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On January 18, 1929, Stalin proposed to ban Trotsky from the Politburo. From the article:
"The Last Exile (1929-1940)
Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929. His first station in exile was the Turkish island of Prinkipo off the Istanbul coast, where he stayed four years. There were many former White Army officers in Istanbul, which put Trotsky's life in danger, but a number of Trotsky's European supporters volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assured his safety.
In 1933 Daladier offered Trotsky asylum in France. He stayed first at Royan, then at Barbizon. He was not allowed to visit Paris. In 1935 it was implied to him that he was no longer welcome in France. After weighing alternatives, he moved to Norway, where he got permission from then Justice minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky was a guest of Konrad Knudsen near Oslo. After two years, allegedly under influence from the Soviet Union, he was put under house arrest. After consultations with Norwegian officials, his transfer to Mexico on a freighter was arranged. Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed him warmly, even arranging a special train to bring him to Mexico City from the port of Tampico.
In Mexico, he lived at one point at the home of the painter Diego Rivera, and at another at that of Frida Kahlo. He remained a prolific writer in exile, penning several key works, including his History of the Russian Revolution (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism. Trotsky argued that the Soviet state had become a degenerated workers' state controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing workers' democracy or degenerate to the point where the bureaucracy converts itself into a capitalist class.
While in Mexico, Trotsky also worked closely with James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, as well as other supporters. Cannon, a long-time leading member of the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism since he first read Trotsky's criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928. Trotsky's critique of the Stalinist regime, though banned, was distributed to leaders of the Comintern. Among his other supporters was Chen Du Xiu, founder of the Chinese Communist party.
Moscow Show Trials (1936-1937)
In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial of the so-called "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center" was staged in front of an international audience. During the trial, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other accused, most of them prominent Old Bolsheviks, confessed to having plotted with Trotsky to kill Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership. The court found everybody guilty and sentenced the defendants to death, Trotsky in absentia. The second show trial of Karl Radek, Grigory Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov and 14 others took place in January 1937, with even more alleged conspiracies and crimes linked to Trotsky. In April 1937, an independent "Commission of Inquiry" into the charges made against Trotsky and others at the "Moscow Trials" was held in Coyoacan, with John Dewey as chairman[7]. The findings were published in the book Not Guilty [43].
The Fourth International
At first Trotsky was opposed to the idea of establishing parallel Communist Parties or a parallel international Communist organization that would compete with the Third International for fear of splitting the Communist movement. However, Trotsky changed his mind in mid-1933 after the Nazi takeover in Germany and the Comintern's response to it, when he proclaimed that:
An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. ... In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International [44].
In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded the Fourth International, which was intended to be a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern.
The Dies Committee
Towards the end of 1939 Trotsky agreed to go to the United States to appear as a witness before the Dies Committee of the House of Representatives, a forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Representative Dies, chairman of the committee, demanded the suppression of the American Communist Party. Trotsky intended to use the forum to expose the NKVD's activities against him and his followers. He made it clear that he also intended to argue against the suppression of the American Communist Party, and to use the committee as a platform for a call to transform the world war into a world revolution. Many of his supporters argued against his appearance, but it came to nothing anyway, as, when made aware of the deposition Trotsky intended to make, the committee refused to hear him, and he was denied a visa to enter the USA. On hearing about it, the Stalinists immediately accused Trotsky of being in the pay of the oil magnates and the FBI [45].
Assassination
Trotsky eventually quarreled with Rivera and in 1939 moved into his own residence in Coyoacán, a neighborhood in Mexico City. On May 24, 1940, he survived a raid on his home by Stalinist assassins under the leadership of GPU agent Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich, Mexican Stalinist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Vittorio Vidale. On August 20, 1940, Ramon Mercader, a Stalinist agent, successfully attacked Trotsky in his home, driving the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull.
The blow was poorly delivered, however, and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. 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 at a local hospital.
