TROTSKY, wow, m. Liar, talker, talker, idle talker. Whistle like Trotsky to lie. L. D. Trotsky (Bronstein) famous political figure … Dictionary of Russian argot
TROTSKY - (real name Bronstein) Lev Davydovich (1879 1940), politician. Since 1896 in the social democratic movement, since 1904 he advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905 he put forward the theory of permanent (continuous) revolution... Russian history
TROTSKY- “TROTSKY”, Russia Switzerland USA Mexico Turkey Austria, VIRGIN FILM, 1993, color, 98 min. Historical and political drama. ABOUT recent months the life of the famous revolutionary, politician, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Republic. “Our film is... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema
Trotsky- idle talker, talker, liar, liar, nonsense, talker, liar Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Trotsky noun, number of synonyms: 9 talker (132) ... Synonym dictionary
Trotsky- (Bronstein) L. D. (1879 1940) political and statesman. In the revolutionary movement since the late 90s, during the split of the RSDLP, he joined the Mensheviks, participant in the revolution of 1905-1907, chairman of the St. Petersburg Council, after the revolution... ... 1000 biographies
TROTSKY- (Bronstein) Lev (Leiba) Davidovich (1879 1940) professional revolutionary, one of the leaders of the October (1917) revolution in Russia. Ideologist, theorist, propagandist and practitioner of the Russian and international communist movement. T. repeatedly... The latest philosophical dictionary
TROTSKY L.D.- Russian politician and statesman; founder of the radical left movement in the international communist movement, bearing his name Trotskyism. Real name Bronstein. The pseudonym Trotsky was taken in 1902 for the purpose of conspiracy. A lion… … Linguistic and regional dictionary
Trotsky, L. D.- born in 1879, worked in workers' circles in Nikolaev (South Russian Workers' Union, which published the newspaper Nashe Delo), was exiled in 1898 to Siberia, from where he fled abroad and took part in Iskra. After the party split into Bolsheviks and... Popular Political Dictionary
Trotsky- Noah Abramovich, Soviet architect. He studied in Petrograd at the Academy of Arts (from 1913) and at the Free Workshops (graduated in 1920), with I. A. Fomin and in the 2nd Polytechnic Institute(1921). Taught at... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
TROTSKY- (real name Bronstein). Lev (Leiba) Davidovich (1879 1940), Soviet statesman, party and military leader, publicist. His figure attracted the attention of Bulgakov, who repeatedly mentioned T. in his diary and others... ... Bulgakov Encyclopedia
Books
- L. Trotsky. My life (set of 2 books), L. Trotsky. Leon Trotsky's book "My Life" is an extraordinary literary work, sums up the activities of this truly outstanding person and politics in the country he left in 1929... Buy for 880 rubles
- Trotsky, Emelyanov Yu.V.. The figure of Trotsky still arouses great interest. His portraits appear at political rallies and demonstrations. Many speak of him as the sinister demon of the revolution. Who was Trotsky?...
(1879- 1940)
Strange as this coincidence is, Lev Davidovich Trotsky was born on the day of the October Revolution - October 25 and in the same year (1879) as Stalin. This happened in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province. His father was a wealthy owner of 400 acres of land.
Leon Trotsky (little Leiba, as his family called him) was the third child in the family (Olga was born after him) and was almost no different from his peers. However, already from youth he was dominated by the desire to excel, Trotsky dreamed of being the best in everything: as a child, Leiba loved to draw and seriously thought about the career of a great artist, and when in real school his math skills, he imagined himself to be a brilliant mathematician.
Trotsky's biography could have turned out differently if his father had insisted that Lev become an engineer. In high school, he became interested in the concepts of liberal populists and then fought with them against Marxism. For the sake of a new idea, he exchanged Odessa University for work in radical youth circles. His father could not resist him.
In one of the revolutionary circles he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya; He soon married her. However, soon all the revolutionaries of this circle were arrested - Trotsky Lev Bronstein ended up in Odessa prison with his wife, where he first studied the works of Marx and Engels. He found that his judgments were in complete agreement with theirs. It was here that he took a pseudonym for himself - the same surname was that of their powerful overseer. For agitating to overthrow the autocracy, Leon Trotsky received 4 years of exile in Siberia, from where in 1902 he fled to Paris, leaving his wife and two small daughters.
