How did Leva (Leiba) Bronstein turn into the “bloody dictator” Trotsky? Lev Davidovich Trotsky - biography.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky, real name - Leib Davidovich Bronstein (among pseudonyms: Pero, Antid Oto, L. Sedov, Old Man). Born on October 26 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province, Russian empire(now Bereslavka, Kirovograd region, Ukraine) - died August 21, 1940 in Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico. Revolutionary figure of the 20th century, ideologist of Trotskyism.

Twice exiled under the monarchy, deprived of all civil rights in 1905. One of the organizers October revolution 1917, one of the founders 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 - leader of the internal party left opposition. 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 he was expelled from the USSR.

In 1932, he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. After being expelled from the USSR, he was the creator and chief theoretician of the Fourth International (1938).

Leon Trotsky (biographical film)

Leiba Bronstein was born on October 26 (November 7, new style) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province.

He was the fifth child in the family of David Leontyevich Bronstein (1843-1922) and his wife Anna (Anetta) Lvovna Bronstein (née Zhivotovskaya) - wealthy landowners and landlords from among the Jewish colonists of the agricultural farm. Leon Trotsky's parents came from the Poltava province.

As a child, Lev 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, and then in Nikolaev. During his years of study in Odessa (1889-1895), Lev lived and was raised in the family of his cousin (on his mother’s side), the owner of the printing house and scientific publishing house “Matesis” Moisei Filippovich Shpenzer and his wife Fanny Solomonovna, the parents of the poetess Vera Inber.

In 1896, in Nikolaev, Lev Bronstein participated in a circle, together with other members of which he conducted revolutionary propaganda. In the same year he graduated from the Nikolaev Real School and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Novorossiysk University, which he soon left.

In 1897 he participated in the founding of the South Russian Workers' Union. On January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time. In the Odessa prison, where Trotsky spent 2 years, he becomes a Marxist. “The decisive influence,” he said on this occasion, “was made on me by two studies by Antonio Labriola on the materialistic understanding of history. Only after this book did I move on to Beltov (Plekhanov’s pseudonym) and Capital.”

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 “Pero” for his obvious literary gift, was invited to collaborate in Iskra.

According to the memoirs of Dr. G. A. Ziv, Trotsky had a tendency to lose consciousness, which, according to Trotsky himself, he inherited from his mother. G. A. Ziv, as a doctor, accurately determines that this was not just a tendency to lose consciousness, but real seizures, that is, Trotsky had epilepsy.

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

Lev received his education 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 Novorossiysk University.

The 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 deported.

First emigration to London

In 1902, he managed to escape abroad using 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 returned to Russia illegally 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. Lived in Vienna, Zurich, Paris, New York (the USA made a great impression on Trotsky).

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

Trotsky after '17

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 went to prison, from which he was released after the failure of the Kornilov rebellion. He immediately became a member of the Central Committee, head of the Petrograd Soviet 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 held the position of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, from 1918 to 1924 he was People's Commissar for Military Affairs. 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 oppose him. In 1924, immediately after Lenin’s death, Trotsky was removed from the post of People’s Commissar of Military Affairs (M. Frunze was appointed).

In 1924-1925 Trotsky found himself almost completely removed from business, but in 1927 he united with M. Zinoviev and D. Kamenev against Stalin. The activities of the “new opposition” were 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 deported outside 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 with him into exile an archive, the contents of which largely compromised Stalin. That is why in 1940, Trotsky, who was living in Mexico at that time, was killed by NKVD officer Ramon Markeder. The USSR officially “denied” 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 of Lenin.

Other biography options

The surname “Trotsky” was entered into Lev Davydovich’s first false passport when he fled abroad in 1902. It is interesting that the real “owner” of this surname was the warden of the Odessa prison.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky is a Russian revolutionary figure of the 20th century, an 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 of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.

Leon Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 into a family of wealthy landowners and tenants. In 1889, his parents sent him to study in Odessa with his cousin, the owner of a printing house and scientific publishing house, Moses Schnitzer. Trotsky was the first student at the school. He was interested in drawing, literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian to Ukrainian language, participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.

He began to conduct revolutionary propaganda at the age of 17, having joined a revolutionary circle in Nikolaev. On January 28, 1898, he was first arrested and spent two years in prison, it was then that he became familiar with the ideas of Marxism. During the investigation, he studied English, German, French and Italian languages, read the works of Marx, became acquainted with the works of Lenin.

