Leon Trotsky

Cast

Born

November 7, 1879 · Yanovka, Yelisavetgrad uyezd, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire [now Bereslavka, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine]

Died

August 20, 1940

Birth name

Lev Davidovich Bronstein

Communist leader. He was chief theorist, a leader in both the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions alongside V.I. Lenin. As commissar for foreign affairs, Trotsky arranged the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. He next became head of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, which resulted in the deaths of over a million White Army soldiers and Cossacks, upon orders from V.I. Lenin. He had Russian peasants and workers forcibly conscripted into the Red Army, but he proved to be a poor military leader and the Russian invasion of Poland in the 1920s was repulsed by Polish forces under Marshal Józef Pilsudski, with very heavy Russian losses. Trotsky and his arch-rival Joseph Stalin struggled for power after Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin eventually stripped Trotsky of his influence by 1929, and expelled him from Russia in 1936. Trotsky spent the rest of his life in exile, living in the home of Mexican communist artist Diego Rivera in Mexico. There he was writing and preaching revolution, until he was assassinated by Spanish communist Ramon Mercader, an assassin sent to kill Trotsky by Stalin, in 1940.