Robert Service's Trotsky: A Biography has been published in the United Kingdom in October by Pan Macmillan and in the United States in November by Harvard University Press. Based heavily on the resources of the Hoover Archive at Stanford, it is the first large-scale biography of Trotsky not written by a Trotskyist. Service says: "This biography could not have been written without the rich, broad ore of original documents assembled at Hoover."

Service covers not just Trotsky's politics but also his personal life.  He shows, above all, that Trotsky was not the great humane and libertarian revolutionary that appears in so many books. In power, Trotsky shared more ideas with Stalin and Stalinism the he cared to admit. In personality, ideas and practice -- as Service shows -- Trotsky was as hard an advocate of dictatorship and terror as Lenin and Stalin. The author hopes to have put an end to the soft-centred, bland interpretations of Trotsky that have been prevalent until now.

Trotsky follows Lenin (2000) and Stalin (2004) to complete Service's trilogy on the three great figures of the Russian Revolution.