SOURCE: "A Figure of Flawed Greatness," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 227, No. 9, September 23, 1978, pp. 277-78.

Rabinowitch is an English-born American educator and historian who specializes in the history of the Bolshevik Revolution. In the review below, he praises Leon Trotsky as a "highly stimulating contribution to the literature about Trotsky and early Soviet history."

Among the two dozen or so writers and political figures who are the subjects of Viking's "Modern Masters" biographical studies ("men who have changed and are changing the life and thought of our age") surely history has been cruelest to Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's central role in the Russian Revolution has been completely obliterated in Soviet historical works and sorely mangled even in many recent Western studies. Moreover, until the last few years, apart from the now classic work of the late Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's life and thought have been virtually ignored as a...