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, he gave me my 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.
According to Joseph Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."
Trotsky's house in Coyoacán was preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day of the assassination and is now a museum run by a board of intellectuals, including his grandson Esteban Volkov. The current director of the museum is Dr. Carlos Ramirez Sandoval under whose supervision the museum has improved considerably after years of neglect. Trotsky's grave is located on its grounds.
Despite the Glasnost-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges, the Soviet government never formally rehabilitated Trotsky. Nonetheless, Trotsky was featured on a commemorative postage stamp in 1987."
"The Last Exile (1929-1940)
Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929. His first station in exile was the Turkish island of Prinkipo off the Istanbul coast, where he stayed four years. There were many former White Army officers in Istanbul, which put Trotsky's life in danger, but a number of Trotsky's European supporters volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assured his safety.
In 1933 Daladier offered Trotsky asylum in France. He stayed first at Royan, then at Barbizon. He was not allowed to visit Paris. In 1935 it was implied to him that he was no longer welcome in France. After weighing alternatives, he moved to Norway, where he got permission from then Justice minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky was a guest of Konrad Knudsen near Oslo. After two years, allegedly under influence from the Soviet Union, he was put under house arrest. After consultations with Norwegian officials, his transfer to Mexico on a freighter was arranged. Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed him warmly, even arranging a special train to bring him to Mexico City from the port of Tampico.
In Mexico, he lived at one point at the home of the painter Diego Rivera, and at another at that of Frida Kahlo. He remained a prolific writer in exile, penning several key works, including his History of the Russian Revolution (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism. Trotsky argued that the Soviet state had become a degenerated workers' state controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing workers' democracy or degenerate to the point where the bureaucracy converts itself into a capitalist class.
While in Mexico, Trotsky also worked closely with James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, as well as other supporters. Cannon, a long-time leading member of the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism since he first read Trotsky's criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928. Trotsky's critique of the Stalinist regime, though banned, was distributed to leaders of the Comintern. Among his other supporters was Chen Du Xiu, founder of the Chinese Communist party.
Moscow Show Trials (1936-1937)
In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial of the so-called "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center" was staged in front of an international audience. During the trial, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other accused, most of them prominent Old Bolsheviks, confessed to having plotted with Trotsky to kill Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership. The court found everybody guilty and sentenced the defendants to death, Trotsky in absentia. The second show trial of Karl Radek, Grigory Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov and 14 others took place in January 1937, with even more alleged conspiracies and crimes linked to Trotsky. In April 1937, an independent "Commission of Inquiry" into the charges made against Trotsky and others at the "Moscow Trials" was held in Coyoacan, with John Dewey as chairman[7]. The findings were published in the book Not Guilty [43].
The Fourth International
At first Trotsky was opposed to the idea of establishing parallel Communist Parties or a parallel international Communist organization that would compete with the Third International for fear of splitting the Communist movement. However, Trotsky changed his mind in mid-1933 after the Nazi takeover in Germany and the Comintern's response to it, when he proclaimed that:
An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. ... In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International [44].
In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded the Fourth International, which was intended to be a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern.
The Dies Committee
Towards the end of 1939 Trotsky agreed to go to the United States to appear as a witness before the Dies Committee of the House of Representatives, a forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Representative Dies, chairman of the committee, demanded the suppression of the American Communist Party. Trotsky intended to use the forum to expose the NKVD's activities against him and his followers. He made it clear that he also intended to argue against the suppression of the American Communist Party, and to use the committee as a platform for a call to transform the world war into a world revolution. Many of his supporters argued against his appearance, but it came to nothing anyway, as, when made aware of the deposition Trotsky intended to make, the committee refused to hear him, and he was denied a visa to enter the USA. On hearing about it, the Stalinists immediately accused Trotsky of being in the pay of the oil magnates and the FBI [45].
