Trotsky: A Biography

Revolutionary icon, cosmopolitan, theorist, leader, writer, lover, philosopher, enemy, Jew, husband, father and hunted victim, Leon Trotsky led a brilliant life in extraordinary times. He was an immensely colourful and complex character who played a pivotal role in the creation of the USSR, but who has recently been overlooked in comparison to fellow Soviet leaders. Now, in this gripping new biography, award-winning historian Robert Service - author of Lenin and Stalin - portrays the third figure in his revolutionary "triptych". Born the son of a wealthy farmer in southern Ukraine in 1879, the young Marxist writer and agitator came to prominence in the 1905 revolutionary crisis and co-organized the October 1917 Revolution. Trotsky was at the heart of the early Soviet regime with Lenin. Theirs was a close partnership despite personal and political differences. Trotsky was the founder of the Red Army and an original member of the Politburo. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky...