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I can't exactly remember how many times I've read War and Peace, since the first time at about 19 (1962). Probably twice more, once in the early 1980s and later sometime in 1990s. Because these corresponded to different moments in my life, I saw or read different aspects in the novel. It's also a time marker for the changes in the life of the reader.
Tolstoy wrote the novel in the 1860s and it was published in 1869. The events cover roughly from 1805 to 1820. I don't know the external history, but in terms of the central characters this corresponds to young adult to middle age (Pierre), from girlhood to married and settled (Natasha). These are in Tolstoy's mind general periods of human life and its cycles in time, mixed with the historical events, and the social changes of the greater society. The reader is transported through a change of generations, their experiences, and grasp of the nature of their country, its people, and the world.
People write books on this novel, so let's turn to Trotsky. Instead of individual characters as in Tolstoy, Trotsky takes up representatives of their class and position and their struggles to revolt or strangle revolt, to adapt and try to co-opt, to preserve themselves and gain power, to pretense of revolution and its many masks. The overt politics and political parties are the more superficial facade for the more concrete class struggle between the lower classes and their overloads.
History of the Russian Revolution so far (Chapter 13) is a condensation of events spinning out of anyone's control in a matter of months. The workers, soldiers, in the cities performed the overthrow and had to bring those events to the peasant orders who were the bulk of the population, etc, etc.
The only point I made was the similarity of sociological scope. While Tolstoy excelled in his individual character portraits, Trotsky excells in his characterization of political respresentatives and their interests in power and position. He ranges from high sarcasm to utter contempt in his exposure of the almost entirely venal nature of the early Duma and Executive Committee at the head of a so-called government, which he considers a sham. The real power is in the factories, the streets, the local Soviets, and the building peasant organizations. The question is how to consolidate these groups to over take those who began to try to manage and limit the impact of the February Revolution.
I don't want to make too much of this parallel, but it sure seems to be there. Tolstoy had the advantage of a generation (lifetime) of hindsight and study. Trotsky also has hindsight, but from a much shorter distance of a decade or less. He went to the government archives of documents for study of what was said and done, and used these materials to retrace the story.
If you or anybody else out there hasn't read both of these works, now is the time. Within them you see many elements of our current world in some sort of global struggle and transition, especially in the Middle East. But that has already spread to most of Europe. And in a much more subrosa way, into the US. The question is will the global elites be able to constrain and subdue, hopefully crush western and middle eastern societies?
As an aside, some of the more hilarious passages in Trotsky concern the infinite variety of liberals, social democrats and socialists who make a farce through their actions of their own stated beliefs. Very funny, like the idea that Obama is a democrat, or that the British Labor party represents labor. We see this same phenomenon especially in the US Democratic party. There is the hawk, Diane Finestein worried about government overreach in mass surveilence, and Boxer protesting whatever. I am even beginning to wonder if Barbara Lee isn't more interested in maintaining Obama's creditability, than she is in any form of economic justice (jobs), healthcare for all, and quality education for all.
Carrol you would love those passages... although I am certain in your arrogance you will never read them.
CG