Leon Trotsky biography

Lev Davidovich Bronstein (November 7, 1879 – August 20, 1940), revolutionary leader. He was born in Yakovka, Ukraine. Better known as Lyev Trotsky or Leon Trotsky. His first stage was spent in a family of Jewish landowners in Russia. His mother was a lover of books and knowledge, so he subscribed to a library, in order to share reading time with their children. At the age of seven, he was the only one of the brothers who could attend school, he was sent to a Jewish school located in a nearby village.

In his youth, he moved to the house of a cousin in Odessa. There he gave himself to reading. He decided to take the entrance examination to a Lutheran university that allowed him to enter, in spite of the strong anti-Semitic laws, the students of different creeds and cultures. Finally, he was admitted and his performance was always the best. The secular environment in which Leon Trotsky began to develop, made his atheist ideals become stronger. Such was the case that he did not perform the traditional festival of passage to adulthood.

Time later, he began to read books and newspapers of the political branch, he became interested in the intellectual and political circles, becoming usual to find him in socialist gatherings. In the year 1896, and formally integrated the circle of populism Mykolayiv, springboard to join the Marxist movement. During these clandestine meetings, they organized in 1897 the foundation of the Union of Workers of the South of Russia. But the Tsarist regime stops him, condemning him to exile in Siberia.

During the four years that he was in exile, Leon Trotsky devoted himself to read carefully the works of Karl Marx and received one or two copies of the recently-published newspaper Iskra, belonging to the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, of which Lenin, L. Mártov, and Gueorgui took part. Plekhanov, among others. All of them socialist emigrants from Russia. Also, he had in his hands Lenin’s work What is to be done? a political treatise published in 1902, of which Trotsky was fascinated and delighted to know this man personally. He also took the opportunity to establish a relationship with Aleksandra Sokolóvskaya, with whom he was married in prison.

He began to think about his escape, with the help of his wife. Finally, he undertook the flight with a false passport under the name of Leon Trotsky. Several weeks later without his wife’s company, he arrived in Samara, where he joined the Iskra followers and later passed through Vienna where he found the help of a social democratic political doctor, Victor Adler who helped him move to London to meet Lenin. He arrived in the British capital in October 1902. After meeting all the editors of such an admirable political newspaper, he was integrated into the editorial side.

He was transferred to the position of lecturer since his ability to oratory was admirable. In one of his conferences in Paris, he met his second wife, Natalia Sedova, with whom he had two children. Upon his arrival, an important meeting was proposed to seek the unification of the various Russian social-democratic groups, but this proved fruitless because a division was created in Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

“He who kneels before the fait accompli is unable to face the future.” Leon Trotsky

This situation triggered the conflict between Lenin and Leon Trotsky since he blamed him for being the generator of such an illogical division because for him the two groups had the same political projects. For a time Trotsky was more attached to the Mensheviks, but with the passage of time, he took an attitude in search of reconciliation between the two sides of the party, convinced that their unification would be the best horizon for the political struggle.

On his return to Kiev, after a trip to Munich, during the Revolution of 1905, he carried out an intense political agitation by writing articles, letters, and proclamations, disseminated to all citizens. In the spring he moved to the capital. There arose the first organization of workers’ delegates called the Soviet of St. Petersburg. Trotsky served as a representative of the Menshevik faction. Taking advantage of the great support obtained, he created his Izvestia newspaper. The regime’s troops dissolved the Soviet and then arrested Trotsky, after ten months of trial, where his first male son Lev was born, he was sentenced to exile in Siberia.

During the exile, he wrote Results and perspectives. Several years after the exile, he built serious statements about how to establish socialism in a backward society like the Russian, decided to escape pretending to be taken to a village where he managed to escape thanks to a peasant. Several months later, he arrived in St. Petersburg. For 1907, he published his history of the revolution and shared the theory of permanent revolution, receiving the support of prominent German socialists such as Karl Kautsky and Franz Mehring.

In 1912, with the ground, Leon Trotsky had to work as a correspondent for a newspaper, covering the Balkan Wars, where he met prominent socialists in the region, such as the Romanian doctor and linguist Christian Rakovski. Then, he founded a group called St. Petersburg interdistrict with several socialist leaders: Adolf Joffe, David Ryazanov, Anatoli Lunacharski, and Mikhail Pokrovski.

After critical periods where he had to face the exile to Madrid, then the expulsion from France, and the ravages of the World War. The period before the 1917 Revolution came. He was part of the Petrograd Soviet and attended meetings and rallies. Trotsky shared the position of Lenin: to overthrow the provisional government emerged from the February Revolution, headed by the moderate socialist Aleksandr Kérensky. Lenin had to take refuge because of the fear of being imprisoned; Leon Trotsky had to assume the leadership of the Revolutionary Military Committee.

From the leadership, the revolutionary forces were ordered to take several points from the garrisons, where violent confrontations took place, which enabled the Committee to control strategic points. With it, the assault against the Government took place, that finished with the capture of almost all the provisional Government. Then, the power of the new government spread through the country, with heavy fighting in places like Moscow. The military weakness of the opposition favored Lenin and his followers.

“It is clear that strategy does not impede tactics.” Leon Trotsky

Lenin had to put an end to Russian participation in the World War, signing peace with the Germans in 1918. The evacuation of Ukraine and Finland was also authorized. Subsequently, a series of revolts broke out throughout the country under the command of the revolutionaries and the Russian allies in the war who wanted to take down the Bolsheviks, because they considered that the cessation of hostilities on the eastern front was greatly damaging them. Thanks to the Red Army under the leadership of Trotsky they were able to emerge victoriously.

Trotsky was dismissed as commissioner of war by Grigori Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Iosif Stalin, this with the intention of weakening the organization until he was expelled. He was later deported to Kazakhstan and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929. After facing several exiles, he was invited by General Lázaro Cárdenas, president of the Mexican country, to be protected in his country. Being in Mexico, from the URRS, it was planned to attempt against his life. After a secret operation called Utka, he attempted against his life on August 20, 1940. About 300,000 people attended his funeral.