The Editions Workers' Struggle (re)publish the monumental work of Leon Trotsky, My Life, which was originally published many years ago by the Change editions and has now gone out of print. In the new edition of our publications, My Life has been "retained" with the original excellent translation and editing by Sister Maria-Louiza Konstantinidi, with two necessary changes:
a) The entire text has been adapted to the modern monotonic writing system, and b) a few words—very few—within the text have been adapted to contemporary demotic language.
My Life, which L. Trotsky wrote in 1929 on Princes' Island (located in the Propontis), where he was exiled by the Stalinist bureaucracy, is not only an autobiography of the great revolutionary. It is a complex work that recounts, in an unparalleled way, the 50 years of his revolutionary career, half a century of world-shaking changes that shaped this historical period—not only that (e.g., the Paris Commune, World War I, the 1905 Revolution, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the rise of Stalinist bureaucracy, the struggle of the Left Opposition against Stalinist Thermidor, the Trotskyists' fight for the continuation of Leninism and global revolution, etc.).
For Trotsky's work, incredibly insightful commentaries have been written, including in the brief introduction by the translator. For example, the great Greek historian Giannis Kordatos wrote: "The literary and intellectual style lends a special and exceptional significance to Trotsky's writing." Academician Spyros Melas, wanting to emphasize the strength of his style and the persuasiveness of his arguments, wrote: "For God's sake, don't read Trotsky! He convinced you!"...
The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in his work Views on World History, describes Trotsky as "an excellent writer" and, quoting a large passage from My Life, emphasizes that "... this excerpt is not only impressive."