Leiba Bronstein at the age of nine, Odessa

A year before going to prison for the first time, Trotsky joined the South Russian Workers' Union. One of its leaders was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became Trotsky's wife in 1898. Together they went into exile in the Irkutsk province, where Trotsky contacted Iskra agents, and soon began collaborating with them, receiving the nickname “Pero” for his penchant for writing.

“I came to London a big provincial, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kyiv, I lived only in a transit prison.” In 1902, Trotsky decided to escape from exile. It was then, when receiving a false passport, that he entered the name Trotsky (the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison where the revolutionary was kept for two years).

Trotsky left for London, where Vladimir Lenin was then located. The young Marxist quickly gained fame by speaking at meetings of emigrants. He was extremely eloquent, ambitious and educated, everyone without exception considered him an amazing speaker. At the same time, for his support of Lenin, he was nicknamed “Lenin’s club,” while Trotsky himself was often critical of Lenin’s organizational plans.

In 1904, serious disagreements began between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. By that time, Trotsky had established himself as a follower of the “permanent revolution”, moved away from the Mensheviks and married Natalya Sedova for the second time (the marriage was not registered, but the couple lived together until Trotsky’s death). In 1905, they returned together illegally to Russia, where Trotsky became one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On December 3, he was arrested and, as part of a high-profile trial, was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to Salekhard.

A split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was brewing, supported by Lenin, who in 1912, at the Prague conference of the RSDLP, announced the separation of the Bolshevik faction into an independent party. Trotsky continued to advocate for the unification of the party, organizing the "August Bloc", which the Bolsheviks ignored. This cooled Trotsky’s desire for a truce; he preferred to step aside.

In 1917 after February Revolution, Trotsky and his family tried to get to Russia, but were removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp for internment of sailors. The reason for this was the revolutionary’s lack of documents. However, he was soon released at the written request of the Provisional Government as an honored fighter against tsarism. Trotsky criticized the Provisional Government, so he soon became informal leader"Mezhrayontsy", for which he was accused of espionage. His influence on the masses was enormous, as he played a special role in the transition to the side of the Bolsheviks of the soldiers of the rapidly decaying Petrograd garrison, which had great importance in the revolution. In July 1917, the Mezhrayontsy united with the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky was soon released from prison, where he was accused of espionage.

While Lenin was in Finland, Trotsky effectively became the leader of the Bolsheviks. In September 1917, he headed the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and also became a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets and Constituent Assembly. In October, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was formed, consisting mainly of Bolsheviks. It was the committee that was engaged in armed preparations for the revolution: already on October 16, the Red Guards received five thousand rifles; Rallies were held among the undecided, at which Trotsky’s brilliant oratorical talent again showed itself. In fact, he was one of the main leaders of the October Revolution.

Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev

“The uprising of the popular masses does not need justification. What happened was a rebellion, not a conspiracy. We tempered the revolutionary energy of St. Petersburg workers and soldiers. We openly forged the will of the masses for an uprising, and not for a conspiracy.”

After the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee remained the only authority for a long time. Under him, a commission was formed to combat counter-revolution, a commission to combat drunkenness and pogroms, and food supplies were established. At the same time, Leni and Trotsky maintained a tough position towards political opponents. On December 17, 1917, in his address to the cadets, Trotsky announced the beginning of the stage of mass terror against the enemies of the revolution in a more severe form: “You should know that no later than in a month, terror will take very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine, and not just prison, will await our enemies.” It was then that the concept of “red terror” appeared, formulated by Trotsky.

Soon Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first composition of the Bolshevik government. On December 5, 1917, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, Trotsky transferred his affairs to Zinoviev and completely immersed himself in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet. “Counter-revolutionary sabotage” began by civil servants of the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suppressed thanks to the publication of secret treaties of the tsarist government. The situation in the country was also complicated by diplomatic isolation, which was not easy for Trotsky to overcome.

To improve the situation, he said that the government would take an intermediate position of “neither peace nor war: we will not sign an agreement, we will stop the war, and we will demobilize the army.” Germany refused to tolerate this position and announced an offensive. By this time the army virtually did not exist. Trotsky admitted the failure of his policies and resigned from the post of People's Commissariat.

