"From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality"
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Patriotism, Trotsky suggests, is easiest to love when it stays safely in the realm of story. The “patriotic myth” is Russia as an abstraction: a noble people, a historic mission, a conveniently unified “nation” that can be invoked to sanctify sacrifice. Then the revolution happens, and the people stop being a symbol and start being a problem. “Awful reality” lands like a slap: the masses are hungry, frightened, contradictory, exhausted, sometimes reactionary, sometimes cruel, and never as ideologically tidy as the slogans promised.
The intent is double-edged. Trotsky is puncturing the romantic nationalism of the old regime and, at the same time, warning his own side about revolutionary self-deception. Myth is useful because it simplifies; reality is “awful” because it refuses to cooperate. He’s also acknowledging a central Bolshevik dilemma: the revolution claims to speak for “the people,” yet the people can be politically inconvenient - wavering, bargaining, resisting discipline, refusing the script of historical destiny.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Trotsky writes from inside a project that depends on mass legitimacy while also requiring coercion. By naming the people as “reality,” he sidesteps sentimentality and clears rhetorical space for harder measures: if the populace is not inherently virtuous, then leadership, vanguardism, and force can be framed as tragic necessity rather than betrayal.
It works because it’s a reversal. Instead of myth becoming reality, reality ruins myth. The line isn’t anti-Russian so much as anti-fantasy: a revolutionary admitting that history is made with human material, and human material is messy.
The intent is double-edged. Trotsky is puncturing the romantic nationalism of the old regime and, at the same time, warning his own side about revolutionary self-deception. Myth is useful because it simplifies; reality is “awful” because it refuses to cooperate. He’s also acknowledging a central Bolshevik dilemma: the revolution claims to speak for “the people,” yet the people can be politically inconvenient - wavering, bargaining, resisting discipline, refusing the script of historical destiny.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Trotsky writes from inside a project that depends on mass legitimacy while also requiring coercion. By naming the people as “reality,” he sidesteps sentimentality and clears rhetorical space for harder measures: if the populace is not inherently virtuous, then leadership, vanguardism, and force can be framed as tragic necessity rather than betrayal.
It works because it’s a reversal. Instead of myth becoming reality, reality ruins myth. The line isn’t anti-Russian so much as anti-fantasy: a revolutionary admitting that history is made with human material, and human material is messy.
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| Topic | Deep |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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