Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky (born November 7 [October 26, Old Style], 1879, Yanovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died August 21, 1940, Coyoacán, Mexico) communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union (1917–24). In the struggle for power following Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent.

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Early life, education, and revolutionary career

Trotsky’s father, David Bronshtein, was a farmer of Russified Jewish background who had settled as a colonist in the steppe region, and his mother, Anna, was of the educated middle class. He had an older brother and sister; two other siblings died in infancy. At the age of eight, he was sent to school in Odessa, where he spent eight years with the family of his mother’s nephew, a liberal intellectual. When he moved to Nikolayev in 1896 to complete his schooling, he was drawn into an underground socialist circle and introduced to Marxism. After briefly attending the University of Odessa, he returned to Nikolayev to help organize the underground South Russian Workers’ Union.

Arrested in January 1898 for revolutionary activity, Bronshtein spent four and a half years in prison and in exile in Siberia, during which time he married his coconspirator Aleksandra Sokolovskaya and fathered two daughters. He escaped in 1902 with a forged passport bearing the name Trotsky, which he adopted as his revolutionary pseudonym. His wife remained behind, and the separation became permanent. Trotsky made his way to London, where he joined the group of Russian Social-Democrats working with Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) on the revolutionary newspaper Iskra (“The Spark”).

Britannica Quiz

Russia: A History Quiz

At the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, held in Brussels and London in July 1903, Trotsky sided with the Menshevik faction—advocating a democratic approach to socialism—against Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Shortly before this, in Paris, Trotsky had met and married Natalya Sedova, by whom he subsequently had two sons, Lev and Sergey.

Upon the outbreak of revolutionary disturbances in 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia. He became a leading spokesman of the St. Petersburg Soviet (council) of Workers’ Deputies when it organized a revolutionary strike movement and other measures of defiance against the tsarist government. In the aftermath, Trotsky was jailed and brought to trial in 1906. While incarcerated, Trotsky wrote one of his major works, “Results and Prospects,” setting forth his theory of permanent revolution.

In 1907, after a second exile to Siberia, Trotsky once again escaped. He settled in Vienna and supported himself as a correspondent in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. At the outbreak of World War I, Trotsky joined the majority of Russian Social-Democrats who condemned the war and refused to support the war effort of the tsarist regime. He moved to Switzerland and then to Paris. His antiwar stance led to his expulsion from both France and Spain. He reached New York City in January 1917, where he joined the Bolshevik theoretician Nikolay Bukharin in editing the Russian-language paper Novy Mir (“The New World”).

Leadership in the Revolution of 1917

Trotsky hailed the outbreak of revolution in Russia in February (March, New Style) as the opening of the permanent revolution he had predicted. He reached Petrograd in mid-May and assumed the leadership of a left-wing Menshevik faction. Following the abortive July Days uprising, Trotsky was arrested in the crackdown on the Bolshevik leadership carried out by Aleksandr Kerensky’s liberal government. In August, while still in jail, Trotsky was formally admitted to the Bolshevik Party and was also elected to membership on the Bolshevik Central Committee. He was released from prison in September and shortly afterward was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

When fighting was precipitated by an ineffectual government raid early on November 6 (October 24, Old Style), Trotsky took a leading role in directing countermeasures for the soviet, while reassuring the public that his Military Revolutionary Committee meant only to defend the Congress of Soviets. Governmental authority crumbled quickly, and Petrograd was largely in Bolshevik hands by the time Lenin reappeared from the underground on November 7 to take direct charge of the Revolution and present the Congress of Soviets with an accomplished fact when it convened next day.

Trotsky continued to function as the military leader of the Revolution when Kerensky vainly attempted to retake Petrograd with loyal troops. He organized and supervised the forces that broke Kerensky’s efforts at the Battle of Pulkovo on November 13. Immediately afterward he joined Lenin in defeating proposals for a coalition government including Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.