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.

Trotsky, briefly personality

Lev Davidovich Trotsky short biography for children

Lev Davidovich Trotsky, in short, is one of the most prominent participants in the revolutionary movement of the 20th century, the founder of Trotskyism, one of the directions of Marxism. The scope of the activities of this international politician is simply amazing. He was one of the organizers of the 1917 revolution along with Lenin. Trotsky was involved in the creation of the Red Army and was its first leader. He held high positions in the new Soviet government.

Speaking about Trotsky, we need to briefly dwell on his pseudonym. The real name of the revolutionary is Leib Bronstein. He chose the name Trotsky at random. That was the name of the warden in the prison where the revolutionary was imprisoned.

Trotsky was born in 1879 into a large, wealthy family of a landowner in the Kherson province. Having entered the school in Odessa, he immediately became the first student. He continued his studies in the city of Nikolaev, where he began to attend a revolutionary circle. In 1898, he went to prison for revolutionary activities, where two important events in his life happened to Trotsky. He becomes a Marxist and gets married.

After two years of imprisonment, he goes into exile in Siberia, but soon flees from there abroad under the pseudonym of Trotsky. Since then, this name has been assigned to him for the rest of his life.
Abroad, Trotsky begins active work. He ardently supports Lenin, works as a correspondent for the revolutionary newspaper Iskra, and marries (unofficially) a second time. He will never divorce his first wife.

During the revolution of 1905, Trotsky secretly returned to the Russian Empire. There he was arrested a second time, and in a highly publicized trial, he was deprived of all rights and exiled to Siberia forever. He safely escaped from the country right from under a convoy carrying convicts to a settlement. For a long time he lived in exile in Austria, France and the USA.

Trotsky's talent as an extraordinary organizer and speaker was most clearly revealed during the 1917 revolution and the Civil War. At one time he headed the Bolshevik faction. He was one of the leader-organizers of the 1917 uprising.

During the Civil War, Trotsky became the first leader of the Red Guard. The army he created with the help of iron discipline was able to defeat the enemy, but after the end of the Civil War, Trotsky with his authoritarian management style was no longer needed.
After Lenin's death, Trotsky participated in the struggle for power. Gradually he is removed from all posts.

L. D. Trotsky is an outstanding revolutionary of the twentieth century. He entered world history as one of the founders of the Red Army and the Comintern. L. D. Trotsky became the second person in the first Soviet government. It was he who headed the people's commissariat, was involved in naval and military affairs, and showed himself to be an outstanding fighter against the enemies of the world revolution.

Childhood

Leiba Davidovich Bronstein was born on November 7, 1879 in the Kherson province. His parents were illiterate people, but quite wealthy Jewish landowners. The boy had no friends the same age, so he grew up alone. Historians believe that it was at this time that Trotsky’s character trait, a sense of superiority over other people, was formed. From childhood, he looked at the children of farm laborers with disdain and never played with them.

Youth period

What was Trotsky like? His biography has many interesting pages. For example, in 1889 he was sent by his parents to Odessa, the purpose of the trip was to educate the young man. He managed to enter the St. Paul School under a special quota allocated for Jewish children. Quite quickly, Trotsky (Bronstein) became the best student in all subjects. In those years, the young man did not think about revolutionary activities; he was interested in literature and drawing.

At the age of seventeen, Trotsky found himself in a circle of socialists engaged in revolutionary propaganda. It was at this time that he began to study with interest the works of Karl Marx.

It’s hard to believe that his books were studied by millions of people and quickly turned into a real fanatic of Marxism. Even then, he differed from his peers in his sharp mind, showed leadership qualities, and knew how to conduct discussions.

Trotsky immersed himself in an atmosphere of revolutionary activity and created the “South Russian Workers' Union,” whose members were workers of the Nikolaev shipyards.

Persecution

When was Trotsky first arrested? The biography of the young revolutionary contains information about many arrests. He was first imprisoned for revolutionary activities in 1898 for two years. Next was his first exile to Siberia, from which he managed to escape. The name Trotsky was entered in the false passport, and it became his pseudonym for the rest of his life.

Trotsky - revolutionary

After escaping from Siberia, the young revolutionary leaves for London. It was here that he met Vladimir Lenin and became the author of the Iskra newspaper, publishing under the pseudonym “Pero”. Having found common interests with the leaders of Russian Social Democrats, Trotsky quickly became popular and accepted active agitators among migrants.