In exile, Bronstein married a second time to Sedova (a distant relative of the Rothschilds) and lived quite prosperously. That's where he started working together with Lenin (as part of the editorial board of Iskra), but they quarreled at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP over the issue of party membership. And only in 1917 there was reconciliation between them. That same year he moved to the USA with Bukharin. Having learned about February revolution, he was delighted - the opportunity had arisen to prove himself and was upset because he could not return immediately. Leon Trotsky arrived in Petrograd only in May 1917 and did not have time to create his own revolutionary party - at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, he, like Lenin, did not even get into the bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
After the failure, Trotsky, like Lenin, understand that they can only gain power by force by joining the Bolsheviks, but this is a big risk, since the Bolsheviks were declared traitors. Here he is nominated as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky's entire biography consists of various risky stories and situations, most of which ended happily for Leo.
Despite the similar Political Views, there was tangible competition between Lenin and Trotsky. It was because of her (after coming to power) that Trotsky did not remain People’s Commissar for long. foreign affairs. However, already on March 14, 1918, he led the armed and naval forces Soviet Republic, and on September 2 of the same year he became chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. However, the opinions of some researchers about huge role Trotsky's views on the victories of the Red Army are erroneous (he was not even a military man), although his role in creating huge military formations by force is very significant. With particular harshness, Trotsky fought against desertion - the punishment for it was execution. Everyone was subjected to severe repression for the slightest mistake or disagreement - it is not for nothing that many consider Leon Trotsky a bloody tyrant.
When Lev Bronstein, along with other members of the Politburo, learned about Lenin's approaching death, he made two mistakes - he was confident in his position in the party and in the country, that the choice of the party would fall on him. The second, fatal mistake was his underestimation of Stalin, whom he considered mediocre and loudly declared this. The party elected Stalin.
After the first and main failure, Leon Trotsky tried to introduce it into the economic life of the country by building barracks-type socialism, creating labor armies, and erecting a single labor camp. However, this attempt also turned out to be a failure - out of 114 people participating in the meeting, only 2 voted for him. Trotsky’s arrogance, intolerance of other people’s opinions and arrogance alienated his supporters. His attempt in October 1923 to rely on the army, where he had his own people everywhere, also failed - neither the navy nor the army supported him. In 1925 He was relieved of his duties as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, and in 1926 he was removed from the Politburo. Ultimately, in 1929, Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.
Trying to take revenge on Stalin, Lev Bronstein continued active relations through couriers with like-minded people in the USSR. In 1937, after the trial of his accomplices, Trotsky published the book “The Crimes of Stalin,” which, of course, did not please the leader. In 1938, he began writing the book “Stalin,” which was never completed - in 1940, Mercader’s ice pick broke the tyrant’s skull, which ended the biography of Leon Trotsky.
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 everything 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.
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. cousin, the owner of the 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.
It was in exile that it was discovered that Trotsky suffered from epilepsy, inherited from his mother. He often lost consciousness and constantly had to be under medical supervision.
“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 loud 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 the 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 the informal leader of the “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 Bolshevik side of the soldiers of the rapidly decomposing Petrograd garrison what 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 mass terror in relation to the enemies of the revolution in a harsher 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 surgery. His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot.
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 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.
Forty-three years old conscious life I remained a revolutionary, forty-two of them 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 politician. 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, took an active part in writing proclamations, publishing a newspaper, 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 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 ability to use a 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 post he showed himself to be highest degree 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 attracting former royal officers and generals (“military experts”) and defended them from attacks by some high-ranking communists. In the years civil war his train ran along railways on all fronts; The People's Commissar of 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.
On October 26, 1879, in the Kherson province, a fifth child was born to a family of landowners - a boy named Lev. His father, David Leontyevich Bronstein, came from peasants and learned to read and write at a fairly advanced age, moreover, only in order to read books written by his son. Lev's mother, Anna Lvovna, nee Zhivotovskaya, was an Odessa native from a middle-class family. David and Anna were Jewish colonists on an agricultural farm near the village of Yanovka in Elisavetgrad district. Their affairs were going uphill, and by the time Lev was born, the Bronsteins’ prosperity was beyond doubt.
At the age of seven, Lev began studying at a private Jewish school, but his studies were not easy for him, since the teaching was conducted in Hebrew, which Lev knew poorly. As he himself later wrote, the first school only gave him the opportunity to learn to write and read in Russian.
