isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

AN INTELLECTUAL PARTNERSHIP 105
elements for the theory of permanent revolution. Yet, Parvus
had so far spoken only about a 'political upheaval' in Russia,
not about a 'social' or Socialist revolution. He apparently still
shared the view, then accepted by all Marxists, that the Russian
revolution by itself would, because of the country's semi-feudal
and backward outlook, be merely bourgeois in character.
Trotsky would be the first to say that the revolution would of its
own momentum pass from the bourgeois to the Socialist stage,
and establish a proletarian dictatorship in Russia, even before
the advent of revolution in the West.
Not only were Parvus's international ideas and revolutionary
perspectives becoming part and parcel of Trotsky's thinking,
but, also, some of Trotsky's views on Russian history, especially
his conception of the Russian state, can be traced back to
Parvus. 1 Parvus developed the view that the Russian state,. a
cross between Asian despotism and European absolutism, had
formed itself not as the organ of any class in Russian society,
but as a military bureaucratic machine designed primarily to
resist pressure from the more highly civilized West. 2 It was for
this purpose that Tsardom had introduced elements of European
civilization into Russia, especially into the army. 'Thus came
into existence the Russian state organism: an Asian absolutism
buttressed by a European type of army.' It was enough, he
remarked, to cast a glance at the line of Russian frontier fortresses
to see that the Tsars had intended to separate Russia
from the West by a sort of Chinese wall. Some of these theories,
as they were developed and refined by Trotsky, became the objects
of heated historical and political disputes twenty years later.
Parvus's influence on Trotsky is felt also in the style and
manner of exposition, especially in the characteristic sweep of
historical prognostication. This is not to say that Trotsky played
the literary ape to Parvus. He absorbed the influence naturally
and organically because of his intellectual and literary affinity
with Parvus, an affinity which was not lessened by contrasts in
character and temperament.
During his first stay in Munich, towards the end of September
1
In part, however, the original source of the views on Russian history held by
both Trotsky and Parvus is the liberal historian P. Miliukov.
1 lsAra, no. 61, 5 March I 904.