Introduction

The classic biography of Trotsky remains that written by Isaac Deutscher in 1954, the trilogy The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Outcast.1 Deutscher went along with, and indeed helped to foster, the Trotsky myth – the idea that he was ‘the best Bolshevik’. Together, Lenin and Trotsky carried out the October Revolution and, with Lenin’s support, Trotsky consistently challenged Stalin from the end of 1922 onwards to save the revolution from its bureaucratic degeneration. In this version of events Trotsky was Lenin’s true heir, only to be removed from that position by the manipulative Stalin. This approach shapes the structure of Deutscher’s trilogy. He devotes a whole volume to the years of exile when Trotsky sniped at Stalin from afar, and most of another volume to the years after Lenin’s death when the factional struggle between Stalin and Trotsky was at its height.