Leon Trotsky: Communism's True Believer,Leon Trotsky:,biography of Leon Trotsky:

                                                    

                                  Leon Trotsky:

Leon Trotsky was a man of thought and action. His dream of a utopian society built on Marxismcrumbled around him yet he never gave up on his ideals. When he was sidelined by the power hungryJosef Stalin he wielded his pen to expose the despot to the world, knowing full wellthat in doing so he was signing his death warrant. In today’s Biographics, we discover theman who was Leon Trotsky. Beginnings The man who is known to history as Leon Trotskywas born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on November 7th, 1879. His parents, David and Anna were farmers inthe Ukrainian village of Yankova. David had built himself from nothing to becomeone of the most successful farmers in the region. Lev was the fifth child born to the Bronstein’s. During his first eight years he was kept onthe farm and instructed by his parents. The language spoken was Surzhyk, a mixtureof Russian and Ukrainian.

Then, at the age of eight, he was sent toa private Ukrainian-Jewish private school in Odessa, Ukraine. Lev struggled during his first year at schoolas he was not familiar with the vernacular of Jewish Yiddish that was spoken. In time, though, he improved and proved himselfa capable student. He quickly learned to speak Russian and fellin love with Russian literature. After two years at the private school, Levwas transferred to a state-run school Russian school. At St. Paul’s High School, he excelled tobe one of the top students. However, he proved to be an independent thinkerwhich sometimes led to run ins with his teachers.

His reading of such intellectual giants asLeo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky gave him the knowledge to challenge things that otherstudents accepted about the order of society, which caused frustratioin for his long sufferinginstructors. Graduating from school at the age of 17, Levmoved to the Ukrainian port town of Nikolayev, close to the Black Sea. He lived with two relatives while he decidedwhat to do with his life. Nikolayev at that time was a center of revolutionarydissent and the teenage Lev soon began to mingle with this radical crowd. Becoming a RevolutionaryWithin a few months of arriving at Nikolayev, Lev met a young woman by the name of AleksandraSokolovskaya. She was six years older than Lev and wellversed in revolutionary leftist politics. Lev later recalled that he was attracted toAleksandra because she was the only person who was able to defeat him in a debate. The subject at issue was Marxism and whetherit would be the best thing for Russian society. Lev argued against it, but his every argumentwas deftly destroyed by the wit and wisdom of Aleksandra. Lev found himself falling in love with Aleksandra. But, hardly before the relationship couldget established, he was thrown in jail.

 The cause of his imprisonment in January 1898was his involvement in a demonstration of striking union members. Over the next two years, he was regularlythrown in jail for short spells as a result of his involvement in public demonstrations. In 1900, Lev and Alexsandra were married. Shortly after the wedding, Alexsandra wasbanished to Siberia for four years as a result of her own radical activities. Her new husband went right along with her. They ended up in the Siberian village of UstKut. Over the next two years as they eked out aliving in this cold, harsh terrain, the couple had two children, the girls Zenaida and Nina. After two years of this exile, Lev had hadenough. He was ready to make his escape. By now his wife had fully converted him toMarxist Communism and he was determined to get out of this purgatory to become activein the revolutionary cause. It was resolved that Alexsandra would remainin Siberia with the two young children. Becoming TrotskyLev travelled to the Irkutsk region of Siberia.

There he got hold of a stolen passport. It was then that he assumed his new name,scribbling it on the pages of his fake passport – Leon Trotsky. He made his way to London eager to learn atthe feet of the founder of Russian Marxism, Vladimir Lenin. The two men developed an immediate bond. Lenin took Trotsky on as his apprentice, settinghim to work as a writer for his Communist newspaper, Iskra. Within a couple of months of his arrival,Lenin sent him out on a fundraising and publicity tour of Europe to promote the newspaper andthe Communist cause. On the Paris leg of the tour, he met a youngwoman by the name of Natalia Sedova. Despite still being married to Aleksandra,he and Natalia soon became man and wife. She returned with him to London and they setup house there. Not long after his return from Europe, Trotskyattended the Second Congress of the Democratic Workers Party in London. The main topic of discussion was the recentsplit in Russia in the communist party between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

