Robert service trotsky biography of albert
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Trotsky wrote an enormous amount and, as a journalist, he was always happy to write on subjects about which he knew very little. [3] It must be also be noted that Service, in his 2004 biography of Stalin, dealt far more respectfully with the Soviet dictator and mass murderer. This was not so. The circumstances of his childhood were inextricably intertwined with his Jewish ancestry.
In my fathers family there was no strict observation of religion.Russian Review, Volume 14, No. 2 (April 1955), pp. And now, as 2009 draws to a close, the Trotsky: A Biography by Professor Robert Service of St. Antonys College, Oxford, has been brought out with considerable fanfare. The only serious fighting in a major German city occurred in Hamburg.
In a passing reference to the Chinese Revolution, Service states that the Communist International sent instructions for an insurrection against Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang in April 1927.
The Thatcher-Swain biographies set out to create a new anti-Trotsky narrative, utilizing slanders and fabrications of old Stalinist vintage in the interest of contemporary anti-communism.
The use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon against Trotsky is so well known that it is impossible to believe that Services incessant invocation of his subjects Jewish roots is innocent. (7)
As for his own relation to his Jewish origins, Trotsky explained:
In my mental equipment, nationality never occupied an independent place, as it was felt but little in every-day life.If he had accomplished nothing else, Service has, with one mighty footnote, restored young Kreitsers name to its proper place in history.
Trotskys Origins
Let us now turn to Services contention that Trotsky sought to downplay his Jewish ancestry. Although Trotsky's followers clung to the stubborn view of him as a pure revolutionary and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin, the reality is very different--From publisher description.
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Service recounts Trotsky's role in the botched German revolution of 1923; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the 1920s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms.It was characteristically courteous, and a very friendly, exercise of judgment. His unuttered basic assumptions were integral to the amalgam of his life. Had he bothered to do so, Service might have taken note of Trotskys important and influential essay on this case.
This reviewer wishes to register his disgust with Services inclusion among the biographys illustrations, for no obvious reason, of a Nazi caricature of Leiba Trotzky-Braunstein. The caption provided by Service states: In reality, his real nose was neither long nor bent and he never allowed his goatee to become straggly or his hair ill-kempt. Did Service intend this as a joke?
Alexandra never betrayed that friendship, for which she ultimately paid with her life. Service is not content to distort and falsify Trotskys political deeds and ideas. Ziv, do you really know for sure that Trotsky ever read the Art of Controversy? Ibid, pp. If so, it is in very bad taste.
What, then, should be made of Services obsessive fixation with Trotskys Jewish background?