Released
through the intervention of Spanish Socialists, he set sail with his family
for New York, where he arrived early in January, 1917. Soon after the news
of the Russian Revolution thrilled the world Trotzky, like many other
Russian exiles, made hasty preparations to return, sailing on March 27th
on a Norwegian steamer. At Halifax he and his family, together with a
number of other Russian revolutionists, were taken from the ship and
interned in a camp for war prisoners, Trotzky resisting violently and
having to be carried off the ship. The British authorities kept them
interned for a month, but finally released them at the urgent demand of the
Foreign Minister of the Russian Provisional Government, Miliukov.
Such, in brief outline, is the history of the man Trotzky. It is a typical
Russian history: the story of a persistent, courageous, and exceedingly
able fighter for an ideal believed in with fanatical devotion. Lenine, in
one of his many disputes with Trotzky, called him "a man who blinds himself
with revolutionary phrases,"[17] and the description is very apt. He
possesses all the usual characteristics of the revolutionary Jewish
Socialists of Russia. To a high-strung, passionate, nervous temperament and
an exceedingly active imagination he unites a keen intellect which finds
its highest satisfaction in theoretical abstractions and subtleties, and
which accepts, phrases as though they were realities.
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