III.

Revolutionary Leadership

Escaping from Siberia in 1907, Trotsky spent the next decade defending his ideas and engaging in émigré squabbling. The March Revolution of 1917 caught him by surprise in New York, where he wrote for a Russian newspaper. Trotsky reached Russia in May, quickly assumed leadership of the independent left Social-Democratic Interdistrict Group, and joined the Petrograd (as St Petersburg was renamed) Soviet. Within weeks, he had gained enormous popularity as the most eloquent agitator of the Soviet left. In July, after being courted by Lenin, he joined the Bolshevik party and was elected to its Central Committee.

As a Bolshevik, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Soviet in September. He sided with Lenin on the need to overthrow the provisional government and devoted all his energies to marshalling support for the armed uprising of the Bolsheviks. With Lenin in hiding, Trotsky was the general in charge, and he successfully directed the masses of workers and soldiers in the November Revolution.

In the ensuing Soviet government Trotsky first became commissar of foreign affairs, negotiating a separate peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. Later, as a ruthlessly practical commissar of war, he is credited with creating, inspiring, and directing the Red Army that gained a great victory in the civil war and saved the Revolution.