Lev Davidovich Trotsky (né Bronstein; 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas and beliefs inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
Trotsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, being arrested and exiled to Siberia for his activities. In 1902 he escaped to London, where he met Lenin. Trotsky initially sided with the Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks in the party's 1903 schism, but declared himself non-factional in 1904. During the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was again exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1907 and lived abroad. After the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He helped to lead the October Revolution, and as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. He served as People's Commissar for Military Affairs from 1918 to 1925, during which he built the Red Army and led it to victory in the civil war. In 1922 Lenin formed a bloc with Trotsky against the growing Soviet bureaucracy and proposed that he should become a deputy premier, but Trotsky declined. Beginning in 1923, Trotsky led the party's Left Opposition faction, which supported greater levels of industrialisation, voluntary collectivisation and party democratisation in a shared framework with the New Economic Policy.
After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky emerged as a prominent critic of Joseph Stalin, who soon politically outmanoeuvred him. Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927, 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 polemics against Stalinism, advocating proletarian internationalism against Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution held that the revolution could survive only if it spread to more advanced capitalist countries. In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), he argued that the Soviet Union had become a "degenerated workers' state", and in 1938 founded the Fourth International as an alternative to the Comintern. After being sentenced to death in absentia at the Moscow show trials in 1936, Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a Stalinist agent.
Written out of official history under Stalin, Trotsky was one of the few of his rivals who were never politically rehabilitated by later Soviet leaders. In the Western world, Trotsky emerged as a hero of the anti-Stalinist left for his defence of a more democratic, internationalist form of socialism against Stalinist totalitarianism, and for his intellectual contributions to Marxism. While some of his wartime actions are controversial, such as his ideological defence of the Red Terror and violent 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 and political development of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and family (1879–1895)
Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on 7 November 1879 into a wealthy but illiterate Jewish farming family in Yanovka, a village then in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire and now in the Kirovohrad Oblast of Ukraine. He was the fifth child of David Leontyevich Bronstein (1847–1922), and Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya, 1850–1910). Trotsky's younger sister, Olga (1883–1941), also became a Bolshevik and Soviet politician, and married her fellow-Bolshevik Lev Kamenev.
Some authors, notably Robert Service, have claimed that Trotsky's childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. However, the Trotskyist writer David North argued that this is an assumption based on Trotsky's Jewish heritage, lacking documentary evidence, especially as Yiddish was not spoken by his family. Both North and the historian Walter Laqueur stated that Trotsky's childhood name was Lyova, a standard Russian diminutive of Lev. North draws a parallel between the speculation and the disproportionate scrutiny of Trotsky’s Jewish heritage. Instead of Yiddish, the family spoke a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Although he acquired good proficiency in French, English, and German, Trotsky stated in his autobiography My Life that he was truly fluent in only Russian and Ukrainian. Raymond Molinier has noted that Trotsky spoke fluent French.
David sent Trotsky to Odessa for education when the latter was eight years old. Trotsky enrolled at St Paul's Realschule, a Lutheran German-language school, which admitted students of various faiths and became increasingly Russified during his time there due to the Imperial government's Russification policy. Trotsky and his wife Natalia later registered their children as Lutheran, as Austrian law then required children to receive religious education "in the faith of their parents". Odessa, a bustling cosmopolitan port city, differed greatly from typical Russian cities and contributed to the development of young Trotsky's international outlook. He excelled academically, particularly in science and mathematics, and was a voracious reader, often disciplined for reading non-curriculum books during class.
Early political activities and life (1896–1917)
Revolutionary activity and imprisonment (1896–1898)
Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the port town of Nikolayev (now Mykolaiv) on the Black Sea. Initially a narodnik (revolutionary agrarian socialist populist), he opposed Marxism but was converted by his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. He graduated from high school with first-class honours the same year. His father had intended him to become a mechanical engineer.
Trotsky briefly attended Odessa University, studying engineering and mathematics. A university colleague noted his exceptional mathematical talent. However, bored with his studies, he increasingly focused on political philosophy and underground revolutionary activities. He dropped out in early 1897 to help to organise the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev. Using the name "Lvov", he wrote and printed leaflets, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularised socialist ideas among industrial workers and students.
