Lenin and Trotsky had worked together on a deliberate policy of terror that precisely foreshadowed the later Stalinist tyranny. Stalinism, therefore, was not a reversal of Leninism but a continuation of it. Trotsky’s enforced militarisation of labour, his crushing of the trade unions, the extreme methods he used to discipline the Red Army, his savagery against the Kronstadt rebels in 1921, and his ferocity towards the Russian peasantry undermine the romantic image of him as “the angel of enlightenment” in an otherwise cruel world.

In exile, Trotsky denounced Stalinism not because it was brutal but because it was brutal for the wrong reasons. All the signs were that, had Trotsky had the opportunity to enforce his concept of revolution on the Bolshevik state, he would have used very similar means to those that Stalin employed. Absolute authority was the necessary requirement of Bolshevik rule. Long before Stalin imposed himself on the Party, Trotsky had supported Lenin in the creation of the one-party totalitarian state, with its secret police, show trials, and prison camps. Trotsky believed unashamedly in state terror.

On Deutscher’s trilogy, I do not think I can quite match the following praise from Max Shachtman (Dissent, July 1964):

As biography, it is an achievement unsurpassed by anything written in this century; as political biography, it is unequalled.

I love the “were prepared”.

It’s time to re-think Kerensky as well.

“the ‘prophet’ he refers to is a concept taken from Machievelli’s ‘The Prince’ as a political leader who wishes to enact radical change in the face of intransigent opposition. Only a prophet, ie politician, who is ARMED can carry out this change. And a ‘prophet’/politician who is UNARMED or OUTCAST cannot enact radical change.”

Methinks that to be a “politician” one has to practice the supremacy of lawful elections. Hardly includes Machiavelli or Trotsky.

And the nazis were prepared to use racist language proves what exactly?

Idiot.

Social Darwinism, red in tooth and claw.

He also witheringly demonstrates how all the Trotskyist groupuscules who’ve provided most of the writings about Trotsky were either ignorant of what he actually said or did. Of course they will huff and puff to the contrary and rave on about the fact that some of Service’s most telling sources were those in the Hoover Institute (which spent years buying up collections of Soviet and Trotskyist archives, including those of the man himself) and the Soviet and satellite state archives.

A minor and irrelevant detail (from a political point of view). Trotsky’s surviving great grandson (most of his family were murdered by Soviet agents) became a Chassidic Jew.

From peyos to peyos in four generations….

It is not just blood thirsty language. According to Stephane Courtois on p.4 of his co-authored book, The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999) a figure that “approaches 100 million” were killed as a result of the effect of Communism. What is absolutely clear is that the terror and the murders did not start in the Stalin era but can be traced back to when Lenin was in power. As Lenin said January 1918:

We can’t expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.

That is correct, I was referring to October/November 1917, I thought it was obvious.

@Poumista

I think the most telling part of Ron Radosh’s memoirs, Commies, is where he describes (pp.126-7 ) a trip he made to a mental hospital in Cuba. He asked a seemingly sane individual who was teaching others how to paint how he could deal with mentally unbalanced patients. The person responded, “I’m a patient myself.” Radosh was clearly confused and the person explained – “I’m a homosexual, and that is why I am confined here.” In a question and answer session with the doctor, the doctor explained, that homosexuality was a disease and it justified commitment to a mental hospital.

The doctor was also proud to tell the tour group that Radosh was on:

in our institution, we have a larger proportion of hospital inmates who have been lobotomised than any other mental hospital in the world.

One group member was horrified – but Suzanne Ross, a Castro loyalist, said:

We have to understand that there are differences between capitalist lobotomies and socialist lobotomies.

Regarding Radosh’s comments about the effect of Deutscher on the New Left, as I have it to hand, he says on pp.78-9 that Deutscher

develop[ed] a unique outlook on the Soviet Union …. [and] provided a convenient way for those who had been enamored with the USSR and Stalin to remain loyal to the ideal of communism while being critical of the reality…. for those infauated with Stalinism, he was a bridge away from it; for those who were already anti-Stalinist, he was a bridge towards acceptance of it.

There was a white terror, there was a red terror, the was a New Labour terror in Iraq

Even if ninety per cent. of the people perish, what matter if the other ten per cent. live to see revolution become universal?

In the end, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were all committed to the idea of fewer but better Russians.