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

88 THE PROPHET ARMED
Bolsheviks, began to react away from the views to which they
had been committed before the split. The reaction spread from
matters of organization to issues of policy. Zasulich was dreaming
aloud about an alliance between socialism and middle-class
liberalism. Theodore Dan, now gaining eminence, bluntly
advocated that alliance. Even now, when Dan and Trotsky
were the leaders of the same faction, they instinctively repelled
each other. Dan was by temperament as solid and pedestrian
as Trotsky was flamboyant and impetuous. The one could
thrive best in a climate of political comJllromise, as his role under
Kerensky's regime in 1917 would show; the other was made
for revolution. While the Mensheviks were beginning to grope
for more moderate formulas, Dan's influence among them was
naturally rising and Trotsky's declining. Martov himself forebodingly
watched his followers in their quest for moderation;
but he was overpowered by the process he had initiated. The
reaction against the spirit of the 'old' Iskra did not leave Trotsky
unaffected. It could not be otherwise, for Lenin, whom he was
opposing, embodied that spirit. Trotsky now found that the old
Iskra had not been free from the Narodnik-like, conspiratorial
attitude; that it had been unjust towards the Economists; and
that it had falsely preached the supremacy of organization over
the 'spontaneous' Labour movement. These were the stock conclusions
which most Mensheviks reached as they reviewed their
own recent past; and thus far Trotsky went along with them.1
But at one point he balked and balked for good, the point at
which they made the first attempt td bridge the gulf between
socialism and liberalism. He stuck to the anti-liberal attitude
which had, on the whole, prevailed in the old Iskra. In long
arguments with the Mensheviks he began to realize how much,
in this crucial issue, divided him from them, and how little from
Lenin.
Yet, before parting with the Mensheviks he once again
assailed Lenin with a hailstorm of his most hurtful invective,
which made any reconciliation with him wellnigh impossible.
In April 190,~ Trotsky lrft Iskra. In August there appeared in
Geneva his pamphlet Our Political Tasks, which he dedicated to
'My dear teacher Paul B. A.x.clrod'. The historical and bio-
1
In this respect there was no difference between .Trotsky (in Nashi Politicheskye
Zadachi) and the most right-wing Menshevik Chcrevanin (in Organizatsion'!)'i VojJTOs).