Lev Trotsky short biography. Trotsky Lev Davidovich - biography, interesting facts

Trotsky Lev Davidovich (real name Leiba Bronstein) (1879-1940), Soviet party and statesman, one of the organizers of the October Revolution, one of the founders of the Red Army. Born October 26 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elizavetgrad district, Kherson province, in a prosperous Jewish family; his father was a wealthy tenant landowner. From the age of seven he attended a Jewish religious school - cheder, which he did not finish. In 1888 he was sent to study in Odessa at a real school, then he moved to Nikolaev; was fond of drawing, literature, showed a masterful character, came into conflict with teachers.

Imbued with the ideas of the populists. In 1896, in Nikolaev, he took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union, which set as its task the political education of the workers and the struggle for their economic interests; wrote leaflets, spoke at rallies, published an underground newspaper together with like-minded people. In January 1898 he was arrested; sent to Moscow. During the investigation in Butyrskaya prison, he intensively studied European languages, joined Marxism; married the revolutionary Alexandra Sokolovskaya. Sentenced to a four-year exile in Siberia. From the spring of 1900, together with his wife, he was in a settlement in the Irkutsk province; In exile, he had two daughters. He served as a clerk for a local merchant, then collaborated in the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye; speaking with articles of a literary-critical and ethno-everyday nature. In August 1902, leaving his wife and daughters forever, he fled abroad with a fake passport, in which he entered the name of Trotsky, the warden of the Odessa prison, which later became a well-known pseudonym.

Settled in London; became close to the leaders of the Russian Social Democracy; in October 1902 he met V.I. Lenin, on whose recommendation he was co-opted to the editorial board of Iskra. He promoted Marxism among Russian emigrants in England, France, Germany and Switzerland. In 1903 he married N. Sedova. In July-August 1903 he participated in the II Congress of the RSDLP. In the discussion on the Party Rules, he spoke together with Yu.O. Martov and the Mensheviks against the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. After the congress, he criticized V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks for striving to establish a dictatorship regime in the party and considered them to be the culprits of its split. In the autumn of 1904, he parted ways with the Mensheviks, condemning their idea of ​​the leading role of the liberal bourgeoisie in the coming revolution. He tried to create a special trend within the Russian social democracy.

In February 1905, shortly after the start of the First Russian Revolution, he illegally returned to Russia. He actively promoted revolutionary ideas in the press and at meetings of workers. In October 1905 he was elected deputy chairman and then chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies; He was the editor of his printed organ - Izvestia. In December 1905 he was arrested. In conclusion, he wrote the book Results and Prospects, in which he formulated the theory of permanent revolution, developed together with Parvus (A.L. Gelfand): as a result of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, not the power of the bourgeoisie (Mensheviks) and not the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry (Bolsheviks) will be established in Russia ), and the dictatorship of the workers; the socialist revolution will triumph in Russia only under the conditions of a world proletarian revolution. At the end of 1906 he was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia and deprived of all civil rights. From the stage he fled abroad.

In May 1907, he participated in the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP in London as the leader of the centrist trend in the party. He wrote articles for Russian and foreign newspapers and magazines. In 1908-1912 he published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna, which was distributed underground in Russia. He made efforts to develop a compromise platform and overcome the split in the party. He condemned the decisions of the VI (Prague) Conference of the RSDLP convened by the Bolsheviks in Prague in January 1912, which set a course for the complete expulsion of all opposition groups from the party. At a general party conference in Vienna in August 1912, together with the leaders of the Mensheviks, he created the anti-Bolshevik "August Bloc". During the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 he was a correspondent for Kievskaya Thought in the theater of operations.

With the outbreak of the First World War, he settled in Switzerland, then in France. He published the pamphlet War and the International, where he spoke from a sharply anti-war position and called for the creation of a "United States of Europe" in a revolutionary way. In 1916 he was expelled from France to Spain, where he was arrested and deported to the USA. Since January 1917, he collaborated in the Russian newspaper Novy Mir, published in New York; met N.I. Bukharin.

He welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 as the beginning of the long-awaited permanent revolution. In March 1917, he tried to leave for his homeland through Canada, but was detained by the Canadian authorities and spent more than a month in an internment camp. He returned to Petrograd only on May 4 (17), 1917. He joined the group of "mezhraiontsy" close to the Bolsheviks. He severely criticized the Provisional Government and advocated, like Lenin, for the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. During the July Crisis of 1917, he tried to direct the anti-government demonstrations of workers and soldiers in a peaceful direction; after the order of the Provisional Government to arrest the leaders of the Bolsheviks, he publicly sided with them and rejected their accusations of espionage and conspiracy.

Arrested and imprisoned in Kresty. At the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in late July - early August, as part of the "Mezhraiontsy", he was admitted in absentia to the Bolshevik Party and elected to its Central Committee. Released on September 2 (15) after the collapse of the Kornilov rebellion. With his extreme radical speeches, he won popularity among the working and soldier masses. On September 25 (October 8) he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. He actively supported Lenin's proposal for the immediate organization of an armed uprising. October 12 (25) initiated the creation by the Soviet of the Military Revolutionary Committee to protect Petrograd from counter-revolutionary forces. Led the preparations for the October Revolution; was its de facto leader.

After the victory of the Bolsheviks on October 25 (November 7), 1917, he entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He supported Lenin in the fight against plans to create a coalition government of all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General P.N. Krasnov advancing on it.

As People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Trotsky was unable to achieve international recognition of the Bolshevik regime and support for the peace initiatives of the Soviet government. He led the negotiations with the powers of the Quadruple Alliance in Brest-Litovsk. He dragged them out in every possible way, hoping for the imminent start of a world revolution. He put forward the formula "we stop the war, we demobilize the army, but we do not sign peace." January 28 (February 9), 1918 rejected the ultimatum demand of Germany and its allies to agree to the terms of the peace treaty put forward by them, announced Russia's withdrawal from the war and ordered the general demobilization of the army; although this order was canceled by V.I. Lenin, it increased the disorganization on the fronts and contributed to the success of the German offensive that began on February 18. On February 22, he resigned from the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

On March 14, 1918, he was appointed People's Commissar for Military Affairs, on March 19 - Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, and on September 6 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He led the work on the creation of the Red Army; made energetic efforts to professionalize it, actively recruited former officers (“military experts”); established strict discipline in the army, resolutely opposed its democratization; used severe repression, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the "red terror" ("whoever renounces terrorism must renounce the political domination of the working class"). He strengthened the Red Army with punitive measures. One of his orders stated: "if any unit retreats without permission, the commissar of the unit will be shot first, the commander second." He was one of the initiators of terror against the "unreliable" and the practice of hostage-taking. At the same time, according to the military historian D.A. Volkogonov, Trotsky “loved a good rest. Even in the most difficult years of the Civil War, he managed to go to resorts, hunt, and fish. Several doctors constantly monitored his health.”

In March 1919 he became a member of the first Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. From March 20 to December 10, 1920, he temporarily acted as People's Commissar of Railways; strict measures restored the work of railway transport. He showed a penchant for administration and the use of force, advocating the need for the creation of labor armies and strict distribution.

In the trade union discussion of November 1920 - March 1921, he demanded that the methods of "war communism" and the militarization of trade unions be preserved in the government of the country. He insisted that industrialization in the RSFSR should be built on a system of forced labor and wholesale collectivization. In March 1921 he led the bloody suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion.

During Lenin's illness (from May 1920) he entered the struggle for power in the party with the triumvirate of I.V. Stalin, G.E. Zinoviev and L.B. Kamenev. In October 1923, in an open letter, he accused them of departing from the principles of the New Economic Policy and violating internal party democracy.

After Lenin's death on January 21, 1924, he found himself isolated in the top party leadership. At the Thirteenth Congress in May 1924, he was sharply criticized by practically all the delegates who spoke. In response, in the fall of 1924, he published an article Lessons of October, where he condemned the behavior of Zinoviev and Kamenev during the October Revolution and blamed them for the failure of the communist uprising in Germany in 1923. He criticized the triumvirate for the bureaucratization of the party; urged to actively involve young cadres in its ranks.

