The only saving grace for Trotsky as far as I’m concerned is how he absolutely dabs on Makhno and the Ukrainian Anarchists.

Edit: One thing that always stands out to me about the Trotskyist coup attempt is that despite enormous efforts to obfuscate various key events that lead up to the purge (did Trotskyists assassinate Kirov or was it Stalin, Was Tukhachevsky actually a German narc etc) the fact that the Sedov letters, the incriminating correspondence between Trotsky and his son, were in fact discovered by a committed French Trotskyist makes the case clean to me. I only thank Pierre Broué that he had the strength of character to accept and report the reality in front of him and not simply bury the letters for sectarian reasons.