Lev Davidovich Bronstein Trotsky biography. Trotsky Lev Davidovich - biography. Beginning of revolutionary activity
Trotsky, briefly personality
Lev Davidovich Trotsky short biography for children
Lev Davidovich Trotsky, in short, one of the most prominent participants revolutionary movement 20th century, the founder of Trotskyism - one of the directions of Marxism. The scope of this politician's activity on an international scale is simply amazing. He was one of the organizers of the 1917 revolution along with Lenin. Trotsky was involved in the creation of the Red Army and was its first leader. He held high positions in the new Soviet government.
Speaking of Trotsky, it is necessary to dwell briefly on his pseudonym. The real name of the revolutionary is Leib Bronstein. The name Trotsky was chosen by him at random. That was the name of the warden in the prison where the revolutionary was.
Trotsky was born in 1879 in a large, prosperous family of a landowner in the Kherson province. Having entered the school in Odessa, he immediately became the first student. He continued his studies in the city of Nikolaev, where he began to attend a revolutionary circle. In 1898, he was imprisoned for revolutionary activities, where two events happened to Trotsky. important events in his life. He becomes a Marxist and marries.
After two years of imprisonment, he goes into exile in Siberia, but soon escapes from there abroad under the pseudonym of Trotsky. Since then, this name has been assigned to him until the end of his life.
Trotsky began active work abroad. He is an ardent supporter of Lenin, works as a correspondent for the revolutionary newspaper Iskra, and marries (unofficially) a second time. He never divorced his first wife.
During the revolution of 1905, Trotsky secretly returned to Russian empire. There he was arrested a second time, and in a highly publicized trial, he was stripped of all rights and exiled to Siberia forever. He safely escaped from the country right from under the convoy carrying the convicts to the settlement. For a long time he lived in exile in Austria, France and the USA.
Trotsky's talent, as an outstanding organizer and orator, was most clearly revealed during the years of the 1917 revolution and the Civil War. At one time he headed the Bolshevik faction. He was one of the leaders and organizers of the 1917 uprising.
During the period civil war Trotsky becomes the first leader of the Red Guard. The army he created with the help of iron discipline was able to defeat the enemy, but after the end of the Civil War, Trotsky and his authoritarian style control was no longer needed.
After Lenin's death, Trotsky participated in the struggle for power. Gradually, he is removed from all posts.
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. He was convicted of revolutionary activities and exiled.
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 unites 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” its involvement in the murder, Markeder was sent to 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 Lenin.
Other biography options
- 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(real name Bronstein) (1879-1940) - Russian and international political figure, publicist, thinker. (A. B. Rakhmanov)
In the social democratic movement since 1896. From 1904 he advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905, Trotsky basically developed the theory of "permanent" (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the proletariat of Russia, having carried out the bourgeois stage, would begin the socialist stage of the revolution, which would win only with the help of the world proletariat.
During the revolution of 1905-07, Leon Trotsky showed himself to be an outstanding organizer, orator, publicist; the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, editor of his Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1908-12 he was the editor of the Pravda newspaper. In 1917, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.
In 1917-18, Leon Trotsky was People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs; in 1918-25 people's commissar for military affairs, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; one of the creators of the Red Army, personally led its actions on many fronts of the Civil War, widely used repression. Member of the Central Committee in 1917-27, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-26.
At the pinnacle of power
After the Bolsheviks came to power, Leon Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Participating in separate negotiations with the powers of the “fourth bloc”, he put forward the formula “we stop the war, we don’t sign peace, we demobilize the army”, which was supported by the Bolshevik Central Committee (Lenin was against it). Somewhat later, after the resumption of the offensive German troops, Lenin managed to achieve the acceptance and signing of the terms of the "obscene" peace, after which Trotsky resigned as people's commissar.
In the spring of 1918, Leon Trotsky was appointed to the post of people's commissar for military and naval affairs and chairman of the revolutionary military council of the republic. In this position, he has shown himself to be the highest degree talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he took decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline, and no exception was made for the Bolsheviks.
L. Trotsky did a great job of attracting former tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) to the Red Army and defended them from the attacks of some high-ranking communists. During the Civil War, his train ran along railways on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military Affairs directed the actions of the fronts, delivered fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, rewarded those who distinguished themselves.
In general, during this period, there was close cooperation between Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, although on a number of political issues (for example, a discussion about trade unions) and military-strategic (the fight against the troops of General Denikin, the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Yudenich and the war with Poland) there were serious disagreements between them.
At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s. Trotsky's popularity and influence reached a climax, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-21, Leon Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail "war communism" and move to the NEP.
[Trotsky's biography always mentions the story of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where he generally screwed up, but almost never mentions where he was just right. And the borders of the USSR in the end were, by the way, established precisely by the Riga, and not by the Brest peace
In addition, it is necessary to mention the most important role of Trotsky in the Rappal Agreement, the basis of the technical equipment of the Red Army.]
Fight with Stalin
Before Lenin's death, and especially after it, a struggle for power flared up among the leaders of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was opposed by the majority of the country's leadership, led by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, who suspected him of dictatorial, Bonapartist plans. In 1923 Trotsky, with his book The Lessons of October, began the so-called literary discussion, criticizing the behavior of Zinoviev and Kamenev during the October Revolution. In addition, in a number of articles, Trotsky accused the "triumvirate" of bureaucratization and violation of party democracy, advocated involving young people in solving important political problems.
The opponents of Leon Trotsky relied on the bureaucracy and, having shown great determination, unscrupulousness and cunning, speculating on the topic of his previous disagreements with Lenin, dealt a strong blow to Trotsky's authority. He was removed from his posts; his supporters were ousted from the leadership of the party and the state. Trotsky's views ("Trotskyism") were declared hostile to Leninism by a petty-bourgeois trend.
In the mid-1920s, Leon Trotsky, joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev, continued to sharply criticize the Soviet leadership, accusing it of betraying the ideals of the October Revolution, including abandoning the world revolution. Trotsky demanded the restoration of party democracy, the strengthening of the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat and an attack on the positions of the Nepmen and kulaks. The majority of the party again turned out to be on the side of Stalin.
In 1927 Trotsky was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, expelled from the party, and in January 1928 exiled to Alma-Ata.
[Here the role of Trotsky in the industrialization of the country must be mentioned. industrialization program]
Last exile
By decision of the Politburo in 1929, Leon Trotsky was expelled from the USSR. Together with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov, Trotsky ended up on the island of Prinkipo in the Sea of Marmara (Turkey). Here Trotsky, continuing to coordinate the activities of his followers in the USSR and abroad, began to publish the Bulletin of the Opposition, wrote his autobiography "". The memoirs were a response to anti-Trotskyist propaganda in the USSR and a justification for his life.
His main historical work, "", dedicated to the events of 1917, was written on Prinkipo. This work was intended to prove the historical exhaustion tsarist Russia, justify the inevitability of the February Revolution and its development into the October Revolution.
In 1933, Leon Trotsky moved to France, in 1935 - to Norway. Trotsky tirelessly criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, refuted the claims of official propaganda and Soviet statistics. The industrialization and collectivization carried out in the USSR was sharply criticized by them for adventurism and cruelty.
In 1935, Trotsky wrote his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society, The Revolution Betrayed, where it was considered in the focus of the contradiction between the interests of the main population of the country and the bureaucratic caste headed by Stalin, whose policies, according to the author, undermined the social foundations of the system. Trotsky proclaimed the need political revolution whose task would be to eliminate the dominance of the bureaucracy in the country.
At the end of 1936, Leon Trotsky left Europe, finding refuge in Mexico, where he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa in the city of Coyocan.
