Leon Trotsky

His blindness to any sense of humanity was evident in his last months of exile when he insisted, against the views of most of his allies, that the Soviet war in Finland was a good thing because Finnish capitalists and exploiters would be put up against the wall. His death from an act of Stalinist terrorism would not have surprised him: Bolshevik justice and injustice were about destroying what lay across the revolution's path. --Richard Overy, Ice-cold in Coyoacan, Literary Review, June 2009, review of Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky, by Bertrand M. Patenaude (via Arts & Letters Daily)


Victory in Defeat, by Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books, December 2, 2004, review of 'The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-21', by Isaac Deutscher, 'The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-29', by Isaac Deutscher, and 'The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-40', by Isaac Deutscher

The Old Man: Even for educated readers, Leon Trotsky survives as part kitsch and part caricature. But the reissue of a majestic biography reveals him as he always was—a prophetic moralist, by Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2004, review of 'The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921', by Isaac Deutscher, 'The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929', by Isaac Deutscher, and 'The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940, by Isaac Deutscher

Revolutionary Thinker: Leon Trotsky's Great-Granddaughter Is Following Her Own Path to Greatness, by Guy Gugliotta, The Washington Post, August 21, 2003, at Cannabis News

Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House: Influence on Bush aides: Bolshevik's writings supported the idea of pre-emptive war, by Jeet Heer, National Post, June 7, 2003, at Alex Jones' Prison Planet

Their Morals and Ours, by Leon Trotsky, reviewed by Mick Hume, New Statesman, December 14, 2002

See Double Standard