World War I was one of the most important events of the twentieth century. It was also a crucial period in Leon Trotsky's political biography. This work is the first comprehensive examination of Trotsky's writings of 1914-1917 and the context in which they were produced. Its findings challenge Trotsky's autobiography and the standard account by Isaac Deutscher. Trotsky's war-time journalism is shown to be of continuing relevance to contemporary issues ranging from European unity to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as co–leader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the Twentieth Century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York City. Between January and March 1917, Trotsky found refuge in the United States. America had kept itself out of the European Great War, leaving New York the freest city on earth. During his time there—just over ten weeks—Trotsky immersed himself in the local scene. He settled his family in the Bronx, edited a radical left wing tabloid in Greenwich Village, sampled the lifestyle, and plunged headlong into local politics. His clashes with leading New York socialists over the question of US entry into World War I would reshape the American left for the next fifty years.

World War I utterly transformed the lives of Jews around the world: it allowed them to display their patriotism, to dispel antisemitic myths about Jewish cowardice, and to fight for Jewish rights. Yet Jews also suffered as refugees and deportees, at times catastrophically. And in the aftermath of the war, the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian and Ottoman Empires with a system of nation-states confronted Jews with a new set of challenges. This book provides a fascinating survey of the ways in which Jewish communities participated in and were changed by the Great War, focusing on the dramatic circumstances they faced in Europe, North America, and the Middle East during and after the conflict.

Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, father and hunted victim, Trotsky lived a brilliant life in extraordinary times. Robert Service draws on hitherto unexamined archives and on his profound understanding of Russian history to draw a portrait of the man and his legacy, revealing that though his followers have represented Trotsky as a pure revolutionary soul and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin and his henchmen. The reality is very different, as this masterful and compelling biography reveals.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the years 1917 to 1921 is one of the most widely studied periods in history. It is also somewhat inevitably one that has generated a huge flow of literature in the decades that have passed since the events themselves. However, until now, historians of the revolution have had no dedicated bibliography of the period and little claim to bibliographical control over the literature. The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921offers for the first time a comprehensive bibliographical guide to this crucial and fascinating period of history. The Bibliography focuses on the key years of 1917 to 1921, starting with the February Revolution of 1917 and concluding with the 10th Party Congress of March 1921, and covers all the key events of the intervening years. As such it identifies these crucial years as something more than simply the creation of a communist state.

A lively introduction to the practical application of strategy in war and peaceRead and download the introduction for free now (pdf)Strategy is a central concept in international security, and one that travels across the academic disciplines of politics, international relations and history. By why is it so important? Aaron Edwards unpacks key strategic episodes from world history and politics to help readers to understand the role of strategy and the scholarly and policy debates surrounding it.Discover how strategic theory can be used to navigate the complex and uncertain international security environment that we live in today.Assesses the practical utility of strategy in the modern world and emphasises its analytical value in the practical business of national and international securityExamines the politics of strategy in times of both war and peaceThemes covered include:International relations *; technology *; ethics *; irregular war (including counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and hybrid warfare) *; the resurgence of great power rivalries in the early 21st century *; the rise of non-state actorsCase studies include:Guerrilla warfare and strategy in regions from South East Asia to the Middle East *; US nuclear strategy in the Cold War *; Russian intervention in Ukraine *; British strategy at the end of empire *; the UN's role in resolving conflict after the Cold War *; US-led coalition strategy in Afghanistan *; the challenge posed by Al Qaeda and Islamic State/Daesh"e;

The first book of its kind to appear since the end of the Cold War, this reference provides encyclopedic coverage of communism and its impact throughout the world in the 20th century. With the opening of archives in former communist states, scholars have found new material that has expanded and sometimes altered the understanding of communism as an ideological and political force. The book explains what communism was, the forms it took, and the enormous role it played in world history from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond. It examines the political, intellectual, and social influences of communism around the globe, and features contributions from an international team of 160 scholars. It includes more than 400 entries on major topics, such as: Figures: Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Gorbachev ; Events: Cold War, Prague Spring, Cultural Revolution, Sandinista Revolution ; Ideas and concepts: Marxism-Leninism, cult of personality, labor ;Organizations and movements: KGB, Comintern, Gulag, Khmer Rouge ; Related topics: totalitarianism, nationalism, antifascism, anticommunism, McCarthyism.

Without Trotsky there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution, but Trotsky was no Bolshevik. Providing a full account of Trotsky’s role during the Russian Civil War and concentrating on his time as an active participant in Russian revolutionary politics, rather than his ideological writings of emigration, Swain gives the student a very different picture of the Bolshevik Commissar of War. This radically new interpretation of Trotsky’s career spanning 1905-1917 incorporates the tense relationship between Trotsky and Lenin until 1917, and pays particular attention to the Russian Civil War and Trotsky’s military organisation and contribution to the war. Swain argues critically that Trotsky achieved where Lenin would have failed, suggesting that Trotsky was in the main part responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution.

Supporters of Stalin saw Trotsky as a traitor and renegade. Trotsky’s own supporters saw him as the only true Leninist. In Trotsky and the Russian Revolution, Geoffrey Swain restores Trotsky to his real and central role in the Russian Revolution. In this succinct and comprehensive study, Swain contests that: In the years between 1903 and 1917, it was the ideas of Trotsky, rather than Lenin, which shaped the nascent Bolshevik Party and prepared it for the overthrow of the Tsar. During the autumn of 1917 workers supported Trotsky’s idea of an insurrection carried out by the soviet, rather than Lenin’s demand for a party orchestrated coup d’etat. During the Russian Civil War, Trotsky persuaded a sceptical Lenin that the only way to victory was through the employment of officers trained in the Tsar’s army. As well as examining Trotsky’s critique of Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s, this seminar reader probes deeper to explore the ideas which drove Trotsky forward during his years of influence over Russia’s revolutionary politics, exploring such key concepts as how to construct a revolutionary party, how to stage a successful insurrection, how to fight a revolutionary war, and how to build a socialist state.

This book contains fresh approaches to the interaction between regime and society in twentieth-century Russia. It offers new answers to familiar questions: * How useful is 'totalitarianism' as a model to categorise authoritarian regimes? * What chances existed for tsarism to establish itself as a constitutional monarchy? * Were Trotsky and Lenin dictators in waiting? * How did the Bolsheviks make the Lenin cult? * What opposition did intellectuals offer in the Soviet regime? * What is the nature of contemporary Russian constitutionalism? It is required reading for historians, political scientists, sociologists and everyone interested in modern Russia.