Leon Trotsky (biography). Trotskyist ideologist Lev Bronstein brief biography
Leiba Bronstein was born on October 26 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, in the family of landowner David Bronstein. In 1888 he entered the St. Paul School in Odessa and graduated from his final classes in Nikolaev. Lev Bronstein, 1888
The Second Congress was a big milestone in my life, if only because it separated me from Lenin for a number of years
Trotsky L.
"My life"
In 1904, Trotsky left the Menshevik Party. He and his wife came to Munich and settled in the apartment of Alexander Parvus. Trotsky, having learned about the strike movement that had begun in Russia, arrived illegally in St. Petersburg, where, together with Parvus, they actually led the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. During the workers' strike in October, Trotsky was in the thick of things.
The fifty-two days of the existence of the first Council were full of work to capacity: the Council, the Executive Committee, continuous meetings and three newspapers. It’s unclear to me how we lived in this whirlpool.
Trotsky L.
"My life"
On December 3, Trotsky was arrested for his “Financial Manifesto,” which called for accelerating the financial collapse of tsarism. In 1906, at the widely publicized trial of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, Trotsky was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights. In 1907, he escaped from the prison camp through Germany to Vienna, where he settled with his wife and children. 
Trotsky in a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, 1905
During this period, his relationship with Lenin became tense. Trotsky publishes the newspaper Pravda for workers and opposition intellectuals, and actively promotes the idea of unifying Social Democrats. A hostile campaign by the Bolsheviks unfolded against the Vienna Pravda. Lenin called Trotsky a “Judass” in the article “On the color of shame in Judas Trotsky,” which was published only in 1932 in the Pravda newspaper in the USSR. Lenin sent letters and articles to party bodies and the press in which he wrote that Trotsky and “Trotskyism” were dangerous. As a result, Lenin borrowed the name of Trotsky’s newspaper and began publishing the Bolshevik Pravda in St. Petersburg. It became the most influential newspaper in the Soviet Union.
On July 28, 1914, the First World War began. Trotsky becomes a war correspondent and actively publishes. For revolutionary propaganda in the newspaper Nashe Slovo in September 1916 he was expelled from France.
In January 1917, Trotsky arrived in New York by ship, where he worked for the Russian newspaper Novy Mir. Having received the news, he and his family went to Russia by ship. In Halifax, Canada, he and several other socialists were dropped off and sent to a concentration camp for prisoners of war. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, Miliukov, under pressure from the Council of Workers' Deputies, requested the release of the detainees. 
French passport of Leon Trotsky
Trotsky arrived in Petrograd through Sweden and Finland, where he joined the Interdistrict Organization and became its leader. By mid-1917 the group had grown from several hundred to four thousand members. Lenin sought to unite with the Mezhrayontsy. The unification took place at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(b), at which time Trotsky was elected to the party’s Central Committee.
Lenin and Trotsky celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution, 1919
In this struggle, Trotsky was defeated - on January 26, 1925, he was deprived of military leadership. In 1926, Trotsky formed an opposition bloc with Kamenev and Zinoviev, his former opponents, and began to openly oppose Stalin's line. Soon the opposition platform went underground. There was organized persecution against her.
accept the Mexican authorities. Trotsky settled in Coyoacan, first in the Blue House of artist Frida Kahlo, and then in a villa nearby.
Leon Trotsky (second from left) with Frida Kahlo.
Meanwhile, a show trial was organized in Moscow, at which Trotsky was called an agent of Hitler and sentenced to death in absentia.
Trotsky began writing a book about Stalin, met with journalists from various publications, and proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International - a Trotskyist international organization that set as its main goal the world revolution and the victory of the working class.
Trotsky, in response to the Moscow trials, recorded a video message to the world community, in which he accused Stalin of despotism. “It was not communism and socialism that gave birth to this court, but Stalinism,” says Trotsky. He claims that the trial of him and his former opposition comrades (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov and others) is based on false evidence in the interests of the ruling elite.
There were two attempts on Trotsky's life. On May 24, the Mexican artist, Stalinist José David Alfaro Siqueiros and a group of militants drove up to Trotsky’s villa and fired about two hundred bullets into the walls, doors and windows of the house. Trotsky and his family survived. In parallel with the Siqueiros group, an NKVD agent infiltrated Trotsky’s trust. He entered his house and on August 20, 1940, dealt a fatal blow with an ice ax, from which Trotsky died the next day.
