The prophet armed : Trotsky, 1879-1921 / Isaac Deutscher.

This is the first volume of the author's "The Prophet" trilogy concerning the life of Leon Trotsky. The second volume is "The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929" was published in 1959. The third volume is "The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940" dealing with the later life of Trotsky and with the events leading to his assassination, which was published in 1963.

Chapter fourteen contains an additional section at the end of the chapter, "Note on Trotsky's Military Writings".

Includes one black and white map detailing the territories occupied by anti-bolshevik armies in 1919 and 1920.

"Issac Deutscher, who has been a specialist in Russian affairs for many years, is the author of "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921"; "Stalin: A Political Biography"; "Russia in Transition"; "Soviet Trade Unions"; and "Russia: What next?" His syndicated articles on current Soviet affairs appear regularly in the leading newspapers of fifteen countries and he contributes frequently to the "The Reporter". Polish by birth, he is now a British subject." -- from dust jacket

Includes bibliographical references (pages 523 - 528) and index.

1. Home and school -- 2. In search of an ideal -- 3. At the door of history -- 4. An intellectual partnership -- 5. Trotsky in 1905 -- 6. 'Permanent revolution' -- 7. The doldrums : 1907 - 1914 -- 8. War and the international -- 9. Trotsky in the October Revolution -- 10. The people's commissar -- 11. The drama of Brest Litovsk -- 12. Arming the republic -- 13. Revolution and conquest -- 14. Defeat in victory.

"Hardly any political figure in this century has aroused so much passion and confused controversy as Trotsky. Stalin denounced him as Hitler's accomplice; he denounced Stalin as the arch betrayer of the revolution. For three decades the Trotskyist 'heresy' haunted Stalin, and the desire to expunge Trotsky from the memory of a whole generation has been behind the prodigious endeavor to rewrite Soviet history. The purpose of Mr. Deutscher's work is to restore the historical balance. From his pages Trotsky emerges in his real stature, in his strength and with all his weaknesses. He is portrayed as the most romantic, heroic, and tragic character in the revolution. The whole path of his development is traced: his early activities, the formation and crystallization of his distinctive and motivating idea-- the permanent revolution --his long feud and final reconciliation with Lenin and Bolshevism, and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. He is shown also as the first diplomat of the revolution and as the founder of the Red Army. The narrative in this volume ends with 1921, when Trotsky, then at the climax of power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his downfall." -- from the dust jacket

"In addition to Trotsky's own voluminous writings and the records of the revolutionary movements, the author has used the many memoirs of him written by friends and enemies Russian, German, Austrian, French, Swiss, Italian, English, American, Jewish, Polish. Mr. Deutscher is the first writer to examine the files of nearly all the clandestine pre-1917 periodicals to which Trotsky contributed or with which he was in some way connected. Most of these were studied at the Hoover Library, Stanford University. The Tsarist police archives have also been drawn upon and extensive use has been made of the Trotsky Archives at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, by far the most important collection of original documents on Soviet history existing outside the U.S.S.R." -- from the dust jacket

From the library of Karl and Elizabeth Niebyl.