In 1888, Lev became a student in the preparatory class of the St. Paul Real School in Odessa. Throughout his studies, he lived with the family of his mother’s nephew, Moses Shpenzer, who was the owner of the printing house and publishing house “Matesis”. The Odessa Real School was founded by the Germans, and its main pride was its highly qualified teachers. Real schools differed from the gymnasium of that time by a greater bias in favor of mathematical and natural sciences. However, it was during his studies at the school that Lev read Pushkin and Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Dickens, Veresaev and Nekrasov. Innate abilities and hard work helped the boy become the best student at the school in all subjects. True, in the second grade he was expelled from school because he quarreled with the French teacher - a big tyrant. Only the petition of influential relatives helped Lev to be reinstated in the school. It is possible that this was a revolutionary impulse of the future leader...
The boyish desire to stand out from the general gray crowd and somehow draw the attention of others to his own person is completely understandable. When the doctor discovered Lev was nearsighted and prescribed glasses, the boy was not upset, but, on the contrary, decided that the glasses gave him special significance. At the same time, young Bronstein began to show another trait - arrogance towards others. However, he, of course, had reasons for this: the best student, Leo treated his comrades with superiority and often emphasized his own primacy.
In his youth, Lev fell in love with the theater. He was fascinated not only by the action on stage itself, but also by the ability of artists to rise above the audience through the game. In general, he considered the world of creative people to be special, access to which was open only to a select few.
In 1896, Lev moved to Nikolaev to finish his studies and entered the seventh grade of a real school. This year generally became a turning point for his psyche. The knowledge acquired at the school gave Lev the opportunity to stay in the place of the first student, but at that time he became interested social life. Lev met Franz Shvigovsky, a gardener, but a very educated man who closely follows politics and has read great amount books. His parents demanded that he abandon this acquaintance, but in response Lev broke up with them, abandoned school and became a member of the Shvigovsky commune along with his older brother Alexander. It was here that he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became his first wife. Members of the commune dressed in identical straw hats and blue blouses, and carried black sticks with them - perhaps that is why they were considered in the city as members of some mysterious sect. The Communards read a lot, but very randomly, distributed books, argued a lot, and even tried to create a “university based on mutual education.”
Lev Bronstein nevertheless graduated from a real school and, at the request of his parents, returned to Odessa. Here he began attending lectures at the university’s mathematics department, but revolutionary sentiments demanded something else, and he quit his classes again. In fact, Lev switched to working in semi-legal circles of radical youth and very soon became the informal leader of one of these groups. Lev's worldview was then quite far from Marxism - for the reason that he had not yet tried to acquire strong political convictions.
In 1897, a surge of revolutionary sentiment began in Russia, and a group of young people under the leadership of Lev began intensively looking for contacts in the working-class neighborhoods of Nikolaev. It was thanks to the efforts of Lev that the South of Russia acquired another revolutionary organization, called the “South Russian Workers' Union”. The Charter of the Union was written by Leo. Workers literally poured into the organization, but this contingent was not interested in strikes, since the earnings of factory workers were quite high. Much more workers wanted to understand social relations. Meetings and political studies with workers gradually developed into serious and painstaking work. Having obtained a hectograph, members of the Union began to print proclamations, and later the newspaper “Our Business”, which was published in a circulation of a couple of hundred copies. Basically, Lev Bronstein himself was responsible for the articles for the newspaper and the texts of the proclamations, and in addition, at May meetings he tested himself as a speaker.
Gradually, members of the Union established relations with other revolutionary cells in the circles of Social Democrats in Odessa. At this time, Lev Bronstein begins to argue that revolutionary work is needed not only among factory workers, but also in the ranks of artisans and the petty bourgeoisie. It cannot be said that the tsarist secret police were dozing all this time, and in January-February 1898 more than two hundred people were arrested in revolutionary circles. The first court in Lev Bronstein's life sentenced him to exile in Siberia for a period of four years. Already in the Moscow transit prison, Lev’s personal life improved - he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya. In the fall of 1900, their daughter Zina was born. At this time, the young family lived in the small village of Ust-Kut in the Irkutsk province. Here Lev Bronstein met Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky.
