Leon Trotsky was unquestionably one of the giants of modern times. He was the inspiration for, and leader of, both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions in Russia. Building the Red Army out of nothing in an incredibly short time, he saved the new government of the Soviet Union from both domestic and foreign enemies who attacked it.

A brilliant writer and orator, he conspired against both the Communist establishment he had helped to build, and the capitalist establishments he sought to tear down, seeing both as bureaucratic enemies of the working classes. He became an almost visionary prophet of the international revolutionary movements that shake the world today. Victimized by his own stubborn principles, which would not allow him to propitiate his powerful enemy Joseph Stalin, Trotsky became a man without a country. He was forced to wander across the face of the earth, rejected by all governments save one, caged like a restless tiger in semi-confinement whenever he temporarily came to rest.

Trotsky's appeal to young radicals around the world survived his assassination in Mexico in 1940. He must be classed as one of the most important figures of our century, despite personal shortcomings of vanity, arrogance, ruthlessness and naivete in practical politics.

From the dust jacket