Review by Booklist Review
Covering the years during which Leon Trotsky lived in Mexico (1937-40), Patenaude recounts the Russian revolutionary's personal and political activities as Stalin's Myrmidons closed for the kill. Finding safe haven as a guest of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Trotsky arrived while the show trials of Stalin's former opponents were staged in Moscow. Patenaude's detailing of Trotsky's initial project on Mexican soil a refutation of the fantastic accusations against him and them brings forth the members of Trotsky's entourage who supported his lonely defiance of Stalin. While Trotsky's defeat in the post-Lenin power struggle is beyond the author's scope, Patenaude observes aspects of Trotsky's personality for readers contemplating that fateful development in the history of Communist Russia. Stiff, humorless, and doctrinaire, Trotsky experienced a range of interpersonal and political conflicts in Mexico. A fling with Kahlo fizzled; money and personal security were chronic worries; and a schism arose within Trotsky's movement. Culminating with the assassination in 1940, Patenaude renders a fair-minded portrait of the historically controversial Trotsky and his final battles.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A captivating account of the final years of Leon Trotsky, Lenin's former right-hand man, who was outmaneuvered by Stalin and driven into exile in 1929. Historian Patenaude (The Big Show in Bololand), a lecturer at Stanford, concentrates on the period from 1937, when Trotsky arrived in Mexico, to 1940, when a Soviet agent plunged an ice pick into his skull. The year 1937 marked the height of Stalin's purge trials during which a parade of great revolutionary figures confessed to being fascist saboteurs working for Trotsky. All were executed along with their families, friends and thousands of other innocent citizens. Some Western leftists were disgusted, but many couldn't believe the nation they admired could tolerate such injustice. Trotsky set to work, pouring out writing and speeches and testifying at international hearings, which concluded that the trials were a sham. Patenaude paints a vivid portrait of Trotsky, a flamboyant, Westernized intellectual; his stormy relations with his equally flamboyant Mexican champion (and later enemy), artist Diego Rivera; his dealings with his own largely American supporters; and the relentless efforts of Stalin's GPU to kill him. This is a dramatic, event-filled portrait of a turbulent, half-forgotten era. 14 b&w illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Patenaude (research fellow, Hoover Inst., Stanford Univ.) applies his expert knowledge of early Soviet history in narrating the story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico. This, then, is the story not of the dashing hero of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian civil war but rather of "the Great Exile" and "the Old Man" of the Dewey Commission hearings and later events, an individual hounded by the Kremlin and its supporters in the West and suffering from an array of physical ailments. The book draws extensively on archival collections and published primary sources, in addition to important (mostly English-language) secondary work. Verdict It's not evident how the author is reassessing this fascinating period in Trotsky's life, and nowhere does he make his case. Nonetheless, his Trotsky is a reliable and masterfully written account that captures, in the words of John Dewey, "the bare overpowering interest of the man and what he has to say." It should be read by anyone interested in Trotsky and the ways in which his life intersected with events in the Soviet Union, Europe, the United States, and Mexico in the 1930s.-Sean Pollock, Wright State Univ., Dayton, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
