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

AT THE DOOR OF HISTORY
revolutionaries. Nobody believed in Iskra's mission more ardently
than Trotsky; and his writings pulsated with this belief. The
distinctive mark of his early contributions to Iskra lies not so
much in originality of ideas as in the force of the emotional
current that runs through them, in the passionate character of
his revolutionary invocations, and in the almost dramatic
vehemence of the invective which he poured out on Russia's
rulers and on socialism's enemies. He was now writing without
the inhibitions of censorship, and he gave free vent to his
temperament, a fact which did not necessarily improve the
quality of his writing-his articles for Iskra were often inferior
to his Siberian essays.
His first contribution to Iskra was devoted to the bi-centenary
of the ill-famed Schliisselburg fortress, which Peter the Great
had built near his capital-'his window on Europe and his most
important prison'. The writer evoked the shades of the martyrs
who had been murdered or driven to madness within its walls,
among them Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin's brother. And he ended
with a ringing apostrophe to the Tsar and his servants: 'You
may still indulge in your patriotic bacchanals-to-day you arc
still the masters of Schliissclburg.' In the same issue he flayed
the quasi-liberal gentry, who in the