Leon Trotsky with his wife Natalya Sedova and son Lev Sedov

On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Military Affairs, on March 28 to the post of Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - Military Commissioner for Naval Affairs and on September 6 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR. Then the formation begins regular army. Trotsky became in fact its first commander-in-chief. In August 1918, Trotsky's regular trips to the front began. Several times Trotsky, risking his life, even speaks to deserters. But practice has shown that the army is not capable, Trotsky is forced to support its reorganization, gradually restoring unity of command, insignia, mobilization, a single uniform, military greetings and awards.

In 1922 general secretary The Bolshevik Party elected Joseph Stalin, whose views did not coincide with the views of Trotsky. Stalin was supported by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who believed that the rise of Trotsky threatened anti-Semitic attacks on the Soviet regime and condemned him for factionalism.

Lenin died in 1924. Stalin took advantage of Trotsky's absence in Moscow to put himself forward as the "heir" and strengthen his position.

In 1926, Trotsky teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin began to oppose. However, this did not help him and was soon expelled from the party, deported to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey.

Trotsky regarded Hitler's victory in February 1933 as the greatest defeat of the international labor movement. He concluded that the Comintern was ineffective due to Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the creation of the Fourth International.

In 1933, Trotsky was given secret asylum in France, which was soon discovered by the Nazis. Trotsky leaves for Norway, where he writes his most significant work, “The Betrayed Revolution.” In 1936, at a show trial in Moscow, Stalin called Trotsky an agent of Hitler. Trotsky is expelled from Norway. The only country that provided the revolutionary with refuge was Mexico: he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City - in the city of Coyocan.

After Stalin's speeches, the International Joint Commission to Investigate the Moscow Trials was organized in Mexico. The commission concluded that the accusations were slanderous and Trotsky was not guilty.

The Soviet intelligence services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances In Paris, his closest ally, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died in a hospital after an operation. His first wife and his wife were arrested and subsequently shot. younger son Sergey Sedov.

Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick in his home near Mexico City on August 24, 1940. The perpetrator was an NKVD agent, Spanish Republican Ramon Mercader (pictured), who infiltrated Trotsky's entourage under the name of Canadian journalist Frank Jackson.

Mercader received 20 years in prison for the murder. After his release in 1960, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union. According to some estimates, the murder of Trotsky cost the NKVD approximately five million dollars.

The ice pick that killed Trotsky

From the will of Leon Trotsky: “I have no need to refute here again the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents: there is not a single stain on my revolutionary honor. Neither directly nor indirectly, I have never entered into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin's opponents died as victims of similar false accusations.

For forty-three years of my adult life I remained a revolutionary, forty-two of which I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start over, I would, of course, try to avoid certain mistakes, but the general direction of my life would remain unchanged. I see a bright green strip of grass under the wall, a clear blue sky above the wall and sunlight everywhere. Life is Beautiful. May future generations cleanse it of evil, oppression, violence and enjoy it fully.”

TROTSKY(real name Bronstein) Lev Davidovich (1879-1940), Russian political figure. In the Social Democratic movement since 1896. Since 1904 he advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905, he basically developed the theory of “permanent” (continuous) revolution: according to Trotsky, the Russian proletariat, having realized the bourgeois one, will begin the socialist stage of the revolution, which will win only with the help of the world proletariat. During the revolution of 1905-07 he proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist; the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1908-12, editor of the newspaper Pravda. In 1917, chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising. In 1917-18, 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 founders of the Red Army, personally led its actions on many fronts of the Civil War, and made extensive use of repression. Member of the Central Committee in 1917-27, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-26. Trotsky's fierce struggle with I.V. Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat - in 1924 Trotsky's views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a "petty-bourgeois deviation" in the RCP(b). In 1927 he was expelled from the party, exiled to Alma-Ata, and in 1929 - abroad. He sharply criticized the Stalinist regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of proletarian power. Initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938). Killed in Mexico by an NKVD agent, Spaniard R. Mercader. Many of his works describe the history of Russia. Author of literary critical articles, memoirs "My Life" (Berlin, 1930).

TROTSKY Lev Davidovich(real name and last name Leiba Bronstein), Russian and international political figure, publicist, thinker.

