The subject of this book, Trotsky and the Jews, is dealt with against the background of Russia in a period of vast political and social change. Because of Trotsky's unique personality and the nature of his impact on his generation, this work must cover much more ground than would at first appear necessary. It has wider ramifications than the life and career of a single person and his attitude to a certain problem. Trotsky was one of the titans of our times; whatever he said and did affected multitudes of people beyond national borders, and there is every reason to believe that his ideas will continue to reverberate for generations to come. Even more significantly, Trotsky should be considered a Jewish case history. He epitomized the predicament of the Diaspora Jew, the product of an environment which had been spiritually unhealthy for centuries. In many respects he was the quintessence of both the sublime and the disruptive in exilic Jewry. Being extremely impetuous and fanatically idealistic, he brought the Jewish tragedy into close focus; and more than anyone else he typified the symptomatic unease of Jewry in the modern age of turbulent change