Leon Trotsky


Leon Trotsky (alternative transliterations: Trostskii, Trotski, Trotzky) (October
26 (Julian calendar), 1879 - August 21, 1940), was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein
to Jewish parents in Yanovka, Kherson Province, Ukraine. His date of birth in
the Gregorian calendar is November 7 - oddly enough, the same day as the
Soviet revolution of 1917. Since the Julian calendar was replaced in 1918,
his date of death is that of the Gregorian calendar.

He was first arrested in 1898 while working as an organizer for the South
Russian Workers' Union. In 1900 he was sentenced to four years in exile in
Siberia. He escaped from Siberia, taking the name Trotsky from a former
jailer in Odessa, and proceeded to London to join Vladimir Lenin, then
managing editor of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party newspaper
Iskra.

He attended the Second Congress of the RSDLP in London in the summer of
1903, and in the internal dispute which split the party, sided with the
Mensheviks against Lenin. Although his allegiance to the Mensheviks was
short-lived, the damage to his relationship with Lenin lasted for the next
14 years.

By 1905, he had returned to Russia. His involvement in the October general
strike and his support for that armed rebellion led to his conviction and
sentence to exile for life. In January 1907, he escaped en route to exile
and once again made his way to London, where he attended the Fifth Party
Congress. In October he moved to Vienna.

As war approached he moved to neutral Switzerland, then France. He was
deported from France and was living in New York City when the Russian
Revolution removed the Tsar. He returned in May 1917 to Russia where he
ultimately joined the Bolsheviks and became actively involved in efforts to
overthrow the Provisional Government headed by Aleksandr Kerensky.

After the Bosheviks came to power, he became the Commissar For Foreign
Affairs with the major goal of negotiating peace with Germany and her
allies. But his withdrawal from the talks (February 10, 1918) provoked a
German invasion (February 18), forcing the Soviet regime to sign the highly
disadvantageous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3. Trotsky subsequently
resigned his diplomatic position and became Commissar of War. As founder and
commander of the Red Army he was largely responsible for their success over
the White Army and victory in the Russian Civil War.

With the illness and death of Lenin, Joseph Stalin was able to consolidate
his control of the Party and the government. At this point, Trotsky was
unable or unwilling to actively oppose Stalin. By remaining silent at the
Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, Trotsky lost his last real opportunity to
oppose Stalin, who along with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev was able to
take control of the Party.

Trotsky would later develop his theory of 'Permanent Revolution', which
stood in stark contrast to Stalin's policy of building "Socialism in One
Country". This ideological division provided much of the basis for the
political divide between Trotsky and Stalin. By 1928, Trotsky had been
stripped of Party membership. He was exiled to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan)
on January 31, 1929.

He was deported and moved from Turkey to France to Norway, eventually
settling in Mexico at the invitation of the painter, Diego Rivera. In 1938,
Trotsky founded an international Marxist organization, the Fourth
International, which was intended to be a Trotskyist alternative to the
Stalinist Third International. He eventually quarreled with Rivera and in
1939 moved into his own residence. On May 24, 1940, Trotsky survived a raid
on his home by alleged Stalinist assassins. While at the home of Frida Kahlo
on August 20, 1940, a Stalinist agent, Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez,
attacked Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico (a suburb of Mexico City), driving an
ice-pick into his skull.

Mercader later testified at his trial: "I laid my raincoat on the table in
such a way as to be able to remove the ice-pick which was in the pocket. I
decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The
moment Trotsky began reading the article gave me the chance, I took out the
ice-pick from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed,
dealt him a terrible blow on the head." Trotsky died the next day.