The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-29

The Prophet Unarmed, published in 1959, is the 2nd volume of Isaac Deutscher’s extraordinary Trotsky trilogy, which the Guardian has said ‘will rank among the great political biographies of our time.’ It is a self-contained account, drawing for the first time on Trotsky’s archives in Harvard, of the great struggle between Stalin & Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in 1921 & the death of Lenin. From the story of Trotsky’s fierce opposition to Stalin’s policies emerges a dazzling portrait gallery of important Soviet leaders with, at its center, Trotsky, the man of ideas, the Marxist philosopher & literary critic. The book provides an original assessment of the defeat that led to his expulsion from the Communist Party, his exile & his banishment from Russia in 1929.