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

TROTSKY IN l 905 135
A few days later he had again to impress upon the Soviet
its own weakness and urge it to stop enforcing the eight-hour
day: the employers had answered with the lockout of more than
100,000 workers. The Soviet was divided, a minority demanding
a general strike; but Trotsky, supported by the metal workers,
prevailed. These displays of weakness were becoming all too
frequent, but the popular impulse to action made them inevitable.
What was surprising was that the Soviet's weakness was
not revealed with more disastrous results, especially as the
Soviet's chief inspirer was a young man who had never lrd, or
participated in, a mass moyement of any size. \\'hen all the
handicaps under which this revolution laboured arc considered,
the tactics of the Soviet, designed to harass the enemy without
engaging him in general battle, appear almost faultless; and its
results, the undiminished authority maintained by the Soviet
and the concessions it contrived to wrest, must be judged impressive.
It was not until twenty years later, during the struggle
between Stalin and Trotsky, that Trotsky's 'moderation' in
1905 was held out against him. During the intervening years
no such reproach was heard; and the Bolsheviks treated the
Soviet's record as a proud chapter in the annals of the revolution.1
Nor was any alternative line of conduct ever proposed by
the Bolsheviks to the Soviet, or even as much as hinted at. In
the political literature devoted to the subject, the failure of the
revolution of 1905 was invariably attributed to the broad,
'objective' alignments in the country, never to the errors of any
leader, least of all of Trotsky. 2
The Soviet had with such breath-taking rapidity become the
main focus of the revolution that the groups and factions did
not even have time to ponder its significance or to adjust themselves
to the new institution. By the middle of Xovember all
their leaders had at last returned from western Europe; and
1
The Bolsheviks, however, cultivated with warmer sentiments the memory of
the Moscow rising of December 1905, which had b