Leon Trotsky left the Soviet Union. Trotsky, Lev Davidovich. Childhood. early years

On Channel One there is a film about the life of Leon Trotsky "Trotsky". How did the personal life of Leon Trotsky develop, who are his wives and children?

The personal life of Leon Trotsky is full of events and contradictions, like the time in which he lived. Trotsky's height is 174 cm.

Leiba Davidovich Bronstein (Leo Trotsky) was born on October 25 (November 7), 1879, the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province, the Russian Empire(now Bereslavka, Kirovograd region, Ukraine).

Leon Trotsky is a revolutionary figure of the 20th century, the ideologist of Trotskyism, one of the currents of Marxism. Twice exiled under the monarchy, deprived of all civil rights in 1905.

One of the organizers October revolution 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.

In the first Soviet government - People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, then in 1918-1925 - People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, then the USSR. Since 1923 - the leader of the inner-party left opposition ("New Course"). Member of the Politburo of the CPSU (b) in 1919-1926.

In 1927 he was removed from all posts and sent into exile; in 1929 - exiled from the USSR. In 1932 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. After expulsion from the USSR - the creator and main theorist of the Fourth International (1938). Author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia (“Our Revolution”, “Revolution Betrayed”), creator of major historical works on the revolution of 1917 (“History of the Russian Revolution”), literary critical articles (“Literature and Revolution”) and autobiography “ My life" (1930).

Leon Trotsky was married twice, and his second wife remained with him until his last days. But at the end of his life, he was infatuated with another woman, the passion for which nearly drove him out of his mind.

His chosen one was the brightest Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, known for her stormy temperament.

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by NKVD agent R. Mercader in Mexico City (Mexico) and died the next day.

First wife - Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya (born 1872, shot in 1938). They were married in 1899-1902. Two daughters were born in the first marriage: Zinaida Volkova (born 1901, committed suicide in 1933) and Nina Bronstein (married Nevelson) (born 1902, died of tuberculosis in 1928).

The second wife is Natalya Ivanovna Sedova (April 5, 1882 - January 23, 1962). They were married in 1903-1940. Two sons were born in the second marriage: Lev Sedov (born 1906, died in 1938 after an operation, wife - Anna Samoilovna Ryabukhina, shot on January 8, 1938) and Sergey Sedov (born 1908, shot in the USSR in 1937, wife - Henrietta Rubinstein).

All four of Trotsky's children died from two marriages, as well as his first wife and sister, two nephews (sons of Olga's sister) and two sons-in-law (second husband of daughter Platon Volkov and first husband of sister Kamenev).

The sister of the second wife, Natalya Sedova, was repressed. Trotsky's daughter Nina Nevelson died of tuberculosis in 1928 during Trotsky's exile in Alma-Ata, and Trotsky himself was refused permission to visit her.

The second daughter - Zinaida Volkova - also contracted tuberculosis and received permission Soviet authorities travel to Berlin for treatment. In January 1933, after Germany demanded to leave the country immediately, she committed suicide in a state of depression.

Her husband Platon Volkov was shot on October 3, 1936 in Moscow in the case of Pavel and Valentin Olberg.

Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, an active Trotskyist and one of his father's closest aides during his Alma-Ata exile and after exile from the USSR, died after an operation in Paris in 1938 under suspicious circumstances. Trotsky dedicated an article to his son “Lev Sedov. Son, friend, fighter”, in which he actually blamed the “poisoners of the GPU” for his death.

Trotsky's other son, Sergei Sedov, refused to take part in political activity father. According to Trotsky himself, Sergei "turned his back on politics from the age of 12." During his father's exile, he visited him several times, during his exile he traveled with him to Odessa, but refused to leave the USSR.

On the night of March 3-4, 1935, Sergei Sedov was arrested on suspicion of having links with Kamenev's nephew L.B., Rosenfeld Boris Nikolaevich. In May 1935, Trotsky managed to get word of his son's arrest. Trotsky and Natalya Sedova tried to appeal to the international community, but to no avail, all their letters were ignored.

The version of the investigation that Sedov and Rosenfeld were preparing the assassination of Stalin was not confirmed, however, Sedov himself, by a decision of an extrajudicial body - a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR - in July 1935 was exiled to Krasnoyarsk for 5 years for "Trotskyist conversations."

By the time his son was expelled from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk, Trotsky was already in gradually increasing isolation from news from the USSR, and in his diary he noted only that letters from his son had stopped, “obviously, and he was expelled from Moscow.” In September, Sergey Sedov was hired as a specialist gas generator plant engineer at the Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant.

Already in May-June 1936, Sergei Sedov was arrested on charges of so-called "sabotage" and an attempt to allegedly "poison the workers with generator gas." According to the research of the historian Dmitry Volkogonov, the pretext for repression was an incident: the mechanic on duty B. Rogozov fell asleep, forgetting to turn off the gasifier tap, after which the workshop was filled with gas. In the morning, the workers ventilated the room, the incident did not cause any consequences. On October 29, 1937, Sergei Sedov was shot without pleading guilty and without giving any evidence.

Sergei Sedov's wife, Henrietta Rubinstein, was sentenced to 20 years in the camps, the couple had a daughter, Yulia (married Axelrod, born August 21, 1936, who emigrated to the United States in 1979, and to Israel in 2004).

By the time of the execution of his son, Trotsky's isolation from the events in the USSR became final: at least on August 24, 1938, he did not know about what had happened, believing that Sergei Sedov "disappeared without a trace."

Trotsky's sister and Kamenev's first wife L.B. - Olga - was expelled from Moscow in 1935. Both of her children (Trotsky's nephews) were shot in 1938-1939, Olga Trotskaya herself was shot in 1941.

The grandson of Leo Trotsky (the son of his eldest daughter Zinaida Volkova) is Vsevolod Platonovich Volkov (Seva, born March 7, 1926, Moscow) - later the Mexican chemist and Trotskyist Esteban Volkov Bronstein.

One of the four daughters of Vsevolod (great-granddaughter of L. D. Trotsky) - Nora D. Volkova (Nora D. Volkow, born March 27, 1956, Mexico City) is a well-known American psychiatrist, professor at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, since 2003 - director of the National Institute of Drug Addiction at the National Institutes of Health (USA).

Another daughter - Patricia Volkow-Fernández (Patricia Volkow-Fernández, born March 27, 1956, Mexico City) - Mexican doctor, author scientific research in the field of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

The eldest daughter - Veronica Volkow (Verónica Volkow, born 1955, Mexico City) is a well-known Mexican poetess and art critic.

