TROTSKY

David Renton

Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, Leon Trot sky (1879-1940) assumed his name in order to escape the work camps of Siberia in 1898. Born to a Russian-Jewish family in the Ukraine, he became the leading spokesman of the Russian revolution, the founder of the victorious Red Army of 1918-1921, and did more than anyone to create the early Soviet State. Yet despite being identified as Lenin's obvious successor, Trot sky was out-manoeuvered by Stalin. In the years that followed, he developed the first systematic critique of Stalin's dictatorship. In 1929, he and his wife were forced out of Russia, moving from Turkey, to France, and finally to Mexico, where he was brutally assassinated by a Spanish communist in 1940. Through a series of books including The History of the Russian Revolution, My Life, and The Revolution Betrayed, Trot sky established the possibility of a democratic socialism and the theory of permanent revolution, identifying the struggle against bureaucracy and complacency. Reputed to have been friends at one point with the Mexican revolutionary artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, his influence resonates beyond the political development of the twentieth century.