Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky (Russian: Лeв Давидович Трóцкий) , born Leon Davidovich Bronstein (Russian: Лeв Давидович Бронштéйн) (1879-1940), pronouced (traht'-skee)
was a leader with Lenin in the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. A charismatic orator, systematic organizer and brilliant theorist, Trotsky was primarily an intellectual whose writings greatly influenced leftist movements worldwide. An energetic organizer he planned the successful Petrograd uprising in November 1917, created the Red Army, and played the central role in winning the civil war (1918-20). Trotsky's independence and aloofness made him a poor backstage negotiator and he was easily outmaneuvered by Stalin, who controlled the party apparatus, After Lenin's disability in 1923, Trotsky lost power to Stalin. Forced into exile, he denounced the Soviet regime as an impure form of Communism; Stalin had him assassinated in Mexico in 1940.
Career
Trotsky, was the son of a prosperous Jewish farmer in the Ukraine. Welleducated and rebellious, he became a professional revolutionary as a teenager. He was arrested in 1898 and was later exiled to Siberia, where he joined the Social Democratic party. In 1902 he escaped abroad, met Lenin.
In 1903, while Lenin headed the Bolsheviks, Trotsky joined the rival Mensheviks. Mensheviks did not believe trying to ignite a revolution, expecting that it would happen when the people were ready. By contrast the Bolsheviks who believed that the people needed to be led. From 1904 until 1917 Trotsky had a stormy relationship with Lenin, accusing Lenin of wanting to become a dictator. But the two of them resolved their differences in 1917, and after that point Trotsky was totally loyal to Lenin.
Trotsky was the most powerful orator in the Bolshevik party, and due to his numerous spells in jail and his active role in the failed 1905 revolution he was much more famous than Lenin was to ordinary Russians. He was the actual organizer behind the October Revolution, as Lenin was still in exile and so unable to participate.
Trotsky also helped build the Red Army that defeated the White Russian Army in the subsequent Civil War in Russia, despite having no military experience of any kind.
When Lenin died in 1924, a lengthy power struggle began between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky took the view that socialism in the Soviet Union must await a revolution in western Europe and even worldwide. Stalin wanted power immediately and offered a rival ideology, Socialism in one country. To fend off accusations of becoming the new 'Napoleon', he gave up his command of the Red Army. However Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Bolshevik party in 1927 and exiled him from Russia in 1929.
Trotsky eventually settled in Mexico in 1937. On August 20, 1940 Soviet agent and Spanish communist Ramón Mercador murdered Trotsky with a ice pick in Trotsky's Mexico City home.
One of Trotsky's famous quotes (which also sums up the Atheism in the Communist Movement) was : "Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government."