How did Trotsky get it in the neck

�

�

Q.� Why

A.� Towards the end of his life�the first Russian revolutionary leader, Lenin, favoured Trotsky over his rival Stalin. Stalin�had other ideas. Trotsky eventually fled the country and was bumped off by one of Stalin's agents, after a�furious campaign by the Troskyite movement against what�they thought had gone wrong in the Soviet Union.

�

Q.� So who was Trotsky

A.� He was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 26 October 1879, son of a hard-working and well-to-do Jewish farmer in the southern part of Ukraine.� At the age of nine, Lev moved to the city of Odessa, to stay with an uncle and attend school. He became a talented student, and in 1896 he moved to Nicolayev to study mathematics.

�

Q.� And where did he discover socialism

A.� At Nicolayev. In 1897 he helped found the South Russia Workers' Union and then the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Within a couple of years, he was arrested and deported to Siberia. He escaped in 1902, called himself Leon Trotsky, fled to London and met Lenin.

�

Q.� And they became friends

A.� Comrades, really. They respected each other intellectually, but belonged to different factions: Lenin led the Bolsheviks�while Trotsky was for�some time associated with the Mensheviks. Trotsky returned to Russia in 1905, where he took part in the first Russian Revolution. He was deported to Western Siberia in January 1907. In 1917, when the Czar abdicated, Trotsky went to Russia and soon became�one of the leading figures�after Lenin.� He was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, founding the Red Army. Lenin died in 1924.

�

Q.� Why didn't�Trotsky take over

A.� Stalin and his supporters�had gained the whip hand over Trotsky's Left Opposition. Even Lenin relied greatly on Stalin's organisational ability - but he formed grave doubts about him towards the end of his life, particularly over what he called Stalin's 'Great Russian' nationalism. He had had his doubts about Trotsky, too, but before he died wanted to make an alliance with him.

�

Trotsky had never really seen eye to eye with Stalin, but�their disagreements�went from bad to worse�over issues like industrialisation and the forced collectivisation of land. In 1927, he was expelled from the executive of the Communist International.�The next year he was banished to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan, and deported to Turkey in 1929.

�

Q.� Then what happened

A.� Stalin (click here for a feature on him) was able to push through virtually unopposed with his his brutal and, in many cases,�incompetent policies (he had most of Trotsky's remaining supporters shot after dubious show trials). Though Trotsky remained a Marxist, he�wrote savage indictments of where communism under Stalin was going wrong. He moved to Mexico City in 1937. Stalin caught up with him three years later.

�

Q.� How

A.� First reports suggested he was attacked by Franck Johnson, a French Jew. Or Jacques Mornard, a Belgian playboy. Trotsky had invited Johnson/Mornard to take afternoon tea with him, so Johnson was therefore not searched, as were most who visited Trotsky's guarded home in the city suburbs. A contemporary report says: 'Johnson had a small pickaxe, of the type used by Boy Scouts, hidden in his trousers. He attacked Trotsky suddenly, battering his skull and injuring his right shoulder and right knee. According to one of his bodyguards Trotsky's last words before he became unconscious were "I think Stalin has finished the job he started".'

�

Q.� Attempts had been made before

A.� Oh yes. The previous May, Trotsky escaped when a gang of 20 communists loyal to Stalin -�� led by Mexican mural painter�David Alfaro Siqueiros - fired hundreds of machinegun bullets into his house.

�

Q.� Who was Johnson

A.� Ramon Mercader, a Spanish Communist recruited into KGB by his mother, the Spanish Communist and KGB agent-officer Caridad Mercader.

�

Q.� And it was a pickaxe

A.� That seems sure. One report says it was 'a piolet or ice-pick such as mountain climbers use - this had a sawn-off handle a foot long and a 7in head with a forked hammer-claw at one end and a sharp point at the other'.

�

Q.� What happened to the attacker

A.� He spent 20 years in a Mexican jail. Upon his release in the 1960s, he went to Havana, where he died of cancer.

�

To ask a question about History & Myths, click here

by Steve Cunningham