Assassination
Trotsky eventually quarreled with Rivera and in 1939 moved into his own residence in Coyoacán, a neighborhood in Mexico City. On May 24, 1940, he survived a raid on his home by Stalinist assassins under the leadership of GPU agent Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich, Mexican Stalinist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Vittorio Vidale. On August 20, 1940, Ramon Mercader, a Stalinist agent, successfully attacked Trotsky in his home, driving the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull.
The blow was poorly delivered, however, and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. 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 at a local hospital.
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, he gave me my 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.
According to Joseph Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."
Trotsky's house in Coyoacán was preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day of the assassination and is now a museum run by a board of intellectuals, including his grandson Esteban Volkov. The current director of the museum is Dr. Carlos Ramirez Sandoval under whose supervision the museum has improved considerably after years of neglect. Trotsky's grave is located on its grounds.
Despite the Glasnost-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges, the Soviet government never formally rehabilitated Trotsky. Nonetheless, Trotsky was featured on a commemorative postage stamp in 1987."
Leon Trotsky
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12th November 1927: Leon Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party
He soon became one of the members of the first Politburo that was founded to manage the transition to a communist state, alongside the Bolshevik founder Vlad...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on January 18, 1929, Stalin proposed to ban Leon [Lev Davidovich] Trotsky from the Politburo.
12th November 1927: Leon Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party
He soon became one of the members of the first Politburo that was founded to manage the transition to a communist state, alongside the Bolshevik founder Vladimir Lenin, and the USSR’s future leader Joseph Stalin.
As Lenin’s health began to fail in the early 1920s, it initially appeared as though Trotsky would be his successor. Following Stalin’s alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the troika, however, Trotsky soon found himself marginalised and he became the subject of rumours about his health and capability to serve in government.
Stalin subsequently emerged as the leader of the USSR following Lenin’s death in 1924. Trotsky’s Left Opposition faction was a vocal critic of many of Stalin’s policies but, with Trotsky himself being increasingly side-lined from government decisions, he was removed from his position as war commissar in 1925 and from the Politburo itself the following year.
Having organised a demonstration by the Left Opposition to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky was accused of fomenting and organising a counter revolution. He, along with his recent ally Zinoviev, was expelled from the Communist Party on 12 November 1927 while 98 of his supporters met the same fate a month later.
Trotsky was soon exiled to Alma Ata, a small town in Kazakhstan, but within a year had left the USSR completely. He never returned, eventually being granted asylum in Mexico where he was assassinated with an ice pick by an NKVD agent."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsCtSO0dYNQ
Biographies
1. bl.uk/people/leon-trotsky
2. history.com/this-day-in-history/stalin-banishes-trotsky
Images:
1. In 1927 Josef Stalin, right, officially ousted his greatest rival, Leon Trotsky, from the Communist Party of Russia
2. Leon Trotsky in Prinkipo 1928
3. Trotsky and Stalin
4. Trotsky (1879-1940) reads a newspaper while sitting at his desk at his Turkish home in 1931.
1. Background from {[https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stalin-banishes-trotsky]}
January 11, 1928 Stalin banishes Trotsky
Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik revolution and early architect of the Soviet state, is deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lived there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin.
Born in the Ukraine of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager and later dropped out of the University of Odessa to help organize the underground South Russian Workers’ Union. In 1898, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and sent to prison. In 1900, he was exiled to Siberia.
In 1902, he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein). In London, he collaborated with Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but later sided with the Menshevik factions that advocated a democratic approach to socialism. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia and was again exiled to Siberia when the revolution collapsed. In 1907, he again escaped.
During the next decade, he was expelled from a series of countries because of his radicalism, living in Switzerland, Paris, Spain, and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the revolution in 1917. Trotsky played a leading role in the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power, conquering most of Petrograd before Lenin’s triumphant return in November.
