“Once I accompanied Trotsky when he left such a meeting held in a dilapidated and poverty stricken dwelling. In the street Lev Davidovich put up the collar of his coat and pulled his cap over his eyes so that he should not be recognized. He now looked an old intellectual still erect after twenty years of wear and tear. We approached a cabman. ‘Please do the bargaining over the fare’, Lev Davidovich said to me, ‘I have very little money on me.’ The cabman, a bearded peasant of the old type, leaned towards him and said: ‘There is no fare for you to pay. Gome on, comrade. You’re Trotsky, aren’t you?’ The cap had not concealed sufficiently the man of the battles of Svyazhsk, Kazan, Pulkovo, and Tsaritsyn. A faint cheerful smile lit Trotsky’s face: ‘Don’t tell anyone about this. Everyone knows that cabmen belong to the petty bourgeoisie whose favour can only discredit us.’97”
from Isaac Deitcher, The Prophet