Trotsky: Memoir and Critique

October, 1931. Albert Glotzer, a young American revolutionary, arrived in Kadikoy, Turkey, for an eagerly anticipated meeting with Leon Trotsky. Of that day, Glotzer writes: "In accented English, he invited me to his buro . . . As I sat talking, I observed the famous head, with its shock of gray hair, the high forehead, the penetrating blue eyes behind the horn rims, the full lips framed by dimples that deepened with his smile or laughter . . . The resonance of his high tenor reminded me of his legendary oratorical prowess . . . Even though he had been almost crushed by the new bureaucracy organized and led by Stalin, Trotsky bore not the slightest air of defeatism. His self-imposed task, in his latest exile, was nothing less than to try to build a new movement from minuscule beginnings."

To this day, Leon Trotsky remains officially condemned in a nation he, with Lenin, was most responsible for establishing. He is still publicly regarded as the Soviet Union's greatest traitor. Yet perhaps the changes now sweeping the communist empire offer hopes of posthumous acknowledgement of the man Lenin called "the best Bolshevik."

In Trotsky: Memoir and Critique, Albert Glotzer, a close associate of Trotsky in the 1930's, provides a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the man and the movement he inspired. Glotzer vividly recounts the years during which Trotsky was in exile, documents Trotsky's dramatic testimony at the Dewey Commission hearings in Mexico City, reviews his political role in Bolshevism, and eloquently explains his failure to be accepted by Soviet leaders after Lenin's death. In chapters that alternate between absorbing first-hand anecdotes and acute appraisals of Trotsky's prophetic insights, Glotzer shows why a man murdered more than forty years ago in Mexico still casts so large a shadow over the nation of his birth.

"A noteworthy contribution to an understanding of 20th-century political history."--Kirkus Reviews.

"A noteworthy contribution to an understanding of 20th-century political history."--Kirkus Reviews.

Library Journal

As a youthful member of the American Communist League (a Trotskyite group) Glotzer made several trips to visit Trotsky during his exile from the Soviet Union. In 1937 he served as court stenographer for the American commission investigating Stalin's conspiracy charges against Trotsky. Although the outline of Trotsky's career and philosophy are assumed, the detailed accounts of Stalin's show trials (1936-38) and of the Trotsky hearings are the most valuable feature of the book. The long discourses on factional differences among Communist groups become tiresome for the uninitiated. Explanations of how and why Trotsky lost out on control of the Russian party to Stalin are based on intimate knowledge of both events and personalities. Specialized collections should consider.-- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York