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

THE PROPHET ARMED
through in the Bolshevik party. Lenin had spent the month
before Trotsky's arrival in an intense controversy with the right
wing of his party, headed by Kamenev; and he had persuaded
the party to abandon the 'old Bolshevik' view on the prospects
of the revolution. It may be assumed that this was explained to
Trotsky there and then. If nobody else, then his brother-in-law
Kamenev must have told him that Lenin's Bolshevik opponents,
indeed Kamenev himself: had reproached Lenin with having
taken over lock, stock, and barrel the theory of' permanent revolution',
and with having abandoned Bolshevism for Trotskyism.
In truth, the roads of Lenin and Trotsky, so long divergent,
had now met. Each of them had reached certain conclusions to
which the other had come much earlier and which he had long
and bitterly contested. But neither had consciously adopted the
other's point of view. From different starting-points and through
different processes their minds had moved towards their present
meeting. We have seen how the events of the war had gradually
driven Trotsky to take the view that the breach in the Labour
movement could not be healed; that it was wrong and even
pernicious to try to heal it; and that it was the duty of the
re\·olutionary internationalists to form new parties. Long before
the war, Lenin had arrived at this conclusion, but only for the
Russian party. The war had induced him to generalize it and
to apply it to the international Labour movement. In Lenin's
reasonings and instinctive reactions his Russian experience was
the primary factor, although it alone did not determine his
attitude. Trotsky had, on the contrary, proceeded from the
international generalization to the application of the principle
to Russia. Whatever the processes by which they arrived at the
common conclusion, the practical implications were the same.
A similar difference in approach and identity in conclusion
can be seen in their evaluation of prospects. In 1905-6 Trotsky
had foreseen the combination of anti-feudal and anti-capitalist
revolutions in Russia and had described the Russian upheaval
as a prelude to international socialist revolution. Lenin had then
refused to see in Russia the pioneer of collectivist socialism.
He deduced the character and the prospects of the revolution
from Russia's historic stage of development and from her
social structure, in which the individualistic peasantry was
the largest element. During the war, however, he came to reckon