Trotsky easily established a trusting relationship with the Bolsheviks, using his oratorical abilities and eloquence.

Books

During this period of his life, Leon Trotsky fully supported Lenin’s ideas, which is why he received the nickname “Lenin’s club.” But a few years later, the young revolutionary goes over to the side of the Mensheviks and accuses Vladimir Ulyanov of dictatorship.

He failed to find mutual understanding with the Mensheviks, since Trotsky tried to unite them with the Bolsheviks. After unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the two factions, he declares himself a "non-factional" member of the Social Democratic society. Now, as his main goal, he chooses to create his own movement, different from the views of the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

In 1905, Trotsky returned to revolutionary St. Petersburg and found himself in the thick of events taking place in the city.

It is he who creates the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, voices revolutionary ideas to people who have a revolutionary mood.

Trotsky actively advocated the revolution, so he ended up in prison again. It was at this time that he was deprived of his civil rights and sent to Siberia for eternal settlement.

But he manages to escape from the gendarmes, cross to Finland, and then leave for Europe. Since 1908, Trotsky settled in Vienna and began publishing the newspaper Pravda. A couple of years later, the publication was intercepted by the Bolsheviks, and Lev Davidovich left for Paris, where he managed the publishing house of the newspaper “Our Word”. In 1917, Trotsky decides to return to Russia and sets off from the Finlyandsky Station to the Petrograd Soviet. He is given membership and given the right to an advisory vote. A couple of months after his stay in St. Petersburg, Lev Davidovich manages to become the informal leader of those who advocate the creation of one common social democratic labor party.

In October of the same year, Trotsky formed the Military Revolutionary Committee, and on November 7 carried out an armed uprising, the goal of which was to overthrow the provisional government. This event in history is known as the October Revolution. As a result, the Bolsheviks come to power, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin becomes their leader.

The new government gives Trotsky the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, a year later he becomes People's Commissar for Naval and Military Affairs. It was from this time that he was involved in the formation of the Red Army. Trotsky imprisons and shoots deserters and violators of military discipline, not sparing those who interfere with his active work. This period in history was called the Red Terror.

In addition to military affairs, Trotsky at this time actively collaborated with Lenin on issues related to foreign and domestic policy. His popularity peaked towards the end of the Civil War, but due to Lenin's death, Trotsky was unable to carry out all the reforms aimed at transitioning from War Communism to the New Economic Policy. He failed to become Lenin's full-fledged successor; Joseph Stalin took this place. He saw Leon Trotsky as a serious rival, so he tried to take steps to neutralize the enemy. In the spring of 1924, the real persecution of Trotsky began, as a result of which Lev Davidovich was deprived of his post and membership in the Central Committee of the Politburo.

Who replaced Trotsky as People's Commissar of Defense? In January 1925, this position was taken by Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze. In 1926, Trotsky tried to return to the political life of the country; he organized an anti-government demonstration. But the attempts were unsuccessful, he was exiled to Alma-Ata, then to Turkey, and deprived of Soviet citizenship.

We have already noted who replaced Trotsky as People's Commissar of Defense, but he himself did not stop his active struggle against Stalin. Trotsky began to publish the “Bulletin of the Opposition,” in which he tried to write about Stalin’s barbaric activities. In exile, Trotsky was working on creating an autobiography, writing the essay “History of the Russian Revolution,” talking about the necessity and inevitability of the October Revolution.

Personal life

In 1935, he moved to Norway and came under pressure from the authorities, who did not plan to spoil relations with the Soviet Union. The revolutionary's works were taken away and he was put under house arrest. Trotsky did not want to put up with such an existence, so he decides to go to Mexico, monitoring from a distance the events unfolding in the USSR. In 1936, he completed work on the book “The Betrayed Revolution,” in which he called the Stalinist regime an alternative counter-revolutionary coup.

Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya became Trotsky's first wife. He met her at the age of 16, when he had not yet thought about revolutionary activity.

Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya was six years older than Trotsky. It was she, according to historians, who became his guide to Marxism.

