AT world history Lev Davidovich Trotsky will enter as a consistent theoretician and ideologist of the world revolution. This fixed idea, in fact, ruined him, making him one of the main losers of the 20th century. Trotsky's global ambitions became one of the reasons for the conflict with Stalin, who, moving away from the canons of Marxism, was going to build socialism in a single country. In this confrontation, Trotsky lost and was expelled from the USSR. However, the "world revolutionary" did not part with his dream: until his death, he believed that in the Eastern Hemisphere globe a state called the United States of Europe and Asia will be built, in which people will live free from "bourgeois" prejudices (such as national culture, family hearth, private property) and enjoy the fruits of a just society.
Defeat the Oedipus Complex
Leon Trotsky was a passionate person. When the red leader had power and influence, all his hobbies acquired a national scale. So, even before the October Revolution, having been in Vienna, Trotsky became interested in Freud's psychoanalysis. From that moment on, Lev Davidovich, in addition to world capital, had another enemy - the Oedipus complex. It was he, according to Sigmund Freud, who was the root in the formation of all neurotic diseases. And how can the world revolution win with neurotic revolutionaries?
As a result, after the Bolsheviks came to power, Soviet Russia became a real testing ground for psychoanalytic experiments. Children's boarding schools appeared all over the country, in which experimental psychologists organized "free sexual development of children."
In 1921, with the blessing of Trotsky and Freud, the famous Orphanage-Laboratory "International Solidarity" was opened, the purpose of which was to create a "new man" - free from the Oedipus complex.
The honor to overcome this misfortune initially fell to the children of the Bolshevik nomenklatura (for example, Stalin's son Vasily received primary sexual education here). Moreover, the main condition for this upbringing was the absolute exclusion of parents from the process. True, the family feelings of high-ranking parents nevertheless prevailed, and in 1925 the Orphanage was closed with the wording "a failed experiment."
“The attempt to declare psychoanalysis 'incompatible' with Marxism and simply turn one's back on Freudianism is too simple, or rather simplistic. But we are by no means obligated to adopt Freudianism either. This is a working hypothesis that can and certainly does give conclusions and conjectures along the lines of materialistic psychology. The experimental path will bring verification in due time. But we have neither reason nor right to impose a ban on another path, even if less reliable, but trying to anticipate conclusions to which the experimental path leads only extremely slowly.
End the institution of the family
As a materialist, Leon Trotsky knew that being determines consciousness and that victory in the battle with the Oedipal complex is possible only with the destruction of the main cause - the family. Lev Davidovich directly said:
“The revolution has made a heroic attempt to destroy the so-called “family hearth”, that is, that archaic, musty and inert institution in which the woman of the working classes is serving hard labor from childhood to death.”
The harmful institution of the family was replaced by communes, which, with the support of Trotsky, began to be created almost immediately after the October Revolution. In these new cells of society, everything was common: both material property and love. Children who appeared after the release of love relationships were kept by the whole commune, and, according to the idea of psychoanalysts, should not have become victims of the oedipal complex, since they could not determine with accuracy who the father was. The last communes were closed in the late 1920s, after Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.
Find Shambhala
Since the beginning of the 20th century, one of the main fashion trends in the intellectual environment has been the search for a mythical country, lost in Tibet, Shambhala. Occultists believed that "great teachers" live on this mysterious land, who invisibly control the evolution of mankind. Trotsky, who liked to be on top of trends, also did not stay away from this process.
In 1925, Lev Davidovich sent his trusted agent, Yakov Blumkin, to Tibet on a special assignment, about whom the theoretician of the world revolution once said: "The revolution prefers young lovers."
It is not known whether Blumkin found Shambhala and whether he was able to meet with the “great teachers”, but we can say that the search had sad consequences. Trotsky is soon sent into exile, and the "young lover" disappears without a trace in 1929 in the camp.
Become an enemy of Hitler
Trotsky did not like Hitler and criticized the ideology of National Socialism until his death. The Fuhrer also did not publicly show love for the theoretician of the world revolution, however, apparently, he deeply respected Lev Davidovich. So, Konrad Heyden, the biographer of Adolf Hitler, recalled:
One day the Fuhrer at the table in a close circle asked: - "Have you read Trotsky's memoirs?"