In January 1898 over 200 union members, including Trotsky, were arrested. He spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev, then Kherson, Odessa, and finally Moscow. In Moscow, he encountered other revolutionaries, learnt of Lenin, and read Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Two months into his imprisonment, the first Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was held (1–3 March 1898). From then on, Trotsky identified as an RSDLP member.
First marriage and Siberian exile (1899–1902)
While imprisoned in Moscow in the summer of 1900, Trotsky married his fellow-Marxist Aleksandra Sokolovskaya (1872–1938) in a ceremony performed by a Jewish chaplain. In 1900 Trotsky was sentenced to four years of exile in Siberia. Due to their marriage, Trotsky and his wife were exiled together to Ust-Kut and Verkholensk in the Baikal region. They had two daughters, Zinaida (1901–1933) and Nina (1902–1928), both born in Siberia.
In Siberia, Trotsky studied history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and the works of Karl Marx to solidify his political stance. He became aware of internal party differences, particularly the debate between "economists", who focused on workers' economic improvements, and those who prioritised overthrowing the monarchy through a disciplined revolutionary party. The latter position was advocated by the London-based newspaper Iskra (The Spark), founded in 1900. Trotsky quickly sided with Iskra and began writing for it.
In the summer of 1902, urged by his wife, Trotsky escaped from Siberia hidden in a load of hay. Aleksandra later escaped with their daughters. Both daughters married and had children but died before their parents. Nina Nevelson died of tuberculosis in 1928. Zinaida Volkova, also suffering from tuberculosis and depression, followed her father into exile but committed suicide in Berlin in 1933. Aleksandra disappeared in 1935 during Stalin's Great Purge and was murdered by Soviet forces in 1938.
First emigration and second marriage (1902–1903)
Until this point, Trotsky had used his birth name, Lev (Leon) Bronstein. He adopted the surname "Trotsky"—reportedly the name of a jailer in the Odessa prison where he had been held—which he used for the rest of his life. This became his primary revolutionary pseudonym. After escaping Siberia, Trotsky moved to London, joining Georgi Plekhanov, Lenin, Julius Martov and other editors of Iskra. Writing under the pen name Pero ("quill" or "pen"), Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading writers.
The six editors of Iskra were split between an "old guard" led by Plekhanov and a "new guard" led by Lenin and Martov. Lenin, seeking a majority against Plekhanov, expected the 23-year-old Trotsky to side with the new guard. In March 1903 Lenin proposed Trotsky's co-option to the editorial board:
I suggest to all the members of the editorial board that they co-opt 'Pero' as a member of the board on the same basis as other members. [...] We very much need a seventh member, both as a convenience in voting (six being an even number) and as an addition to our forces. 'Pero' has been contributing to every issue for several months now; he works, in general, most energetically for the Iskra; he gives lectures (in which he has been very successful). In the section of articles and notes on the events of the day, he will not only be very useful, but absolutely necessary. Unquestionably a man of rare abilities, he has conviction and energy, and he will go much farther.
Due to Plekhanov's opposition, Trotsky did not become a full board member but participated in an advisory capacity, earning Plekhanov's animosity.
In late 1902 Trotsky met Natalia Sedova (1882–1962), who soon became his companion. They married in 1903 and remained together until his death. They had two sons, Lev Sedov (1906–1938) and Sergei Sedov (1908–1937), both of whom predeceased their parents. Trotsky later explained that, for "citizenship" requirements after the 1917 revolution, he "took on the name of my wife" so his sons would not have to change their name. However, he never publicly or privately used the name "Sedov". Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya".
Split with Lenin (1903–1904)
In August 1903 Iskra convened the RSDLP's Second Congress in London. Trotsky attended with other Iskra editors. After defeating the "economist" delegates, the congress addressed the Bund's desire for autonomy within the party.