Childhood and youth

Born into the family of a wealthy landowner from among the Jewish colonists. His father only learned to read in his old age. Trotsky's childhood languages were Ukrainian and Russian; he never mastered Yiddish. He studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first student in all disciplines. He was interested in drawing and literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine. During these years, his rebellious character first appeared: due to a conflict with a teacher French he was temporarily expelled from the school.

Political universities

In 1896 in Nikolaev, young Lev joined a circle whose members studied scientific and popular literature. At first he sympathized with the ideas of the populists and vehemently rejected Marxism, considering it a dry and alien teaching. Already during this period, many traits of his personality appeared - a sharp mind, polemical gift, energy, self-confidence, ambition, and a penchant for leadership.

Together with other members of the circle, Bronstein taught political literacy to workers, accepted Active participation in writing proclamations, publishing newspapers, and acted as a speaker at rallies, putting forward demands of an economic nature.

In January 1898 he was arrested along with like-minded people. During the investigation, Bronstein studied English, German, French and Italian from the Gospels, studied the works of Marx, becoming a fanatical adherent of his teachings, and became acquainted with the works of Lenin. He was convicted and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

Since the fall of 1900, the young family was in exile in the Irkutsk province. Bronstein worked as a clerk for a Siberian millionaire merchant, then collaborated with the Irkutsk newspaper "Eastern Review", where he published literary critical articles and essays about Siberian life. It was here that his extraordinary abilities with the pen first appeared. In 1902, Bronstein, with the consent of his wife, leaving her with two small daughters - Zina and Nina, fled alone abroad. When escaping, he entered into a false passport his new surname, borrowed from the warden of an Odessa prison, Trotsky, by which he became known throughout the world.

First emigration

Arriving in London, Trotsky became close to the leaders of Russian Social Democracy living in exile. He read abstracts defending Marxism in the colonies of Russian emigrants in England, France, Germany, and Switzerland. Four months after his arrival from Russia, Trotsky, at the suggestion of Lenin, who highly appreciated the abilities and energy of the young adept, was co-opted to the editorial office of Iskra.

In 1903 in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion and shared all the ups and downs that abounded in his life.

In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy, where he supported Martov’s position on the issue of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. But in the fall of 1904, a conflict broke out between Trotsky and the leaders of Menshevism over the issue of attitude towards the liberal bourgeoisie and he became a “non-factional” Social Democrat, claiming to create a movement that would stand above the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

Revolution 1905-1907

Having learned about the beginning of the revolution in Russia, Trotsky returned to his homeland illegally. He spoke in the press, taking radical positions. In October 1905 he became deputy chairman, then chairman of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. In December, he was arrested along with the council.

In prison he created the work “Results and Prospects”, where the theory of “permanent” revolution was formulated. Trotsky proceeded from the uniqueness of the historical path of Russia, where tsarism should be replaced not by bourgeois democracy, as the liberals and Mensheviks believed, and not by the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, as the Bolsheviks believed, but by the power of the workers, which was supposed to impose its will on the entire population of the country and rely on the world revolution.

In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to his place of exile he fled again.

Second emigration

From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (this name was later borrowed by Lenin), and in 1912 he tried to create an “August bloc” of Social Democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judass”.

In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for "Kyiv Thought" in the Balkans, and after the outbreak of World War I - in France (this work gave him military experience that was later useful). Having taken a sharply anti-war position, he attacked the governments of all the warring powers with all the might of his political temperament. In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the USA, where he continued to appear in print.

Return to revolutionary Russia

Having learned about the February Revolution, Trotsky headed home. In May 1917 he arrived in Russia and took a position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July, he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He showed his talent as an orator in all its brilliance in factories, in educational institutions, in theaters, squares, and circuses, as usual, he performed prolifically as a publicist. After the July days he was arrested and ended up in prison. In September, after his liberation, professing radical views and presenting them in a populist form, he became the idol of the Baltic sailors and soldiers of the city garrison and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In addition, he became chairman of the military revolutionary committee created by the council. He was the de facto leader of the October armed uprising.

At the pinnacle of power

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Participating in separate negotiations with the powers of the “quadruple 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 by 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, 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 showed himself to be a highly talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he took decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment in prisons and concentration camps of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline, and no exception was made for the Bolsheviks. Trotsky did great job to attract former tsarist officers and generals ("military experts") to the Red Army and defended them from attacks by some high-ranking communists. In the years civil war his train ran through railways on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military and Marine supervised the actions of the fronts, made fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, and rewarded those who distinguished themselves.