Youngest daughter - Natalia Volkow (Natalia Volkow, or Natalia Volkow Fernández) - economist, deputy director for communications educational institutions Mexican National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics.

As for Trotsky's great-great-grandchildren, they currently live in three different countries: the son of Olga Bakhvalova Denis - in Moscow, several grandchildren of Vsevolod Volkov - in Mexico City, as well as three children of David Axelrod in Israel.

Predecessor:Nikolai Chkheidze Successor:

Grigory Zinoviev

	People's Commissar of the RSFSR for Foreign Affairs
November 8, 1917 - March 13, 1918

Predecessor:

post established

Successor:

Georgy Chicherin


September 6, 1918 - January 26, 1925

Predecessor:

post established

Successor:

Mikhail Frunze

	People's Commissar of the RSFSR - USSR for Military and Naval Affairs
August 29, 1918 - January 26, 1925

Predecessor:

Nikolai Podvoisky

Successor:

Mikhail Frunze

Name at birth:

Leiba Davidovich Bronstein

Aliases:

Feather, Antid Otho, L. Sedov, Old Man

Date of Birth: Place of Birth:

Yanovka village, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province, Russian Empire

Date of death: A place of death:

Mexico City, Mexico

Religion: Education: The consignment:

RSDLP → RCP(b) → VKP(b)

Key Ideas: Occupation:

party and state building, journalism

Awards and prizes:

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Bronstein)(October 26 (November 7, according to a new style) 1879, the Yanovka estate of the Kherson province of the Russian Empire (now the village of Bereslavka, Bobrynetsky district, Kirovograd region of Ukraine) - August 21, 1940, Mexico City, Mexico) - figure in the international communist revolutionary movement, one of the organizers, founder of one of the largest currents of Marxist thought -. First People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Soviet Russia(10/26/1917 - 04/08/1918), People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (April 8, 1918 - January 26, 1925). The first chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, then the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR (1918 - 1925).

Childhood and youth

He was the fifth child in the family of David Leontievich Bronstein and Anna (Anetta) Lvovna Bronstein (nee Zhivotovskaya). In 1879, the family moved from the Jewish agricultural colony Gromokley to the Yanovka estate, partly bought and partly rented from the widow of Colonel Yanovsky. In Yanovka in the same year, the son of Leib, Leo, was born, and in 1883, the youngest daughter, Olga. Leo had an older brother, Alexander (b. 1870) and a sister, Elizabeth (b. 1875). In total, eight children were born in the Bronstein family, but four children died in childhood from various diseases.

As a child, he was sent to study at a Jewish religious school (cheder), but he did not show a great desire for learning there, he did not really learn Hebrew. But early on he learned to read and write in Russian, as a child he became addicted to writing poetry (not preserved). In 1888 he was sent by his parents to study in Odessa, in the real school of St. Paul. He studied with honors, "all the time he was the first student." He was an impressionable child. Read a lot since childhood fiction, both European and Russian (favorite domestic author -). As a student of the second grade, he tried to publish a handwritten magazine - only one issue was made, almost completely prepared by himself.

His uncle M. F. Shpentzer (father of the once quite famous poetess Vera Inber), a journalist, and then the owner of a printing house and publishing house, contributed a lot to the fact that Trotsky, in his early youth, was already seriously “sick” with writing: as a process of writing a book or articles, and delivery to the press, typing, proofreading, the operation of the printing press, a heated discussion of upcoming and newly published books - the love of journalism and the printed word remained for life.

Start of political activity

In 1896, Trotsky went to finish his studies (the seventh grade of a real school) in Nikolaev, where his introduction to political life began: he was a member of a kind of political circle, which consisted, in his words, of "visiting students, former exiles and local youth." There were heated discussions in the circle. The young Trotsky, who took an ardent part in them, possessed, according to I. Deutscher, "a wonderful gift for bluffing" - he could get involved in a dispute and lead it with dignity, without really knowing the subject of the dispute. This does not mean that this state of affairs suited Trotsky: he greedily pounces on political literature, at first he does not even read books, but “swallows” them. However, the members of the circle study the most interesting things together. Create a circle for the distribution of literature "Redspring". In 1896-97. Trotsky at first leans not towards Marxism, but towards.

Parents learn about Trotsky's new acquaintances (from Nikolaev to Yanovka not so far), and after a stormy explanation, Trotsky declares his independence and refuses material assistance. For several months, Trotsky lives in the "commune" created by the members of the circle. He earns money by tutoring. The members of the commune rush from one project to another: having failed in the dissemination of literature, they try to create a "university on the basis of mutual learning", then they try to write a grandiose political sounding play, which, despite the large amount of time and effort expended, was never brought to fruition. end.

Having reconciled with his parents, Trotsky thought about entering the mathematical faculty of the Novorossiysk University (located in Odessa), but revolutionary work became the activity that really occupied him in Nikolaev. The result of the acquaintance of the members of the "commune" with the electrical worker Mukhin, who was engaged in the propaganda of revolutionary ideas under the guise of a return to true Christianity, is the creation of the group "". According to Trotsky, it all started rather spontaneously:

It was like this: I was walking along the street with the youngest member of our commune, Grigory Sokolovsky, a young man of about my age. "We ought to start all the same," I said. "We must begin," Sokolovsky answered. "But how?" "That's right: how? - We must find workers, do not wait for anyone, do not ask anyone, but find workers and start." "I think you can find it," Sokolovsky said.
Sokolovsky that same day went to the boulevard to the bible. That hasn't been for a long time. There was a woman, and this woman had an acquaintance, also a sectarian. Through this acquaintance of a woman unknown to us, Sokolovsky on the same day met several workers, among whom was the electrical engineer Ivan Andreevich Mukhin, who soon became the main figure in the organization. Sokolovsky returned from the search with burning eyes. "Here it is people so people!"

The young organization has a success that is unexpected even for its creators:

The workers came to us by gravity, as if they had been waiting for us at the factories for a long time. Everyone brought a friend, some came with their wives, a few elderly workers entered circles with their sons. We were not looking for workers, but they were looking for us. Young and inexperienced leaders, we soon began to choke on the movement we had called forth.

According to Trotsky's close friend, Dr. G. A. Ziva, during the years of work in the "South Russian Workers' Union" Trotsky departs from the ideas of populism - "only genuine social democracy." (Ziv G. A. Trotsky. Characteristics (According to personal recollections)

Arrest and exile

On January 28, 1898, Trotsky and other organizers of the "Union" were arrested. He himself later wrote about this: “There was no serious conspiracy in our organization. We were all quickly arrested. The provocateur Schrenzel betrayed. From the Nikolaev prison, Trotsky was transferred to Odessa, and from there to Kherson. By the end of 1899, those arrested in the case of the "South Russian Union" without trial, "in an administrative order" were sentenced: 4 years of exile in Eastern Siberia. Before the exile, they had to spend several more months in the Butyrka transit prison, where Trotsky marries a woman close to him in the "commune" and the "Union" - Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya.

