Notebooks for the Grandchildren: Recollections of a Trotskyist Who Survived the Stalin Terror, Mikhail Baitalsky, translated and edited by Marilyn Vogt-Downey. Many valuable memoirs of life during the time of Stalinist terror have been published. Notebooks for the Grandchildren is unique in that it was written by someone who had been active in the Trotskyist opposition to Stalin and who sought to reflect on how the revolutionary society created by the October Revolution came to be succeeded by Stalinism.
In so doing, he confirmed in terms of his own personal experience a number of sig- Toky made in his aka this teoluton nificant points of the analysis that Leon Betrayed. Though, of course, Baitalsky had no access to the work of the exiled Trotsky or to that of his co-thinkers. Baitalsky began writing his notebooks in 1958 after his release from his second stay in the notorious Vorkuta camp, where he spent most of his 11 years of imprisonment. He continued work on them for 12 years.
Fearful of being imprisoned once more, Baitalsky wanted this book to be published only after his death. He died in 1978, but 17 years more elapsed before it was possible to secure American publication. Vogt-Downey has translated and edited the manuscript, and added useful annotations that clarify Baitalsky's references. * Reviewed by Paul Siegel Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. 1995. 447+xviiii pp. $75.