11. An Émigré for the First Time¶
Core Argument¶
Here, Trotsky recounts his first emigration, arriving in London in autumn 1902 to join Lenin and the Iskra editorial board. The chapter’s core narrative thrust is the forging of a political and personal relationship between the young revolutionary, fresh from Siberian exile, and Lenin, the movement’s central organiser. Trotsky’s first impressions are not of awe but of a shared, instinctive class antagonism. Lenin’s offhand reference to Westminster as “their famous Westminster” reveals a worldview where all cultural and material achievements are immediately reframed as the property of the ruling class, an enemy as tangible as daylight. This sets the tone for their first long walk, which functions as an examination by Lenin, who listens intently to Trotsky’s account of Siberian debates on centralised organisation and his studies of Marx, Bernstein, and Kautsky.
Key claims include the intellectual and political dominance of the Iskra and Zarya periodicals, which Trotsky describes as combining “scientific profundity with revolutionary passion,” and his own rapid integration into this milieu, writing short notes and then political articles. The chapter provides a vivid portrait of the émigré milieu: the chaotic, Bohemian household shared by Vera Zasulich, Martov, and Blumenfeld—described by Plekhanov as a “den”—stands in stark contrast to Lenin’s disciplined, family life and his methodical use of time in the British Museum. Trotsky notes the relative weakness of British Marxism, which held little interest compared to the German struggle between orthodox Marxists and revisionists. A notable polemic is Trotsky’s public lecture in Whitechapel, where he clashes with the “patriarch” Tchaikovsky and the anarchist Cherkezov, dismissing their arguments as “infantile.” This serves as his “test” before being sent on a lecture tour to defend historical materialism against the Russian subjective school.
The chapter draws heavily on the theoretical context of the split between revolutionary Marxism and economism, as well as the broader European socialist movement. Trotsky’s resistance to Parisian art and culture is framed as a form of “barbarian” self-preservation, a conscious prioritisation of revolutionary politics over aesthetic absorption, a struggle he likens to his earlier resistance to Marxism itself and to Lenin’s methods. The anecdote of Lenin’s too-tight shoes, passed to Trotsky and causing him agony at the opera, is a characteristic piece of self-deprecating humour that underscores the material privations and personal intimacy of this political apprenticeship. The chapter concludes with Trotsky’s lecture tour, including a defence of “materialist dialectics” against the Kantian idealism of Russian students in Heidelberg, and the decision to keep him abroad for further education rather than return him immediately to illegal work in Russia.