January 26, 1925 removed from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. In 1926 he entered into an alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Stalin's group. He demanded freedom of internal party discussions, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the struggle against the kulaks; accused the party leadership of betraying the ideals of October and rejecting the idea of ​​a world revolution; condemned the Stalinist theory of the possibility of building socialism in one single country. For "anti-party activity" and "petty-bourgeois deviation" in October 1926 he was removed from the Politburo, in October 1927 at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) - from the Central Committee, and after organizing an open entry with his supporters on November 7, 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, he was expelled from the party. Especially many supporters of Trotsky were among the leadership of the Red Army (M.N. Tukhachevsky, Ya.B. Gamarnik and others).

In January 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and in early 1929 he and his family were expelled from the USSR.

In 1929-1933 he lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of ​​Marmara). the Turkish government refused to accept it. The governments of other countries also refused to accept Trotsky, and he was forced to move from country to country, published the anti-Stalin Opposition Bulletin. Wrote an autobiography My life and his main historical essay History of the Russian Revolution. He criticized industrialization and collectivization in the USSR.

In 1933 he moved to France, and in 1935 to Norway. He published the book Revolution Betrayed, in which he characterized the Stalinist regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat and revealed deep contradictions between the interests of the bureaucratic caste and the interests of the bulk of the population. At the end of 1936 he left for Mexico, where he settled with the help of the Trotskyist artist Diego Rivera, lived in his fortified and guarded villa in Coyocan (a suburb of Mexico City). Sentenced in absentia in the USSR to death; his first wife and younger son, Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.

In 1938, he united groups of his supporters around the world into the Fourth International. He began to write a book about I.V. Stalin as a fatal figure for the socialist movement. He appealed to the working people of the USSR with an appeal to overthrow the Stalinist clique. Condemned the Soviet-German non-aggression pact; at the same time, he approved the entry of Soviet troops into Western Ukraine and Western Belarus and the war with Finland.

In 1939, Stalin ordered its liquidation. At the beginning of 1940 he made a political testament, in which he expressed his hope for an imminent proletarian world revolution. In May 1940, the first attempt to assassinate Trotsky, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed. On August 20, 1940, he was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who penetrated his inner circle.

He died on August 21 and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of a house in Koyokan. The Soviet authorities publicly denied any involvement in the assassination. R. Mercader was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison; after his release in 1960 he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

(1879- 1940)

Oddly enough, this coincidence, Lev Davidovich Trotsky was born on the day of the October Revolution - October 25 and in the same (1879) year as Stalin. It happened in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province. His father was a wealthy owner of 400 acres of land.

Lev Trotsky (little Leiba, as his family called him) was the third child in the family (Olga was born after him) and was almost no different from his peers. However, from a young age, the desire to excel dominated in him, Trotsky dreamed of being the best in everything: as a child, Leiba loved to draw and seriously thought about the career of a great artist, and when his mathematical abilities showed up in a real school, he imagined himself a brilliant mathematician.

Trotsky's biography could have turned out differently if his father had insisted that Lev become an engineer. In the senior classes of a real school, he became interested in the concepts of the liberal populists and then, together with them, fought against Marxism. For the sake of a new idea, he exchanged Odessa University for work in circles of radical youth. The father could not resist him.

In one of the revolutionary circles, he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya; he soon married her. However, soon all the revolutionaries of this circle were arrested - Trotsky Lev Bronstein ended up in the Odessa prison with his wife, where he first studied the works of Marx and Engels. He found that his judgments completely coincided with their points of view. It was here that he took a pseudonym for himself - the same surname was with their imperious overseer. For campaigning to overthrow the autocracy, Leon Trotsky received 4 years of exile in Siberia, from where he fled to Paris in 1902, leaving his wife and two young daughters.

