Trotsky (biography)

Description

Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) assumed his name in order to escape the work camps of Siberia in 1898. Born to a Russian-Jewish family in the Ukraine, he became the leading spokesman of the Russian Revolution, the founder of the victorious Red Army of 1918-21, and did more than anyone to create the early Soviet State. Yet despite being identified as Lenin’s obvious successor, Trotsky was out-maneuvered by Stalin. In the years that followed, he developed the first systematic critique of Stalin’s dictatorship. In 1929, he and his wife were forced out of Russia, moving from Turkey to France, and finally to Mexico, where he was brutally assassinated by a Spanish communist in 1940. Through a series of books including The History of the Russian Revolution, My Life, and The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky established the possibility of a democratic socialism and the theory of permanent revolution, identifying the struggle against bureaucracy and complacency. Reputed to have been friends at one point with the Mexican revolutionary artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, his influence resonates beyond the political development of the twentieth century. Front Back Introduction From Hope to Revolt (1879-1898 The Pen (1899-1903 The Dress Rehearsal (1904-1916 The Revolution Made (1917 The Sword (1917-1921 The Pockmarked Rival (1921-1922 The Revolution Betrayed (1923-1928 A Tactic for Movement (1929-1933 The Last Struggle (1933-1936 Mexico (1937-1940 Notes Chronology Further Reading Picture Sources index