Trotsky, The Passionate Revolutionary

Although Trotsky was dramatically assassinated just over eighty years ago, he remains a controversial figure. He has had many biographers over the decades — ranging from the overly—sympathetic, to the extremely—hostile. Robert Service, his most recent biographer, expressed the hope that his book would ‘finish off’ Trotsky — a job he believed the ice—axe had failed to do in 1940!

This biography, as expected, deals with those aspects for which Trotsky is noted: his passionate and fiery oratory...