Answers were heard: “Yes! A disgusting book! This is a memoir of Satan!”
"Disgusting?" Hitler asked. “Brilliant book! What a head he has! I learned a lot from him…”
It is curious that Trotsky's autobiography was used as a psychological weapon by the Japanese security service in the 1930s and 1940s: prison officials forcibly forced local communists to read My Life, believing that the "confession of a planetary loser" would destroy their ambitions.
Defeat Stalin
On October 21, 1928, exactly one year after being expelled from the party, Trotsky addressed a message to the communists of the whole world, urging them to resist Stalin's plans. This was not the only "anti-Stalinist" appeal of Lev Davidovich. True, these appeals sometimes had the opposite effect: it was precisely because of Trotsky's activity abroad that Stalin launched the Great Terror in the country in order to eradicate the influence of the ideologist of the world revolution forever.
Triumphant return to the USSR
The last years of his life, Trotsky lived in exile in Mexico, on the sidelines of the world. However, despite this, Lev Davidovich still believed in his return to big politics.
Trotsky regarded the outbreak of World War II as a good chance for a world revolution. He was sure that the war would create a revolutionary wave of class and national struggle, similar to the one that gave rise to the 1st World War.
The main role in these processes was to be played by the so-called Fourth International, which Leon Trotsky created in the late 1930s. It is curious that, in all likelihood, in Germany, the United States and Great Britain, in all seriousness, they considered the figure of Trotsky as an alternative to Stalin. Before the start of the war, the Germans even had plans to create a collaboration government of the USSR headed by Trotsky. It is not known whether the ideologist of the world revolution himself knew about the views on himself, but the ice ax of Ramon Mercader buried all these plans completely on August 20, 1940.
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The liquidation of Leon Trotsky: how it was
On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the international communist movement and Stalin's personal enemy, was killed in Mexico. mother of Ramon Mercader, communist Maria Caridad. Shortly after they met, both Mercadera's mother and son were recruited by Soviet intelligence. The death of the "demon of the revolution"
After the first unsuccessful assassination attempt by the group of the Mexican artist Siqueiros in May of that year, Trotsky became more cautious. According to the recollections of his wife, Natalya Sedova, Lev Davidovich even wanted to ban the visits of his secretary's husband and insisted that information be collected about him.
However, on August 21, when Ramon came to Trotsky's office, he let him in and even allowed "Raymond" to stand in the "blind zone", from where Mercader struck with an ice ax. Trotsky's attempt to stop Mercader was belated - the blow turned out to be fatal, although the "demon of the revolution" managed to finally bite his killer.
According to Sudoplatov's memoirs, at the time of the assassination, a car with Mercader's mother and Eitingon was standing at Trotsky's house, but they only had to watch how the beaten "Raymond" was taken away. That evening they flew to Cuba.
Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, O.S.) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (Ukraine) into a wealthy family. From the age of seven he attended a Jewish religious school, which he did not finish. In 1888 he was sent to study in Odessa, then moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he entered the Nikolaev real school, and after graduation he began attending lectures at the mathematical faculty of Odessa University. Here Trotsky met with radical, revolutionary-minded youth and took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union.
In January 1898, Trotsky, along with like-minded people, was arrested and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a comrade-in-arms in revolutionary activities.
In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile using false documents for the name Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.
In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of Russian social democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed his candidacy to the editorial board of Iskra.
In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion.
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, along with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and the destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. From 1904 Trotsky advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.
When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the St. Petersburg Soviet, becoming one of its three co-chairs.
By this time, Trotsky, together with Alexander Parvus (Gelfand), developed the theory of the so-called. "permanent" (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the revolution will win only with the help of the world proletariat, which, having carried out its bourgeois stage, will pass to the socialist one.
During the revolution of 1905-1907, Trotsky proved himself to be an outstanding organizer, orator, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia newspaper.
In 1907, he was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights, but fled on the way to the place of exile.
From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna and tried to create an "August bloc" of Social Democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky "Judas".
