Here is a review addressing those points about Trotsky, the great historian
of Russia Richard Pipes reviewing the new biography *Leon Trotsky: A
Revolutionary's Life* by Joshua Rubenstein, who also seems to think Trotsky
rising to the top would have meant a kinder, gentler Bolshevik Revolution.
Pipes (Jewish like Leon Trotsky) disagrees, and spells out why ("In view
of the murderous paranoia of Stalin, it is tempting to gloss over Trotsky’s
own ruthlessness and to depict him as a humane counterpart to his rival.
This is quite unwarranted.")
http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/80739/trotsky-the-jew/
Someone else who did not have such sunny views about Trotsky and how things
would have gone if he'd risen to the top was the one-time Soviet general
turned historian, Dmitri Volkogonov, who was able to work in Soviet
archives not then open to the public, and who is, I think, the only person
who succeeded in writing substantial biographies of all three, Lenin,
Stalin and Trotsky. In the latter case, *Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutiona*ry,
trans. by Harold Shukman (Free Press, 1996). His view is developed and
documented in great detail, but summed up in the judgment that "Trotsky had
declared intellectual war on virtually everyone.."
(In short, WSC was surely right about Trotsky too.)
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Carey Stronach <[email protected]>wrote:
> In his recent book, "In Defense Of Leon Trotsky," David North quotes WSC
> as saying of Trotsky in 1937, "Like the cancer bacillus he grew, he fed, he
> tortured, he slew in fulfillment of his nature."
>
> Was Churchill on the mark with these comments, or was he mistaken,
> possibly grossly mistaken (as North claims)? The Russian revolution was
> terribly bloody, but many, perhaps most, of the atrocities were committed
> on the orders of others, Lenin, Stalin and the NKVD.
>
> It's a fascinating, but ultimately frustrating, game to construct
> alternative histories. Trotsky lost the power struggle with Stalin in 1927
> and left the Soviet Union in fear of his life in 1929. (He was eventually
> murdered in Mexico by a Stalinist thug in 1940.) The worst horrors of the
> Soviet regime lay in the future, the Ukrainian famine of 1931-33, and the
> great purge of 1937-38. The book "Bloodlands," by Timothy Snyder, documents
> these terrors in excruciating detail, as does the historical novel
> "Everything Flows," by Vasily Grossman.
>
> Let us assume for the moment that Trotsky had defeated Stalin in the
> 1920s. Would the Soviet people have accepted a Jewish leader? Would the
> USSR have morphed into a social democracy along the lines of a Slavic
> Sweden? Or would there have been a coup, perhaps led by the army, that
> might have brought a right-wing dictatorship to power? If Trotsky had
> prevailed, World War II might never have happened, at least not along the
> lines of what actually took place. This is because a Trotsky - Hitler pact
> would have been utterly unthinkable, indeed laughable in its absurdity.
> Then Britain and Churchill would not have had to endure the supreme
> challenge of 1940-41, and WSC might have ended his career as a relatively
> unknown back bencher.
>
> This chat group has been relatively quiet recently. I know that there are
> a number of distinguished scholars present, from both right and left. Maybe
> this topic will draw out some interesting and divergent opinions.
>
> CES
>
>
>
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