Leon Trotsky

Social theorist, revolutionary, and Soviet commissar (1917-1924)

• Born: November 7, 1879
• Birthplace: Yanovka, Kherson Province, district of Yelizavetgrad, Ukraine, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine)
• Died: August 21, 1940
• Place of death: Coyoacán, near Mexico City, Mexico

Cause of notoriety: Trotsky was a leader in the first (1905) and second (1917) Russian Revolutions; his rival for power, Joseph Stalin, sought to eliminate him on grounds of treason and conspiracy.

Active: 1905-1940

Locale: Russia, later the Soviet Union

Sentence: Banished from Russia, 1929; later tried and sentenced to death in absentia

Early Life

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, later known as Leon Trotsky (TROTS-kee), was born at Yanovka, a small town in southern Ukraine, to David and Anna Bronstein, who were of Jewish origin. Lev was one of eight children, four of whom died in infancy. The Bronsteins sent Lev to the port city of Odessa for schooling, where he stayed with a relative of his mother. At Odessa, with its rich German culture, he was influenced by liberal ideas. A bright student, Lev excelled in academics while also demonstrating a propensity to question authority, with the result that he was once expelled from school.

After six years of schooling at Odessa, he moved to Nikolayev to continue his education and joined a clandestine socialist organization there that introduced him to Marxist ideas. Upon completion of his secondary schooling, he attended the University of Odessa and then returned to Nikolayev in 1897 to help organize the South Russian Workers Union and, later, the Russian Democratic Labor Party. These revolutionary activities led to his arrest and imprisonment in Odessa in 1898, and he was exiled to Siberia in 1900. During his captivity in Siberia, he married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a co-revolutionary, and fathered two girls. In 1902, Bronstein, with the help of a forged passport with an assumed name, Trotsky, which was the name of the head jailer in the Odessa prison in which he was imprisoned, escaped from Siberia and traveled to London to meet Vladimir Ilich Lenin, leaving his family behind. From that point Lev Bronstein was known as Leon Trotsky.

Political Career

Although Trotsky’s political career began to take shape in Nikolayev, he rose to prominence after he met Lenin in London. Trotsky’s membership in the London Social Democrats helped position him to become a leader in the first Russian Revolution, which broke out in 1905.

Although the collaboration between Trotsky and Lenin continued until Lenin’s death in 1924, there were sharp differences in their thinking and approach to the course of the Russian Revolution. These differences became pronounced when Lenin supported the Bolsheviks (members of the majority), while Trotsky supported the Menshevik (minority) faction of the Russian Democratic Workers Party. The Mensheviks argued for a more democratic and broad-based approach for implementing socialism, while the Bolsheviks advocated a revolution led by a relatively small but well-disciplined, action-oriented group of the proletariat and peasantry, supported by sympathizers.

In 1905, Trotsky traveled to Russia to help organize the workers against Czar Nicholas II, demanding political and economic reforms. Trotsky was arrested and incarcerated and, in 1907, once again deported to Siberia. After escaping from Siberia a second time, he made his way through several European countries and eventually settled in Vienna, where he worked as a correspondent until the beginning of World War II. When the war broke out, he was expelled from one European country after another because of his antiwar stance. Eventually he arrived in New York in 1917, the year the second Russian Revolution began. Welcoming the revolution as an opportunity, Trotsky reached Petrograd and assisted Lenin, despite his theoretical differences with him. Trotsky soon assumed the military leadership for the revolution.

Following the revolution, Trotsky was appointed commissar of foreign affairs in the Bolshevik government and was regarded as the most powerful official, second only to Lenin. He also joined the five-member Politburo, the powerful policy-making body of the Communist Party. Eventually, Trotsky resigned from the position of foreign commissar to assume the position of commissar of war and built the Red Army from the remnants of the old Russian army.

Lenin’s declining health and death in 1924 precipitated a power struggle between Joseph Stalin and Trotsky for the leadership of the Communist Party, a struggle that Stalin won. Trotsky was soon removed from his position as commissar of war. Eventually, Stalin succeeded in expelling him not only from the Politburo and the Central Committee but also from the Communist Party itself. To remove any possible threat from Trotsky, Stalin banished him from the country in 1929. After having failed to secure permanent domicile in any European country, Trotsky found asylum in Mexico in 1936 and lived at Coyoacán, outside Mexico City. His troubles did not end there.

Legal Action and Outcome

Trotsky was at the center of the political opposition, called the Trotskyite-Zinovyevite Terrorist Center, that Stalin sought to suppress. In the notorious Moscow Trials (1936-1938), which Stalin used to eliminate his opponents, forced confessions aided in obtaining convictions. Trotsky was tried in absentia and sentenced to death for treason. Historians have found no evidence to support the charge.

There were two attempts against Trotsky’s life during his stay in Mexico. The second one succeeded when Ramón Mercader, believed to be an agent of Stalin, struck and killed Trotsky with an ice ax in 1940.

Impact

Leon Trotsky was one of the most prolific and powerful Russian writers; his contribution to literature and culture is enormous, as acknowledged even by those who oppose his theoretical perspective. Trotskyism represents the more idealistic and democratic version of communism. Trotsky vigorously argued for a broad-based, worldwide revolutionary process that, he believed, would become permanent. The concept of permanent revolution, one that eventually encompasses all nations and achieves the final victory of the working class everywhere, sharply contrasts with Stalin’s view of socialism in one country. Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the demise of Russian communism, some still believe in Trotsky’s theory of a permanent revolution.

Bibliography

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unamarmed. New York: Verso, 2003. Deutscher provides a well-documented account of the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that led to Trotsky’s defeat and expulsion from Russia in 1929.

Gilbert, Helen. Leon Trotsky: His Life and Ideas. Seattle, Wash.: Red Letter Press, 2003. This short primer on Trotsky serves as an accessible introduction to his life and thinking.

Trotsky, Leon. My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1930. Trotsky recalls and interprets the events that transformed his life and, in the process, contributes to the understanding of twentieth century world history.