On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the international communist movement and Stalin's personal enemy, was killed in Mexico.
Spanish footage
The operation to eliminate Trotsky was led by the legendary Soviet intelligence officer and saboteur Pavel Sudoplatov. In the late 1930s, at the height of the Civil War, he headed Soviet agents in Spain. At that time, personnel for future special operations of Soviet intelligence were forged there. Including for the most famous operation Sudoplatov "Duck", which the scout himself preferred to call "The Lion Hunt".
The future leader of the assassination attempt on Trotsky, Naum Eitingon, also participated in that Civil War (pseudonym "Cats"), here he also met Ramon Mercader's mother, the communist Maria Caridad. Soon after they met, both mother and son Mercadera were recruited by Soviet intelligence.
Ramon (operational nickname "Raymond") in 1938 in Paris became close to an employee of Trotsky's secretariat Sylvia Ageloff. They soon got married. Mercader was in no hurry. He arrived in Mexico in October 1939, but did not appear at the house of "The Old Man" (as Trotsky was called when developing the operation) until March 1940.
Death of the "demon of revolution"
Promotional video:
After the first unsuccessful assassination attempt by a group of Mexican artist Siqueiros in May of that year, Trotsky became more cautious. According to the recollections of his wife, Natalya Sedova, Lev Davidovich even wanted to ban the visits of his secretary's husband and insisted that information be collected about him.
However, on August 21, when Ramon came to Trotsky's office, he let him in and even allowed "Raymond" to stand in the "blind zone", from where Mercader struck with an ice pick. Trotsky's attempt to stop Mercader was belated - the blow turned out to be fatal, although the "demon of revolution" finally managed to bite his murderer.
According to Sudoplatov's memoirs, at the time of the assassination attempt there was a car with Mercader's mother and Eitingon at Trotsky's house, but all they had to do was watch the beaten "Raymond" being taken away. They flew to Cuba the same evening.