In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl in the Balkans, two years later, after the outbreak of the First World War, he moved to Switzerland, and then to France and Spain. Here he entered the editorial office of the newspaper of the left socialists "Our Word".
In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the USA.
Trotsky hailed the February Revolution of 1917 as the start of a long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia, in July he joined the Bolshevik Party as part of the Mezhraiontsy. He was chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.
After the victory of the Bolsheviks on October 25 (November 7), 1917, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He supported Lenin in the struggle against plans to create a coalition government of all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Krasnov advancing on it.
In 1918-1925, Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the creators of the Red Army, personally led its actions on many fronts of the Civil War. He did a great job of attracting former tsarist officers and generals ("military experts") to the Red Army. He widely used repression to maintain discipline and "establish revolutionary order" at the front and in the rear, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the "Red Terror".
Member of the Central Committee in 1917-1927, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-1926.
At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, Trotsky's popularity and influence reached a climax, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail "war communism" and move to the NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In the well-known "Letter to the Congress", noting the shortcomings of Trotsky, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable person from the entire composition of the Central Committee at that time.
Before Lenin's death, and especially after it, a struggle for power flared up among the leaders of the Bolsheviks. After Lenin's death, the bitter struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph 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). For his leftist opposition views, he was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma Ata, and in 1929, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.
In 1929-1933, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of Marmara). In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. At the end of 1936, he left Europe and settled in Mexico, in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.
He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, refuted the assertions of official propaganda and Soviet statistics.
Trotsky was the initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938), the author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, books "Lessons of October", "History of the Russian Revolution", "Revolution Betrayed", memoirs "My Life", etc.
In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia; his first wife and younger son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.
In 1939, Stalin ordered the liquidation of Leon Trotsky. In May 1940, the first attempt to kill him, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed.
On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation he was buried in the courtyard of a house in Koyokan, where his museum is now located.
Material prepared on the basis of open sources
"You're lying like Trotsky!" - You must have heard this phrase? Often we hear this about a person who talks a lot and at length, and can also easily lie without blinking an eye. The phrase “you lie like Trotsky” absolutely does not paint a person and has a negative connotation.
As many know, Leon Trotsky was once a popular revolutionary and political figure. Why is his name still commemorated in the unflattering expression "you're lying like Trotsky"? His activity, like any historical character, deserves careful study, especially since after so many years, this can be done partly objectively. Studying his biography will bring us closer to the solution. Where did the expression "you lie like Trotsky" come from?
two names
An acquired name, a pseudonym, possibly adopted by him in the fashion of the then revolutionary times. His real name is Leib Davidovich Bronstein. As you can see, Lev Davidovich changed it to a more harmonious one, leaving only the patronymic unchanged. In fact, many of Trotsky's life episodes are completely false and full of deceit, which is why they say: "you lie like Trotsky." Thanks to adventurism and a great gift for persuasion, Trotsky got out of difficult situations with the least losses for himself.
Born on October 26 (November 7, modern style), 1879, exactly 38 years before the October Revolution, near the village of Yanovka, Kherson province (Ukraine), in a wealthy family that leases its own plots of land to peasants.
From childhood, Leiba tried to speak Russian and Ukrainian, although in his native places it was customary to speak Yiddish. The feeling of his own superiority was formed in the future revolutionary thanks to the environment of the children of farm laborers, with whom he behaved arrogantly and did not communicate.
Studies. Youth
In 1889, Leo entered the Odessa School of St. Paul, where he soon became the best student, but showed more interest in creative subjects - literature, poetry and drawing.
At the age of 17, he actively participates in a revolutionary circle and conducts propaganda. A year later, Lev Bronstein becomes one of the organizers of the South Russian Workers' Union, after which his first arrest will follow. After spending two years in an Odessa prison, Leo goes over to the side of Marxist ideals. In prison, Lev Bronstein marries the head of the union, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.
The young Marxist was exiled to the Irkutsk province, where he establishes contact with the editorial agents of the Iskra newspaper. Subsequently, being the author of this newspaper, Lev Bronstein received the nickname Feather, thanks to his journalistic gift.
