This is the first comprehensive exposition and critical analysis of Trotsky's social and political ideas. Eschewing the polemics which have characterized so much of the literature on Trotsky, but not abandoning the critical approach, the author shows that Trotsky's was the most far-reaching and original of theoretical attempts to deal with the relationship between Marxism and the Social-Democratic movement on the one hand and backwardness and the problems of pre-industrial or underdeveloped society on the other. The author also deals in detail with the problem of why Trotsky, once a violent opponent of Bolshevism, later became one of its most ardent supporters and, indeed, leaders. This book is, therefore, as much a study of the Russian Revolution as of the ideas of one man. [Back cover].