Leon Trotsky
Personality and characteristics

Trotsky was regarded as an outstanding orator, preeminent theoretician, and organiser that, in the view of historian Michael Kort, "forged and directed the Red Army". He served as one of the original Politburo members in Lenin's government. Biographer Isaac Deutscher considered him to be the "prompter of planned economy and industrialization" during the early years of the Soviet Union. Historian Laura Engelstein judged Trotsky to be personally fastidious, but possessing the qualities of vanity and volatility which were not shared with Lenin. Engelstein also described him as talented and dynamic, "but only a second in command ".

Political theorist Ernest Mandel summarised the dominant image of Trotsky as "self-confident", "unshakeable in the conviction of his historic mission", "strict with others and himself" and "indifferent to material privileges and to the small joys and sorrows of life". Mandel argued this image reflected "certain aspects of Trotsky's personality, strengths and weaknesses".

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore described Trotsky as the "genius of the revolution" and biographer Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as a "vivid, complex, multi-faceted personality in the gallery of world figures" who was remembered "with hatred and respect, anger and admiration" decades after his assassination in Mexico. Volkogonov also found Trotsky to be a constant "spectre" for Stalin, after his exile, and also wrote that he was "of a different calibre intellectually, with his grasp of organization and his talents as a speaker and writer". Volkogonov considered Trotsky "far superior" to figures such as Molotov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, Zhdanov and "also superior to Stalin and Stalin knew it".

Biographer Robert Service commented that he was a "volatile and untrustworthy", "arrogant individual" that impressed supporters even during the periods of "personal adversity in the 1920s and 1930s" but failed to "coax and encourage them to the full". Service stated that Trotsky gave the "minimum time to the Jewish question" and believed that "he ceased to be a Jew in any important sense because Marxism had burned out the fortuitous residues of his origins".

Political scientist August Nimtz regarded Trotsky to have had better foresight than both Marxist and some non-Marxist intellectual observers with his work The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936). Trotsky argued that the Stalinist regime was an "ephemeral phenomenon" and Nimtz believed this had later been proven with the Soviet collapse after 1989. Other scholars have similarly described Trotsky as having a prescient judgement of events such as the Stalinist alliance with the Kuomintang, the rise of Nazi Germany and The Spanish Civil War through his political writings and levels of military accuracy. Deutscher also referenced his "uncanny clear sightedness" in predicting the emergence of a single dictator who would "substitute himself" for the Central Committee, the party and the working class.

Trotsky was a Marxist intellectual. Russian historian Vladimir Buldakov considered Trotsky, in some respect, a "typical representative" of "Russia's radical intelligentsia " who had "elements of bourgeois origin". He had a diverse and profound range of interests which exceeded that of other Bolshevik theoreticians such as Nikolai Bukharin. He also had a notable interest in literature and wrote on "everyday life and cultural progress as well as on the more customary Marxism of the day". Trotsky and his second wife, Natalia Sedova enjoyed Viennese galleries and made frequent visits to museums such as the Louvre and the Tate Gallery across Europe to view specific art collections. He also retained a personal interest in science which stemmed from his youth when he considered studying mathematics and physics at the New Russian University in Odessa.

His personal secretary and later a historian of mathematical logic, Jean van Heijenoort, considered him to be amicable, inquisitive and occasionally charming with new acquaintances during his final years in Mexico. Old Bolshevik Anatoly Lunacharsky viewed Trotsky as the best prepared among the Social Democratic leaders during the 1905–1907 revolution and stated that he "emerged from the revolution having acquired an enormous degree of popularity, whereas neither Lenin nor Martov had effectively gained any at all".

His arch enemy, Stalin, even read and sometimes appreciated a great deal of his writings. According to Rubenstein, Stalin had even acknowledged that "after Lenin, Trotsky was the most popular figure in the country" at the end of the Civil War. He also recognized the prominent role of Trotsky during the October revolution in the 1917 Pravda editorial. Stalin himself wrote: "All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet".

Upon his exile in 1929, eighteen of his close relatives remained in the Soviet Union and all were subjected to repressive measures with seven of his family members including his son Sergei Sedov, sister Olga Kameneva and brother Aleksandr Bronstein having been shot. He spoke several European languages "with a markedly Russian accent" and identified as a cosmopolitan and internationalist. In the course of his life, Trotsky wrote about 30,000 documents, most of which are contained in various archives. Deutscher stated that Trotsky wrote most of the Soviet 's manifestos and resolutions, edited its Izvestia newspaper and also composed the oath of loyalty for the Red Army. According to Mandel, Trotsky wrote the Zimmerwald Manifesto for the Zimmerwald Conference because he was radically opposed to World War I and drafted the Appeal for the Convocation of the First Comintern Congress due to his active involvement with the Third International. He also served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International for the initial Congress sessions.

Aside from his interest in political activism, Trotsky also worked as a statistician and a journalist. Trotsky stated that he worked for three newspapers and oversaw the "Russian Gazette" with Alexander Parvus. He claimed that the circulation under his tenure had increased from 30,000 to 500,000. However, historians Anthony Heywood and Jonathan Smele believe this was an exaggerated claim and cited circulation figures from the editors of Trotsky's collected works that the figures had in fact increased to 100,000 which they still regarded as impressive and comparatively ahead of Lenin's New Life newspaper by 20,000.
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