Emigration and the first revolution
Then Trotsky emigrates to London, communicates with the Social Democrats, collaborates with Lenin there and works in the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper, and also often makes speeches to Russian emigrants. The talent of the young orator does not go unnoticed: Trotsky wins the respect of both the Bolsheviks in general and Lenin in particular, receives another nickname - Lenin's Club.
But then Trotsky's love for the leader of the world proletariat fades away, he goes over to the side of the Mensheviks. The relationship between Trotsky and Lenin cannot be called unambiguous. They quarrel, then reconcile. Lenin calls him a "Jew", it is likely that the expression "you lie like Trotsky" has its roots in these conflicts. Accusing Lenin of dictatorship, Trotsky tried to reconcile the two camps of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, but this finally divorced him from the Mensheviks too.
Returning to Russia in 1905 with his new and last wife, Trotsky finds himself in the thick of the revolutionary events in St. Petersburg. He creates the Petersburg Soviet of Workers and speaks eloquently and convincingly before the huge masses of discontented workers. How honest were these speeches, was it possible then to say "you're lying like Trotsky!" - is already unknown.
In 1906, Trotsky was arrested again for calling for a revolution. And in 1907, he was deprived of all civil rights, sent to eternal exile in Siberia, on the way to which Trotsky managed to escape one more time.
Two revolutions
From 1908 to 1916 Trotsky is engaged in revolutionary publicistic activity, lives in many cities of Europe. During World War I, Trotsky also wrote military reports for the newspaper Kievskaya Mysl. He underwent another exile from France in 1916, many European countries refuse to accept it. In early 1917, Trotsky, having been expelled from Spain, arrived in the United States.
Trotsky enthusiastically welcomed the second Russian revolution in February 1917, and in May of the same year he came to Russia. Speaking at numerous meetings of soldiers, sailors and workers, Trotsky, thanks to an extraordinary oratory, again wins the recognition of the masses and becomes chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies.
The Military Revolutionary Committee, created in October 1917 by Trotsky, helps the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional Government in the October Revolution with the help of an armed rebellion.
new time
In the new government, Trotsky receives the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. However, after six months, he becomes the people's commissar of the military forces and begins the formation of the Red Army by rather cruel methods. Violation of discipline or desertion was followed by immediate arrest or even execution. This period has gone down in history as the Red Terror.
At the end of 1920, Lenin appointed Lev Davidovich People's Commissar of Railways, where Trotsky again applied paramilitary methods of government. Speaking to the railroad, he often does not keep his promises, perhaps that is why the common people create the saying "you lie like Trotsky."
Trotsky becomes the second leader of the country after Lenin, thanks to his persuasive performances during the Civil War and harsh methods of government. However, Lenin's death did not allow him to fully bring his plans to life. At the head of the country stands Joseph Stalin, who considered Trotsky his competitor.
After Lenin
Stalin is considered the possible progenitor of the saying "you lie like Trotsky." Having taken the first post of the country, Stalin immediately disgraces Trotsky, as a result of which he loses the post of military people's commissar and membership in the Central Committee of the Politburo.
Trotsky makes an attempt to restore his positions and holds an anti-government demonstration, after which he was deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled to Alma-Ata, and then completely outside the USSR.
In exile, Trotsky begins to write books, conduct opposition work, and publishes the Bulletin of the Opposition. In his autobiographical writings, he tries to answer Soviet anti-Trotskyism and justify his life in general. Leon Trotsky writes negatively about the leaders of the USSR, strongly criticizes industrialization and collectivization, and also does not believe Soviet statistics.
Last years
In 1936, Trotsky left Europe and settled in Mexico in a gated estate near Mexico City. But this does not stop the Soviet special agents, who are monitoring Trotsky almost around the clock.
In Paris in 1938, under strange circumstances, his eldest son and chief associate dies. Then the Stalinist hand deals with the first wife and youngest son.
Later, it comes to Trotsky himself - Stalin orders him removed, and after the first failed assassination attempt, Leon Trotsky dies at the hands of the Spanish NKVD agent Mercader. After his death, Trotsky was cremated and buried within the Mexican estate, where his museum is located to this day.
