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IRVING HOWE
capitalist nor socialist in character. The first of these miscalculations
did not necessarily call into question the validity of Marxism, but the
second involved historical possibilities with which traditional Marx–
ism was not well prepared to cope.
With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Trotsky
moves into the center of modern history. His achievements as revolu–
tionary leader are sufficiently known not to require a full account
in these pages, but a few details may help us in tracing the curve of
his political career.
Returning to Petersburg after the overthrow of the Czar, Trot–
sky thrust himself into the excitements of Russian politics, a politics
that was chaotic and ultimatistic but, for the first time in history,
free. Parties sprang up, debate rang passionately, the long-silent
masses began to find their voice. The provisional governments that
had replaced the Czar- first under the liberal monarchist Prince
Lvov, then the Constitutional Democrat Miliukov and finally the
populist Kerensky-were inherently unstable. Their incapacity or
unwillingness to permit a division of landed estates among the
peasants and their failure to end Russia's participation in a fruitless
and exhausting war made them increasingly unpopular. Since Trot–
sky opposed in principle any political collaboration with these re–
gimes, even when they included some Menshevik ministers under
Kerensky, he found himself at odds with both the Mensheviks and
the "conciliationist" wing of the Bolsheviks. By the same token he
was now closer to Lenin, whose entire political strategy beginning
with the spring of 1917, to the astonishment even of many of
his
own comrades, was directed toward preparing the Bolshevik party
for a seizure of power. In July Trotsky formally joined the Bolsheviks,
though for some months he had already been working with them.
Supported by Lenin and for the first time in his political career
working closely with a disciplined party organization, Trotsky be–
came the popular spokesman for Bolshevism. Sukhanov, the gifted
Menshevik whose eyewitness chronicle of the revolution is a major
historical source, has recalled that Trotsky "spoke everywhere simul–
taneously. Every worker and soldier at Petrograd knew him and
listened to him. His influence on the masses and the leaders alike
was overwhelming." His biographer, Isaac Deutscher, offers a vivid
picture of Trotsky as a mass orator:
