134 Facts About Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky escaped from Siberia in 1902 and moved to London, where he befriended Vladimir Lenin.

Leon Trotsky helped organize the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, after which he was again arrested and exiled to Siberia.

Leon Trotsky escaped, and spent the following 10 years working in Britain, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain and the United States.

Leon Trotsky became one of the seven members of the first Bolshevik Politburo in 1919.

Leon Trotsky was nominated for the position of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by Lenin in 1922 but declined the position.

In 1922, Leon Trotsky formed a bloc alliance with Lenin to counter the bureaucratisation of the party and the growing influence of Stalin.

Leon Trotsky spent the rest of his life in exile, writing prolifically and engaging in open critique of Stalinism.

Leon Trotsky's writings were banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.

Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to David Leontyevich Bronstein and Anna Lvovna on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a wealthy Jewish landowner family in Yanovka, Kherson governorate, Russian Empire.

North has compared the speculation on Leon Trotsky's given name to the undue emphasis given to his having a Jewish surname.

When Leon Trotsky was eight, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated.

Leon Trotsky was enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial government's policy of Russification.

Leon Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea.

Leon Trotsky was held for the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev, then Kherson, then Odessa, and finally in Moscow.

Leon Trotsky became aware of the differences within the party, which had been decimated by arrests in 1898 and 1899.

Leon Trotsky quickly sided with the Iskra position and began writing for the paper.

Until this point in his life, Trotsky had used his birth name: Lev Bronstein.

Leon Trotsky changed his surname to "Trotsky", the name he would use for the rest of his life.

Under the pen name Pero, Leon Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading writers.

In late 1902, Leon Trotsky met Natalia Sedova, who soon became his companion.

Leon Trotsky never used the name "Sedov" either privately or publicly.

Leon Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

From 1904 until 1917, Leon Trotsky described himself as a "non-factional social democrat".

Leon Trotsky worked between 1904 and 1917, trying to reconcile different groups within the party, which resulted in many clashes with Lenin and other prominent party members.

Leon Trotsky later maintained that he had been wrong in opposing Lenin on the issue of the party.

Amid the resulting confusion, Leon Trotsky returned from Finland to Saint Petersburg on 15 October 1905.

On that day, Leon Trotsky spoke before the Saint Petersburg Soviet Council of Workers Deputies, which was meeting at the Technological Institute in the city.

Leon Trotsky co-founded, together with Parvus and Julius Martov and other Mensheviks, "Nachalo", which proved to be a very successful newspaper in the revolutionary atmosphere of Saint Petersburg in 1905.

Leon Trotsky was a lawyer that stood above the political factions contained in the Soviet.

Leon Trotsky joined the Soviet under the name "Yanovsky" and was elected vice-chairman.

Leon Trotsky did much of the actual work at the Soviet and, after Khrustalev-Nosar's arrest on 26 November 1905, was elected its chairman.

In Vienna, Leon Trotsky became close to Adolph Joffe, his friend for the next 20 years, who introduced him to psychoanalysis.

Leon Trotsky approached the Russian Central Committee to seek financial backing for the newspaper throughout 1909.

When various Bolshevik and Menshevik factions tried to re-unite at the January 1910 RSDLP Central Committee meeting in Paris over Lenin's objections, Leon Trotsky's Pravda was made a party-financed 'central organ'.

Lev Kamenev, Leon Trotsky's brother-in-law, was added to the editorial board from the Bolsheviks, but the unification attempts failed in August 1910.

Leon Trotsky continued publishing Pravda for another two years until it finally folded in April 1912.

Leon Trotsky was so upset by what he saw as a usurpation of his newspaper's name that in April 1913, he wrote a letter to Nikolay Chkheidze, a Menshevik leader, bitterly denouncing Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

In Vienna, Leon Trotsky continuously published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers, such as Kievskaya Mysl, under a variety of pseudonyms, often using "Antid Oto".

Leon Trotsky became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky, later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally in the Soviet Communist Party.

On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, in which Austria-Hungary fought against the Russian Empire, Leon Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian emigre.

In Switzerland, Leon Trotsky briefly worked within the Swiss Socialist Party, prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution.

Leon Trotsky wrote a book opposing the war, The War and the International, and the pro-war position taken by the European social democratic parties, primarily the German party.

Leon Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists in September 1915 and advocated a middle course between those who, like Martov, would stay within the Second International at any cost and those who, like Lenin, would break with the Second International and form a Third International.

In September 1916, Leon Trotsky was deported from France to Spain for his anti-war activities.

Leon Trotsky arrived in New York City on 13 January 1917.

Leon Trotsky stayed for nearly three months at 1522 Vyse Avenue in The Bronx.

Leon Trotsky was living in New York City when the February Revolution of 1917 overthrew Tsar Nicholas II.

Leon Trotsky left New York on 27 March 1917, but his ship, the SS Kristianiafjord, was intercepted by British naval officials in Canada at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Leon Trotsky was detained for a month at Amherst Internment Camp in Nova Scotia.

Morris then forbade Leon Trotsky to make any more public speeches, leading to 530 prisoners protesting and signing a petition against Morris' order.

Leon Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organization in Saint Petersburg, and became one of its leaders.

Leon Trotsky was released 40 days later in the aftermath of the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by Lavr Kornilov.

Leon Trotsky sided with Lenin against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed staging an armed uprising, and he led the efforts to overthrow the Provisional Government headed by Aleksandr Kerensky.

Leon Trotsky overshadowed the ambitious Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant over the previous decade, but whose star appeared to be fading.

On 23 November 1917, Leon Trotsky revealed the secret treaty arrangements which had been made between the Tsarist government, Britain and France, causing them considerable embarrassment.

In preparation for peace talks with the representatives of the German government and the representatives of the other Central Powers leading up to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Leon Trotsky appointed his old friend Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks.

Therefore, Leon Trotsky replaced Joffe as the leader of the Soviet delegation during the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918.

Leon Trotsky agreed with the Left Communists that ultimately a pan-European Soviet revolution would solve all problems, but until then the Bolsheviks had to stay in power.

Leon Trotsky argued that any German ultimatum should be refused, and that this might well lead to an uprising in Germany, or at least inspire German soldiers to disobey their officers since any German offensive would be a naked grab for territories.

LeninPass the following on to Leon Trotsky: please adjourn proceedings and leave for Petrograd.

Since Leon Trotsky was so closely associated with the policy previously followed by the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, he resigned from his position as Commissar for Foreign Affairs to remove a potential obstacle to the new policy.

The post of commander-in-chief was abolished, and Leon Trotsky gained full control of the Red Army, responsible only to the Communist Party leadership, whose Left Socialist Revolutionary allies had left the government over Brest-Litovsk.

In dealing with deserters, Leon Trotsky often appealed to them politically, arousing them with the ideas of the Revolution.

In December 1918 Leon Trotsky ordered that detachments of additional barrier troops be raised for attachment to each infantry formation in the Red Army.

Nevertheless, Leon Trotsky eventually established a working relationship with the often prickly Vatsetis.

Leon Trotsky appointed former imperial general Pavel Pavlovich Sytin to command the Southern Front, but in early October 1918 Stalin refused to accept him and so he was recalled from the front.

Leon Trotsky's plan was rejected, and he was much criticized for various alleged shortcomings in his leadership style, much of it of a personal nature.

Leon Trotsky was temporarily sent to the Southern Front, while Smilga informally coordinated the work in Moscow.

Leon Trotsky argued that Petrograd needed to be defended, at least in part to prevent Estonia and Finland from intervening.

Leon Trotsky did not believe that the Red Army would find much support in Poland proper.

Back in Moscow, Leon Trotsky again argued for a peace treaty, and this time prevailed.

Leon Trotsky's position formed while he led a special commission on the Soviet transportation system, Tsektran.

Leon Trotsky was appointed there to rebuild the rail system ruined by the Civil War.

At a meeting of his faction at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, Lenin's faction won a decisive victory, and a number of Leon Trotsky's supporters lost their leadership positions.

Leon Trotsky presented alleged French press articles announcing the revolt two weeks before its outbreak as proof that the rebellion was a plan devised by the emigre and the forces of the Entente.

Leon Trotsky was an ideologist and practitioner of the Red Terror.

Leon Trotsky despised "bourgeois democracy"; he believed that spinelessness and soft-heartedness would destroy the revolution, and that the suppression of the propertied classes and political opponents would clear the historical arena for socialism.

Leon Trotsky was the initiator of concentration camps, compulsory "labour camps", and the militarization of labour, and the state takeover of trade unions.

Leon Trotsky was implicated in many practices which would become standard in the Stalin era, including summary executions.

Leon Trotsky had three strokes between 25 May 1922 and 9 March 1923, which caused paralysis, loss of speech and finally death on 21 January 1924.

Much of the Bolshevik elite wanted 'normality,' while Leon Trotsky was personally and politically personified as representing a turbulent revolutionary period that they would much rather leave behind.

In late 1922, Leon Trotsky secured an alliance with Lenin against Stalin and the emerging Soviet bureaucracy.

In March 1923, days before his third stroke, Lenin asked Leon Trotsky to denounce Stalin and his so-called "Great-Russian nationalistic campaign" at the XIIth Party Congress.

At the XIIth Party Congress in April 1923 just after Lenin's final stroke, Leon Trotsky did not raise the issue.

The delegates, most of whom were unaware of the divisions within the Politburo, gave Leon Trotsky a standing ovation.

On 8 October 1923 Leon Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, attributing these difficulties to lack of intra-Party democracy.

The troika used his letter as an excuse to launch a campaign against Leon Trotsky, accusing him of factionalism, setting "the youth against the fundamental generation of old revolutionary Bolsheviks" and other sins.

Leon Trotsky defended his position in a series of seven letters which were collected as The New Course in January 1924.

Yet in October 1924, Leon Trotsky published Lessons of October, an extensive summary of the events of the 1917 revolution.

