In a scrupulously researched book,
Ackerman reconstructs Leon Trotsky's 10-week stay in New York City
and makes some far-reaching claims about the importance of the
layover that, at least, invite discussion.
Basically thrown out of Europe, Trotsky
hit New York in 1917. The historian provides some background on the
rebel's life prior to getting on that transatlantic crossing and
knows a little about what happened on board as well.
As the book's subtitle – “A
Radical on the Eve of Revolution” – suggests, Trotsky arrived
anonymous, but would leave with his name on everybody's lips as
turmoil in Russia created the opening he and Vladimir Lenin had been
anticipating for years.
Ackerman relishes his twin topics and
brings “Trotsky's New York” to life visually, factually,
sensually.
The noisy isle crowded with
Yiddish-speaking, Russian Tsar-hating Jews, the elevated trains
hammering out the urban machine soundtrack to industrial Manhattan,
other flavors and phantoms are successfully summonsed in this
engaging text.
The author traces Trotsky's steps: his
rental in a middle-class section of the Bronx; his day job at a
Russian-language left-wing rag (and debates therein); his
interactions with socialists both American and foreign, his
associates both old world and new.
Together, in New York and Trotsky,
Ackerman ably helps himself to not one, but two great historical
players so that, although we're dealing with footnoted, historical
nonfiction, a lively and, yes, even fun, portrait of man and place in
time emerges.
We might call it “Ragtime” for
communists save for the fact Ackerman hews closer to an academic
style than does E.L. Doctorow in his intentionally literary turn.
The portrait of Trotsky is that of a
verbal and ideological bulldog, an insolent intellectual, a man
convinced of his cause's correctness, intolerant of any divergence
from his recipe for violent revolution.
The author does a bang-up job of
resuscitating American socialist Morris Hillquit from the dustbin of
history through the replay of his policy battle with Trotsky over how the American
left would respond to the country's entry into World War I.
Hillquit prevailed... barely. Ackerman
suggests that in his confrontations with the milder reformist and
those of his ilk in New York, Trotsky mapped the future of American
left-radicalism for decades to come.
That, and other claims the author makes
regarding the impact of Trotsky's stay are plausible and provide
fodder for debate and further scholarship.
The book sheds a novel light on the
Russian Revolution, which looms quite so large given Trotsky's
decisive role and Ackerman can't resist commenting on
the too-big subject. Here he falls into a bit of rote
anti-communism.
It's unavoidable that the horrors of
Stalin, the gulags, show-trials, pogroms, etc., be raised, but there
is no consideration of what good, if any, Trotsky's efforts generated
so that Ackerman short-shrifts his own subject.
How history treats us! Hillquit, a
decent human being and worldly character is forgotten, but the
Trotsky produced here, who wrought nothing but heartache upon those
he or his ideas touched, is the historical standout.
Without a counter-discussion, Trotsky
comes across as a man of multiple talents, all of which were
misapplied in the creation of a sanguinary communist dictatorship.
But there were many who believed in the Soviet Union and still others
who lament its passing. Their take on Trotsky is missing.
Which is to say, Ackerman should have
stopped where his title does: in New York. The post-Gotham section is
not inconsiderable and removes the reader from a curious epoch that
is the book's strength.
Yes, following the trajectories of
certain players, and Trotsky family members, in revolutionary Russia
serves a purpose and provides the reader with satisfying – or
mortifying – closure.
Still, the author would have lost
nothing and gained a more cohesive “whole” by sticking with his
attractive, almost stylized account and cutting Trotsky loose at the
New York piers; letting him float off into a history left for books
written and unwritten alike.
