Trotsky: A Biography

His biography of Trotsky was positively reviewed in the British and American press on its publication, but two years later was strongly criticized by Service's Hoover Institution colleague Bertrand Patenaude in a review for The American Historical Review.[6] Patenaude, reviewing Service's book alongside a rebuttal by the Trotskyist David North (In Defence of Leon Trotsky), charged Service with making dozens of factual errors, misrepresenting evidence, and "fail[ing] to examine in a serious way Trotsky's political ideas". He also described Service as seeking to “discredit Trotsky as a historical figure and a human being”. He concluded with the statement that his work “fails to meet basic standards of historical scholarship”.[7]

Service responded that the book's factual errors were minor and that Patenaude's own book on Trotsky presented him as a "noble martyr". In July 2009, prior to the publication of his own book, Robert Service had written a review of Partenaude's publication Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky which he applauded for being "vividly told" but also criticised for neglecting Trotsky's crimes while sharing power in the USSR.

The book has also been harshly criticized by the German historian of communism Hermann Weber who led a campaign to prevent Suhrkamp Verlag from publishing it in Germany. Fourteen historians and sociologists signed a letter to the publishing house. The letter cited "a host of factual errors", the "repugnant connotations" of the passages in which Service deals with Trotsky's Jewish origins, and Service's recourse to "formulas associated with Stalinist propaganda" for the purpose of discrediting Trotsky.[8][9] Suhrkamp published the German translation in July 2012.

Historian Paul Le Blanc regarded his work as a “second assassination” and highlighted a number of issues with the contents of his work. This included several inaccuracies, omissions, a negative characterization of Trotsky’s personality and the limited engagement with his Marxist theories. Le Blanc also drew attention to his political associations with the Hoover Institution which has a “conservative orientation” and decried the “central point of this biography, repeated over and over again, was that Trotsky’s orientation does not represent any meaningful alternative to Stalinism”. Le Banc argued that this proposition contradicted the actual evidence. He also referenced the views of contemporary Trotskyists and non-Trotskyists from the period such as Winston Churchill who emphasised the clear differences between Stalin and Trotsky.[10]

Reviews in the mainstream British press were predominantly positive. In The Daily Telegraph, the popular historian Simon Sebag Montefiore described Trotsky as "an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan." Believing that it offered a much-needed "scholarly revision" of the revolutionary's "historical reputation", he praised the way that it explored "the ugly egotism and unpleasant, overweening arrogance, the belief in and enthusiastic practice of killing on a colossal scale, the political ineptitude [and] the limit of ambition [of Trotsky]."[11] Writing for the Literary Review, the political philosopher John N. Gray claimed that "the full extent of Trotsky's role in building Soviet totalitarianism has not been detailed – until now". Considering the book to be "[r]igorously researched," he notes that Service "surpasses himself", painting a portrait of Trotsky that is "genuinely revelatory" and "very different from the one celebrated by bien pensants." Although focusing his review on a discussion of what he interprets as the negative side to Trotsky's personality, Gray claims that Service's work is "scrupulously balanced". Summing up his review, Gray proclaims that Service has authored the "best biography of Trotsky to date, and there seems little reason why anyone should write another."[12]

In contrast, Tariq Ali, socialist activist and a former Trotskyist still appreciating Trotsky,[13] produced a negative review of Service's book for The Guardian. Describing the work as "stodgy", Ali claims that the work is highly politically motivated by Service's anti-communist views, believing that Service's view "can be summarised in a sentence: Trotsky was a ruthless and cold-blooded murderer and deserves to be exposed as such." He relates that this "counter-factual approach is nothing new", having been the "stock-in-trade" for both anti-communist and Stalinist critics of Trotsky for decades.[14]