The place of exile - the village of Ust-Kut on the Lena River (nowadays - a city in the Irkutsk region), also lived on the Ilim River, later moved to Verkholensk. Shortly after his arrival, Trotsky begins to contribute to the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozrenie, whose editor at the time was a former exiled Narodnaya Volya member. Takes a literary pseudonym Antid Oto (from the Italian "antidoto", which means "antidote"). In the Ust-Kut exile, Trotsky gets acquainted with and. Trotsky spends two years in exile, during which time two daughters are born to him and Sokolovskaya.

Escape and work in Iskra

In the summer of 1902, news reached the exiles about a new upsurge in the revolutionary movement, about the creation of a Marxist newspaper abroad, and also that several Siberian articles by Trotsky got into the editorial office of Iskra and evoked favorable reviews. Trotsky (then, of course, still Bronstein) decides to escape from exile and by all means get to the center of the revolutionary movement. In exile, he leaves his wife with two young daughters. In Irkutsk, friends give the fugitive decent clothes and a blank passport, where he enters his new name: Trotsky.

It is known that such a surname was worn by the jailer in the Odessa prison, where those arrested in the case of the "South Russian Union" served about a year and a half - a domineering, stately and self-satisfied man. Why the young Bronstein chose this particular surname is not exactly known.

Trotsky's first stop was in Samara. There he spends about a week with, who at that time led the Russian "headquarters" of Iskra. Krzhizhanovsky accepts Trotsky into an organization that still exists unofficially and gives the young journalist the conspiratorial nickname "Pero". On the instructions of Krzhizhanovsky, Trotsky makes a trip to Ukraine, with the aim of meeting with the Ukrainian "Iskrists" and trying to attract to the organization revolutionaries who did not stand on the "Iskra" positions - in this respect, according to Trotsky, the trip gave almost nothing. From there comes an order to send Trotsky to the editorial office of Iskra, in London. Illegally (with smugglers) having crossed the Austrian border, Trotsky through Vienna (where the head of the Austrian Social Democrats helps him with money for the further journey) and Zurich (where he meets him) arrives in October 1902 London and from the station goes straight to Lenin. meets him with the words: - The pen has arrived!

As early as November 1902, an article by Trotsky appeared in Iskra. On the advice of Lenin, Trotsky begins to give lectures, first in London, and then on the continent - in Brussels, Zurich, Paris. In Paris (in 1903) Trotsky met with his parents, who had come from Russia especially for this purpose. His parents promise him financial support for his family remaining in Russia and, if necessary, for himself. In Paris, Trotsky meets Natalya Ivanovna Sedova, a student from Russia, expelled for reading forbidden literature from the Kharkov Institute for Noble Maidens and studying art history at the Sorbonne. Sedova recalled their first meeting as follows:

The autumn of 1902 was full of essays in the Russian colony of Paris. The Iskra group, to which I belonged, first saw Martov, then Lenin. There was a struggle with the "Economists" and with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In our group, they talked about the arrival of a young comrade who had escaped from exile ... The performance was very successful, the colony was delighted, the young Iskra-born exceeded expectations.

Subsequently, Sedova would become Trotsky's wife.

At Lenin's suggestion, in March 1903, Trotsky was accepted into the editorial board of Iskra with the right of an advisory vote. The editorial board at that time included six people: three "old men" (,), and three "young" (Lenin,). The sympathies of the 23-year-old revolutionary are more likely on the side of the “old people” - he admires Vera Zasulich, who was already a “living legend” then (she repays him in return), highly appreciates the scholarship of P. B. Axelrod, and only relations with Plekhanov do not add up - recognized authority in revolutionary movement I am inclined to consider the young revolutionary an upstart and a creature of Lenin.

A few months later, on where Trotsky represented, a gap occurred between Lenin and Trotsky. The “external” reason was in the personalities: Trotsky could not agree with Lenin’s proposal to reduce the composition of the editorial board of Iskra by excluding less active members from it (although Trotsky personally would have benefited from this). Trotsky would later write about this:

It was only a question of placing Axelrod and Zasulich outside the editorial office of Iskra. My attitude towards both of them was imbued not only with respect, but also with personal tenderness. Lenin also held them in high esteem for their past. But he came to the conclusion that they are increasingly becoming a hindrance to the future. And he made an organizational conclusion: to eliminate them from leadership positions. I couldn't put up with this. My whole being protested against this ruthless cutting off of old people who had finally reached the threshold of the party. It was from this indignation that I broke with Lenin at the Second Congress. His behavior seemed unacceptable, terrible, outrageous to me. Meanwhile, it was politically correct and, consequently, organizationally necessary.

Revolution of 1905 and further struggle against the party

Trotsky met the revolution of 1905 with the notorious theory of "permanent" revolution. It was the theory of the disarmament of the proletariat, the demobilization of its forces. After the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Trotsky supported the Menshevik liquidators. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote the following about Trotsky:

"Trotsky behaved like the meanest careerist and factionalist... He talks about the party, but behaves worse than all other factionalists."

Trotsky was, as you know, the organizer of the August *anti-revolutionary* Menshevik bloc of all groups and trends that opposed Lenin.

Trotsky met the imperialist war that began in August 1914, as one would expect, on the other side of the barricades - in the camp of the defenders of the imperialist slaughter. He covered up his betrayal of the proletariat with "Left" phrases about fighting the war, phrases calculated to deceive the working class. On all the most important questions of the war and socialism, Trotsky spoke out against Lenin, against the Bolshevik Party.

The ever-increasing strength of the influence of the Bolsheviks on the working class, on the soldier masses after the February bourgeois-democratic revolution, the enormous popularity of Lenin's slogans among the masses of the people, the Menshevik Trotsky regarded in his own way. He joined our party in July 1917, along with a group of his like-minded people, declaring that he had "disarmed" to the end.

Subsequent events showed, however, that the Menshevik Trotsky did not disarm, did not for a moment stop fighting against Lenin, and entered our party in order to blow it up from within.

