The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky

I've always been fascinated by Russian history, and how tragic it is. The revolution and the subsequent civil war are perhaps the most tragic episodes. As a key player in these events, Trotsky has a unique perspective writing as a historian 15 years later.
Trotksy is an impressive figure who deserves to be taken seriously, in spite of my thorough ideological disagreement. This is a long, well-written and exacting work which appears to possess factual reliability even as it dispenses with any veneer or objectivity. Its high level of detail is at times absorbing and at times ponderous, and while the overbearing tone and bias in favour of the Bolsheviks grows wearing, it also provides a useful perspective.
The narrative begins with the February Revolution and ends with the October Revolution (or coup?) taking in all intermediate episodes including the April Days, July Days and the Kornilov Revolt. Throughout, the position of the Bolsheviks with the Russian people improves, from a minor fringe grouping to one capable of seizing power. It does appear however that Trotsky continually overstates the popularity of the Bolsheviks. Their eminent position among the industrial workers and soldiers by October was decisive, but it was hardly as unchallenged as presented here, and in an all-Russian context was still a small minority, the population being comprised mostly of peasants. Trotsky (following Lenin) excuses this by appointing the Bolsheviks as the "vanguard" of the revolution, but the inevitable (and real) end-point of that is one-party rule.
Unexamined, in fact, is Trotsky's own opposition to this principle pre-1917 (he didn't join the Bolshviks until that year), describing it as "Bonapartism". Here his fanatical enthusiasm for the idea, and for the principles of dialectic materialism (also extremely questionable) lead to all sorts of historical conclusions that I find indefensible.
Unexamined also are the extent to which Lenin's own positions taken in 1917 are a divergence from those expressed both before and after, not to mention his actions in power, which expose him in my view as an opportunist.
Yes, power to the soviets in 1917 was probably a noble aim, if something that was going to prove difficult in the heat of wartime. The problem with the Bolsheviks is that they identified soviet power with their own power, and with it would very quickly move to build the first totalitarian state and to rebuild the Tsarist machinery of repression in a much more severe form (see the Cheka, Red Terror, war communism, the closure of the Constituent Assembly, the progressive outlawing of opposition parties, the subjugation of the soviets to the party...)
All said, these are criticisms of the Leninist doctrines found in the book, but it's an intriguing read for all that.