What event did Trotsky take part in? The beginning of political activity. Dates from the biography of Leon Trotsky

Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name and surname Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, old style), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district of the Kherson province (Ukraine) into the family of a wealthy landowner.

He studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first student in all disciplines. He was fond of drawing, literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian language, participated in the publication of the school handwritten magazine.

In 1896 in Nikolaev, young Leo entered a circle, whose members studied literature of a scientific and popular nature. Together with other members of the circle, he taught political literacy to the workers, took an active part in writing proclamations, publishing a newspaper, and acted as an orator at rallies, putting forward economic demands.

In January 1898 he was arrested together with like-minded people. During the investigation, he studied English, German, French and italian languages, read the works of Marx, got acquainted with the works of Lenin. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a colleague in revolutionary activity Alexandra Sokolovskaya. The young revolutionary was convicted and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia.

Since the fall of 1900, the young family was in exile in the Irkutsk province. Lev worked as a salesman for a Siberian millionaire merchant, then worked for the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye, where he published literary critical articles and essays on Siberian life.

In 1902, with the consent of his wife, he fled abroad alone. When he escaped, he entered into a false passport his new surname, borrowed from the warden of the Odessa prison - Trotsky, under which he became known to the whole world.

In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of the Russian Social Democracy living in exile. Four months after his arrival from Russia, Trotsky, at the suggestion of Lenin, who highly appreciated his abilities, entered the editorial board of Iskra.

In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalia Sedova.

In the summer of 1903, Trotsky took part in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy in London, where he supported Yuli Martov's position on the question of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and the destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. In the fall of 1904, a conflict broke out between Trotsky and the leaders of Menshevism over the issue of attitudes towards the liberal bourgeoisie, and he became a "non-factional" Social Democrat.

After "Bloody Sunday" on January 9, 1905, which was followed by a revolutionary upsurge, he returned to his homeland and took part in the activities of the first councils in St. Petersburg. Trotsky played a leading role in the 1905 revolution, led the October general strike and the uprising that followed, and was arrested in December.

In prison, he wrote 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 lean on the world revolution.

In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal 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, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna, in 1912 he tried to create an "August bloc" of Social Democrats. In 1912 he was a war correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl in the Balkans, after the start of the First World War - in France. In 1916 he was exiled from France to Spain, where he was imprisoned and another deportation. At the beginning of 1917 he arrived in the USA, where he continued to appear in print.

Trotsky hailed the February Revolution of 1917 as the start of a long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia and took a position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July he joined the Bolshevik Party. Trotsky soon became one of the main Bolshevik leaders and gained wide popularity as an orator. He was the 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, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for foreign affairs... In 1918-1925, Trotsky was the people's commissar for military affairs, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army, personally directed its actions on many fronts of the Civil War.

In March 1919, Trotsky became a member of the first Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto.

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, he was one of the first to propose measures to curtail "war communism" and the transition to NEP.

After Lenin's death, the bitter struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat - Trotsky's views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a "petty-bourgeois deviation" in the RCP (b). He was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was expelled to Alma-Ata, and in 1929 by the 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). Here Trotsky, continuing to coordinate the activities of his followers in the USSR and abroad, began to publish the Bulletin of the Opposition, wrote his autobiography My Life (1930) and the historical essay History of the Russian Revolution, dedicated to the events of 1917.

In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 - to Norway. Trotsky tirelessly criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics. The industrialization and collectivization carried out in the USSR was sharply criticized by them for adventurism and cruelty.

In 1936, Trotsky wrote his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society- the book "What is the USSR and where is it going?", Published in many countries under the title "Revolution Betrayed". The book represents the result of many years of reflections on the fate of the victorious popular revolution, which withstood the onslaught of external and internal enemies, but betrayed from within by forces that formally acted on its behalf.

At the end of 1936, Trotsky 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 - in the city of Coyocan.

The Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close scrutiny, with agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris in a hospital after an operation, his closest associate, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died. His first wife and his younger son Sergey Sedov.

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate 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 a Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of a house in Koyokan.

This house in Coyocan (now the Mexico City district) now houses his museum (Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky).

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Date of birth: October 26, 1879
Place of birth: Yanovka, Russian empire
Died: August 21, 1940
Place of death: Coyoacan, Mexico

Leib Davidovich Bronstein (Leon Trotsky)- Russian revolutionary, politician.

Leon Trotsky was born on October 26, 1879 in Ukraine. He studied at a real school in the city of Nikolaev and on last grades became interested in socialism. In 1896 he graduated from a real school, and before him attended the Odessa school. He married the Marxist Alexandra Sokolovskaya and became fascinated by her ideas.

Together they created the South Russian Workers' Union, for which they were arrested and exiled to Irkutsk, where they were from 1898 to 1902. There they continued their ideas of Marxism and became members of the Iskra newspaper circle.

In 1902, he escaped from exile using forged documents in the name of Trotsky, arrived in London and began to communicate with Lenin. In London, he wrote articles for Iskra. In 1903 he joined the Mensheviks and broke with Lenin, accusing him of authoritarianism. In 1905, after the January conflict, he returned to his homeland and began to lead the activities of the councils there.

In October 1905, he held a general strike and uprising, for which he was arrested and exiled in December. In exile, he wrote the book Results and Prospects, and in court accused tsarism of everything. He fled from exile and in 1907 arrived in Vienna with his second wife. In Vienna, he wrote articles for the press in Germany and Austria. In 1908 he created the newspaper Pravda, which he redirected from Vienna to St. Petersburg for distribution among the workers.

In 1914 he published the work War and the International, written by him in Switzerland, whose idea was to create the united states of Europe. After that he left for Paris and wrote articles for the press in Kiev and for his newspaper Nashe Slovo. In 1915, he became a participant in the Zimmerwald Conference, for which he wrote a manifesto. In the future, this conference grew into the 3rd international.

From Paris in 1916 he was exiled to Spain, where he was arrested and deported again. So in January 1917, Trotsky ended up in New York, began to cooperate with the left-wing socialists and publish a newspaper together with Bukharin New world in Russian. In it, he highlighted the events of February, where he recognized them as positive. After that, he tried to return to Petrograd, but on the way he was captured by British intelligence and released only after the Provisional Council's demand to extradite him.

So in May 1917 he ended up in Russia and became a member of the Interdistrict Organization of the United Social Democrats. He soon retrained from a Menshevik to a Bolshevik and became a well-known orator. In July 1917, he was again arrested for riots and released after the defeat of Kornilov. He took part in the October events, and after them he became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

He also owned to name new country and her government by the Council of People's Commissars. In December 1917, he became the head of the USSR at the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk. There he behaved strangely, called for an end to the war, but without concluding a peace treaty. He also spoke out there against Lenin and Bukharin.

In March 1918, he became a military commissar and created the Red Army, and also took part in the civil war of 1918-1922. In 1920, he became the head of the commission for the restoration of railways and introduced strict discipline in the structures under his control.

However, in 1921 Lenin did not support his idea of ​​militarizing the trade unions together with Zinoviev and Stalin.
In 1922, Lenin invited him to become an ally in the fight against Stalin and his party, where Stalin was the general secretary and wanted to bring everything to the bureaucratic foundations.

Zinoviev and Kamenev began to ally with Stalin, to which Trotsky replied to Lenin with a refusal of the alliance for fear of anti-Semitic attacks.

After that he worked with Germany and cooked with her the communist party the uprising with the participation of the Red Army, in October 1923 the uprising was canceled, a crisis was brewing within the Bolshevik party.

On the day of Lenin's death, Trotsky was abroad and was not summoned by Stalin, since he wanted to establish himself as Lenin's successor. Trotsky could not refute this and soon lost his post as military commissar.

In 1925, a struggle began between the power of Stalin and Trotsky, who found himself in opposition. Trotsky called on all his allies and in April 1926 formulated a declaration on the restoration of democracy by eliminating Stalin. In 1927, the opposition waited for failure on the part of Talin, but was caught off guard on the other side - Stalin accused them of having White Guards in their ranks.

Trotsky held several rallies and demonstrations, published the newspaper Platform of the Opposition, but in October 1927 he was expelled from the party, and in November 1927 he was not allowed to hold a demonstration in honor of 10 years of the overthrow of the tsarist regime.

In January 1928 he was deported to Alma-Ata, and a year later to Turkey, where he wrote his autobiography My Life and the book History of the Russian Revolution in three volumes. At the same time, he began to see a threat from Germany, in which the mobilization of the left and the creation of the Nazis began to gain strength. He wrote to Stalin with the aim of unification, and after Hitler's victory in 1933 urged him to form the Fourth International, but never received an answer.

In July 1933 he emigrated to France, but the Germans quickly found him there and in 1934 forced him to leave. In 1936 he arrived in Norway and wrote Revolution Betrayed there. Six months later, he was slandered by Stalin, who called Trotsky an agent of Hitler and in December 1936, Trotsky arrived in Mexico. There, the Mexicans set up a commission on his case and Stalin's accusation of conniving with the Nazis and gave a negative answer and found him innocent.

In 1938, Trotsky, together with Breton and Rivera, issued a manifesto to the free revolutionary art, after which his son was killed by Stalin's agents in Paris. And soon he himself was killed on August 21, 1940.

Achievements of Leon Trotsky:

First People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
Many works on the revolution
Created the Red Army

Dates from the biography of Leon Trotsky:

October 26, 1879 - born in Ukraine
1896 - graduated from a real school
1898-102 - first link
1902 - escape to London and meeting with Lenin
1917 - return to Russia, creation of the red army
1925 - the struggle for power, the removal from the affairs of the party
1936 - emigration to Mexico
August 21, 1940 - death

Interesting facts of Leon Trotsky:

He was married twice, had 4 children, all of whom died in the struggle for power
He was killed by an ice pick, six months before his death, an attempt was made on his life, for the murder of Trotsky, Ramon Mrkader received the title of Hero of the USSR
Only in May 1992 was he rehabilitated
Streets, squares and cities bore his names, but with the collapse of the USSR, all were renamed into historical names.

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 of the Kherson province (Ukraine) into a well-to-do 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 upon graduation he began to attend lectures at the Faculty of Mathematics 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 the Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile, using false documents on the name of Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.

In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of the Russian Social Democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed him as a candidate for the Iskra editorial board.

In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalia 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 question of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and the destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. Since 1904, Trotsky advocated the unification of the factions of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the Petersburg Soviet, becoming one of its three co-chairmen.

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 1905-1907 revolution, Trotsky showed himself to be an outstanding organizer, orator, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, editor of its newspaper Izvestia.

In 1907 he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to the place of exile he fled.

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 "Nashe Slovo".

In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States.

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 "Mezhraiontsy" in the Bolshevik Party. 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 the people's commissar for military affairs, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army, personally directed 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 civil war and in the early 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 the transition to NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In his well-known Letter to the Congress, noting Trotsky's shortcomings, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable man of the entire Central Committee of 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, the views of Trotsky (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, at the home of the artist Diego Rivera, then at a fortified and heavily guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.

He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, denied the statements 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" and others.

In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced in absentia to death penalty; his first wife and youngest son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate 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 a Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of the house in Koyokan, where his museum is now located.

The material was prepared on the basis of open sources

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Bronstein)- Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leib Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, O.S.), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district of the Kherson province (Ukraine) into a well-to-do family. Since seven ... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers

Lev Davidovich Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ... Wikipedia

Trotsky, Lev Davidovich- Lev Davidovich Trotsky. TROTSKY ( real surname Bronstein) Lev Davidovich (1879 1940), politician. In the social democratic movement from 1896, from 1904 he advocated the unification of the factions of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In 1905 he mainly developed ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

This article or section may need to be shortened. Reduce the length of the text in accordance with the recommendations of the rules on the balance of presentation and the size of the articles. More information may be on the talk page ... Wikipedia

