TROTSKY
. . . he established his platform in the Cirque Modeme, where
almost every night he addressed enormous crowds. The amphi–
theatre was so densely packed that Trotsky was usually shuffled
towards the platform over the heads of the audience, and from
his elevation he would catch the excited eyes of the daughters
of his first marriage . . . He spoke on the topics of the day
and the aims of the revolution with his usual piercing logic;
but he also absorbed the spirit of the crowd, its harsh sense
of justice, its desire to see things in sharp and clear outline ...
Later he recollected how at the mere sight of the multitude
words and arguments he had prepared well in advance receded
and dispersed in his mind and other words and arguments,
unexpected by himself but meeting a need in his listeners,
rushed up as if from his subconscious. He then listened to his
own voice as to that of a stranger, trying to keep pace with
the tumultuous rush of his own ideas and phrases and afraid
lest like a sleepwalker he might suddenly wake and break
down. Here his politics ceased to be the distillation of in–
dividual reflection or of debates in small circles of professional
politicians. He merged emotionally with the dark warm human
mass in front of him ...
367
Trotsky was more than a superb orator, more than a remark–
ably sensitive medium between the aroused masses and the straining
Bolshevik leadership.
In
the Soviets, those improvised institutions
of popular sovereignty where the left-wing parties struggled for
domination, he became the main political spokesman for the Bolshe–
vik point of view. And as preparations for the October Revolution
proceeded, "all the work of practical organization of the insurrec–
tion"-even Joseph Stalin had to admit shortly afterwards-"was
conducted under the immediate leadership of the President of the
Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky.
It
is possible to declare with
certainty that the swift passing of the garrison to the side of the
Soviet, and the bold execution of the work of the Military Revolu–
tionary Committee [the body directing the October insurrection],
the party owes principally and first of all to Comrade Trotsky."
In
the government now formed under Lenin, Trotsky became
foreign minister, intending, as he joked, to issue "a few revolutionary
proclamations and then close shop," but in reality having to con–
duct the difficult Brest-Litovsk negotiations with imperial Germany,
which at a heavy price brought peace to Russia.
In
1918, when the