In 1937-38, after the unfolding of trials against the opposition in the USSR, in which he himself was tried in absentia, Trotsky paid much attention to exposing them as falsified. In 1937, in New York, an international commission of inquiry into the Moscow trials, chaired by the American philosopher John Dewey, issued a verdict of not guilty against Trotsky and his associates.
All these years, Leon Trotsky did not give up attempts to rally supporters. In 1938, the Fourth International was proclaimed, which included small and scattered groups from various countries. This brainchild of Trotsky, which he considered the most important for himself during this period, turned out to be unviable and fell apart shortly after the death of the founder.
The Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris, his closest and tireless colleague, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died after an operation in a hospital. From Soviet Union there was news not only of unprecedentedly cruel repressions against the "Trotskyists". His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot. The accusation of Trotskyism in the USSR became at that time the most terrible and dangerous.
Last days of life
In 1939, Stalin ordered the liquidation of his old enemy. Turned into a Coyocan recluse, Leon Trotsky worked on his book about Stalin, in which he considered his hero as a fatal figure for socialism. From his pen came an appeal to the working people of the Soviet Union with a call to overthrow the power of Stalin and his clique, articles in the Bulletin of the Opposition, in which he, sharply condemning the Soviet-German rapprochement, justified the war of the USSR against Finland and supported the entry of Soviet troops into the territory Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. anticipating quick death, in early 1940, Trotsky wrote a testament, where he spoke of satisfaction with his fate as a Marxist revolutionary, proclaimed an unshakable faith in the triumph of the Fourth International and in the imminent world socialist revolution.
In May 1940, the first attempt on the life of Leon Trotsky, which ended in failure, was made, led by the Mexican artist Siqueiros. On August 20, 1940, Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent who penetrated Trotsky's entourage, mortally wounded him. [less known is that Trotsky is in fact] Leon Trotsky died August 21, 1940 in Coyocan, Mexico. He was buried in the courtyard of his house, where his museum is now located.
On October 26, 1879, in the Kherson province, the fifth child was born to a family of landowners - a boy named Leo. His father, David Leontyevich Bronstein, came from peasants and learned to read and write, already at a fairly advanced age, moreover, only to read books written by his son. Lev's mother, Anna Lvovna, nee Zhivotovskaya, was from Odessa from a bourgeois family. David and Anna were Jewish colonists on an agricultural farm near the village of Yanovka in the Elisavetgrad district. Their affairs were going uphill, and by the time of the birth of Leo, the prosperity of the Bronsteins was not in doubt.
At the age of seven, Leo began to study at a private Jewish school, but he was not given education, since the teaching was conducted in Hebrew, which Leo did not know well. As he himself later wrote, the first school only gave him the opportunity to learn how to write and read Russian.
In 1888, Leo became a student of the preparatory class of the real school of St. Paul in Odessa. Throughout his studies, he lived in the family of his mother's nephew, Moses Shpentzer, who was the owner of the printing house and publishing house "Matesis". The Odessa real school was founded by the Germans, and highly qualified teachers were its main pride. From the gymnasium of that time, real schools differed in a large bias in favor of mathematical and natural sciences. However, it was during his studies at the school that Lev read Pushkin and Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Dickens, Veresaev and Nekrasov. Innate abilities and diligence helped the boy become the best student of the school in all subjects. True, in the second grade he was expelled from the school, as he quarreled with the teacher. French- a big tyrant. Only the petition of influential relatives helped Leo to recover at the school. It is possible that this was a revolutionary impulse of the future leader ...
The boyish desire to stand out from the general gray crowd and somehow draw the attention of others to their own person is completely understandable. When the doctor discovered that Leo was short-sighted and ordered glasses to be worn, the boy was not upset, but, on the contrary, decided that the glasses gave him special significance. At the same time, young Bronstein began to show another trait - arrogance towards others. However, he, of course, had reasons for this: the best student, Lev treated his comrades with superiority and often emphasized his own superiority.