In exile, Bronstein remarried Sedova (a distant relative of the Rothschilds) and lived quite well. Here he began joint work with Lenin (as part of the editorial board of Iskra), but they quarreled at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP on the issue of party membership. And only in 1917 reconciliation came between them. In the same year he moved to the USA with Bukharin. When he learned about the February revolution, he was delighted - the opportunity arose to prove himself and was upset because he could not return immediately. Leon Trotsky came to Petrograd only in May 1917 and did not have time to create his own revolutionary party - at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, he, like Lenin, did not even get into the bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

After the failure, Trotsky, like Lenin, understands that the only way to gain power is by force, joining the Bolsheviks, but this is a big risk, since the Bolsheviks were declared traitors. Here he is nominated chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky's entire biography consists of various risky stories and situations, most of which ended happily for Leo.

Despite similar political views, there was tangible competition between Lenin and Trotsky. It was because of her (after coming to power) that Trotsky did not stay long as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. However, already on March 14, 1918, he headed the armed and naval forces of the Soviet Republic, and on September 2 of the same year he became chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. However, the judgments of some researchers about the huge role of Trotsky in the victories of the Red Army are erroneous (he was not even a military man), although his role in the creation of huge military formations by force is very significant. With particular rigidity, Trotsky fought against desertion - the punishment for him was execution. Everyone was subjected to severe repressions for the slightest mistake or disagreement - many do not for nothing consider Leon Trotsky a bloody tyrant.

When Lev Bronstein, among other members of the Politburo, learned about the approaching death of Lenin, he made two mistakes - he was confident in his position in the party and in the country, that the choice of the party would fall on him. The second, fatal mistake was his underestimation of Stalin, whom he considered mediocre and loudly declared this. The party elected Stalin.

After the first and main failure, Leon Trotsky tried to introduce into the economic life of the country by building barrack-type socialism, creating labor armies, and building a single labor camp. However, this attempt also turned out to be a failure - out of 114 people participating in the meeting, only 2 voted for him. Trotsky's arrogance, intolerance of other people's opinions and arrogance alienated supporters from him. His attempt in October 1923 to rely on the army, where he had his people everywhere, also failed - neither the fleet nor the army supported him. In 1925 He was relieved of his duties as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, and in 1926 he was removed from the Politburo. Ultimately, in 1929, Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.

Trying to take revenge on Stalin, Lev Bronstein continued active relations through couriers with like-minded people in the USSR. In 1937, after the trial of his accomplices, Trotsky published the book Crimes of Stalin, which, of course, did not please the leader. In 1938, he began writing the book "Stalin", which was never completed - in 1940, Mercader's ice ax broke the tyrant's skull, which ended the biography of Leon Trotsky.

TROTSKY, wow, m. Liar, talker, talker, empty talker. Whistle like a Trotsky lie. L. D. Trotsky (Bronstein) a well-known political figure ... Dictionary of Russian Argo

- (real name Bronstein) Lev Davydovich (1879 1940), politician. Since 1896, in the social democratic movement, since 1904, he advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905, he put forward the theory of permanent (continuous) revolution ... Russian history

- "TROTSKY", Russia Switzerland USA Mexico Turkey Austria, VIRGO FILM, 1993, color, 98 min. Historical political drama. About the last months of the life of the famous revolutionary, politician, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Republic. "Our film is... Cinema Encyclopedia

Chatterbox, talker, liar, liar, liar, talker, liar Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Trotsky n., number of synonyms: 9 talker (132) ... Synonym dictionary

- (Bronstein) L. D. (1879 1940) political and statesman. In the revolutionary movement since the late 90s, during the split of the RSDLP, he joined the Mensheviks, a participant in the revolution of 1905 1907, chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet, after the revolution ... ... 1000 biographies

- (Bronstein) Lev (Leiba) Davidovich (1879 1940) professional revolutionary, one of the leaders of the October (1917) revolution in Russia. Ideologist, theorist, propagandist and practitioner of the Russian and international communist movement. T. repeatedly ... The latest philosophical dictionary

