Synopsis:
David Renton has produced a clear and informative biography of “the man who refused to compromise, who followed the Revolution to its end, who wrote and argued and never gave up”. It constitutes a sympathetic but far from uncritical portrait of perhaps the most controversial leftwing figure in the history of the 20th century. For an inexpensive paperback, the book is beautifully produced, containing dozens of photographs.
The main text is interspersed with brief “encyclopaedia-style” entries on famous events, historical figures, and concepts and theories. For the most part, brevity does not lead to a loss of clarity or theoretical focus. On the whole Renton does a good job of filling out the theoretical background to Trotsky's life.
Renton also effectively charts the factors that led to the degeneration of the Russian revolution. He gives a sense of how civil war and the resulting near-extinction of the Russian working class set the scene for the ascendancy of Stalin and the bureaucratic strata that coalesced around him. He shows how the fate of the revolution was eventually sealed by the fact that revolution failed to materialise in the more advanced economies of Western Europe.
Renton's presentation raises difficult questions about how things would have been different if Trotsky's oppositional faction in the Communist Party had triumphed in the 1920s over the Stalinist bureaucracy.
If Stalinism was the product of isolation and the failure of revolutionary socialism in Western Europe, factors outside the control of the Russians, wouldn't trying to save the revolution by overthrowing Stalin be like trying to put out a fire by blowing away the smoke? Would the victory of the Opposition have resulted in just another form of bureaucratic degeneration? How does the claim that Stalin's success led to isolation and blockade square with the claim that it was isolation and blockade that led to Stalin's success?
Anyone looking for a quick and inexpensive introduction to Trotsky's contribution to the socialist journey could do far worse than start with Renton's engaging and well-produced biography. |