In general, during this period there was close cooperation between Trotsky and Lenin, although on a number of issues of a political (for example, 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) nature between them there were serious disagreements.

At the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 1920s. Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.

In 1920-21, he was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP.

At the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 1920s. Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape. Who is he? This man is a legend, who was overtaken by an NKVD bullet 20 years later?

TROTSKY (real name Bronstein) Lev Davidovich (1879-1940), Russian political figure. In the Social Democratic movement since 1896. Since 1904 he advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905, he mainly developed the theory of “permanent” (continuous) revolution: according to Trotsky, the Russian proletariat, having realized the bourgeois one, will begin the socialist stage of the revolution, which will win only with the help of the world proletariat. During the revolution of 1905-07 he proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist; the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1908-12, editor of the newspaper Pravda. In 1917, chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising. In 1917-18, 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 founders of the Red Army, personally led its actions on many fronts of the Civil War, and made extensive use of repression. Member of the Central Committee in 1917-27, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-26. Trotsky's fierce struggle with I.V. Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat - in 1924 Trotsky's views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a “petty-bourgeois deviation” in the RCP(b). In 1927 he was expelled from the party, exiled to Alma-Ata, and in 1929 - abroad. He sharply criticized the Stalinist regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of proletarian power. Initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938). Killed in Mexico by an NKVD agent, Spaniard R. Mercader. Author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, and memoirs “My Life” (Berlin, 1930).

Trotsky Lev Davidovich* * *

TROTSKY Lev Davidovich (real name and last name Leiba Bronstein), Russian and international political figure, publicist, thinker.

Childhood and youth

Born into the family of a wealthy landowner from among the Jewish colonists. His father only learned to read in his old age. Trotsky's childhood languages were Ukrainian and Russian; he never mastered Yiddish. He studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first student in all disciplines. He was interested in drawing and literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine. During these years, his rebellious character first appeared: due to a conflict with a French teacher, he was temporarily expelled from the school.

Political universities

Together with other members of the circle, Bronstein taught political literacy to workers, took an active part in writing proclamations, publishing a newspaper, and acted as a speaker at rallies, putting forward demands of an economic nature.

Since the fall of 1900, the young family was in exile in the Irkutsk province. Bronstein worked as a clerk for a millionaire Siberian merchant, then collaborated with the Irkutsk newspaper Eastern Review, where he published literary critical articles and essays about Siberian life. It was here that his extraordinary abilities with the pen first appeared. In 1902, Bronstein, with the consent of his wife, leaving her with two small daughters, Zina and Nina, fled alone abroad. When escaping, he entered into a false passport his new surname, borrowed from the warden of an Odessa prison, Trotsky, by which he became known throughout the world.

First emigration

In 1903 in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion and shared all the ups and downs that abounded in his life.

Revolution 1905-1907

In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to his place of exile he fled again.

Second emigration

In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for “Kyiv Thought” in the Balkans, and after the outbreak of World War I - in France (this work gave him military experience that was later useful). Having taken a sharply anti-war position, he attacked the governments of all the warring powers with all the might of his political temperament. In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the USA, where he continued to appear in print.

Return to revolutionary Russia

Having learned about the February Revolution, Trotsky headed home. In May 1917 he arrived in Russia and took a position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July, he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He showed his talent as an orator in all its brilliance in factories, educational institutions, theaters, squares, and circuses; as usual, he acted prolificly as a publicist. After the July days he was arrested and ended up in prison. In September, after his liberation, professing radical views and presenting them in a populist form, he became the idol of the Baltic sailors and soldiers of the city garrison and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In addition, he became chairman of the military revolutionary committee created by the council. He was the de facto leader of the October armed uprising.

At the pinnacle of power

In the spring of 1918, 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 showed himself to be a highly talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he took decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment in prisons and concentration camps of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline, and no exception was made for the Bolsheviks. Trotsky did a great job of recruiting former Tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army and defended them from attacks by some high-ranking communists. During the Civil War, his train ran on railroads on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military and Marine supervised the actions of the fronts, made fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, and rewarded those who distinguished themselves.

At the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 1920s. Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.

In 1920-21, he was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP.

The fight against Stalin

Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. 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 “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, and advocated the involvement of young people in solving important political problems.

