Leon Trotsky

File:Leo Trotsky 1888 Portrait (cropped).jpg

{{Leon Trotsky series}}

Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on 7 November 1879 into a wealthy Jewish family in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, Ukraine). He was the fifth child of David Leontyevich Bronstein and Anna Lvovna ({{née|Zhivotovskaya}}). Trotsky's younger sister, Olga, who also grew up to be a Bolshevik and Soviet politician, married fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev.{{sfn|Parrish|1996|p=69}}

Some authors, notably Robert Service, have claimed that Trotsky's childhood first name was Yiddish Leiba.{{sfn|Service|2010|p=11}} The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an assumption based on Trotsky's Jewish birth, but, contrary to Service's claims, there is no documentary evidence to support his using a Yiddish name, when that language was not spoken by his family.{{sfn|North|2010|pp=144–146}} Both North and political historian Walter Laqueur wrote that Trotsky's childhood name was Lyova, a standard Russian diminutive of the name Lev.{{sfn|Laqueur|1990|pp=59–60}} North has compared the speculation on Trotsky's given name to the undue emphasis given to his having a Jewish surname.{{sfn|North|2010|pp=144–146}}{{sfn|Laqueur|1990|pp=59–60}} The language spoken at home was not Yiddish{{Cite book |last=Троцкий |first=Лев |title=Моя жизнь |year=1930 |location=Berlin |pages=22,109 |language=Russian}} but a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, known as Surzhyk.{{sfn|North|2010|p=145}} Although Trotsky spoke French, English, and German to a good standard, he said in his autobiography My Life that he was never fluent in any language but Russian.{{cite web |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=My Life – Chapter VIII, My First Prisons |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch08.htm |publisher=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=20 May 2021}} Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently.{{cite web|url=https://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070604005522/http://.revolutionary-history.co.uk/supplem/bronstein.htm|url-status=usurped|title=On Meeting with Trotsky|first1=Raymond|last1=Molinier|translator-first1=Ted| translator-last1=Crawford|archive-date=4 June 2007|access-date=29 January 2022}}

When Trotsky was eight years old,{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky|title=Leon Trotsky – Biography, Books, Assassination, & Facts|access-date=24 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170915061510/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky|archive-date=15 September 2017|url-status=live}} his father sent him to Odessa to be educated. He was enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school (School of the Lutheran St. Pauls Cathedral, of Black Sea Germans, which admitted students of other faiths and backgrounds,Mein Leben. Ein Essay über Trockijs Autobiographie und den jungen Trockij (1879–1904), Wolfgang und Petra Libitz, 2022, p. 48.) which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial government's policy of Russification.{{cite book|author=Albert S. Lindemann|title=Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NagdhSUgB9oC&pg=PA446|access-date=26 September 2013|year= 2000| publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-79538-8|page=446}} Trotsky and his wife Natalia later registered their children as Lutheran, since Austrian law at the time required children to be given religious education "in the faith of their parents".{{cite web |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=My Life – Chapter XVII, Preparing for a New Revolution|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch17.htm |publisher=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=7 April 2022}} Odessa was then a bustling cosmopolitan port city, very unlike the typical Russian city of the time. This environment contributed to the development of the young man's international outlook. While attending school, Trotsky excelled academically and showed exceptional aptitude for science and mathematics. Along with his scholastic abilities, he was noted to be a voracious reader and was often disciplined by school officials for reading non-curriculum books during classroom instructions.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|loc=Chapter 1}}

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Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Black Sea.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=36}} At first a narodnik (revolutionary agrarian socialist populist), he initially opposed Marxism but was won over by his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. That same year, he graduated from his high school with first class honours.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=39}} According to his relative, Valery Bronstein, his father had intended for Trotsky to become a mechanical engineer after leaving modern school.{{cite book |editor1-last=Brotherstone |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dukes |editor2-first=Paul |title=The Trotsky reappraisal |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=Edinburgh |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=8}}

Trotsky briefly attended Odessa University where he studied engineering and mathematics. Trotsky's university colleague and a prominent engineer who served as the Technical Director of the Baltic Shipyard had noted that he displayed an exceptional gift for mathematics. Despite his capabilities in the engineering department, he quickly grew bored of his studies and began to spend more time reading books on political philosophy and participating in underground revolutionary activities.{{Sfn|Renton|2004|p=19}} He dropped out of university in early 1897 to help organize the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev.{{Sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=39}}{{cite book |last1=Eastman |first1=Max |title=Leon Trotsky: the Portrait of a Youth |date=1970 |publisher=AMS Press |isbn=978-0-404-02235-8 |page=68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=koErAQAAMAAJ&q=Leon+Trotsky:+The+Portrait+of+a+Youth |language=en}} Using the name "Lvov",chapter XVII of his autobiography, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch07.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051119141154/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch07.htm |date=19 November 2005}}, Marxist Internet Archive he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and revolutionary students.{{sfn|Renton|2004|pp=22–24}}

In January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested. He was held for the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev, then Kherson, then Odessa, and finally in Moscow.Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, The Case of Leon Trotsky (1937, reprinted 1968). In the Moscow prison, he came into contact with other revolutionaries, heard about Lenin and read Lenin's book, The Development of Capitalism in Russia.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=40}} Two months into his imprisonment, on 1–3 March 1898, the first Congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was held.{{sfn|Schapiro|1970|p=645}} From then on Trotsky identified as a member of the party.

{{Main|First exile of Trotsky}}

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While imprisoned in Moscow, in the summer of 1899, Trotsky married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya (1872–1938), a fellow Marxist. The ceremony was performed by a Jewish chaplain.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=42}} In 1900, he was sentenced to four years exile in Siberia. Because of their marriage, Trotsky and his wife were allowed to be exiled to the same location in Siberia: Ust-Kut and the Verkholensk in the Baikal Lake region. They had two daughters, Zinaida (1901–1933) and Nina (1902–1928), born in Siberia.

In Siberia, Trotsky read numerous books on history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and the works of Karl Marx with an intent on solidifying his own political stance.{{sfn|Warth|1978|p=22}} He became aware of the differences within the party, which had been decimated by arrests in 1898 and 1899. Some social democrats known in Leninist phraseology as "economists" argued the party should focus on helping industrial workers improve their lot and were less concerned with changing the government.{{sfn|Schapiro|1970|pp=31–32}} They believed that societal reforms would grow out of the worker's struggle for higher pay and better working conditions. Others argued that overthrowing the monarchy was more important and that a well-organized and disciplined revolutionary party was essential. The latter position was expressed by the London-based newspaper Iskra (The Spark), founded in 1900. Trotsky quickly sided with the Iskra position and began writing for the paper.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=67}}

In the summer of 1902, at the urging of his wife, Aleksandra, Trotsky escaped from Siberia hidden in hay.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=55}} Aleksandra later escaped with their daughters.{{sfn|Warth|1978|p=22}} Both daughters married, and Zinaida had children, but the daughters died before their parents. Nina Nevelson died from tuberculosis in 1928, cared for in her last months by her older sister. Zinaida Volkova followed her father into exile in Berlin, taking her son by her second marriage but leaving behind a daughter in Russia. Suffering also from tuberculosis and depression, Zinaida committed suicide in 1933. Aleksandra disappeared in 1935 during the Great Purges under Stalin and was murdered by Soviet forces three years later.

Until this point, Trotsky had used his birth name: Lev (Leon) Bronstein.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=7}} He changed his surname to "Trotsky", the name he would use for the rest of his life. It is said he adopted the name of a jailer of the Odessa prison in which he had earlier been held.cf, for instance, [http://www.bartleby.com/65/tr/Trotsky.html "Leon Trotsky"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090314102048/http://www.bartleby.com/65/tr/Trotsky.html |date=14 March 2009}}, The Columbia Encyclopedia This became his primary revolutionary pseudonym. After escape from Siberia, Trotsky moved to London, joining Georgi Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, and other editors of Iskra. Under the pen name Pero ("quill" or "pen"), Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading writers.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|pp=6–7}}

File:Лев Троцкий после побега из первой ссылки (ок. 1902).jpg

Unknown to Trotsky, the six editors of Iskra were evenly split between the "old guard" led by Plekhanov and the "new guard" led by Lenin and Martov. Plekhanov's supporters were older, and had spent the previous 20 years together in exile in Europe. Members of the new guard were in their early 30s and only recently emigrated from Russia. Lenin, who was trying to establish a permanent majority against Plekhanov within Iskra, expected Trotsky, then 23, to side with the new guard. In March 1903 Lenin wrote:

{{Blockquote|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.Quoted in chapter XII of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch12.htm 'My Life'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051121230553/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch12.htm |date=21 November 2005}}, Marxist Internet Archive}} Because of Plekhanov's opposition, Trotsky did not become a full member of the board. But participated in its meetings in an advisory capacity, which earned him Plekhanov's enmity.

In late 1902, Trotsky met Natalia Sedova (1882–1962), who soon became his companion. They married in 1903, and she was with him until his death. They had two children together, Lev Sedov (1906–1938) and Sergei Sedov (1908–1937), both of whom would predecease their parents. Regarding his sons' surnames, Trotsky later explained that after the 1917 revolution:

{{Blockquote|In order not to oblige my sons to change their name, I, for "citizenship" requirements, took on the name of my wife.Trotsky's [http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6735/673549.html 'Thermidor and anti-Semitism' (1937)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051129055537/http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6735/673549.html |date=29 November 2005}}}}

Trotsky never used the name "Sedov" either privately or publicly. Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya".

In the meantime, after a period of secret police repression and internal confusion that followed the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, Iskra succeeded in convening the party's Second Congress in London in August 1903. Trotsky and other Iskra editors attended. The first congress went as planned, with Iskra supporters handily defeating the few "economist" delegates. Then the congress discussed the position of the Jewish Bund, which had co-founded the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898 but wanted to remain autonomous within the party.Trotsky, Leon. My life: an attempt at an autobiography. Courier Corporation, 2007.

Shortly afterwards, the pro-Iskra delegates unexpectedly split into two factions. The split was initially over an organisational issue. Lenin and his supporters, the Bolsheviks, argued for a smaller but highly organized party where only party members would be seen as members, while Martov and his supporters, the Mensheviks, argued for a bigger and less disciplined party where people who assisted would also be seen as members. In a surprise development, Trotsky and most of the Iskra editors supported Martov and the Mensheviks, while Plekhanov supported Lenin and the Bolsheviks. During 1903 and 1904, many members changed sides in the factions. Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.{{Cite journal|last=Cavendish|first=Richard|year=2003|title=The Bolshevik–Menshevik Split|url=http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/bolshevik-menshevik-split|journal=History Today|volume=53|number=11|access-date=22 October 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141022175007/http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/bolshevik-menshevik-split|archive-date=22 October 2014|url-status=live}}

From 1904 until 1917, Trotsky described himself as a "non-factional social democrat". He tried to reconcile different groups within the party, which resulted in many clashes with Lenin and other prominent party members. Trotsky later maintained that he had been wrong in opposing Lenin on the issue of the party. Trotsky began developing his theory of permanent revolution and developed a close working relationship with Alexander Parvus in 1904–07.{{Cite journal|url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8497.1975.tb01151.x|title=Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russian Revolution: The Relationship with Trotsky|last=Weber|first=Nicholas|date=1975|journal=Australian Journal of Politics and History|volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=39–53 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8497.1975.tb01151.x |issn=0004-9522}} During their split, Lenin referred to Trotsky as "Little Judas" (Iudushka, based on the character from Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyov Family),[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/jan/02.htm Lenin: "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130703011452/http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/jan/02.htm |date=3 July 2013}}, Marxists Internet Archive; retrieved 26 July 2013.Goryachkina, [http://feb-web.ru/feb/irl/il0/il9/il9-159-.htm?cmd=2 М.S. М.Е.Saltykov-Shchedrin]. The Selected Works. Critical and biographical essay. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura Publishers. Moscow. 1954. Pp. 5–24. a "scoundrel"[http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/periodicals/communist_review/1950/01/x01.htm CPGB: Stalin: "Slander and Truth"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130625022442/http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/periodicals/communist_review/1950/01/x01.htm |date=25 June 2013}}, Marxists Internet Archive; retrieved 26 July 2013. and a "swine".[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/feb/17ak.htm Lenin: 123. To Alexandra Kollontai] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130110225222/http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/feb/17ak.htm |date=10 January 2013}}, Marxists Internet Archive, (9 June 2006); retrieved 26 July 2013.

The unrest and agitation against the Russian government came to a head in Saint Petersburg on 3 January 1905 (Julian Calendar), when a strike broke out at the Putilov Works in the city. This single strike grew into a general strike, and by 7 January 1905, there were 140,000 strikers in Saint Petersburg.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=73}}

On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Father Georgi Gapon knowingly led a procession of radicals mixed within larger groups of ordinary working citizens through the streets to the Winter Palace to supposedly beseech the Tsar for food and relief from the government. According to Gapon himself, he led the people into a Palace Guard already on the defensive due to the crowd instigating violence against them. They eventually fired on the demonstration, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of violent radicals, peaceful demonstrators and police caught within the melee. Although Sunday, 9 January 1905, became known as Bloody Sunday, Gapon's own biography points to a conspiracy. This was later confirmed by Russian police records listing the number of known militant radicals found among the dead.Gapon, Georgy. The Story of My Life. Chapman & Hall; 1st THUS edition (1 January 1905)Smith, Edward Ellis. The Okhrana; The Russian Department of Police; A Bibliography. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1967.

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Following the events of Bloody Sunday, Trotsky secretly returned to Russia in February 1905, by way of Kiev.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=117}} At first he wrote leaflets for an underground printing press in Kiev, but soon moved to the capital, Saint Petersburg. There he worked with both Bolsheviks, such as Central Committee member Leonid Krasin, and the local Menshevik committee, which he pushed in a more radical direction. The latter, however, were betrayed by a secret police agent in May, and Trotsky had to flee to rural Finland. There he worked on fleshing out his theory of permanent revolution.{{cite book | author = Leon Trotsky | title = Permanent Revolution | chapter = Results and Prospects | publisher = Pathfinder Press | location = New York | year = 1969 | orig-year = 1929 | pages = 27, 122}}

On 19 September 1905, the typesetters at the Ivan Sytin's printing house in Moscow went out on strike for shorter hours and higher pay. By the evening of 24 September, the workers at 50 other printing shops in Moscow were also on strike. On 2 October 1905, the typesetters in printing shops in Saint Petersburg decided to strike in support of the Moscow strikers. On 7 October 1905, the railway workers of the Moscow–Kazan Railway went out on strike.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|pp=85–88}} Amid the resulting confusion, Trotsky returned from Finland to Saint Petersburg on 15 October 1905. On that day, Trotsky spoke before the Saint Petersburg Soviet Council of Workers Deputies, which was meeting at the Technological Institute in the city. Also attending were some 200,000 people crowded outside to hear the speeches—about half of all workers in Saint Petersburg.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=126}}

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After his return, Trotsky and Parvus took over the newspaper Russian Gazette, increasing its circulation to 500,000. Trotsky also co-founded, together with Parvus and Julius Martov and other Mensheviks, "Nachalo" ("The Beginning"), which also proved to be a very successful newspaper in the revolutionary atmosphere of Saint Petersburg in 1905.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|pp=138–139}}

Just before Trotsky's return, the Mensheviks had independently come up with the same idea that Trotsky had: an elected non-party revolutionary organization representing the capital's workers, the first Soviet ("Council") of Workers. By the time of Trotsky's arrival, the Saint Petersburg Soviet was already functioning, headed by Khrustalyev-Nosar (Georgy Nosar, alias Pyotr Khrustalyov). Khrustalyev-Nosar had been a compromise figure when elected as the head of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was a lawyer that stood above the political factions contained in the Soviet.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=131}}

However, since his election, he proved to be very popular with the workers in spite of the Bolsheviks' original opposition to him. Khrustalev-Nosar became famous in his position as spokesman for the Saint Petersburg Soviet.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=218}} Indeed, to the outside world, Khrustalev-Nosar was the embodiment of the Saint Petersburg Soviet.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=131}} Trotsky joined the Soviet under the name "Yanovsky" (after the village he was born in, Yanovka) and was elected vice-chairman. He did much of the actual work at the Soviet and, after Khrustalev-Nosar's arrest on 26 November 1905, was elected its chairman. On 2 December, the Soviet issued a proclamation which included the following statement about the Tsarist government and its foreign debts:Quoted in Chapter XIV of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch14.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060414150502/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch14.htm |date=14 April 2006}} {{Blockquote|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, on 3 December 1905, the Soviet was surrounded by troops loyal to the government and the deputies were arrested.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|pp=231–233}} Trotsky and other Soviet leaders were tried in 1906 on charges of supporting an armed rebellion. On 4 October 1906 he was convicted and sentenced to internal exile to Siberia.

File:ParvusTrotskiDeich.jpg (left) and Leo Deutsch (right) in Saint Peter and Paul Fortress prison at Saint Petersburg in 1906]]

While en route to exile in Obdorsk, Siberia, in January 1907, Trotsky escaped at BerezovChapter XXIII of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch17.htm 1905] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060305033203/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch17.htm |date=5 March 2006}} and once again made his way to London. He attended the 5th Congress of the RSDLP. In October, he moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary. For the next seven years, he often took part in the activities of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and, occasionally, of the German Social Democratic Party.