The Mensheviks were the more moderate of thetwo factions who envisioned a gradual transition to communism. The Bolsheviks, however, were far more radical. They intended to dismantle the current systemimmediately and replace it with full on Communism. They were fully prepared to stage a violentuprising in order to achieve their means. The names of these factions tell us abouttheir levels of support. The word Menshevik means ‘men of the minority’while Bolsheviks translates as ‘men of the majority.’ Lenin was in favour of the Bolsheviks. At the congress meeting, he explained thatthe Bolsheviks needed to create a centralized power structure from which they could controland direct the common people. This idea was very troubling to Trotsky, whosaw it a replacement of the type of capitalist control of the masses that they were tryingto get rid of. For many years thereafter, he tried to bridgethe divide between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. 1905 RevolutionIn 1905, Russia suffered a humiliating defeat against the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima. It left the Russian economy in ruins and ledto mass demonstrations.

On January 22nd, 1905, a peaceful demonstrationgathered outside of Tsar’s Nicholas’ Winter Palace. Nicholas reacted by sending in the cavalry. The demonstrators were routed, with hundredsbeing killed in the street. The people were outraged. In the Bolshevik ranks, however, celebrationswere occurring. They saw this as the spark that would bringon the great communist revolution. Ove the following months, protests grew larger,morphing into the general strike of October, 1905. Over that period of time, the Bolshevik’swere busy organizing the resistance. Both Lenin and Trotsky had relocated to St.Petersburg. Trotsky began organizing special worker’sassemblies. These groups were designed to take controlof regions that were to be governed by a worker’s council. The Russian word for council is soviet. Trotsky set up the first soviet in St Petersburg,with he serving as its chairman. In short order the region was surrounded bythe Tsarist army and Trotsky taken into captivity. He was held in prison for nearly a year beforebeing put on trial. Defending the charge of leading an armed rebellion,Trotsky gave an impressive speech in which he laid out the benefits of Marxism. It was in vain, however, as he was convictedand exiled to Siberia. PravdaTrotsky determine that there was no way that he was returning to the Siberian wilderness. In January, 1907 he escaped while being transportedto his place of banishment. For a second time he headed for London. Within weeks, though, he relocated to Vienna,Austria.

 He began working for the Communist propagandanewspaper, Pravda. Financing the ongoing publication of Pravdawas a constant challenge. In 1909, Trotsky requested that the BolshevikCentral Committee inject funds to keep the paper going. Lenin, now at the head of the Bolsheviks,agreed but only on the condition that a Bolshevik be put in place as assistant editor. This meant that the moderate views which Trotskyhad managed to infuse into the paper were no longer going to be acceptable. From 1910 onwards, Pravda became the mouthpieceof Bolshevik communism. Tensions between the Bolsheviks and the Menshevikscontinued to cause division. In 1912, Lenin instigated a purge to removethe moderate voices. Trotsky remained in opposition to the moreradical actions of the Bolsheviks, such as armed robberies of banks to finance the party. He organised a unification conference to bringthe factions together, but this was a failure. DeportationsThroughout 1912, Trotsky wrote for a number of radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers. In September of that year, he was sent onassignment to cover the Balkan war. When World War One broke out, he moved fromAustria to Switzerland and then to Paris. From his base there, he wrote anti-war diatribesin which he described the injustice of the workers of the world being forced to killeach other at the beckoning of their rulers.

 The French government were not impressed withthis anti-war stance and had Trotsky deported on March 31st, 1916. Trotsky made his way to Spain, but his writingsled to his deportation from that country also. He ended up in the United States. He arrived in New York on January 13th, 1917. He settled into a small room in the Bronxand began writing for several Russian newspapers. A month after his arrival in the US, Trotskyreceived the news that Tsar Nicholas had been overthrown. He decided to return to play his part in thehistory that was unfolding. On March 27th, 1917, Trotsky sailed from NewYork harbor on board the SS Kristianiafjord. However, the ship was intercepted by the BritishNavy at Halifax, Nova Scotia and Trotsky was held in an internment camp for a month. Through the intervention of the Russian foreignminister, he was released to continue on to Russia. The October Revolution Following the ousting of Tsar Nicholas, asupposedly neutral provisional government was put in place until a more permanent governmentcould be established. Trotsky arrived in St. Petersburg on May 17th,1917.

