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

IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL 37
serve as informers. 'There were times ... when I was sick with
loneliness', he confessed. But he found moral satisfaction in his
sacrifice and he composed revolutionary limericks which later
were sung as folk-songs. Towards the end of his stay in this
prison the police relented, and his mother succeeded in bribing
his guards and sending in food parcels and such 'luxuries' as
soap, linen, and fruit.
For depositions and examination he was at last transferred to
a prison in Odessa, in which he was to remain a year and a
half, until the end of 1899. There, too, he was kept in solitary
confinement, but he could secretly communicate with his
friends.' The prison was overcrowded and alive with constant
movement, plotting, and practical jokes. He was in high spirits
and poked fun at the colonel of the gendarmerie who conducted
the investigation. To prepare himself for his interrogator he had
to ascertain how much the gendarmes had discovered about
the Union and he communicated about this with his associates
in other cells. 'His task ... was not easy ... he had to tell me the
the whole story of his arrest and the circumstances attending
it and to summarize his own deposition .... All this had to be
expressed so that I should get the fullest possible idea of what
had happened and so that the communication should contain
no clue against himself in case of interception. He performed this
in a masterly fashion. He wrote an essay full of scintillating wit
and satirical irony, a brilliant pamphlet.' 2 He began to transform
his own experience into literature.
The interrogation dragged on without producing incriminating
evidence. In the meantime Bronstein avidly read whatever
he could lay hands on, at first only books and periodicals
available in the prison library but, later, books sent from outside
as well. The prison library contained only religious literature
and church periodicals. For linguistic exercise he read the
Bible simultaneously in German, French, English, and Italian.
Then he got hold of files of Greek Orthodox periodicals, which
were full of polemics against agnostics, athei5ts, an