Josh Ireland

Both of them are incredibly bright.

Both of them are incredibly ambitious.

But also, when they're young, both of them get seized by a sort of overwhelming passion for world revolution.

In a way that I don't think we can quite understand the sort of force with which it hits them.

It's in the air.

It's in the air, but I think there are some people for whom it lands more securely and it drives them and it pushes them and it pushes them and pushes them.

But I guess it would do, because if they're hyper-intelligent, they're in a system, they're in a Russian empire where people like them really aren't going to get on.

It was also something that marked him in the eyes of almost everyone he met when he was younger.

There were quotas when he was younger at school for how many Jewish kids could go to a local school.

And it would also become a sort of anti-Semitic trope in the way that he was talked about later.

And I think also there is just, I think the thing that we can't understand from our perspective in a kind of liberal democracy is the excitement of it all and the power and the importance of it.

You know, it's just, it's so distant from our sort of fairly lukewarm relationship with politics.

Even now, when we sort of talk about things being overheated and,

and being tribal, it still doesn't even come close to the passion and the devotion they felt.

I mean, lots of people have compared them to early Christians, because it's not just the passion, but it's also this belief that paradise is so close, that all you need to do is push a little bit more to get paradise.

But what marks them apart from Christians is that whereas Christians believe in peace and

and generosity and forgiveness, the Bolsheviks were sort of addicted to ruthlessness and violence because that's what they felt was necessary to achieve the thing that they had dreamed of.

No, it's early on.

And to begin with, I think he's just a sort of...

The thing about Trotsky is he's so bright that he also is desperate for everyone to know how bright he is.