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IRVING HOWE
demanding both a monopoly of power and a monopoly of freedom
for the Bolsheviks: something just barely possible for a brief interval
but surely not for longer. There is no reason to suppose that if he
had raised the demand for multi-party democracy it would have
strengthened his cause or re-established his popularity. Such a de–
mand would probably have isolated him still further within the
Bolshevik hierarchy and very likely not have sparked any great
enthusiasm among the weary and impoverished masses. But what
it would have done was to make his political and moral position
more secure in the eyes of that historical posterity upon whose verdict
he seemed so heavily to bank.
By 1928 Stalin had consolidated his power. The Left Opposi–
tion of Trotsky was crushed and the Right Opposition of Bukharin
rendered powerless; the members of both groups were driven into
exile, silenced in prison, or broken to recant. Trotsky himself was
sent to a distant region of Asian Russia and early in 1929 deported
from the country. A pall of obedience fell over Russia, and then:
terror.
It
was now, in his years as a powerless and harassed exile,
that Trotsky achieved his greatest moral stature. No longer were
there masses of cheering listeners to inflame with his eloquence; no
longer armies to spur into heroism; no longer parties to guide to
power. The most brilliant figure of the revolution was cast by the
usurping dictatorship as a heretic, then a traitor, and finally, in the
macabre frame-ups of the Moscow Trials, an agent of fascism.
Driven from country to country, partly because of the pressures
brought to bear by the Stalin regime and partly because the presence
of the famous revolutionist, helpless and isolated though he might
be, made governments feel uncomfortable, Trotsky found his final
exile in Mexico. He lived always in danger of assassination, and at
least one effort involving the Mexican Communist painter David
Siqueiros was made upon his life before the actual murder. A
number of Trotsky's political associates were killed by agents of the
Russian secret police, and his children, including a son who had
never shown any interest in politics, were systematically hounded in
Russia.
But Trotsky continued to cry out his defiance, unbent and
