Leon Trotsky and the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) ranks among the greatest and most controversial figures in the political history of the 20th century. During his lifetime he was the target of a vicious campaign of lies orchestrated by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which culminated in his assassination in exile. Nearly 70 years after Trotsky's death, long-discredited Stalinist distortions and falsifications of his ideas and actions are finding their way into mainstream academic literature. In this penetrating analysis of two recent biographies of Trotsky by Professors Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher, two well-known British historians, David North raises troubling questions about the state of contemporary historical scholarship.