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

TROTSKY IN 1905 12!
itself with the Prussian king's promise of freedom; how it
had helped the autocrat to subdue the revolution; and how,
in the end, on the ebb of the revolution, the autocrat had
defeated and humiliated liberalism:
But history teaches the professors of history nothing. The mistakes
and crimes of liberalism are international. You are repeating what
your predecessors did in the same situation half a century ago ....
You are afraid of breaking with the Duma, because to you this
constitutional mirage seems real in the dry and barren desert
through which Russian liberalism has been wading not for its first
decade .... You, Professor, you will not tell the people this. But we
shall. And if you try to debate with us not at liberal banquets but in
front of the masses, we shall show that in our crude, harsh, revolutionary
idiom we can be irrefutably convincing and eloquent ....
If the revolution does not ebb away, the bureaucracy will cling
to you as to its bulwark; and if you really try to become its bulwark,
the victorious revolution will throw you overboard ... [if, on the
other hand, the revolution is defeated, then Tsardom will have no
use for liberalism]. You propose not to be disturbed by the voices from
the right and the voices from the left. ... The revolution has not
yet said its last word. With powerful and broad thrusts it lowers the
edge of its knife over the head of absolutism. Let the wiseacres of
liberalism beware of putting their hands under the glittering steel
blade. Let them beware.
The style was the whole man in this 'Open Letter', at once
scholarly, rhetorical, and implacable. In his attitude towards
liberalism he was akin to Lenin. But Lenin had little or no
inclination to engage in a direct ideological dialogue with
liberalism, while Trotsky felt the need for a constant confrontation
between revolutionary socialism and liberalism. He conducted
this dialogue now, and he would do so to the end of his
life, not because he had broken less decisively than Lenin with
bourgeois liberalism, but in part because he was more aware
of its attraction. Lenin instructed and led his followers, and in a
sense preached to the converted, while Trotsky addressed the
Liberal spokesmen directly and dissected and countered their
arguments before large and undecided audiences. The dialogue
with the adversary also best suited his polemical temperament
and his dialectical style. Not for nothing was the Open Letter
his favourite form of expression.
He addressed thus directly the most diverse audiences, speak-