There was a fairly clear connection between the exiles, and Bronstein wrote leaflets and appeals for Social Democratic organizations. In the summer of 1902, he received previously ordered books, in the bindings of which tissue paper with the latest foreign publications was hidden. With this mail, one of the first issues of the Iskra newspaper and articles by Lenin arrived to the exiles. By this time, Lev had a second daughter, Nina, and the family moved to Verkholensk. Here Bronstein begins to prepare to escape. They gave him a fake passport, in which a new name was written - Trotsky. This pseudonym remained with Lev Davidovich for the rest of his life. Despite the fact that the wife was left with two small daughters, she fully supported Lev in organizing the escape.
Leon Trotsky went to Samara, where the main headquarters of the Iskra newspaper, headed by Krzhizhanovsky, was then located. Having received the order, Trotsky traveled to Kharkov, Kyiv and Poltava to establish connections with local revolutionary organizations. Soon Trotsky received an invitation from Lenin from London. Provided with money for the trip, Lev illegally crossed the Russian-Austrian border and went to London through Switzerland and France. This trip finally made Trotsky a professional revolutionary.
In the fall of 1902, in Europe, Trotsky met Natalya Sedova, who later became his second wife. True, he did not divorce Sokolovskaya, and therefore the marriage with Sedova was not registered. Nevertheless, they lived together until Trotsky’s death, and two boys were born into their family - Lev and Sergei.
During this period, conflicts began in the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper between its old members Axelrod, Plekhanov and Zasulich and the new ones - Lenin, Potresov and Martov. Lenin proposed introducing Trotsky to the editorial board, but Plekhanov blocked this decision in the form of an ultimatum. In the summer of 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP took place, at which Trotsky so ardently supported Lenin’s ideas that the sarcastic Ryazanov called Lev Davidovich “Lenin’s club.” However, the result of the congress and the exclusion of Zasulich and Axelrod from the editorial board of Iskra prompted Trotsky to take the side of the offended and speak very critically about organizational plans Lenin. From this moment the countdown of the confrontation between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks begins.
Trotsky returned to Russia through illegal routes in 1905. Here he is elected chairman of the Council of Workers' Deputies of St. Petersburg. As a result of revolutionary events, Lev Davidovich was arrested and in 1907, by a court verdict, he was deprived of all civil rights and sent to Siberia for eternal settlement. Already at the beginning next year Leon Trotsky arrives with a convoy to the city of Obdorsk, in the Arctic. Thirty-five days later, the convoy of exiles reached Berezov, from where Trotsky decided to flee. This time he took a very big risk - the escape of a convict sentenced to eternal settlement without options doomed him to hard labor. Through a local peasant, Trotsky met a reindeer herder and, with the help of bribery with alcohol and chervonets of royal coinage on reindeer, covered the seven hundred kilometers road to Ural mountains. From here he traveled by train to St. Petersburg and was sent abroad by the party leadership.
Since 1908, Trotsky has published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna. He did this until 1912, when the Bolsheviks “took over” the name of the newspaper. Trotsky went to Paris in 1914 and began publishing the daily newspaper Nashe Slovo. In the fall of 1915, Trotsky participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, where he passionately objected to the attacks of Lenin and Martov. In 1916, at the request of the Russian tsarist government, the French police expelled Lev Davidovich to Spain, and in turn, the Spanish authorities demanded the revolutionary’s departure to the United States.
Having learned about the February revolution, Leon Trotsky tried to leave for Russia by ship, but in Halifax, a Canadian port, the British authorities removed him and his family from the ship and placed him in a camp intended for internment of sailors of the German merchant fleet. The British put forward Trotsky's lack of Russian documents, and they did not care at all that there was an American passport, personally issued to Trotsky by US President Wilson. Soon the provisional government sent a written request for the release of Trotsky as an honored fighter against the regime of tsarism.
On May 4, 1917, Trotsky and his family arrived in Petrograd and immediately took the place of the informal leader of the group of so-called “Mezhrayontsy” who criticized the Provisional Government. After the July riots, Lev Davidovich was arrested and accused of spying for Germany. During the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b) in July, Lev Davidovich was in “Kresty” and was unable to read his report “On the Current Situation”. Nevertheless, he was elected to the Central Committee. Immediately after the suppression of the Kornilov rebellion, Trotsky was released from prison, and on September 20 he took the post of chairman of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of Petrograd. While in this position, Trotsky was directly involved in the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution. Stalin points out in his memoirs that the revolution owes its success to Leon Trotsky. It was Trotsky who introduced the concept of “red terror” into politics and clearly described its principles in an address to the cadets on December 17, 1917.