She became an official wife only in 1898. After the wedding, the young couple went into exile in Siberia, where they had two daughters: Nina and Zinaida. The second daughter was only four months old when Trotsky managed to escape from exile. The wife was left alone in Siberia with two babies. Trotsky himself wrote about that period of his life that he escaped with the consent of his wife, and it was she who helped him move to Europe.

In Paris, Trotsky met an active participant in the publication of the Iskra newspaper. This led to the breakup of his first marriage, but Trotsky managed to maintain friendly relations with Sokolovskaya.

A series of troubles

In his second marriage, Trotsky had two sons: Sergei and Lev. Since 1937, Trotsky's family began to face numerous misfortunes. The youngest son was shot for political activity. A year later, his eldest son dies during an operation. A tragic fate befalls the daughters of Lev Davydovich. In 1928, Nina dies of consumption, and in 1933, Zina commits suicide; she cannot get out of a state of severe depression. Soon, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, Trotsky’s first wife, was shot in Moscow.

Lev Davydovich’s second wife lived for another 20 years after his death. She died in 1962 and was buried in Mexico.

Mystery biography

Trotsky's death still remains an unsolved mystery for many people. Who is he, the secret agent who is associated with the death of Lev Davydovich? Who killed Trotsky? This issue deserves separate consideration. Pavel Sudoplatov, whose name is associated with the death of Trotsky, was born in 1907 in Melitopol. Since 1921, he became an employee of the Cheka, then was transferred to the ranks of the NKVD.

Some historians believe that it was he who committed the murder of Trotsky on the orders of Stalin. The task from the “leader of the peoples” was to eliminate Stalin’s enemy, who at that time lived in Mexico.

Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was appointed to the position of deputy head of the 1st department of the NKVD, where he worked until 1942.

Perhaps it was the murder of Trotsky that allowed him to rise so high in the ranks. Lev Bronstein was Stalin's personal enemy and opponent all his life. No one knows exactly how Trotsky was killed; many legends are associated with the name of this man. Some consider Trotsky a state criminal who fled abroad trying to save his life.

How was Trotsky killed? This question still plagues domestic and foreign historians. It was Lev Bronstein who made a significant contribution to Russian history. There is no exact information about how Trotsky was killed, but Stalin tried to eliminate his rival by any means throughout his political life.

Lenin's and Trotsky's views on the reality of Soviet Russia differed significantly. Lev Bronstein considered the Stalinist regime to be a bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian regime.

Secrets of death

How was Trotsky killed? In 1927, he was charged seriously with carrying out counter-revolutionary activities under Art. 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, Trotsky was expelled from the party.

The investigation into his case was short. Just a few days later, a car with prison bars was transporting Trotsky’s family to Alma-Ata, far from the capital. This journey became for the founder of the Red Army his farewell to the capital's streets.

For Stalin, Trotsky's death would have been an excellent way to eliminate a strong enemy, but he was afraid to deal with him directly.

In search of an answer to the question of who killed Trotsky, we note that many KGB agents tried to deal with Trotsky.

In exile, his family was given shelter by the Mexican artist Rivera. He protected Trotsky from attacks from local communists. Police were constantly on duty at Rivera's house; American supporters of Trotsky reliably protected their leader and helped him conduct active propaganda work.

Soviet counterintelligence in Europe was led at that time by Ignacy Reiss. He decided to stop his spy work and informed Trotsky that Stalin was trying to end his life with his supporters outside the Soviet Union. To do this, it was supposed to use various methods: blackmail, cruel torture, terrorist acts, interrogations. A few weeks after sending this letter to Trotsky, Reiss was found dead on the way to Lausanne, and about ten bullets were found in his body. Mexican police found out that the people who killed Reiss were spying on Trotsky's son. In 1937, Stalin's supporters were preparing an assassination attempt on Leo, but Trotsky's son did not arrive in Mulhouse on time. This incident made Stalin's supporters think about a possible leak of information, and they began searching for an informant. Trotsky's family, having learned about the planned murder, became even more circumspect and cautious.

Lev Davydovich wrote to his son that if an attempt was made on his life, Stalin would be the orderer of the murder.

