“Outside the party, formless revolutionary frustration mingled with distinctly counter-revolutionary trends. Since the ruling group had singled out Trotsky as a target for attack he automatically attracted the spurious sympathy of many who had hitherto hated him. As he made his appearance in the streets of Moscow [in the spring of 1924], he was spontaneously applauded by crowds in which idealist communists rubbed shoulders with Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, and the new bourgeoisie of the NEP, by all those indeed who, for diverse reasons hoped for a change”

—  Isaac Deutscher

Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, Pelican, 1966, p. 279. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, pp. 25.

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British historian 1907–1967

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