Why bring a “noir sensibility” to bear on the story of the assassination of Trotsky? He has already been given the exhaustive bibliographical treatment, played both aged lover and reincarnated ghost in Hollywood, and been satirized by none less than Monty Python. What does the detective novel form have to say about that personage of Trotsky which has become so giant — outgrowing the historical person to become the repository of so many utopian hopes and alternative histories. Does a narrative form traditionally organized around the central question of “whodunit”, employed instead to help answer “why’d he done it”, help bring the appropriate weight to bear on the question about Trotsky’s motives, and by extension of those countless others who struggled for the sake of socialist utopia?

In the case of “The Man Who Loved Dogs” by Leonardo Padura, unfortunately, the answer is no. It is the story of Trotsky, rather, that ends up lending its gravity and immense historical intrigue to the Cuban author’s detective novel. That is not meant as a condemnation of Padura’s novel as such. Given the ideological baggage and textbook level of facts needed to tell such a story, the author has pulled off an impressive feat of novelization that beautifully juxtaposes Trotsky’s personal defeats with two other individuals living on the Soviet periphery. Using three alternating stories, tied together by both anecdotal and thematic parallels, Padura does much to help us bridge the gap between personal and collective trauma and disillusionment.

It is just that the task of giving a conclusive resolution to the motive of the Bolsheviks and their global network of adherents has so far seemed beyond the boundaries of any narrative form. How many historians have already staked their careers on pathologizing the Soviet leaders (or trying to find explanatory power in anything but, as is the case with Stephen Kotkin)? Who could claim to have finally worked out theoretically just where the lure of utopia resides in the psyche? Anyone who has ever sat in on a meeting with Trotskyists or 4th internationalists will know intimately just how exhaustively one can play what-if alternative history games, imagining a more humane Soviet Union if only Trotsky could have won in his battle against Stalin and his bureaucracy. Anyone who is interested in more than than pure satire should acknowledge the vast heritage of thought and speculation that have surrounded Trotsky and the ultimate meaning of his life. Anyone who wishes to write about true believers has to find a way to speak to what, exactly, it is that they truly believed.

In this regard, “The Man Who Loved Dogs” chooses the path of stream of consciousness à la great 19th century Russian novel. We are treated to the exhaustive, self-pitying soliloquies of the dejected exile Trotsky, the impassioned assassin Ramón, and the loser veterinarian copywriter Ivan and are given the responsibility to draw comparison between their fates. There is no gap in the novel between their voices for us to step outside and orient ourselves. No reader of this novel will claim to not have understood what was going on in the minds of these three men, not understood each of their journeys towards disillusionment. And yet, ironically, none of these conclusions feels adequately self-critical. The utopian impulse cannot have merely been the collective effect of so many personal efforts to act of out vanity (Trotsky), fanaticism (Ramon), or boredom (Ivan). There is a dimension above ego that is acknowledged even by the author but remains unarticulated. In order to truly engage with the question of motives, Padura would have had to rise above the level of simultaneous self-examination rooted in the isolated consciousness of these characters, and have used a decentered narratological voice capable of pointing in the direction. An effort to circumvent psychological understandings of the utopian impulse will not succeed with simply more psychological understanding, no matter how many pages are devoted to it.

Joining what now seems like a canon of works based on the life and death of Trotsky, “The Man Who Loved Dogs” represents one of the more serious artistic efforts. The novel works as an effective page-turner, while also remaining faithful to the former term in the designation of “historical fiction”. For anyone interested in studying the global history of the left in the 20th century, one would be hard pressed to find a single work of fiction offering more that this novel. However, even though this is a detective novel which gives away the essential facts of the crime as early as the epigraph, despite its best efforts it still leaves the central mystery unresolved.