TROTSKY L.D.- Russian political and statesman; founder of the radical left trend in the international communist movement, which bears his name Trotskyism. The real name is Bronstein. The pseudonym Trotsky was taken in 1902 for the purpose of secrecy. A lion… … Linguistic Dictionary

Trotsky, L. D.- was born in 1879, worked in working circles in the city of Nikolaev (Southern Russian Workers Union, which published the newspaper Nashe Delo), was exiled in 1898 to Siberia, from where he fled abroad and took part in Iskra. After the split of the party into the Bolsheviks and ... ... Popular political vocabulary

Noi Abramovich, Soviet architect. He studied in Petrograd at the Academy of Arts (since 1913) and at the Free Workshops (graduated in 1920), with I. A. Fomin and at the 2nd Polytechnic Institute (1921). He taught at... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (real name Bronstein). Lev (Leiba) Davidovich (1879-1940), Soviet statesman, party and military leader, publicist. His figure attracted the attention of Bulgakov, who repeatedly mentioned T. in his diary and others ... ... Encyclopedia Bulgakov

Books

• L. Trotsky. My life (set of 2 books), L. Trotsky. Lev Trotsky's book "My Life" is an outstanding literary work summing up the activities of this truly outstanding person and politician in the country that he left in 1929. ...
• Trotsky, Yu.V. Emelyanov. The figure of Trotsky is still of great interest. His portraits appear at political rallies and demonstrations. Many speak of him as an ominous demon of the revolution. Who was Trotsky?...

Among the people who left their mark on the history of Russia, there are not many politicians with such a confusing biography as Leon Trotsky. There is still fierce debate about his role in many events that took place in Russia, and then in the USSR in the first 40 years of the 20th century.

So who was Lev Davidovich Trotsky? The biography of a famous politician presented in this article will help you learn about some of his decisions that influenced the fate of millions of people.

Childhood

Trotsky Lev was the 5th child of David Leontyevich and Anna Lvovna Bronstein. The couple were wealthy Jewish landowners-colonists who moved to the Kherson province from the Poltava region. The boy was named Leiba, and he was fluent in Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Yiddish.

By the time the youngest son was born, the Bronsteins had 100 acres of land, a large garden, a mill and a repair shop. Near Yanovka, where the Leiba family lived, there was a German-Jewish colony. There was a school where he was sent at the age of 6. After 3 years, Leiba was sent to Odessa, where he entered the Lutheran real school of St. Paul.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

After graduating from the 6th grade of the school, the young man moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he joined a revolutionary circle.

To receive a higher education, Leiba Bronstein had to leave his new comrades and go to Novorossiysk. There he easily entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the local university. However, the revolutionary struggle had already captured the young man, and he soon left this university to return to Nikolaev.

Arrest

Bronstein, who took the underground nickname Lvov, became one of the organizers of the South Russian Workers' Union. At the age of 18, he was arrested for anti-government activities, and for two years he wandered through prisons. There he became a Marxist and managed to marry Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

In 1990, the young family was exiled to Irkutsk, where Bronstein had two daughters. They were sent to Yanovka. In the Kherson region, the girls ended up under the care of their grandparents.

Abroad

In 1992, it became possible to escape from exile. Leib entered the name Trotsky Lev at random into a fake passport. With this document, he was able to go abroad.

Finding himself out of reach of the Russian Okhrana, Trotsky went to London, where he met with V. Lenin. There he repeatedly spoke to emigrants-revolutionaries. Leon Trotsky (a biography of his early youth is presented above) struck everyone with his intellect and oratorical talent. Lenin, who sought to weaken the "old men," suggested that he be included in the editorial board of Iskra, but Plekhanov categorically opposed this.

While in London, Trotsky married Natalia Sedova. However, officially, Alexandra Sokolova remained his wife until the end of her life.

In 1905

When the revolution broke out in the country, Trotsky and his wife returned to Russia, where Lev Davidovich organized the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On November 26, he was elected its chairman, but already on November 3 he was arrested and sentenced to a life-long settlement in Siberia. At the trial, Trotsky delivered a fiery speech against violence. She made a strong impression on the audience, among whom were his parents.