Already a few months after the Great October Revolution in the spring of 1918, Trotsky, together with a group of so-called "Left" Communists and Left Social Revolutionaries, organized a villainous conspiracy against Lenin, seeking to arrest and physically destroy the leaders of the proletariat, Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov. As always, Trotsky himself - a provocateur, an organizer of murderers, an intriguer and an adventurer - remains in the shadows. His leading role in the preparation of this atrocity, fortunately unsuccessful, is fully revealed only two decades later, at the trial of the anti-Soviet "Right-Trotskyist bloc" in March 1938. Only twenty years later, the dirty tangle of crimes of Trotsky and his henchmen was finally unraveled.

In the years civil war When the country of the Soviets repulsed the onslaught of numerous hordes of White Guards and interventionists, Trotsky, with his treacherous actions and wrecking orders, in every possible way weakened the strength of the resistance of the Red Army, as a result of which he was forbidden by Lenin to visit the Eastern and Southern fronts. It is a well-known fact that Trotsky, due to his hostile attitude towards the old Bolshevik cadres, tried to shoot a number of responsible front-line communists who were objectionable to him, thus acting into the hands of the enemy.

At the same trial of the anti-Soviet "Right-Trotskyist bloc" the whole treacherous path of Trotsky was revealed to the whole world: the defendants in this trial, the closest associates of Trotsky, admitted that they, and together with them and their boss Trotsky, had already been agents of foreign intelligence agencies were international spies. They, headed by Trotsky, zealously served the intelligence services and the general staffs of England, France, Germany, and Japan.

When in 1929 the Soviet government expelled the counter-revolutionary, the traitor Trotsky, from our homeland, the capitalist circles of Europe and America embraced him. It was no accident. It was natural. For Trotsky had long since passed into the service of the exploiters of the working class.

Trotsky has become entangled in his own nets, having reached the limit of human fall. He was killed by his own supporters. It was the very terrorists whom he taught about murder from around the corner, betrayal and atrocities against the working class, against the country of the Soviets, who did away with him. Trotsky, who organized the villainous murder of Kirov, Kuibyshev, M. Gorky, became a victim of his own intrigues, betrayals, betrayals, atrocities.

So ingloriously ended his life this despicable man, descending into the grave with the seal of an international spy and murderer on his forehead.

Compositions

Year	Name	First publication	Text
1900	"An inconspicuous, but very important cog in the state machine"	"Eastern Review" N 230, October 15, 1900
1900	Something about the philosophy of the "superman"	"Eastern Review" NN 284, 286, 287, 289, 22, 24, 25, December 30, 1900	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1900	Something about land	"Eastern Review" N 285, December 23, 1900	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	"Old house"	"Eastern Review" N 10, January 14, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	"Tear-off" calendar as a culture tracker	"Eastern Review" N 19, January 25, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Herzen and the "young generation"	"Messenger World History"N 2, January 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	About one old question	"Eastern Review" N 33 - 34, February 14 - 15, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	About pessimism, optimism, the 20th century and much more	"Eastern Review" N 36, February 17, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	"Declaration of Rights" and "Velvet Book"	"Eastern Review" NN 56, 57, 13, 14 March 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	About Balmont	"Eastern Review" N 61, March 18, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Ordinary village ( Unsaid words about the village in general, etc.)	"Eastern Review" N 70, March 29, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Hauptmann's last drama and comments on it by Struve	"Eastern Review", NN 99, 102, 5, May 9, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Ordinary village ( More about "district" medicine, etc.)	"Eastern Review" N 117, May 30, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	About Ibsen	"Eastern Review" NN 121, 122, 126, 3, 4, June 9, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Penitentiary ideals and humane prison outlook	"Eastern Review" NN 135, 136, 20, 21 June 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	We are ripe	"Eastern Review" N 154, July 13, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	New times - new songs	"Eastern Review" NN 162, 164, 165, 22, 25, July 26, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Ordinary village ( Belated preface, etc.)	"Eastern Review" N 173 - 176, August 4 - 9, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Two writer's souls in the grip of a metaphysical demon	"Eastern Review" N 189, August 25, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	The "illiberal" moment of "liberal" relations	"Eastern Review" N 194, September 2, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	Poetry, the machine and the poetry of the machine	"Eastern Review" N 197, September 8, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	ordinary rustic	"Eastern Review" N 212, September 26, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	S. F. Sharapov and German farmers	"Eastern Review" N 225, October 13, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	"Russian Darwin"	"Eastern Review" N 251, November 14, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	N. A. Dobrolyubov And "Whistle"	"Eastern Review" N 253, November 17, 1901	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1901	History of literature, Mr. Boborykin and Russian criticism	?	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1902	Something about the "freedom of creative spasm"	"Eastern Review" N 8, January 10, 1902	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1904	political letters. "Before the Disaster"	"Iskra" N 75, October 5, 1904	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1904	political letters. Foundation for Public Education, etc.		in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov
1904	The Appearance of the Liberals to the People	"Iskra" N 76, October 20, 1904	in the library of Oleg Kolesnikov

Biographies

Vasetsky N. A. Trotsky. An experience political biography. - M.: Respublika, 1992. ISBN 5-250-01159-4
Volkogonov D. A. Trotsky / Political portrait. - In two books. - M .: JSC "Publishing House" Novosti ", 1994. ISBN 5-7020-0216-4
Deutscher I. Trotsky. Armed Prophet. 1879-1921 - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. ISBN 5-9524-2147-4
Deutscher I. Trotsky. Unarmed prophet. 1921-1929 - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. ISBN 5-9524-2155-5
Deutscher I. Trotsky. Exiled prophet. 1929-1940 - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. ISBN 5-9524-2157-1
Ziv G. A. Trotsky: Characteristics (according to personal recollections). New York: People's Rights, 1921
David King. Trotsky. Biography in photo documents. - Yekaterinburg: "SV-96", 2000. ISBN 5-89516-100-6
Paporov Yu. N. Trotsky. The murder of the "big entertainer" - St. Petersburg: ID "Neva", 2005. ISBN 5-7654-4399-0
“Was there an alternative?”: “Trotskyism – a look through the years”, “Power and opposition”, “Stalin’s neo-onep”, “1937”, “Party of the executed”, “World Revolution and World War"," The end means the beginning ".
Startsev V. I. L. D. Trotsky. Pages of political biography. - M.: Knowledge, 1989. ISBN 5-07-000955-9
Chernyavsky G. I. Lev Trotsky - M .: Young Guard, 2010. ISBN 978-5-235-03369-6
Isaac Don Levine. The Mind of an Assassin, New York, New American Library/Signet Book, 1960.
Dave Renton. Trotsky, 2004.
Leon Trotsky: the Man and His Work. Reminiscences and Appraisals, ed. Joseph Hansen. New York, Merit Publishers, 1969.
The Unknown Lenin, ed. Richard Pipes, Yale University Press (1996) ISBN 0-300-06919-7

Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on October 26, 1879 in Yanovka in Ukraine. He first got acquainted with socialist ideas in 1896, when he attended the last class of a real school in Nikolaev. Bronstein's interest in Marxism was aroused by Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya, who became his first wife. For the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union group, the couple were arrested in 1898 and exiled to Irkutsk for four years.

