The Balkan Wars (1912–13): The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky (English and Russian Edition) Paperback – December 31, 1981

Regardless of what you think of his politics, Trotsky is a great traveling writer. All politics of the time are there, and are described efficiently, yet he is able to write in the novel style, giving us short, sharp portraits of individuals and weaving them into the political economic narrative. IMO the best writer of the Bolsheviks, and one of the best in a nation of great writers.

Trotsky saw in the Balkan Wars a portent of the Europe-wide war, which we know today as World War I. He risked cholera, malaria, and other ills, to file these articles, which expose the social breakdown in these small impoverished nations. He blasts the imperialist powers for using the conflict for their own purposes, for example when the Russian-French-British camp covered up massacres of Turkish Muslims. Anyone interested in the roots of anti-Semitism should read the article included here on the Jewish question in Romania. This book is a classic of Marxist reporting and a very good source of background information to anyone wanting to understand the current unraveling of the Balkans.