Appointed Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs, he negotiated with the Germans for an end to Russian involvement in World War I. In 1918, he became war commissioner and set about building up the Red Army, which succeeded in defeating anti-Communist opposition in the Russian Civil War. In the early 1920s, Trotsky seemed the heir apparent of Lenin, but he lost out in the struggle of succession after Lenin fell ill in 1922.
In 1924, Lenin died, and Joseph Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR. Against Stalin’s stated policies, Trotsky called for a continuing world revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling of the Soviet state. He also criticized the new regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for failing to develop adequate economic planning. In response, Stalin and his supporters launched a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. One year later, he was expelled from the Politburo and in 1927 from the Communist Party. In January 1928, Trotsky began his internal exile in Alma-Ata and the next January was expelled from the Soviet Union outright.
He was received by the government of Turkey and settled on the island of Prinkipo, where he worked on finishing his autobiography and history of the Russian Revolution. After four years in Turkey, Trotsky lived in France and then Norway and in 1936 was granted asylum in Mexico. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City, he was found guilty of treason in absentia during Stalin’s purges of his political foes. He survived a machine-gun attack on his home but on August 20, 1940, fell prey to a Spanish Communist, Ramon Mercader, who fatally wounded him with an ice-ax. He died from his wounds the next day."
2. Background from {[ https://www.bl.uk/people/leon-trotsky]}
Who was Leon Trotsky?
Leon Trotsky was a leading Marxist revolutionary of the first half of the 20th century. He is famous for playing leading roles in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and for organising the Red Army during the ensuing Russian Civil War.
In the 1920–30s, Trotsky was an important figure in the Marxist opposition against Joseph Stalin. He critiqued what he saw as the degeneration of the Soviet regime, and inspired many socialists who continued working for an international working-class revolution in opposition to the model of ‘socialism in one country’. He was expelled from the USSR in 1929 and killed in 1940.
Trotsky is also well known as a theoretician, cultural commentator and historical chronicler. His body of work informs the movement known as Trotskyism.
How did Trotsky become involved in the revolutionary movement?
Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November (Old Style: 26 October) 1879 to a family of Jewish land-owners in what is now southern Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire. He became an active revolutionary while still a teenager and celebrated his 20th birthday in prison.
After escaping from Siberia in 1902, Bronstein adopted the pseudonym Trotsky, according to legend, the name of one of his jailors. He became involved with London’s community of exiled revolutionaries, establishing a friendship with Lenin and writing for Iskra, the newspaper of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).
This friendship broke down, however. Trotsky criticised the centralised ‘vanguard party’ model advocated by Lenin, seeing it as an authoritarian approach. In the years up to 1917 Trotsky maintained independence from both the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, hoping for their reconciliation.
What was Trotsky’s role in the 1905 Revolution?
In 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia, intending to take part in the revolutionary movement more directly and proved that he had a talent for practical mass politics, writing for various revolutionary newspapers, making stirring speeches and pushing for the end of the Tsarist regime.
He soon became a leading figure of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which had been organised by workers to co-ordinate demonstrations and strike action.
Trotsky was arrested in December 1905 as the autocracy reasserted its grip. For the second time, he was exiled to Siberia and escaped, settling in Vienna in 1907.
What was Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’?
Trotsky formulated the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ in the aftermath of 1905, seeking to develop the Marxist theory of revolution.
Before 1917, most Marxists believed that society would progress through a series of ordered stages. They interpreted the previous great revolutions as marking the leap from feudalism to capitalism. Only once capitalism had been firmly established could there follow a further revolution – a working-class, socialist revolution.
By the early 20th century Russia had yet to achieve its ‘bourgeois’ revolution, with the majority of its peasant population barely integrated into the capitalist system. Russian Marxists, therefore, commonly sought an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie to remove the remnants of feudalism and Tsarist absolutism which impeded the full development of capitalism.
Like Lenin, Trotsky was dissatisfied with this alliance between socialists and liberals. He thought the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of leading a successful revolution. According to Trotsky, the ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution would have to be accomplished by the working class movement itself, which would then pass directly into the struggle for socialism.