He soon became a popular speaker at town hallsand factories as the various political elements vied for power. His catchphrase embodied the 3 key tenetsof his revolutionary vision . . . Distrust the bourgeoisie, control our ownleaders and have confidence in our own revolutionary forces. The Bolsheviks struggled for more radicalchanges than the State Government, or Dhuma, envisioned. Trotsky aligned himself with the Bolsheviks. He was arrested on August 7th for his involvementin a Bolshevik demonstration and spent 40 days in prison. On October 8th, with Bolshevik support gainingascendancy, Trotsky was voted governor of the St Petersburg soviet for the second time. By the end of the year the Provisional Governmenthad failed. It was superseded by the Bolsheviks, withLenin at their head. The second most powerful man in the partywas Leon Trotsky. Pulling Out of the WarAn immediate focus for the Bolshevik government was to get Russia out of the war. This task was handed to Trotsky along withthe title of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. On December 2nd, 1917, the Bolsheviks signeda ceasefire with the allied central powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey.

Talks then began between Trotsky and the centralpowers delegates to work out an armistice agreement. The Germans, in particular, drove a hard bargain. They demanded that the Russians give up anyclaim to Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, as well as parts of Latvia and Belorussia. Trotsky was taken back by the demands, buthe also knew that he had little choice. The Bolsheviks had campaigned on a platformof getting Russia out of the war and all of Russia was demanding just that. Trotsky related the demands to Lenin, addingthat he felt they had no choice but to agree. Lenin was of the same opinion. But when the rest of the Bolshevik governmentheard the demands they were infuriated. They managed to convince both Trotsky andLenin not to sign the armistice. In the end, Trotsky decided to simply pullout of the hostilities without the benefit of an armistice agreement. He explained . . .We declare we end the war but not sign a peace. They will be unable to make an offensive againstus. If they attack us, our position will be noworse than now. It was a gamble that Trotsky would immediatelyregret.

On February 18th, 1918 Austria and Germanforces invaded Russia. They found the borders completely undefended. On hearing the news, Trotsky was dumbfounded. He sent a message to the German ambassador,stating . . . We request clarification of this misunderstanding. But there was no misunderstanding. The very next day Trotsky was commanded byLenin to accept the original German conditions for the armistice. Civil WarWith Russia now out of the war, Trotsky was made commander in chief of the Russian armedforces. A crisis occurred when the Czechoslovak legionsreturning from the war revolted against the Bolshevik government. The resistance grew into what became knownas the White Army. When he heard that the outpost of Kazan hadfallen to this opposition, Trotsky hopped on a train and headed for the area to assessthe situation for himself. His train only made it to Sviyazhsk, whereit was forced to turn back. But before they could get out of town, WhiteArmy forces had surrounded Trotsky’s contingent. For twenty-five days they were forced to fendoff the assault until they were finally able to break out and return to St Petersburg. With the White Army challenging then fromthe east, the Bolsheviks also faced pressure from the north as a Finnish group known asthe White Guard sought to rescue Tsar Nicholas and his family from captivity.

 The group were on the verge of taking controlof the town of Yekaterinburg, which is where the royal family were being held captive. Then the order came through to kill the entireroyal family. With this terrible deed done, the Bolshevikswere ousted from the town. However, the White Guard was too late to saveNicholas or his family. At the beginning of 1919, Russia was in stateof crisis. Civil wars had racked the country and nowdisease, famine and poverty decimated the population. Meanwhile European powers hovered around likevultures ready to devour the Russian corpse. By October, the White Army had almost totalcontrol and were pressing at the gates of St Petersburg. The Soviet government ordered a full-scaleretreat from the capital but Trotsky strongly disagreed. He rallied his supporters to resist to thelast man. Trotsky’s bravery, persistence and strongpersonality turned the tide. The Soviet forces dug in and managed to pushback the White Army. St Petersburg was safe and the tide of thecivil war began to change in favour of the Bolsheviks. By the end of 1920, the White Army had beenconcentrated in Siberia. The Soviets had survived to see off theirenemies and cement their leadership.

However, in May 1922, their leader and visionaryVladimir Lenin had a massive stroke. Trotsky would have seemed to have been thenatural successor. However, there was another member of the Bolshevikpower structure who had other ideas – his name was Josef Stalin. Stalin VS TrotskyJosef Stalin was a streetfighter and a thug who had cajoled his way to becoming the generalsecretary of the Soviet Union by the time that Lenin had died. The position didn’t hold any real power,with all of his actions being controlled by the executive committee, or Politburo. By the end of 1922, Lenin had recovered sufficientlyto send a note to the Politburo giving his thoughts on a successor. He stated that Trotsky was a stronger personalitythan Stalin, but that he was too prone to acting unilaterally without consulting therest of the council. As for Stalin, Trotsky considered him to betoo rude, too ruthless and too intolerant. Lenin held on until January 21st 1924. During that time, it became clear to Stalinthat the dying leader favoured Trotsky over him. This led him to embark on a ruthless campaignto discredit Trotsky.

