Kepler's 2020 Project in the News:
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Cast in the reflective mode of a man whose life was nearing its end, an exile in Mexico and being hunted by the KGB, the remarkable story of Trotsky’s life is haunting and humanizing. Trotsky is revealed as a man whose lofty ideals were more than matched by his own human foibles. An unwilling Bolshevik, who tried to hold fast to his democratic notions of a Marxist paradise, Trotsky was compelled by the “opportunity” of the October Revolution to become Lenin’s right-hand man, as well as the creator of the Red Army. The apparatus of the Soviet state, created to free the people from oppression, rapidly assumed the role of the oppressor. With the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin, Trotsky’s idealistic rhetoric became a threat to the Soviet regime. Torn between his hope for the evolution of the human spirit and a stubborn defense of his complicity in the creation of the totalitarian Soviet empire, Trotsky was forced into exile. In his political and personal life, he continued to struggle with his own contradictions until he was finally assassinated by agents of the Soviet government. Bertrand Patenaude has given us a portrait of Trotsky that reveals the tragic nature of this man of ideas who found himself forced to be a man of action. Reviewed by Jeff K |
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