The Authority of Failure

MARTOV: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, by Israel Getzler. London and New York: Cambridge University Press. 246 pp. $12.50.

People who have experienced political defeat like to console themselves with the thought of historical vindication. The past has rejected them, the future will reject the past. Perhaps. But mostly it’s an illusion: history seldom vindicates anyone, let alone the losers and the just.

Shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power Trotsky made a speech at a Soviet session in which he pointed his finger at Julian Martov, the brilliant and equivocating left-Menshevik leader, and consigned him to “the dust-bin of history.” Trotsky was, in one sense, right: Martov would die a powerless and penniless exil...