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harryhaller@diasp.eu
harry

I give my first impressions of him exactly as I entered them in my diary at the time: #trotsky #lenin #ussr #uk #germany #canada #halifax #lockhart #kerensky #ww1 #russianrevolution #brest #brest-litovsk #history ">

" February 15th, 1918. Had a two hours’ conversation with L.D.T. (Lev Davidovitch Trotsky).

He struck me as perfectly honest and sincere in his bitterness against the Germans.

He has a wonderfully quick mind and a rich, deep voice. With his broad chest, his huge forehead, surmounted by great masses of black, waving hair, his strong, fierce eyes, and his heavy protruding lips, he is the very incarnation of the revolutionary of the bourgeois caricatures.

He is neat about his dress. He wore a clean soft collar and his nails were carefully manicured.

I agree with Robins. If the Bosche bought Trotsky, he bought a lemon. His dignity has suffered an affront. He is full of belligerent fury against the Germans for the humiliation to which they have exposed him at Brest.

He strikes me as a man who would willingly die fighting for Russia provided there was a big enough audience to see him do it.”

Trotsky was angry with the Germans. At that moment he was not quite certain what the German reaction would be tohis famous declaration of “no peace and no war,” but he had a shrewd idea that it would be unpleasant.

Unfortunately, he was also full of bitterness against the English.

We had not handled Trotsky wisely.

At the time of the first revolution he was in exile in America.

He was then neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik.

He was what Lenin called a Trotskist — that is to say, an individualist and an
opportunist.

A revolutionary with the temperament of an artist and with undoubted physical courage, he had never been and never could be a good party man.

His conduct prior to the first revolution had incurred the severest condemnation by Lenin.
“Trotsky, as always,” wrote Lenin in 1915, “is, in principle, opposed to the Socialist Chauvinists, but in practice he is always in agreement with them.”

In the spring of 1917 Kerensky requested the British Government to facilitate Trotsky's return to Russia. Common sense seemed to indicate one of two courses: to refuse, on the grounds that Trotsky was a danger to the Allied cause; or to allow him to return unmolested.

As usual in our attitude towards Russia, we adopted disastrous half-measures. Trotsky was treated as a criminal. At Halifax, Nova Scotia, he was separated from his wife and children and interned in a prison camp at Amherst with German prisoners for four weeks.

His finger-prints were taken. Then, having roused his bitter hate, we allowed him to return to Russia.

I am giving Trotsky's own account of the incident. I learnt afterwards that it was substantially correct.

The outraged Trotsky came back to Russia, threw in his lot with the Bolsheviks, and relieved his injured feelings by writing a fiercely anti-British pamphlet entitled
“A Prisoner of the English.” Some trace of his resentment showed itself during our interview* I succeeded, however, in soothing him.

Memoirs Of A British Agent (1933)
by R. H. Bruce Lockhart

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