Trotsky: A Biography [Leon]

xxii, 600 pp. Service is of the opinion, controversial among Trotskyists and anti-Stalinist Leninists, that politically the difference between Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin was only marginal and that excessive antidemocratic attitudes and use of terror as a mean of politics, was an embedded attitude with all three men and a significant portions of the Bolshevik leadership from the earliest days. The excesses of Stalin was mainly a matter of personality and background such as ruthlessness, jealousy, a deep feeling of anger emanating from being continually overlooked and disregarded, a level of personal paranoia, and never failing memory regarding hurt and perceived enemies and a deep lust for vengeance on a personal level. Lenin favoured Stalin until, too late, their fallout in 1923 really opened Lenin's eyes to the danger of a future with Stalin in power. Trotsky failed to form alliances and was socially inept and never fully accepted in the Bolshevik party leadership, which he had joined late. However, Stalin, contrary to his opponent, was a brilliant politician and political tactician, who was among the few who genuinely understood the consequences and means of political maneuvering in an environment in which appeals to the masses (where the other leaders were strong) had been systematically cut out of the equation by the means of the red-terror and prohibition of most means and vehicles of opposition that they had themselves promoted and embraced. The ability to think theoretically, appeal in writing or speech to the public had rapidly diminished in political value by 1924 and was steadily declining in political value, and only alliances counted, which was Stalin's strength. Trotsky had himself aided the cutting off the only branch which might have supported him.