Book description
Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling
writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e. g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the
Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand
seigneur of his household, father and hunted victim, Trotsky lived a
brilliant life in extraordinary times. Robert Service draws on hitherto
unexamined archives and on his profound understanding of Russian history
to draw a portrait of the man and his legacy, revealing that though his
followers have represented Trotsky as a pure revolutionary soul and a
powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin and his
henchmen. The reality is very different, as this masterful and
compelling biography reveals. Robert Service is a Fellow of the
British Academy and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has written
several books, including the highly acclaimed
Lenin: A Biography
, Russia: Experiment with a People
, Stalin: A Biography
and Comrades: A History of World Communism
, as well as many other books on Russia’s past and present. Married with
four children, he lives in London.