Why do they say "you're lying like Trotsky"?
Of course, Trotsky is an extraordinary historical figure who possessed an extraordinary talent for eloquence and persuasion. It is said that even as a child, little Leo always kept a book on oratory on his study table. His oratory style was specific: he immediately took his opponent into circulation, not allowing him to come to his senses.
“You lie like Trotsky” had the right to say both the people, more than once deceived by the Soviet government, and Lenin, who clashed with Trotsky. Perhaps, after Stalin recognized Trotsky as an "enemy of the people", they began to say so in party circles. Or the well-aimed phrase “you’re lying like Trotsky” was the first to use Joseph Vissarionovich himself, not trusting not only Trotsky, but also many other people.
Were Trotsky's talents a weapon in Lenin's able hands? Perhaps Lev Davydovich and Vladimir Ilyich were close comrades-in-arms, had the same right to bear the title of "leader of the revolution"? Was Stalin's cruel revenge deserved or not? History cannot give an answer, providing only bare facts.
Probably, we will never really know where the expression "you lie like Trotsky" came from.
"Traitor to the Revolution" Leon Trotsky
This man, whom Lenin called "an outstanding leader," was one of the brightest and most controversial personalities among those who led the Russian revolutionary movement, the construction and defense of the world's first "state of workers and peasants."
Lev Davidovich Trotsky
Leiba Bronstein (Lev Davidovich Trotsky) was born on October 25 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province. His father, David Leontievich, from among the Jewish colonists, rented 400 acres (about 440 hectares) of land in those parts. He managed successfully, but he learned to read only in old age. Mother, Anna, came from urban philistines.
Trotsky's childhood languages were Ukrainian and Russian; he never mastered Yiddish. Leiba studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first student in all disciplines. He was fond of drawing, literature, composed poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.
How did he join the revolutionary struggle
In 1896, in Nikolaev, Leiba, who changed his name to Lev, entered the circle of lovers of scientific and popular literature. At first, he sympathized with the ideas of the Narodniks and vehemently rejected Marxism, considering it a dry and alien doctrine. Already at that time, many features of his personality were manifested - a sharp mind, a polemical gift, energy, self-confidence, ambition, a tendency to leadership. Together with other members of the circle, young Bronstein was engaged in political literacy with the workers, wrote proclamations, published newspapers, and spoke at rallies.
In January 1898, he was arrested along with several associates. During the investigation, Lev studied English, German, French and Italian, using as an improvised means ... the Gospels. Having begun to study the works of Marx, he became a fanatical adherent of his teachings, and became acquainted with the works of Lenin. He was convicted and sentenced to a four-year exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a comrade-in-arms in revolutionary activities.
Since the autumn of 1900, the young family was in exile in the Irkutsk province. Bronstein worked as a clerk for a Siberian millionaire merchant, then collaborated in the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozrenie, where he published literary critical articles and essays on Siberian life. Here, for the first time, his extraordinary ability to master the pen appeared. In 1902, with the consent of his wife, Bronstein left her with two young daughters, Zina and Nina, and fled abroad alone. When escaping, he entered his new surname, borrowed from the overseer of the Odessa prison, Trotsky, into a fake passport. It was as Trotsky that he became known to the whole world.
Arriving in London, Trotsky became close to the leaders of Russian Social Democracy living in exile. At the suggestion of Lenin, who highly appreciated his abilities and energy, he was co-opted to the editorial board of Iskra.
In 1903, in Paris, Trotsky married a second time - to 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 II Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). After the congress, together with the Mensheviks, he accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and the destruction of the unity of social democracy. However, in the fall of 1904, a conflict also broke out between the leaders of the Mensheviks and Trotsky over the attitude towards the liberal bourgeoisie, and he became a "non-factional" Social Democrat, claiming to create a trend that would stand above the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
When the Revolution of 1905 began in Russia, Trotsky illegally returned to his homeland. In October he became deputy chairman, then chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies. And in December, together with the Council, he was arrested.
