Leon Trotsky

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Leon Trotsky

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In office
13 March 1918 – 15 January 1925
Deputy Ephraim Sklyansky
Preceded by Nikolai Podvoisky
Succeeded by Mikhail Frunze

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In office
8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918
Deputy Georgy Chicherin
Preceded by Mikhail Tereshchenko
Succeeded by Georgy Chicherin

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In office
8 October 1917 – 8 November 1917

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Born 7 November 1879(1879-11-07)
Kherson, Russian Empire
Died 21 August 1940 (aged 60)
Coyoacán, DF, México
Citizenship Soviet
Political party RSDLP, SDPS, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Left Opposition, IV International
Spouse(s) Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, Natalia Sedova
Profession Statesman, editor
Religion Born Jewish, as an adult Trotsky denounced all religion, claimed to be an Internationalist[1]
Signature

Leon Trotsky (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий (help·info), Ukrainian: Лев Давидович Троцький (Lev Davidovich Trotsky, also transliterated Lyev, Trotski, Trotskij, Trockij and Trotzky) 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Russian: Лев Давидович Бронштéйн), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Vladimir Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo.

After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union. An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism,[2] Trotsky also opposed Stalin's peace agreements with Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet agent.[3] Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a term coined as early as 1905 by his opponents in order to separate it from Marxism. Trotsky's ideas remain a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism. He was one of the few Soviet political figures who were never rehabilitated by the Soviet administration.

Before the 1917 Revolution

Part of the
Politics series on
Trotskyism

Leon Trotsky
Fourth International
Marxism
Leninism
Russian Revolution
Concepts
Deformed workers' state
Degenerated workers' state
French Turn
Permanent revolution
Political revolution
Social revolution
Transitional demand
United front
World revolution
Trotskyists
James P. Cannon
Tony Cliff
Pierre Frank
Ted Grant
Joseph Hansen
Gerry Healy
C.L.R. James
Pierre Lambert
Livio Maitan
Ernest Mandel
Nahuel Moreno
Max Shachtman
Internationals
FI Centre of Reconstruction
Fourth International (Post-Reunification)
FI International Committee
International Workers' League
Branches
Orthodox Trotskyism
Third camp
Communism Portal

Childhood and family (1879–1895)

Leon Trotsky was born Leiba Davidovich Bronstein (Russian: Лейба Давидович Бронштейн) on 7 November 1879, in Yanovka, Kherson Province of the Russian Empire (today's Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine), a small village 15 miles (24 km) from the nearest post office. He was the fifth, and favorite child of a well-to-do farmer, David Leontyevich Bronstein (1847–1922) and Anna Bronstein (1850–1910). The family was Jewish, although it was not religious. The languages spoken in his home were Russian and Ukrainian instead of Yiddish. Trotsky's younger sister, Olga, married Lev Kamenev, a leading Bolshevik.

When Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated and he was enrolled in a historically German school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa, consequent to the Imperial government's policy of Russification.^{[citation needed]} As Isaac Deutscher points out in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a bustling cosmopolitan port city, very unlike the typical Russian city of the time. This environment contributed to the development of the young man's international outlook.

Although it is stated in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke fluent French.[4]

Revolutionary activity and exile (1896–1902)

Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to Nikolayev (now Mykolaiv). At first a narodnik (revolutionary populist), he was introduced to Marxism later that year and was originally opposed to it. But during periods of exile and imprisonment he gradually became a Marxist. Instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name 'Lvov',[5] he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets and popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and revolutionary students.

In January 1898, over 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested, and he spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial. Two months after his imprisonment, the first Congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was held, and from then on Trotsky considered himself a member of the party. While in prison, he married fellow Marxist Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. While serving his sentence he studied philosophy. In 1900 he was sentenced to four years in exile in Ust-Kut and Verkholensk (see map) in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, where his first two daughters, Nina Nevelson and Zinaida Volkova, were born.

In Siberia, Trotsky became aware of the differences within the party, which had been decimated by arrests in 1898 and 1899. Some social democrats known as "economists" argued that the party should focus on helping industrial workers improve their lot in life. Others argued that overthrowing the monarchy was more important and that a well organized and disciplined revolutionary party was essential. The latter were led by the London-based newspaper Iskra,Or in English, Spark, which was founded in 1900. Trotsky quickly sided with the Iskra position.

First emigration and second marriage (1902–1903)

Trotsky escaped from Siberia in the summer of 1902. It is said he adopted the name of a jailer of the Odessa prison in which he had earlier been held,[6] and this became his primary revolutionary pseudonym. Once abroad, he moved to London to join Georgy Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov and other editors of Iskra. Under the pen name Pero ("feather" or "pen" in Russian), Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading authors.