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Famous Trials that shook the world by Lionel Wijesiri

Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) is regarded as one of the greatest Marxists of the twentieth century. His whole life was entirely devoted to the cause of the working class and international socialism. And what a life it was!

Lev was born on October 26, 1879, son of a hard-working and well-to-do Jewish farmer, in the southern part of Ukraine. The family valued education highly, and when Lev was about nine years old they let him move to the city of Odessa to attend Primary School.

Lev was an exceptionally bright and capable student, and in 1896 he moved to Nicolayev to complete his secondary education and to study mathematics. At Nicolayev, he was first introduced to the ideas of Karl Marx.

In 1897, he was instrumental in founding the underground South Russia Workers' Union and in 1898 the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1898 he was first arrested for revolutionary activity and was sentenced to two years in prisonment.

On his return in 1900 he was again deported to Siberia for four years. He escaped from Siberia in summer in 1902, taking the name Trotsky from a former jailer in Odessa, and eventually made his way to London. Trotsky joined the Social Democratic Party and while in England he met and worked with a group of Marxists producing the journal called Iskra (Spark). The group included Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov.

At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party held in London in 1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters.

Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists. Martov won the vote 28-23 but Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.

A large number of the Social Democratic Party including Joseph Stalin joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky supported Julius Martov.

Trotsky returned to Russia during the 1905 Revolution. He became heavily involved in the creation of the St. Petersburg Soviet and was eventually elected chairman. Over the next few weeks over 50 of these Soviets were formed all over Russia. (Many of the Russian uprisings were organized and led by democratically elected councils called Soviets. The Soviets originated as strike committees and were basically a form of local self-government).

With the failings of the Duma, (the Russian Parliament during the time of Tsarist rule set up around 1905) the Soviets were seen as the legitimate workers' government. Trotsky and the Soviets challenged the power of Nicholas II and continued the struggle to enforce him to deliver the promises made by him such as the freedom of the press, assembly and association.

Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia (1894 - 1917) whose reign was marked by the increasing conflict between classes and ethnic groups).

In December, 1905, the St. Petersburg Soviet was crushed and Trotsky was arrested and imprisoned. In October, 1906 Trotsky was sentenced to internal exile and deprived of all civil rights. While in prison Trotsky developed the theory of permanent revolution.

After two years in Siberia, Trotsky managed to escape and eventually reached Vienna where he joined forces with Adolf Joffe to publish the journal, Pravda. Trotsky was now seen as one of the most important figures in the Russian revolutionary movement and Vladimir Lenin sent him a message persuading him to join the Bolsheviks.

In 1917, as the Tsar abdicated, Leon Trotsky went back to Russia, and in August that year he became a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which had Lenin as its uncontested leader and visionary. In this capacity Trotsky became second in command after Lenin.

He became commissar of war in 1918 and organised the Red Army in the civil war that followed the revolution, accomplishing the monumental task of welding an efficient fighting force from the tattered remnants of the czarist army and various disparate elements.

As Lenin's health declined, Joseph Stalin, more skilful in party infighting, gained prominence. As a result, at the tenth party congress (1921), Stalin was named General Secretary of the party. On Lenin's death (1924) power passed to a triumvirate consisting of Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. Advocating world revolution, Trotsky came into increasing conflict with Stalin's plans for "socialism in one country."

Trotsky enjoyed great prestige as a revolutionary leader and had followers in the army and state administration, but Stalin effectively controlled the party machine.

The triumvirate firmly opposed Trotsky and dismissed him from the post of commissar of war in 1925. In 1926 Zinoviev and Kamenev belatedly joined forces with Trotsky in a desperate attempt to check Stalin's power. Trotsky was expelled from the politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927.

In January 1928, Trotsky was exiled to Alma-Ata (now Almaty, Kazakhstan), and in 1929 he was ordered to leave the USSR. Refused admission by most countries, he was granted asylum by Turkey, where he lived on the Princes' Islands near Istanbul.

In 1933 he was allowed to move to France, and in 1935 he found refuge in Norway.

In the public treason trials held at Moscow in 1936 - 1938, Trotsky was charged with heading a plot against the Stalinist regime.

The accusations, which Trotsky bitterly denied, cloaked Stalin's real purpose of purging the party ranks of all who might prove disloyal to him. In December 1936, the Soviet government obtained the expulsion of Trotsky from Norway, and he settled with his family in a suburb of Mexico the City.

In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded an international Marxist organisation, the Fourth International.

On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was successfully attacked in his home by a supposedly Stalinist agent, who drove the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. Trotsky died the next day.

Trotsky was fighting for class equality between intellectuals and capitalists and used his writings to establish an alternative direction for communism.

Stalin implemented communist policies to the core that were exceedingly costly both in lives, and in depriving the Soviet people from freedom.

Trotsky's house in Coyoacan was preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day of the assassination and is now a museum.

His grave is located on its grounds.

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