Читать книгу Trotsky in New York, 1917 - Kenneth D. Ackerman - Страница 7

ACT I:

ON THE EVE

LEV DAVIDOVICH BRONSTEIN, a thirty-eight-year-old zealot who went by the nom de guerre Leon Trotsky, burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as co-leader of a Marxist revolution seizing power in Russia. As foreign commissar of the new government under Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky quickly made his name by orchestrating Russia’s exit from the First World War. Then, as war commissar, he led Russia’s Red Army to victory in a gruesome civil war against White Russians and foreign interveners.

Their rule secure, Trotsky and his Marxist cohorts would tear Russian society to its roots and impose a communist regime that would challenge the world for the next seventy years. With his thick glasses; riveting eyes; and shaggy, unkempt hair, Trotsky emerged as one of the most recognized personalities of the twentieth century.

Yet just months before his great moment in Russia, this same Lev Bronstein/Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from countries across Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of quarrelsome fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else: New York.

From January through March 1917, Trotsky had found refuge in the United States. America had kept itself out of the European Great War, leaving New York a safe haven, the freest city on earth, enjoying a last gasp of the belle epoque.