In Irkutsk, he and Alexandra were part of a group of Marxists that formed around the Iskra newspaper. In September 1902, Trotsky fled from exile, arrived in London in October and immediately established contact with Lenin.

When escaping from Siberia, Lev Davidovich used false documents in the name of Trotsky, which became known thanks to his articles in Iskra and public lectures. In 1903, at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in London, he broke with Lenin and joined the Mensheviks. Trotsky disagreed with Lenin's "Jacobinism" and his concept of an authoritarian party organization. After " bloody sunday» January 9, 1905, followed by a revolutionary upsurge, he returned to his homeland and participated in the activities of the first councils in St. Petersburg.

Trotsky played a leading role in the revolution of 1905, led the October general strike and the uprising that followed, and was arrested in December. While in prison, he wrote the book Results and Prospects - a pamphlet analyzing the revolution of 1905 from the point of view of the theory of "permanent revolution". According to this theory, a world socialist revolution can also begin in a backward country like Russia, but the revolutionary movement here will succeed if “socialist” measures are taken (such as the nationalization of banks and heavy industry), “democratic” tasks are solved (for example, division of land between peasants or the establishment of a new representative body - a constituent assembly). At the trial, he turned his defense into an accusation of tsarism. Subsequently escaped from exile.

In October 1907, Trotsky and his second wife and son settled in Vienna. Trotsky wrote extensively for the German and Austrian socialist press. In 1908 he began to publish in Vienna the Russian-language newspaper Pravda, which was widely distributed in Russia, primarily in St. Petersburg, by volunteer workers.

In 1914, Trotsky published in Switzerland the pamphlet War and the International, in which he exposed the "surrender" of the European Social Democratic leaders and called for the formation of a socialist United States of Europe. After moving to Paris, he wrote articles about military operations for the Kiev press, and also published the daily newspaper Nashe Slovo. In 1915 he took part in the Zimmerwald Conference - the germ of the future 3rd International - and became the main author of its manifesto. In 1916 he was expelled from France to Spain, where he was imprisoned and deported again. On January 13, 1917, Trotsky and his family arrived in New York, where he actively supported the left wing of the US Socialist Party and, together with N.I. Bukharin, published the Russian-language newspaper “ New world”, in which he welcomed the February Revolution of 1917. On the way home, he was abducted by the British secret service and interned; released only after the Petrograd Soviet forced the Provisional Government to demand his release.

At the end of May 1917, Trotsky arrived in Petrograd and joined the Interdistrict Organization of United Social Democrats (mezhraiontsy), but the ideological and political preponderance turned out to be on the side of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky himself, too, soon became one of the main Bolshevik leaders and gained wide popularity as an orator. Imprisoned after the July riots in Petrograd, he was released after the defeat of the Kornilov rebellion and later elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. While in this key post, he played a decisive role in the October Revolution. It was he who put forward the idea to call the new Soviet government the Soviet People's Commissars. He himself became People's Commissar (People's Commissar) for Foreign Affairs.

In December 1917, Trotsky led the Soviet delegation at the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk. He dragged out the negotiations, hoping for an early revolution in Central Europe, and over the heads of the negotiators addressed calls for an uprising to the “workers in military uniform» Germany and Austria. When the Germans decided to dictate harsh peace terms, Trotsky spoke out against Lenin, who advocated peace at any cost, but did not support Bukharin, who called for " revolutionary war". Instead, he put forward the slogan "no war, no peace", i.e. called for an end to the war, but proposed not to conclude a peace treaty.

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In March 1918, Trotsky took the post of military commissar and took an active part in the creation of the Red Army and the civil war of 1918-1921. At the end of 1920, Lenin instructed him to lead the work to restore the completely destroyed transport system in Russia. Trotsky proposed to introduce at all railways rigid discipline like military. The militarization also affected the trade union of railway workers and transport workers. In the winter of 1920-1921, the "question of trade unions" became the subject of heated debate; Lenin opposed Trotsky's guidelines, supported by Zinoviev and Stalin.

In 1922, Lenin sought an alliance with Trotsky in the fight against the danger of bureaucratization of the party, of which Stalin was elected general secretary. Trotsky agreed with Lenin's proposal, but met with opposition from the "troika" - Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, and in response to Lenin's request to assume the formal duties of his personal representative, put forward the argument that his rise could provoke anti-Semitic attacks on the Soviet regime.

Convinced that the Russian Revolution would succeed only if the industrialized nations joined in Western Europe, Trotsky worked closely with the German Communist Party to prepare an uprising, which he intended to support with all the might of the Red Army. In October 1923, the "troika" used its control functions in the International and at the very last moment came out for the abolition of the uprising. The failure of the "German October" plan led to a crisis within the CPSU(b).

In an atmosphere of economic difficulties and social tensions, discussions about inner-party democracy were launched. Trotsky and the so-called "Old Bolsheviks" who signed a special manifesto vigorously advocated its restoration. In response, the "troika" condemned Trotsky and the "Moscow opposition" for being "factional". The 13th Party Conference, which ended the debate, was preceded by a series of party election fraud and bureaucratic manipulation. Appearing as a fully organized faction, the apparatus—despite representing only a minority of party members—virtually prevented the opposition from participating in the conference, which was denounced as a "Menshevik deviation."

When Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Trotsky was not in Moscow. After delaying his return to attend the funeral with a false telegram, Stalin used the funeral ceremony to nominate himself as Lenin's heir and asserted his position as leader by proclaiming "Lenin's Testament" for the urgent admission of 100,000 new members to the party who could become obedient instruments of the apparatus. Trotsky did not sanction the proposal of his supporters in the Red Army to stage a coup and remove Stalin and Zinoviev, but he himself was soon removed from the post of military commissar.

In 1925, Stalin and the party apparatus, supported by Bukharin and the “rightists” in the party, opposed Zinoviev and his ally Kamenev. After that, he defeated the "new opposition", and Zinoviev announced his secret struggle against Trotsky. Then in 1926 Trotsky hastened his allies to unite with former enemies to form a "united opposition".

