(real name Leyba Davidovich Bronshtein) (26.10.(07.11.) 1879, Yanovka village, Kherson province - 21.08. 1940, Coyoacán, Mexico)
Social democrat from 1897, Menshevik from 1903-1904. In October-November 1905, he was the chairman of the Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies under the surname Yanovsky. He was arrested and sentenced to eternal life in Siberia, but escaped on his way to his destination. In 1912 VI established the August Association directed against Lenin and the Bolsheviks. At the beginning of the First World War, he published the anti-war newspaper Nashe Slovo (Our Word) in Paris (together with the Menshevik L. Martov) and was expelled from France. In 1916, he published the newspaper "Noviy Mir" ("New World") in the USA, in which he propagated his idea of permanent revolution. In the summer of 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Inter-Regional Organization of the RSDRP. In early July, he called on the workers not to go out in arms early, but was nevertheless arrested by the Provisional Government on July 23. He was released on September 2. On September 25, he became the chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and was included in the list of 40 candidates from the RSDRP for the elections to the Council of Influence. He made a great contribution to the preparation of the October 1917 uprising. After the revolution, People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Executive Committee of the Comintern, participated in all debates within the Party. In 1927 he was expelled from the party, in 1929 he was expelled from the USSR. In 1932, he was deprived of his Soviet citizenship. During his stay in exile, he continued his active political activity. Killed by NKVD agent R. Mercader in Mexico.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky is one of the leaders of the international communist movement, a great theoretician of Marxism, representative of the Soviet Party. Leyba Bronshtein was born into a rich peasant family. He was the fifth child of David and Anna Bronstein. From the age of 7, he studied at the religious school of the Ayyarites - Kheder, but did not finish it. In 1888, he was sent to Odessa, studied at a real school and "was always the first student." In 1896, while graduating from Nikolayev school of real education, he got acquainted with the members of the social-democratic "South Russian Workers' Union". Trotsky's revolutionary activities narodnik? started as In 1898, he was imprisoned, spent 2 years in prison, where he married his comrade AL Sokolovskaya.
L. Trotsky became a Marxist under the influence of fellow workers in prison. In 1900, he was exiled to the Irkutsk province, where he published many articles in regional publications. In 1902, completely abandoning his wife and two daughters, he fled abroad with a forged passport in the name of the warden of the Odessa prison Trotsky, which eventually became his pseudonym. L. in London. Trotsky V. He got to know Lenin, and assessed him as a "motivated and capable comrade." He VI Zasulich, Yu.0. He also met the Martovs, became an employee of Iskra ("Spark") newspaper, gave lectures to Russian emigrants in Paris. The Ukrainian immigrant NI, who shared with him both fame and persecution for the rest of his life He married Sedova. In 1903, as a delegate of the Second Congress of the RSDRP, VI Lenin and PV He supported the Plekhanovs, but in the debates about the party charter, Yu.0. He approved Martov's point of view, because he did not consider it desirable that the party should become a strictly disciplined organization of active revolutionaries, which was in danger of becoming a group of radical conspirators with personal rule. He cooperated with the Mensheviks until 1904, but did not join the Bolsheviks even after moving away from them. He developed the theory of "Continuous Revolution", which he expresses as follows: "Socialist revolution begins in the national territory, develops in the international arena and ends on a global scale." When the first Russian revolution began in 1905, L. Trotsky returned to Russia and took an active part in it; In December, he was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Council. was arrested and exiled to Tobolsk in 1906, but escaped abroad on the way. participated in the meeting of RSDRP in London; tried to reconcile the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks without officially joining the factions. L. Trotsky settled in Vienna and became a prominent figure in the international socialist movement, contributing to many newspapers and magazines. In 1912-1913, he worked as a military correspondent in the Balkans, where military operations were taking place. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, L. Trotsky moved to Zurich, where he published a pamphlet entitled War and the International, denouncing all participants in the bloodshed. Under the motto "Protection of the Motherland" L. Trotsky opposed the revolutionary call to create a United States of Europe, and then to do the same throughout the world, and to end the war. L. Trotsky V. disagreed with Lenin's slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war; he believed that a revolution could be started in Russia, but doubted that it could win without the help of other countries. In 1915 L. Trotsky took an active part in the Simmervalley Conference, which promoted the slogan of a just democratic world and the need for international proletarian cooperation.
