LEIBA DAVIDOVICH BRONSHTEIN TROTSKY AKA
REVOLUTIONARY WRITER AND JOURNALIST, NEGOTIATOR AT BREST-LITOVSK AND FOUNDER OF THE RED ARMY, TROTSKY WAS LENIN’S HEIR APPARENT AND STALIN’S VICTIM
Trotsky was educated in Odessa where, at the age of 19, he was arrested for subversive activities. He was sentenced to exile in Siberia, where he spent two years studying Marxism until his escape to western Europe in 1902. Trotsky was the alias he used on his fake passport and the name stuck. He reached London, where he met Lenin and joined the staff of the Russian socialist newspaper Iskra (spark).
Returning to Russia in early 1905 he joined the revolutionaries as a member of the St Petersburg Soviet. As a result of his activities he was arrested and again exiled to Siberia but escaped en route, to resume his journalistic career as editor of Pravda (truth), based in Vienna. In August 1914 he and Lenin were in agreement – both opposed the war – and consequently when Trotsky arrived in Petrograd in May 1917 he threw himself into propaganda work for the Bolsheviks. Deputising for Lenin, who was hiding in Finland during the summer of 1917, raised Trotsky’s profile dramatically and on 25 October he formed the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, which directed the Bolshevik coup of 7/8 November 1917 and brought them to power.
However, Trotsky’s achievements as commissar for war – the creation of the Red Army and victory in the civil war – coupled with his close relationship with Lenin created numerous enemies for him, and in particular Stalin.
Following Lenin’s death, political manoeuvrings led to Trotsky being first sidelined then, in 1928, exiled to Kazakhstan. The following year Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, finally settling in Mexico in 1932. Still regarded as a huge threat by Stalin, Trotsky was murdered by a Spanish NKVD operative on 20 August 1940.