The prophet outcast : Trotsky, 1929-1940 / Isaac Deutscher.

This is the third volume of the author's "The Prophet" trilogy concerning the life of Leon Trotsky. The first volume, "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921' was published in 1954. The second volume is "The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929" was published in 1959.

List of illustrations (page vii.) includes illustrations from the last years of Trotsky's life (photographs of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940 on one of his last outings, and another taken just days before his assassination). Additionally there are photographs of Zina, Trotsky's daughter, shortly before her suicide.

"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

Includes bibliographical references (pages 525-532) and index.

1. On the princes' isles -- 2. Reason and unreason -- 3. The revolutionary as historian -- 4. 'Enemy of the people' -- 5. The 'hell-black night' -- 6. Postscript : victory in defeat.

"This volume, the culmination of Isaac Deutscher's brilliant trilogy follows Trotsky's extraordinary life from his banishment from Russia to his brutal murder in Mexico in 1940. Of the book Mr. Deutscher writes: 'At the denouement the protagonist of a tragedy is usually more acted upon than acting. Yet Trotsky remained Stalin's active and fighting antipode to the end, his sole antagonist. Throughout the twelve years covered here no voice could be raised against Stalin in the U.S.S.R....consequently, Trotsky appeared to stand quite alone against Stalin's autocracy. It was as if a huge historic conflict had become compressed into a feud between two men... To show how this happened I have had to narrate the tremendous social and political events of the period: the turmoil of industrialization and collectivization in the U.S.S.R. and the Great Purges; the collapse of the German and European labour movements under the onslaught of Nazism; and the outbreak of the Second World War. Each of these events affected Trotsky's fortunes; and over each he took his stand against Stalin. I have also had to go over the major controversies of the time; for in Trotsky's life the ideological debate is as important as the battle scene is in Shakespearean tragedy: through it the protagonists character reveals itself, while he is moving towards catastrophe... At this Trotsky's family life is an inseparable from his political fortunes: it gives a new dimension to his struggle; and it adds to the somber depth to his drama. The strange and moving tale is told here, for the first time on the basis of Trotsky's intimate correspondence with his wife and children, a correspondence to which I have been privileged to obtain unlimited access.' --from book jacket

"Mr. Deutscher, author of 'Stalin: A Political Biography' (1949), and an authority on Russia affairs for many years, also discusses the impact of Trotskyism upon the American political scene, the American labor movement, and American intellectual life; and he tells the story of Trotsky's remarkable counter-trial, conducted in Mexico by the Joint Commission of Inquiry under John Dewey's leadership in 1937, to allow Trotsky to vindicate himself against Stalinist charges. Now a quarter century later, the post-Stalin era in Russia and the controversy between Kruschev and Mao Tse-tung evidence the continuing vitality and topicality of the issues which Mr. Deutscher explores. Trotsky emerges here, in his strengths and weaknesses, as the most heroic and tragic revolutionary figure of our time." --from book jacket

From the library of Karl and Elizabeth Niebyl.