OKay, I'm about to write a story called Arsenal of Socialism. Now, there is going to be TONS of research for this story, reason why you can read about in the thread named it. I have questions regarding Trotsky though, to get started. 1. Did he write about his personal life, or just politics? I mean stuff like autobiographies or what have you. 2. Why did he break with Lenin? Was it because he wanted the Soviet Union to be more democratic or what? 3. This relates to the second, which is this. Is Trotsky more democratic than his peers, or what? This is probably just the beginning, but this is a good starting place.
That's a tough one, I don't really know the answer. I assume this is a historical story about the USSR? I doubt he wrote autobiographies--probably not a lot of demand for autobiographies in Russia at the time--but you can probably find references to his life in his writing. Remember that he initially broke with Lenin MORE THAN TEN YEARS BEFORE THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. So the Lenin-Trotsky split was a while before the Soviet Union was founded. And yes I suppose he was somewhat more democratic, but still a Bolshevik and a Marxist theorist--I'm not the right person to ask. Also, use the term "socialism" wisely--I often interchange it with communism too, as many do, but there are lots of people out there who consider themselves socialists (though they're usually just slightly socialist, if at all--more just left-wing) who might be offended if you link them to the Soviet Union.
Oh, I know that. I myself consider Communism kind of an extremist subsect of Socialism, which I don't think is as bad as that sounds but that's a topic for another time. But anyway, this is research for my first novel actually, which is an alternative history fiction.
you can get all of that info a lot more easily/quickly by googling, than asking here... google should always be your starting place... and only if you don't find what you need there, does it make any sense to ask elsewhere... but for a specialized subject like that, you'd do much better asking on sites that are devoted to the study of the man and his work: Google trotsky websites
Good point, and probably should've known that. Last night I made a lot of mistakes, finding myself having a euphoric like experience with the idea. Good thing I didn't make anymore threads.