Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronshteyn in Kherson province, Ukraine. He became a member of the Social Democratic movement when he was eighteen and spent several years in prison and exile before escaping abroad in 1902, where he wrote for Iskra. Trotsky leaned to the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, which led to a conflict with Lenin in 1903; that same year, Trotsky condemned the Bund for their nationalism. He slipped into Russia after the 1905 Revolution and was arrested that same year, but he escaped. In 1917 he again returned to Russia, joining the Bolsheviks and becoming central to military and foreign relations during the October Revolution and its aftermath. He founded the Red Army and advocated worldwide revolution. With Lenin’s death, Trotsky competed with Stalin for power for several years and lost, being expelled from the party in 1927. He was exiled in 1929, his citizenship was revoked in 1932, and so was accused of an attempt on Stalin’s life in 1936. He was assassinated by the NKVD in Mexico.