In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to the place of exile he fled again. From 1908 to 1912 he published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (this name was later borrowed by Lenin), in 1912 he tried to create an "August bloc" of social democrats. His most acute clashes with Lenin belonged to this period.
In 1912, Trotsky was a military correspondent for the newspaper Kievskaya Mysl in the Balkans, after the outbreak of the First World War - in France (this work gave him military experience that would later come in handy). Taking a sharply "anti-imperialist" position, he attacked the governments of the belligerent 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.
How to fight and lead
Upon learning of the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky left the United States. In May, he arrived in Russia and took the position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July, he joined the Bolsheviks and joined the RSDLP (b), acted as a publicist at factories, in educational institutions, theaters, squares. After the July events, he was arrested and ended up in prison. In September, after his release, he became the idol of the Baltic sailors and soldiers of the city garrison, was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In addition, he became chairman of the military revolutionary committee created by the Soviet.
Trotsky actually led the October armed uprising. After the Bolsheviks came to power, he became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Participating in separate negotiations with the powers of the "Fourth Bloc", he put forward the formula: "We stop the war, we do not 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 of the German troops, Lenin managed to achieve the acceptance and signing of the terms of the "obscene" Brest Peace.
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 early 1918. In this post, he showed himself to be a talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he used decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline in prisons and concentration camps, and there was no exception for the Bolsheviks. Trotsky did a great job of recruiting former tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army and defending them from the attacks of some high-ranking communists.
During the Civil War, his train ran on railways on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military Affairs directed the actions of the fronts, delivered fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, rewarded those who distinguished themselves. At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, Lev Davidovich's popularity and influence reached its apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail "war communism" and move to the NEP.
In general, during this period, there was close cooperation between Trotsky and Lenin, although they had serious disagreements on a number of issues of a political and military-strategic nature.
Before Lenin's death, and especially after it, a struggle for power flared up among the leaders of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was opposed by the majority of party leaders, who suspected him of dictatorial, Bonapartist plans, headed by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin.
Trotsky's opponents, showing great determination, unscrupulousness and cunning, speculating on the theme of his previous disagreements with Lenin, dealt a strong blow to Trotsky's authority. He was removed from his posts; his supporters were ousted from the leadership of the party and the state. Trotsky's views ("Trotskyism") were declared hostile to Leninism by a petty-bourgeois trend.
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 refusing to carry out the world revolution. Trotsky also demanded the restoration of inner-party democracy, the strengthening of the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and an attack on the positions of the NEPmen and kulaks. However, the majority of the party again took the side of Stalin.
How he was overthrown and expelled
In 1927, Trotsky was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, expelled from the party, and in January 1928 exiled to Alma-Ata, and the following year, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.
Together with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov, Trotsky ended up first on the Turkish island of Prinkipo in the Sea of Marmara, then in France, in Norway.
He tirelessly criticized the policy of the Soviet leadership, exposed the "adventurism and cruelty of industrialization and collectivization", refuted the assertions of official Soviet propaganda and Soviet statistics. In 1935, Trotsky completed his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society, The Revolution Betrayed, where he revealed the contradictions between the interests of the main population of the country and the bureaucratic caste led by Stalin.
At the end of 1936, Trotsky settled in Mexico, where he settled in the house of the famous artist Diego Rivera, and then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa in the city of Coyocan. Turning into a "Koyokan recluse", Trotsky worked on a book about Stalin, in which he described his hero as a fatal person for socialism. And after high-profile trials against the opposition took place in the USSR in 1937-1938, in which he himself was tried in absentia, Trotsky paid much attention to exposing them as falsified.
All this time, the Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, recruiting agents among his closest associates. In 1938, under strange circumstances, in a Paris hospital, his closest and tireless colleague, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died after an operation. At the same time from Soviet Union news reached not only about the unprecedentedly cruel repressions against the "Trotskyists". His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot. The accusation of Trotskyism became the most terrible and dangerous in the USSR.
How they killed him
In 1939, Stalin ordered the liquidation of his old enemy.