In his youth, Leo fell in love with the theater. He was fascinated not only by the action itself on stage, but also by the ability of artists to rise above the audience with the help of the game. In general, he considered the world of creative people to be special, access to which was open only to the elite.
In 1896, Lev moved to Nikolaev to complete his studies and entered the seventh grade of a real school. This year has become a turning point for his psyche. The knowledge acquired at the school gave Leo the opportunity to stay in the place of the first student, but at that time he became interested in social life. Leo met Franz Shwigovsky, a gardener, but very an educated person, closely following politics and having read a huge number of books. Parents demanded to abandon this acquaintance, but in response, Lev broke with them, abandoned the school and became a member of the Shvigovsky commune, along with his older brother Alexander. It was here that he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became his first wife. Members of the commune dressed in the same straw hats and blue blouses, carried black sticks with them - perhaps that is why they were considered members of some mysterious sect in the city. The Communards read a lot, but very randomly, distributed books, argued a lot, and even tried to create a "university based on mutual learning."
Lev Bronstein nevertheless graduated from a real school and, at the request of his parents, returned to Odessa. Here he began to attend lectures of the mathematical faculty of the university, but the revolutionary mood demanded something else, and he again gave up classes. In fact, Lev switched to work in semi-legal youth circles of radical sentiments and very soon turned into an informal leader of one of these groups. Lev's worldview was then quite far from Marxism - for the reason that he had not yet tried to acquire strong political convictions.
In 1897, a surge of revolutionary sentiment began in Russia, and a group of young people under the leadership of Lev began to intensively seek contacts in the workers' quarters of Nikolaev. It was thanks to the efforts of Leo that the South of Russia acquired another revolutionary organization, called the “South Russian Workers' Union”. The Charter of the Union was written by Leo. The workers literally flowed into the organization, but this contingent was not interested in strikes, since the wages of the factory workers were quite high. Much more workers wanted to understand social relations. Meetings and political studies with the workers gradually developed into serious and painstaking work. Having obtained a hectograph, the members of the Union began to print proclamations, and later the newspaper Our Business, which was published in a circulation of a couple of hundred copies. Basically, Lev Bronstein himself dealt with articles for the newspaper and the texts of proclamations, and in addition, at May Day meetings, he tested himself as a speaker.
Gradually, the members of the Union established relations with other revolutionary cells in the circles of the Social Democrats in Odessa. At this time, Lev Bronstein began to argue that revolutionary work was needed not only among the factory workers, but also in the ranks of artisans and the petty bourgeoisie. It cannot be said that the tsarist secret police were dozing all this time, and in January-February 1898 more than two hundred people were arrested in revolutionary circles. The first court in Lev Bronstein's life sentenced him to exile in Siberia for a period of four years. Already in the transit prison of Moscow, Leo's personal life improved - he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya. In the autumn of 1900, their daughter Zina was born. At this time, the young family lived in the small village of Ust-Kut in the Irkutsk province. Here Lev Bronstein met Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky.
There was a fairly clear connection between the exiles, and Bronstein wrote leaflets and appeals for the Social Democratic organizations. In 1902, in the summer, he receives books ordered earlier, in the bindings of which tissue paper with the latest foreign editions is hidden. With this mail, one of the first issues of the Iskra newspaper and Lenin's article arrived to the exiles. By this time, Lev had a second daughter, Nina, and the family moved to Verkholensk. Here Bronstein begins to prepare to escape. They got him a fake passport, in which a new surname, Trotsky, was entered. This pseudonym remained with Lev Davidovich for life. Despite the fact that the wife remained with two young daughters, she fully supported Leo in organizing the escape.
Leon Trotsky went to Samara, where the main headquarters of the Iskra newspaper, headed by Krzhizhanovsky, was then located. Having received an order, Trotsky traveled to Kharkov, Kyiv and Poltava to establish contacts with local revolutionary organizations. Soon Trotsky received an invitation from Lenin from London. Equipped with money for the trip, Leo illegally crossed the Russian-Austrian border and went through Switzerland and France to London. This trip finally made a professional revolutionary out of Trotsky.