The authority of the opposition was given by several thousand "old Bolsheviks" - veterans of the underground struggle, revolution and civil war. It consisted of a significant number of the most prominent theorists and political leaders of the party. Signed by 13 members of the Central Committee in April 1926, the Declaration contained a program emphasizing the need to restore democracy and develop a political course to improve the living conditions of the working class and accelerate industrialization. It called for the release of the parties of the Comintern from the influence of Stalin's paralyzing doctrine of "socialism in one country", which turned them into "border guards" of the beleaguered Soviet regime.

In the spring of 1927, the opposition revived after the failure of Stalin's policy towards China (despite warnings from Trotsky and Zinoviev, Stalin forced the Chinese Communists to submit completely to Chiang Kai-shek).

However, Stalin made a loud scandal in connection with the penetration of a former White Guard officer (actually an agent of the GPU) into the ranks of the opposition. Trotsky managed to organize street demonstrations, a large public rally at Moscow University, and even print and distribute the Opposition Platform, but on October 23, 1927, Stalin called for him to be expelled from the party. Despite the sympathy of students and workers for Trotsky, police repression prevented attempts by the opposition to organize mass demonstrations on November 7, 1927 in honor of the 10th anniversary of the revolution. In December, Trotsky made his last public speech at the funeral of his friend A. A. Ioffe, who, being terminally ill, committed suicide in protest against Stalinism. In January 1928 Trotsky was forcibly deported to Alma-Ata. In the summer of 1928 Trotsky and other opposition leaders managed to send a letter to the Congress of the Comintern. On February 12, 1929, he was again deported, this time to Turkey.

In Turkey, Trotsky published two great works - the autobiography My Life and the three-volume History of the Russian Revolution. But his main task in those years was the mobilization of the left forces in Germany against the growing Nazi danger. Trotsky's calls for unity in the fight against the Nazis were rejected by both the Stalinists and the leaders of the German Social Democracy, who saw enemies primarily in each other. Hitler's victory in February 1933 was immediately regarded by Trotsky as the biggest defeat of the international workers' movement. He concluded that the Comintern was incapacitated because of Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the formation of a 4th International.

In July 1933, the new French government, headed by Edouard Daladier, granted Trotsky a secret asylum in France. But in February 1934 his whereabouts were discovered by the Nazis and intense pressure from Germany led to his deportation from France. However, only a year later the French managed to find a country ready to accept the exile. In 1935, the new Labor government of Norway granted Trotsky asylum. In Norway, he wrote his most significant work, The Revolution Betrayed.

In August 1936, the first of the show trials staged by the security services opened in Moscow, at which Stalin slandered Trotsky as an agent of Hitler. Yielding to pressure, the Norwegian Minister of Justice, Trygve Lie, interned Trotsky and declared that his presence in the country was undesirable. In December 1936, President L. Cardenas granted him asylum in Mexico, where he arrived on January 9, 1937, settling in Coyoacan as a guest of Diego Rivera.

In April 1937, the International Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Moscow Trials, headed by J. Dewey, worked here. Trotsky's testimonies contained a full account of his revolutionary ideas and a description of his career as a revolutionary, and also refuted the slander about collaboration with the Nazis. The Dewey Commission published a summary of these hearings under the title The Case of Leon Trotsky, and in 1938 issued an opinion on the case under the title Not Guilty!

In February 1938, Trotsky, André Breton and Diego Rivera issued a manifesto Toward a Free Revolutionary Art, which put forward the slogan: “Independence of art for the revolution. Revolution - for the complete liberation of art! At this very time, Lev Sedov, Trotsky's son and his assistant, was killed in Paris by Stalin's agents. Trotsky did not stop trying to create the 4th International, whose manifesto (called by Trotsky the Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International) became known as the Program of Transitional Demands. Trotsky was mortally wounded by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader and died in Coyoacan on August 21, 1940.

Leon Trotsky was born in 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province. He was the fifth child in a classical Jewish family.

Leo was educated first in Odessa, and then in Nikolaev, where he became a member of the local Marxist circle. After graduating from the Nikolaev real school, he entered the Novorossiysk University.

Beginning of revolutionary work

In 1897 he participated in the organization of the workers' union. In 1898 he went to prison for the first time. Was convicted for revolutionary activity and expelled.

First emigration to London

In 1902, he managed to escape abroad on false documents. In exile, he closely collaborated with V. Lenin, O. Martov, G. Plekhanov, either taking the side of the "old guard" led by the latter, or taking the side of the young members of the RSDLP led by V. Lenin.

Trotsky in 1905-1907

In 1905, Lev Davydovich illegally returned to Russia and headed the work of the Petrograd Soviet. In 1906 he was detained, sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia and deprived of all civil rights, but on the way to exile he again managed to escape.

Second emigration

According to short biography Trotsky Lev Davydovich, during the second emigration (1906-1917) Trotsky traveled a lot. He lived in Vienna, Zurich, Paris, New York (the United States made a great impression on Trotsky).

He published various newspapers, was a freelance correspondent for the newspaper, covering events in the East and Western fronts First World War.

Trotsky after the 17th year

In 1917, Trotsky returned to Russia and immediately became a member of the Petrograd Soviet, which was in opposition to the Provisional Government. For his activities in promoting Bolshevism, he ended up in prison, from where he left after the failure of the Kornilov rebellion. He immediately became a member of the Central Committee, head of the Petrosoviet and a member of the faction from the RSDLP in the Constituent Assembly. In fact, he was the second person in the state and the leading organizer of the October Revolution (as I. Stalin pointed out in his memoirs).

From 1917 to 1918 he served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, from 1918 to 1924 he was People's Commissar of the Navy. In 1919, he took part in the organization of the Comintern, and also became a member of the first Politburo of the Central Committee.

power struggle

Since 1922, Trotsky began an active struggle for political primacy. I. Stalin, M. Zinoviev and D. Kamenev are against him. In 1924, immediately after the death of Lenin, Trotsky was dismissed from the post of People's Commissar for the Navy (M. Frunze was appointed).

In 1924-1925. Trotsky was almost completely removed from business, but in 1927 he united with M. Zinoviev and D. Kamenev against Stalin. The activity of the "new opposition" was a failure. In the same year, Trotsky was expelled from the Comintern.

In 1928-1929, he was actually in exile in Alma-Ata, from where he was expelled from the country.

Last emigration

Since 1929, Trotsky was engaged in literary work. They wrote several monographs on the history of the Russian revolution. In 1938 he announced the creation of the Fourth International.

It is known that Trotsky took the archive with him into exile, the content of the documents of which largely compromised Stalin. That is why in 1940 Trotsky, who lived at that time in Mexico, was killed by the NKVD officer Ramon Markeder. The USSR officially "disowned" involvement in the murder, Markeder was put in a Mexican prison for 20 years, but after his release he moved to the USSR, where he received the title of Hero of the USSR and was awarded the Order of Lenin.