And even earlier, in the summer of 1938, a charming young man appeared in Paris, a "macho", as they would say now - a Belgian named Jacques Mornard. There he was soon introduced to a US citizen of Russian origin, Sylvia Agelof (Agelova), an ardent Trotskyist. Inexpressive appearance, not spoiled by the attention of men, besides several years older than her new acquaintance, Sylvia was carried away by him in earnest. Moreover, he diligently pretended to be an adherent of Trotskyism, took her to restaurants and theaters, not embarrassed in the means, and most importantly, he promised Sylvia to marry her. Agelova introduced her lover to her sister Ruth, who worked as a secretary for Trotsky and traveled between Paris and Mexico City. The appearance and impeccable manner of "boyfriend" Sylvia made a huge impression on Ruth.
Well, who was this charming and wealthy boyfriend really?
Under the name of Jacques Mornar, the Spaniard Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez was hiding. He was born in 1913 into a rather wealthy family, where besides him there were four more children. During the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from July 1936 to March 1939, Eustacia Maria Caridad del Rio, Ramon's mother, divorced her husband, joined the Spanish Communist Party and became an employee of the agents of the Soviet OGPU. Soon Caridad moved to Paris with her children.
As for Ramon, after graduating from the lyceum, he served in the army, participated in the youth movement, was arrested in 1935, but was soon released by the government of the Spanish Popular Front that came to power. During the war, he fought on the side of the Republicans with the rank of lieutenant (according to other sources, a major).
Naum Isaakovich Eitingon (aka Naumov, Kotov, Leonid Alexandrovich), one of the then leaders of the Soviet residency in Spain, who died in the late 90s, attracted Caridad to cooperate with the OGPU (according to one version, Eitingon began the recruitment chain with what he did caridad by his mistress). With the assistance of Caridad, her son, Ramon, was also recruited.
After three happy months of an affair with Jacques Mornard, Sylvia Agelof returned to her homeland in the United States in February 1939. Three months later, Jacques also arrived there "on business of the film business", but ... already as a Canadian Frank Jackson. He explained his transformation by the desire to avoid being drafted to military service. And an “almost real” passport was made for him in Moscow, in a special laboratory of the NKVD, using the documents of a Canadian volunteer who died in Spain. The new passport to Ramon, now Frank, was presented in Paris in the spring of 1939 by the same Eitingon.
Shortly after arriving in the United States, Ramon moved to Mexico City and settled there, and in early 1940 he summoned Sylvia to him. After some time, Sylvia managed to get a job with Trotsky as a secretary. This happened easily enough, because earlier her own sister Ruth, who had been so fascinated in Paris by Mercader-Mornard-Jackson, worked for him.
Lev Davidovich liked a modest, unobtrusive and unattractive young woman, ready to help him in everything: shorthand, print, select materials, make newspaper clippings, and carry out various small assignments. And besides, Sylvia spoke languages - English, French, Spanish and Russian.
When Eitingon learned that Sylvia had begun working for Trotsky, he was very pleased: the process of "infiltration" had begun.
Since Sylvia was staying at the Montejo Hotel with Ramon, he soon began dropping her off at work in his elegant Buick. A smartly dressed businessman got out of the car, opened the door, helped Sylvia out, kissed her on the cheek and waved goodbye. Often he came for her. The guards who replaced each other at the gates of Trotsky's "fortress" gradually got used to the handsome, tall, smiling "groom" Sylvia. Gradually, he became his own man for protection.
Once, Ramon had to bring the Rosmers, close friends of Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, to the center of Mexico City, who had come to visit them from France. After that, the Rosmers told Trotsky that Sylvia had "a very nice, pleasant fiancé." With the help of Margarita Rosmer, Ramon managed to visit the territory of the “fortress”: she, having traveled around the capital’s shops, asked for a “pleasant young man» to bring purchases into the house. Having visited the house, Mercader confirmed the data of the Soviet female agent (introduced earlier into the state of servants) regarding the location of rooms, doors, external alarms, constipation, etc.
It should be said here that Mercader was considered as a potential assassin of Trotsky as a "understudy" of those terrorists who were supposed to commit the assassination first. Its organizer and leader was the well-known Mexican artist Alfaro Siqueiros, who later became famous all over the world. The command to "start liquidation" was given, of course, from Moscow.
