An accomplice in organizing the 1917 revolution, Soviet party and statesman Lev Trotsky was twice in a civil marriage, his second wife stayed with him until the end. But towards the end of his life, his last passion was one of the most famous artists in the world - a beautiful Mexican named Frida Kahlo.
In 1929, Leon Trotsky was expelled from the USSR after failing to defeat Stalin in the race for leadership. But even abroad, the disgraced revolutionary was not left alone. He was monitored around the clock, and then he was sentenced to death in absentia. At the end of 1936 he left Europe and, at the invitation of the artist Diego Rivera, moved with his wife to Mexico.
Diego Rivera was an ardent communist and deeply impressed by the 1917 revolution, and he began to correspond with Trotsky because he fully shared some of his views. They later became close friends. Trotsky praised his work:
"These are not just pictures, not an object of passive aesthetic contemplation, they are a living part of the class struggle."
Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo met in January 1937. Diego Rivera was then in hospital due to kidney disease, and therefore Trotsky and his wife were met by Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo. The couple settled in the house of Diego Rivera.
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At that time, Trotsky was 58 years old, Frida - 29. It began with a light flirtation and secret notes that they passed on to each other in books. But Trotsky soon lost his head so much that he courted Frida in the presence of his wife and Diego.
In his notes, he addressed her "oh, my beloved, beloved!" However, no such impulses were observed from Frida's side. Very soon she got bored with this novel.
“I’m very tired of this old man,” she allegedly once said in a circle of close friends.
Historians claim that this short romance was a kind of revenge of Frida to her husband for his endless betrayal, especially for the relationship with her younger sister Christina.
Trotsky's biographer G. Chernyavsky writes that Frida “hardly had serious feelings for Leo, but was carried away by him as a famous person … She tried to somehow humiliate Diego with the help of adultery with her husband's“teacher”, to take revenge on him for numerous betrayals. As a young man, Trotsky ran after her across the patio (understandably, it was, rather, a joke run, for Frida could not move quickly). Allowing herself to be caught, she took him to her own bedroom with a huge orthopedic bed, at first, as if in order to admire her works hanging there.
Natalya Sedova, Trotsky's wife, unlike Diego, knew perfectly well that an affair had flared up between her husband and Frida. She was going to divorce Trotsky, however, he begged her to forgive him. And Natalia forgave her husband. They left Diego's house. At parting, the artist presented him with a self-portrait entitled "Between the Curtains" with the inscription: "I dedicate this work to Leon Trotsky with deep love." True, when moving, he did not take this picture with him.
In 1939, Stalin ordered the liquidation of Trotsky. The first assassination attempt failed, but in August 1940 he was mortally wounded. Trotsky died the next day. Shortly after his death, Frida broke up with Diego. Natalia Sedova-Trotskaya lived for another 22 years. She died in 1962 in the suburbs of Paris.