In Vienna, Trotsky became close to Adolph Joffe, his friend for the next 20 years, who introduced him to psychoanalysis.Chapter XVII of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch17.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060305033203/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch17.htm |date=5 March 2006}}, Marxist Internet Archive; retrieved 31 January 2018. {{ISBN?}}

File:Троцкий читает газету „Правда“ в Вене (ок. 1910).jpg

In October 1908 he was asked to join the editorial staff of Pravda ("Truth"), a bi-weekly, Russian-language social democratic paper for Russian workers, which he co-edited with Adolph Joffe and Matvey Skobelev. It was smuggled into Russia.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=191}} The paper appeared very irregularly; only five issues were published in its first year.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=191}}

Avoiding factional politics, the paper proved popular with Russian industrial workers. Both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks split multiple times after the failure of the 1905–1907 revolution. Money was very scarce for the publication of Pravda. Trotsky approached the Russian Central Committee to seek financial backing for the newspaper throughout 1909.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=192}}

A majority of Bolsheviks controlled the Central Committee in 1910. Lenin agreed to the financing of "Pravda", but required a Bolshevik to be appointed as co-editor of the paper.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=192}} When various Bolshevik and Menshevik factions tried to re-unite at the January 1910 RSDLP Central Committee meeting in Paris over Lenin's objections,{{cite web | title = Towards Unity | author = V. I. Lenin | url = https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1910/feb/13.htm | website = Internet Marxists Archive | year = 1974 | volume = 16 | pages = 147–155}} Trotsky's Pravda was made a party-financed 'central organ'. Lev Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, was added to the editorial board from the Bolsheviks, but the unification attempts failed in August 1910. Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations. Trotsky continued publishing Pravda for another two years until it finally folded in April 1912.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|loc=Chapter 1}}

The Bolsheviks started a new workers-oriented newspaper in Saint Petersburg on 22 April 1912 and also called it Pravda. Trotsky was so upset by what he saw as a usurpation of his newspaper's name that in April 1913, he wrote a letter to Nikolay Chkheidze, a Menshevik leader, bitterly denouncing Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Though he quickly got over the disagreement, the message was intercepted by the Russian secret police, and a copy was put into their archives. Shortly after Lenin's death in 1924, the letter was found and publicized by Trotsky's opponents within the Communist Party to portray him as Lenin's enemy.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|pp=6–7}}

The 1910s were a period of heightened tension within the RSDLP, leading to numerous frictions between Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The most serious disagreement that Trotsky and the Mensheviks had with Lenin at the time was over the issue of "expropriations",Chapter XVI of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch16.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420211850/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch16.htm |date=20 April 2006}} i.e., armed robbery of banks and other companies by Bolshevik groups to procure money for the Party. These actions had been banned by the 5th Congress, but were continued by the Bolsheviks.

File:Trotsky in Vienna.jpg

In January 1912, the majority of the Bolshevik faction, led by Lenin, as well as a few defecting Mensheviks, held a conference in Prague and decided to break away from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and formed a new party, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). In response, Trotsky organized a "unification" conference of social democratic factions in Vienna in August 1912 (a.k.a. "The August Bloc") and tried to re-unite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks into one party. The attempt was generally unsuccessful.

In Vienna, Trotsky continuously published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers, such as Kievskaya Mysl, under a variety of pseudonyms, often using "Antid Oto", a name chosen at random from an Italian dictionary, with Trotsky joking that "wanted to inject the Marxist antidote into the legitimate newspapers".{{sfn|Service|2010|p=62}}{{cite web | title = My Life, Chapter IX | author = L. Trotsky | url = https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch09.htm | website = Marxists Internet Archive}} 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. While there, Trotsky chronicled the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbian army against the Albanian civilian population.{{cite book |last1=Perritt |first1=Henry H. Jr. |title=The Road to Independence for Kosovo: A Chronicle of the Ahtisaari Plan |date=2010 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-11624-4 |page=17 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f2nOTuF_KC0C&q=Leon+Trotsky+Kosovo&pg=PA17 |access-date=1 January 2020}} He became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky, later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally in the Soviet Communist Party. On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, in which Austria-Hungary fought against the Russian Empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré.

The outbreak of World War I caused a sudden realignment within the RSDLP and other European social democratic parties over the issues of war, revolution, pacifism and internationalism, redividing the party into defeatists and defencists. Within the RSDLP, Lenin, Trotsky and Martov advocated various internationalist anti-war positions that saw defeat for your own country's ruling class imperialists as the "lesser evil" in the war, while they opposed all imperialists in the imperialist war. These anti-war believers were known as "defeatists". Those who supported one side over the other in the war were known as "defencists". Plekhanov and many other defencist social democrats (both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) supported the Russian government to some extent and wanted them to win the war, while Trotsky's ex-colleague Parvus, now a defencist, sided against Russia so strongly that he wanted Germany to win the war. In Switzerland, Trotsky briefly worked within the Swiss Socialist Party, prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution. He wrote a book opposing the war, The War and the International,{{cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1914-war/index.htm |title=Marxists.org, The War and the International |access-date=31 August 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051120092354/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1914-war/index.htm |archive-date=20 November 2005 |url-status=live}} and the pro-war position taken by the European social democratic parties, primarily the German party.

File:Trotskynina1915.jpg

As a war correspondent for the Kievskaya Mysl, Trotsky moved to France on 19 November 1914. In January 1915 in Paris, he began editing (at first with Martov, who soon resigned as the paper moved to the left) Nashe Slovo ("Our Word"), an internationalist socialist newspaper. He adopted the slogan of "peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered." Lenin advocated Russia's defeat in the war and demanded a complete break with the Second International.{{Cite book|title=The Life of Lenin|last=Fischer|first=Louis|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson History|year=2001|isbn=978-1-84212-230-3|location=UK}}

Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists in September 1915 and advocated a middle course between those who, like Martov, would stay within the Second International at any cost and those who, like Lenin, would break with the Second International and form a Third International. The conference adopted the middle line proposed by Trotsky. At first opposed, in the end Lenin voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.Gus Fagan. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/rakovsky/biog/biog2.htm Christian Rakovsky biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060619133845/http://www.marxists.org/archive/rakovsky/biog/biog2.htm |date=19 June 2006}}, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.

In September 1916,{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=75}} Trotsky was deported from France to Spain for his anti-war activities. Spanish authorities did not want him and deported him to the United States on 25 December 1916. He arrived in New York City on 13 January 1917. He stayed 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 the Yiddish-language daily, Der Forverts ("Forward"), in translation. He also made speeches to Russian émigrés.

Trotsky was living in New York City when the February Revolution of 1917 led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. He left New York onboard SS Kristianiafjord on 27 March 1917, but his ship was stopped by the Royal Navy at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Trotsky was arrested and detained for a month at the Amherst Internment Camp in Nova Scotia. While imprisoned in the camp, Trotsky established an increasing friendship with the workers and sailors amongst his fellow inmates, describing his month at the camp as "one continual mass meeting".[http://ns1758.ca/quote/trotsky1917.html Leon Trotsky: My Life – In a Concentration Camp] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150508001344/http://ns1758.ca/quote/trotsky1917.html |date=8 May 2015}}, ns1758.ca; accessed 31 January 2018.

Trotsky's speeches and agitation incurred the wrath of German inmates at the camp, who complained to its commander, a Colonel Morris, about Trotsky's "anti-patriotic" attitude. Morris subsequently forbade Trotsky from making any more public speeches, leading to 530 prisoners protesting and signing a petition against Morris' decision. Back in Russia, after initial hesitation and facing pressure from the workers' and peasants' Soviets, the Russian foreign minister Pavel Milyukov was compelled to demand the release of Trotsky as a Russian citizen, and the British government freed him on 29 April 1917.

File:Leo Trotzki 1917.jpg

He reached Russia on 17 May 1917. After his return, Trotsky substantially agreed with the Bolshevik position, but did not join them right away. Russian social democrats were split into at least six groups, and the Bolsheviks were waiting for the next party Congress to determine which factions to merge with. Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organization in Petrograd, and became 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.{{cite web|title=Leon Trotsky {{!}} Biography, Books, Assassination, & Facts|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=26 May 2020}}

After an unsuccessful pro-Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd, Trotsky was arrested on 7 August 1917. He was released 40 days later in the aftermath of the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by Lavr Kornilov. After the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was elected chairman on {{OldStyleDate|8 October|1917|25 September}}.{{harvnb|Wade|2004|p=xxi}}

Trotsky 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 socialist Aleksandr Kerensky.

The following summary of Trotsky's role in 1917 was written by Joseph Stalin in Pravda, 6 November 1918.[https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol02/no06/quote.htm In One And The Same Issue] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715133106/https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol02/no06/quote.htm |date=15 July 2018}} New International, Vol. 2 No. 6, October 1935, p. 208. Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book The October Revolution (1934), it was expunged from Stalin's Works (1949).{{cite web | author = J. V. Stalin | title = The October Revolution and the National Question | url = https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/19.htm | website = Internet Marxists Archive | volume = 4}}

{{Blockquote|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.}}

After the success of the October Revolution on 7–8 November 1917, Trotsky led the efforts to repel a counter-attack by Cossacks under General Pyotr Krasnov and other troops still 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 was an outspoken advocate for a predominantly Bolshevik government and was reluctant to recall Mensheviks as partners after their voluntary withdrawal from the Congress of the Soviets. However, he released several socialist ministers from prison, and neither Trotsky nor his colleagues in 1917 wished to suppress these parties. The Bolsheviks also reserved a number of vacant seats in the Soviets and Central Executive for the parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Armed Trotsky 1879-1921 (1954) |date=1954 |publisher=Oxford University Press. |pages=330–336 |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507702/page/335/mode/1up?view=theater}}

At the same time, a number of prominent members of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and lead commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture (Kolegaev), property (Karelin), justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs (Proshian) and local government (Trutovsky).{{cite book |last1=Abramovitch |first1=Raphael R. |title=The Soviet Revolution, 1917-1939 |date=1985 |publisher=International Universities Press |page=130 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L_q1WAmv7XkC&q=Steinberg+became+the+People%27s+Commissar+of+Justice,+Proshyan+became+the+People%27s+Commissar+for+Posts+and+Telegraphs |language=en}}

According to Deutscher, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries presented a number of demands for a coalition government. These demands proposed disarming the Bolshevik detachments and excluding Lenin and Trotsky from the coalition. This was seen as unacceptable to even the most moderate, Bolshevik negotiators such as Kamenev and Sokolnikov.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Armed Trotsky 1879-1921 (1954) |date=1954 |publisher=Oxford University Press. |page=331 |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507702/page/330/mode/1up?view=theater}}

By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the second man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin. He overshadowed Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant over the previous decade.

File:Protección del Palacio Tauride durante el Segundo Congreso Regional de los Soviets.jpg on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich.]]

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Trotsky became the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and published the secret treaties previously signed by the Triple Entente that detailed plans for post-war reallocation of colonies and redrawing state borders. On 23 November 1917, Trotsky revealed the secret treaty arrangements which had been made between the Tsarist government, Britain and France, causing them considerable embarrassment.

{{Main|Treaty of Brest-Litovsk}}

File:Leon Trotsky Lev Kamenev Brest-Litovsk negotiations.jpg at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations (c. 1917–1918)]]

In preparation for peace talks with the representatives of the Imperial German government and the representatives of the other Central Powers leading up to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Leon Trotsky appointed his old friend Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks. When the Soviet delegation learned that Germans and Austro-Hungarians planned to annex slices of Polish territory and to set up a rump Polish state with what remained, while the Baltic provinces were to become client states ruled by German princes, the talks were recessed for 12 days.

The Soviets' only hopes were that, given time, their allies would agree to join the negotiations or that the western European proletariat would revolt, so their best strategy was to prolong the negotiations. As Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky wrote, "To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying".{{cite web|last1=Trotsky|first1=Leon|title=My Life|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/1930-lif.pdf|website=Marxists|publisher=Charles Schribner's Sons|page=286|date=1930}} Therefore, Trotsky replaced Joffe as the leader of the Soviet delegation during the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918.{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/treaties-of-Brest-Litovsk|title=Treaties of Brest-Litovsk|website=Encyclopaedia Britannica|date=2 February 2024 }} At that time the Soviet government was split on the issue. Left Communists, led by Nikolai Bukharin, continued to believe that there could be no peace between a Soviet republic and a capitalist empire, and that only a revolutionary war leading to a pan-European Soviet republic would bring a durable peace.{{cite web|title=Leon Trotsky|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/leon-trotsky|website=Jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=26 May 2020}}{{Cite book |last=Service |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/historyofmodernr00robe |title=A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin |year=2005 |location=Cambridge, MA|publisher=Harvard University Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-674-01801-3 |pages=75–80}}

They cited the successes of the newly formed (15 January 1918) voluntary Red Army against Polish forces of Gen. Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki in Belarus, White forces in the Don region, and newly independent Ukrainian forces as proof that the Red Army could repel German forces, especially if propaganda and asymmetrical warfare were used.

They were willing to hold talks with the Germans as a means of exposing German imperial ambitions (territorial gains, reparations, etc.) in the hope of accelerating the hoped−for Soviet revolution in the West. Still, they were dead set against signing any peace treaty. In the case of a German ultimatum, they advocated proclaiming a revolutionary war against Germany to inspire Russian and European workers to fight for socialism. This opinion was shared by Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who were then the Bolsheviks' junior partners in a coalition government.

File:Map Treaty of Brest-Litovsk-en.jpg]]

Lenin, who had earlier hoped for a speedy Soviet revolution in Germany and other parts of Europe, quickly decided that the Imperial government of Germany was still firmly in control and that, without a strong Russian military, an armed conflict with Germany would lead to a collapse of the Soviet government in Russia. He agreed with the Left Communists that ultimately a pan-European Soviet revolution would solve all problems, but until then the Bolsheviks had to stay in power. Lenin did not mind prolonging the negotiating process for maximum propaganda effect, but, from January 1918 on, advocated signing a separate peace treaty if faced with a German ultimatum. Trotsky's position was between these two Bolshevik factions. Like Lenin, he admitted that the old Russian military, inherited from the monarchy and the Provisional Government and in advanced stages of decomposition, was unable to fight:The "Brest-Litovsk" chapter in Trotsky's 1925 book [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1925/lenin/04.htm Lenin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051125145958/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1925/lenin/04.htm |date=25 November 2005}}, marxists.org; Retrieved 1 June 2018.{{Blockquote|That we could no longer fight was perfectly clear to me and that the newly formed Red Guard and Red Army detachments were too small and poorly trained to resist the Germans.}}

But he agreed with the Left Communists that a separate peace treaty with an imperialist power would be a terrible morale and material blow to the Soviet government, negate all its military and political successes of 1917 and 1918, resurrect the notion that the Bolsheviks secretly allied with the German government, and cause an upsurge of internal resistance. He argued that any German ultimatum should be refused, and that this might well lead to an uprising in Germany, or at least inspire German soldiers to disobey their officers since any German offensive would be a naked land grab for territories. Trotsky wrote in 1925:[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1925/lenin/04.htm Lenin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051125145958/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1925/lenin/04.htm |date=25 November 2005}}, marxists.org; Retrieved 31 January 2018.

{{Blockquote|We began peace negotiations in the hope of arousing the workmen's party of Germany and Austria-Hungary as well as of the Entente countries. For this reason we were obliged to delay the negotiations as long as possible to give the European workman time to understand the main fact of the Soviet revolution itself and particularly its peace policy. But there was the other question: Can the Germans still fight? Are they in a position to begin an attack on the revolution that will explain the cessation of the war? How can we find out the state of mind of the German soldiers, how to fathom it?}}

Trotsky, in a letter he wrote to Lenin during the negotiations, which must have been written before 18 January 1918, described its policy, summarily, as follows:{{cite journal |title=Letters From Trotzky and From Kerensky's War Minister |journal=Current History |date=1918 |volume=VIII |issue=Second part |page=113 |url=https://archive.org/details/currenthistoryfo08newyuoft/page/113/ |access-date=10 April 2023}}{{cite book |last1=Magnes |first1=Judah Leon |author1-link=Judah Leon Magnes |title=Russia and Germany at Brest-Litovsk: A Documentary History of the Peace Negotiations |date=1919 |publisher=Rand School of Social Science |pages=122–123 |edition=1st |url=https://archive.org/details/russiagermanyatb00magnrich/page/122/ |access-date=10 April 2023}}For a time it was speculated that this letter was in fact not an authentic one. However, Trotsky's himself verified its authenticity to Wheeler-Bennett. {{cite book |last1=Wheeler-Bennett |first1=John W. |author1-link=John Wheeler-Bennett |title=Brest-Litovsk: the Forgotten Peace, March 1918 |date=1938 |publisher=Macmillan and Co., Limited |location=London |pages=185–186 |edition=1st |quote=The authenticity of this letter, which has been in doubt for twenty years, was personally confirmed to the writer by Leon Trotsky in conversation in Mexico City, in September 1937.}}; the letter was auctioned in 1990. {{cite news |last1=Pyle |first1=Richard |title=Revolutionary's Letter to Lenin Auctioned |url=https://apnews.com/article/346eacc1c0640c0659dc0d8edfb866e1 |access-date=10 April 2023 |work=Associated Press |date=23 March 1990}}

{{Blockquote

|text=Dear Vladimir Ilyich
It is impossible to sign their peace. They already have agreed with fictitious Governments of Poland, Lithuania, Courland and others concerning territorial concessions and military and customs treaties. (...)
We cannot sign their peace. My plan is this:
We announce the termination of the war and demobilization without signing any peace. We declare we cannot participate in the looting war of the Allies nor can we sign a looting peace. Poland's, Lithuania's and Courland's fate we place upon the responsibility of the German working people.
The Germans will be unable to attack us after we declare the war ended. At any rate, it would be very difficult for Germany to attack us, because of her internal condition. The Scheidemannites adopted a formal resolution to break with the Government if it makes annexationist demands of the Russian revolution.
The Berliner Tageblatt and the Vossische Zeitung demand an understanding with Russia by all means. The Centrists favor an agreement. (...)
We declare we end the war but do not sign a peace. They will be unable to make an offensive against us. If they attack us, our position will be no worse than now (...)
We must have your decision. We can still drag on negotiations for one or two or three or four days. Afterward they must be broken off. I see no other solution than that proposed. I clasp your hand.
Yours,
TROTZKY.
Answer by direct wire: "I agree to your plan" or "I don't agree."

