Leon Trotsky facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Leon Trotsky
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Photograph of Trotsky that appeared on the cover of the magazine Prozhektor in January 1924
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| People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union | |
| In office 13 March 1918 – 6 January 1925 |
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| Premier | |
| Preceded by | Nikolai Podvoisky |
| Succeeded by | Mikhail Frunze |
| People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR | |
| In office 8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918 |
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| Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
| Preceded by | Mikhail Tereshchenko |
| Succeeded by | Georgy Chicherin |
| Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet | |
| In office 8 October – 8 November 1917 |
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| Preceded by | Nikolay Chkheidze |
| Succeeded by | Grigory Zinoviev |
| Full member of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th Politburo | |
| In office 10 October 1917 – 23 October 1926 |
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| Personal details | |
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Lev Davidovich Bronstein
7 November 1879 Yanovka, Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | 21 August 1940 (aged 60) Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Cause of death | Assassination |
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Leon Davidovich Trotsky (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий; also transliterated Leo, Lev, Trotskii, Trotski, Trotskij and Trotzky; October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 in Kropyvnytskyi (nowadays Ukraine) - August 21, 1940 in Coyoacán, Mexico) was the public name of Leib or Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He was a Russian revolutionary and political theoretician. He was of Jewish-Ukrainian descent. After leading the Red Army in the Russian Civil War he disagreed with other Bolsheviks and had to leave Russia.
Trotsky was a socialist and a Marxist. In 1905 there was a revolution in Russia. Trotsky helped organize a committee of workers in St Petersburg which was called the Soviet. When the leader of the Soviet was arrested, Trotsky became leader of the Soviet in his place. Trotsky helped to expand on the idea of Permanent Revolution, which is a theory originally thought up by Karl Marx.
After the revolution Trotsky left Russia for his own safety. In 1917, he returned to Russia because of the Russian Revolution. He helped to bring about communism in Russia and defend it during the Russian Civil War. He was in charge of the army at this time. When the leader of the Bolsheviks (the party who led the revolution) Vladimir Lenin died, Trotsky became involved in a power struggle with Joseph Stalin for the leadership of the party. He lost, and Stalin came to power. He had to leave Russia because of Stalin, who was now his own enemy and wanted to harm Trotsky. In 1938 Trotsky founded the Fourth International. Stalin had one of his spies, Spaniard Ramón Mercarder, stab Trotsky to death in Mexico in 1940.
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Childhood and family (1879–1895)
Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to David Leontyevich Bronstein (1847–1922) and Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya, 1850–1910) on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a wealthy Jewish landowner family in Yanovka, Kherson governorate, Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, Ukraine).
When Trotsky was eight, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated. He was enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school (Realschule zum Heiligen Paulus or school of the Lutheran St. Pauls Cathedral, a school of Black Sea Germans which also admitted students of other faiths and backgrounds,) which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial government's policy of Russification.
Political career and life (1896–1940)
In 1898, Trotsky was arrested for revolutionary activities and exiled to Siberia, but in 1902 escaped to London, where he met Lenin and wrote for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's paper Iskra. During the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky returned to Russia and became chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was again exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1907 and spent time in London, Vienna, Switzerland, Paris, and New York. After the February Revolution of 1917 which overthrew the tsar, Trotsky returned to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks. As chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he played an important role in the October Revolution which overthrew the Provisional Government.
In Lenin's first government, Trotsky was appointed the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and led the negotiations for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. From 1918 to 1925, he served as the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, founding the Red Army; establishing conscription, training, and discipline; and leading it to victory in the Russian Civil War. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky was outmaneuvered by Joseph Stalin and his allies and lost his positions: he was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927, internally exiled to Alma Ata in 1928, and deported in 1929. He lived in Turkey, France, and Norway before settling in Mexico in 1937.