In September 1937, an international commission headed by Dewey published the results of the Leon Trotsky case. They spoke of the complete innocence of Lev Sedov (son) and Lev Trotsky (father) of the charges brought against them in Moscow. This news gave Stalin's opponent strength for work and creative activity. But his joy was overshadowed by the death of his son Lev during the operation. The young man became a victim of the NKVD; death overtook him at the age of 32. The death of his son crippled Trotsky, he grew a beard, and the sparkle in his eyes disappeared.

The youngest son refused to renounce his father, for which he was sentenced to five years in the camps and deported to Vorkuta.

Only Zina’s son, Seva (Trotsky’s grandson), who was born in 1925 and lived in Germany, managed to survive.

Life in exile

Historians put forward different versions regarding the place where Trotsky was killed. In the spring of 1939, he settled in a house near Coyoacan in Mexico. An observation tower was built at the gate, police were on duty outside, and an alarm system was installed in the house. Trotsky grew cacti and raised rabbits and chickens.

Conclusion

In the winter of 1940, Trotsky wrote a will, where in every line one could read the expectation of tragic events. By that time, his relatives and supporters had been destroyed, but Stalin did not want to stop there. Criticism of Trotsky, sounded from the other end of the earth, cast a shadow on the bright image of the leader that had been created over so many years.

Lev Davydovich, in his messages addressed to Soviet sailors, soldiers, and peasants, tried to warn them about the corruption of GPU agents and commissars. He called Stalin the main source of danger for the Soviet Union. Of course, such statements were painfully perceived by the “leader of peoples”; he could not allow Trotsky to live. On Stalin's orders, NKVD agent Jackson, who was the son of the Spanish communist Caridad Mercader, is sent to Mexico.

The operation was carefully planned, thought out to the smallest detail. Jackson met Sylvia Agelof, Trotsky's secretary, and gained access to the house. On the night of May 24, 1940, an attempt was made on Lev Davydovich.

Together with his wife and grandson, Trotsky was hiding under the bed. Then they managed to survive, but on August 20, Stalin’s plans to eliminate the enemy were realized. Trotsky, who was hit in the head with an ice drill, did not die immediately. He managed to give some orders regarding his wife and grandson to his devoted workers.

When the doctor arrived at the house, part of Trotsky’s body was paralyzed. Lev Davydovich was taken to the hospital and began to prepare for surgery. The craniotomy was performed by five surgeons. Most of the brain was damaged by bone fragments, and part of it was destroyed. Trotsky survived the operation, and for almost a day his body desperately fought for life.

Trotsky died on August 21, 1940, without regaining consciousness after the operation. Trotsky's grave is located in the courtyard of a house in the Coyoacan area of ​​Mexico City; a white stone was erected over it and a red flag was placed.

Date of birth: October 26, 1879
Place of birth: Yanovka, Russian Empire
Date of death: August 21, 1940
Place of Death: Coyoacan, Mexico

Leib Davidovich Bronstein (Leon Trotsky)- Russian revolutionary, politician.

Leon Trotsky was born on October 26, 1879 in Ukraine. He studied at a real school in the city of Nikolaev and in the last classes he became interested in socialism. In 1896 he graduated from a real school, and before that he attended the Odessa School. He married Marxist Alexandra Sokolovskaya and became passionate about her ideas.

Together they created the South Russian Workers' Union, for which they were arrested and exiled to Irkutsk, where they stayed from 1898 to 1902. There they continued their ideas of Marxism and became members of the Iskra newspaper circle.

In 1902, he escaped from exile using forged documents in the name of Trotsky, arrived in London and began communicating with Lenin. In London he wrote articles for Iskra. In 1903 he joined the Mensheviks and broke with Lenin, accusing him of authoritarianism. In 1905, after the January conflict, he returned to his homeland and began to direct the activities of the councils there.

In October 1905 he led a general strike and uprising, for which he was arrested and exiled in December. In exile, he wrote the book Results and Prospects, and in court he blamed tsarism for everything. He escaped from exile and arrived in Vienna in 1907 with his second wife. In Vienna he wrote articles for the press in Germany and Austria. In 1908 he created the newspaper Pravda, which he redirected from Vienna to St. Petersburg for distribution among workers.

In 1914 he published the work War and the International, written by him in Switzerland, the idea of ​​which was the creation of the United States of Europe. After that, he went to Paris and wrote articles for the Kyiv press and for his newspaper Nashe Slovo. In 1915 he became a participant in the Zimmerwald Conference, for which he wrote a manifesto. In the future, this conference grew into the 3rd International.

