"To the Finland Station": Trotsky Identifies History with Himself

Wilson re Trotsky:

History, then, with its dialectical Trinity, had chosen Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky to disillusion the middle class, had propounded revolutionary conclusions which it had compelled Father Gapon to bless, and will cruelly discredit and destroy certain Pharisees and Sadducees of Marxism before it summons the boiling lava of the Judgment. These statements make no sense whatever unless one substitutes for the words history and the dialectic of history the words Providence and God. And this providential power of history is present in all the writing of Trotsky. John Jay Chapman said of Browning that God did duty in his work as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection and preposition, and the same is true of History with Trotsky. Of late, in his solitude and exile, this History, as austere spirit, has seemed actually to stand behind his chair as he writes, encouraging, admonishing, approving, giving him the courage to confound his accusers, who have never seen History's face.

And Wilson quoting Trotsky:

. . . Trotsky, with the contempt and indignation of a prophet, read Martov and his followers out of meeting. "You are pitiful isolated individuals," he cried at this height of the Bolshevik triumph. "You are bankrupt; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on--into the rubbish-can of history!"