Trotsky Lev Davidovich: biography, quotes August 21 of this year marked 75 years since the day Leon Trotsky was assassinated. The biography of this famous revolutionary is well known. But the following circumstance is striking: he became an enemy not only of those who are rightly classified as counter-revolutionaries - enemies of the October Revolution of 1917, but also of those who prepared and carried it out with him. However, he never became an anti-communist and did not revise revolutionary ideals (at least the initial ones). What is the reason for such a sharp break with his like-minded people, which ultimately led to his death? Let's try to find the answer to this question together. First, let's give a biographical information. Leon Trotsky: a short biography It’s quite difficult to describe this briefly, but let’s try anyway. Lev Bronstein (Trotsky) was born on November 7 (what an amazing coincidence of dates, how can you not believe in astrology?) 1879 in the family of a wealthy Jewish landowner (more precisely, a tenant) in Ukraine, in a small village, which is now located in the Kirovograd region . He began his studies in Odessa at the age of 9 (note that our hero left his parents' home as a child and never returned to it for a long time), continued it in 1895-1897. in Nikolaev, first at a real school, then at Novorossiysk University, but soon stopped studying and plunged into revolutionary work. So, at the age of eighteen - the first underground circle, at nineteen - the first arrest. Two years in different prisons under investigation, the first marriage with someone like himself, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, entered into directly in the Butyrka prison (appreciate the humanism of the Russian authorities!), then exile to the Irkutsk province together with his wife and brother-in-law (humanism is still in action). Here Trotsky Lev does not waste time - he and A. Sokolovskaya have two daughters, he is engaged in journalism, publishes in Irkutsk newspapers, and sends several articles abroad. What follows is an escape and a dizzying journey with forged documents under the surname Trotsky (according to Lev Davidovich himself, this was the name of one of the guards in the Odessa prison, and his surname seemed so euphonious to the fugitive that he offered it for making a fake passport) all the way to London. Our hero arrived there at the very beginning of the second congress of the RSDLP (1902), at which the famous split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks took place. It was here that he met Lenin, who appreciated Trotsky’s literary gift and tried to introduce him to the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper. Before the first Russian revolution, Leon Trotsky occupied an unstable political position, wavering between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. His second marriage to Natalya Sedova dates back to this period, which he entered into without divorcing his first wife. This marriage turned out to be very long, and N. Sedova was with him until his death. 1905 is the time of our hero’s unusually rapid political rise. Arriving in St. Petersburg, seething after Bloody Resurrection, Lev Davidovich organized the St. Petersburg Council and became first its deputy chairman, G. S. Nosar (pseudonym Khrustalev - lawyer, Ukrainian, originally from the Poltava region, shot in 1918 on Trotsky’s personal orders), and after his arrest and the chairman. Then, at the end of the year - arrest, in 1906 - trial and exile in the Arctic (the region of present-day Salekhard) forever. But Lev Trotsky would not have been himself if he had allowed himself to be buried alive in the tundra. On the way to exile, he makes a daring escape and alone makes his way across half of Russia abroad. This was followed by a long period of emigration until 1917. At this time, Lev Davidovich began and abandoned many political projects, published several newspapers, and tried in every possible way to gain a foothold in the revolutionary movement as one of its organizers. He does not take the side of either Lenin or the Mensheviks, he constantly vacillates between them, maneuvers, tries to reconcile the warring wings of Social Democracy. He is desperately trying to take a leadership position in the Russian revolutionary movement. But he fails, and by 1917 he finds himself on the sidelines of political life, which leads Trotsky to the idea of leaving Europe and trying his luck in America. Here he made very interesting contacts in various circles, including financial ones, which allowed him to arrive in Russia after the February Revolution, in May 1917, clearly not with an empty pocket. His previous chairmanship of the Petrograd Soviet secured his place in the new reincarnation of this institution, and his financial capabilities propel him to the leadership of the new Council, which, under the leadership of Trotsky, enters into a struggle for power with the Provisional Government. He eventually (in September 1917) joined the Bolsheviks and became the second man in Lenin's party. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov and Bubnov were the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik revolution. Moreover, from September 20, 1917, he was also the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In fact, all practical work on organizing the October Revolution and its defense in the first weeks of Soviet power was the work of Leon Trotsky. In 1917-1918 He served the revolution first as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and then as the founder and commander of the Red Army in the post of People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. Leon Trotsky was a key figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918-1923). He was also a permanent member (1919-1926) of the Politburo of the Bolshevik Party. After the defeat of the Left Opposition, which waged an unequal struggle against the rise of Joseph Stalin and his policies in the 1920s aimed at increasing the role of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was removed from power (October 1927), expelled from the Communist Party (November 1927 g.) and expelled from the Soviet Union (February 1929). As head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union in exile. On Stalin's orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramon Mercader, a Soviet agent of Spanish origin. Trotsky's ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a major movement of Marxist thought that opposed the theory of Stalinism. He was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated either under Nikita Khrushchev’s government in the 1960s or during Gorbachev’s perestroika. In the late 1980s, his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union. Only in post-Soviet Russia was Leon Trotsky rehabilitated. His biography was researched and written by a number of famous historians, including, for example, Dmitry Volkogonov. We will not retell it in detail, but will analyze only a few selected pages. The origins of character formation in childhood (1879-1895) In order to understand the origins of the formation of our hero’s personality, you need to take a closer look at where Leon Trotsky was born. It was the Ukrainian hinterland, a steppe agricultural zone that remains the same to this day. And what did the Jewish Bronstein family do there: father David Leontyevich (1847-1922), who was from the Poltava region, mother Anna, an Odessa native (1850-1910), their children? The same as other bourgeois families in those places - they earned capital through the brutal exploitation of Ukrainian peasants. By the time our hero was born, his illiterate (note this