From Paris in 1916 he was deported to Spain, where he was arrested and deported again. So in January 1917, Trotsky found himself in New York, began to collaborate with left-wing socialists and, together with Bukharin, publish the New World newspaper in Russian. In it, he covered the events of February, where he recognized them as positive. After this, he tried to return to Petrograd, but on the way he was captured by British intelligence and released only after the Provisional Council demanded that he be extradited.

So in May 1917 he ended up in Russia and became a member of the Interdistrict Organization of United Social Democrats. He soon retrained from a Menshevik to a Bolshevik and became a famous speaker. In July 1917, he was again arrested for rebellion and released after Kornilov's defeat. He took part in the October events, and after them became the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

It was also his responsibility to name the new country and its government the Council of People's Commissars. In December 1917, he became the head of the USSR at the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk. There he behaved strangely, calling for an end to the war, but without concluding a peace treaty. He also spoke out there against Lenin and Bukharin.

In March 1918, he became military commissar and created the Red Army, and also took part in the civil war of 1918-1922. In 1920, he became the head of the commission for the restoration of railways and introduced strict discipline in the structures under his control.

However, in 1921, Lenin did not support his idea about the militarization of trade unions along with Zinoviev and Stalin.
In 1922, Lenin invited him to become an ally in the fight against Stalin and his party, where Stalin was the general secretary and wanted to bring everything to bureaucratic foundations.

Zinoviev and Kamenev began to ally with Stalin, to which Trotsky responded to Lenin by refusing an alliance due to fear of anti-Semitic attacks.

After that, he worked together with Germany and prepared an uprising with the participation of the Red Army with its Communist Party; in October 1923, the uprising was canceled, and a crisis ripened within the Bolshevik Party.

On the day of Lenin's death, Trotsky was abroad and was not summoned by Stalin, as he wanted to establish himself as Lenin's successor. Trotsky was unable to refute this and soon lost his post as military commissar.

In 1925, a struggle began between the power of Stalin and Trotsky, who found himself in opposition. Trotsky called on all his allies and in April 1926 formulated a declaration to restore democracy by eliminating Stalin. In 1927, the opposition waited for failure on the part of Talin, but was taken by surprise on the other side - Stalin accused them that White Guards were active in their ranks.

Trotsky held several rallies and demonstrations, published the newspaper Platform of the Opposition, but in October 1927 he was expelled from the party, and in November 1927 he was not allowed to hold a demonstration in honor of 10 years of the overthrow of the tsarist regime.

In January 1928 he was deported to Alma-Ata, and a year later to Turkey, where he wrote his autobiography My Life and the book The History of the Russian Revolution in three volumes. At the same time, he began to see a threat from Germany, where the mobilization of the left and the creation of the Nazis began to gain strength. He wrote to Stalin with the aim of unification, and after Hitler's victory in 1933 he called on him to form the 4th International, but never received a response.

In July 1933 he emigrated to France, but the Germans quickly discovered him there and in 1934 forced him to leave. In 1936 he arrived in Norway and wrote the work The Revolution Betrayed. Six months later he was slandered by Stalin, who called Trotsky an agent of Hitler and in December 1936, Trotsky arrived in Mexico. There, the Mexicans set up a commission on his case and Stalin's accusation of pandering to the Nazis and returned a negative answer and found him innocent.

In 1938, Trotsky, together with Breton and Rivera, issued a manifesto for free revolutionary art, after which his son was killed by Stalin's agents in Paris. And soon he himself was killed on August 21, 1940.

Achievements of Leon Trotsky:

First People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs
Many works on the revolution
Created the Red Army

Dates from the biography of Leon Trotsky:

October 26, 1879 – born in Ukraine
1896 – graduated from real school
1898-102 - first exile
1902 - escape to London and meeting with Lenin
1917 - return to Russia, creation of the Red Army
1925 - struggle for power, removal from party affairs
1936 – emigration to Mexico
August 21, 1940 - death

Interesting facts about Leon Trotsky:

He was married twice, had 4 children, who all died during the struggle for power
He was killed with an ice ax, six months before his death an attempt was made on his life, for the murder of Trotsky Ramon Mrkader received the title of Hero of the USSR
Only in May 1992 was he rehabilitated
Streets, squares and cities were named after him, but with the collapse of the USSR, all were renamed to historical names

(1879- 1940)

Strange as this coincidence is, Lev Davidovich Trotsky was born on the day of the October Revolution - October 25 and in the same year (1879) as Stalin. This happened in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province. His father was a wealthy owner of 400 acres of land.

