Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky remains a figure of fascination more than eighty years after his murder in Mexico by a Soviet agent. He has been brought to life on screen by Richard Burton, Geoffrey Rush, and Brian Cox. Biographies continue to be published, and Trotsky’s own voluminous writings remain in print.
One can question the need for a novel about Trotsky, given this mountain of material. Yet Robert Littell, the ninety-year-old, best-selling author of Cold War spy thrillers such as The Amateur, offers both charms and insights in this slim work of fiction.
Bronshtein in The Bronx recounts Trotsky’s ten-week sojourn in New York City in early 1917. Trotsky arrived in New York after passing through Europe, where he failed to find refuge after escaping the czar’s clutches in Russia. Littell sticks close to the historical record of Trotsky’s brief time in the USA, which was recounted in a 2017 nonfiction study by Kenneth D. Ackerman.
One clue that this novel offers something new — Trotsky’s love-hate relationship with his Jewishness — is evident in its clever, alliterative title. Trotsky entered the USA on a Russian passport under his real name, Lev Bronshtein (or Bronstein, depending on your source). He was the son of a prosperous Jewish farmer, and despite his allegiance to the religion of Communist revolution, Trotsky was forced to confront his Jewish identity throughout his life.
A second element that separates this novel from previous fictional and nonfiction efforts is Trotsky’s ongoing struggle with his conscience, which Littell personifies under the name “Litzky.” (Littell tells us in a foreword that his father Leon Litzky changed his name to avoid comparisons to Trotsky.) Litzky emerges as Trotsky’s central antagonist and as the most fully developed character in the book during their frequent verbal clashes.
In New York, Trotsky encounters the notable early twentieth-century Jewish figures Forward editor Abraham Cahan and anarchist Emma Goldman, as well as American socialists such as Eugene Debs. Littell also imagines that young federal agent John E. Hoover grills Bronshtein upon his arrival at Ellis Island and later in a New York City prison cell. However, all these characters exist as foils or audiences for Trotsky’s Marxist-Leninist rhetoric.
The book’s only fully fictional character is one of its brightest. Trotsky falls into a passionate affair with Brooklyn Eagle journalist Frederika “Fred” Fédora. She is based in part on the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had a brief tryst. Littell brings Fédora to life with depictions of her nascent feminism, attractiveness, and belief in free love.
The book closes with Trotsky and family racing back to Russia after the czar abdicates, which sets the revolution on its path. The final questions Littell poses are whether Trotsky’s conscience will survive the revolution’s likely violence, and whether his lust for Fédora will convince her to join him in Russia.
Former journalist Alan D. Abbey is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a regular reviewer of books for numerous publications. He is writing a novel of first century CE Roman Judaea, much of which is set at locations within walking distance of his Jerusalem home.