fact!) father, who lived, in fact, surrounded by people alien to him by nationality and mentality, already owned an estate of several hundred acres of land and a steam mill. Dozens of farm laborers bent their backs on him. Doesn't all this remind the reader of something from the life of Boer planters in South Africa, where instead of black Kaffirs there are dark Ukrainians? It was in such an atmosphere that the character of little Leva Bronstein was formed. No friends and peers, no reckless boyish games and pranks, just the boredom of a bourgeois home and a view from above on Ukrainian farm laborers. It is from childhood that the roots of that feeling of one’s own superiority over other people grow, which constituted the main trait of Trotsky’s character. And he would have been a worthy assistant to his dad, but, fortunately, his mother, being a slightly educated woman (from Odessa, after all), felt in time that her son was capable of more than simple exploitation of peasant labor, and insisted that he be sent to study in Odessa (live in an apartment with relatives). Below you can see what Leon Trotsky was like as a child (photo presented). The hero's personality begins to emerge (1888-1895). In Odessa, our hero was enrolled in a real school according to the quota that was allocated for Jewish children. Odessa was then a bustling, cosmopolitan port city, very different from typical Russian and Ukrainian cities of the time. In the multi-part film by Sergei Kolosov “Raskol” (we recommend watching it to everyone who is interested in the history of the Russian revolution) there is a scene when Lenin in 1902 in London meets Trotsky, who had fled from his first exile, and is interested in the impression that the capital of Great Britain made on him. He replies that it is simply impossible to experience a greater impression than Odessa made on him after moving to it from a rural outback. Lev is an excellent student, becoming the first student in his course all years in a row. In the memoirs of his peers, he appears as an unusually ambitious person; his desire for primacy in everything distinguishes him from his fellow students. By the time Leo comes of age, he turns into an attractive young man, to whom, if he has wealthy parents, all doors in life should be open. How did Leon Trotsky live further (a photo of him during his studies is presented below)? First love Trotsky planned to study at Novorossiysk University. For this purpose, he transferred to Nikolaev, where he completed his last year of real school. He was 17 years old, and he did not at all think about any revolutionary activity. But, unfortunately, the sons of the owner of the apartment were socialists, they pulled the high school student into their circle, where various revolutionary literature was discussed - from populist to Marxist. Among the circle participants was A. Sokolovskaya, who had recently completed obstetric courses in Odessa. Being six years older than Trotsky, she made an indelible impression on him. Wanting to show off his knowledge in front of the subject of his passion, Lev intensively began studying revolutionary theories. This played a cruel joke on him: having started once, he never got rid of this activity again. Revolutionary activity and imprisonment (1896-1900) Apparently, it suddenly dawned on the young ambitious man - after all, this is the very thing to which he can devote his life, which can bring the coveted glory. Together with Sokolovskaya, Trotsky immerses himself in revolutionary work, prints leaflets, conducts social democratic agitation among the workers of the Nikolaev shipyards, and organizes the “South Russian Workers' Union”. In January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested. He spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial - first in Nikolaev, then in Kherson, then in Odessa and Moscow. In Butyrka prison he came into contact with other revolutionaries. There he first heard about Lenin and read his book “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” gradually becoming a real Marxist. Two months after its conclusion (March 1-3, 1898), the first congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) took place. From then on, Trotsky defined himself as its member. First marriage Alexandra Sokolovskaya (1872-1938) was imprisoned for some time before being sent into exile in the same Butyrka prison in Moscow, where Trotsky was at that time. He wrote romantic letters to her, begging her to agree to marry him. Typically, her parents and the prison administration supported the ardent lover, but the Bronstein couple was categorically against it - apparently, they had a presentiment that they would have to raise the children of such unreliable (in the everyday sense) parents. In defiance of his father and mother, Trotsky still marries Sokolovskaya. The wedding ceremony was performed by a Jewish priest. First Siberian exile (1900-1902) In 1900, he was sentenced to four years of exile in the Irkutsk region of Siberia. Because of their marriage, Trotsky and his wife are allowed to live in the same place. Accordingly, the couple was exiled to the village of Ust-Kut. Here they had two daughters: Zinaida (1901-1933) and Nina (1902-1928). However, Sokolovskaya failed to keep such an active person as Lev Davidovich next to her. Having gained a certain fame due to articles written in exile and tormented by a thirst for activity, Trotsky lets his wife know that he is unable to remain away from the centers of political life. Sokolovskaya meekly agrees. In the summer of 1902, Lev fled from Siberia - first on a cart hidden under hay to Irkutsk, then with a false passport in the name of Leon Trotsky by rail to the borders of the Russian Empire. Alexandra subsequently fled Siberia with her daughters. Leon Trotsky and Lenin After escaping Siberia, he moved to London to join Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin, Martov and other editors of Lenin's newspaper Iskra. Under the pseudonym “Per”, Trotsky soon became one of its leading authors. At the end of 1902, Trotsky met Natalya Ivanovna Sedova, who soon became his companion, and from 1903 until his death, his wife. They had 2 children: Lev Sedov (1906-1938) and Sergei Sedov (March 21, 1908 - October 29, 1937), both sons predeceased their parents. At the same time, after a period of secret police repression and internal disorder that followed the first congress of the RSDLP in 1898, Iskra managed to convene the 2nd Party Congress in London in August 1903. Trotsky and other Iskrists took part in it. The delegates to the congress were divided into two groups. Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters argued for a small but highly organized party, while Martov and his Menshevik supporters sought to create a larger and less disciplined organization. These approaches reflected their different goals. If Lenin wanted to create a party of professional revolutionaries for the underground struggle against the autocracy, then Martov dreamed of a party of the European type with an eye to parliamentary methods of fighting tsarism. At the same time, Lenin’s closest associates gave Lenin a surprise. Trotsky and the majority of Iskra editors supported Martov and the Mensheviks, while Plekhanov supported Lenin and the Bolsheviks. For Lenin, Trotsky's betrayal was a strong and unexpected blow, for which he called the latter Judas and, apparently, never forgave him. Throughout 1903-1904. many faction members switched sides. Thus, Plekhanov soon parted ways with the Bolsheviks. Trotsky also left the Mensheviks in September 1904 and until 1917 called himself a "non-factional Social Democrat" in an attempt to reconcile various groups within the party, resulting in many clashes with Lenin and other prominent members of the RSDLP. How did Leon Trotsky personally treat Lenin? Quotes from his correspondence with the Menshevik Chkheidze quite clearly characterize their relationship. Thus, in March 1913, he wrote: “Lenin... is a professional exploiter of all backwardness in the Russian labor movement... The entire edifice of Leninism is currently built on lies and falsification and carries within itself the poisonous beginning of its own decay...” Later, during the struggle for power, he will be reminded of all his hesitations regarding the general course of the party set by Lenin. Below you can see what Lev Davidovich Trotsky was like (photo with Lenin). Revolution (1905) So, everything that we know about the personality of our hero so far does not characterize him very flatteringly. His undoubted literary and journalistic talent is offset by painful ambition, posturing, and selfishness (remember A. Sokolovskaya, left in Siberia with two small daughters). However, during the period of the first Russian revolution, Trotsky unexpectedly showed himself in a new way - as a very courageous man, an outstanding orator, capable of igniting the masses, as their brilliant organizer. Arriving in seething revolutionary St. Petersburg in May 1905, he immediately rushed into the thick of events, became an active member of the Petrograd Soviet, wrote dozens of articles, leaflets, and spoke to crowds electrified by revolutionary energy with fiery speeches. After some time, he was already deputy chairman of the Council and actively participated in the preparation of the October general political strike. After the appearance of the tsar's manifesto of October 17, which granted the people political rights, he sharply opposed it and called for the continuation of the revolution. When the gendarmes arrested Khrustalev-Nosar, Lev Davidovich took his place, preparing combat workers’ squads, the striking force of the future armed uprising against the autocracy. But at the beginning of December 1905, the government decided to disperse the Council and arrest its deputies. An absolutely amazing story occurs during the arrest itself, when the gendarmes burst into the meeting room of the Petrograd Soviet, and the presiding officer, Trotsky, only by the power of his will and the gift of persuasion, sends them out the door for a while, which gives those present the opportunity to prepare: destroy some documents that are dangerous to them, get rid of weapons. But the arrest nevertheless took place, and Trotsky finds himself in a Russian prison for the second time, this time in the St. Petersburg “Crosses.” Second escape from Siberia The biography of Lev Davidovich Trotsky is replete with striking events. But it is not our task to present it in detail. We will limit ourselves to a few striking episodes in which the character of our hero is most clearly revealed. These include the story associated with Trotsky’s second exile to Siberia. This time, after a year of imprisonment (however, in quite decent conditions, including access to any literature and the press), Lev Davidovich was sentenced to eternal exile in the Arctic, in the region of Obdorsk (now Salekhard). Before leaving, he handed over a farewell letter to the public with the words: “We are leaving with deep faith in the speedy victory of the people over their centuries-old enemies. Long live the proletariat! Long live international socialism!” It goes without saying that he was not ready to sit for years in the polar tundra, in some wretched dwelling, and wait for a saving revolution. Besides, what kind of revolution could we talk about if he himself did not participate in it? Therefore, his only option was immediate escape. When the caravan with prisoners reached Berezovo (a famous place of exile in Russia, where the former Serene Highness Prince A. Menshikov spent the rest of his life), from where there was a way to the north, Trotsky feigned an attack of acute radiculitis. He ensured that he was left with a couple of gendarmes in Berezovo until he recovered. Having deceived their vigilance, he flees the town and gets to the nearest Khanty settlement. There, in some incredible way, he hires reindeer and travels across the snow-covered tundra (this happens in January 1907) for almost a thousand kilometers to the Ural Mountains, accompanied by a Khanta guide. And having reached the European part of Russia, Trotsky easily crosses it (let’s not forget that the year is 1907, the authorities tie “Stolypin ties” around their necks to people like him) and ends up in Finland, from where he moves to Europe. This, so to speak, adventure ended quite happily for him, although the risk to which he exposed himself was incredibly high. He could easily have been stabbed with a knife or stunned and thrown into the snow to freeze, having coveted the rest of the money he had on him. And the murder of Leon Trotsky would have happened not in 1940, but three decades earlier. Neither the enchanting rise during the years of the revolution nor all that followed would have happened then. However, the history and fate of Lev Davidovich himself decreed otherwise - to the happiness of himself, but to the grief of long-suffering Russia, and to his homeland no less. The last act of life's drama In August 1940, the news spread around the world that Leon Trotsky had been killed in Mexico, where he lived in the last years of his life. Was this a global event? Doubtful. It has been almost a year since Poland was defeated, and two months have already passed since the surrender of France. The wars between China and Indochina were blazing. The USSR was feverishly preparing for war. So, except for a few supporters from among the members of the Fourth International created by Trotsky and numerous enemies, ranging from the authorities of the Soviet Union to the majority of world politicians, few people commented on this death. The Pravda newspaper published a murderous obituary written by Stalin himself and filled with hatred for the murdered enemy. It should be mentioned that they tried to kill Trotsky more than once. Among the potential killers was even the great Mexican artist Siqueiros, who participated in the raid on Trotsky’s villa in Mexico as part of a group of orthodox communists and personally fired a machine-gun round at Lev Davidovich’s empty bed, not suspecting that he was hiding under it. Then the bullets passed by. But what was used to kill Leon Trotsky? The most surprising thing is that the weapon of this murder was not a weapon - cold steel or firearms, but an ordinary ice ax, a small pickaxe used by climbers during their ascents. And she was held in the hands of NKVD agent Ramon Mercador, a young man whose mother was an active participant in the Spanish Civil War. Being an orthodox communist, she blamed the defeat of the Spanish Republic on Trotsky’s supporters, who, although they participated in the civil war on the side of the republican forces, refused to act in line with the policies set from Moscow. She passed this belief on to her son, who became the true instrument of this murder.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Bronstein) (born November 7, 1879 - died August 21, 1940) - revolutionary, ideologist of Trotskyism. One of the organizers of the 1917 revolution. Member of the Bolshevik Party from August 1917 to November 14, 1927. Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) - RCP (b) - VKP (b). He was a member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) between the VIII and IX party congresses, a member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) from September 25, 1923 to June 2, 1924.
