This is a fascinating book detailing the fall from grace of the Soviet Union's number 2 man in the revolution: Leon Trotsky. After Lenin's death, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, the ruling triumverate, did all that they could to eliminate this popular figure from the political arena. Deutscher does a great job illuminating one of the the major ideological conflicts in the Soviet Union during the 1920's: socialism in one country advocated by Stalin and permanent revolution supported by Trotsky. Deutscher's arguments make a strong case for Trotsky's position, since without a communist revolution in a more industrially advanced country, Soviet socialism faced the danger of becoming heavily bureaucratic and deformed. The other major difference between Stalin and Totsky was about the course of inustrialization in the Soviet Union. Trotsky warned about the danger of the New Economic Policy (NEP) slowly restoring capitalism in Russia. In Stalin's battle for power with Trotsky, he originally supported the NEP and a slow course of industrialization. When he finally defeated Trotsky (which begins the final book of Deutscher's trilogy) he almost completely stole Trotsky's program of rapid industrialization for the USSR. The question that the reader is left with is: would idustrialization in the USSR have been more peaceful under Trotsky than Stalin? Would we be talking about millions of dead Soviet citizens today and would the communist movement around the world still be a factor if Trotsky, not Stalin, would have won the power struggle in the 1920's. It's obvious that Deutscher is a big supporter of Leon Trotsky. Its hard not to be: he almost single handedly organized the Red Army with no military background which repelled foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War. He was matched only by Lenin as the supreme Marxist intellectual of the time. A supreme orator, he was the consumate revolutionary and internationalist. This trilogy is by far the best Trotsky biography to date. Any one interested in the Russian revolution or the Communist movement must read these books.

This is the second volume of a three-volume sympathetic biography of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher. This is Deutscher's most famous work.

In this second volume the author gets about telling the story that he really wants to tell. Rather than a balanced tale of the life of Trotsky, the author really want to concentrate on the conflict between him and Joseph Stalin. This volume is where that tale begins in earnest.

Nonetheless, Deutscher's style of writing grabs the reader's interest and holds her/him to the subject. This is a worthy addition to any library of any reader interested in Soviet history.

This is an excellent book and those that enjoyed Deutscher's Trilogy on Leon Trotsky and his biography of Stalin will not be dissappointed with this book! It includes a number of topics, including Kerensky's influence in pre-Bolshevik revolution Russia, as well as commentary on Trotsky, Marxism, Stalin's betrayal of the USSR and the USSR after Stalin, as well as the tragedy that befell the Polish Communist Party. An excellent book, should be read by all Deutscher fans!!

This is the final volume of Isaac Deutscher's famous three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary. Deutscher's biography is the standard biography of Trotsky by which all other biographies of Trosky are measured.

Picking up the life of Trotsky from the time of his first exile from the Soviet Union in 1929, this book carries the story of the later portion of Trotsky's life all the way to his murder in Mexico in 1940.

Deutscher's writing is enticing and holds the interest of the reader. The book is also wonderfully indexed and serves as a guide to the voluminous writing of Leon Trosky during the last phase of his life.

Isaac Deutscher is the only one capable of writing such a great book about one of Russias' greatest man. This book is made up of three parts, three components. The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Armed, and the Prophet Outcast are combined to create a monumental book on a monumental man.

This is an excellent biography of Trotsky, and, despite the fact it takes up 3 books, it makes up excellent reading and gives one understanding of not just the life of Trotsky, but the reason for many of the peculiar changes that happened in the USSR in it's early days. It leaves the reader quite well informed, and one gets to meet quite a few revolutionaries through the book, including Zasulich, Axelrod, Plekhanov, and Parvus. Get it!

This is a great and very informative book, you never get tired of reading it

I found the book at the same time gripping and disappointing. Very well-written and readable, it contains a number of gems, such as discussions of the complicated relationship between Stalin and Lenin and its shocking conclusion between Lenin's second stroke and his death, and the effect of Alexander Blok's poem "The Scythians" on the pre-revolution Russian intelligentia. But revelations -- or even details -- concerning other critical events such as the purges of the mid-Thirties seem entirely lacking. Here, Deutscher simply lists the names of a few of the old guard who were annihilated and sparsely sums the whole episode thus: "It is not necessary to assume that he acted from sheer cruelty or lust for power. He may be given the dubious credit of the sincere conviction that what he did saved the interests of the revolution and that he alone interpreted those interests aright." (page 378) Absolutely no description of any thought process by Stalin as to who would die is given; no hint of the stories of Stalin personally going over lists of names to mark the condemned is offered. Likewise, the deaths and ruined families of these thousands are passed over and we are given this in their stead: "The real mass purges were carried out without the thunder and lightning of publicity, without confession of the victims, and often without any trial whatsoever. He sent thousands to their deaths and tens of hundreds of thousands into prisons and concentration camps." (page 380)

What the book does offer is a detailed and easily-followed history of the Russian revolutions of 1907 and 1917, the subversion and takeover of the latter by the Bolsheviks, and the major (and sometimes minor) events that followed until Stalin's death. But even here important events are left out; the murder of the Romanovs is not even mentioned in passing and the Western miltary interventions aimed at toppling the Reds are only hinted at. Trotsky's complex role and his relationship with Stalin is handled well throughout, but his murder warrants a single paragraph, as if it happens off stage, with no hint of Stalin's inner compunction or outer reactions to the death of his lifelong nemesis.

Overall, the book is a good read. But the reader who expects to pry into the personal, inner workings of Stalin is likely, as I was, to be sorely disappointed.