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

IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL 47
He dealt with the same characters, the peasants and the petty
officials, the injured and the dejected; and he treated them with
the same sympathy and pity-only his indignation was sharper
and more bitteF. As his writings had to be laid before the censor,
he did not directly attack the Government. But this restraint
made his subdued anger and mockery even more effective. His
language was easy and fluent, and despite its mannerisms-it
was often verbose, sometimes pompous and over-elaborateit
was colourful and expressive; and full, penetrating observation,
vivid portraiture, and unexpected contrasts and images
made up for his mannerisms. 'Our village is economically
devastated by the kulaks, physically by syphilis and all sorts of
epidemics, and spiritually it lives in a dense concentrated darkness
... ', he wrote in an essay on the insanitary state of the
Siberian countryside and on the lot of the village doctor. 'In
thoughtful silence our village is dying from disease.' The mentally
ill were kept for observation in the prisons, which, because of the
lack of hospitals, formed 'the psychiatric department of the
local sanitary authority'. In one case two homeless invalids, an
old insurgent and an old gendarme-the same gendarme who
had once escorted the insurgent to the place of deportationlived
in the same prison cell, for lack of any other asylum. The
doctors were cut off from the world, helpless and dejected. Perhaps
regional conferences of the medical personnel would shake
them from their apathy.' Another time he demanded local
government for Siberia. In European Russia, he wrote, the