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

THE PROPHET ARMED
the street. The newcomer had only to glance at the capital to
see how incongruous it was that Prince Lvov should still be the
revolution's first minister.
Trotsky had hardly deposited his family and its few belongings
in a lodging-house when he made for the Smolny Institute, the
seat of the Petrograd Soviet. 1 I ts Executive, the successor to the
body of which he had been the presiding spirit in 1905, was just
in session. The man who now presided was Chkhcidzc, his former
associate whom he had jmt attacked in Novyi Mir. Chkheidze
rose to welcome Trotsky, but the welcome was lukcwarm.2 A
moment of embarrassment followed. The Mcnshcviks and Social
Revolutionaries, who were in a majority, did not know whether
the newcomer was their friend or their foe-from a friend of
long standing he seemed to have turned into a foe. The Bolshevik
members of the Executive pointed out that the leader of
the Soviet of 1905 ought to be invited to take a scat on the
Executive of the present Soviet. The Mensheviks and Social
Revolutionaries consulted each other in perplexed whispers.
They agreed to admit Trotsky as an associate member, without
the right to vote. He wished for nothing more: what mattered
to him was not the right to vote, but the opportunity to make
himself heard from the chief platform of the revolution.
Nevertheless, the cool reception could not but irk him.
Angelica Balabanov, the secretary of the Zimmerwald movement,
wrote that he even suspected that the party leaders had
not pressed energetically enough for his release from British
internment, because they had not been cager to sec him on the
scene. 'Both Menshcviks and Bolsheviks regarded him with
rancour and distrust ... partly out of fear of competition ... ,'J
Whatever the truth, the fact was that between February and
May the political alignments had become defined; the parties
and groups had formed their ranks and clarified their attitudes,
and the leaders had assumed their roles and taken up their
positions. In 190'.) Trotsky had been the first of the cmigrcs to
rd urn. Now he was the last. And no appropriate vacancy seemed
to be open for a man of his gifts and ambition.
1
From now on 'the Soviet' (in the singular) denotes the Soviet of Pctrograd,
unless it is stated otherwise.
' L. Trotsky, Moya Zhizn, loc. cit.; N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o Revolutsii, vol. iii,
pp. 440-1.
' A. Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel, p. 176.