Times Literary Supplement
A first rate biographer.

Graham Greene
The most exciting reading of the year. Surely this must be counted among the greatest biographies in the English language.

A.J.P Taylor, New Statesman
He has told the story more accurately and with fuller detail than ever before....compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of Soviet Russia.

Book Description
Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.

About the Author
Isaac Deutscher was born in 1907 near Krakow and joined the Polish Communist Party in 1926. After his expulsion in 1932, he maintained his opposition to the general drift of Comintern policy in the 1930s. He moved to London in 1939 and continued his journalistic activity until 1946, devoting the rest of his life to historical research and the writing of books and essays. His prolific output includes Stalin and The Unfinished Revolution. Isaac Deutscher died in 1967.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion and controversy as the Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience; and yet there was at one time a danger that his name would disappear altogether from history. Isaac Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine, and in this definitive work Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. This first volume of the trilogy, originally published in 1954, traces Trotsky's political development: his early activities, the formation and crystallization of his distinctive and motivating idea -- the permanent revolution -- his long feud and final reconciliation with Lenin and Bolshevism, and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. The volume ends in the year 1921, when Trotsky, then at the climax of power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his own defeat.

FROM THE CRITICS

Graham Greene

The most exciting reading of the year. Surely this must be counted among the greatest biographies in the English language.

Times Literary Supplement

A first rate biographer.

A.J.P Taylor - New Statesman

He has told the story more accurately and with fuller detail than ever before....compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of Soviet Russia.

Library Journal