}}

However, even though Lenin was in favor of a peace, due to party opposition, he responded with these messages from 18 January 1918:{{cite book |editor1-last=Meijer |editor1-first=Jan M. |title=The Trotsky Papers, 1917–1922 |date=1964 |publisher=Mouton & Co. |location=The Hague|pages=6–7}} "Stalin has just arrived; we will look into the matter with him and let you have a joint answer right away," and "please adjourn proceedings and leave for Petrograd. Send a reply; I will wait. Lenin, Stalin." As it was remarked by Trotsky that, "[... p]ossibly this answer already showed that he did not agree with my proposition (...)", Trotsky returned to Petrograd to debate with Lenin.{{cite book |last1=Trotzky |first1=Leon |title=Lenin |date=1925 |publisher=Blue Ribbon Books Inc. |location=New York |page=107 |url=https://archive.org/details/lenin00trot/ |access-date=10 April 2023}} During his debate with Trotsky, Lenin concluded: "(...) In any case, I stand for the immediate signing of peace; it is safer."{{cite book |last1=Trotzky |first1=Leon |title=Lenin |date=1925 |publisher=Blue Ribbon Books Inc. |location=New York |page=110 |url=https://archive.org/details/lenin00trot/ |access-date=10 April 2023}}

However, after debates with the German delegation, Trotsky and the Russian delegation withdrew from peace talks on 10 February 1918, by declaring ending the war on the side of Soviet Russia, and not signing a peace treaty.{{cite web |last1=Trotsky |first1=L. |title=Statement By Trotsky At The Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference On Russia's Withdrawal From The War |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917-1918/1918/February/10a.htm |website=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=10 April 2023}} Privately, in correspondence with Count Otto von Czernin, Trotsky had expressed his willigness to relent to peace terms upon the resumption of a German offensive although with moral dissent.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=389}} Contrary to Russia's declaration, Germany resumed military operations on 18 February. Within a day, it became clear that the German army was capable of conducting offensive operations and that Red Army detachments, which were relatively small, poorly organized, and poorly led, were no match for it. On the evening of 18 February 1918, Trotsky and his supporters in the committee abstained, and Lenin's proposal was accepted 7–4. The Soviet government sent a radiogram to the German side, taking the final Brest-Litovsk peace terms.{{cite book | first = Yuri | last = Felshtinsky | title = Lenin and His Comrades: The Bolsheviks Take Over Russia 1917–1924 | publisher = Enigma Books | location = New York | isbn =978-1-929631-95-7 | date = 26 October 2010}}

Germany did not respond for three days and continued its offensive, encountering little resistance. The response arrived on 21 February, but the proposed terms were so harsh that even Lenin briefly thought that the Soviet government had no choice but to fight. But in the end, the committee again voted 7–4 on 23 February 1918; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March and ratified on 15 March 1918. Since Trotsky was so closely associated with the policy previously followed by the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, he resigned from his position as Commissar for Foreign Affairs to remove a potential obstacle to the new policy.

File:Leon Trotsky Armored Train 1920.jpg during the civil war in 1920]]

On 13 March 1918, Trotsky's resignation as Commissar for Foreign Affairs was officially accepted, and he was appointed People's Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs—in place of Podvoisky—and chairman of the Supreme Military Council. The post of commander-in-chief was abolished, and Trotsky gained full control of the Red Army, responsible only to the Communist Party leadership, whose Left Socialist Revolutionary allies had left the government over the controversial treaty of Brest-Litovsk.[https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/l/e.htm#left-srs Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Left SRs)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180716012705/https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/l/e.htm#left-srs#left-srs |date=16 July 2018}}; Glossary of organizations on Marxists.org

The entire Bolshevik leadership of the Red Army, including People's Commissar (defence minister) Nikolai Podvoisky and commander-in-chief Nikolai Krylenko, protested vigorously against Trotsky's appointment and eventually resigned. They believed that the Red Army should consist only of dedicated revolutionaries, rely on propaganda and force, and have elected officers. They viewed former imperial officers and generals as potential traitors who should be kept out of the new military, much less put in charge of it. Their views continued to be popular with many Bolsheviks throughout most of the Russian Civil War, and their supporters, including Podvoisky, who became one of Trotsky's deputies, were a constant thorn in Trotsky's side. The discontent with Trotsky's policies of strict discipline, forced conscription and reliance on carefully supervised non-Communist military experts eventually led to the Military Opposition, which was active within the Communist Party in late 1918–1919.{{cite book|title=My Life|last=Trotsky|first=Leon|chapter=XXXVI|year=1930|chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch36.htm|title-link=My Life (Leon Trotsky autobiography)}}

{{Main|Russian Civil War}}

File:WhiteArmyPropagandaPosterOfTrotsky.jpg{{cite book |last1=Hanebrink |first1=Paul |title=A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism |date=2018 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-674-04768-6 |page=43 }} 1919 White Army propaganda poster depicting Trotsky as Satan wearing a pentagram and portraying the Bolsheviks' Chinese supporters as mass murderers. The caption reads, "Peace and Liberty in Sovdepiya".]]

The military situation soon tested Trotsky's managerial and organization-building skills. In May–June 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions en route from European Russia to Vladivostok rose against the Soviet government. This left the Bolsheviks with the loss of most of the country's territory, an increasingly well-organized resistance by Russian anti-Communist forces (usually referred to as the White Army after their best-known component) and widespread defection by the military experts whom Trotsky relied on.{{Cite journal|last=Bradley|first=J.F.L|date=1963|title=The Czechoslovak Revolt against the Bolsheviks|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/149174|journal=Soviet Studies|volume=15|issue=2|pages=124–151|doi=10.1080/09668136308410353|jstor=149174}}

Trotsky and the government responded with a full-fledged mobilization, which increased the size of the Red Army from fewer than 300,000 in May 1918 to one million in October, and an introduction of political commissars into the army. The latter had the task of ensuring the loyalty of military experts (mostly former officers in the Imperial Army) and co-signing their orders. Trotsky regarded the organisation of the Red Army as built on the ideas of the October Revolution. As he later wrote in his autobiography:Chapter XXXIV of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch34.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420212103/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch34.htm |date=20 April 2006}}, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.

{{Blockquote|An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear. And yet armies are not built on fear. The Tsar's army fell to pieces not because of any lack of reprisals. In his attempt to save it by restoring the death-penalty, Kerensky only finished it. Upon the ashes of the great war, the Bolsheviks created a new army. These facts demand no explanation for any one who has even the slightest knowledge of the language of history. The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement.}}

Another controversial feature of his military decisions was to inaugurate hostage-taking of relatives of ex-Tsarist officials working in the Red Army to avert the risk of defection or betrayal.{{sfn|Kort|2015|p=130}} Service pointed out that this practice was exercised by both Red and White armies during the Civil War.{{sfn|Service|2010|p=263}}

Trotsky would later defend his decision and argue that none of the families of ex-officials who did betray the army and contribute to additional human casualties were themselves ever executed. He would also insist that had these draconian measures been adopted rather than excess "magnanimity" to opponents at the start of the October Revolution then Russia would have experienced far less casualties.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Stalin's Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR |date=2009 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-04-4 |page=376 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dDiFNXLNPDEC&dq=trotsky+hostage+taking&pg=PA376 |language=en}} Deutscher draws attention to the fact that Trotsky preferred to exchange hostages and prisoners rather than execute them. He recounts that Trotsky had released General Krasnov on parole in 1918 after the Kerensky–Krasnov uprising during the initial stage of the civil war but the general would take up arms against the Soviets shortly again afterwards.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=339–340 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky |language=en}}

File:Russian civil war west.svg

Arising after assassination attempts on Lenin and Trotsky along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky,{{cite book |last1=Liebman |first1=Marcel |title=Leninism under Lenin |date=1975 |location=London |publisher= J. Cape |isbn=978-0-224-01072-6 |pages=313–314 |url=https://archive.org/details/leninismunderlen0000lieb_f2h6/page/313/mode/1up}} the Red Terror was enacted. The French Reign of Terror has been viewed as an influence and a model for the civil war repressions.Wilde, Robert. 2019 February 20. "[https://www.thoughtco.com/the-red-terror-1221808 The Red Terror]." ThoughtCo. Retrieved 24 March 2021.{{Cite web |title=Библиотека газеты "Революция". Клушин В.И. Малоизвестное о Троцком |url=http://www.revolucia.ru/otrozkom.htm |access-date=17 October 2022 |website=www.revolucia.ru}} The decision to enact the Red Terror was also driven by initial White Army massacres of "Red" prisoners in 1917, allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and the large-scale massacres of Reds during the Finnish Civil War in which 10,000-20,000 workers had been killed by the Finnish Whites. In his book, Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky argued that the reign of terror in Russia began with the White Terror under the White Guard forces and the Bolsheviks responded with the Red Terror.{{cite book |last1=Kline |first1=George L |title=In Defence of Terrorism in The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=158}}

Felix Dzerzhinsky was tasked with rooting out counter-revolutionary threats and appointed director of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (aka Cheka), a predecessor of the KGB that served as the secret police.{{Cite magazine|last=Bird|first=Danny|date=5 September 2018|title=How the 'Red Terror' Exposed the True Turmoil of Soviet Russia 100 Years Ago|url=https://time.com/5386789/red-terror-soviet-history/ |access-date=24 March 2021|magazine=Time}} From early 1918, the Bolsheviks started physical elimination of opposition and other socialist and revolutionary fractions, anarchists among the first.{{cite journal |last1=Berkman |first1=Alexander |author-link1=Alexander Berkman |last2=Goldman |first2=Emma |author-link2=Emma Goldman |date=January 1922 |title=Bolsheviks Shooting Anarchists |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-alexander-berkman-bolsheviks-shooting-anarchists |journal=Freedom |volume=36 |issue=391 |page=4 |doi= |access-date=9 May 2023}} On 11 August 1918, prior to the events that would officially catalyze the Terror, Lenin sent telegrams "to introduce mass terror" in Nizhny Novgorod in response to a suspected civilian uprising, and to "crush" landowners who resisted, sometimes violently, the requisitioning of their grain by military detachments.{{ill|Alter Litvin|ru|Литвин, Алтер Львович}} «Красный и Белый террор в России в 1917—1922 годах» {{ISBN|5-87849-164-8}}.

On 30 August, Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. In September, Trotsky rushed back from the far-eastern front of the civil war to Moscow after the second day of the shooting and Stalin remained in Tsaritsyn.{{cite book |last1=Kotkin |first1=Stephen |title=Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 |date=23 October 2014 |publisher=Penguin Books Limited |isbn=978-0-7181-9298-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sFx7AwAAQBAJ&dq=rykov+lenin+funeral+italy&pg=PT402 |language=en}} Kaplan referenced the Bolsheviks' growing authoritarianism. These events persuaded the government to heed Dzerzhinsky's lobbying for greater terror against opposition. The campaign of mass repressions would officially begin thereafter. The Red Terror is began between 17 and 30 August 1918. Regarding the Red Terror Trotsky wrote:{{Blockquote|The bourgeoisie today is a falling class... We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie.{{cite book|author=Leon Trotsky|title=Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky|year=1975|orig-year=1920|page=83}}}}

In dealing with deserters, Trotsky appealed to them politically, arousing them with the ideas of the Revolution.

{{Blockquote|In...Kaluga, Voronezh, and Ryazan, tens of thousands of young peasants had failed to answer the first recruiting summons by the Soviets ... The war commissariat of Ryazan succeeded in gathering in some fifteen thousand of such deserters. While passing through Ryazan, I decided to take a look at them. Some of our men tried to dissuade me. "Something might happen," they warned me. But everything went off beautifully. The men were called out of their barracks. "Comrade-deserters—come to the meeting. Comrade Trotsky has come to speak to you." They ran out excited, boisterous, as curious as schoolboys. I had imagined them much worse, and they had imagined me as more terrible...The "comrade-deserters" were looking at me with such curiosity that it seemed as if their eyes would pop out of their heads. I...spoke to them for about an hour and a half. It was a most responsive audience. I tried to raise them in their own eyes; concluding, I asked them to lift their hands in token of their loyalty to the revolution. The new ideas infected them before my very eyes. They were genuinely enthusiastic...shouted at the tops of their voices. They would hardly let me go. I learned afterward, with some pride, that one of the best ways to educate them was to remind them: "What did you promise Comrade Trotsky?" Later on, regiments of Ryazan "deserters" fought well at the fronts.}}

The first use of the punitive barrier troops by the Red Army occurred in the summer and fall of 1918 in the Eastern front during the Russian Civil War, when People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs (War Commissar) Trotsky authorized Mikhail Tukhachevsky, commander of the 1st Army, to station blocking detachments behind unreliable infantry regiments, with orders to shoot if front-line troops either deserted or retreated without permission. The barrier troops comprised personnel drawn from Cheka punitive detachments or regular infantry regiments.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=180}}

In December 1918, Trotsky ordered detachments of additional barrier troops be raised for attachment to each infantry formation. On 18 December he cabled: "How do things stand with the blocking units? As far as I am aware they have not been included in our establishment and it appears they have no personnel. It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them."{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=180}} The barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies in areas controlled by the army, a role which earned them the hatred of the civilian population.Lih, Lars T., Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921, University of California Press (1990), p. 131.

File:Demyan Bedny and Leon Trotsky.jpg near Kazan, 1918]]

Given the lack of manpower and the 16 opposing foreign armies, Trotsky insisted on the use of former Tsarist officers as military specialists within the army, in combination with Bolshevik political commissars to ensure the revolutionary nature of the Red Army. Lenin commented on this:{{Blockquote|When Comrade Trotsky informed me recently that the number of officers of the old army employed by our War Department runs into several tens of thousands, I perceived concretely where the secret of using our enemy lay, how to compel those who had opposed communism to build it, how to build communism with the bricks which the capitalists had chosen to hurl against us! We have no other bricks! And so, we must compel the bourgeois experts, under the leadership of the proletariat, to build up our edifice with these bricks. This is what is difficult; but this is the pledge of victory.{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x01.htm |title=Achievements and Difficulties of the Soviet Government |last1=Lenin |first1=Vladimir Ilych |date=1919 |website=marxists.org |publisher=Progress Publishers |access-date=6 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304090910/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x01.htm |archive-date=4 March 2016 |url-status=live |df=dmy-all}}}}

File:Trotsky, Lenin, Kamenev (1919).jpg (centre) and Kamenev (right), in discussion during the Russian Civil War]]

In September 1918, the Bolshevik government, facing military difficulties, declared what amounted to martial law and reorganized the Red Army. The Supreme Military Council was abolished, and the position of commander-in-chief was restored, filled by the commander of the Latvian Riflemen, Jukums Vācietis, who had formerly led the Eastern Front against the Czechoslovak Legions. Vatsetis took charge of the day-to-day operations. Trotsky became chairman of the newly formed Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and retained overall control of the military. Trotsky and Vatsetis had clashed earlier in 1918, while Vatsetis and Trotsky's adviser Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich were also on unfriendly terms. Nevertheless, Trotsky eventually established a working relationship with the often prickly Vatsetis.

The reorganization caused yet another conflict, this time between Trotsky and Stalin, in late September. Trotsky appointed former imperial general Pavel Pavlovich Sytin to command the Southern Front, but in early October 1918 Stalin refused to accept him and so he was recalled from the front. Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov tried to make Trotsky and Stalin reconcile, but their meeting proved unsuccessful.

In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's dracionan measures.{{cite book |last1=Reese |first1=Roger R. |title=Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine |date=3 October 2023 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=978-0-8061-9356-4 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hWS2EAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+desertion+612&pg=PA109 |language=en}} According to Orlando Figes, most "deserters...were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000-132,000 deserters.{{cite journal |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=The Red Army and Mass Mobilization during the Russian Civil War 1918-1920 |journal=Past & Present |date=1990 |issue=129 |pages=168–211 |doi=10.1093/past/129.1.168 |jstor=650938 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/650938 |issn=0031-2746}}

File:Trotsky con la guardia roja.jpg

Throughout late 1918 and early 1919, there were a number of attacks on Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army, including veiled accusations in newspaper articles inspired by Stalin and a direct attack by the Military Opposition at the VIIIth Party Congress in March 1919. On the surface, he weathered them successfully and was elected one of only five full members of the first Politburo after the Congress. But he later wrote:{{Blockquote|It is no wonder that my military work created so many enemies for me. I did not look to the side, I elbowed away those who interfered with military success, or in the haste of the work trod on the toes of the unheeding and was too busy even to apologize. Some people remember such things. The dissatisfied and those whose feelings had been hurt found their way to Stalin or Zinoviev, for these two also nourished hurts.}}

In mid-1919, the dissatisfied had an opportunity to mount a serious challenge to Trotsky's leadership: the Red Army grew from 800,000 to 3,000,000 and fought simultaneously on sixteen fronts.{{cite web|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/03/trotsky-stalin-russian-lenin|title=Lost leaders: Leon Trotsky|work=The New Statesman|location=UK|access-date=22 April 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100423073037/http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/03/trotsky-stalin-russian-lenin|archive-date=23 April 2010|url-status=live}}

At the 3–4 July Central Committee meeting, after a heated exchange, the majority supported Kamenev and Smilga against Vācietis and Trotsky. Trotsky's plan was rejected, and he was much criticized for various alleged shortcomings in his leadership style, much of it of a personal nature. Stalin used this opportunity to pressure LeninChapter XXXVII of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch37.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420212156/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch37.htm |date=20 April 2006}} to dismiss Trotsky from his post.

However, some significant changes to the leadership of the Red Army were made. Trotsky was temporarily sent to the Southern Front, while Smilga informally coordinated the work in Moscow. Most members of the Revolutionary Military Council who were not involved in its day-to-day operations were relieved of their duties on 8 July, and new members, including Smilga, were added. The same day, while Trotsky was in the south, Vācietis was suddenly arrested by the Cheka on suspicion of involvement in an anti-Soviet plot, and replaced by Sergey Kamenev. After a few weeks in the south, Trotsky returned to Moscow and resumed control of the Red Army. A year later, Smilga and Tukhachevsky were defeated during the Battle of Warsaw, but Trotsky refused this opportunity to pay Smilga back, which earned him Smilga's friendship and later his support during the intra-Party battles of the 1920s.Isai Abramovich's [http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/ABRAMOWICH/abramowich1.txt memoirs] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060226084149/http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/ABRAMOWICH/abramowich1.txt |date=26 February 2006}} re: the Smilga episode. Abramovich (1900–1985), a friend of Smilga's, was one of the few Trotskyists who survived the Great Purges and returned from Stalin's camps in the late 1950s.

By October 1919, the government was in the worst crisis of the Civil War: Denikin's troops approached Tula and Moscow from the south, and General Nikolay Yudenich's troops approached Petrograd from the west. Lenin decided that since it was more important to defend Moscow, Petrograd would have to be abandoned. Trotsky argued[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch35.htm My Life (Chapter XXXV)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420212115/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch35.htm |date=20 April 2006}}, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018. that Petrograd needed to be defended, at least in part to prevent Estonia and Finland from intervening. In a rare reversal, Trotsky was supported by Stalin and Zinoviev, and prevailed against Lenin in the Central Committee.

