15. Trial, Exile, Escape¶
Core Argument¶
In the second prison cycle, spanning fifteen months, conditions proved far more tolerable than the first, allowing Trotsky to resume systematic scientific and literary work. He studied the theory of rent and Russian social history; the former manuscript was lost after the October Revolution, while the latter produced The Results of the Revolution and Its Prospects, the period’s most finished statement of the theory of permanent revolution. Lawyers smuggled manuscripts out of prison. His pamphlet Peter Struve in Politics defended the St. Petersburg Soviet and the December armed uprising against liberal and opportunist criticism. The Bolshevik press received it favourably; the Menshevik press was silent. Tens of thousands of copies sold within weeks. Sverchkov described Trotsky’s cell as a library, working from morning to night.
The trial of the Soviet of Workers’ Delegates opened on 19 September 1906. Over four hundred witnesses were called. The defendants, especially Trotsky, used the proceedings to reconstruct the Soviet’s activity and argue for armed uprising. When the court refused to call a witness, the defendants broke up the trial by leaving, followed by the defence, witnesses, and public. The verdict was passed in their absence. They were sentenced to enforced settlement in exile, a milder punishment than expected. Trotsky escaped en route to Obdorsk, travelling by deer from Berezov across the Urals with the help of a local peasant, ‘The Goat’s Foot’, and a Zyryan guide.
The escape party travelled by reindeer along the Sosva River for a week, covering 700 kilometres toward the Urals. A decoy—a slaughtered calf driven down the Tobolsk road—successfully diverted the police for two days after the escape was discovered. Trotsky posed as an engineer from Baron Tol’s polar expedition; a drunken former expedition clerk was deflected with rum. Reaching the narrow-gauge Ural line, he passed secret police unnoticed, then boarded the Perm railway. He telegraphed his wife, Natalia Sedova, to meet him at a junction station, though the telegram omitted the station name. She travelled to Samino, where they reunited. In St Petersburg, they stayed with Dr Litkens’ family, then fled to Finland. Trotsky visited Lenin and Martov in neighbouring villages, noting Lenin’s order and Martov’s disorder. Lenin urged him to join the Bolsheviks. With Lenin’s addresses, Trotsky settled in Oglbu near Helsingfors, wrote There and Back, and used the proceeds to go abroad via Stockholm, beginning a ten-year exile.