Leon Trotsky

A Revolutionary's Life

Joshua Rubenstein

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Paperback

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English

Yale University
24 September 2013

Biography: historical, political & military; History; European history; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Russian Revolution

Series: Jewish Lives

A clear-eyed exploration of the career of Leon Trotsky, the tragic hero who “dreamed of justice and then wreaked havoc,” by a leading expert on human rights and the former Soviet Union

Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in southern Ukraine, Trotsky was both a world-class intellectual and a man capable of the most narrow-minded ideological dogmatism. He was an effective military strategist and an adept diplomat, who staked the fate of the Bolshevik revolution on the meager foundation of a Europe-wide Communist upheaval. He was a master politician who played his cards badly in the momentous struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s. And he was an assimilated, indifferent Jew who was among the first to foresee that Hitler’s triumph would mean disaster for his fellow European Jews, and that Stalin would attempt to forge an alliance with Hitler if Soviet overtures to the Western democracies failed.

Here, Trotsky emerges as a brilliant and brilliantly flawed man. Rubenstein offers us a Trotsky who is mentally acute and impatient with others, one of the finest students of contemporary politics who refused to engage in the nitty-gritty of party organization in the 1920s, when Stalin was maneuvering, inexorably, toward Trotsky’s own political oblivion.

As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, “Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics.” In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky’s life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

By: Joshua Rubenstein
Imprint: Yale University
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 2mm
Weight: 281g
ISBN: 9780300198324
ISBN 10: 0300198329
Series: Jewish Lives
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 24 September 2013
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Joshua Rubenstein is the northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA and a longtime associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is the author of Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, a masterful biography of this controversial Soviet-Jewish writer and journalist. In addition, Rubenstein is coeditor of The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov and Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, both published by Yale University Press. Stalin's Secret Pogrom received a National Jewish Book Award.

Reviews for Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life

"""An accessible scholarly account of a man whose life spanned continents, whose charisma was legendary and whose ideas sparked a revolution and its backlash.""—Kirkus Reviews * Kirkus Reviews * ""This trim book . . . pulls together all the essentials of the life of Leon Trotsky and the revolution he so significantly shaped into a seamless, intelligent, and wonderfully accessible synopsis.""—Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs -- Robert Legvold * Foreign Affairs * “. . . this is both a good read and a balanced, plausible interpretation of the man in his times. Rubenstein sees things to admire and deplore, and achieves the mix of empathy and critical distance a good biographer needs.”—Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Guardian -- Sheila Fitzpatrick * The Guardian * ""In this new, concise biography, Rubenstein offers a more balanced view of Trotsky. . . . There are many reasons to commend this work — among them, Rubenstein’s depoliticization of its subject and the book’s succinctness and readability.""—Peter Ephross, The Forward -- Peter Ephross * The Forward *"