With the defeat of Denikin and Yudenich in late 1919, the Soviet government's emphasis shifted to the economy. Trotsky spent the winter of 1919–20 in the Urals region trying to restart its economy. A false rumor of his assassination circulated in Germany and the international press on New Year's Day 1920.{{cite news |title=Assassinate Trotzky, Report; Ex-Leader Of Russia Soviet Slayer's Victim, Berlin Officials Hear |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH19200101.2.179&e=--2019---2019--en--20-LAH-1--txt-txIN-Assassinate+Trotzky-------1 |access-date=24 May 2020 |newspaper=Los Angeles Herald |date=1 January 1920 |page=1}} Based on his experiences, he proposed abandoning the policies of War Communism,[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch38.htm My Life (Chapter XXXVIII)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051210202136/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch38.htm |date=10 December 2005}}, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018. which included confiscating grain from peasants, and partially restoring the grain market. Still committed to War Communism, Lenin rejected his proposal.

File:Trotsky on a Polish poster of 1920.jpg Polish poster titled "Bolshevik freedom" which depicts him on a pile of skulls, holding a bloody knife, during the Polish–Soviet War]]

In early 1920, Soviet–Polish tensions eventually led to the Polish–Soviet War. In the run-up and during the war, Trotsky argued that the Red Army was exhausted and the Soviet government should sign a peace treaty with Poland as soon as possible. He did not believe that the Red Army would find much support in Poland proper. Lenin later wrote that he and other Bolshevik leaders believed the Red Army's successes in the Russian Civil War and against the Poles meant "The defensive period of the war with worldwide imperialism was over, and we could, and had the obligation to, exploit the military situation to launch an offensive war."{{sfn|Pipes|1996|loc=Political Report of the Central Committee of the RKP(b) to the Ninth All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party delivered by Lenin on 20 September 1920, Document 59}}

Poland defeated the Red Army, and the offensive was turned back during the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920. Back in Moscow, Trotsky again argued for a peace treaty, and this time prevailed.

{{main|Trade union debate}}

During the trade union debate of 1920–1921, Trotsky argued that trade unions should be integrated directly into the state apparatus, advocating for a "militarization of labor" to rebuild the Soviet economy after the Civil War. He believed that in a workers' state, the state should control the unions, with workers being treated as "soldiers of labor" under strict discipline.Tony Cliff; [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/trotsky2/11-warcomm.html Trotsky: The Sword of the Revolution 1917–1923] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715195155/https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/trotsky2/11-warcomm.html |date=15 July 2018}}; Chapter 11: War Communism at an impasse; paragraph "The militarisation of all labour"; Bookmarks, London 1990.

This position was sharply criticized by Vladimir Lenin, who argued that trade unions should retain some independence from the state and act as "schools of communism" rather than instruments of state control. Lenin's view won out at the 10th Congress in 1921, and several of Trotsky's supporters, including Nikolay Krestinsky, lost their leadership positions.

{{main|Kronstadt rebellion}}

File:Kronstadt attack.JPG troops attack Kronstadt sailors in March 1921.]]

In March 1921, during the Kronstadt Rebellion, sailors and soldiers in the naval base of Kronstadt rose up against the Bolshevik government, demanding greater freedom for workers and peasants, an end to one-party rule, and the restoration of civil rights.Kronstadt Rebellion, Kronstädter Aufstand In: Dictionary of Marxism, http://www.inkrit.de/e_inkritpedia/e_maincode/doku.php?id=k:kronstaedter_aufstand The rebellion occurred simultaneously with the 10th Party Congress, further destabilizing the fragile political situation.

Trotsky, as Commissar of War, was instrumental in ordering the suppression of the rebellion. On 18 March 1921, after several failed negotiations, the Red Army stormed the island, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Kronstadt sailors.[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/07/kronstadt2.htm "More on the Suppression of Kronstadt"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071121073115/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/07/kronstadt2.htm |date=21 November 2007}} by Leon Trotsky Trotsky justified the action by presenting evidence that the rebellion had foreign backing, though this claim has been contested by several historians.{{Cite book|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Trotsky_Protests_Too_Much|title=Trotsky Protests Too Much|first=Emma|last=Goldman|publisher=The Anarchist Communist Federation|year=1939}} Trotsky's role has been the subject of criticism, with anarchists such as Emma Goldman accusing him of betraying the revolution's democratic ideals.{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/pdfs/PublishedEssaysandPamphlets_TROTSKYPROTESTSTOOMUCH.pdf|first=Emma|last=Goldman|title=Trotsky Protests too Much|date=1938|publisher=The Anarchist Communist Federation|location=Glasgow|access-date=14 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180118090914/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/pdfs/PublishedEssaysandPamphlets_TROTSKYPROTESTSTOOMUCH.pdf|archive-date=18 January 2018|url-status=live}}

File:Leon Trotsky as the October Revolution Guard.jpg, as the Guard of the October Revolution on 14 May 1923]]

Vladimir Cherniaev, a leading Russian historian, sums up Trotsky's main contributions to the Russian Revolution:

{{Blockquote|Trotsky bears a great deal of responsibility both for the victory of the Red Army in the civil war, and for the establishment of a one-party authoritarian state with its apparatus for ruthlessly suppressing dissent... He was an ideologist and practitioner of the Red Terror. He despised "bourgeois democracy"; he believed that spinelessness and soft-heartedness would destroy the revolution, and that the suppression of the propertied classes and political opponents would clear the historical arena for socialism. He was the initiator of concentration camps, compulsory "labour camps", and the militarization of labour, and the state takeover of trade unions. Trotsky was implicated in many practices which would become standard in the Stalin era, including summary executions.V. I͡U. Cherni͡aev, "Trotsky" in {{cite book|editor1-first=Edward |editor1-last=Acton |editor2-first=Vladimir I͡u. |editor2-last=Cherni͡aev |editor3-first=William G. |editor3-last=Rosenberg|title=Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA191|year=1997|publisher=Indiana University Press|page=191|isbn=978-0-253-33333-9}}}}

Historian Geoffrey Swain argues that:

{{Blockquote|The Bolsheviks triumphed in the Civil War because of Trotsky's ability to work with military specialists, because of the style of work he introduced where widescale consultation was followed through by swift and determined action.{{sfn|Swain|2014a|p=210}}}}

Lenin said in 1921 that Trotsky was "in love with organisation," but in working politics, "he has not got a clue." Swain explains the paradox by arguing that Trotsky was not good at teamwork; he was a loner who had mostly worked as a journalist, not as a professional revolutionary like the others.{{sfn|Swain|2014a|p=211}}

File:TrotskiEnMoscúConTropas1922 (cropped).jpeg

In late 1921, Lenin's health deteriorated and he was absent from Moscow for longer periods of time. He had three strokes between 25 May 1922 and 9 March 1923, which caused paralysis, loss of speech and finally death on 21 January 1924. With Lenin increasingly sidelined throughout 1922, Stalin was elevated to the newly created position of the Central Committee general secretary.{{efn|Yakov Sverdlov was the Central Committee's senior secretary responsible for personnel affairs from 1917 and until his death in March 1919. He was replaced by Elena Stasova, and in November 1919 by Nikolai Krestinsky.

After Krestinsky's ouster in March 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov became the senior secretary, but he lacked Krestinsky's authority, since he was not a full Politburo member. Stalin took over the position as senior secretary, which was formalized at the XIth Party Congress in April 1922, with Molotov becoming second secretary.}} Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev{{efn|It is not clear why Kamenev, a mild-mannered man with few leadership ambitions and who was the brother-in-law of Trotsky, sided with Zinoviev and Stalin against Trotsky in 1922. Trotsky later speculated that it may have been due to Kamenev's love of comfort, which Trotsky found "repelled me." He expressed [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/xx/kremlin.htm his feelings to Kamenev] in late 1920 or early 1921:{{Blockquote|Our relations with Kamenev, which were very good in the first period after the insurrection, began to become more distant from that day.}}}} became part of the triumvirate (troika) formed by Stalin to ensure that Trotsky, publicly the number-two man in the country and Lenin's heir presumptive, would not succeed Lenin.

The rest of the recently expanded Politburo (Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Bukharin) was at first uncommitted, but eventually joined the troika. Stalin's power of patronage{{efn|The Central Committee's Secretariat became increasingly important during the Civil War and especially in its aftermath, as the Party switched from elected officials to appointed ones. The change was prompted by the need to allocate manpower quickly during the Civil War as well as by the transformation of the party from a small group of revolutionaries into the country's ruling party, with a corresponding increase in membership. New members included career seekers and former members of banned socialist parties, who were viewed with apprehension by Old Bolsheviks.

To prevent a possible degeneration of the party, various membership requirements were instituted for party officials, and the ultimate power of appointment of local officials was reserved for the Secretariat of the Central Committee. This put enormous power in the general secretary's hands.}} in his capacity as general secretary clearly played a role, but Trotsky and his supporters later concluded that a more fundamental reason was the process of slow bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime once the extreme conditions of the Civil War were over. Much of the Bolshevik elite wanted 'normality,' while Trotsky was personally and politically personified as representing a turbulent revolutionary period that they would much rather leave behind.

Although the exact sequence of events is unclear, evidence suggests that at first the troika nominated Trotsky to head second-rate government departments (e.g., Gokhran, the State Depository for Valuables).{{sfn|Pipes|1996|loc=Document 103 (22 May 1922)}} In mid-July 1922, Kamenev wrote a letter to the recovering Lenin to the effect that "(the Central Committee) is throwing or is ready to throw a good cannon overboard". Lenin was shocked and responded:{{sfn|Pipes|1996|loc=Document 106}}

{{Blockquote|Throwing Trotsky overboard—surely you are hinting at that, it is impossible to interpret it otherwise—is the height of stupidity. If you do not consider me already hopelessly foolish, how can you think of that????}}

From then until his final stroke, Lenin spent much of his time trying to devise a way to prevent a split within the Communist Party leadership, which was reflected in Lenin's Testament. As part of this effort, on 11 September 1922 Lenin proposed that Trotsky become his deputy at the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom). The Politburo approved the proposal, but Trotsky "categorically refused". Lenin's proposal has been interpreted by various scholars as evidence that he designated Trotsky as a successor as head of government.{{sfn|Pipes|1996|loc=Document 109}}{{cite book |last1=Bullock |first1=Alan |title=Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives |date=1991 |location=London |publisher= HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-215494-9 |page=163 |url=https://archive.org/details/hitlerstalinpara0000bull/page/132/mode/2up}}{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=149}}{{cite book |last1=Ceplair |first1=Larry |title=Revolutionary Pairs: Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Gandhi and Nehru, Mao and Zhou, Castro and Guevara |date=21 July 2020 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-7945-2 |page=93 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pc3cDwAAQBAJ |language=en}}{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=127}}

File:Rakovsky and trotsky circa 1924 trimmed.jpg

In late 1922, Trotsky secured an alliance with Lenin against Stalin and the emerging Soviet bureaucracy.Chapter XXXIX of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch39.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420212213/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch39.htm |date=20 April 2006}}, Marxist Internet Archive Stalin had recently engineered the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), further centralising state control. The alliance proved effective on the issue of foreign trade{{efn|Lenin's [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/15.htm letter] to Stalin dictated on 15 December 1922: "I am sure Trotsky will uphold my views as well as I." Faced with a united opposition by Lenin and Trotsky, the Central Committee reversed its previous decision and adopted the Lenin-Trotsky proposal.}} but was hindered by Lenin's progressing illness.

In January 1923, Lenin amended his Testament to suggest that Stalin should be removed as the party's general secretary, while also mildly criticising Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders. The relationship between Stalin and Lenin had broken down completely by this time, as was demonstrated during an event where Stalin crudely insulted Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. In March 1923, days before his third stroke, Lenin asked Trotsky to denounce Stalin and his so-called "Great-Russian nationalistic campaign" at the XIIth Party Congress.

At the XIIth Party Congress in April 1923, however, just after Lenin's final stroke, Trotsky did not raise the issue.Chapter 11 of Trotsky's unfinished book, entitled [http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/08/trotskys-stalin-chap-11-from-obscurity.html Stalin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070629051005/http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/08/trotskys-stalin-chap-11-from-obscurity.html |date=29 June 2007}} Instead, he made a speech about intra-party democracy while avoiding any direct confrontation of the troika.{{efn|Trotsky explained in Chapter 12 of his unfinished book [http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_maximumred_archive.html Stalin] that he refused to deliver the report because "it seemed to me equivalent to announcing my candidacy for the role of Lenin's successor at a time when Lenin was fighting a grave illness.}} Stalin had prepared for the congress by replacing many local party delegates with those loyal to him, mostly at the expense of Zinoviev and Kamenev's backers.Chapter 12 of Trotsky's unfinished book, entitled [http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_maximumred_archive.html Stalin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070712104730/http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_maximumred_archive.html |date=12 July 2007}}

The delegates, most of whom were unaware of the divisions within the Politburo, gave Trotsky a standing ovation. This upset the troika, already infuriated by Karl Radek's article, "Leon Trotsky – Organiser of Victory"{{efn|Radek wrote:{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937/dewey/session13_c.htm|title=Archived copy|access-date=24 October 2005|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051122201847/http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937/dewey/session13_c.htm|archive-date=22 November 2005}}{{Blockquote|The need of the hour was for a man who would incarnate the call to struggle, a man who, subordinating himself completely to the requirements of the struggle, would become the ringing summons to arms, the will which exacts from all unconditional submission to a great, sacrificial necessity. Only a man with Trotsky's capacity for work, only a man so unsparing of himself as Trotsky, only a man who knew how to speak to the soldiers as Trotsky did—only such a man could have become the standard bearer of the armed toilers. He was all things rolled into one.}}}} published in Pravda on 14 March 1923. Stalin delivered the key reports on organisational structure and questions of nationality; while Zinoviev delivered the Central Committee political report, traditionally Lenin's prerogative. Among the resolutions adopted by the XIIth Congress were those calling for greater democracy within the Party, but these were vague and remained unimplemented.

The power struggle in the Soviet Union which emerged during Lenin's illness and eventual death would also determine the prospect of world revolution. In particular, the leadership of the German Communist party had requested that Moscow send Trotsky to Germany to direct the 1923 insurrection. However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |page=272 |language=en}}

{{Main|Left Opposition}}

File:Trotsky-Annenkov 1922 sketch.jpg portrait by Yury Annenkov – a version of this appeared on one of the earliest covers of Time magazine.]]

Starting in mid-1923, the Soviet economy ran into significant difficulties, which led to numerous strikes countrywide. Two secret groups within the Communist Party, "Workers' Truth" and "Workers' Group", were uncovered and suppressed by the Soviet secret police. On 8 October 1923 Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, attributing these difficulties to lack of intra-Party democracy. Trotsky wrote:

{{Blockquote|In the fiercest moment of War Communism, the system of appointment within the party did not have one tenth of the extent that it has now. Appointment of the secretaries of provincial committees is now the rule. That creates for the secretary a position essentially independent of the local organization. [...] The bureaucratization of the party apparatus has developed to unheard-of proportions by means of the method of secretarial selection. [...] There has been created a very broad stratum of party workers, entering into the apparatus of the government of the party, who completely renounce their own party opinion, at least the open expression of it, as though assuming that the secretarial hierarchy is the apparatus which creates party opinion and party decisions. Beneath this stratum, abstaining from their own opinions, there lies the broad mass of the party, before whom every decision stands in the form of a summons or a command.Leon Trotsky, "The First Letter to the Central Committee" contained in the Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925 (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1975) pp. 55–56.{{ISBN?}}}}

Other senior communists who had similar concerns sent The Declaration of 46 to the Central Committee on 15 October, in which they wrote:

{{Blockquote|[...] we observe an ever progressing, barely disguised division of the party into a secretarial hierarchy and into "laymen", into professional party functionaries, chosen from above, and the other party masses, who take no part in social life. [...] free discussion within the party has virtually disappeared, party public opinion has been stifled. [...] it is the secretarial hierarchy, the party hierarchy which to an ever greater degree chooses the delegates to the conferences and congresses, which to an ever greater degree are becoming the executive conferences of this hierarchy.}}

Although the text of these letters remained secret at the time, they had a significant effect on the Party leadership and prompted a partial retreat by the troika and its supporters on the issue of intra-Party democracy, notably in Zinoviev's Pravda article published on 7 November. Throughout November, the troika tried to come up with a compromise to placate, or at least temporarily neutralise, Trotsky and his supporters. (Their task was made easier by the fact that Trotsky was sick in November and December.) The first draft of the resolution was rejected by Trotsky, which led to the formation of a special group consisting of Stalin, Trotsky and Kamenev, which was charged with drafting a mutually acceptable compromise. On 5 December, the Politburo and the Central Control Commission unanimously adopted the group's final draft as its resolution. On 8 December, Trotsky published an open letter, in which he expounded on the recently adopted resolution's ideas. The troika used his letter as an excuse to launch a campaign against Trotsky, accusing him of factionalism, setting "the youth against the fundamental generation of old revolutionary Bolsheviks"Quoted in Max Shachtman. The Struggle for the New Course, New York, New International Publishing Co., 1943. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1943/fnc/nc04.htm The Campaign Against "Trotskyism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060209032511/http://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1943/fnc/nc04.htm |date=9 February 2006}} and other sins.

Trotsky defended his position in a series of seven letters which were collected as The New Course in January 1924.Leon Trotsky, "The New Course" contained in The Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 63–144. {{ISBN?}} The illusion of a "monolithic Bolshevik leadership" was thus shattered and a lively intra-Party discussion ensued, both in local Party organizations and in the pages of Pravda. The discussion lasted most of December and January until the XIIIth Party Conference of 16–18 January 1924. Those who opposed the Central Committee's position in the debate were thereafter referred to as members of the Left Opposition.[https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/l/e.htm#left-opposition Left Opposition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180716012705/https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/l/e.htm#left-opposition#left-opposition |date=16 July 2018}}; Glossary of organizations on Marxists.org In 1924, in a series of conferences at Sverdlov University; Stalin cited several times, in a critical way 'the Permanentists', as the followers of Trotsky 'Permanent revolution'.