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The surname "Trotsky" was entered into the first false passport of Lev Davydovich when he fled abroad in 1902. Interestingly, the real "owner" of this surname was the warden of the Odessa prison.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Davidovich Bronstein; October 26, 1879, Yanovka farm, Kherson province, Russian Empire - August 22, 1940, Villa Coyacana, Mexico) - figure in the international workers' and communist movement, Marxist theorist, ideologist of one of its currents - Trotskyism. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917 and one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In the Soviet government - People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs; in 1918–1925 - People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, then the USSR. Member of the Politburo of the CPSU(b) in 1919-1926.

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From the family of a wealthy colonist, he was educated at the Nikolaev real school. He joined a circle of revolutionary-minded youth, who tried to conduct propaganda among the workers. Together with the Sokolovsky brothers, in 1897 he formed the Social Democratic South Russian Workers' Union. Arrested in January 1898. He spent about 2 years in prison, after which he was sentenced to 4 years in the settlement. Initially, he served the link in the village of Ust-Kutsky (since August 1900), from February 1901 - in Nizhneilimsky, then in Verkholensk, Irkutsk province. Here L.D. Trotsky actively studied Marxism, studied literary activity. The newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye published his articles under the pseudonym Antid Oto.

In February 1902 L.D. Trotsky arrived in , where he delivered a lecture to the local Social Democrats, and in August, with the help of the Siberian Social Democratic Union, he fled to Samara. In , before entering the train car, he entered the name Trotsky on a blank passport form.

In the autumn of the same year he went to V.I. Lenin in London. After January 9, 1905, he returned to Russia, joined the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, and then, after the arrest of G. S. Nosar (Khrustalev), was elected its chairman. In December 1905 he was arrested and in October 1906 exiled to Obdorsk, Tobolsk province, but fled to Finland from the road.

In 1907-1917 he tried to distance himself from both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, taking his own position on issues socialist revolution. On September 25, 1917, at the suggestion of the Bolsheviks, he was again elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, took an active part in preparing the coup, and was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee.

After the October Revolution, L.D. Trotsky was People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Communications, Military and Naval Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. He was a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), took part in a number of all-Russian discussions. In November 1927 he was expelled from the party, in 1928 he was expelled from Moscow, and a year later from the country. Abroad L.D. Trotsky continued to fight against Stalin. Organizer of the IV International (1938). Last years spent his life in Mexico. On August 19, 1940, he was mortally wounded by GPU agent R. Mercader.

Irkutsk. Historical and local lore dictionary. - Irkutsk, 2011

Trotsky in Siberia

Almost two years at the very beginning of the 20th century, Trotsky spent in exile in the Irkutsk province (his daughters were born here). It was on the Irkutsk land that Leiba Bronstein, thinking before escaping, what name to enter in the handed over false passport, remembering his prison guard, entered in the passport: "Trotsky". In Irkutsk, through which he fled (to Samara), his comrades brought him a suitcase with underwear, a tie, and, as he put it, " other attributes of civilization". In the book" My life. The experience of autobiography" he recalled:

Biography

Childhood and youth

Leiba Bronstein was born the fifth child in the family of David Leontievich Bronstein (1843-1922) and his wife Anna (Annetta) Lvovna Bronstein (nee Zhivotovskaya) - wealthy landowners from among the Jewish colonists of an agricultural farm near the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (now the village of Bereslavka Bobrinetsky district of the Kirovohrad region, Ukraine). Leon Trotsky's parents came from the Poltava province. As a child, he spoke Ukrainian and Russian, and not the then widespread Yiddish. He studied at St. Paul's School in Odessa, where he was the first student in all disciplines. During the years of study in Odessa (1889-1895), Leon Trotsky lived and was brought up in the family of his cousin (on the maternal side), the owner of the printing house and scientific publishing house "Mathesis" Moses Filippovich Shpentzer and his wife Fanny Solomonovna, the parents of the poetess Vera Inber.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

In 1896, in Nikolaev, Lev Bronstein participated in a circle, together with other members of which he conducted revolutionary propaganda. In 1897, he participated in the founding of the South Russian Workers' Union. January 28, 1898 was first arrested. In the Odessa prison, where Trotsky spent 2 years, he becomes a Marxist. “A decisive influence,” he said on this occasion, “two studies by Antonio Labriola on the materialistic understanding of history had on me. Only after this book did I move on to Beltov and Capital. The appearance of his pseudonym Trotsky dates back to the same time, it was the name of the local jailer who impressed the young Lyova (he would write it in his fake passport after escaping). In 1898, in prison, he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who was one of the leaders of the Union. Since 1900, he was in exile in the Irkutsk province, where he established contact with Iskra agents and, on the recommendation of G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, who gave him the nickname "Pen" for his obvious literary gift, was invited to cooperate in Iskra. In 1902 he fled from exile abroad; “at random” entered the name Trotsky in a fake passport, after the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison.

Arriving in London to Lenin, Trotsky became permanent employee newspapers, spoke with essays at meetings of emigrants and quickly gained fame. A. V. Lunacharsky wrote about the young Trotsky:

“... Trotsky struck the foreign audience with his eloquence, education, significant for a young man, and aplomb. ... They didn’t take him very seriously because of his youth, but everyone resolutely recognized his outstanding oratorical talent and, of course, felt that this was not a chicken, but an eagle.”

First emigration

Insoluble conflicts in the editorial board of Iskra between the “old men” (G. V. Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod, V. I. Zasulich) and the “young” (V. I. Lenin, Yu. O. Martov and A. N. . Potresov) prompted Lenin to propose Trotsky as the seventh member of the editorial board; however, supported by all members of the editorial board, Trotsky was voted down by Plekhanov in an ultimatum form.

At the II Congress of the RSDLP, in the summer of 1903, he supported Lenin so ardently that D. Ryazanov dubbed him "Lenin's club." However, the new composition of the editorial board proposed by Lenin: Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov - the exclusion of Axelrod and Zasulich from it prompted Trotsky to go over to the side of the offended minority and criticize Lenin's organizational plans.

In 1903, in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova (this marriage was not registered, since Trotsky never divorced A. L. Sokolovskaya).

In 1904, when serious political differences emerged between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, Trotsky moved away from the Mensheviks and became close to A. L. Parvus, who fascinated him with the theory of "permanent revolution". At the same time, like Parvus, he advocated the unification of the party, believing that the impending revolution would smooth out many contradictions.
Revolution of 1905-1907.

