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PARTISAN REVIEW
of ironic surprises; could he admit that the world had changed
radically from 1905 to 1945 and in admitting this then change his
analysis?
Once we get our imagination going, why stop with the "correct
position" on state socialism and the historical role of the working
class? What would Trotsky, along with Bukharin one of the few of
the Bolshevik old guard genuinely concerned with literature and the
arts, have made of the Beats? (Can't you see Ginsberg on a pil–
grimage to the Old Man, preparing an interview for
Evergreen
Review?
"What I most regret is the stupid suburban revolutionism,
my ego, the electric draw of the platform and the crowds in 1905 and
the Petrograd soviet in 1918.")
Had he survived into the next decade, what would he have
made of the fatally blurred lines separating high art from kitsch and
high politics from theater, so characteristic of the sixties? What
would Trotsky - ne Bronstein - have thought of the remarkable fall
and rise of the Jewish people, his biological and cultural, if not in–
tellectual, root in history; of the descent into the Holocaust and as–
cent to the State of Israel?
In
Trotsky and the Jews
by Joseph Nedava, one of the few in–
tellectuals of the annexationist right in Israel, the author argues that
"under the changed circumstances brought about by the establish–
ment of the State of Israel .. . Trotsky ... had he lived .. . would
have subscribed to the Zionist solution ."
In his slender volume on Trotsky, Irving Howe, while familiar
with Nedava's speculations, refuses to indulge himself. Howe does
see a "new uncertainty" in "Trotsky's hesitant and groping state–
ments on the Jewish question ... a feeling that it would no longer
do to keep repeating the old 'positions'."
What of it? Did Trotsky in fact soften his position with regard
to Zionism? Might he have turned from opponent to friend, even
participant? And if he had, would people have regarded him as a
prodigal son returned from a lifetime adventure abroad , or as a
lonely and defeated old man turned in upon himself in search of il–
lusory metaphysical comfort in the face of death?
In this fantastic might-have-been, Trotsky survives the assas–
sination bid against him in Coyoacan in August 1940. The ice pick
grazes his skull, and he is briefly hospitalized in Mexico City. There
is some mention in the press of the attempt for a few weeks but then,
like most new stories, it fades away with the newsprint. (The failed
assassination has to compete for headline space on the international