In the autumn of 1902, in Europe, Trotsky met Natalya Sedova, who later became his second wife. True, he did not divorce Sokolovskaya, and therefore the marriage with Sedova was not registered. Nevertheless, they lived together until the death of Trotsky, and two boys were born in their family - Lev and Sergey.
During this period, conflicts began in the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper between its old members Axelrod, Plekhanov and Zasulich and the new ones - Lenin, Potresov and Martov. Lenin suggested introducing Trotsky to the editorial board, but Plekhanov blocked this decision in the form of an ultimatum. In 1903, in the summer, the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held, at which Trotsky supported Lenin's ideas so ardently that the caustic Ryazanov called Lev Davidovich "Lenin's club." However, the result of the congress and the exclusion of Zasulich and Axelrod from the editorial board of Iskra prompted Trotsky to take the side of the offended and to speak very critically about Lenin's organizational plans. From this moment begins the countdown of the confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
Trotsky returned to Russia via illegal routes in 1905. Here he is elected chairman of the Council of Workers' Deputies of St. Petersburg. As a result of the revolutionary events, Lev Davidovich was arrested and in 1907, by a court verdict, he was deprived of all civil rights and sent to Siberia for eternal settlement. Already at the beginning of next year, Leon Trotsky arrives with a stage in the city of Obdorsk, in the Arctic. Thirty-five days later, the convoy of exiles reached Berezov, from where Trotsky decided to flee. This time he risked very much - the escape of the convict to the eternal settlement without options doomed him to hard labor. Through a local peasant, Trotsky met a reindeer breeder and, with the help of bribery with alcohol and gold coins of the royal coinage on deer, he crossed the road of seven hundred kilometers to the Ural Mountains. From here he reached St. Petersburg by train and was sent by the party leadership abroad.
Since 1908, Trotsky has been publishing the newspaper Pravda in Vienna. He did this until 1912, when the Bolsheviks "intercepted" the name of the newspaper. Trotsky went to Paris in 1914 and started publishing the daily newspaper Nashe Slovo. In the autumn of 1915, Trotsky participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, where he vehemently objected to the attacks of Lenin and Martov. In 1916, at the request of the tsarist government of Russia, the French police sent Lev Davidovich to Spain, and in turn, the Spanish authorities demanded that the revolutionary leave for the United States.
Learning about February Revolution, Leon Trotsky tried to leave for Russia on a steamer, but in Halifax, a Canadian port, the British authorities removed him and his family from the ship and placed him in a camp intended for interned sailors of the German merchant fleet. The British put forward Trotsky's lack of Russian documents as the reason for his detention, and they did not care at all that there was an American passport, personally issued to Trotsky by US President Wilson. Soon the provisional government sent a written request for the release of Trotsky as a well-deserved fighter against the tsarist regime.
On May 4, 1917, Trotsky and his family arrived in Petrograd and immediately took the place of the informal leader of a group of so-called "mezhraiontsy" who criticized the Provisional Government. After the July riots, Lev Davidovich was arrested and charged with spying for Germany. During the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in July, Lev Davidovich was in the "Crosses" and could not read his report "On the Current Situation". Nevertheless, he was elected to the Central Committee. Immediately after the suppression of the Kornilov rebellion, Trotsky was released from prison, and on September 20 he takes the post of chairman of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of Petrograd. While in this position, Trotsky was directly involved in the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution. Stalin, in his memoirs, points out that it was to Leon Trotsky that the revolution owed its success. It was Trotsky who introduced the concept of "Red Terror" into politics and clearly characterized its principles in an address to the Cadets on December 17, 1917.
