Prophet Unarmed

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 and 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 as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. This second volume of the trilogy, first published in 1959, is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin. From the narrative of Trotsky's uncompromising opposition to Stalin's policies emerge character studies of the important Soviet leaders; a brilliant portrait of Trotsky the man of ideas, the Marxist philosopher and the literary critic; and a new assessment of the causes of defeat which led to his expulsion from the part, his exile, and his 1929 banishment from Russia.