File:Soviet leaders write the letter of defiance to George Curzon.jpg Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in 1923, in a parody of Ilya Repin's Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks]]

Since the troika controlled the Party apparatus through Stalin's Secretariat and Pravda through its editor Bukharin, it was able to direct the discussion and the process of delegate selection. Although Trotsky's position prevailed within the Red Army and Moscow universities and received about half the votes in the Moscow Party organisation, it was defeated elsewhere, and the Conference was packed with pro-troika delegates. In the end, only three delegates voted for Trotsky's position, and the Conference denounced "Trotskyism"{{efn|The term "Trotskyism" was first coined by the Russian liberal politician Pavel Milyukov, the first foreign minister in the Provisional Government who, in April 1917, was forced to demand that the British government release Trotsky.}} as a "petty bourgeois deviation".

Members of the Left Opposition represented most of the international elements of the party and held offices at the highest responsibility with Christian Rakovsky, Adolph Joffe and Nikolay Krestinsky holding ambassadorial posts in London, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=735 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky |language=en}}

Internationally, Trotsky's opposition and criticism of the ruling troika received support from several, Central Committee members of foreign communist parties. This included Christian Rakovsky, Chairman of the Ukraine Sovnarkom, Boris Souvarine of the French Communist Party and the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party which was led by prominent theoreticians such as Maksymilian Horwitz, Maria Koszutska and Adolf Warski.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=139, 249, 268–269 |language=en}}

File:Trotsky Leon.jpg

There was little overt political disagreement within the Soviet leadership throughout most of 1924. On the surface, Trotsky remained the most prominent and popular Bolshevik leader, although his "mistakes" were often alluded to by troika partisans. Behind the scenes, he was completely cut off from the decision-making process. Politburo meetings were pure formalities since all key decisions were made ahead of time by the troika and its supporters. Trotsky's control over the military was undermined by reassigning his deputy, Ephraim Sklyansky, and appointing Mikhail Frunze, who was being groomed to take Trotsky's place.

At the thirteenth Party Congress in May, Trotsky delivered a conciliatory speech:Chapter VIII of Boris Souvarine's [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/souvar/works/stalin/ch08.htm Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060430065533/http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/souvar/works/stalin/ch08.htm |date=30 April 2006}}{{ISBN?}}

{{Blockquote|None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right... We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. The English have a saying, "My country, right or wrong", whether it is in the right or in the wrong, it is my country. We have much better historical justification in saying whether it is right or wrong in certain individual concrete cases, it is my party... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.Leon Trotsky, "Speech to the Thirteenth Party Congress on May 26, 1924" contained in The Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 161–62.}}

File:Leon Trotsky attends The October Revolution parade 1924.jpg, Kliment Voroshilov, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Kalinin, and Mikhail Frunze attend the October Revolution parade in Red Square on 7 November 1924]]

In the meantime, the Left Opposition, which had coagulated somewhat unexpectedly in late 1923 and lacked a definite platform aside from general dissatisfaction with the intra-Party "regime", began to crystallise. It lost some less dedicated members to the harassment by the troika, but it also began formulating a program.

Economically, the Left Opposition opposed the development of capitalist elements in the Soviet economy and advocated for accelerated industrialization through state-led policies.Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni. The New Economics. Oxford University Press, 1965." That put them at odds with Bukharin and Rykov, the "Right" within the Party, who supported the troika. On the question of world revolution, Trotsky and Karl Radek saw a period of stability in Europe, while Stalin and Zinoviev confidently predicted an "acceleration" of revolution in Western Europe in 1924. On the theoretical plane, Trotsky remained committed to the Bolshevik idea that the Soviet Union could not create a true socialist society in the absence of the world revolution, while Stalin gradually came up with a policy of building "socialism in one country". These ideological divisions provided much of the intellectual basis for the political divide between Trotsky and the Left Opposition on the one hand, and Stalin and his allies on the other.

At the thirteenth Congress Kamenev and Zinoviev helped Stalin defuse Lenin's Testament, which belatedly came to the surface. But just after the congress, the troika, always an alliance of convenience, showed signs of weakness. Stalin began making poorly veiled accusations about Zinoviev and Kamenev. Yet in October 1924, Trotsky published Lessons of October,Leon Trotsky "Lessons of October" contained in Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 199–258. a summary of the events of the 1917 revolution. He described Zinoviev and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something they would have preferred left unmentioned. This started a new round of intra-party struggle, which became known as the Literary Discussion, with Zinoviev and Kamenev again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. Their criticism of Trotsky was concentrated in three areas:

• Trotsky's disagreements and conflicts with Lenin and the Bolsheviks prior to 1917.
• Trotsky's alleged distortion of the events of 1917 to emphasise his role and diminish the roles played by other Bolsheviks.
• Trotsky's harsh treatment of his subordinates and other alleged mistakes during the Civil War.

Trotsky was again sick and unable to respond while his opponents mobilised all their resources to denounce him. They succeeded in damaging his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council on 6 January 1925. Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party, but Stalin refused to go along and played the role of a moderate. Trotsky kept his Politburo seat, but was effectively put on probation.

File:Leon Trotsky and Leonid Serebryakov attend the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union May 1925.jpg attend the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union in May 1925]]

For Trotsky, 1925 was a difficult year. After the bruising Literary Discussion and losing his Red Army posts, he was effectively unemployed throughout the winter and spring. In May 1925, he was given three posts: chairman of the Concessions Committee, head of the electro-technical board, and chairman of the scientific-technical board of industry. Trotsky wrote in My LifeChapter 22 of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch42.htm My Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060420212234/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-lif/ch42.htm |date=20 April 2006}} that he "was taking a rest from politics" and "naturally plunged into the new line of work up to my ears".Leon Trotsky, My Life (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1970) p. 520. {{ISBN?}} Trotsky would also deliver a tribute to Lenin in his 1925 short book, "Lenin".{{cite web |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Lenin (1925) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/lenin/index.htm}}{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Lenin |date=1959 |publisher=Garden City Books |page=215 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OyAfAAAAMAAJ&q=Lenin+is+no+more%2C+but+Leninism+endures.+The+immortal+in+Lenin%2C+his+doctrine%2C+his+work%2C+his+method%2C+his+example%2C+lives+in+us%2C+lives+in+the+party+that+he+founded%2C+lives+in+the+first+workmen%E2%80%99s+State+whose+head+he+was+and+which+he+guided. |language=en}}

Some contemporary accounts paint a picture of a remote and distracted man.Nikolai Valentinov-Volsky's account of his work with Trotsky in 1925 in Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika i Krizis Partii Posle Smerti Lenina: Gody Raboty v VSNKh vo Vremia NEP, Moscow, Sovremennik, 1991. {{ISBN?}} Later in the year, Trotsky resigned his two technical positions (maintaining Stalin-instigated interference and sabotage) and concentrated on his work in the Concessions Committee.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch42.htm|title=Leon Trotsky: My Life (42. The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party)|date=22 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181122231754/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch42.htm|access-date=21 April 2020|archive-date=22 November 2018}}

In one of the few political developments that affected Trotsky in 1925, the circumstances of the controversy over Lenin's Testament were described by American Marxist Max Eastman in his book Since Lenin Died (1925). Trotsky denied these statements made by Eastman in an article he wrote.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/07/lenin.htm|title=Leon Trotsky: Letter on Eastman's Book|date=22 November 2018|access-date=21 April 2020}}

In the meantime, the troika finally broke up. Bukharin and Rykov sided with Stalin while Krupskaya and Soviet Commissar of Finance Grigory Sokolnikov aligned with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The struggle became open at the September 1925 meeting of the Central Committee and came to a head at the XIV Party Congress in December 1925. With only the Leningrad Party organization behind them, Zinoviev and Kamenev, dubbed The New Opposition, were thoroughly defeated, while Trotsky refused to get involved in the fight and did not speak at the Congress.

File:Leon Trotsky speaks on the fifth anniversary of Soviet Georgia.jpg in March 1926]]

In early 1926, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their supporters in the "New Opposition" gravitated closer to Trotsky's supporters, and the two groups soon formed an alliance, which also incorporated some smaller opposition groups within the Communist Party. The alliance became known as the United Opposition.

The United Opposition was repeatedly threatened with sanctions by the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party, and Trotsky had to agree to tactical retreats, mostly to preserve his alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The opposition remained united against Stalin throughout 1926 and 1927, especially on the issue of the Chinese Revolution. The methods used by the Stalinists against the Opposition became more and more extreme. At the XV Party Conference in October 1926, Trotsky could barely speak because of interruptions and catcalls, and at the end of the Conference he lost his Politburo seat. In 1927, Stalin started using the GPU (Soviet secret police) to infiltrate and discredit the opposition. Rank-and-file oppositionists were increasingly harassed, sometimes expelled from the Party and even arrested.

Soviet policy toward the Chinese Revolution became the ideological line of demarcation between Stalin and the United Opposition. The Chinese Revolution began on 10 October 1911,Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady (Alfred A. Knopf Inc.: New York, 1992) p. 454. resulting in the abdication of the Chinese Emperor, Puyi, on 12 February 1912.Compilation Group for the "History of Modern China" Series, The Revolution of 1911 (Foreign Languages Press: Peking, 1976) p. 153. Sun Yat-sen established the Republic of China. In reality, however, the Republic controlled very little of the country. Much of China was divided between various regional warlords. The Republican government established a new "nationalist people's army and a national people's party"—the Kuomintang. In 1920, the Kuomintang opened relations with Soviet Russia. With Soviet help, the Republic of China built up the nationalist people's army. With the development of the nationalist army, a Northern Expedition was planned to smash the power of the warlords of the northern part of the country. This Northern Expedition became a point of contention over foreign policy by Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin tried to persuade the small Chinese Communist Party to merge with the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists to bring about a bourgeois revolution before attempting to bring about a Soviet-style working class revolution.Joseph Stalin, "The Prospects of Revolution in China" a speech to the Chinese Commission of the Executive Committee of the Communist International on 30 November 1926" contained in J. Stalin on Chinese Revolution (Suren Dutt Publishers: Calcutta, India, 1970), pp. 5–21. {{ISBN?}}

File:Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky at Felix Dzerzhinsky funeral.jpg and Stalin bearing the coffin of Felix Dzerzhinsky on 22 July 1926. Trotsky can be seen over Kalinin's left shoulder.|alt=]]

Trotsky wanted the Communist Party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and have clear class independence from the KMT. Stalin funded the KMT during the expedition.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OCI3gnzsYc0C&q=trotsky+squeezed+lemon+chiang&pg=PA233|title=China in war and revolution, 1895–1949|author=Peter Gue Zarrow|year=2005|publisher=Psychology Press|edition=illustrated|volume=1 of Asia's transformations|isbn=978-0-415-36447-8|page=233|access-date=1 January 2011}} Stalin countered Trotskyist criticism by making a secret speech in which he said that Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing Kuomintang were the only ones capable of defeating the imperialists, that Chiang had funding from the rich merchants, and that his forces were to be utilized until squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded. However, Chiang quickly reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927 by massacring the Communist Party in Shanghai midway through the Northern Expedition.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wjCsAAAAIAAJ&q=trotsky+squeezed+lemon+chiang&pg=PA96|title=Moscow and Chinese Communists|author=Robert Carver North|year=1963|publisher=Stanford University Press|edition=2|isbn=978-0-8047-0453-3|page=96|access-date=1 January 2011}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMwdWFtgV0QC&q=trotsky+squeezed+lemon+chiang&pg=PA282|title=A history of Russia: Since 1855|author=Walter Moss|year=2005|publisher=Anthem Press|edition=2, illustrated|volume=2 of A History of Russia|isbn=978-1-84331-034-1|page=282|access-date=1 January 2011}}

File:Leon Trotsky 1928.jpg

On the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the Opposition held a street demonstration in Moscow against Stalin's Government, that was dispersed by the sovietic authorities and Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party shortly after.J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov. Road to Terror. pp. 26-27{{Cite web|url=https://topos.memo.ru/en/node/135|title=Anti-Stalinist Demonstration on November 7, 1927|date=2 December 2015|website=Topography of Terror, Moscow|access-date=10 January 2024|archive-date=10 January 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240110131422/https://topos.memo.ru/en/node/135|url-status=dead}} Trotsky gave the eulogy at the funeral of his friend, the Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe, in November 1927. It would be the last speech that Trotsky would give in the Soviet Union. When the XV Party Congress made United Opposition views incompatible with membership in the Communist Party, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their supporters capitulated and renounced their alliance with the Left Opposition. Trotsky and most of his followers, on the other hand, refused to surrender and stayed the course. Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata, Kazakhstan on 31 January 1928. He was expelled from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and their eldest son, Lev.{{sfn|Rubenstein|2013|pp=155, 202}}

File:Soviet reaction to Leon Trotsky publication.jpg as reported in the Soviet Union in August 1929, with the editors of Projector titled the publication: "On the service of bourgeoisie"]]

After Trotsky's expulsion from the Soviet Union, Trotskyists within the Soviet Union began to waver. Between 1929 and 1932, most leading members of the Left Opposition surrendered to Stalin, "admitted their mistakes" and were reinstated in the Communist Party. One initial exception to this was Christian Rakovsky, who inspired Trotsky between 1929 and 1934 with his refusal to capitulate as state suppression of any remaining opposition to Stalin increased by the year. In late 1932, Rakovsky had failed with an attempt to flee the Soviet Union and was exiled to Yakutia in March 1933. Answering Trotsky's request, the French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort, together with his fellow activist Pierre Frank, unsuccessfully called on the influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky to intervene in favor of Christian Rakovsky, and boarded the ship he was traveling on near Constantinople.Tova Yedlin, Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography, Praeger/Greenwood, Westport, 1992, pp. 201–02. {{ISBN|978-0275966058}} According to Heijenoort, they only managed to meet Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, who reportedly told them that his father was indisposed, but promised to pass on their request. Rakovsky was the last prominent Trotskyist to capitulate to Stalin in April 1934, when Rakovsky formally "admitted his mistakes" (his letter to Pravda, titled There Should Be No Mercy, depicted Trotsky and his supporters as "agents of the German Gestapo").{{sfn|Medvedev|1976|p=169}} Rakovsky was appointed to high office in the Commissariat for Health and allowed to return to Moscow, also serving as Soviet ambassador to Japan in 1935.{{sfn|Feofanov|Barry|1995|p=22}} However, Rakovsky was cited in allegations involving the killing of Sergey Kirov, and was arrested and imprisoned in late 1937, during the Great Purge.Fagan, Gus; Biographical Introduction to Christian Rakovsky; chapter [https://www.marxists.org/archive/rakovsky/biog/biog5.htm Opposition and Exile] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715212757/https://www.marxists.org/archive/rakovsky/biog/biog5.htm |date=15 July 2018}}

Almost all Trotskyists who were still within the Soviet Union's borders were executed in the Great Purges of 1936–1938, although Rakovsky survived until the Medvedev Forest massacre of September 1941, where he was shot dead along with 156 other prisoners on Stalin's orders, less than three months into the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Also among the Medvedev Forest victims was Trotsky's sister/Kamenev's first wife, Olga Kameneva.{{sfn|Parrish|1996|p=69}}

After being deported from the Soviet Union, in February 1929, Trotsky arrived in Turkey. During his first two months in Turkey, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son at the Soviet Union Consulate in Istanbul and then at a nearby hotel in the city. In April 1929, Trotsky, his wife and son were moved to the island of Büyükada (also known by its Greek name of Prinkipo) by the Turkish authorities. On Büyükada, they were moved into a house called the Yanaros mansion.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxist.com/esteban-volkov-return-to-prinkipo.htm|title=Esteban Volkov: Return to Prinkipo|first=Greg|last=Oxley|date=1 February 2004|website=Marxist.com|access-date=10 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110160934/https://www.marxist.com/esteban-volkov-return-to-prinkipo.htm|archive-date=10 January 2017|url-status=live}} During his exile in Turkey, Trotsky was under the surveillance of the Turkish police forces of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Trotsky was also at risk from the many former White Army officers who lived on Prinkipo, officers who had opposed the October Revolution and who had been defeated by Trotsky and the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. However, Trotsky's European supporters volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assured his safety.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/06/french.htm|title=Leon Trotsky: An Open Letter to the French Workers|date=10 June 1935|website=Marxists.org|access-date=8 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123230116/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/06/french.htm|archive-date=23 November 2016|url-status=live}} At this time, he made requests to enter Belgium, France, Norway, Germany, and the United Kingdom,{{Cite book|url=http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7728106|title=Application by Leon Trotsky for permission to reside in England.|date=24 June 1929|publisher=UK National Archives}} but all refused access.

File:Trotsky House Istanbul.jpg in Turkey, as it appears today. Trotsky lived at the house from April 1929 until July 1933.]]