LEV DAVIDOVICH BRONSHTEIN (TROTSKY) (1879 1940), Russian professional revolutionary, publicist, theorist of socialism, military leader. Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on October 26, 1879 in Yanovka in Ukraine. For the first time I got acquainted with the socialist ... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

Trotsky L. D. (1879 1940) b. October 26, 1879 in the village. Yanovka, Elizavetgrad district, Kherson province. and until the age of 9 he lived on the small estate of his father, a Kherson colonist. For 9 years, T. was sent to the Odessa real school, studied there until 7 ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

Trotsky Lev Davidovich- (real name Bronstein) (1879-1940), revolutionary, party and statesman. He graduated from a real school. In the revolutionary movement since 1896. In 1898 he was arrested and exiled to Eastern Siberia; fled in August 1902, soon emigrated. ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

TROTSKY (real family. Bronstein) Lev Davidovich (1879 1940) Russian politician. In the social democratic movement since 1896. From 1904 he advocated the unification of the factions of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In 1905 he basically developed the theory of permanent ... Big encyclopedic Dictionary

- (real name Bronstein) (1879 1940), revolutionary, party and statesman. He graduated from a real school. In the revolutionary movement since 1896. In 1898 he was arrested and exiled to Eastern Siberia; fled in August 1902, soon emigrated ... Saint Petersburg (encyclopedia)

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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. Who is he? This legendary man who was overtaken by an NKVD bullet 20 years later?

TROTSKY (real family. Bronstein) Lev Davidovich (1879-1940), Russian politician. In the social democratic movement since 1896. From 1904 he advocated the unification of the factions of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In 1905, he basically developed the theory of "permanent" (continuous) revolution: according to Trotsky, the proletariat of Russia, having realized the bourgeois, will begin socialist stage a revolution that will win only with the help of the world proletariat. During the revolution of 1905-07, he proved himself to be an outstanding organizer, orator, publicist; de facto leader of the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, editor of its Izvestia. He belonged to the most radical wing in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1908-12 he was editor of the Pravda newspaper. In 1917, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising. In 1917-18 the 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 directed its actions on many fronts of the Civil War, widely used repression. Member of the Central Committee in 1917-27, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and 1919-26. Trotsky's sharp struggle for leadership with JV Stalin 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, in 1929 - abroad. Harsh criticism Stalinist regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian power. Initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938). Killed in Mexico by the Spaniard R. Mercader, an agent of the NKVD. Author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, memoirs "My Life" (Berlin, 1930).

Trotsky Lev Davidovich * * *

TROTSKY Lev Davidovich (real name and surname Leiba Bronstein), Russian and international politician, publicist, thinker.

Childhood and youth

Born into the family of a wealthy landowner from among the Jewish colonists. His father only learned to read when he was old. The languages ​​of Trotsky's childhood 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 fond of drawing, literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, participated in the publication of a school manuscript magazine. During these years, his rebellious character first manifested itself: due to a conflict with a teacher French he was temporarily expelled from the school.

Political universities

In 1896 in Nikolaev, young Leo entered a circle, whose members studied literature of a scientific and popular nature. At first, he sympathized with the ideas of the Narodniks and vehemently rejected Marxism, considering it a dry and alien teaching. Already during this period, many features of his personality were manifested - a sharp mind, polemical gift, energy, self-confidence, ambition, a tendency to leadership.

Together with other members of the circle, Bronstein taught political literacy to the workers, took an active part in writing proclamations, publishing a newspaper, and acted as an orator at rallies, putting forward economic demands.

In January 1898 he was arrested together 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 got acquainted with the works of Lenin. He was convicted and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in the Butyrka prison, he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a revolutionary comrade-in-arms.

From 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 worked for the Irkutsk newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye, where he published literary critical articles and essays on Siberian life. Here, for the first time, his extraordinary ability to use the pen manifested itself. In 1902 Bronstein, with the consent of his wife, leaving her with two young daughters - Zina and Nina, fled alone abroad. When he escaped, he entered into a false passport his new surname, borrowed from the warden of the Odessa prison - Trotsky, under which he became known to the whole world.

