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

THE PROPHET ARMED
times father and son quarrelled, especially when the calculations
seemed to the old Bronstein unduly favourable to the
wage-earners. '"(he quarrels did not escape the attention of ~he
labourers, and this incensed the farmer. The boy was not inclined
to behave with discretion, and his spirit of contradiction
was enhanced by a feeling of superiority, not unusual in the
educated son of an illiterate peasant. Rural life in general
struck him now as repulsively brutal. Once he tried, unavailingly,
to protest against the rudeness of a policeman who came
to deport two labourers because their passports had not been
quite in order. He had a glimpse of the savage cruelty with
which the poor themselves treated one another. He felt a vague
sympathy for the underdog and an even vaguer remorse for his
own privileged position. Equally strong, or perhaps even more
so, was his offended.self-esteem. It hurt him to see himself as the
son of a rustic moneygrubber and illiterate upstart, the son, one
might say now, of a kulak.
His stay in Odessa ended in 1896. A Realschule normally had
seven forms, but St. Paul's only six, so he had to attend a
similar school at Nikolayev to matriculate. He was now nearly
seventeen, but no political idea had so far appealed to him. The
year before, Friedrich Engels had died; the event did not register
in the mind of the future revolutionary-even the name of
Karl Marx had not yet come to his ears. He was, in his own
words, 'poorly equipped politically for a boy of seventeen of that
time'. He was attracted by literature; and he was preparing for
a university course in pure mathematics. These two approaches
to life, the imaginative and the abstract, lured him-later he
would strive to unite them in his writings. But for the time being
politics exercised no pull. He pondered the prospects of an
academic career, to the disappointment of his father, who would
have preferred a more practical occupation for him. Least of
all did he imagine himself as a revolutionary.
In this the spirit of the time undoubtedly showed itself. At
other times young people often plunged into clandestine revolutionary
groups straight from school. This happened when such
groups were astir with new ideas, animated by great hopes, and
naturally expansive. During the 1880s and the early 1890s the
revolutionary movement was at its nadir. In assassinating
Alexander II the Freedom of the People had itself committed