Soon after arriving in Turkey Trotsky established the publication Bulletin of the Opposition. A Russian language journal, it was first published in July 1929 in Paris.{{cite web |last1=Lubitz |first1=Petra |last2=Lubitz |first2=Wolfgang |title=Biulleten' oppozitsii |url=https://www.trotskyana.net/Leon_Trotsky/Biulleten__Oppozitsii/biulleten__oppozitsii.html |website=trotskyana.net |access-date=29 May 2024 |date=August 2004}}{{cite journal |last1=Kassow |first1=Samuel |author-link=Samuel Kassow |title=Trotsky and the Bulletin of the Opposition |journal=Studies in Comparative Communism |date=Summer 1977 |volume=10 |issue=1 / 2 |pages=184–197 |doi=10.1016/S0039-3592(77)80006-9 |jstor=45367174 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45367174 |access-date=29 May 2024 |issn=0039-3592}} In 1931, Trotsky wrote a letter to a friend entitled "What is Fascism" in which he attempted to define fascism and asserted that the Communist International was wrong to describe the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera as "fascist" because it was not a mass movement arising from a base in the lower classes.{{cite web|author=L. Trotsky|title=What is Fascism|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/11/fascism.htm|date=15 November 1931}}

On 20 February 1932, Trotsky and all of his family lost their Soviet citizenship and were forbidden to enter the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Swain|2006|p=191}}{{cite web|title=Open Letter to the C.E.C. of the U.S.S.R.|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/03/cec1.htm|date=1 March 1932}} In 1932, Trotsky entered via a port into the fascist Kingdom of Italy{{cite web|url=https://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19321205-01.2.20|title=The Stanford Daily, Volume 82, Issue 44, 5 December 1932|website=Stanforddailyarchive.com}}{{cite web|url=https://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675056639_Soviet-Leader-Leon-Trotsky_Trotsky-with-dignitaries_Roman-civilization_Trotsky-in-exile|title=Former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, in exile visits ruins of ancient Roman sites with other dignitaries in Naples, Italy.|website=Criticalpast.com|date=1932}} on his way to a socialist conference in Denmark.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/11/radio.htm|title=The Stalinists and Trotsky's Radio Speech to America|date=3 December 1932|website=Marxists.org}} By the end of 1932, Trotsky had made contact with the anti-Stalin opposition inside the USSR and discussed the possibility of forming a bloc.{{Cite book|last=Thurston|first=Robert W.|title=Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941| page =25|date=1996|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-06401-8|jstor=j.ctt32bw0h}} There was no evidence of any alliance with Nazi Germany or Japan, as the Soviet Union government claimed. The alleged members of the anti-Stalin bloc were Zinovievites, rightists and Trotskyists who "capitulated" to Stalin. Kamenev and Zinoviev were also alleged members of the bloc. Trotsky wanted by no means that the alliance became a fusion, and he was afraid of the right gaining much power inside the bloc. Historian Pierre Broué concluded that the bloc dissolved in early 1933, since some of its members like Zinoviev and Kamenev joined Stalin again, and because there were no letters in the Trotsky Harvard archive mentioning the bloc after 1932.{{cite web|title=Pierre Broué: The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html|access-date=4 August 2020|website=Marxists.org}}

{{See also|Trotskyism in France}}

In July 1933, Trotsky was offered asylum in France by Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. Trotsky accepted the offer, but he was forbidden to live in Paris and soon found himself under the surveillance of the French police. From July 1933 to February 1934, Trotsky and his wife lived in Royan. The philosopher and activist Simone Weil also arranged for Trotsky and his bodyguards to stay for a few days at her parents' house. Following the 6 February 1934 crisis in France, the French minister of internal affairs, Albert Sarraut, signed a decree to deport Trotsky from France. However, no foreign government was found willing to accept Trotsky within its borders. Accordingly, the French authorities instructed Trotsky to move to a residence in the tiny village of Barbizon under the strict surveillance of the French police, where Trotsky found his contact with the outside world to be even worse than during his exile in Turkey.

In May 1935, soon after the French government had agreed to the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union government, Trotsky was officially told that he was no longer welcome in France. After weighing his options, Trotsky applied to move to Norway.

File:Heradsbygdveien 26, Hønefoss.jpg

After obtaining permission from Justice Minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky and his wife became a guest of Konrad Knudsen at Norderhov, near Hønefoss, and spent over a year living at Knudsen's house, from 18 June 1935 to 2 September 1936. Trotsky was hospitalized for a few weeks at the nearby Oslo Community Hospital, from 19 September 1935.Geoffrey Swain, Trotsky (Taylor & Francis, 2014) p.199-202Oddvar Høidal, Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935–1937

Following French media complaints about Trotsky's role in encouraging the mass strikes in France in May and June 1936 with his articles, the Johan Nygaardsvold-led Norwegian government began to exhibit disquiet about Trotsky's actions. In the summer of 1936, Trotsky's asylum was increasingly made a political issue by the fascist Nasjonal Samling, led by Vidkun Quisling,Oddvar Høidal's Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935–1937. along with an increase in pressure from the Soviet government on the Norwegian authorities. On 5 August 1936, Knudsen's house was burgled by fascists from the Nasjonal Samling while Trotsky and his wife were out on a seashore trip with Knudsen and his wife. The burglars targeted Trotsky's works and archives for vandalism. The raid was largely thwarted by Knudsen's daughter, Hjørdis, although the burglars did take a few papers from the nearest table as they left.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm|title=Leon Trotsky in Norway (1936)|date=January 1937|website=Marxists.org|access-date=8 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123230427/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm|archive-date=23 November 2016|url-status=live}} Although the perpetrators were caught and put on trial, the "evidence" obtained in the burglary was used by the government to make claims against Trotsky. 

On 14 August 1936, the Soviet Press Agency TASS announced the discovery of a "Trotskyist–Zinovievist" plot and the imminent start of the Moscow trials of the accused. Trotsky demanded a complete and open enquiry into Moscow's accusations. The accused were sentenced to death, including Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, and executed on 25 August 1936. On 26 August 1936, eight policemen arrived at Knudsen's house demanding that Trotsky sign new conditions for residing in Norway. These conditions included agreeing to write no more about current political matters, to give no interviews, and to have all his correspondence (incoming and outgoing) inspected by the police. Trotsky categorically refused the conditions, and Trotsky was then told that he and his wife would soon be moved to another residence. The following day Trotsky was interrogated by the police about his political activities, with the police officially citing Trotsky as a "witness" to the fascist raid of 5 August 1936.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm|title=Leon Trotsky in Norway|access-date=8 March 2018|website=Marxists.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715072452/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm|archive-date=15 July 2018|url-status=live}}

On 2 September 1936, four weeks after the break-in at Knudsen's house, Trygve Lie ordered that Trotsky and his wife be transferred to a farm in Hurum,{{cite web|url=http://www.dagsavisen.no/fremtiden/en-sensasjonell-rettssak/|title=En sensasjonell rettssak|access-date=31 August 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130929072142/http://www.dagsavisen.no/fremtiden/en-sensasjonell-rettssak/|archive-date=29 September 2013|url-status=dead}} where they were under house arrest. The treatment of Trotsky and his wife at Hurum was harsh, as they were forced to stay indoors for 22 hours per day under the constant guard of thirteen policemen, with only one hour permitted twice a day for a walk on the farm. Trotsky was prevented from posting any letters and prevented from arguing back against his critics in Norway and beyond. Only Trotsky's lawyers and the Norwegian Labour Party Parliamentary leader, Olav Scheflo, were permitted to visit. From October 1936, even the outdoor walks were prohibited for Trotsky and his wife. Trotsky did eventually manage to smuggle out one letter on 18 December 1936, titled The Moscow "Confessions".{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/03/confession.htm|title=The Moscow "Confessions"|date=18 December 1936|website=Marxists.org|access-date=6 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123230450/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/03/confession.htm|archive-date=23 November 2016|url-status=live}} On 19 December 1936, Trotsky and his wife were deported from Norway after being put on the Norwegian oil tanker Ruth, under guard by Jonas Lie. When later living in Mexico, Trotsky was utterly scathing about the treatment he received during his 108 days at Hurum, and accused the Norwegian government of trying to prevent him from publicly voicing his strong opposition to the Moscow Trials and other show trials, saying:

{{Blockquote|When I look back today on this period of internment, I must say that never, anywhere, in the course of my entire life—and I have lived through many things—was I persecuted with as much miserable cynicism as I was by the Norwegian "Socialist" government. For four months, these ministers, dripping with democratic hypocrisy, gripped me in a stranglehold to prevent me from protesting the greatest crime history may ever know. }}

File:Leon Trotsky House, Mexico City (7144251529).jpg from April 1939 until his assassination in August 1940]]

File:Trotsky & Khalo.jpg behind them.]]

File:Trotsky Speech In Mexico (1930-1939).webm

The Ruth arrived in Mexico on 9 January 1937. On Trotsky's arrival, the Mexican president, Lázaro Cárdenas, welcomed Trotsky to Mexico and arranged for his special train The Hidalgo to bring Trotsky to Mexico City from the port of Tampico.{{cite web|url=https://www.marxist.com/house-in-coyacan-reflections-trotsky.htm|title=The House in Coyoacán – Reflection on Trotsky's last years|first=Alan|last=Woods|date=30 June 2003|website=Marxist.com|access-date=10 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110162137/https://www.marxist.com/house-in-coyacan-reflections-trotsky.htm|archive-date=10 January 2017|url-status=live}}

From January 1937 to April 1939, Trotsky and his wife lived in the Coyoacán area of Mexico City at La Casa Azul (The Blue House), the home of the painter Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had an affair, and Kahlo's husband and fellow painter, Diego Rivera.Herrera, Hayden (1983). A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: HarperCollins. {{ISBN|978-0060085896}}Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2009) Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary New York: HarperCollins. {{ISBN|978-0060820688}} She later presented him with Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky on his birthday, the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s_ZdPsktyjEC&dq=%22Self-Portrait+Dedicated+to+Leon+Trotsky%22&pg=PA41 | title=Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954: Pain and Passion | publisher=Taschen | author=Kettenmann, Andrea | year=2003 | pages=41 | isbn=9783822859834}} His final move was a few blocks away to a residence on Avenida Viena in April 1939, following a break with Rivera.

Trotsky wrote prolifically while in exile, penning several key works, including his History of the Russian Revolution (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism. He argued that the Soviet state had become a "degenerated workers' state" controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing a workers' democracy, or degenerate into a capitalist class.Daniel Gaido, "Marxist Analyses of Stalinism", Science & Society

75/1 (Jan. 2011): 99–107. www.jstor.org/stable/25769086.

While in Mexico, Trotsky also worked closely with James Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and other supporters.{{Cite news|url=https://spartacus-educational.com/USAcannonJ.htm|title=James P. Cannon|work=Spartacus Educational|access-date=6 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106053432/https://spartacus-educational.com/USAcannonJ.htm|archive-date=6 November 2018|url-status=live}} Cannon, a long-time leading member of the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism since he had first read Trotsky's criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928. Trotsky's critique of the Stalinist regime, though banned, was distributed to leaders of the Comintern. Among his other supporters was Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party.Chen, Duxiu. [https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/chen-duxiu/1931/05/chinlo.htm "The Unification of the Chinese Opposition"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171211053628/https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/chen-duxiu/1931/05/chinlo.htm |date=11 December 2017}}, The Militant, 15 June 1931.

While in Mexico, Trotsky worked with André Breton and Diego Rivera to write the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, published in 1938, which emphasized the need for artistic freedom outside the constraints of capitalist and Stalinist regimes. This collaboration inspired the creation of the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI) in 1938. However, this organization was short-lived and ended before 1940.André Breton and Leon Trotsky, Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, 1938, in Free Rein, University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial of the so-called "Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" was staged in front of an international audience. During the trial, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other accused, most of them prominent Old Bolsheviks, confessed to having plotted with Trotsky to kill Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership. The court found every defendant guilty,

in absentia, including Trotsky, sentencing them to death. The second show trial of Karl Radek, Grigori Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov, and 14 others, took place in January 1937, during which more alleged conspiracies and crimes were linked to Trotsky. The findings were published in the book "Not Guilty".Not Guilty; Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, John Dewey, chairman, New York, London, Harper & brothers, 1938, xv, 422 pp. 2nd edition New York, Monad Press, distributed by Pathfinder Press 1973, c. 1972 xxiii. {{ISBN?}}

{{blockquote|The Moscow trials are perpetuated under the banner of socialism. We will not concede this banner to the masters of falsehood! If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word 'Socialism' is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life—forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future."| Leon Trotsky, 'I Stake My Life', opening address to the Dewey Commission, 9 February 1937{{sfn|North|2010|p=viii}}Full text of ~ [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/09/life.htm "I Stake My Life!"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101114233838/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/09/life.htm |date=14 November 2010}} – Leon Trotsky's telephone address to the N.Y. Hippodrome Meeting for the opening event of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trial, delivered on 9 February 1937.}}

{{Trotskyism}}

{{Main|Fourth International}}

For fear of splitting the communist movement, Trotsky initially opposed the idea of establishing parallel communist parties or a parallel international communist organization that would compete with the Third International. In mid-1933, after the Nazi takeover in Germany and the Comintern's response to it, he changed his mind. He said:{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-ger/330715.htm|title=Marxists.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051121162621/http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-ger/330715.htm|archive-date=21 November 2005|access-date=26 October 2005}}

{{Blockquote|An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it... In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.Leon Trotsky. To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew, 15 July 1933.}}

In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded the Fourth International, which was intended to be a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern.

File:Leon Trotsky and American admirers. Mexico - NARA - 283642.jpg (left) in Mexico, shortly before his assassination, 1940]]

Towards the end of 1939, Trotsky agreed to go to the United States to appear as a witness before the Dies Committee of the House of Representatives, a forerunner of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Representative Martin Dies Jr., chairman of the committee, demanded the suppression of the American Communist Party. Trotsky intended to use the forum to expose the NKVD's activities against him and his followers.

He made it clear that he also intended to argue against the suppression of the American Communist Party and to use the committee as a platform for a call to transform World War II into a world revolution. Many of his supporters argued against his appearance. When the committee learned the nature of the testimony Trotsky intended to present, it refused to hear him, and he was denied a visa to enter the United States. On hearing about it, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union immediately accused Trotsky of being in the pay of the oil magnates and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003c|p=482}}

After quarreling with Diego Rivera, Trotsky moved to his final residence on Avenida Viena in April 1939.Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2009) Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary New York: HarperCollins; {{ISBN|978-0060820688}}, pp. 171–73. On 27 February 1940, Trotsky wrote a document known as "Trotsky's Testament", in which he expressed his final thoughts and feelings for posterity. He was suffering from high blood pressure, and feared that he would suffer a cerebral haemorrhage. He would also reiterate his "unshaken faith in a communist future".[http://www.newyouth.com/content/view/169/68/ "Trotsky's Testament"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724015711/http://www.newyouth.com/content/view/169/68/ |date=24 July 2011}} (27 February 1940) Retrieved 12 June 2011. After forcefully denying Stalin's accusations that he had betrayed the working class, he thanked his friends and above all his wife, Natalia Sedova, for their loyal support:{{Blockquote|In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.

For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.
Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
L. Trotsky
27 February 1940
Coyoacán.}}

{{main|Assassination of Leon Trotsky}}

File:Trotsky last office.jpg

After a failed attempt to have Trotsky murdered in March 1939, Stalin assigned the overall organization of implementing the task to the NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov, who, in turn, co-opted Nahum Eitingon. According to Sudoplatov's Special Tasks, the NKVD proceeded to set up three NKVD agent networks to carry out the murder; these three networks were designed to operate entirely autonomously from the NKVD's hitherto-established spy networks in the U.S. and Mexico.{{cite book|author1=Pavel Sudoplatov|author2=Anatoli Sudoplatov|author3=Jerrold L. Schecter|author4=Leona P. Schecter|title=Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – A Soviet Spymaster|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|location=Boston|date=1994|isbn=978-0-316-77352-2|url=https://archive.org/details/specialtasksmemo00sudo}}

On 24 May 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his villa by armed assassins led by the NKVD agent Iosif Grigulevich and Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1940/05/25/archives/trotsky-injured-in-attack-on-home-leon-trotsky-and-home-in-mexico.html |title=Trotsky Injured in Attack on Home; Leon Trotsky and Home in Mexico Where He Was Attacked |date=25 May 1940 |newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=23 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180723214548/https://www.nytimes.com/1940/05/25/archives/trotsky-injured-in-attack-on-home-leon-trotsky-and-home-in-mexico.html |archive-date=23 July 2018 |url-status=live}} Trotsky's 14-year-old grandson, Vsevolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov (7 March 1926 – 16 June 2023), was shot in the foot. A young assistant and bodyguard of Trotsky, Robert Sheldon Harte, disappeared with the attackers and was later found murdered; it is probable that he was an accomplice who granted them access to the villa.{{sfn|Service|2010|p=485}} Trotsky's other guards fended off the attackers.[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19356256 Trotsky's grandson recalls ice pick killing] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180811142439/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19356256 |date=11 August 2018}}, BBC News, Mike Lanchin, 28 August 2012. Following the failed assassination attempt, Trotsky wrote an article titled "Stalin Seeks My Death" on 8 June 1940, in which he stated that another assassination attempt was certain.{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/stalin.htm |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalin Seeks My Death |date=8 June 1940 |website=Marxists.org |access-date=4 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123231842/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/stalin.htm |archive-date=23 November 2016 |url-status=live}}Christopher Weaver, "The Assassination of Trotsky" History Today (Oct 1971), pp. 697–707 online.

On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his study by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader, who used an ice axe{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/13/trotsky-ice-axe-murder-mexico-city |title=Bloodstained ice axe used to kill Trotsky emerges after decades in the shadows |first1=Julian |last1=Borger |first2=Jo |last2=Tuckman |date=13 September 2017 |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |issn=0261-3077 |access-date=25 May 2022}} as a weapon.{{cite book | author = Isaac Don Levine | title = The Mind of an Assassin | year = 1960 | publisher = New American Library | location = New York | isbn = 0-313-20972-3}}{{efn|The murder weapon was an ice axe (and not an ice pick—an awl-like bartender's tool); this misnomer has been explained as being occasioned by the assassin's use of the French-language term picolet—meaning the winter-mountaineering tool which resembles the pickaxes used in mining and other excavations, and by the multiple languages spoken by those involved in reporting the details; many history and reference books have confused the two tools.{{sfn|Conquest|1992|p=418}}}} The operation was known within the NKVD as "Operation Utka" (Operation Duck).