In the spring of 1918, Lev Davidovich took over as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR and People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. While in these posts, he did a lot to create a strong and efficient army. Trotsky's activity was highly appreciated by the government. Several cities were named after him, but with the onset of repressions against the Trotskyists, they were renamed. None other than Trotsky, back in 1920, proposed supplying the peasants on the principle of "grain-manufactured goods" and replacing the predatory surplus appropriation with a tax in kind. However, in the Central Committee, he received only four votes out of fifteen, and Lenin, not yet ready to change the policy of war communism, accused Trotsky of "free trading."
After the conflict in the Central Committee, which split the committee into two parts and gave rise to "discussions about trade unions", relations between Lenin and Trotsky deteriorated greatly, and Lev Davidovich's supporters were removed from the Central Committee. In 1922, an alliance was outlined between Lenin and Trotsky, but Lenin's illness and his withdrawal from political life prevented Trotsky from carrying out the necessary reforms. Problems between Stalin and Trotsky began during the defense of Tsaritsyn during the civil war, and Lenin's death actually turned most of the party leadership against Lev Davidovich. Such a situation was skillfully fueled by Stalin, and Trotsky was accused of dictatorial plans, as well as the fact that he joined the Bolshevik Party only in 1917.
In 1923, Trotsky sharply opposed the "troika" of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev in his articles, accusing these leaders of bureaucratizing the party apparatus. These accusations were rejected by the 13th Party Conference, and Trotsky's actions were strongly condemned. By the autumn of 1924, Trotsky lost the posts of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar of the Military Sea. Pressure on Trotsky increases, and despite his attempts to resist in the press, in 1926 he is removed from the Central Committee of the Politburo. After organizing an anti-government demonstration in early November 1927, Lev Davidovich was expelled from the CPSU (b) and deported to Alma-Ata. The rest of his associates and followers, which by that time included Zinoviev and Kamenev, either admitted they were wrong or were repressed - while both were shot a decade later.
In 1929, by decision of the Central Committee, Leon Trotsky was exiled to the Turkish island of Prinkipo, and in 1932 he lost his citizenship of the USSR. A year later he moved to France, in 1934 he was already in Denmark, in 1935 in Norway. The Norwegian government, in order not to worsen its relations with the Land of the Soviets, confiscated all of Trotsky's works and, in fact, placed him under house arrest. Harassment led to the fact that in 1936 Lev Davidovich emigrated to Mexico. In exile, he closely followed the developments in the USSR and sensitively reacted to any political events. In August 1936, Trotsky's book "The Revolution Betrayed" was completed, in which he directly called what was happening in the USSR "Stalin's Thermidor" - that is, a counter-revolutionary coup. Actually, Leon Trotsky was the first to understand what the "successful assimilation" of yesterday's class enemies by Soviet society would lead to - later they were all exiled or destroyed. In 1938, Trotsky proclaimed the emergence of the Fourth International - in opposition to the Third. Supporters of this political organization exist in our time.
In May 1940, the NKVD organized an attempt on the life of Leon Trotsky, as an implacable enemy. Soviet power. Under the leadership of NKVD agent Grigulevich, a group of raiders, led by a Mexican raider and a staunch Stalinist, Siqueiros, burst into the room and shot all the cartridges from revolvers, after which the attackers hastily disappeared. Siqueiros would later attribute the failure of this attack to his group's inexperience and excitement. Trotsky did not suffer then. However, the next attempt by the NKVD to settle scores with Lev Davidovich was crowned with success.
On August 20, early in the morning, Ramon Mercader, who was considered a staunch supporter of Lev Davidovich, came to Trotsky. This NKVD agent brought the manuscript with him, and while Trotsky was reading it at his desk, Mercader removed a gift ice pick from the wall and delivered a fatal blow from behind. As a result of the wound, Trotsky died a day later - on August 21, 1940. He was buried next to the house where he lived.
Ramon Mercader was convicted for the murder by a Mexican court and received twenty years in prison. After his release, he arrived in Moscow in 1961, where he received high rank- Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as many great privileges ...