In exile, Trotsky wrote extensively and polemically against Stalinism. In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union had become a "degenerated workers' state" due to its isolation, and called for an end to Stalin's dictatorship. He founded the Fourth International in 1938 as an alternative to the Comintern. In 1936, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia at the first of the Moscow show trials, and in 1940, he was assassinated at his home in Mexico City by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.
Legacy
People who believe in Trotsky's ideas are called Trotskyists and follow Trotskyism. The main Trotskyist organizations today are the Fourth International (post - Reunification), the Socialist Workers Party in the UK and the International Socialist Tendency.
In popular culture
In the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, Trotsky is represented by Snowball the pig and Stalin is represented by Napoleon who was also a pig.
Images for kids
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8-year-old Lev Bronstein, 1888
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Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1897
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Trotsky's first wife Aleksandra Sokolovskaya with her brother (sitting on the left) and Trotsky (sitting on the right) in 1897
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Trotsky in 1902
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Police mugshots of Trotsky in 1905 after Soviet members were arrested during a meeting in the Free Economic Society building
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Trotsky in prison, awaiting trial, 1906
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Trotsky with Alexander Parvus (left) and Leo Deutsch (right) in Saint Peter and Paul Fortress prison at Saint Petersburg in 1906
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Trotsky reading the Pravda in Vienna, circa 1910
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Trotsky in Vienna
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Leon Trotsky with his daughter Nina in 1915
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Trotsky arriving in Petrograd by train in May 1917.
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Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev at Brest-Litovsk negotiations (c. 1917–1918)
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Territory lost under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
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The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev and Lashevich.
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Leon Trotsky speaks from the Armoured Train during the Russian Civil War in 1920
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An antisemitic 1919 White Army propaganda poster depicting Trotsky as Satan. The caption reads, "Peace and Liberty in Sovdepiya".
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Trotsky with Demyan Bedny near Kazan, 1918
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Trotsky with Lenin and Kamenev
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Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev motivate the troops to fight on the Soviet-Polish war. 1 May 1920
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Trotsky addressing soldiers of the Red Army during the Polish-Soviet War.
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Béla Kun, Alfred Rosmer, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Frunze and Sergey Gusev. Kharkov Ukraine 1920.
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Mikhail Kalinin and Leon Trotsky greet Red Army troops. Polish–Soviet War.
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Trotsky with Vladimir Lenin and Klim Voroshilov among soldiers in Petrograd in 1921.
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Red Army troops attack Kronstadt sailors in March 1921.
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Leon Trotsky, the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs USSR, as the Guard of the October revolution on 14 May 1923
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Trotsky with Red Army soldiers in Moscow, 1922
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Trotsky with Rakovsky, circa 1924
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Leon Trotsky with Soviet leaders write the letter of defiance to British Foreign Secretary Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in 1923, in a parody of Ilya Repin's Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
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Andrei Bubnov, Kliment Voroshilov, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Kalinin and Mikhail Frunze attend The October Revolution parade on The Red Square on 7 November 1924
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Leon Trotsky and Leonid Serebryakov attend the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union in May 1925
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Kalinin and Stalin bearing the coffin of Felix Dzerzhinsky on 22 July 1926. Trotsky can be seen over Kalinin's left shoulder.
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Trotsky with his wife Natalia and son Lev in Alma Ata, 1928
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The publication of Trotsky's autobiography My Life as reported in the Soviet Union in August 1929, with the editors of Projector titled the publication: "On the service of bourgeoisie"
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Trotsky's house, the Yanaros mansion on the island of Büyükada in Turkey, as it appears today. Trotsky lived at the house from April 1929 until July 1933.
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Trotsky arrives in Mexico, January 1937 with his wife. Artist Frida Kahlo behind them.
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James Cannon and Felix Morrow with a bust of Trotsky
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Leon Trotsky's grave in Coyoacán, where his ashes are buried
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A Diego Rivera mural depicts Trotsky with Marx and Engels as a true champion of the workers' struggle
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See also
In Spanish: León Trotski para niños
