[Live on Zoom] “The East Side Jew Who Conquered Europe”: Leon Trotsky through the Eyes of Jews

Lecture Admission: Free Registration is required.

Leon Trotsky ranks among the 20th century’s most important political leaders. A theorist of revolution and commander of the Red Army, Trotsky profoundly shaped the course of modern Russia. He has come to represent a certain type of modern Jew, the proverbial “non-Jewish Jew,” indifferent to the Jewish people and its fate. Yet many Jews, during Trotsky’s lifetime, saw him differently. Jewish admirers viewed Trotsky as an intellectual genius and a fearless revolutionary; a Russian by cultural attainment but still a Jew in some essential sense; a Jewish hero and a hero to the Jews. This lecture will explore Jewish perceptions of Trotsky, as they appeared in Yiddish and English.

About the Speaker

Tony Michels teaches American Jewish history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also serves as director of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. He is author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Jewish Socialists in New York, editor of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History, and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume Eight: The Modern World, 1815-2000.