Leon Trotsky (little Leiba, as his family called him) was the third child in the family (Olga was born after him) and was almost no different from his peers. However, from a young age, he was dominated by the desire to excel, Trotsky dreamed of being the best in everything: as a child, Leiba loved to draw and seriously thought about the career of a great artist, and when his mathematical abilities manifested themselves in a real school, he imagined himself as a brilliant mathematician.

Trotsky's biography could have turned out differently if his father had insisted that Lev become an engineer. In high school, he became interested in the concepts of liberal populists and then fought with them against Marxism. For the sake of a new idea, he exchanged Odessa University for work in radical youth circles. His father could not resist him.

In one of the revolutionary circles he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya; He soon married her. However, soon all the revolutionaries of this circle were arrested - Trotsky Lev Bronstein ended up in Odessa prison with his wife, where he first studied the works of Marx and Engels. He found that his judgments were in complete agreement with theirs. It was here that he took a pseudonym for himself - the same surname was that of their powerful overseer. For agitating to overthrow the autocracy, Leon Trotsky received 4 years of exile in Siberia, from where in 1902 he fled to Paris, leaving his wife and two small daughters.

In exile, Bronstein married a second time to Sedova (a distant relative of the Rothschilds) and lived quite prosperously. Here he began working together with Lenin (as part of the editorial board of Iskra), but they quarreled at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP over the issue of party membership. And only in 1917 there was reconciliation between them. That same year he moved to the USA with Bukharin. Having learned about the February revolution, he was happy - there was an opportunity to prove himself and was upset because he could not return immediately. Leon Trotsky arrived in Petrograd only in May 1917 and did not have time to create his own revolutionary party - at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, he, like Lenin, did not even get into the bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

After the failure, Trotsky, like Lenin, understand that they can only gain power by force by joining the Bolsheviks, but this is a big risk, since the Bolsheviks were declared traitors. Here he is nominated as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky's entire biography consists of various risky stories and situations, most of which ended happily for Leo.

Despite similar political views, there was tangible competition between Lenin and Trotsky. It was because of her (after coming to power) that Trotsky did not remain People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs for long. However, already on March 14, 1918, he headed the armed and naval forces of the Soviet Republic, and on September 2 of the same year he became chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. However, the judgments of some researchers about Trotsky’s huge role in the victories of the Red Army are erroneous (he was not even a military man), although his role in creating huge military formations by force was very significant. With particular harshness, Trotsky fought against desertion - the punishment for it was execution. Everyone was subjected to severe repression for the slightest mistake or disagreement - it is not for nothing that many consider Leon Trotsky a bloody tyrant.

When Lev Bronstein, along with other members of the Politburo, learned about Lenin's approaching death, he made two mistakes - he was confident in his position in the party and in the country, that the choice of the party would fall on him. The second, fatal mistake was his underestimation of Stalin, whom he considered mediocre and loudly declared this. The party elected Stalin.

After the first and main failure, Leon Trotsky tried to introduce it into the economic life of the country by building barracks-type socialism, creating labor armies, and erecting a single labor camp. However, this attempt also turned out to be a failure - out of 114 people participating in the meeting, only 2 voted for him. Trotsky’s arrogance, intolerance of other people’s opinions and arrogance alienated his supporters. His attempt in October 1923 to rely on the army, where he had his own people everywhere, also failed - neither the navy nor the army supported him. In 1925 He was relieved of his duties as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, and in 1926 he was removed from the Politburo. Ultimately, in 1929, Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.

Trying to take revenge on Stalin, Lev Bronstein continued active relations through couriers with like-minded people in the USSR. In 1937, after the trial of his accomplices, Trotsky published the book “The Crimes of Stalin,” which, of course, did not please the leader. In 1938, he began writing the book “Stalin,” which was never completed - in 1940, Mercader’s ice pick broke the tyrant’s skull, which ended the biography of Leon Trotsky.