He argued that the victory of Russian socialists might be the spark to rouse the working class to revolution in the industrialised capitalist nations. Revolutionary Russia could become part of a fraternal network of European socialist states which would aid its economic development. The fate of Russia would depend on the fate of the world revolution.
How did Trotsky become a key figure in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917?
Trotsky felt vindicated by news of the Revolution in 1917, and returned to Russia, plunging once more into practical revolutionary politics. Trotsky made common cause with the Bolsheviks, seeking to radicalise the revolution further. He was arrested after the July Days, though and then released as part of Kerensky’s effort to mobilise revolutionary workers against the Kornilov revolt.
In September Trotsky was again elected Chairman of the revived Petrograd Soviet. In this position he moved quickly to organise a Military Revolutionary Committee, preparing armed insurrection against the Provisional Government. He was the principal organiser of the Bolshevik uprising in October 1917.
What role did Trotsky play during the first years of the Soviet state?
Trotsky took on the role of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the new government headed by Lenin. Trotsky assumed there would be little to the job, famously saying that he would ‘issue a few revolutionary proclamations to the people of the world then shut up shop’.
In the absence of a rapid international uprising, the new Soviet government was forced to seek a peace treaty with the Central Powers. Trotsky oversaw the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, taking a position in-between Lenin’s desire for peace, and the plan to turn the conflict into a revolutionary war. Lenin prevailed and peace was established at great cost.
Trotsky was then appointed to transform the Red Army from a disorganised group of volunteers into an effective military machine. Commanding the Red Army from his iconic train, Trotsky became known for his organisational ability, and for the strict discipline he expected of the revolutionary army. His leadership was a crucial factor in the victory of the Reds over the Whites in the Russian Civil War.
Trotsky hoped to apply this discipline to the Soviet state generally – arguing for the ‘militarisation of labour’ to aid Russia’s economic reconstruction. Trotsky played an important part in preserving Soviet power during its precarious first years, though he was also in part responsible for the centralised, authoritarian apparatus which would later be taken over by Stalin.
How did Trotsky lose power?
The period after the end of the Civil War saw heated debates within the Bolshevik leadership about all aspects of Soviet policy, including the shift to the New Economic Policy (NEP), foreign relations and the prospects for international revolution, and the potential sources of instability facing the government.
With Lenin’s death in 1924, the Communist Party (as the Bolsheviks now called themselves) lost its unifying figurehead, and the party began to split into opposing factions.
As a leading figure of the so-called Left Opposition in the mid-1920s, Trotsky warned against the bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime, and feared that the Stalinist policy of ‘socialism in one country’ would mean abandoning the attempt to support world revolution.
Many leading Communists distrusted Trotsky, who had joined the party relatively late after being critical of the Bolsheviks for many years. Trotsky was marked out by his personal arrogance, and disdained to act decisively to secure his powerbase until it was too late. By 1926 Stalin’s hold on the Communist Party had become unassailable and in 1927 Trotsky was expelled.
How did Trotsky die?
Trotsky was exiled to Soviet Central Asia, and then to Turkey in early 1929. Like Nicholas II a decade before, Trotsky sought refuge in Britain, and was also rejected. After being hounded out of France and Norway, Trotsky was granted asylum in Mexico in 1936.
Trotsky’s political agitation did not cease with his exile from the USSR. He sharpened his attacks on Stalin, and sought to organise an international Left Opposition to continue the struggle.
In the 1930s Stalin’s Great Purges claimed the lives of many ‘Old Bolsheviks’ who had led the party in Lenin’s time. During the Moscow Trials (1936–38), many of the defendants spuriously confessed to being part of a joint Trotskyist-Nazi plot against the USSR, and were executed.
After surviving previous assassination attempts, Trotsky himself was killed by a Stalinist agent in August 1940.