First emigration

Arriving in London, Trotsky became close to the exiled leaders of the Russian Social Democracy. He read essays defending Marxism in the colonies of Russian emigrants in England, France, Germany, 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 into the editorial board 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 question of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and the 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 attitude to the liberal bourgeoisie, and he became an "non-factional" Social Democrat claiming to create a trend 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 appeared in print, taking radical positions. In October 1905 he became deputy chairman, then chairman of the Petersburg Soviet 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 lean on the world revolution.

In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to the 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 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, after the outbreak of World War I - in France (this work gave him military experience that was later useful). Having embarked on a sharply anti-war position, he attacked the governments of all 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.

Return to revolutionary Russia

Learning about 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 Mezhraiontsy in the Bolshevik Party. In all his brilliance he showed his talent as an orator in factories, in educational institutions, in theaters, in squares, in circuses, as usual, he was prolific as a publicist. After the July days, he was arrested and ended up in prison. In September after his release, 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 actual leader of the October armed uprising.

At the pinnacle of power

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Trotsky became the 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 do not sign peace, we demobilize the army", which was supported by the Bolshevik Central Committee (Lenin was against). Somewhat later, after the resumption of the offensive German troops, Lenin managed to achieve the acceptance and signing of the terms of the "obscene" peace, after which Trotsky resigned as the people's commissar.

In the spring of 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for the military and maritime affairs and the chairman of the revolutionary military council of the republic. In this post, he proved himself to be an extremely talented and energetic organizer. To create an efficient army, he took decisive and brutal measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment 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 recruiting former tsarist officers and generals ("military experts") into the Red Army and defending them against attacks from some high-ranking communists. During the Civil War, his train ran along railways on all fronts; The People's Commissariat for Military Affairs supervised the actions of the fronts, delivered fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, awarded those who distinguished themselves.

In general, during this period, there was close cooperation between Trotsky and Lenin, although on a number of political issues (for example, the 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) 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 a climax, 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 the transition to NEP.

Struggle with Stalin

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 the country's leadership, led by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, who suspected him of dictatorial, Bonapartist designs. In 1923, Trotsky began a so-called literary discussion with his book The Lessons of October, criticizing the behavior of Zinoviev and Kamenev during the October coup. In addition, in a number of articles, Trotsky accused the "triumvirate" of bureaucratization and violation of party democracy, advocated the involvement of important political issues youth.

Trotsky's opponents relied on the bureaucracy and, displaying great decisiveness, unscrupulousness and cunning, speculating on the topic 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. The views of Trotsky ("Trotskyism") were declared a petty-bourgeois trend hostile to Leninism.

In the mid-1920s, Trotsky, joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev, continued to sharply criticize the Soviet leadership, accusing it of betraying ideals. October revolution, including the rejection of the world revolution. Trotsky demanded the restoration of party democracy, the strengthening of the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat and an offensive against the positions of the Nepmen and kulaks. The majority of the party again turned out to be on the side of Stalin.

In 1927 Trotsky was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, expelled from the party, and in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata.

The last exile

By decision of the Politburo in 1929 he was expelled from the USSR. Together with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov, Trotsky ended up on the Prinkipo island in the Sea of ​​Marmara (Turkey). Here Trotsky, continuing to coordinate the activities of his followers in the USSR and abroad, began to publish the Bulletin of the Opposition and wrote his autobiography My Life. The memoirs were a response to anti-Trotskyist propaganda in the USSR and a justification for his life.

On Prinkipo, his main historical work was written - "The History of the Russian Revolution", dedicated to the events of 1917. This work was intended to prove the historical exhaustion of Tsarist Russia, to substantiate the inevitability of the February Revolution and its development into the October Revolution.

In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 - to Norway. Trotsky tirelessly criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics. The industrialization and collectivization carried out in the USSR was sharply criticized by them for adventurism and cruelty.

