Certainly
all who knew anything at all of the personnel of the Russian revolutionary
movement during the past twenty years knew that Trotzky was Bronstein, and
that he was a Jew. The idea, assiduously disseminated by a section of the
American press, that there must be something discreditable or mysterious
connected with his adoption of an alias is extremely absurd, and can only
be explained by monumental ignorance of Russian revolutionary history.
Trotzky has been a fighter in the ranks of the revolutionary army of Russia
for twenty years. As early as 1900 his activities as a Socialist
propagandist among students had landed him in prison in solitary
confinement. In 1902 he was exiled to eastern Siberia, whence he managed to
escape. During the next three years he lived abroad, except for brief
intervals spent in Russia, devoting himself to Socialist journalism. His
first pamphlet, published in Geneva in 1903, was an attempt to reconcile
the two factions in the Social Democratic party, the Bolsheviki and the
Mensheviki. He was an orthodox Marxist of the most extreme doctrinaire
type, and naturally inclined to the Bolshevik view. Yet he never joined the
Bolsheviki, preferring to remain aloof from both factions and steadfastly
and earnestly striving to unite them.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241