Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Bronstein) (born November 7, 1879 - death 1940-21-08) - revolutionary, ideologist of Trotskyism. One of the organizers of the 1917 revolution. Member of the Bolshevik Party from August 1917 to 1927-14-11. 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 09.25.1923 to 06.02.1924
1924 - the confrontation between Trotsky and I. V. Stalin's 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 the proletarian power. 1938 - the initiator of the creation of the 4th International. 1940 - was killed in Mexico by the Spaniard R. Mercader, an agent of the NKVD.
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 could only learn to read when he was old. 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, took part in the publication of a school manuscript magazine. At that time, his rebellious character first began to appear: due to a conflict with a French teacher, he was temporarily expelled from school.
Trotsky in childhood and adolescence.
The beginning of revolutionary activity. Arrest. Link
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1896 - in the city of Nikolaev (where he moved) he joined a revolutionary circle. To get a higher education, Leiba had to leave new comrades and go to Novorossiysk. There he could easily 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 - was arrested, imprisoned, first in the Nikolaev prison, from there transferred to the Kherson prison, then to the Odessa and Moscow transit. In a Moscow prison he married an activist of the "South Russian Workers' Union" A. L. 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 1900, in the fall. At the stage I met F. E. Dzerzhinsky. While in exile he collaborated with the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye, wrote 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, fled from Siberian exile with a passport in the name of Trotsky, which he himself wrote, not foreseeing that it would become his name for life.
Leon Trotsky went to London, where he met with V. I. Lenin. There he spoke more than once in front of emigrant revolutionaries. Trotsky amazed everyone with his intellect and oratorical abilities. Lenin proposed to include him in the editorial board of Iskra, but Plekhanov categorically opposed this.
1903 - in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova. But officially, until the end of his life, Alexandra Sokolova remained his wife.
Return to Russia
After the 1905 revolution, Lev Davidovich and his wife returned to Russia. During the revolution he proved himself to be an outstanding organizer, orator, publicist; de facto leader of the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing in 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 life in Siberia, deprived of all civil rights. On the way to Obdorsk, he fled from Berezovo.
He moved to Europe, where he made several attempts to unite scattered parties of a socialist orientation, but could not achieve success. In 1912-1913, Lev Davidovich Trotsky, as a military commander of the newspaper "Kievskaya Mysl", 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 Nashe Slovo. In it, he was engaged in the publication of his articles of a pacifist orientation, which became the reason for the expulsion of Trotsky from France. The revolutionary moved to America, where he hoped to settle, as he doubted the possibility of an imminent revolution in Russia.
Trotsky at a meeting in Yekaterinodar (1919).
October Revolution
May 1917 - returned to Petrograd, joined the united social-democratic internationalists ("Mezhraiontsy"). Soon he became the informal leader of the "Mezhraiontsy", who took a critical position in relation to the Provisional Government. After the failure of the July uprising attempt, 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's Central Committee. 1917, September - after being released from prison, he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He was one of the organizers of the armed uprising in Petrograd, during the October Revolution he played a leading role in the PVRK, 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, that is, he becomes the first commander-in-chief of the newly formed Red Army. For the next years, he essentially lived on a train, on which he traveled on all fronts. During the defense of Tsaritsyn, Lev Davidovich entered into an 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 in the Red Army, seeking to reorganize it and return to the traditional principles of building the armed forces. 1924 - Trotsky was removed from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council.
In exile
1927 - Lev Davidovich Trotsky was removed from the Central Committee Politburo, 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 about his life and revolution there, and harshly criticized Stalin's policies. Considering the Comintern, "captured" by the Stalinists, to be political bankrupt, Lev Davidovich began to organize a new, Fourth International.
He sharply opposed Adolf Hitler, calling for all the left forces of Europe to unite against German National Socialism. 1933, summer - after the Fuhrer came to power, the radical French government of E. Daladier granted Trotsky asylum in France. 1935 - Trotsky was forced to leave this country. New asylum was granted to him by the Labor government of Norway, but in early 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 established by the Trotskyists.
Meanwhile, the secret services of the USSR did not cease to keep Trotsky under close supervision, having agents among his associates. 1938 - under strange circumstances in a Paris hospital after an operation, his closest and indefatigable colleague, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died. From the USSR, news came not only about the unprecedentedly brutal 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 at that time the most terrible and dangerous.
Death
In recent years, Lev Davidovich worked on his book about Stalin, in which he viewed Stalin as a fatal value for socialism. Anticipating his imminent death, at the beginning of 1940, Trotsky wrote a testament in which he spoke about his satisfaction with his fate as a revolutionary Marxist, proclaimed an indestructible faith in the triumph of the Fourth International and in the imminent world socialist revolution.
1940, May - an attempt was made on the life of a revolutionary in Mexico by a group of assassins led by the famous artist A. Siqueiros. However, it did not succeed, 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.