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

220 THE PROPHET ARMED
learned from Parvus and how proud they had been of him. He
acknowledged that Parvus had taught him, among other things,
'to express plain thoughts in plain words'. But-'Parvus is no
longer. A political Falstaff is now roaming the Balkans, and he
slanders his own deceased doublc.' 1 When presently Parvus set
up at Copenhagen a 'sociological institute', suspected of being
a German propagandist agency, Trotsky publicly warned
Socialists against entering into any contact with it. 2 When
Parvus sent an apologia, in the form of a Letter to the Editor,
Trotsky first intended to publish it, but then changed his mind.J
Once for all he put an end to relations with his former friend; and
when, after the revolution, Parvus tried to approach him and to
oflcr his services to the Soviet government, Trotsky left these
approaches without an answer. Even so, the shadow of this
association was to haunt him more than once: in July 1917, the
'month of the great slander', and again during his struggle
against Stalin in the years of the great slander.•
Nashe Slovo began to appear on 29January 1915. This was a
modest sheet of two, rarely four, pages abundantly strewn with
white spaces marking the censor's deletions, and yet packed
with news and comment. The paper was constantly in danger of
being killed by the censor and by its own poverty. Editors and
contributors received no salaries or fees. Wages of the compositors
and printers were usually many months in arrears; but
the half-starved workers, political cmigrcs like the editors, went
on producing the daily without a murmur. Every now and then
collections were made in shabby emigre centres such as the
Russian Library in the Avenue des Gobelins, the Club of the
Russian Emigrcs in :Yiontmartre, or the Library of Jewish
Workers in the rue Ferdinand Duval. The donations were in
centimes and sous rather than francs, and the money went to pay
1
Nasht Slovo, no. 15, 14. February 1915.
2
Ibid., no. 208, 5 October 1915. Yet, when Alexinsky used Trotsky's
warning to brand Parvus a