In the spring of 1918, Lev Davidovich took the posts of Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR and People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. While in these posts, he did a lot to create a strong and combat-ready army. Trotsky's activities were highly appreciated by the government. Several cities were named in his honor, but with the beginning of the repressions against the Trotskyists, they were renamed. None other than Trotsky, back in 1920, proposed supplying peasants on the principle of “grain and manufactured goods” and replacing the predatory surplus appropriation with a percentage tax in kind. However, in the Central Committee he received only four votes out of fifteen, and Lenin, not yet ready to change the policy of war communism, accused Trotsky of “free trade.”
After the conflict in the Central Committee, which split the committee into two parts and gave rise to “discussions about trade unions,” relations between Lenin and Trotsky deteriorated greatly, and Lev Davidovich’s supporters were removed from the Central Committee. In 1922, an alliance emerged between Lenin and Trotsky, but Lenin’s illness and his departure from political life Trotsky was not allowed to carry out the necessary reforms. Problems between Stalin and Trotsky began during the defense of Tsaritsyn during the Civil War, and the death of Lenin actually turned against Lev Davidovich most party leadership. This situation was skillfully fueled by Stalin, and Trotsky was accused of dictatorial plans, and also of the fact that he joined the Bolshevik Party only in 1917.
In 1923, Trotsky, in his articles, sharply opposed the “troika” of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, accusing these leaders of bureaucratizing the party apparatus. These accusations were rejected by the XIII Party Conference, and Trotsky's actions were sharply condemned. By the fall of 1924, Trotsky had lost the posts of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar of the Military Marine. The pressure on Trotsky increases, and, despite his attempts at resistance in the press, in 1926 he is removed from the army. Central Committee Politburo. After organizing an anti-government demonstration in early November 1927, Lev Davidovich was expelled from the CPSU (b) and exiled to Alma-Ata. The rest of his comrades and followers, which by that time included Zinoviev and Kamenev, either admitted they were wrong or were repressed - and both were shot a decade later.
In 1929, by decision of the Central Committee, Leon Trotsky was exiled to the Turkish island of Prinkipo, and in 1932 he lost his USSR citizenship. A year later he moved to France, in 1934 he was already in Denmark, in 1935 in Norway. The Norwegian government, in order not to worsen its relations with the Land of the Soviets, confiscated all of Trotsky’s works and actually placed him under house arrest. The oppression led to Lev Davidovich emigrating to Mexico in 1936. In exile, he closely followed developments in the USSR and reacted sensitively to any political events. In August 1936, Trotsky’s book “The Betrayed Revolution” was completed, in which he directly called what was happening in the USSR “Stalin’s Thermidor” - that is, a counter-revolutionary coup. Actually, Leon Trotsky was the first to understand what the “successful assimilation” of yesterday’s class enemies by Soviet society would lead to - later they were all exiled or destroyed. In 1938, Trotsky proclaimed the emergence of the Fourth International - in opposition to the Third. Supporters of this political organization still exist today.
In May 1940, the NKVD organized an attempt on the life of Leon Trotsky, as an irreconcilable enemy Soviet power. Under the leadership of NKVD agent Grigulevich, a group of raiders, led by the Mexican raider and convinced Stalinist Siqueiros, burst into the room and shot all the cartridges from their revolvers, after which the attackers hastily fled. Siqueiros would later attribute the failure of this attack to his group's inexperience and nervousness. Trotsky was not injured then. However, the next attempt by the NKVD to settle scores with Lev Davidovich was crowned with success.
On August 20, early in the morning, Ramon Mercader, who was considered a staunch supporter of Lev Davidovich, came to see Trotsky. This NKVD agent brought the manuscript with him, and while Trotsky was reading it at his desk, Mercader took a gift ice pick from the wall and struck a fatal blow from behind. As a result of his wound, Trotsky died a day later - on August 21, 1940. He was buried next to the house in which he lived.
Ramon Mercader was convicted of murder in a Mexican court and received twenty years in prison. After his release, he arrived in Moscow in 1961, where he received high rank– Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as many great privileges...
