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Review: Trotsky: A Biography

The disastrous dilettante

November 26, 2009 11:19
Professional revolutionary at work: Trotsky reads international communist papers while in Turkey

By

David Cesarani,

David Cesarani

3 min read

By Robert Service
Macmillan, £25

In 1918, Leon Trotsky was “the most famous Jew on earth”, second only to Lenin in the new Soviet government. His meteoric career fascinated those who yearned for freedom and justice, while it terrified the defenders of property and the status quo. To millions of Jews, his success was both an inspiration and a curse.

Trotsky, born Leiba Bronstein in 1879, was the son of a hard-working and successful Jewish farm owner in the southern Ukraine. Although he learned Yiddish and Hebrew as well as Ukrainian --- the language of the workers on his father’s estate --- young Leiba was hardly integrated into Jewish life. The farm was remote from the nearest Jewish community and his parents were relaxed about Jewish observances.

Between the ages of nine and 16, he attended a Christian school in Odessa. While there, he boarded with relatives who ensured that he had some Jewish education. However, at his next school, the gymnasia in Nikolaev, he discovered his true religion: Marxism. He also soon found his vocation, that of professional revolutionary. In 1898, he was arrested for subversive activities. His mother and father visited him in prison, setting a pattern for their infrequent meetings with their wayward son.