1924 – confrontation between Trotsky and I.V. Stalin's battle for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat. 1927 - expelled from the party, exiled to Alma-Ata, 1929 - abroad. He sharply criticized the Stalinist regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of proletarian power. 1938 - initiator of the creation of the 4th International. 1940 - was killed in Mexico by an NKVD agent, Spaniard R. Mercader.
Childhood. early years
Leiba Bronstein was born in 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province, into the family of a wealthy landowner from among the Jewish colonists. His father was able to learn to read only in old age. He studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first in all disciplines. Leiba loved to draw, was fond of literature, wrote poetry, translated I. A. Krylov’s fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and took part in the publication of a school handwritten magazine. At that time, his rebellious character began to manifest itself for the first time: due to a conflict with a French teacher, he was temporarily expelled from the school.
Trotsky in childhood and youth
The beginning of revolutionary activity. Arrest. Link
1896 - in Nikolaev (where he moved) he joined a revolutionary circle. In order to get a higher education, Leiba had to leave her new comrades and go to Novorossiysk. There he was easily able to enter the physics and mathematics department of the local university. But the revolutionary struggle had already captured the young man, and he soon left this university and returned to Nikolaev.
1898, January - he was arrested, imprisoned, first in Nikolaev, from there transferred to Kherson, then to Odessa and Moscow transit centers. In a Moscow prison he married A.L., an activist of the South Russian Workers' Union. Sokolovskaya, whom I knew from the Nikolaev period of participation in this organization. Sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia, where he and his wife were taken in the fall of 1900. At the stage I met F.E. Dzerzhinsky. In exile, he collaborated with the Irkutsk newspaper “Eastern Review”, writing under the pseudonym Antid Oto. He joined the Mensheviks.
Trotsky with his daughter Zina and first wife Alexandra Sokolovskaya
Emigration
1902, August - leaving his wife with two daughters, the youngest of whom was three months old, he fled from Siberian exile with a passport in the name of Trotsky, which he himself entered, not foreseeing that it would become his name for the rest of his life.
Leon Trotsky went to London, where he met with V.I. Lenin. There he spoke more than once to emigrant revolutionaries. Trotsky amazed everyone with his intellect and oratorical abilities. Lenin proposed to include him on the editorial board of Iskra, but Plekhanov categorically opposed this.
1903 - in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova. But officially, Alexandra Sokolova remained his wife until the end of his life.
Return to Russia
After the revolution of 1905, Lev Davidovich and his wife returned to Russia. During the revolution, he showed himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist; the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP).
Arrest. Second emigration
After the publication of the Financial Manifesto, he was arrested and convicted. 1906 - was sentenced to lifelong settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights. On the way to Obdorsk, he fled from Berezov.
He moved to Europe, where he made several attempts to unite disparate parties of a socialist orientation, but could not achieve success. In 1912-1913, Lev Davidovich Trotsky, as a military correspondent for the Kyiv Mysl newspaper, wrote 70 reports from the fronts of the Balkan Wars. Subsequently, this experience will help him organize work in the Red Army.
After the outbreak of the First World War, he fled from Vienna to Paris, where he published the newspaper “Our Word”. In it, he published his pacifist articles, which became the reason for Trotsky’s expulsion from France. The revolutionary moved to America, where he hoped to settle, since he doubted the possibility of an imminent revolution in Russia.
Trotsky at a rally in Yekaterinodar (1919)
October Revolution
May 1917 - returned to Petrograd, joined the United Social Democratic Internationalists (“Mezhrayontsy”). Soon he became the informal leader of the “Mezhrayontsy”, who took a critical position towards the Provisional Government. After the failure of the July uprising, he was arrested by the Provisional Government.
At the 6th Congress of the RSDLP(b) he was elected one of the honorary chairmen of the congress and a member of the party Central Committee. 1917, September - after being released from prison, he is elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He was one of the organizers of the armed uprising in Petrograd, during the days of the October Revolution he played a leading role in the PVRK, and led the suppression of the Kerensky-Krasnov rebellion.
Fall from the pinnacle of power
1918, autumn - Trotsky is appointed chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, i.e. he becomes the first commander-in-chief of the newly formed Red Army. For the next few years, he essentially lived on a train, on which he traveled on all fronts. During the defense of Tsaritsyn, Lev Davidovich entered into open confrontation with Stalin. Over time, he began to understand that there could be no equality in the army, and began to introduce the institution of military experts into the Red Army, striving for its reorganization and a return to the traditional principles of building the armed forces. 1924 - Trotsky was removed from his post as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council.
