This trio of biographical books just flies by but, I defy you to read this book, with dry eyes. Knowing the story doesn't help.

Isaac Deutscher really knows his subject and, the more that you read, the more the reader understands why Trotsky's demise was inevitable.

Highly recommended to all. ( )

This book is better than volume 1 of Deutscher’s trilogy on Trotsky and much better than the overpraised biography of Stalin. It is not faultless in matter or tone -- there are traces of pompousness and as a stylist Deutscher tends to solemnity. But this volume established Deutscher as a historian of the Russian Revolution, even though readers may still go elsewhere for the details (e.g., EH Carr’s works).

Trotsky’s fall from power is brought into proper focus and related to the crisis of the Soviet regime after Lenin’s death. In 1921, with the civil war over, Trotsky was at the height of his power and prestige; in 1929 he was expelled from the USSR, never to return. Trotsky was aware of what was happening, but obstinately clung to the notion that the regime was inherently socialist and only needed to be reformed politically. Other Bolsheviks lost hope sooner and exiled themselves long before Trotsky. Deutscher does not explain how Trotsky rationalized his decision to oppose a current which on his own reading of the facts was irresistible. The answer is that Trotsky was both a revolutionary and a historian; in his political role he had to continue the struggle. His analogues to the French Revolution are false, although the participants at the time worried about this a lot; and Trotsky and others (but not Stalin) would time and again set their course of action based on their analysis of the stages of the earlier revolution. Stalin benefited not merely from his control of the machine but his lack of imagination -- he never worried about his place in history until he had won and could have the history books rewritten to suit his purpose. Trotsky had an impractical streak that Deutscher does not stress sufficiently.

Deutscher suggested that the post-Stalinist age would do justice to Trotsky. This was unlikely for several reasons including that Trotskyism as a political doctrine was sterile in the context of the post-Stalinist USSR. Trotsky stands for the myth of the October Revolution, and myths, though potent in their own domain, do not serve as guideposts to action. There was very little to connect the thoughts and anticipations of those who started the revolution with the social reality to which it gave rise, and by the same token the Russian Revolution had no lessons for Western countries. Trotsky’s chief contribution to Marxist thinking was the idea that socialist revolutions are possible in backward countries. While this was proven in the Third World, the experience also showed that it takes a dictatorship to stabilize the new society and that the society is not classless.[1960]
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Full review to come at Volume 3. ( )

In questo secondo volume, "Il Profeta disarmato", narra i problemi della costruzione del socialismo in Unione Sovietica, le lotte interne e fratricide del gruppo dirigente e le spaccature nello stesso partito bolscevico, con l'ascesa di Stalin. ( )

2049 The Prophet Unarmed Trotsky: 1921-1929 by Isaac Deutscher (read 25 Jan 1987) This volume covers from 1921 to Trotsky's expulsion from Russian in 1929. He strikes me as really dumb, even though Deutscher is positively hagiographical about him. His opposition to Stalin was from the left--he was critical of Stalin for being too soft on the kulaks and not socialistic enough. The book goes on and on at great length about the disputes between Communist theorists. It is boring, in a way, especially since Deutscher just assumes everybody is viewing what he says from his own Marxist viewpoint. A lot of talk about "primitive socialist accumulation," and a lot of effort to tell what is happening to rhe Russian Revolution by comparing events in the French Revolution to events after 1917. One cannot say Russia would have been better off if Trotsky had won his struggle with Stalin. ( )