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Leon Trotsky | |
|---|---|
| Лев Троцкий | |
 Trotsky c. 1918 | |
| People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union[a] | |
| In office 14 March 1918 – 12 January 1925 | |
| Premier | |
| Preceded by | Nikolai Podvoisky |
| Succeeded by | Mikhail Frunze |
| People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Russian SFSR | |
| In office 8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918 | |
| Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Georgy Chicherin |
| Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet | |
| In office 20 September – 26 December 1917 | |
| Preceded by | Nikolay Chkheidze |
| Succeeded by | Grigory Zinoviev |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Lev Davidovich Bronstein 7 November 1879 (N.S.) Yanovka, Russian Empire |
| Died | 21 August 1940 (aged 60) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Manner of death | Assassination |
| Resting place | Leon Trotsky House Museum |
| Citizenship |
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| Political party |
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| Spouses | |
| Children | |
| Signature |  |
Central institution membership Other offices held
| |
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Lev Davidovich Bronstein[b] (7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,[c] was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He was a central figure in the 1905 Revolution,[3] October Revolution, Russian Civil War, and establishment of the Soviet Union. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent Soviet figures, and Trotsky was "de facto" second-in-command during the early years of the Russian Soviet Republic.[4][5][6] Ideologically a Marxist and Leninist, his thought and writings inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Trotsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. He was arrested for revolutionary activities and exiled to Siberia, but in 1902 escaped to London, where he met Lenin and wrote for the party's newspaper Iskra. Trotsky sided with Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks after the party's 1903 schism, but declared himself non-factional in 1904. During the failed 1905 Revolution, Trotsky returned to Russia and was elected 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 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 that overthrew the Provisional Government.
In Lenin's first government, Trotsky was appointed as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister) and led 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 (Defence Minister); he founded the Red Army and led it to victory in the Russian Civil War. He was an honorary president of the Third International.[7] In 1922, Trotsky and Lenin formed an alliance against the growing Soviet bureaucracy;[8] Lenin proposed that Trotsky become his Deputy Chairman and preside over economic management,[9] but he declined.[10] Trotsky led the party's Left Opposition, which opposed the concessions of the New Economic Policy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky was the most prominent critic of Joseph Stalin, but was outmaneuvered by him and lost his positions: he was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and 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 polemically against Stalinism, supporting proletarian internationalism against Stalin's theory of "socialism in one country". Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" posited that the socialist revolution could only survive if spread to advanced capitalist countries. 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, was assassinated at his home in Mexico City by Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader.
Written out of Soviet history under Stalin, Trotsky was one of the few of Stalin's rivals who was never politically rehabilitated by later leaders. In the West, Trotsky emerged as a hero of the anti-Stalinist left for his defense of a more democratic, internationalist form of socialism[11][12] against Stalinist totalitarianism, and for his intellectual contributions to Marxism. While some of his wartime actions have proved controversial, such as his ideological defence of the Red Terror[13] and suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, scholarship ranks Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army highly among historical figures, and he is credited for his major involvement with the military, economic, cultural[14] and political development of the Soviet Union.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Cliff, Tony (2004) [1976]. "Lenin Rearms the Party". All Power to the Soviets: Lenin 1914–1917. Vol. 2. Chicago: Haymarket Books. p. 139. ISBN 9781931859103. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
Trotsky was a leader of a small group, the Mezhraionts, consisting of almost four thousand members.
- ^ "Trotsky". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
- ^ "A prolific writer and a spellbinding orator, he was a central figure in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917, the organizer and leader of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, the heir apparent to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and the arch enemy and then vanquished foe of Joseph Stalin in the succession struggle after Lenin's death".Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Medvedev, Roj Aleksandrovič (1989). Let history judge: the origins and consequences of Stalinism (Rev. and expanded ed.). Columbia Univ. Press. pp. 109–112, 143. ISBN 978-0-231-06351-7.
- ^ "Stalin was a relatively unimportant and little known figure at the time [October Revolution]. Lenin's best known disciples in 1917- men like Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Radek".Bailey, Sydney D. (1955). "Stalin's Falsification of History: The Case of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty". The Russian Review. 14 (1): 24–35. doi:10.2307/126074. ISSN 0036-0341. JSTOR 126074.
- ^ "It would be wrong to imagine, however, that the second great leader of the Russian revolution is inferior to his colleague in everything: there are, for instance, aspects in which Trotsky incontestably surpasses him – he is more brilliant, he is clearer, he is more active." "Anatoly Lunacharsky: Revolutionary Silhouettes (Trotsky)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. p. 605. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Mccauley 2014, p. 59; Deutscher 2003b, p. 63; Kort 2015, p. 166; Service 2010, p. 301–20; Pipes 1993, p. 469; Volkogonov 1996, p. 242; Lewin 2005, p. 67; Tucker 1973, p. 336; Figes 2017, pp. 796, 797; D'Agostino 2011, p. 67.
- ^ Getty 2013b, p. 53; Douds 2019b, p. 165.
- ^ Bullock 1991b, p. 163; Rees & Rosa 1992b, p. 129; Kosheleva 1995b, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Barnett, Vincent (7 March 2013). A History of Russian Economic Thought. Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-134-26191-8.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 1053.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (Chapter 4)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
- ^ Knei-Paz 1979, p. 296; Kivelson & Neuberger 2008, p. 149.