In exile
1927 - Lev Davidovich Trotsky was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee and expelled from the party. 1928, January - was exiled to Alma-Ata. 1929, February - deported from the Soviet Union to Turkey.
He settled on the island of Prinkipo (Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul), wrote works there about his life and the revolution and harshly criticized Stalin's policies. Considering the Comintern “captured” by the Stalinists to be politically bankrupt, Lev Davidovich began organizing a new, Fourth International.
He sharply opposed it, calling for the unification of all leftist forces in Europe against German National Socialism. 1933, summer - after the Fuhrer came to power, the radical French government of E. Daladier provided Trotsky with asylum in France. 1935 - Trotsky was forced to leave this country. He was granted new asylum by the Norwegian Labor government, but at the beginning of 1937 he was expelled from there, apparently due to Soviet pressure.
Last years
The revolutionary was now given refuge by the “leftist” President of Mexico Lazaro Cardenas. Leon Trotsky settled in Coyoacan as a guest of the radical artist Diego Rivera. 1938 - The Fourth International was officially founded by Trotskyists.
Meanwhile, the USSR intelligence services did not cease to keep Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. 1938 - under strange circumstances, his closest and tireless colleague, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died in a Paris hospital after an operation. News came from the USSR not only about unprecedentedly cruel repressions against the “Trotskyists”. His first wife and his youngest son, Sergei Sedov, were arrested and subsequently shot. The accusation of Trotskyism in the Soviet Union became the most terrible and dangerous in those days.
Death
In recent years, Lev Davidovich worked on his book about Stalin, in which he considered Stalin as a fatal figure for socialism. Anticipating his imminent death, at the beginning of 1940, Trotsky wrote a will, where he spoke of his satisfaction with his fate as a Marxist revolutionary, proclaimed his unshakable faith in the triumph of the 4th International and in the imminent world socialist revolution.
1940, May - an attempt was made on the revolutionary himself in Mexico by a group of killers led by the famous artist A. Siqueiros. However, it failed, but on August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Ramon Mercader struck Trotsky on the head with an ice pick.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky died the next day, August 21, 1940 in Coyocan (Mexico). He was buried in the courtyard of his house, where his museum is now located.
Leon Trotsky is an outstanding revolutionary of the 20th century, who went down in history as one of the founders of the Civil War, the Red Army and the Comintern. He was actually the second person in the first Soviet government and headed the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs, where he proved himself to be a tough and implacable fighter against the enemies of the world revolution. After his death, he led the opposition movement, speaking out against politics, for which he was deprived of Soviet citizenship, expelled from the Union and killed by an NKVD agent.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name at birth - Leiba Davidovich Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 in the Ukrainian outback near the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, into a Jewish family of wealthy landowners. His parents were illiterate people, which did not prevent them from earning capital from the brutal exploitation of peasants. The future revolutionary grew up alone - he had no peer friends with whom he could fool around and play, since he was surrounded only by the children of farm laborers, whom he looked down on. According to historians, this laid down the main character trait in Trotsky, in which a sense of his own superiority over other people prevailed.
In 1889, young Trotsky’s parents sent him to study in Odessa, since even then he showed interest in education. There he entered the St. Paul School under the quota for Jewish families, where he became the best student in all disciplines. At that time, he did not even think about revolutionary activity, being carried away by drawing, poetry and literature.
But in his final years, 17-year-old Trotsky ended up in a socialist circle that was engaged in revolutionary propaganda. At the same time, he became interested in studying the works of Karl Marx and subsequently became a fanatical supporter of Marxism. It was during that period that a sharp mind, a penchant for leadership, and a polemical gift began to manifest in him.
Immersed in revolutionary activity, Trotsky organizes the “South Russian Workers' Union”, which was joined by workers of the Nikolaev shipyards. At that time, they were of little interest in wages, since they received quite high salaries, and were worried about social relations under the tsarist rule.
Young Leon Trotsky | liveinternet.ru In 1898, Leon Trotsky went to prison for the first time for his revolutionary activities, where he had to spend 2 years. This was followed by his first exile to Siberia, from which he escaped a few years later. Then he managed to make a fake passport, in which Lev Davidovich randomly entered the name Trotsky, like the senior warden of the Odessa prison. It was this surname that became the future pseudonym of the revolutionary, with whom he lived for the rest of his life.
Revolutionary activities
In 1902, after escaping from exile in Siberia, Leon Trotsky traveled to London to join Lenin, with whom he established contact through the Iskra newspaper, founded by Vladimir Ilyich. The future revolutionary became one of the authors of Lenin's newspaper under the pseudonym "Pero".
Having become close to the leaders of Russian Social Democracy, Trotsky very quickly gained popularity and fame, delivering propaganda speeches to migrants. He amazed those around him with his eloquence and oratory, which allowed him to win serious attention in the Bolshevik movement, despite his youth.
Books by Leon Trotsky | inosmi.ru During that period, Leon Trotsky supported Lenin’s policies as much as possible, for which he was dubbed “Lenin’s club.” But this did not last long - literally in 1903, the revolutionary went over to the side of the Mensheviks and began to accuse Lenin of dictatorship. But he “didn’t get along” with the leaders of Menshevism either, because he wanted to try on and unite the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, which caused great political disagreements. As a result, he declared himself a “non-factional” member of the Social Democratic society, setting out to create his own movement, which would be superior to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
In 1905, Leon Trotsky returned to his homeland, to St. Petersburg, seething with revolutionary sentiments, and immediately burst into the thick of things. He quickly organized the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and gave fiery speeches to crowds of people who were already maximally electrified with revolutionary energy. For his active work, the revolutionary was again imprisoned, as he advocated the continuation of the revolution even after the Tsar’s manifesto appeared, according to which the people received political rights. At the same time, he was also deprived of all civil rights and exiled to Siberia for eternal settlement.