A mountaineering ice axe has a narrow end, called the pick, and a flat wide end called the adze. The adze of the axe wounded Trotsky, fracturing his parietal bone and penetrating {{cvt|7|cm}} into his brain.{{sfn|Soto-Pérez-de-Celis|2010}} The blow to his head was bungled and failed to kill Trotsky instantly. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him, which resulted in Mercader's hand being broken. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly beat Mercader to death, but Trotsky stopped them, laboriously stating that the assassin should be made to answer questions.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=466}} Trotsky was then taken to a hospital and operated on, surviving for more than a day, yet ultimately dying at the age of 60 on 21 August 1940 from blood loss and shock.Walsh, Lynn, [http://www.marxist.net/trotsky/life/life.htm The Assassination of Trotsky] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040622084335/http://www.marxist.net/trotsky/life/life.htm |date=22 June 2004}}, Militant International Review, Summer 1980; retrieved 29 July 2007. {{ISBN?}}{{sfn|Soto-Pérez-de-Celis|2010}} Mercader later testified at his trial:{{Blockquote|I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=466}}}}

According to James Cannon, the Trotskyist secretary of the American Socialist Workers Party, Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."Australian Associated Press, [http://150.theage.com.au/view_bestofarticle.asp?straction=update&inttype=1&intid=1188 Death of Leon Trotsky] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070902183410/http://150.theage.com.au/view_bestofarticle.asp?straction=update&inttype=1&intid=1188|date=2 September 2007}}, The Age 150th Anniversary edition reprint, 23 August 1940; retrieved 22 March 2007. Mercader was tried and convicted of the murder and spent the next 20 years in a Mexican prison. Stalin wrote that the assassin of Trotsky was a dangerous Trotskyist. This is why Mercader had no awards initially, though his mother was presented with the Order of Lenin for her own part of the operation. Ramón Mercader could not be either assassinated or freed from prison by the Soviets. When he was released from jail in 1960 and arrived in the USSR in 1961, Leonid Brezhnev signed a sentence to award Mercader the Order of Lenin, the Gold Star, and the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union "for the special deed". The KGB boss Alexander Shelepin presented all these awards to Ramón Mercader in person.{{cite web|url=https://oncubanews.com/en/world/ramon-mercader-mission-of-silence/|title=Ramón Mercader, mission of silence|website=Oncubanews.com|date=27 May 2019|access-date=29 January 2022}}Don Levine, Isaac (1960), The Mind of an Assassin, D1854 Signet Book, pp. 109–10, 173.

In the aftermath of Trotsky's assassination, an estimated 300,000 people had passed by his funeral casket in Mexico City over several days by 27 August 1940.{{sfn|North|2010|p=129}}{{cite book |last1=Mahoney |first1=Harry Thayer |title=The saga of Leon Trotsky: his clandestine operations and his assassination |date=1998 |publisher=Austin & Winfield |location=San Francisco |isbn=1572921242 |page=452}}{{cite book |last1=Garza |first1=Hedda |title=Leon Trotsky |date=1986 |publisher=Chelsea House |isbn=978-0-87754-444-9 |page=106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sk0jAQAAIAAJ&q=leon+trotsky+300+000+people+funeral |language=en}}

File:Portrait of Leon Trotsky.jpg

Trotsky was regarded as an outstanding orator,{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} preeminent

theoretician,{{cite book |last1=Traugott |first1=Mark |title=The Insurgent Barricade |date=2010 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-26632-2 |page=Chapter 7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yRXPdH7IZjEC&dq=trotsky+preeminent+theoretician&pg=PT299 |language=en}} and organiser that, in the view of historian Michael Kort, "forged and directed the Red Army".{{cite book |last1=Kort |first1=Michael |title=The Soviet colossus: history and aftermath |date=2010 |publisher=M. E. Sharpe |location=Armonk, N.Y. |isbn=978-0765623867 |page=176 |edition=7th}} He served as one of the original Politburo members in Lenin's government.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=185}}{{cite book |last1=Hough |first1=Jerry F. |last2=Fainsod |first2=Merle |title=How the Soviet Union is Governed |date=1979 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-41030-5 |page=125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38gMzMRXCpQC&pg=PA125 |language=en}} Biographer Isaac Deutscher considered him to be the "prompter of [the] planned economy and industrialization" during the early years of the Soviet Union.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 |date=1965 |publisher=New York, Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-394-70747-1 |page=468 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmed00isaa/page/468/mode/2up}}

Old Bolshevik Anatoly Lunacharsky viewed Trotsky as the best prepared among the Social Democratic leaders during the 1905–1907 revolution and stated that he "emerged from the revolution having acquired an enormous degree of popularity, whereas neither Lenin nor Martov had effectively gained any at all".{{cite book |last1=Lunacharsky |first1=Anatoly Vasilievich |title=Revolutionary Silhouettes |date=1968 |publisher=Hill and Wang |page=61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ptRoAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} His personal secretary and later a historian of mathematical logic, Jean van Heijenoort, considered him to be amicable, inquisitive and occasionally charming with new acquaintances during his final years in Mexico.{{cite book |last1=Heijenoort |first1=Jean Van |title=With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán |date=1978 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-80255-1 |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U81oAAAAMAAJ&q=With+Trotsky+in+Exile:+From+Prinkipo+to+Coyoac%C3%A1n |language=en}}

Historian Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as a "vivid, complex, multi-faceted personality in the gallery of world figures" who was remembered "with hatred and respect, anger and admiration" decades after his assassination in Mexico.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=xxxi}} Volkogonov considered Trotsky "far superior" to figures such as Molotov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, Zhdanov and "also superior to Stalin and Stalin knew it".{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitri |title=Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy |date=2000 |publisher=Phoenix |isbn=978-1-84212-026-2 |page=228 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7CQ3QAAACAAJ |language=en}}

Biographer Robert Service commented that he was a "volatile and untrustworthy",{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} "arrogant individual"{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} that impressed supporters even during the periods of "personal adversity in the 1920s and 1930s"{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} but failed to "coax and encourage them to the full".{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} Service stated that Trotsky gave the "minimum time to the Jewish question" and believed that "he ceased to be a Jew in any important sense because Marxism had burned out the fortuitous residues of his origins".{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=200–201}}

Political scientist August Nimtz regarded Trotsky to have had better foresight than both Marxist and some non-Marxist intellectual observers with his work The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936). Trotsky argued that the Stalinist regime was an "ephemeral phenomenon" and Nimtz believed this had later been proven with the Soviet collapse after 1989.{{cite book |last1=August Nimtz. Krieger, Joel (ed). |title=The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics |date=2013 |publisher=OUP USA |isbn=978-0-19-973859-5 |page=74 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r-dMAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+foresight+soviet+collapse&pg=RA1-PA74 |language=en}} Other scholars have similarly described Trotsky as having a prescient judgement of events such as the Stalinist alliance with the Kuomintang,{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=886-887}} the rise of Nazi Germany and The Spanish Civil War through his political writings and levels of military accuracy."Trotsky...maintained during the period of Hitler's rise to power so persistent and, for the most part, so prescient a commentary on the course of events in Germany as to deserve record".{{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |title=The twilight of Comintern 1930–1935 |date=1986 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-333-40455-3 |page=433}}{{cite book |last1=Martin |first1=James |title=Antonio Gramsci: Marxism, philosophy and politics |date=2002 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-21749-1 |pages=398 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1RWFNQ4E_ekC&dq=Trotsky+Spanish+civil+war+tactics&pg=PT10 |language=en}} Deutscher also referenced his "uncanny clear sightedness" in predicting the emergence of a single dictator who would "substitute himself" for the Central Committee, the party and the working class.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The prophet armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 |date=1954 |publisher=New York, Oxford University Press |page=522 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetarmedtrot01deut/page/522/mode/2up?q=uncanny+clear+sightedness}}

Trotsky was a Marxist intellectual.{{cite book |last1=Traverso |first1=Enzo |title=Revolution: An Intellectual History |date=19 October 2021 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-83976-333-5 |page=68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=de1DEAAAQBAJ |language=en}}{{cite journal |last1=Rees |first1=John |title=Trotsky and the Dialectic of History |journal=The Algebra of Revolution |date=1998 |pages=263–290 |doi=10.4324/9780203983171-12 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203983171-12/trotsky-dialectic-history-john-rees |publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780203983171 }}{{cite journal |last1=Blackledge |first1=Paul |title=Leon Trotsky's Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History |journal=Studies in East European Thought |date=2006 |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=1–31 |doi=10.1007/s11212-005-3677-z |jstor=20099925 |s2cid=85504744 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20099925}}{{cite book |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=A people's tragedy: a history of the Russian Revolution |date=1997 |location=New York, NY |publisher= Viking |isbn=978-0-670-85916-0 |page=795 |url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestragedyhi00fige/page/794/mode/2up}} Russian historian Vladimir Buldakov considered Trotsky, in some respect, a "typical representative" of "Russia's radical intelligentsia" who had "elements of bourgeois origin".{{cite book |last1=Buldakov |first1=Vladimir |title=Trotsky: October and its perspective in the Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=102}} He had a diverse and profound range of interests which exceeded that of other Bolshevik theoreticians such as Nikolai Bukharin.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|pp=168–169}}

Aside from his political activism, Trotsky also worked as a statistician and journalist.{{sfn|Renton|2004|p=6}}

He also had a notable love for literature and had a particular fondness for French novels.{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=1–10}} Trotsky and his second wife, Natalia Sedova enjoyed Viennese galleries and made frequent visits to museums such as the Louvre and the Tate Gallery across Europe to view specific art collections.{{sfn|Deutscher|2003a|p=152}} He also retained a personal interest in science which stemmed from his youth when he studied engineering, mathematics, and physics at the New Russian University in Odessa.{{sfn|Service|2009|p=327}}

File:Leon Trotsky with his second wife in 1932.jpg

His arch enemy, Stalin, even read and sometimes appreciated a great deal of his writings.{{cite book |last1=Roberts |first1=Geoffrey |title=Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books |date=2022 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-17904-0 |page=2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A96MzgEACAAJ |language=en}} According to Rubenstein, Stalin had even acknowledged that "after Lenin, Trotsky was the most popular figure in the country" at the end of the Civil War.{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=127}} He also recognized the prominent role of Trotsky during the October revolution in the 1917 Pravda editorial. Stalin himself wrote: "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".{{cite book |last1=Black |first1=Robert |title=Stalinism in Britain |date=1970 |publisher=New Park Publications |isbn=978-0-902030-02-2 |page=422 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ofAEAQAAIAAJ&q=stalin+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 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Marriott |first1=Emma |title=Bad History: How We Got the Past Wrong |date=30 September 2011 |publisher=Michael O'Mara Books |isbn=978-1-84317-777-7 |pages=50–100 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UivdAgAAQBAJ&dq=%22All+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.+The+principal+assistants+of+Comrade+Trotsky+were+Comrades+Antonov+and+Podvoisky.%22&pg=PT32 |language=en}}{{cite web |last1=Stalin |first1=Joseph |title=Telegram to V. I. Lenin (1917) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}

Upon his exile in 1929, eighteen of his close relatives remained in the Soviet Union and all were subjected to repressive measures with seven of his family members including his son Sergei Sedov, sister Olga Kameneva and brother Aleksandr Bronstein having been shot.{{cite book |editor1-last=Brotherstone |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dukes |editor2-first=Paul |title=The Trotsky reappraisal |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=Edinburgh |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=9}} He spoke several European languages "with a markedly Russian accent"{{sfn|Service|2009|p=200}} and identified as a cosmopolitan and internationalist.{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=200–205}} In the course of his life, Trotsky wrote about 30,000 documents, most of which are contained in various archives.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=xxx}} Deutscher stated that Trotsky wrote most of the Soviet's manifestos and resolutions, edited its Izvestia newspaper and also composed the oath of loyalty for the Red Army.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-85984-441-0 |pages=109, 472 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v_1G3ddOoYsC&dq=Politically,+Trotsky,+as+the+records+and+memoirs+of+participants+testify,+was+the+Soviet%27s+moving+spirit.+On+major+occasions+he+spoke+for+both+...+He+wrote+most+of+the+Soviet%27s+manifestoes+and+resolutions,+and+edited+its+Izvestya.&pg=PA109 |language=en}}

{{Main|Anti-Stalinist Left|The Stalin School of Falsification|Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence}}

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| quote = Had Trotsky won the struggle to succeed Lenin, the character of the Soviet regime would almost certainly have been substantially different, particularly in foreign policy, cultural policy, and the extent of terroristic repression. Trotsky's failure, however, seems to have been almost inevitable, considering his own qualities and the conditions of authoritarian rule by the Communist Party organization.

| source = —Historian Robert Vincent Daniels, 1993{{sfn|Daniels|1993|pp=945–946}}

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Trotsky lacked the political acumen to succeed against Stalin's machinations.{{sfn|Mccauley|2014|p=59}}{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Frank N. |title=The 20th Century O–Z: Dictionary of World Biography |date=13 May 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59369-7 |page=3728|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqvpudh8dasC&dq=trotsky+lacked+political&pg=PA3728 |language=en}} Lenin had encouraged Trotsky, in his absence, to challenge Stalin at the Twelfth Party Congress over the Georgian Affair but the latter relented.{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=199 |language=en}} Historian Martin McCauley commented that Trotsky "displayed a lamentable lack of political judgement" on multiple occasions such as declining Lenin's proposal to become deputy chairman of Sovnarkom, failing to build a power base before forming a bloc with Lenin against the Orgburo and not immediately recognising that a triumvirate had been established to prevent his succession.{{sfn|Mccauley|2014|p=59}} Biographer Joshua Rubenstein differed in his interpretation and attributed Trotsky's decision to decline Lenin's proposal because he believed the position had "little authority of its own" and overlapped with other government and party officials.{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=127}} Deutscher believed he had underestimated Stalin's cunning, ruthlessness, and tenacity on several occasions.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929–1940 |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-85984-451-9 |page=249 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6JfWUSEacRgC&dq=he+underrated+once+again+Stalin%27s+cunning%2C+tenacity&pg=PA249 |language=en}}

File:SovietDelegatesAtBrestLitovsk.jpg with the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, 1917]]

His enmity with Stalin developed during the Civil War with the latter's disregard of military specialists whom Trotsky considered indispensable for the success of the Red Army. In Tsaritsyn, Stalin ordered the imprisonment of several specialists on a barge in the Volga river and oversaw the sinking of the floating prison in which the officers perished.{{cite book |last1=Brackman |first1=Roman |title=The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life |date=23 November 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-75840-0 |page=129 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PY2RAgAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+trotsky+military+specialist&pg=PA129 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 |date=1959 |location=London; New York |publisher= Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-501094-7 |page=76 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmedtr0000unse/page/76/mode/1up?q=Tsaritsyn+battles+}} Another instance was when Stalin disobeyed Trotsky's order to march on Warsaw which contributed to the defeat of the Red Army at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920.{{cite book |last1=Dziewanowski |first1=M. K. |title=Russia in the twentieth century |date=2003 |publisher=Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-097852-3 |page=157 |url=https://archive.org/details/russiaintwentiet0000dzie/page/157/mode/1up?view=theater&q=befell+}}{{cite book |last1=Brackman |first1=Roman |title=The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life |date=23 November 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-75840-0 |page=135 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PY2RAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+stalin+battle+of+warsaw&pg=PA135 |language=en}} Bazhanov also claimed that Stalin's antagonism towards Trotsky stemmed from the fact that he was Jewish and that the former would refuse to obey military orders during the Russian Civil War.{{cite book |last1=Bazhanov |first1=Boris |last2=Doyle |first2=David W. |title=Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin |date=1990 |publisher=Ohio University Press |isbn=978-0-8214-0948-0 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0_ANAQAAMAAJ |language=en}} According to Rogovin, Trotsky received hundreds of letters reporting the use of anti-semitic methods during the inter-party struggle between Stalin and the United Opposition.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=440–441 |language=en}}

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| quote = "With all the greater frankness can I state how, in my view, the Soviet government should act in case of a fascist upheaval in Germany. In their place, I would, at the very moment of receiving telegraphic news of this event, sign a mobilisation order calling up several age groups. In the face of a mortal enemy, when the logic of the situation points to inevitable war, it would be irresponsible and unpardonable to give that enemy time to establish himself, to consolidate his positions, to conclude alliances… and to work out the plan to attack.."

| source = Trotsky describing the military measures he would have taken in place of Stalin to counter the rise of Nazi Germany in 1932.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=1192–1193}}

}}

Rubenstein regarded Trotsky's position among the Soviet elites as largely dependent on Lenin. Rubenstein also added that he had an image of an outsider within party circles as he had previously been an "outspoken critic of Lenin".{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=126}} Conversely, Volkongov stated that Trotsky had the support of many party intellectuals but this was overshadowed by the huge apparatus which included the GPU and the party cadres who were at the disposal of Stalin.{{sfnm|1a1=Volkogonov|1y=1996|1p=284}}

Trotsky himself ascribed his political defeat to external, objective conditions rather than the individual qualities of Stalin. He specifically argued that the failed series of international insurrections as seen in Bulgaria in 1923 and China in 1927 had diminished the prospect of world socialism and demoralised the Russian working class which in turn strengthened the growth of an internal, Soviet bureaucracy.{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going? |date=1991 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-0-929087-48-1 |pages=85–98 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hiCYS9Z3lDoC&q=trotsky+defeat+bureaucracy |language=en}} Russian historian Vadim Rogovin also remarked that Trotsky, in the 1930s, did not abandon hope for the spread of the revolution. Rogovin argued that Trotsky's prognosis of world events was plausible as a majority of European countries such as Germany, France, and especially Spain, "went through a period of revolutionary crisis".{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |page=381 |language=en}} Although, Daniels contended that Trotsky would have in reality been no more prepared than other Bolshevik figures to risk war or the loss of trade opportunities despite his support for world revolution.{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=195 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}

{{Main|Leninism}}

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| footer = Lenin and Trotsky (both photographed in 1920) were viewed as the leading figures in the first Soviet government

}}

His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate.{{sfnm|Swain|2014b|1pp=1–10|North|2010|2pp=52–90}} Historian Paul Le Blanc and philosopher Michael Lowy described Lenin and Trotsky as the "widely leading figures in the Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as well as in the final years of the rising world communist movement".{{cite book |last1=Rockmore |first1=Tom |last2=Levine |first2=Norman |title=The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy |date=19 December 2018 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-137-51650-3 |pages=231–255 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0nWADwAAQBAJ |language=en}}

However, Swain viewed the notion that Trotsky was Lenin's natural heir a myth and cited several scholars such as Erik Van Rees, James White and Richard B.Day who Swain claimed had challenged the traditional characterization of their relationship.{{sfnm|Swain|2014b|1pp=1–10}}

Le Blanc has disputed Swain's representation of Trotsky and referenced various historians which included E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny and W. Bruce Lincoln across different generations. According to Le Blanc, these historians on balance had tilted "toward the view that Lenin's desired "heir" was collective responsibility in which Trotsky placed an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)".{{cite book |last1=Blanc |first1=Paul Le |title=Leon Trotsky |date=15 April 2015 |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=978-1-78023-471-7|pages=1–30|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VMCkCQAAQBAJ&dq=Paul+le+blanc+swain+heir&pg=PT14 |language=en}}

