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Lev Davidovich Bronstein (7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist.
- Sergei Sedov
The son of Leon Trotsky, he was killed in the Great Purge....
- Bereslavka, Ukraine
It is the birthplace of Marxist theorist and politician Leon...
- Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd
The Elisavetgrad uezd was a county of the Kherson...
- Zinaida Volkova
Zinaida Volkova. Zinaida Lvovna Volkova (née Bronstein;...
- Sergei Sedov
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: Stalin: Ruler of the Soviet Empire
Read about the tale of deceit, betrayal and a pickaxe-wielding secret agent behind Leon Trotsky’s assassination.
Leon Trotsky awaited the inevitable as he fed his rabbits on the afternoon of August 20, 1940. Marked for death by Joseph Stalin, the 60-year-old intellectual architect of the Russian Revolution knew that neither the armed guards patrolling the high walls of his Mexico City compound nor even the thousands of miles of land and sea that stretched between him and Moscow could completely protect him from the Soviet dictator’s deadly reach. Any thoughts of finding a sanctuary in exile had been destroyed like his bullet-riddled bedroom door when Stalinist agents stormed his villa less than three months earlier in an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Trotsky, though, had been used to dangerous enemies since his early days as a student revolutionary in Russia. The czarist government had twice exiled him to Siberia for his Marxist beliefs. In between, the man born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein had escaped to London on a forged British passport, under the name Leon Trotsky, and met fellow revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, he plotted a coup of the provisional government with Lenin and formed the Red Army, which defeated the anti-Bolshevik White Army in the ensuing civil war.
Trotsky appeared to be Lenin’s natural successor, but he lost a power struggle to Stalin following the Soviet leader’s death in 1924. Trotsky became increasingly critical of Stalin’s totalitarian tactics, and his belief in a permanent global proletarian revolution ran counter to his rival’s thought that it was possible to have communism survive in the Soviet Union alone. Sensing a threat to his power, the Soviet dictator expelled Trotsky from the Politburo and the Communist Party before exiling him to present-day Kazakhstan and banishing him from the country altogether in 1929. After a four-year stay in Turkey and brief stops in France and Norway, Trotsky received asylum in Mexico in 1936.
The exiled dissident settled in Mexico City’s leafy Coyoacan neighborhood and held court with American and Mexican supporters—as well as carried on an affair with painter Frida Kahlo—while organizing the Fourth International to fight against both capitalism and Stalinism. Trotsky may have been out of Stalin’s sight, but he was never out of his mind. As the outspoken exile continued to castigate his foe, Trotsky was found guilty of treason by a show court and condemned to death.
In the early morning hours of May 24, 1940, a group of 20 gunmen stormed Trotsky’s walled compound to carry out the sentence. They sprayed the house with bullets but missed their target before they were forced to retreat. The political pariah’s bodyguards, mostly young American Trotskyites, expected the next attack would come from a bomb, so they heightened the compound’s exterior walls, bricked over windows and added watchtowers with money provided by wealthy American benefactors. “Thanks to the efforts of the North American friends, our peaceful suburban house is now being transformed, week by week, into a fortress—and at the same time into a prison,” Trotsky wrote to one of his backers.
The Iron Curtain parts for a portrait of Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator who ruled supreme over the Soviet Union from 1929-1953. Through methods of fear and intimidation, as well as death, millions of his own citizens died under his regime.
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The exiled communist theorist and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked by a Soviet agent in Coyoacán, Mexico, on August 20, 1940, and died of his injuries the following day.
- Noah Tesch
After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, there was a power struggle within the Soviet leadership. Trotsky's unwavering commitment to international revolution and his vocal criticism of the growing bureaucracy within the Communist Party put him at odds with Joseph Stalin.
Oct 18, 2010 · Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by an ice-ax-wielding assassin at his compound outside Mexico City. The killer—Ramón Mercader—was a Spanish communist and probable...
Sep 9, 2015 · Trotsky was taken to hospital in a coma and died there at 7.25pm the next day, aged 60. After a funeral procession attended by huge crowds, he was buried in the garden at the house on the Avenida Viena.
Trotsky settled in Mexico in 1936. On 20 August 1940, an assassin called Ramon Mercader, acting on Stalin's orders, stabbed Trotsky with an ice pick, fatally wounding him. He died the next day.