Subsequently, the pro-Iskra delegates unexpectedly split. The initial dispute was organisational: Lenin and his supporters (the Bolsheviks) advocated for a smaller, highly organised party of committed members, while Martov and his supporters (the Mensheviks) favoured a larger, less disciplined party that included sympathisers. Trotsky and most Iskra editors supported Martov, while Plekhanov backed Lenin. During 1903–1904, allegiances shifted; Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904, disagreeing with their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
From 1904 to 1917 Trotsky described himself as a "non-factional social democrat". He attempted to reconcile party factions, leading to clashes with Lenin and others. Trotsky later admitted he was wrong to oppose Lenin on party organisation. During this period, he developed his theory of permanent revolution and worked closely with Alexander Parvus (1904–1907). During their split Lenin referred to Trotsky as "Judas" (Iudushka, after a character in Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyov Family), a "scoundrel", and a "swine".
1905 revolution and trial (1905–1906)
Anti-government unrest culminated in Saint Petersburg on 3 January 1905 (O.S.), when a strike began at the Putilov Works. This escalated into a general strike, with 140,000 strikers in Saint Petersburg by 7 January 1905.
On Sunday, 9 January 1905 Father Georgi Gapon led a procession to the Winter Palace, ostensibly to petition Tsar Nicholas II. Accounts differ, but the Palace Guard fired on the demonstration, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. This event, known as Bloody Sunday, intensified revolutionary fervour. Gapon's own biography suggests a degree of provocation by radicals within the crowd, a claim later echoed by some police records.
Following Bloody Sunday, Trotsky secretly returned to Russia in February 1905 via Kiev. He wrote for an underground press in Kiev before moving to Saint Petersburg. There he worked with Bolsheviks like Leonid Krasin and the local Menshevik committee, pushing the latter in a more radical direction. A police raid in May forced him to flee to rural Finland, where he further developed his theory of permanent revolution.
On 19 September 1905, typesetters at Ivan Sytin's Moscow printing house struck for shorter hours and higher pay. By 24 September, 50 other Moscow printing shops joined. On 2 October, Saint Petersburg typesetters struck in solidarity. On 7 October railway workers of the Moscow–Kazan Railway also struck. Amidst this turmoil, Trotsky returned to Saint Petersburg on 15 October. He addressed the Saint Petersburg Soviet (Council) of Workers' Deputies at the Technological Institute, with an estimated 200,000 people gathered outside—about half the city's workers.
After his return, Trotsky and Parvus took over the newspaper Russian Gazette, increasing its circulation to 500,000. Trotsky also co-founded "Nachalo" ("The Beginning") with Parvus, Julius Martov, and other Mensheviks, which became a successful newspaper during the 1905 revolutionary climate in Saint Petersburg.
Before Trotsky's return, Mensheviks had independently conceived of an elected, non-party revolutionary body representing the capital's workers: the first Soviet. By Trotsky's arrival, the Saint Petersburg Soviet was functioning, headed by Khrustalyev-Nosar (Georgy Nosar, alias Pyotr Khrustalyov), a lawyer chosen as a compromise figure. Khrustalyev-Nosar became popular and was the Soviet's public face. Trotsky joined the Soviet as "Yanovsky" (after his birthplace) and was elected vice-chairman. He performed much of the practical work and, after Khrustalyev-Nosar's arrest on 26 November 1905, became its chairman. On 2 December, the Soviet issued a proclamation on Tsarist government debts:
The autocracy never enjoyed the confidence of the people and was never granted any authority by the people. We have therefore decided not to allow the repayment of such loans as have been made by the Tsarist government when openly engaged in a war with the entire people.
The following day, 3 December 1905, government troops surrounded the Soviet, and its deputies were arrested. Trotsky and other leaders were tried in 1906 for supporting an armed rebellion. On 4 October 1906 he was convicted and sentenced to internal exile in Siberia.
Second emigration (1907–1914)
En route to exile in Obdorsk, Siberia, in January 1907, Trotsky escaped at Berezov and made his way to London. He attended the 5th Congress of the RSDLP. In October he moved to Vienna in Austria-Hungary. For the next seven years, he participated in the activities of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and occasionally the German Social Democratic Party. In Vienna he became close to Adolph Joffe, his friend for the next 20 years, who introduced him to psychoanalysis.
