TROTSKY IN ECLIPSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 12

TROTSKY IN ECLIPSE.

LIVE WIRE OF BOLSHEVISM. CAN HE COME BACK ? (By F. A. MACKENZIE, Author of "Russia Before Dawn.") Trotsky is to the Western world the most vivid and intriguing personality of the Russian Revolution. Lenin, with his cynical smile and ice-cold brain; Zinovieff, with his disgusting cruelty and underground intrigue; Krassin, the able business man who mistook hia side, are little mo,re than names. But Trotsky lias captured the imagination of the world. We read Ills books; his mode of thought is Western rather than Asiatic; he is soldier, student, and man of letters, and his quick changes of fortune lend him an air of romance. Isaac Marcosson, the American interviewer of kings and statesmen, recently told me| that, much as he hated Communism, hel found Trotsky one of the three outstanding characters among all the world leaders he had met. To-day in disgrace and ruin, searching for a lodging in the city he once ruled (56 square feet floor space of house room is all the law now allows him), he still emerges. Ruined he may be, but ignored—never. Years of Exile. Recall his story. The son of a prosperous, farmer in the big Jewish settlement in the southern Ukraine, as a young man he found his university career wrecked and himself condemned to exile in the Arctic for revolutionary opinions. He made a romantic escape by reindeer sledge through the winter ice, and reappeared in Europe among the organisers of the coming Russian Revolution. Some of the old Revolutionaries were, at first, suspicious of him. Very handsome and well dressed, he did not look his part. Speaking French and German very well, but English scarcely at all, he moved from capital to capital. For a time he lived in London, close to Lenin; in Vienna he edited a paper, "Pravda" ("Truth"); he stayed sometimes in Geneva and Paris. When the great split came between the Bolshevists and the Menshevists, he refused to join either side, but tried to act as a conciliator between the two. He was expelled from Paris, driven from Spain and found refuge on the East side of New York, earning his living as a journalist. When Revolution Came. Then came tb« Kerensky revolution of March, 1917. Trotsky raised money as best he could, and took ship for Europe en route for Russia. At Halifax he was arrested by the British authorities, and kept for a time in a concentration camp near by, soon to be released at the request of Kerensky. At Petrograd he at once joined Lenin. There was no more hesitation now. In a week Lenin's followers,,the Communists who had humbly supported hira for close on a score of years, found this new recruit outshine them all. Lenin's Rival. When the Bolshevists seized power, Trotsky was a national figure, almost rivalling Lenin. The "old guard" still regarded him as an. interloper who had joined their party at the last moment and taken all the spoils." But they could do nothing. Lenin was the greater and stronger of the two. In the first big fight between them Lenin won. Trotsky wanted to keep on with the war, and offered the British representative to give the Allies opportunity to reorganise the Russian Armies, provided they recognised the Communist Government. The French General Staff did not think that the Communists could hold power for many Weeks, and so the offer was, refused. Lenin resolved to make peace with the Central Powers, and made the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky resigned. his post as Commissar rather than consent;

But he was too big a figure to remain long in the background. As People's Commissar for War, he beat down the Whites. He took the Red Guards, the revolutionary sans-culottes, and turned them into 'the strictly disciplined Red Army. He made the old Czarist officers organise the new force, shot ruthlessly at the first sign of weakness, but backed thein in measures making their men efficient. He went to one of the few ships left in the old Imperial Navy that had some of its officers remaining alive. They had been bullied and driven by their men. Trotsky spoke to them with dignity, summoned the crew before him, and put them in their place. "This man, acts like a gentleman," said the amazed officers. Personal Courage. r In the revolutionary war he earned a great reputation for personal courage. When Juvenitch nearly succeeded in capturing Petrograd, it was Trotsky who .hurried up from Moscow, placed himself at the head of the fighting troops, and advanced in person on the Whites, utterly defeating them. While not cruel for cruelty's sake, he could he merciless. When the Red .sailors and troops in Kronstadt showed signs of disloyalty, early in 1921, and demanded constitutional government, some" of the Moscow leaders would have compromised. Trotsky would have none of it. He hurried up troops, and guns, called on the garrison to surrender, and when they refused, started bombarding their fortress. Any man in his own ranks who showed signs of hanging back was shot. And then Trotsky hurled his troops on the fortress, took it by assault, and slew the garrison by the thousand. - The first stage of the great fight between him and the old revolutionists came while Lenin lay dying. A group ot Communists wanted the Russian Communist party made really representative, m place of merely an efficient machme, controlled by its secretary, Stalin. Trotsky supported them, but ! ei T c " 818 of tho fight Trotsky's health broke down, an obscure disease of the stomach, caused by his tremendous labours absolutely him. He had to leave Moscow for a holiday in the Caucasus, and returned m the spring of 1924 to find that, with the death of Lenin, his day of power had gone.

He had been forced to resign his post as Commissar for War. He spent that summer trying to recreate an organised following among the rank and file of the party. The moderate Communists, like Krassin, openly supported him. But! in the autumn his health again gave way. He was still the most popular living man in Russia, but the "machine" deliberately set itself, to wipe out his reputation, and has largely succeeded. Can Trotsky come .back? . Is he likely to /( organise a revolt against the ruling Stalin group? What may come'in th| years ahead, no one can foresee. But, in the: immediate future,-he can only come back as a humble prodigal. And. I, fori one, , havs not imagination enough to see Trotsky in that role* ; ■■