Lot 264
  • 264

Trotsky, Leon

Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 USD
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

Moia zhizn' [My Life].  Berlin: Izd-vo "Granit", 1930



2 volumes, in 8s (7  3/4  x 5  5/8  in.; 197 x 143 mm).  A few leaves roughly opened, signature in ink on front free endpaper of vol. 2, contents leaf at end of vol. 2 creased at outer margin.  Publisher's drab wrappers, printed in red and black; some creasing and light wear to extremities.  Black buckram clamshell case, printed label on spine.

Literature

Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky, the Eternal Revolutionary, p. 41

Catalogue Note

First edition.  A very good copy of Communist revolutionary and leader Leon Trotsky's My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography.  First published in 1930, the first year of Trotsky's exile, the book describes the author's childhood, the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the Russian Civil War, Trotsky's split with Stalin, and his eventual expulsion from the Communist Party. Trotsky was famously assassinated a decade later in Mexico by one of Stalin's secret police agents, who used an ice-axe for the job.

Trotsky's "My Life must hold pride of place as a work of remarkable self-analysis, as well as imaginative history.  Although he wrote it at the relatively early age of forty-eight, soon after his deportation, his life up to then had been eventful enough to merit recording" (Volkogonov).