Wednesday, August 26, 2009

No. Trotsky Was A Very Bad Man Indeed!

What is wrong with people, especially historians who should know better? Lesley Chamberlain reviews a new biography of Trotsky in today's Wall Street Journal and writes:

"We are left weighing a multiple ­tragedy, of a man so loyal to an ideology he died for it; of an ideology that in one form or another killed ­millions; and of a 20th century in which political ­radicals world-wide called themselves Trotskyists and believed that Lenin was good and Stalin bad, that even if the Soviet Union was a degenerate workers' state, the real thing could be established elsewhere. Trotsky had people killed. But . . . [he] was not a bad man."

Good grief: get us rewrite!

Hat tip: The Volokh Conspiracy