Leon Trotsky was again sick and unable to respond while his opponents mobilised all of their resources to denounce him.

Leon Trotsky kept his Politburo seat, but was effectively put on probation.

Leon Trotsky wrote in My Life that he "was taking a rest from politics" and "naturally plunged into the new line of work up to my ears".

Later in the year, Leon Trotsky resigned his two technical positions and concentrated on his work in the Concessions Committee.

Leon Trotsky denied these statements made by Eastman in an article he wrote.

The United Opposition was repeatedly threatened with sanctions by the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party, and Leon Trotsky had to agree to tactical retreats, mostly to preserve his alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev.

Leon Trotsky wanted the Communist Party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and have clear class independence from the KMT.

Leon Trotsky gave the eulogy at the funeral of his friend, the Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe, in November 1927.

Leon Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata, Kazakhstan on 31 January 1928.

Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and their eldest son, Lev.

In 1931, Leon Trotsky wrote a letter to a friend entitled "What is Fascism" in which he attempted to define fascism and asserted that the Comintern was wrong to describe the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera as "fascist" because it was not a mass movement arising from a base in the lower classes.

In 1932, Leon Trotsky entered via a port into the fascist Kingdom of Italy on his way to a socialist conference in Denmark.

Leon Trotsky wanted by no means that the alliance became a fusion, and he was afraid of the right gaining much power inside the bloc.

In July 1933, Leon Trotsky was offered asylum in France by Prime Minister Edouard Daladier.

Leon Trotsky accepted the offer, but he was forbidden to live in Paris and soon found himself under the surveillance of the French police.

Accordingly, the French authorities instructed Leon Trotsky to move to a residence in the tiny village of Barbizon under the strict surveillance of the French police, where Leon Trotsky found his contact with the outside world to be even worse than during his exile in Turkey.

In May 1935, soon after the French government had agreed to the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union government, Leon Trotsky was officially told that he was no longer welcome in France.

Leon Trotsky was hospitalized for a few weeks at the nearby Oslo Community Hospital, from 19 September 1935.

Leon Trotsky demanded a complete and open enquiry into Moscow's accusations.

Leon Trotsky categorically refused the conditions, and Leon Trotsky was then told that he and his wife would soon be moved to another residence.

When later living in Mexico, Leon Trotsky was utterly scathing about the treatment he received during his 108 days at Hurum, and accused the Norwegian government of trying to prevent him from publicly voicing his strong opposition to the Moscow Trials and other show trials, saying:.

Leon Trotsky's final move was a few blocks away to a residence on Avenida Viena in April 1939, following a break with Rivera.

Leon Trotsky wrote prolifically while in exile, penning several key works, including his History of the Russian Revolution and The Revolution Betrayed, a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism.

Leon Trotsky argued that the Soviet state had become a "degenerated workers' state" controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing a workers' democracy, or degenerate into a capitalist class.

For fear of splitting the Communist movement, Leon Trotsky initially opposed the idea of establishing parallel Communist parties or a parallel international Communist organization that would compete with the Third International.

Towards the end of 1939, Leon Trotsky agreed to go to the United States to appear as a witness before the Dies Committee of the House of Representatives, a forerunner of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Leon Trotsky intended to use the forum to expose the NKVD's activities against him and his followers.

Leon Trotsky made it clear that he intended to argue against the suppression of the American Communist Party and to use the committee as a platform for a call to transform World War II into a world revolution.

On hearing about it, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union immediately accused Leon Trotsky of being in the pay of the oil magnates and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

On 27 February 1940, Leon Trotsky wrote a document known as "Leon Trotsky's Testament", in which he expressed his final thoughts and feelings for posterity.

Leon Trotsky was suffering from high blood pressure, and feared that he would suffer a cerebral haemorrhage.

Leon Trotsky underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives.

On 24 May 1940, Leon Trotsky survived a raid on his villa by armed assassins led by the NKVD agent Iosif Grigulevich and Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.

On 20 August 1940, Leon Trotsky was attacked in his study by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who used an ice axe as a weapon.

Leon Trotsky was then taken to a hospital and operated on, surviving for more than a day, but dying, at the age of 60, on 21 August 1940 from exsanguination and shock.

The moment Leon Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.

Leon Trotsky had a diverse and profound range of interests which exceeded that of other Bolshevik theoreticians such as Nikolai Bukharin.

The foundation "International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum" has been organized to raise funds to improve the museum further.

Shortly before his assassination, Leon Trotsky agreed to sell the bulk of the papers he still had to Harvard University.

Leon Trotsky was never rehabilitated during the rule of the Soviet government, despite the de-Stalinization-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges.

Leon Trotsky was rehabilitated on 16 June 2001 by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

Leon Trotsky considered himself to be a "Bolshevik-Leninist," arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party.

Leon Trotsky viewed himself as an advocate of orthodox Marxism.

Leon Trotsky elaborated on the need for Soviet democracy in relation to the industrialisation period when questioned by the Dewey Commission:.

Leon Trotsky was a central figure in the Comintern during its first four congresses.