In 1935, Trotsky wrote his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society - Revolution Betrayed, where it was considered in the focus of the contradiction between the interests of the main population of the country and the bureaucratic caste led by Stalin, whose policy, according to the author, undermined the social foundations of the system. Trotsky proclaimed the need political revolution, whose task would be to eliminate the dominance of the bureaucracy in the country.

At the end of 1936 he left Europe, taking refuge in Mexico, where he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa in the city of Coyocan.

In 1937-38 after deployment to the USSR litigation against the opposition, on which he himself was tried in absentia, Trotsky paid much attention to exposing them as falsified. In 1937 in New York international commission on the investigation of the Moscow trials, chaired by the American philosopher John Dewey, delivered an acquittal against Trotsky and his associates.

All these years Trotsky did not give up trying to rally his supporters. In 1938, the IV International was proclaimed, which included small and scattered groups from different countries... This brainchild of Trotsky, which he considered the most important for himself during this period, turned out to be unviable and disintegrated soon after the death of the founder.

The Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close scrutiny, with agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris in a hospital after an operation, his closest and indefatigable companion-in-arms, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died. From Soviet Union there was news not only about the unparalleled brutal repressions against the "Trotskyists". His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot. The accusation of Trotskyism in the USSR became at that time the most terrible and dangerous.

The last days

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to eliminate his old enemy.

Having become a Koyokan recluse, Trotsky worked on his book about Stalin, in which he viewed his hero as a fatal figure for socialism. From under his pen came an appeal to the working people of the Soviet Union with a call to overthrow the power of Stalin and his clique, articles in the "Bulletin of the Opposition", in which he, sharply condemning the Soviet-German rapprochement, justified the USSR's war against Finland and supported the entry Soviet troops to the territory Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Anticipating his imminent death, at the beginning of 1940, Trotsky wrote a testament in which he spoke of his satisfaction with his fate as a revolutionary Marxist, proclaimed an indestructible faith in the triumph of the IV International and in the imminent world socialist revolution.

In May 1940, the first attempt on Trotsky's life, which ended in failure, was committed, led by the Mexican artist Siqueiros.

On August 20, 1940, Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent who infiltrated Trotsky's entourage, mortally wounded him. Trotsky died on August 21. He was buried in the courtyard of his house, where his museum is now located.

P.S. Tatiana moreva

1. Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in the summer of 1926 (not in 1927).

2. "Struggle for leadership" with Stalin is, to put it mildly, an incorrect wording. First, in 1923-24. Stalin was not so popular or influential as to fight for leadership, and really competed with Trotsky (since 1920) Zinoviev (it was not for nothing that he read the traditionally "Leninist" report at the first, without Lenin, XII Congress); Stalin, on the other hand, simply quietly took over the power in the apparatus, taking advantage of the fact that Zinoviev was in St. Petersburg, and Kamenev was overwhelmed with other work. Second, it would be more correct to speak of a struggle for influence; under a democratic regime, the real power in the party was possessed by the one who ruled over the minds, and Trotsky's trouble was that no one could really compete with him here. Both Zinoviev, and especially Stalin, annoyed Trotsky too much even under Lenin, because - being themselves vindictive and vindictive - they feared that Trotsky would reckon with them (using his influence); that's why it was necessary to curtail democracy - to replace the "leaders" (rulers of thoughts) came " officials"endowed with simple bureaucratic power.

3. I pay tribute to the author for mentioning that it was Trotsky who proposed NEP, back in the beginning of 1920 (by the way, after its introduction, it was Trotsky, not Bukharin, who became the main theoretician of NEP: he explained what NEP was to a foreign communist in Comintern, he also made the main economic report at the XII Congress); but it is high time to sort out the "discussion about trade unions". It is no coincidence that in his Letter to the Congress, recalling this story, Lenin writes "on the issue of the People's Commissariat of Communications" (the People's Commissariat of Railways, which Trotsky headed at that time), and not "on the trade unions." Zinoviev invented the "discussion of trade unions", and Lenin and Trotsky argued about something completely different: is it possible to scapegoat people who, at a critical moment, saved transport by not entirely democratic methods ...