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

HOME AND SCHOOL 15
care to avoid further trouble, though in one of the upper forms,
together with other pupils, he refused to write compositions for
a sluggish teacher who never read or returned the cxercisebooks;
but this time he suffered no punishment. In the autobiography,
he himself describes, in a somewhat self-indulgent
tone, the sequel to his expulsion: 'Such was my first politic al
test, as it were. The class was henceforth divided into distinct
groups: the talebearers and the envious on one side, the frank
and courageous boys on the other, and the neutral and vacillating
mass in the middle. These three groups never quite disappeared
even in later years. I was to meet them again and again in my
life ... .' 1 In this reminiscence the second form at the Odessa school
is indeed made to look like the prototype of the Communist
party in the 1920s with its divisions for and against Trotsky.
The boy's appearance and character were now becoming
formed. He was handsome, with a swarthy complexion and
sharp but well-proportioned features, short-sighted eyes lively
behind their spectacles, and an abundant crop of jet black, wellbrushed
hair. He took unusual care with his appearance: neat
and tidy, well and even stylishly dressed, he looked 'highly
bourgcois'. 2 He was buoyant, sprightly, but also dutiful and
well mannered. Like many a gifted youth, he was also strongly
self-centred and cager to excel. To quote his own words, he
'felt that he could achieve more than the others. The boys who
became his friends acknowledged his superiority. This could not
fail to have some effect on his character.' 3 Max Eastman, his
not uncritical admirer, speaks about his strong and early developed
instinct of rivalry, and compares it to a well-known
instinct in race-horses. 'It makes them, even when they arc
ambling along at a resting pace, keep at least one white eye
backwards along the track to see if there is anything in the field
that considers itself an equal. It involves an alert awareness of
self, and is upon the whole a very disagreeable trait-especially
as it appears to those horses who were not bred for speed.' •
Although Lyova had many followers among his school mates,
none became his intimate friend.
At school he came under no significant influence. His teachers,
' L. Trotsky, Moya Zhizn, vol. i, p. 94.
• M. Eas1man, Leon TrotJky: The Portrait of a routh, pp. 15, 31.
> L. Trouky, op. cit., vol. i, p. iii.
4
M. Eutman, op. cit., p. 19.