Facts about Trotsky
o While exiled in Mexico, Trotsky famously undertook an affair with the artist Frida Kahlo.
o His one-time follower Max Eastman recorded: ‘He did not “smoke, drink, chew, swear, dance nor play cards”. He could not bring an improper word to his lips’.
o Trotsky used dozens of other pseudonyms during his revolutionary career, including ‘Pero’ (‘The Pen’) in his early career and ‘Old Man’ towards the end.
o Trotsky suffered frequent blackouts, including one on the day of the October Revolution.
o In Mexico Trotsky developed an interest in farming and started breeding chickens and rabbits.
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12th November 1927: Leon Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party
He soon became one of the members of the first Politburo that was founded to manage the transition to a communist state, alongside the Bolshevik founder Vladimir Lenin, and the USSR’s future leader Joseph Stalin.
As Lenin’s health began to fail in the early 1920s, it initially appeared as though Trotsky would be his successor. Following Stalin’s alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the troika, however, Trotsky soon found himself marginalised and he became the subject of rumours about his health and capability to serve in government.
Stalin subsequently emerged as the leader of the USSR following Lenin’s death in 1924. Trotsky’s Left Opposition faction was a vocal critic of many of Stalin’s policies but, with Trotsky himself being increasingly side-lined from government decisions, he was removed from his position as war commissar in 1925 and from the Politburo itself the following year.
Having organised a demonstration by the Left Opposition to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky was accused of fomenting and organising a counter revolution. He, along with his recent ally Zinoviev, was expelled from the Communist Party on 12 November 1927 while 98 of his supporters met the same fate a month later.
Trotsky was soon exiled to Alma Ata, a small town in Kazakhstan, but within a year had left the USSR completely. He never returned, eventually being granted asylum in Mexico where he was assassinated with an ice pick by an NKVD agent."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsCtSO0dYNQ
Biographies
1. bl.uk/people/leon-trotsky
2. history.com/this-day-in-history/stalin-banishes-trotsky
Images:
1. In 1927 Josef Stalin, right, officially ousted his greatest rival, Leon Trotsky, from the Communist Party of Russia
2. Leon Trotsky in Prinkipo 1928
3. Trotsky and Stalin
4. Trotsky (1879-1940) reads a newspaper while sitting at his desk at his Turkish home in 1931.
1. Background from {[https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stalin-banishes-trotsky]}
January 11, 1928 Stalin banishes Trotsky
Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik revolution and early architect of the Soviet state, is deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lived there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin.
Born in the Ukraine of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager and later dropped out of the University of Odessa to help organize the underground South Russian Workers’ Union. In 1898, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and sent to prison. In 1900, he was exiled to Siberia.
In 1902, he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein). In London, he collaborated with Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but later sided with the Menshevik factions that advocated a democratic approach to socialism. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia and was again exiled to Siberia when the revolution collapsed. In 1907, he again escaped.
During the next decade, he was expelled from a series of countries because of his radicalism, living in Switzerland, Paris, Spain, and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the revolution in 1917. Trotsky played a leading role in the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power, conquering most of Petrograd before Lenin’s triumphant return in November.
Appointed Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs, he negotiated with the Germans for an end to Russian involvement in World War I. In 1918, he became war commissioner and set about building up the Red Army, which succeeded in defeating anti-Communist opposition in the Russian Civil War. In the early 1920s, Trotsky seemed the heir apparent of Lenin, but he lost out in the struggle of succession after Lenin fell ill in 1922.
In 1924, Lenin died, and Joseph Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR. Against Stalin’s stated policies, Trotsky called for a continuing world revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling of the Soviet state. He also criticized the new regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for failing to develop adequate economic planning. In response, Stalin and his supporters launched a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. One year later, he was expelled from the Politburo and in 1927 from the Communist Party. In January 1928, Trotsky began his internal exile in Alma-Ata and the next January was expelled from the Soviet Union outright.