Second emigration

On the way to the place where he was supposed to live in exile, Trotsky was able to escape and moved to Europe. There he made several attempts to unite the disparate parties of the socialist persuasion, but did not succeed.

In 1912-1913. Trotsky, as a military correspondent for the newspaper Kyiv Mysl, wrote 70 reports from the fronts of the Balkan wars. This experience helped him organize work in the Red Army in the future.

When the First World War began, Trotsky Lev fled from Vienna to Paris, where he began to publish the newspaper Nashe Slovo. In it, he published his articles of a pacifist orientation, which was the reason for the expulsion of the revolutionary from France. He moved to the United States, where he hoped to settle down, as he did not believe in the possibility of an imminent revolution in Russia.

In 1917

When the February Revolution broke out, Trotsky and his family went by ship to Russia. However, on the way he was removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp, as he could not show his Russian passport. Only in May 1917, after long ordeals, did Trotsky and his family arrive in Petrograd. He was immediately included in the Petrosoviet.

In the following months, Leon Trotsky, whose brief biography before the revolution you already know, was engaged in the demoralization of the garrison of the Northern capital. In the absence of Lenin, who was in Finland, he actually led the Bolsheviks.

In the days of the revolution

On October 12, Trotsky headed the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, and a few days later he ordered 5,000 rifles to be issued to the Red Guards.

During the days of the October Revolution, Lev Davidovich was one of the main leaders of the rebels.

In December 1917, it was he who announced the beginning of the "Red Terror".

In 1918-1924

At the end of 1917, Trotsky was included in the first composition of the Bolshevik government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. During Lenin's ultimatum demanding the acceptance of German conditions, he took the side of Vladimir Ilyich, which ensured his victory.

In the autumn of 1918, Trotsky was appointed chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, that is, he became the first commander in chief of the newly formed Red Army. The following years, he practically lived on a train, which traveled on all fronts.

During the defense of Tsaritsyn, Leon Trotsky entered into a frank confrontation with Stalin. Over time, he began to understand that there could be no equality in the army, and began to introduce the institute of military experts into the Red Army, seeking to reorganize it and return to the traditional principles of building the armed forces.

In 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council.

In the second half of the 20s

By the beginning of 1926, it became clear that the long-awaited world revolution would not come in the near future. Leon Trotsky became close to the Zinoviev/Kamenev group on the basis of the unity of political views on the issue of "building socialism in one country". Soon the number of oppositionists increased, and Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya joined them.

In 1927, the Central Control Commission considered the cases of Trotsky and Zinoviev, but did not expel them from the party, but issued a severe reprimand.

Exile

In 1928, Trotsky was exiled to Alma-Ata, and a year later he was expelled from the USSR.

In 1936, Lev Davidovich settled in Mexico, where he was sheltered by the family of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. There he wrote a book entitled The Revolution Betrayed, in which he sharply criticized Stalin.

After 2 years, Trotsky announced the creation of an alternative to the Comintern communist organization "The Fourth International", which gave rise to many political movements that currently exist in different parts of the world.

Until the last day of his life, Lev Davidovich worked on a book, where he proved the version of the poisoning of Lenin on the orders of the "father of all peoples."

On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. However, attempts on his life were made from the very first days of his arrival in Mexico.

After his death, Trotsky was one of the few victims of Stalin who was never rehabilitated.

Now you know what life path Lev Davidovich Trotsky went through. A brief biography of the politician tells only about a small part of the events in which he was directly involved. Many consider him a villain, and for some, Trotsky is a strong personality, true to his ideals.

Leiba Bronstein was born on October 26 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, in the family of landowner David Bronstein. In 1888 he entered St. Paul's School in Odessa, graduated from his graduation classes in Nikolaev. Lev Bronstein, 1888

The Second Congress entered my life as a great milestone, at least for the mere fact that it separated me from Lenin for a number of years.

