The Prophet Unarmed

The Prophet Unarmed, first published in 1959, is the second 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 and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in 1921 and 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 and literary critic. The book provides an original assessment of the defeat that led to his expulsion from the Communist Party, his exile, and his banishment from Russia in 1929.