In 1905, Trotsky illegally returned to Russia with Natalia Sedova. He was one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, joined its Executive Committee. Formally, G. S. Khrustalev-Nosar was the chairman of the Council, but in fact the Council was led by Parvus and Trotsky; after the arrest of Khrustalev on November 26, 1905. The Executive Committee of the Soviet officially elected Trotsky chairman; but on December 3 he was arrested along with a large group of deputies. In 1906, at the widely publicized trial of the St. Petersburg Soviet, he was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights. On the way to Obdorsk (now Salekhard) he fled from Berezov.

Second emigration

In 1908-1912, he published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (in 1912 the Bolsheviks founded their own newspaper Pravda with the same name, which caused much controversy). Trotsky recalled in 1923:

« During several years of my stay in Vienna, I came into fairly close contact with the Freudians, read their works and even attended their meetings at that time.».

In 1914-1915 he published the daily newspaper Nashe Slovo in Paris.

In September 1915 he took part in the work of the Zimmerwald Conference together with Lenin and Martov.

In 1916 he was expelled from France to Spain, from where he was already deported by the Spanish authorities to the United States, where he continued his publicistic activities.

Return to Russia

Right after February Revolution Trotsky headed from America to Russia, but along the way, in the Canadian port of Halifax, along with his family, he was removed from the ship by the British authorities and sent to an internment camp for sailors of the German merchant fleet. The reason for the detention was the lack of Russian documents (Trotsky had an American passport issued personally by President Woodrow Wilson, with attached visas to enter Russia and a British transit visa), as well as British fears about Trotsky's possible negative influence on stability in Russia. However, soon, at the written request of the Provisional Government, Trotsky was released as a well-deserved fighter against tsarism and continued his journey to Russia. On May 4, 1917, Trotsky arrived in Petrograd and became the informal leader of the Mezhraiontsy, who took a critical position in relation to the Provisional Government. After the failure of the July uprising, he was arrested by the Provisional Government and accused, like many others, of espionage; while he was charged with passing through Germany.

In July, at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b), the “mezhraiontsy” united with the Bolsheviks; Trotsky himself, who at that time was in the "Crosses", which did not allow him to speak at the congress with the main report - "On the Current Situation", - was elected to the Central Committee. After the failure of the Kornilov speech in September, Trotsky was released, along with other Bolsheviks arrested in July.

Exile from the USSR

In 1929 he was exiled outside the USSR - to Turkey on the island of Buyukada or Prinkipo - the largest of the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul. In 1932 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. Norway, fearing to worsen relations with the USSR, tried with all its might to get rid of the unwanted immigrant, confiscating all the works from Trotsky and placing him under house arrest, and Trotsky was also threatened to extradite him Soviet government. Unable to withstand the harassment, Trotsky emigrated to Mexico in 1936, where he lived in the house of the family of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

In early August 1936, Trotsky finished work on the book The Revolution Betrayed, in which he called what was happening in the Soviet Union "Stalin's Thermidor." Trotsky accused Stalin of Bonapartism.

Trotsky wrote that " the lead backside of the bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution', while he stated that ' with the help of the petty bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy managed to tie the proletarian vanguard hand and foot and crush the Bolshevik opposition»; the strengthening of his family in the USSR aroused real indignation in him, he wrote: “ The revolution made a heroic attempt to destroy the so-called “family hearth”, that is, an archaic, musty and inert institution ... The place of the family ... was supposed to be, according to the plan, taken by a complete system of public care and service…».

In 1938 he proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International, whose heirs still exist.

In 1938, Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, died in a hospital in Paris after an operation.

Trotsky archive

During his exile from the USSR in 1929, Trotsky was able to take his personal archive. This archive included copies of a number of documents signed by Trotsky during his time in power in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, the Central Committee, the Comintern, a number of Lenin's notes addressed personally to Trotsky and not published anywhere else, as well as a number of valuable information for historians about the revolutionary movement before 1917, thousands letters received by Trotsky, and copies of letters sent to him, telephone and address books, etc. Based on his archive, Trotsky in his memoirs easily quotes a number of documents he signed, including sometimes even secret ones. In total, the archive consisted of 28 boxes.

Stalin turned out to be unable to prevent (or he was allowed, which Stalin later called in personal conversations a big mistake, like expulsion) Trotsky to take out his archive, however, in the 30s, GPU agents repeatedly tried (sometimes successfully) to steal some of their fragments, and in March 1931, part of the documents burned down during a suspicious fire. In March 1940, Trotsky, in dire need of money and fearing that the archive would still fall into the hands of Stalin, sold most of his papers to Harvard University.

At the same time, a number of other documents related to Trotsky's activities are, according to the historian Yu. G. Felshtinsky, also in other places, in particular, in the president's archive Russian Federation, archived by the International Institute social history in Amsterdam, etc.

Murder

In May 1940, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Trotsky's life. The assassination attempt was led by a secret agent of the NKVD Grigulevich. The group of raiders was led by the Mexican artist and staunch Stalinist Siqueiros. Bursting into the room where Trotsky was, the attackers fired aimlessly at all the cartridges and hurriedly disappeared. Trotsky, who managed to hide behind the bed with his wife and grandson, was not hurt. According to Siqueiros, the failure was due to the fact that the members of his group were inexperienced and very worried.

Early in the morning of August 20, 1940, the NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who had previously penetrated Trotsky's entourage as a staunch supporter, came to Trotsky to show his manuscript. Trotsky sat down to read it, and at that time Mercader hit him on the head with an ice pick, which he carried under his cloak. The blow was struck from behind and from above on the seated Trotsky. The wound reached 7 centimeters in depth, but Trotsky, after receiving the wound, lived for almost a day and died on August 21. After cremation, he was buried in the courtyard of a house in Koyokan.

The Soviet authorities publicly denied their involvement in the murder. The killer was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison; in 1960, Ramon Mercader, who was released from prison and arrived in the USSR, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin.

Compositions

Trotsky L. My life. Experience of autobiography, in 2 volumes. Berlin: Granit, 1930.

Literature

Shaposhnikov V. N. Trotsky - an employee of the "Eastern Review" // Izv. Sib. Department of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR: Ser. history, philology and philosophy. 1989. Issue. 3.

Startsev V.I. L. D. Trotsky: Pages watered, biographies. M., 1989;

Ivanov A. Leon Trotsky in Siberian exile // Irkutsk Land. 1998. No. 10.

Trotsky L.D. My life. Autobiographical experience. M., 1991.

Links

Trotsky, Lev Davidovich. // Wikipedia