Trotsky L.
"My life"

In 1904 Trotsky left the Menshevik Party. He came to Munich with his wife and settled in the apartment of Alexander Parvus. In Trotsky, having learned about the strike movement that had begun in Russia, he illegally arrived in St. Petersburg, where, together with Parvus, they actually led the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. During the workers' strike in October, Trotsky was in the thick of things.

The fifty-two days of the existence of the first Soviet were full of work: the Soviet, the Executive Committee, incessant meetings and three newspapers. How we lived in this whirlpool is not clear to me.

Trotsky L.
"My life"

On December 3, Trotsky was arrested for the "Financial Manifesto", which called for hastening the financial collapse of tsarism. In 1906, at the widely publicized trial of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, Trotsky was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights. In 1907, he fled from the stage through Germany to Vienna, where he settled with his wife and children. Trotsky in the cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress, 1905

During this period, his relationship with Lenin heated up. Trotsky publishes the newspaper Pravda for the workers and the opposition intelligentsia, and actively promotes the idea of ​​uniting the Social Democrats. A hostile campaign was launched against the Vienna Pravda by the Bolsheviks. Lenin called Trotsky a "Jewish" in the article "On the paint of shame in Judas Trotsky", which was published only in 1932 in the newspaper Pravda in the USSR. Lenin sent letters and articles to party organs and the press in which he wrote that Trotsky and "Trotskyism" were dangerous. As a result, Lenin borrowed the name of Trotsky's newspaper and began to publish the Bolshevik Pravda in St. Petersburg. It became the most influential newspaper in the Soviet Union.

On July 28, 1914, the First World War began. Trotsky becomes a war correspondent and is actively published. For revolutionary propaganda in the newspaper Nashe Slovo in September 1916 he was expelled from France.

In January 1917, Trotsky arrived in New York by ship, where he worked for the Russian newspaper Novy Mir. Having received the news about, he went to Russia by ship with his family. In Canadian Halifax, he and several other socialists were dropped off and sent to a concentration camp for prisoners of war. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, Milyukov, under pressure from the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, requested the release of the detainees. French passport of Leon Trotsky

Trotsky arrived in Petrograd through Sweden and Finland, where he joined the Interdistrict Organization and became its leader. By mid-1917, the group had grown from a few hundred to four thousand members. Lenin sought to unite with the Mezhrayontsy. The unification took place at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (b), at the same time Trotsky was elected to the Central Committee of the party.

Lenin and Trotsky at the celebration of the second anniversary of the October Revolution, 1919

In this struggle, Trotsky was defeated - on January 26, 1925, he was deprived of military leadership. In 1926, Trotsky forms an opposition bloc with Kamenev and Zinoviev, his former opponents, and begins to openly oppose the Stalinist line. Soon the opposition platform went underground. There was organized persecution against her.

accept the Mexican authorities. Trotsky settled in Coyoacán, first in the "Blue House" of the artist Frida Kahlo, and then in a villa nearby.

Leon Trotsky (second from left) with Frida Kahlo.

In the meantime, a show trial was arranged in Moscow, at which Trotsky was called an agent of Hitler and sentenced to death in absentia.
Trotsky, on the other hand, began to write a book about Stalin, met with journalists from various publications, and proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International, a Trotskyist international organization that set as its main goal the world revolution and the victory of the working class.

Trotsky, in response to the Moscow trials, recorded a video message to the world community, in which he accused Stalin of despotism. “It was not communism and socialism that gave birth to this court, but Stalinism,” says Trotsky. He claims that the trial of him and his former comrades in the opposition (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov and others) is based on false evidence in the interests of the ruling elite.

There were two assassination attempts on Trotsky. On May 24, the Mexican artist, Stalinist Jose David Alfaro Siqueiros, with a group of militants drove up to Trotsky's villa and fired about two hundred bullets into the walls, doors and windows of the house. Trotsky and his family survived. In parallel with the Siqueiros group, the NKVD agent instilled confidence in Trotsky. He entered his house and on August 20, 1940, dealt a fatal blow with an ice pick, from which Trotsky died the next day.