Lev (Leiba) Davidovich Trotsky (real name - Bronstein) was born on October 26, 1879 near Yanovka (Kherson province, Little Russia), in the family of a wealthy Jewish landowner. Already in his early youth, he became interested in revolutionary ideas and began their propaganda among the workers of Nikolaev, where he took a course at a real school. In January 1898, Leo was arrested, spent about two years in prison, and then was exiled to Lena.
In 1902, he escaped from exile on a false passport issued under the name Trotsky, went to London and began to work there in the Marxist newspaper " Spark". In terms of his views, Trotsky stood closer to the left wing of the Iskra editorial board. But, not wanting to submit to the primacy of the leader of this wing, Lenin, he II Congress of the RSDLP(1903) joined not to Bolsheviks, and to Mensheviks. Soon, Trotsky put forward the theory of "permanent revolution", according to which in Russia the working class should take power before the bourgeoisie, assist the proletarian revolution in Europe and, together with it, go towards socialism.
Leon Trotsky. Photo ok. 1920-1921
Trotsky. TV series. Series 1-2
Trotsky and Bolshevism. Polish poster, 1920
After education Council People's Commissars Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs there. In December 1917 - January 1918, he led the Soviet delegation in negotiations with the Germans on the Brest Peace. During them, Trotsky put forward the famous slogan: "no peace, no war, but disband the army" - that is, stop the war without recognizing the German conquests as a formal peace treaty.
In March 1918 Trotsky assumed the post of military people's commissar and took an active part in the creation of the Red Army. Leading it during the Civil War, he acted with merciless cruelty. Trotsky reinforced the discipline of the Red Army by shooting every tenth in badly fought units, and ordered the whites and the insurgent people to be destroyed without pity. Through " decossackization"He tried to exterminate the Cossacks - the most organized and militant part of the Russians. At the end of the Civil War, Trotsky was going to drive the entire population Soviet power arranged according to the military prison model " labor armies", but the growth of widespread uprisings in 1920 - early 1921 forced the Bolsheviks to make a "strategic retreat" and proclaim NEP.
Leon Trotsky and the Red Army
In 1922-1923, due to Lenin's illness, a struggle for power began in the RCP (b). The "troika" of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The Trotskyists were defeated in a fight with her at the top. In January 1925, Trotsky lost the posts of military people's commissar and chairman Revolutionary Military Council.
Trotsky. TV series. Series 3-4
However, soon after this, Stalin entered into rivalry with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The last two began to seek support from their former enemy Trotsky and formed with him " united opposition”, mainly from the “old Bolsheviks”. She demanded to start "accelerated industrialization" by plundering the "petty-bourgeois" village - that is, to roll up the NEP. Stalin, at this stage, for personal purposes, deceitfully presented himself as a supporter of its preservation.
Dispersed November 7, 1927 demonstrations, arranged by the opposition in honor of the 10th anniversary of October, Stalin achieved the expulsion of Trotsky to Alma-Ata (January 1928), and then his deportation from the USSR (February 1929).
Trotsky settled in Turkey, on the island of Prinkipo (near Istanbul). He did not stop his political and writing activities there, vehemently condemning the "gravedigger of the revolution" Stalin. Trotsky conducted his agitation not only for the USSR, but also for Western communists. He won over to his side a considerable part of them, which broke with the "Stalinist" Comintern and founded her own Fourth International.
In 1933 Trotsky moved to France, and in 1935 to Norway. Forced to leave this country because of Soviet pressure, he moved (1937) to Mexico, to the "left" President Lazaro Cardenas. Trotsky lived there in a villa in Coyoacan, a guest of the radical artist Diego Rivera.
Stalin, meanwhile, ordered an operation to assassinate him. In May 1940, Trotsky survived a dangerous attack by a group led by a famous artist. A. Siqueiros, but on August 20, 1940, another NKVD agent, Ramon Mercader, dealt him a fatal blow with an ice ax on the head.
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