Leon Trotsky - organizer of the revolution | imgur.com On the way to the “polar tundra,” Leon Trotsky manages to escape from the gendarmes and get to Finland, from where he will soon move to Europe. Since 1908, the revolutionary settled in Vienna, where he began publishing the newspaper Pravda. But four years later, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, intercepted this publication, as a result of which Lev Davidovich went to Paris, where he began publishing the newspaper “Our Word”.
After the February Revolution in 1917, Trotsky decided to return to Russia. Directly from the Finlyandsky Station he went to the Petrosovet, where he was granted membership with the right of advisory vote. In just a few months of his stay in St. Petersburg, Lev Davidovich became the informal leader of the Mezhrayontsy, who advocated the creation of a unified Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
Photo by Leon Trotsky | livejournal.com In October 1917, the revolutionary created the Military Revolutionary Committee, and on October 25 (November 7, new style) he carried out an armed uprising to overthrow the provisional government, which went down in history as the October Revolution. As a result of the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power under the leadership of Lenin.
Under the new government, Leon Trotsky received the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and in 1918 became People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. From that moment on, he began forming the Red Army, taking tough measures - he imprisoned and shot all violators of military discipline, deserters and all his opponents, giving no mercy to anyone, even the Bolsheviks, which went down in history under the concept of “Red Terror”.
In addition to military affairs, he worked closely with Lenin on issues of domestic and foreign policy. Thus, by the end of the Civil War, the popularity of Leon Trotsky reached its apogee, but the death of the “leader of the Bolsheviks” did not allow him to carry out the planned reforms for the transition from “War Communism” to the New Economic Policy.
yandex.ru Trotsky was never able to become Lenin’s “successor” and his place at the helm of the country was taken by Joseph Stalin, who saw Lev Davidovich as a serious opponent and hastened to “neutralize” him. In May 1924, the revolutionary was subjected to real persecution by opponents under the leadership of Stalin, as a result of which he lost the post of People's Commissar of Naval Affairs and membership in the Central Committee of the Politburo. In 1926, Trotsky tried to restore his position and organized an anti-government demonstration, as a result of which he was exiled to Alma-Ata and then to Turkey with the deprivation of Soviet citizenship.
In exile from the USSR, Leon Trotsky did not stop his struggle with Stalin - he began publishing the “Bulletin of the Opposition” and created an autobiography “My Life”, in which he justified his activities. He also wrote a historical work, “The History of the Russian Revolution,” in which he proved the exhaustion of Tsarist Russia and the need for the October Revolution.
Books by Leon Trotsky | livejournal.com In 1935, Lev Davidovich moved to Norway, where he came under pressure from the authorities who did not want to worsen relations with the Soviet Union. All of the revolutionary’s works were taken away and he was put under house arrest. This led to Trotsky deciding to leave for Mexico, from where he “safely” followed the development of affairs in the USSR.
In 1936, Leon Trotsky completed his book “The Revolution Betrayed,” in which he called the Stalinist regime a counter-revolutionary coup. Two years later, the revolutionary proclaimed the creation of an alternative to “Stalinism”, the Fourth International, the heirs of which still exist today.
Personal life
Leon Trotsky's personal life was inextricably linked with his revolutionary activities. His first wife was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, whom he met at the age of 16, when he had not even thought about his revolutionary future. According to historians, it was Trotsky’s first wife, who was 6 years older than him, who became the young man’s guide to Marxism.
Trotsky with his eldest daughter Zina and first wife Alexandra Sokolovskaya Sokolovskaya became Trotsky's official wife in 1898. Immediately after the wedding, the newlyweds were sent into exile in Siberia, where they had two daughters, Zinaida and Nina. When his second daughter was only 4 months old, Trotsky fled from Siberia, leaving his wife with two small children in her arms. In his book “My Life,” Lev Davidovich, when describing this stage of his life, indicated that his escape was accomplished with the full consent of Alexandra, who helped him escape abroad unhindered.
While in Paris, Leon Trotsky met his second wife Natalya Sedova, who participated in the work of the Iskra newspaper under the leadership of Lenin. As a result of this fateful acquaintance, the revolutionary’s first marriage broke up, but he maintained friendly relations with Sokolovskaya.
Trotsky with his second wife Natalya Sedova | liveinternet.ru In his second marriage to Sedova, Leon Trotsky had two sons - Lev and Sergei. In 1937, a series of misfortunes began in the revolutionary’s family. His youngest son Sergei was shot for his political activity, and a year later Trotsky's eldest son, who was also an active Trotskyist, died under suspicious circumstances during an operation to remove appendicitis in Paris.
The daughters of Leon Trotsky also suffered a tragic fate. In 1928, his youngest daughter Nina died of consumption, and his eldest daughter Zinaida, who along with her father was deprived of Soviet citizenship, committed suicide in 1933, being in a state of deep depression.
Following his daughters and sons, in 1938 Trotsky also lost his first wife, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who until her death remained his only legal wife. She was shot in Moscow as a stubborn supporter of the Left Opposition.