Early in the morning of May 24, 1940, a group of "unknowns" in the form of police officers disarmed the guards and attacked the house where Trotsky lived.
“We, the participants in the national revolutionary war in Spain,” Siqueiros later wrote, “considered that the time had come to carry out the operation we had planned to capture the so-called Trotsky fortress in the Coyoacán quarter.”
The attackers literally shot at the room where Trotsky, his wife and grandson were hiding. But they managed to hide in a corner, behind the bed. Several dozen bullet holes turned out to be in the place where they had just been. None of them were hurt.
After this assassination attempt, Siqueiros himself had to hide for a long time, he was in prison, was in exile. Years later, he had the courage to admit: "My participation in the attack on Trotsky's house on May 24, 1940 is a crime."
The news of the failure angered Stalin. All the organizers of the operation had to listen to many angry words of the leader. Now the bet was made on an understudy - a lone militant Mercader-Jackson.
In May 1940, he finally managed to personally meet Trotsky. After that, he occasionally visited Coyoacan and in private conversations made it clear that he liked the political position of the Bolshevik exile. Gradually, Jackson managed to gain confidence in him.
One day, in mid-August, he asked Trotsky to correct his article on some minor issue. Trotsky made several remarks. On the evening of August 20, Jackson came again with the already corrected article, went to Trotsky's office and asked him to look over the text. He put aside the manuscript of the second volume of his monumental work "Stalin", took the pages with Jackson's article and began to read.
He put the folded cloak, which he had been holding on his hand up to that moment, on a chair, took out a climbing ice ax from under it and, closing his eyes, brought it down with all his might on the head of the reader Trotsky. There was a terrible, piercing scream...
The guards ran in to the cry, grabbed Mercader and began to beat him, but Trotsky was still able to say: “Don't kill him! Let him tell who sent him…”
When the terrorist was searched, in addition to an ice ax, they also found a pistol and a dagger.
After the assassination attempt, Trotsky lived in the hospital for another 26 hours. Despite all the efforts of the doctors, it was not possible to save him.
The funeral took place a few days later. During this time, over thirty thousand people visited the coffin with the body of Trotsky. Even those who did not share his communist beliefs paid tribute to this fierce revolutionary. He was cremated and buried in the garden of his villa. Here and now is his museum.
The fate of the killers
The entire "support group" - Eitingon, Caridad and several other individuals who were waiting for the return of Mercader near Trotsky's villa, immediately after the assassination attempt managed to get out of Mexico City and "get lost". Eitingon and Caridad "lay low" in California. They were waiting for instructions from Moscow. A month later, Moscow thanked them through special channels for completing the task and allowed them to return. They returned to Moscow via China in May 1941, a month before the start of the war.
Mercader-Jackson received the highest sentence under Mexican law - 20 years in prison, of which he spent the first five in solitary confinement. After serving the entire term, he was released in 1960 and ended up in Cuba - along with his wife Raquel Mendoza, an Indian woman whom he married while still in prison. From Cuba, the couple went to Prague, and from there to the Soviet Union. In 1961, Ramon Mercader was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, given a pension of 400 rubles, a small apartment in Moscow, on Sokol, and was allowed to use the dacha in Malakhovka. Ramon Ivanovich Lopez (now his name was that) worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU, was one of the authors of the History of the Spanish Communist Party.
Mercader spent the last years of his life in Cuba, where he died in 1978. According to the will, his ashes were buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
Mercader's mother, Caridad, after arriving in Moscow, sought to meet with Stalin, but the leader did not accept her. However, she was nevertheless invited to the Kremlin. Just before the start of the war, Kalinin, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, presented her with the Order of Lenin. Beria (more on him later) sent on this occasion a box of Georgian wine "Napareuli" bottled in 1907 with royal eagles on wax seals. During the war, Karidad was evacuated to Ufa, lived in the best hotel in the city "Bashkiria". After the war she lived in France.
Caridad died in 1976 in Paris, under a portrait of Stalin. She was 82 years old.
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