In October 1908 Trotsky joined the editorial staff of Pravda ("Truth"), a bi-weekly, Russian-language social democratic paper for Russian workers, co-editing it with Joffe and Matvey Skobelev. It was smuggled into Russia. The paper appeared irregularly, with only five issues in its first year. Avoiding factional politics, it proved popular with Russian industrial workers. After the 1905–1907 revolution's failure, both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks experienced multiple splits. Funding for Pravda was scarce. Trotsky sought financial backing from the RSDLP Central Committee throughout 1909.
In 1910 a Bolshevik majority controlled the Central Committee. Lenin agreed to finance Pravda but required a Bolshevik co-editor. When various factions tried to reunite at the January 1910 RSDLP Central Committee meeting in Paris (over Lenin's objections), Trotsky's Pravda was made a party-financed 'central organ'. Lev Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, joined the editorial board from the Bolsheviks. However, unification attempts failed by August 1910. Kamenev resigned amid mutual recriminations. Trotsky continued publishing Pravda for another two years until it folded in April 1912.
The Bolsheviks launched a new workers' newspaper in Saint Petersburg on 22 April 1912, also named Pravda. Trotsky, upset by what he saw as the usurpation of his newspaper's name, wrote a bitter letter to Nikolay Chkheidze, a Menshevik leader, in April 1913, denouncing Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Though he quickly moved past the disagreement, the letter was intercepted by the Okhrana (secret police) and archived. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky's opponents within the Communist Party publicised the letter to portray him as Lenin's enemy.
The 1910s were a period of heightened tension within the RSDLP. A major disagreement between Trotsky and the Mensheviks on one side, and Lenin on the other, concerned "expropriations"—armed robberies of banks and businesses by Bolshevik groups to fund the Party. These actions, banned by the 5th Congress, were continued by Bolsheviks.
In January 1912 most of the Bolshevik faction, led by Lenin, held a conference in Prague, broke away from the RSDLP, and formed the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). In response, Trotsky organised a "unification" conference of social democratic factions in Vienna in August 1912 (the "August Bloc") to reunite Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, but this attempt was largely unsuccessful.
In Vienna, Trotsky published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers like Kievskaya Mysl, using pseudonyms such as "Antid Oto", a name chosen randomly from an Italian dictionary. Trotsky joked he "wanted to inject the Marxist antidote into the legitimate newspapers". In September 1912 Kievskaya Mysl sent him to the Balkans as its war correspondent, where he covered the two Balkan Wars for the next year. There, Trotsky chronicled ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbian army against Albanian civilians. He became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky, later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally. On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, with Austria-Hungary fighting the Russian Empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré.
World War I (1914–1917)
World War I caused a sudden realignment within the RSDLP and other European social democratic parties over issues of war, revolution, pacifism, and internationalism. The RSDLP split into "defeatists" and "defencists". Lenin, Trotsky, and Martov advocated various internationalist anti-war positions, viewing defeat for their own country's ruling class as a "lesser evil" and opposing all imperialists in the war. "Defencists" like Plekhanov supported the Russian government to some extent. Trotsky's former colleague Parvus, now a defencist, sided so strongly against Russia that he wished for a German victory. In Switzerland, Trotsky briefly worked with the Swiss Socialist Party, prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution. He wrote The War and the International, opposing the war and the pro-war stance of European social democratic parties, especially the German party.
As a war correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl, Trotsky moved to France on 19 November 1914. In January 1915 in Paris he began editing Nashe Slovo ("Our Word"), an internationalist socialist newspaper, initially with Martov (who soon resigned as the paper moved left). He adopted the slogan "peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered". Lenin advocated Russia's defeat and demanded a complete break with the Second International.
Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists in September 1915, advocating a middle course between those like Martov, who would stay in the Second International, and those like Lenin, who would break from it and form a Third International. The conference adopted Trotsky's proposed middle line. Lenin, initially opposed, eventually voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.
In September 1916 Trotsky was deported from France to Spain for his anti-war activities. Spanish authorities, not wanting him, deported him to the United States on 25 December 1916. He arrived in New York City on 13 January 1917, staying for over two months at 1522 Vyse Avenue in the Bronx. In New York he wrote articles for the local Russian-language socialist newspaper Novy Mir and, in translation, for the Yiddish-language daily Der Forverts ("Forward"). He also gave speeches to Russian émigrés.