Leon Trotsky's second wife, Natalya Sedova, despite the fact that she had lost both sons, did not lose heart and supported her husband until his last days. She and Lev Davidovich moved to Mexico in 1937 and after his death lived there for another 20 years. In 1960 she moved to Paris, which became for her the “eternal” city, where she met Trotsky. Sedova died in 1962, she was buried in Mexico next to her husband, with whom she shared his difficult revolutionary fate.
Murder
On August 21, 1940 at 7:25 am Leon Trotsky died. He was killed by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader in the revolutionary's house in the Mexican city of Cayoacan. The murder of Trotsky was a consequence of his struggle in absentia with Stalin, who at that time was the head of the USSR.
The operation to liquidate Trotsky began back in 1938. Then Mercader, on instructions from the Soviet authorities, managed to infiltrate the revolutionary’s entourage in Paris. He appeared in the life of Lev Davidovich as a Belgian subject Jacques Mornard.
Trotsky with Mexican comrades | liveinternet.ru Despite the fact that Trotsky turned his house in Mexico into a real fortress, Mercader managed to penetrate it and carry out Stalin’s orders. In the two months preceding the murder, Ramon managed to ingratiate himself with the revolutionary and his friends, which allowed him to appear frequently in Cayoacan.
12 days before the murder, Mercader arrived at Trotsky's house and presented him with an article he had written about the American Trotskyists. Lev Davidovich invited him into his office, where for the first time they managed to be alone. That day, the revolutionary was alarmed by Ramon’s behavior and his attire - in the extreme heat he appeared in a raincoat and hat, and while Trotsky was reading an article, he stood behind his chair.
Ramon Mercader - Trotsky's killer On August 20, 1940, Mercader again came to Trotsky with an article, which, as it turned out, was a pretext allowing him to retire with the revolutionary. He was again dressed in a cloak and hat, but Lev Davidovich invited him into his office without taking any precautions.
Having settled down behind Trotsky’s chair, who was carefully reading the article, Ramon decided to carry out the order of the Soviet authorities. He took an ice ax from his coat pocket and struck the revolutionary with a strong blow to the head. Lev Davidovich let out a very loud scream, to which all the guards came running. Mercader was grabbed and began to be beaten, after which he was handed over to special police agents.
gazeta.ru Trotsky was immediately taken to the hospital, where two hours later he fell into a coma. The blow to the head was so strong that it damaged vital centers of the brain. Doctors desperately fought for the life of the revolutionary, but he died 26 hours later.
Death of Leon Trotsky | liveinternet.ru For the murder of Trotsky, Ramon Mercader received 20 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty under Mexican law. In 1960, the revolutionary killer was released and immigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. According to historians, the preparation and execution of the operation to kill Lev Davidovich cost the NKVD $5 million.
Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, old style) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (Ukraine) into a wealthy family. From the age of seven he attended Jewish religious school, which he did not complete. In 1888, he was sent to study in Odessa, then moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he entered the Nikolaev Real School, and upon graduation began attending lectures at the Faculty of Mathematics of Odessa University. Here Trotsky became friends with radical, revolutionary-minded youth and took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union.
In January 1898, Trotsky, along with like-minded people, was arrested and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.
In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile, using false documents under the name of Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.
In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of Russian social democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed his candidacy for the editorial office of Iskra.
In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion.
In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy, where he supported Martov’s position on the issue of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. Since 1904, Trotsky advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.
When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the St. Petersburg Council, becoming one of its three co-chairs.
The development of the so-called theory by Trotsky, together with Alexander Parvus (Gelfand), dates back to this time. “permanent” (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the revolution will win only with the help of the world proletariat, which, having completed its bourgeois stage, will move on to the socialist one.
During the revolution of 1905-1907, Trotsky proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and editor of its newspaper Izvestia.
In 1907, he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to his place of exile.
From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna and tried to create an “August bloc” of social democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judass”.
In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for Kiev Thought in the Balkans; two years later, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland, and then to France and Spain. Here he joined the editorial office of the left-wing socialist newspaper Nashe Slovo.
In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States.
Trotsky hailed the February Revolution of 1917 as the beginning of the long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia, and in July he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He was chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.
After the Bolshevik victory on October 25 (November 7), 1917, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Supported Lenin in the fight against plans to create a coalition government of all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Krasnov advancing on it.
In 1918-1925, Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army and personally supervised its actions on many fronts of the Civil War. He did a great job of recruiting former tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army. He widely used repression to maintain discipline and “establish revolutionary order” at the front and in the rear, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the “Red Terror.”
Member of the Central Committee in 1917-1927, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-1926.
At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In the famous “Letter to the Congress,” noting Trotsky’s shortcomings, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable person from the entire composition of the Central Committee at that time.
Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. After Lenin's death, Leon Trotsky's bitter struggle with Joseph Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat.
In 1924, Trotsky’s views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a “petty-bourgeois deviation” in the RCP(b). For his leftist opposition views, he was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma Ata, and in 1929, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.
In 1929-1933, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of Marmara). In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. At the end of 1936, he left Europe and settled in Mexico, in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.
He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership and refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics.
Trotsky was the initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938), the author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, books “Lessons of October”, “History of the Russian Revolution”, “The Betrayed Revolution”, memoirs “My Life”, etc.
In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia; his first wife and youngest son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.
In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate Leon Trotsky. In May 1940, the first attempt to kill him, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed.
On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of his house in Coyocan, where his museum is now located.
The material was prepared based on open sources
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