In 1917, he welcomed the February Revolution in Russia and moved with his family to Petrograd, where he joined a group of united social-democratic internationalists (interdistrictists) who had no serious disagreements with the Bolsheviks. Arrested after the July Bolshevik demonstrations and spent 40 days in prison. At the VI session of the RSDRP (b) held in August 1917, L. Trotsky was accepted into the party as part of "inter-districts" and was included as a member of the Central Committee in absentia. He participated in the preparations for the October coup. L. Trotsky, who was an excellent orator and a brilliant publicist, became very popular. In September, he became the chairman of the Petrograd Council, in October he became the de facto head of the military-revolutionary committee and one of the leaders of the October coup. During this period, the names of Lenin and Trotsky were among the most popular. At the II meeting of the All-Russian Soviets, L. Trotsky was included in the first Soviet government as People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs. UA.F. Kerensky — PN He played an important role in the defeat of Krasnov's troops, and supported Lenin in the fight against the attempts of some members of the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks to create a "one-component socialist government". L. Trotsky went to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate peace with Germany. Despite the decision of the Central Committee and the agreement with Lenin, Trotsky prolonged the negotiations as much as possible, but after the German ultimatum he put forward the formula "we will stop the war, disband the army, but we will not sign the peace", with which he gave the international proletariat October without weakening the influence of the ntari and counting on the imminent support of the world revolution, he thought of depriving the Entente of an official pretext for a war of aggression. Lenin evaluated these actions of Trotsky as a "tactical or diplomatic mistake", as a result of which he had to get used to much more difficult conditions in Germany. In March 1918, L. Trotsky was appointed the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Republic, in September - the Chairman of the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Republic, one of the main organizers of the Red Army, its leader during the period of foreign intervention and civil war, one of the theorists of the "Red Terror". ("Whoever renounces terrorism, i.e. repression and intimidation against an angry and armed counter-revolution, must renounce the political rule of the working class, its revolutionary dictatorship"). L., who, like all Bolsheviks, showed a tendency to administration and the use of force, supported the need to create labor armies and a strict distribution. In 1920-1921, Trotsky was also on Lenin's side regarding the need for the New Economic Policy (NEP) ("The current policy of equalizing requisitioning according to food standards and equal distribution of industrial products is aimed at the decline of agriculture, the dissolution of the industrial proletariat and threatened to derail the country's economic life"). V. Lenin L. He appealed to Trotsky for help on the issue of foreign trade monopoly, on the "Georgian issue" during the resolution of the nation-state structure of the country; considers him a supporter in the fight against bureaucratization of the party, and in "Letter to Sezd" evaluates him as "the most capable person in the current Central Committee." V. After Lenin's death, I., who in practice used many of the ideas of his opponent. L., who realized the possibilities of Stalin too late. Trotsky lost the battle; In 1925, he was released from the positions of Chairman of the Revolutionary-Military Council of the USSR and People's Commissar of Military Affairs, and in 1926 he was removed from the Politburo.
In 1929, after the Almaty exile, he and his family were exiled to Prinkilo Island in the Sea of Marmara, Turkey. In 1932, he was deprived of his Soviet citizenship. Abroad, he exposed Stalin's totalitarian regime, engaged in journalistic and literary activities, exposed the falsification of noisy trials in the USSR, and worked on the creation of the IV ("Marxist") International. He had to move from one country to another: France, Norway, Mexico. NKVD officers stole L. Trotsky's archival materials from different countries, all his relatives in the USSR (first wife, son, brother, etc.) were persecuted.
On May 1940, 24, the assassination of L. Trotsky organized by the NKVD was carried out by the Spanish communist Ramon Mercader. He gained the confidence of the Trotsky household (he lived with L. Trotsky's secretary Silvia Angelova-Maslova, promising to marry her), and finally, on May 24, he hit Lev Davidovich on the head with an ice breaker of climbers, who was alone in the office. Ramón Mercader was immediately arrested and sentenced by a Mexican court to 20 years in prison (at that time, this was the highest sentence in Mexico). Merkaler completed his prison sentence and was released in 1960 and came to the USSR via Cuba. In 1961, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, a lifetime pension (400 soums), and his wife was allocated an apartment and a country yard in Moscow. R. Mercader got a job at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, he is one of the authors of the history of the Spanish Communist Party. But R. Mercader could not live in the USSR and settled in Cuba with the permission of the Soviet leaders. He died there in 1978 and was buried in Moscow according to his will.
L. Trotsky created his imaginary world, which seemed to be the bright future of humanity today. To create this world, in his opinion, it is possible and necessary to use all means: camps, "Purges", physical extermination, espionage, betrayal, purchase, terror. For him, people are just a material on the way to the realization of this great goal.
L. Trotsky was not even 61 years old when he was killed. His enemies used his methods, followed his views. These views eventually turned the revolutionaries who came to power in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, who gained independence, into dictators. The experience of these countries, which often ended tragically, shows that any idea that is instilled in the masses by brute force will eventually overthrow the authors of that idea with the same brute force.
I will die a proletarian revolutionary, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and therefore an atheist. My faith in the communist future of humanity is now stronger than it was when I was a teenager. (Lev Trotsky)