He claimed that Trotsky was trying to causedivisions within the party by trying to push out the old guard in favour of younger memberswho were more inclined to his will. Stalin managed to have a book that Trotskyhad written in 1923 banned from sale as being anti-Leninist even though it was nothing ofthe kind. The open and constant criticisms of Trotskyresulted in the loss of his two offices as Chairman of the War Council and People’sCommissar of War and Navy. After spending almost all of 1925 withouta job, Trotsky was recalled in 1926 and given three roles. However, Stalin interfered so much that heresigned from two of them, only retaining the position of Chairman of the ConcessionsCommittee. BanishedBut Stalin was not through with Trotsky yet. On November 12th, 1927 he had him expelledfrom the Communist Party and then exiled to Kazakhstan. Then three months later he was completed bannedfrom living in the Soviet Union. Soviet Guards forced him onto a train, yetwould not tell him where he was going. After going on a hunger strike, he was finallyinformed that he was headed for Turkey.

This enraged Trotsky, who was convinced thatthe anti-Communist regime there would have him executed immediately. He sent of a message to the Central Committeerequesting a change of heart, but there was no response. Surprisingly, the Turks treated Trotsky withthe greatest respect. He was giving a home to live in with his wifeNatalia and their son Lev. From his new base, he began writing aboutthe situation within the Soviet Union and, specifically, the failings of Stalin. He didn’t hold back, writing the followingin an article titled ‘What is Stalin?’ . . .His political horizon is extremely narrow . . . he has the mentality of a dogged empiricist,devoid of creative imagination. These writings were published in newspapersaround the world. Knowing what we do now about Stalin’s personality,it is a wonder that he didn’t have Trotsky killed immediately. But to have done so would have been to bringthe condemnation of the world down on Stalin. As a result, he sought to shut Trotsky upby sending him deeper into exile.

 The Turks received orders to remove Trotskyto the island of Prinkipo. After a year there he managed to get politicalasylum in France. The French would not allow Trotsky to livein Paris, so he settled into the coastal community of Royan. He spent almost two years there. But then French-Soviet relations improvedand the government was pressured to deport him. For a year he stayed in Norway with journalistKonrad Knudsen. While there he wrote The Revolution Betrayedwhich further highlighted the failings of Josef Stalin. A furious Stalin pressured the Norwegian governmentand Trotsky was, once more, deported. He and his wife and son now headed for Trotsky’sfinal destination – Mexico. For just over two years, from January 1937and April 1939, they lived with artists Diego Rivera and wife Frida Kahlo. During that time, Trotsky had an affair withFrida, even though his wife and son were also living under the same roof.

In April, 1939, the Trotsky’s moved intotheir own home a few streets away from Diego and Frida. It was here that he wrote his strongest attackon Stalin yet. The article was titled ‘Hitler and Stalin’. In it he wrote about Stalin’s hypocrisyin signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler . . .Over the last three years, Stalin has labelled every one of Lenin’s comrades in arms agentsof Hitler ... Having destroyed the army Party and decapitated the army, Stalin is now openlyadvancing his candidature as Hitler’s chief agent. Stalin’s RevengeBy now Trotsky was convinced that Stalin would soon silence him. On February 27th, 1940 he wrote ‘Trotsky’sTestament’ in which defended himself as a loyal Party member. In the mid-1940s Trotsky’s house was swarmedby members of the Russian secret police, the NKVD. Trotsky’s guards managed to fight them off. Following the failed assassination attempt,Trotsky wrote an article titled "Stalin Seeks My Death" on June 8th, 1940, in which he statedthat another assassination attempt was certain.

 A month later, on August 20th, 1940 a manwalked into Trotsky’ study and buried an ice pick into his head. Trotsky did not die immediately. Rather, he fought the attacker until his bodyguardswere able to come in and subdue him. Trotsky was rushed to the local hospital. According to James P. Cannon, the secretaryof the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task heattempted unsuccessfully before." He died the next day.