Trotsky’s opponents relied on the bureaucracy and, showing great determination, unprincipledness and cunning, speculating on the topic of his previous disagreements with Lenin, caused swipe according to the authority of Trotsky. He was removed from his posts; his supporters are ousted from the leadership of the party and state. Trotsky's views (“Trotskyism”) were declared a petty-bourgeois movement hostile to Leninism.

In the mid-1920s, 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 sided with 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.

Last exile

By decision of the Politburo in 1929 he 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 publishing the “Bulletin of the Opposition” and wrote his autobiography “My Life”. The memoirs were a response to anti-Trotskyist propaganda in the USSR and a justification for his life.

His main historical work was written on Prinkipo - “The History of the Russian Revolution”, dedicated to the events of 1917. This work was intended to prove the historical exhaustion Tsarist Russia, to justify the inevitability of the February Revolution and its development into the October Revolution.

In 1933 he 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 him for adventurism and cruelty.

In 1935, Trotsky created his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society - “The Betrayed Revolution”, where it was considered in the focus of the contradiction between the interests of the main population of the country and the bureaucratic caste led by Stalin, whose policies, in the author’s opinion, undermined social foundations building. Trotsky proclaimed the need political revolution, whose task would be to eliminate the dominance of bureaucracy in the country.

At the end of 1936 he 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 deployment to the USSR trials against the opposition, against which he himself was tried in absentia, Trotsky paid a lot of 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, rendered a not guilty verdict against Trotsky and his associates.

All these years, Trotsky did not abandon attempts to rally supporters. In 1938, the IV International was proclaimed, which included small and disparate 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 disintegrated shortly after the death of the founder.

The Soviet intelligence services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris, his closest and tireless colleague, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died in a hospital after surgery. From the 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 at this time became the most terrible and dangerous.

Last days

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate his longtime enemy.

Having turned into a Koyokan recluse, 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 throw off the power of Stalin and his cliques, articles in the “Bulletin of the Opposition”, in which he sharply condemned the Soviet-German rapprochement, justified the USSR’s war against Finland and supported the entry Soviet troops to the territory Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Anticipating his imminent death, at the beginning of 1940 Trotsky wrote a will, 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 Trotsky's life, which ended in failure, was made, led by the Mexican artist Siqueiros.

On August 20, 1940, Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent who had infiltrated Trotsky's entourage, mortally wounded him. On August 21, Trotsky died. He was buried in the courtyard of his house, where his museum is now located.

P.S. Tatiana Moreva

1. Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in the summer of 1926 (not in 1927).

2. “Struggle for leadership” with Stalin is, to put it mildly, an incorrect formulation. Firstly, in 1923-24. Stalin was not so popular or influential as to compete for leadership, and Zinoviev really competed with Trotsky (since 1920) (it was not for nothing that he read the traditionally “Leninist” report at the first without Lenin, the Twelfth Congress); Stalin simply quietly seized power in the apparatus, taking advantage of the fact that Zinoviev was in St. Petersburg, and Kamenev was swamped with other work. Secondly, it would be more correct to talk about the struggle for influence; under a democratic regime in the party, real power was wielded by the one who ruled the minds, and Trotsky’s trouble is precisely that here no one could really compete with him. Both Zinoviev and especially Stalin annoyed Trotsky too much even under Lenin, which is why - being vindictive and vindictive themselves - they feared that Trotsky would reckon with them (using his influence); That’s why we had to curtail democracy - so that the “leaders” (the rulers of thoughts) would be replaced by “ officials", endowed with simple bureaucratic power.

3. I give the author credit for mentioning that it was Trotsky who proposed the NEP, back in early 1920 (by the way, after its introduction, it was Trotsky, and not Bukharin, who became the main theorist of the NEP: he explained what the NEP was to foreign communists in Comintern, he also made the main economic report at the XII Congress); but it’s high time to sort out the “discussion about trade unions.” It is not by chance that Lenin, in his “Letter to the Congress,” recalling this story, writes “on the question of the NKPS” (the People’s Commissariat of Railways, which Trotsky headed at that time), and not “about the trade unions.” The “discussion about trade unions” was invented by Zinoviev, and Lenin and Trotsky argued about something completely different: is it possible to make scapegoats of people who at a critical moment saved transport using not entirely democratic methods...