1. Yanovka¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 1: Yanovka¶
Leon Trotsky’s childhood at Yanovka was neither the sunny idyll of privilege nor the dark deprivation of the peasantry, but the grey existence of a lower-middle-class family on the remote steppes of Ukraine. His parents, Jewish farmers who had risen from poverty through relentless labour and thrift, provided material competence but little affection or generosity. The household was governed by work and savings, leaving a modest place for children. The estate consisted of crude mud buildings, leaking roofs, and earthen floors that bred fleas. The mill, where his mother worked long hours, was a central feature; peasants waited weeks to grind their grain. Trotsky notes that the year of his birth, 1879, saw the first dynamite attacks by the People’s Will against Tsarism, but no echo of politics reached Yanovka, isolated on the boundless steppes. His official birth year was later altered to 1878 to allow early school entry.
In the machine shop, kitchen, and backyard, Trotsky encountered a life more expansive than his family home. As a small child, he was unnoticed, and people spoke freely. By the light of the forge or kitchen fire, he saw his parents, relatives, and neighbours in a new light. Many overheard conversations from his youth remain vivid in his memory, and he suggests these laid the foundation for his later social attitudes. The world market affected Yanovka; falling Argentine wheat prices caused gloom. Winter was peaceful; the children sometimes suffered from charcoal fumes. The nearest post office was twenty-three kilometres away, the railroad thirty-five. No newspapers or magazines arrived. Letters were rare; telegrams cost two roubles fifty kopecks and were considered catastrophic.
Trotsky’s parents lived hard-working lives with some friction but overall happily. Of eight children, four survived infancy; the four who died did so from diphtheria and scarlet fever, their deaths passing almost unnoticed. The land, cattle, poultry, and mill consumed all parental attention; there was no display of tenderness, but a strong comradeship of labour existed between the parents. Trotsky’s father was superior in intellect and character—deeper, more reserved, tactful, with a good eye for things and people. His mother loved reading worn novels during long winters, following words with her finger; his father learned to spell as an old man to read book titles. The October Revolution found his father prosperous; his mother died in 1910. During the civil war, the seventy-year-old father walked hundreds of miles to Odessa—the Reds menaced him for being rich, the Whites for being Trotsky’s father. He eventually reached Moscow, lost all savings, ran a small state mill, and died of typhus in spring 1922 while Trotsky read a report at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International.