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

THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR 345
Guards; but they were always accessible to the humblest
worker, sailor, and journalist. To this circumstance we owe innumerable
descriptions of the Trotsky of the Smolny period.
Here is a typica\ impression, given by an American journalist:
During the first days of the Bolshevik revolt, I used to go every
morning to Smolny to get the latest news. Trotsky and his pretty
little wife, who hardly ever spoke anything but French [to foreign
journalists], lived in one room on the top floor. The room was
partitioned off like a poor artist's attic studio. In one end were two
cots and a cheap little dresser and in the other a desk and two or three
cheap wooden chairs .... Trotsky occupied this office all the time he
was Minister of Foreign Aflairs and many dignitaries found it
necessary to call upon him there .... every little difficulty under the
sun was brought to Trotsky. He worked hard and was often on the
verge of a nervous breakdown: he became irritable and flew into
rages.'
Before the insurrection Trotsky had lived as a sub-tenant in
a middle-class block of flats, where he and his family were
surrounded by intense hatred. 'Trotsky appears tired, nervous
... ', writes Sadoul. 'Since 20 October he has not been in his
home. His wife, nice, small, militant, fresh, vivacious and charming,
says that their neighbours threatened to kill her husband .
. . . Is it not amusing to think that this pitiless dictator, this
master of all the Russias, dare not sleep in his home for fear of
the broom of his concierge?"
1
Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia, p. 145.
• Sadoul, op. cit., p. 94·