Description
A series of biographical profiles of leading figures in the European social-democratic movement, many written as the first imperialist world war put the movement and its leaders to a harsh test. Would they remain faithful to the antiwar and revolutionary positions of socialism or would they capitulate to chauvinism and opportunism? Most of Trotsky’s subjects depicted here failed the test but the author himself and a few others such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Franz Mehring did not. Trotsky’s sketches bring to life European social-democracy in the period before the war and in the crisis produced by the terrible conflict.