Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Trotsky, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, October Revolution of 1917, Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas and beliefs inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
Trotsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, being arrested and exiled to Siberia for his activities. In 1902 he escaped to London, where he met Lenin. Trotsky initially sided with the Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks in the party's 1903 schism, but declared himself non-factional in 1904. During the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was again exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1907 and lived abroad. After the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He helped to lead the October Revolution, and as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. He served as People's Commissar for Military Affairs from 1918 to 1925, during which he built the Red Army and led it to victory in the civil war. In 1922 Lenin formed a bloc with Trotsky against the growing Soviet bureaucracy and proposed that he should become a deputy premier, but Trotsky declined. Beginning in 1923, Trotsky led the party's Left Opposition faction, which supported greater levels of industrialisation, voluntary collectivisation and party democratisation in a shared framework with the New Economic Policy.
After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky emerged as a prominent critic of Joseph Stalin, who soon politically outmanoeuvred him. Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927, exiled to Alma Ata in 1928 and deported in 1929. He lived in Turkey, France and Norway before settling in Mexico in 1937. In exile, Trotsky wrote polemics against Stalinism, advocating proletarian internationalism against Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution held that the revolution could only survive if spread to more advanced capitalist countries. In The Revolution Betrayed, he argued that the Soviet Union had become a "degenerated workers' state", and in 1938 founded the Fourth International as an alternative to the Comintern. After being sentenced to death in absentia at the Moscow show trials in 1936, Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a Stalinist agent.
Written out of official history under Stalin, Trotsky was one of the few of his rivals who were never politically rehabilitated by later Soviet leaders. In the Western world Trotsky emerged as a hero of the anti-Stalinist left for his defence of a more democratic, internationalist form of socialism against Stalinist totalitarianism, and for his intellectual contributions to Marxism. While some of his wartime actions are controversial, such as his ideological defence of the Red Terror and violent suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, scholarship ranks Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army highly among historical figures, and he is credited for his major involvement with the military, economic, cultural and political development of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and family (1879–1895)
Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on 7 November 1879 into a wealthy but illiterate Jewish farming family in Yanovka, a village in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire. The village, now known by Bereslavka, is part of present-day Kropyvnytskyi Raion in the Kirovohrad Oblast of Ukraine. He was the fifth child of David Leontyevich Bronstein, and Anna Lvovna. Trotsky's younger sister, Olga, also became a Bolshevik and Soviet politician, and married her fellow-Bolshevik Lev Kamenev.Some authors, notably Robert Service, have claimed that Trotsky's childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. However, the Trotskyist writer David North argued that this is an assumption based on Trotsky's Jewish heritage, lacking documentary evidence, especially as Yiddish was not spoken by his family. Both North and the historian Walter Laqueur stated that Trotsky's childhood name was Lyova, a standard Russian diminutive of Lev. North draws a parallel between the speculation and the disproportionate scrutiny of Trotsky’s Jewish heritage. Instead of Yiddish, the family spoke a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Although he acquired good proficiency in French, English, and German, Trotsky stated in his autobiography My Life that he was truly fluent only in Russian and Ukrainian. Raymond Molinier has noted that Trotsky spoke French fluently.
David sent Trotsky to Odessa for education when the latter was eight years old. Trotsky enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school, which admitted students of various faiths and became increasingly Russified during his time there due to the Imperial government's Russification policy. Trotsky and his wife Natalia later registered their children as Lutheran, as Austrian law then required children to receive religious education "in the faith of their parents". Odessa, a bustling cosmopolitan port city, differed greatly from typical Russian cities and contributed to the development of young Trotsky's international outlook. He excelled academically, particularly in science and mathematics, and was a voracious reader, often disciplined for reading non-curriculum books during class.
Early political activities and life (1896–1917)
Revolutionary activity and imprisonment (1896–1898)
Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the port town of Nikolayev on the Black Sea. Initially a narodnik, he opposed Marxism but was converted by his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. He graduated from high school with first-class honours the same year. His father had intended him to become a mechanical engineer.Trotsky briefly attended Odessa University, studying engineering and mathematics. A university colleague noted his exceptional mathematical talent. However, bored with his studies, he increasingly focused on political philosophy and underground revolutionary activities. He dropped out in early 1897 to help to organise the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev. Using the name "Lvov", he wrote and printed leaflets, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularised socialist ideas among industrial workers and students.
In January 1898 over 200 union members, including Trotsky, were arrested. He spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev, then Kherson, Odessa, and finally Moscow. In Moscow, he encountered other revolutionaries, learnt of Lenin, and read Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Two months into his imprisonment, the first Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held. From then on, Trotsky identified as an RSDLP member.
First marriage and Siberian exile (1899–1902)
While imprisoned in Moscow in the summer of 1900, Trotsky married his fellow-Marxist Aleksandra Sokolovskaya in a ceremony performed by a Jewish chaplain. In 1900 Trotsky was sentenced to four years of exile in Siberia. Due to their marriage, Trotsky and his wife were exiled together to Ust-Kut and Verkholensk in the Baikal region. They had two daughters, Zinaida and Nina, both born in Siberia.In Siberia, Trotsky studied history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and the works of Karl Marx to solidify his political stance. He became aware of internal party differences, particularly the debate between "economists", who focused on workers' economic improvements, and those who prioritised overthrowing the monarchy through a disciplined revolutionary party. The latter position was advocated by the London-based newspaper Iskra, founded in 1900. Trotsky quickly sided with Iskra and began writing for it.
In the summer of 1902, urged by his wife, Trotsky escaped from Siberia hidden in a load of hay. Aleksandra later escaped with their daughters. Both daughters married and had children but died before their parents. Nina Nevelson died of tuberculosis in 1928. Zinaida Volkova, also suffering from tuberculosis and depression, followed her father into exile but committed suicide in Berlin in 1933. Aleksandra disappeared in 1935 during Stalin's Great Purge and was murdered by Soviet forces in 1938.
First emigration and second marriage (1902–1903)
Until this point, Trotsky had used his birth name, Lev Bronstein. He adopted the surname "Trotsky"—reportedly the name of a jailer in the Odessa prison where he had been held—which he used for the rest of his life. This became his primary revolutionary pseudonym. After escaping Siberia, Trotsky moved to London, joining Georgi Plekhanov, Lenin, Julius Martov and other editors of Iskra. Writing under the pen name Pero, Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading writers.The six editors of Iskra were split between an "old guard" led by Plekhanov and a "new guard" led by Lenin and Martov. Lenin, seeking a majority against Plekhanov, expected the 23-year-old Trotsky to side with the new guard. In March 1903 Lenin proposed Trotsky's co-option to the editorial board:
Due to Plekhanov's opposition, Trotsky did not become a full board member but participated in an advisory capacity, earning Plekhanov's animosity.
In late 1902 Trotsky met Natalia Sedova, who soon became his companion. They married in 1903 and remained together until his death. They had two sons, Lev Sedov and Sergei Sedov, both of whom predeceased their parents. Trotsky later explained that, for "citizenship" requirements after the 1917 revolution, he "took on the name of my wife" so his sons would not have to change their name. However, he never publicly or privately used the name "Sedov". Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya".