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Leon Davidovich Trotsky (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий; also transliterated Trostskii, Trotski, or Trotzky) (October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 - August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist intellectual. He was an influential politician in the early Soviet Union, first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and then as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was a founding member of the powerful Politburo. Following a power struggle with Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union; he was later murdered in Mexico by a Soviet agent. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of the communist theory of Trotskyism.
Early days
His date of birth in the Gregorian calendar is November 7 – the same day as the Soviet revolution of 1917. Since the Julian calendar was replaced in 1918, his date of death is that of the Gregorian calendar. He was born in Yanovka, Kherson Province, Ukraine, the son of a farmer, David Bronstein, of Jewish background.
Revolutionary activity
Okhranka mugshot, circa 1900
He was first introduced to Marxism in 1896, whilst at school in Nikolayev studying mathematics. He was first arrested in 1898 while working as an organizer for the South Russian Workers' Union. He was sentenced to two years in prison. During this time, he married his first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. In 1900 he was sentenced to four years in exile in Siberia, where his first two daughters were born. He escaped from Siberia, taking the name Trotsky from a former jailer in Odessa, and proceeded to London to join Vladimir Lenin, then managing editor of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party newspaper Iskra.
He attended the Second Congress of the RSDLP in London in the summer of 1903, and in the internal dispute which split the party, sided with the Mensheviks against Lenin. Although his allegiance to the Mensheviks was short-lived, the damage to his relationship with Lenin lasted for the next 14 years.
By 1905, he had returned to Russia. He was elected Chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies. His involvement in the October general strike and his support for that armed rebellion led to his conviction and sentence to exile for life. In January 1907, he escaped en route to exile and once again made his way to London, where he attended the Fifth Party Congress. In October, he moved to Vienna, where he edited a Social Democratic paper called Pravda, which was smuggled into Russia. It was one of numerous short-lived revolutionary Pravdas and had no connection with the official paper of the CPSU (see Pravda).
As war approached, Trotsky moved to neutral Switzerland, then France. He was deported from France and was living in New York City when the Russian Revolution removed the Tsar. He returned in May of 1917 to Russia as a supporter of the Bolshevik position, formally joining the faction a few months later. Trotsky was actively involved in efforts to overthrow the Provisional Government headed by Aleksandr Kerensky and was Chair of the Revolutionary Military Committee that planned and implemented the October Revolution.
After the Russian Revolution
Trotsky with troops at the Polish front, 1919
After the Bolsheviks came to power, he became the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs with the major goal of negotiating peace with Germany and her allies. But his withdrawal from the talks (February 10, 1918) provoked a German invasion (February 18), forcing the Soviet regime to sign the highly disadvantageous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3. Trotsky subsequently resigned his diplomatic position. In March, 1918 he was appointed People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs (Нарком по военным и морским делам, Нарком армии и флота) (1918-1925). In September 1918 he was appointed Chairman of Revolutionary Military Council (Реввоенсовет) of the Republic. As founder and commander of the Red Army, he was largely responsible for their success over the White Army and victory in the Russian Civil War, during which tens of thousands were killed in Russia and the Ukraine.
With the illness and death of Lenin, Joseph Stalin was able to consolidate his control of the Party and the government. At this point, Trotsky was unable or unwilling to actively oppose Stalin. By remaining silent at the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, particularly on the issue of the suppressed Testament of Lenin that called for Stalin's removal, Trotsky lost his last real opportunity to oppose Stalin, who, along with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, was able to take control of the Party. Trotsky and his supporters founded the Left Opposition, which fought within the Communist Party for several years against Stalin's platform and leadership.
Trotsky put forward the theory of 'Permanent Revolution' and an internationalist perspective, which stood in stark contrast to Stalin's policy of building 'Socialism in One Country'. He also put forward an argument for rapid industrialization of the economy and abandonment of the New Economic Policy while Stalin, allied with Bukharin, argued for gradual industrialization and retention of the NEP. This ideological division provided much of the intellectual basis for the political divide between Trotsky and Stalin, which culminated on November 12, 1927 when he was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party (leaving Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union). He was exiled to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan) on January 31, 1928. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929.
Following Trotsky's defeat, Stalin turned against Bukharin and appropriated much of Trotsky's domestic economic policy though implementing them in a manner criticised for being authoritarian.
Study where Leon Trotsky's attack took place.
In exile
Trotsky was deported, and moved from Turkey to France to Norway, eventually settling in Mexico at the invitation of the painter, Diego Rivera; he lived at one point at the home of Rivera, and at another at that of Frida Kahlo. He was a prolific writer penning several key works including his History of the Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-hrr/index.htm) (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/index.htm) (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism which argued that the state had become a bureaucratically degenerated workers state controlled by an undemocratic bureaucratic layer which must be overthrown via a political revolution.
In 1938, Trotsky and his followers founded an international Marxist organization, the Fourth International, which was intended to be a Trotskyist alternative to the Stalinist Third International. He eventually quarreled with Rivera and in 1939 moved into his own residence. On May 24, 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his home by alleged Stalinist assassins. While at the home on August 20, 1940, a Stalinist agent, Ramón Mercader, attacked Trotsky in Coyoacán (a neighborhood in Mexico City), driving the pick of an ice axe, whose shaft had been drastically shortened, into his skull. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, shouting, "Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell." Trotsky died the next day.
Leon Trotsky's grave in Coyoacán.
Mercader later testified at his trial: "I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself.
The moment Trotsky began reading the article gave me the chance, I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head."
Trotsky's house in Coyoacán was preserved in much the same condition as it was in on the day of the assassination and is now a museum. His grave is in its grounds.
Trotsky was never formally rehabilitated by the Soviet government, despite the Glasnost-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges.
Theory
Trotskyism
Main article: Trotskyism.
Permanent Revolution
Main article: Permanent Revolution.
Transitional Program
Main article: Transitional Program.
Labor Armies
Main article: Labor army.
Trotsky promulgated the idea of organizing workforce into labor armies as an ultimate form of fulfilling the obligations of the liberated working class with respect to their "worker-peasant state".
Related articles
References
- The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, Volume 39, published by Academic International Press
- Trotsky, the Eternal Revolutionary by Dimitri Volkogonov published by the Free Press in 1996.
- Isaac Deutscher wrote a largely sympathetic biography of Trotsky, in three volumes, titled Trotsky: The Prophet Armed (1954), Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed (1959), and Trotsky: The Prophet Outcast (1963). Also see his book Ironies of History (1966).
External links
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he:לאון טרוצקי
nl:Lev Trotski
ja:レオン・トロツキー
pl:Lew Trocki
ru:Троцкий, Лев Давидович
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