He was received by the government of Turkey and settled on the island of Prinkipo, where he worked on finishing his autobiography and history of the Russian Revolution. After four years in Turkey, Trotsky lived in France and then Norway and in 1936 was granted asylum in Mexico. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City, he was found guilty of treason in absentia during Stalin’s purges of his political foes. He survived a machine-gun attack on his home but on August 20, 1940, fell prey to a Spanish Communist, Ramon Mercader, who fatally wounded him with an ice-ax. He died from his wounds the next day."
2. Background from {[ https://www.bl.uk/people/leon-trotsky]}
Who was Leon Trotsky?
Leon Trotsky was a leading Marxist revolutionary of the first half of the 20th century. He is famous for playing leading roles in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and for organising the Red Army during the ensuing Russian Civil War.
In the 1920–30s, Trotsky was an important figure in the Marxist opposition against Joseph Stalin. He critiqued what he saw as the degeneration of the Soviet regime, and inspired many socialists who continued working for an international working-class revolution in opposition to the model of ‘socialism in one country’. He was expelled from the USSR in 1929 and killed in 1940.
Trotsky is also well known as a theoretician, cultural commentator and historical chronicler. His body of work informs the movement known as Trotskyism.
How did Trotsky become involved in the revolutionary movement?
Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November (Old Style: 26 October) 1879 to a family of Jewish land-owners in what is now southern Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire. He became an active revolutionary while still a teenager and celebrated his 20th birthday in prison.
After escaping from Siberia in 1902, Bronstein adopted the pseudonym Trotsky, according to legend, the name of one of his jailors. He became involved with London’s community of exiled revolutionaries, establishing a friendship with Lenin and writing for Iskra, the newspaper of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).
This friendship broke down, however. Trotsky criticised the centralised ‘vanguard party’ model advocated by Lenin, seeing it as an authoritarian approach. In the years up to 1917 Trotsky maintained independence from both the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, hoping for their reconciliation.
What was Trotsky’s role in the 1905 Revolution?
In 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia, intending to take part in the revolutionary movement more directly and proved that he had a talent for practical mass politics, writing for various revolutionary newspapers, making stirring speeches and pushing for the end of the Tsarist regime.
He soon became a leading figure of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which had been organised by workers to co-ordinate demonstrations and strike action.
Trotsky was arrested in December 1905 as the autocracy reasserted its grip. For the second time, he was exiled to Siberia and escaped, settling in Vienna in 1907.
What was Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’?
Trotsky formulated the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ in the aftermath of 1905, seeking to develop the Marxist theory of revolution.
Before 1917, most Marxists believed that society would progress through a series of ordered stages. They interpreted the previous great revolutions as marking the leap from feudalism to capitalism. Only once capitalism had been firmly established could there follow a further revolution – a working-class, socialist revolution.
By the early 20th century Russia had yet to achieve its ‘bourgeois’ revolution, with the majority of its peasant population barely integrated into the capitalist system. Russian Marxists, therefore, commonly sought an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie to remove the remnants of feudalism and Tsarist absolutism which impeded the full development of capitalism.
Like Lenin, Trotsky was dissatisfied with this alliance between socialists and liberals. He thought the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of leading a successful revolution. According to Trotsky, the ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution would have to be accomplished by the working class movement itself, which would then pass directly into the struggle for socialism.
He argued that the victory of Russian socialists might be the spark to rouse the working class to revolution in the industrialised capitalist nations. Revolutionary Russia could become part of a fraternal network of European socialist states which would aid its economic development. The fate of Russia would depend on the fate of the world revolution.
How did Trotsky become a key figure in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917?
Trotsky felt vindicated by news of the Revolution in 1917, and returned to Russia, plunging once more into practical revolutionary politics. Trotsky made common cause with the Bolsheviks, seeking to radicalise the revolution further. He was arrested after the July Days, though and then released as part of Kerensky’s effort to mobilise revolutionary workers against the Kornilov revolt.
