Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
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Markin comment on this article:
Whatever political differences developed between Serge and Trotsky in the late 1930s, and they were considerable and real (the meaning of Kronstadt being the most notable for those who wanted to bail out in their defense of the Soviet Union being the most publicly argued), Victor Serge knew the measure of Trotsky, what he meant to the revolutionary process, and where he stood in the pantheon of revolutionary working-class heroes.
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Victor Serge
A Reaffirmation
Source: Excerpt from Vie et Mort de Trotsky, 1947, published in Fourth International, Autumn 1959
It was to the cause of the workers that Leon Davidovitch devoted his long life of toil, combat, thought, and inflexible resistance to inhumanity. All those who approached him know that he was disinterested and conceived of his whole existence only as part of a great historic task, which was not his alone, but that of the movement of the socialist masses conscious of the perils and possibilities of our period. “These are bitter times,” he wrote, “but we have no other country.” His character was integral in the full sense of the word: seeing no gap between behavior and conviction, idea and action; not admitting that higher interests, which give meaning to life, can be sacrificed to what is passing and personal, to banal petty egotism. His moral uprightness was allied to an intelligence that was simultaneously objective and passionate, and always tended toward depth, breadth, creative effort, the fight for the right ... And he was a simple man. He happened to note in the margin of a book whose author alluded to his “will to power”: “[It was another man who] wanted power for power’s sake. I have never felt this sentiment ... I sought power over intelligences and wills ...” He felt himself to be not so much an authoritarian – though without failing to recognize the practical utility of authority – as one who spurred men on, drew them after him, not by flattering their base instincts but by summoning them to idealism, to clear reason, to the greatness of being fully men of a new type called on to transform society.
Those who hunted him down and killed him, as they killed the Russian Revolution and martyrized the peoples of the USSR, will meet their punishment. Already they have called down on a Soviet Union weakened by the massacres called the “Stalinist purges” the most disastrous invasion. They continue on their road to the abyss ... A few days after his death, I wrote – and I wish to change nothing in these lines: “Throughout his whole heroic life, Leon Davidovitch believed in the future, in the liberation of men. Far from weakening during the last sombre years, his faith matured still further and was rendered firmer by ordeal. Humanity of the future, freed from all oppression, will eliminate from its life all violence. As he did to many others, he taught me this faith.”
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
*******
Markin comment on this article:
Whatever political differences developed between Serge and Trotsky in the late 1930s, and they were considerable and real (the meaning of Kronstadt being the most notable for those who wanted to bail out in their defense of the Soviet Union being the most publicly argued), Victor Serge knew the measure of Trotsky, what he meant to the revolutionary process, and where he stood in the pantheon of revolutionary working-class heroes.
****
Victor Serge
A Reaffirmation
Source: Excerpt from Vie et Mort de Trotsky, 1947, published in Fourth International, Autumn 1959
It was to the cause of the workers that Leon Davidovitch devoted his long life of toil, combat, thought, and inflexible resistance to inhumanity. All those who approached him know that he was disinterested and conceived of his whole existence only as part of a great historic task, which was not his alone, but that of the movement of the socialist masses conscious of the perils and possibilities of our period. “These are bitter times,” he wrote, “but we have no other country.” His character was integral in the full sense of the word: seeing no gap between behavior and conviction, idea and action; not admitting that higher interests, which give meaning to life, can be sacrificed to what is passing and personal, to banal petty egotism. His moral uprightness was allied to an intelligence that was simultaneously objective and passionate, and always tended toward depth, breadth, creative effort, the fight for the right ... And he was a simple man. He happened to note in the margin of a book whose author alluded to his “will to power”: “[It was another man who] wanted power for power’s sake. I have never felt this sentiment ... I sought power over intelligences and wills ...” He felt himself to be not so much an authoritarian – though without failing to recognize the practical utility of authority – as one who spurred men on, drew them after him, not by flattering their base instincts but by summoning them to idealism, to clear reason, to the greatness of being fully men of a new type called on to transform society.
Those who hunted him down and killed him, as they killed the Russian Revolution and martyrized the peoples of the USSR, will meet their punishment. Already they have called down on a Soviet Union weakened by the massacres called the “Stalinist purges” the most disastrous invasion. They continue on their road to the abyss ... A few days after his death, I wrote – and I wish to change nothing in these lines: “Throughout his whole heroic life, Leon Davidovitch believed in the future, in the liberation of men. Far from weakening during the last sombre years, his faith matured still further and was rendered firmer by ordeal. Humanity of the future, freed from all oppression, will eliminate from its life all violence. As he did to many others, he taught me this faith.”
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