Biography of Leon Trotsky, Russian Revolutionary

On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky, Russian Marxist revolutionary, was assassinated at the age of 62. Ramón Mercader attacked him the day before with an ice axe. An excerpt from the:

"Death
On May 24, 1940, Soviet agents fired machine guns at Trotsky's house in the early morning. Although Trotsky and his family were home, all survived the attack. On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was not so lucky. As he was sitting at his desk in his study, Ramon Mercader punctured Trotsky's skull with a mountaineering ice pick. Trotsky died of his injuries a day later at the age of 60.

Legacy
In 2015, 75 years after Trotsky's assassination, Dan La Boltz wrote the following of his life and accomplishment:

"For some on the left, Trotsky is—after Vladimir Lenin—the world’s greatest revolutionary. ... Trotsky’s achievements as a writer, an intellectual, and as an organizer—and he was also a great orator—vie with those of any other figure of the twentieth century."
However, Trotsky is not viewed as a revolutionary by all. In fact, perhaps because he lost the power struggle with Stalin, philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, Trotsky has largely been forgotten, even in present-day Russia. Trotsky "appears in none of the Soviet Russian history books," according to this political scientist.

To the extent Trotsky is remembered in Russia today, he is generally recalled as the revolutionary who was murdered with an ice pick. A 2017 Russian-produced miniseries called "Trotsky" portrayed Trotsky as an unhinged hothead and brutal murderer and Stalin as a sane and noble warrior, despite the fact that Stalin was responsible for murdering many more people than Trotsky, including Trotsky himself. For the person who once led the Red Army, it's an odd legacy to be so disremembered, but such is the case for Trotsky."