Trotsky was in New York City when the February Revolution of 1917 led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. He left New York aboard SS Kristianiafjord on 27 March 1917, but his ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Trotsky was arrested and detained for a month at the Amherst Internment Camp in Nova Scotia. In the camp, he befriended workers and sailors among his fellow inmates, describing his month there as "one continual mass meeting". His speeches and agitation angered German inmates, who complained to the camp commander, Colonel Morris, about Trotsky's "anti-patriotic" attitude. Morris subsequently forbade Trotsky from making public speeches, leading to 530 prisoners protesting and signing a petition against the decision. In Russia, after initial hesitation and under pressure from workers' and peasants' Soviets, Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov demanded Trotsky's release as a Russian citizen. The British government freed him on 29 April 1917.
He reached Russia on 17 May 1917. Upon his return, Trotsky largely agreed with the Bolshevik position but did not immediately join them. Russian social democrats were split into at least six groups, and the Bolsheviks awaited the next party Congress to decide on mergers. Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organisation in Petrograd, becoming one of its leaders. At the First Congress of Soviets in June, he was elected a member of the first All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) from the Mezhraiontsy faction.
After an unsuccessful pro-Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd in July (the July Days), Trotsky was arrested on 7 August 1917. He was released 40 days later following the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by Lavr Kornilov. After the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was elected its chairman on 8 October [O.S. 25 September] 1917. He sided with Lenin against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed staging an armed uprising, and he led the efforts to overthrow the Russian Provisional Government headed by the socialist Alexander Kerensky.
Joseph Stalin wrote the following summary of Trotsky's role in 1917 in Pravda on 6 November 1918:
All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized.
Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book The October Revolution (1934), it was expunged from Stalin's Works (1949).
After the success of the October Revolution on 7–8 November 1917, Trotsky led efforts to repel a counter-attack by Cossacks under General Pyotr Krasnov and other troops loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government at Gatchina. Allied with Lenin, he defeated attempts by other Bolshevik Central Committee members (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, etc.) to share power with other moderate socialist parties. Trotsky advocated for a predominantly Bolshevik government and was reluctant to recall Mensheviks as partners after their voluntary withdrawal from the Congress of Soviets. However, he released several socialist ministers from prison. Neither Trotsky nor his colleagues in 1917 initially wished to suppress these parties entirely; the Bolsheviks reserved vacant seats in the Soviets and the Central Executive Committee for these parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress. Concurrently, prominent Left Socialist Revolutionaries assumed positions in Lenin's government, leading commissariats such as agriculture (Andrei Kolegayev), property (Vladimir Karelin), justice (Isaac Steinberg), posts and telegraphs (Prosh Proshian), and local government (Vladimir Trutovsky). According to Deutscher, Menshevik and Social Revolutionary demands for a coalition government included disarming Bolshevik detachments and excluding Lenin and Trotsky, which was unacceptable even to moderate Bolshevik negotiators like Kamenev and Sokolnikov. By the end of 1917 Trotsky was unquestionably the second-most-powerful man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin, overshadowing Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant for the previous decade.
Russian Revolution and aftermath
Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Brest-Litovsk (1917–1918)
After the Bolsheviks seized power, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He published the secret treaties previously signed by the Triple Entente, which detailed plans for post-war reallocation of colonies and redrawing state borders, including the Sykes–Picot Agreement. This revelation on 23 November 1917 caused considerable embarrassment to Britain and France.
Brest-Litovsk
In preparation for peace talks with the Central Powers, Trotsky appointed his old friend Adolph Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks. When the Soviet delegation learned that Germany and Austria-Hungary planned to annex Polish territory, establish a rump Polish state, and turn the Baltic provinces into client states ruled by German princes, the talks were recessed for 12 days. The Soviets hoped that, given time, their allies would join the negotiations or that the Western European proletariat would revolt; thus, prolonging negotiations was their best strategy. As Trotsky wrote, "To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying". Consequently, Trotsky replaced Joffe as head of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918.