In September Trotsky was again elected Chairman of the revived Petrograd Soviet. In this position he moved quickly to organise a Military Revolutionary Committee, preparing armed insurrection against the Provisional Government. He was the principal organiser of the Bolshevik uprising in October 1917.
What role did Trotsky play during the first years of the Soviet state?
Trotsky took on the role of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the new government headed by Lenin. Trotsky assumed there would be little to the job, famously saying that he would ‘issue a few revolutionary proclamations to the people of the world then shut up shop’.
In the absence of a rapid international uprising, the new Soviet government was forced to seek a peace treaty with the Central Powers. Trotsky oversaw the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, taking a position in-between Lenin’s desire for peace, and the plan to turn the conflict into a revolutionary war. Lenin prevailed and peace was established at great cost.
Trotsky was then appointed to transform the Red Army from a disorganised group of volunteers into an effective military machine. Commanding the Red Army from his iconic train, Trotsky became known for his organisational ability, and for the strict discipline he expected of the revolutionary army. His leadership was a crucial factor in the victory of the Reds over the Whites in the Russian Civil War.
Trotsky hoped to apply this discipline to the Soviet state generally – arguing for the ‘militarisation of labour’ to aid Russia’s economic reconstruction. Trotsky played an important part in preserving Soviet power during its precarious first years, though he was also in part responsible for the centralised, authoritarian apparatus which would later be taken over by Stalin.
How did Trotsky lose power?
The period after the end of the Civil War saw heated debates within the Bolshevik leadership about all aspects of Soviet policy, including the shift to the New Economic Policy (NEP), foreign relations and the prospects for international revolution, and the potential sources of instability facing the government.
With Lenin’s death in 1924, the Communist Party (as the Bolsheviks now called themselves) lost its unifying figurehead, and the party began to split into opposing factions.
As a leading figure of the so-called Left Opposition in the mid-1920s, Trotsky warned against the bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime, and feared that the Stalinist policy of ‘socialism in one country’ would mean abandoning the attempt to support world revolution.
Many leading Communists distrusted Trotsky, who had joined the party relatively late after being critical of the Bolsheviks for many years. Trotsky was marked out by his personal arrogance, and disdained to act decisively to secure his powerbase until it was too late. By 1926 Stalin’s hold on the Communist Party had become unassailable and in 1927 Trotsky was expelled.
How did Trotsky die?
Trotsky was exiled to Soviet Central Asia, and then to Turkey in early 1929. Like Nicholas II a decade before, Trotsky sought refuge in Britain, and was also rejected. After being hounded out of France and Norway, Trotsky was granted asylum in Mexico in 1936.
Trotsky’s political agitation did not cease with his exile from the USSR. He sharpened his attacks on Stalin, and sought to organise an international Left Opposition to continue the struggle.
In the 1930s Stalin’s Great Purges claimed the lives of many ‘Old Bolsheviks’ who had led the party in Lenin’s time. During the Moscow Trials (1936–38), many of the defendants spuriously confessed to being part of a joint Trotskyist-Nazi plot against the USSR, and were executed.
After surviving previous assassination attempts, Trotsky himself was killed by a Stalinist agent in August 1940.
Facts about Trotsky
o While exiled in Mexico, Trotsky famously undertook an affair with the artist Frida Kahlo.
o His one-time follower Max Eastman recorded: ‘He did not “smoke, drink, chew, swear, dance nor play cards”. He could not bring an improper word to his lips’.
o Trotsky used dozens of other pseudonyms during his revolutionary career, including ‘Pero’ (‘The Pen’) in his early career and ‘Old Man’ towards the end.
o Trotsky suffered frequent blackouts, including one on the day of the October Revolution.
o In Mexico Trotsky developed an interest in farming and started breeding chickens and rabbits.
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Excellent history share brother David, have a great afternoon brother
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Great history share! Always great to she your history stories, it’s interesting and educational, thanks for posting!
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