Historian Roy Medvedev noted the close association of Trotsky and Lenin in the Soviet republic throughout the period of 1921–24. Medvedev mentioned a number of public commendations such as "greetings in honour of comrades Lenin and Trotsky were announced at many rallies and meetings, and portraits of Lenin and Trotsky hung on the walls of many Soviet and party institutions".{{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roj Aleksandrovič |title=Let history judge: the origins and consequences of Stalinism |date=1989 |publisher=Columbia Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-231-06351-7 |page=109 |edition=Rev. and expanded}}

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.|source=—Lenin's testament; 1923{{sfn|Lewin|2005|p=80}}{{cite book |last1=Kuromiya |first1=Hiroaki |title=Stalin |date=16 August 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86780-7 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BRV4AAAAQBAJ&dq=Comrade+Trotsky,+on+the+other+hand,+as+his+struggle+against+the+C.C.+on+the+question+of+the+People%27s+Commissariat+of+Communications+has+already+proved,+is+distinguished+not+only+by+outstanding+ability.+He+is+personally+perhaps+the+most+capable+man+in+the+present+C.C.,+but+he+has+displayed+excessive+self-assurance+and+shown+excessive+preoccupation+with+the+purely+administrative+side+of+the+work.&pg=PA60 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Lenin |first1=Vladimir Ilʹich |title=Selected Works in Three Volumes |date=1970 |publisher=Progress Publishers |isbn=978-0-7178-0300-2 |page=682 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gh4KAQAAIAAJ&q=Comrade+Trotsky,+on+the+other+hand,+as+his+struggle+against+the+C.C.+on+the+question+of+the+People%27s+Commissariat+of+Communications+has+already+proved,+is+distinguished+not+only+by+outstanding+ability.+He+is+personally+perhaps+the+most+capable+man+in+the+present+C.C.,+but+he+has+displayed+excessive+self-assurance+and+shown+excessive+preoccupation+with+the+purely+administrative+side+of+the+work. |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Moss |first1=Walter G. |title=A History Of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855 |date=1 October 2004 |publisher=Anthem Press |isbn=978-0-85728-739-7 |pages=237–238 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMwdWFtgV0QC&dq=Comrade+Trotsky,+on+the+other+hand,+as+his+struggle+against+the+C.C.+on+the+question+of+the+People%27s+Commissariat+of+Communications+has+already+proved,+is+distinguished+not+only+by+outstanding+ability.+He+is+personally+perhaps+the+most+capable+man+in+the+present+C.C.,+but+he+has+displayed+excessive+self-assurance+and+shown+excessive+preoccupation+with+the+purely+administrative+side+of+the+work.&pg=PA238 |language=en}} Most historians consider the document to be an accurate reflection of Lenin's views.{{cite book |last1=Suny |first1=Ronald |title=Red Flag Wounded |date=25 August 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78873-074-7 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I4XzDwAAQBAJ&dq=Few+other+scholars+doubt+the+authorship+of+the+document,+which+accurately+reflected+Lenin%E2%80%99s+views,+nor+was+it+questioned+at+the+time+it+was+written+and+debated+in+high+party+circles.+Kotkin%E2%80%99s+interpretation,+fascinating+as+it+is,+relies+on+conjecture+rather+than+evidence&pg=PA59 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Edele |first1=Mark |title=Debates on Stalinism |date=11 June 2020 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-4895-7 |pages=137–239 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1-rqDwAAQBAJ&dq=lenin+testament+forgery&pg=PT126 |language=en}}}}

Trotsky was generally viewed as Lenin's choice as a successor in 1923.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-85984-446-5 |pages=77–78 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgubj5z1XUcC&dq=lenin+choice+successor+trotsky&pg=PA78 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Schapiro |first1=Leonard |title=The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union |date=1967 |publisher=Hutchinson |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kHwKAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} He had been nominated to be Lenin's deputy in 1922 and 1923 as well as expected to assume responsibility over the Council of National Economy or Gosplan.{{cite book |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |title=Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition |date=27 August 2013 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-16929-4 |page=53 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RaYzAAAAQBAJ&dq=Lenin+Trotsky+chairman+gosplan+1923&pg=PA53 |language=en}} Lenin and Trotsky were also the only Soviet leaders elected honorary presidents of the Communist International.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=605}} Prior to the introduction of the factional ban in 1921, due to intra-party controversies and the wider conflict of the Civil War, Trotsky had a considerable following among the party activists and members of the Central Committee against the narrow majority supporting Lenin. His supporters also controlled the newly established Orgburo and the Party Secretariat before the appointment of Stalin as General Secretary.{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=162 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Reiman|first1=Michal |title=Trotsky and the struggle for "Lenin's heritage". Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |pages=42–52}} According to Mccauley, Lenin had revealed that he planned to retire to the Central Committee and made an arrangement for Trotsky to speak on his behalf as his natural successor which in turn triggered the formation of the troika.{{sfn|Mccauley|2014|p=52}} Historian Orlando Figes has drawn focus to the increasing alignment between Lenin and Trotsky in 1923. He cited Lenin's testament which was critical of Stalin and the bureaucracy along with their shared position on foreign trade, party reform and the Georgian affair.{{cite book |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=A people's tragedy: a history of the Russian Revolution |date=1997 |location=New York, NY |publisher= Viking |isbn=978-0-670-85916-0 |pages=796–801 |url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestragedyhi00fige/page/796/mode/2up}}

Similarly, Soviet historian Victor Danilov believed that Lenin's proposed appointment of Trotsky as deputy "would have made him in effect Lenin's successor". Danilov also cited Politburo Secretary Bazhanov's notes of a concluding speech delivered by Trotsky in 1923 to the wider party membership. Trotsky explained his decision to decline the proposed position of Lenin's chief deputy due to concerns about his "Jewish origins" which could accentuate anti-semitic attitudes towards the Soviet Union.{{cite journal |last1=Danilov |first1=Victor |last2=Porter |first2=Cathy |title=We Are Starting to Learn about Trotsky |journal=History Workshop |date=1990 |issue=29 |pages=136–146 |jstor=4288968 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288968 |issn=0309-2984}}{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |page=438 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC&dq=Victor+Danilov+Trotsky&pg=PA438 |language=en}} Mccauley stated that Trotsky would "almost certainly" have become the successor had Lenin succumbed to his first stroke in 1922.{{sfn|Mccauley|2014|p=51}} Deutscher noted that Zinoviev had been Lenin's closest discipline rather than Trotsky between 1907 and 1917. However, Zinoviev's opposition to the October revolution had strained his relations with Lenin.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 |date=1959 |location=London; New York |publisher= Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-501094-7 |pages=78–79 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmedtr0000unse/page/76/mode/1up?q=Tsaritsyn+battles+}}

Opponents such as Winston Churchill even argued that "Lenin [had] indeed regarded Trotsky as his political heir" and sought to protect him before his passing in 1924. In his autobiography, My Life, Trotsky maintained that Lenin had intended for him to be his successor as Chairman of the Soviet Union with his proposed appointment as deputy. He explained that this process would have begun after their alliance in 1923 with the formation of a commission to mitigate the growth of the state bureaucracy which in turn would have facilitated the conditions for his succession in the party.{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography |date=5 April 2012 |publisher=Courier Corporation |isbn=978-0-486-12340-0 |page=479 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F4fqc7eZbjUC&dq=as+would+allow+me+to+become+lenin%27s+deputy+and+as+he+intended+his+successor+to+the+post+of+chairman+of+the+soviet+of+people%27s+commissaries&pg=PA479 |language=en}}

{{Main|Soviet Red Army|Petrograd Soviet|The Fourth International|Leon Trotsky bibliography}}

File:Trotsky grave.jpg, where his ashes are buried]]

In 1923, the historic town of Gatchina in Petrograd Governorate (now Leningrad Oblast) was renamed Trotsk ({{langx|ru|Троцк}}) by the Soviet authorities after Lev Trotsky.{{cite web|url=http://classif.spb.ru/sprav/np_lo/4_Gatch_uezd.htm|script-title=ru:Гатчинский уезд (февраль 1923 г. – август 1927 г.)|publisher=Система классификаторов исполнительных органов государственной власти Санкт-Петербурга|language=ru|access-date=27 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304094855/http://classif.spb.ru/sprav/np_lo/4_Gatch_uezd.htm|archive-date=4 March 2016|url-status=dead}} After Joseph Stalin became General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (b), Trotsky was gradually exiled, and the town was renamed Krasnogvardeysk ({{lang|ru|Красногварде́йск}}, Red Guard City) in 1929. In 1944, to increase the morale of Russian troops, the town's historic name was restored.{{cite web|url=http://classif.spb.ru/sprav/np_lo/43_Trotsky_Krasnofvardeysky_Gatchinsky_rayon.htm|script-title=ru:Троцкий район (август 1927 г. – август 1929 г.), Красногвардейский район (август 1929 г. – январь 1944 г.), Гатчинский район (январь 1944 г.)|publisher=Система классификаторов исполнительных органов государственной власти Санкт-Петербурга|language=ru|access-date=27 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203001008/http://classif.spb.ru/sprav/np_lo/43_Trotsky_Krasnofvardeysky_Gatchinsky_rayon.htm|archive-date=3 December 2013|url-status=dead}}

Trotsky's house in Coyoacán has been preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day he was assassinated there, and is now the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico City, run by a board which included his grandson Esteban Volkov (1926–2023).{{cite news |last1=Pérez |first1=David Marcial |title=Muere a los 97 años Esteban Volkov, nieto y guardián de la memoria de León Trotsky |trans-title=Esteban Volkov, grandson and guardian of Leon Trotsky's memory, dies at 97 |url=https://elpais.com/mexico/2023-06-17/muere-a-los-97-anos-esteban-volkov-nieto-y-guardian-de-la-memoria-de-leon-trotsky.html |access-date=18 June 2023 |work=El País México |date=17 June 2023 |language=es-MX}} Trotsky's grave is located on its grounds. The foundation "International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum" has been organized to raise funds to improve the museum further.

Shortly before his assassination, Trotsky agreed to sell the bulk of the papers he still had to Harvard University. After his assassination, his widow, Natalya Sedova collected his remaining papers and shipped them to Harvard, and in the years following, Harvard managed to collect additional papers that had been hidden from both Soviet and Nazi agents in Europe.Gerald M. Rosberg, [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1967/7/3/leon-trotskys-personal-papers-pbibn-the/ "Leon Trotsky's Personal Papers"], The Harvard Crimson, 3 July 1967. These papers now occupy {{convert|65|ft|m}} of shelf space in Harvard's Houghton Library.[https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/6706 Leon Trotsky exile papers], MS Russ 13.1 in the Houghton Library.

Trotsky was never rehabilitated during the rule of the Soviet government, despite the de-Stalinization-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges. His son, Sergei Sedov, who died in 1937, was rehabilitated in 1988, as was Nikolai Bukharin. Beginning in 1989, Trotsky's books, forbidden until 1987, were published in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky was rehabilitated on 16 June 2001 by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation (Certificates of Rehabilitation No. 13/2182-90, No. 13-2200-99 in Archives Research Center "Memorial").[http://memorial-nic.org/iofe/3.html В. В. Иофе. Осмысление Гулага.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110821184248/http://memorial-nic.org/iofe/3.html |date=21 August 2011}} НИЦ «Мемориал»

Historian Harold Shukman assessed the conflicting perspectives on Trotsky's legacy in the Soviet Union and the Western world. He also commented on the lack of a balanced view. Specifically, he stated:

Trotsky's legacy, unlike those of Stalin and Lenin, had long been submerged and obliterated as a topic of debate, and his place in Soviet history books had correspondingly diminished to one of no importance. For Western readers, however, Trotsky has always been one of the most enigmatic and powerful personalities of the Russian revolution, a Mephistophelian figure whose life ended in an appropriately dramatic way.{{cite book |last=Volkogonov |first=Dmitri |date=18 June 2008 |others=Harold Shukman (ed. and trans.) |title=Trotsky: Eternal Revolutionary |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4391-0573-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/trotskyeternalre0000volk/page/n27/mode/2up xxi] (Preface) |url=https://archive.org/details/trotskyeternalre0000volk/page/n27/mode/2up |language=en}}

Political theorist David North attributed his diminished influence and historical role to the "virtually unlimited resources of the Soviet regime, and of Stalinist-run parties throughout the world, [which] were devoted to blackguarding Trotsky as an anti-Soviet saboteur, terrorist and fascist agent. Within the Soviet Union, his political co-thinkers, past and present, were ruthlessly exterminated".{{sfn|North|2010|pp=160–161}} North was also critical of the biographical literature on Trotsky's legacy written by some historians such as Ian Thatcher, Geoffrey Swain and Robert Service. He viewed these recent trends in historiography as "manifestations of the confluence of neo-Stalinist falsification and traditional Anglo-American anti-Communism".{{sfn|North|2010|pp=127}}

File:Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.4212 (17086177105).jpg holding a placard of Trotsky in 1968]]

In 2018, John Kelly wrote that "almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyite organisations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America". However, he also argued that no Trotskyite group had ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass political party.{{cite book |last1=Kelly |first1=John |title=Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain |date=14 March 2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-36894-6 |page=iii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0mJRDwAAQBAJ&q=john+kelly+57+countries |language=en}}

On the other hand, British historian and socialist Christian Høgsbjerg believed that academic literature on Trotskyism had minimised its historical role in building wider social movements. Høgsbjerg stressed the key role of British Trotskyists in various movements such as the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (1966–71), the Anti-Nazi League (1977–81), the Anti Poll Tax Federation (1989–91) and the Stop the War Coalition (2001).{{cite journal |last1=Høgsbjerg |first1=Christian |title=Trotskyology: A review of John Kelly, Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain |journal=International Socialism |date=18 October 2018 |issue=160 |url=https://isj.org.uk/trotskyology/}}

Outside of the Fourth International, Trotsky has also been admired by a range of figures across intellectual, military, political and cultural fields including philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,{{cite book |last1=Birchall |first1=Ian H. |title=Sartre Against Stalinism |date=2004 |publisher=Berghahn Books |isbn=978-1-57181-621-4 |page=86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p0FE2XWvFRcC |language=en}} military general Mikhail Tukhachevsky,{{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy Aleksandrovich |title=On Stalin and Stalinism |date=1979 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-215842-0 |page=53 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=82JpAAAAMAAJ&q=Tukhachevsky%20admired%20Trotsky |language=en}} Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg,{{cite book |last1=Luxemburg |first1=Rosa |title=The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume IV: Political Writings 2, On Revolution (1906-1909) |date=15 March 2022 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78873-810-1 |page=xviii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YSIhEAAAQBAJ&dq=she+admired+trotskyist&pg=PR28 |language=en}} economist Paul Sweezy,{{cite book |last1=Saccarelli |first1=Emanuele |title=Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition |date=28 February 2008 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-89980-6 |page=242 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8GSAgAAQBAJ&dq=paul+sweezy+trotsky&pg=PA242 |language=en}} philosopher John Dewey,{{cite book |last1=Gregson |first1=John |title=Marxism, Ethics and Politics: The Work of Alasdair MacIntyre |date=11 December 2018 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-030-03371-2 |page=186 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=04J-DwAAQBAJ&dq=Admirer+of+Trotsky&pg=PA186 |language=en}} historian A.J.P Taylor,{{cite book |last1=Roy |first1=James Charles |title=All the World at War: People and Places, 1914–1918 |date=31 May 2024 |publisher=Pen and Sword Military |isbn=978-1-3990-6034-9 |pages=1–672 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vizaEAAAQBAJ&dq=Admirer+of+Trotsky&pg=PT760 |language=en}} psychoanalyst Erich Fromm,{{cite book |last1=Wilde |first1=Lawrence |title=Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity |date=30 April 2016 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-137-07511-6 |page=121 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OWoYDAAAQBAJ&dq=admiration+of+trotsky&pg=PA121 |language=en}} philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,{{cite book |last1=Saccarelli |first1=Emanuele |title=Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition |date=28 February 2008 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-89980-6 |page=114 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8GSAgAAQBAJ&dq=philosopher+admire+trotsky&pg=PA114 |language=en}} literary critic Edmund Wilson,{{cite book |last1=Wald |first1=Alan M. |title=The New York Intellectuals, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s |date=10 October 2017 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-3595-8 |page=157 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bDM5DwAAQBAJ |language=en}} painter Diego Rivera,{{cite book |last1=Feferman |first1=Anita Burdman |title=From Trotsky to Gödel: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort |date=28 January 2022 |publisher=CRC Press |isbn=978-1-000-11079-1 |page=123 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yu1bEAAAQBAJ |language=en}} political leader Martin Tranmæl{{cite book |last1=Hoidal |first1=Oddvar |title=Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935–1937 |date=1 October 2013 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-5806-5 |page=298 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8f_-DwAAQBAJ&dq=admired+trotsky&pg=PA298 |language=en}} and literary writer Lu Xun.{{cite journal |last1=Benton |first1=Gregor |title=Lu Xun and Leon Trotsky |website=www.historicalmaterialism.org |date=24 January 2020 |url=https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/book-review/lu-xun-and-leon-trotsky}}

File:Lev Trotsky.jpg

In modern historiography, Trotsky's legacy has evoked a range of conflicting and diverse interpretations.{{cite book |last1=Blanc |first1=Paul Le |title=Leon Trotsky |date=15 April 2015 |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=978-1-78023-471-7 |pages=1–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VMCkCQAAQBAJ&q=paul+le+blanc+trotsky |language=en}} Prior to the October Revolution, Trotsky had been part of an old radical democracy which included both Left Mensheviks and Left Bolsheviks.{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=181 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}} By 1917, Bolshevik figures such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky and Dmitry Manuilsky held him in comparable stature with Lenin; with the October insurrection having been carried through in accordance with Trotsky's plan of action.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1283|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}} He was viewed by contemporaries in the initial Soviet period and later historians as the hero of the revolution.{{sfnm|1a1=Volkogonov|1y=1996|1p=272|2a1=Rubenstein|2y=2011a|2p=96|3a1=Thatcher|3y=2003|3pp=100-105|4a1=Carr|4y=1978|4pp=1-167|5a1=Deutscher|5y=2015a|5pp=310,629|6a1=Patenaude|6y=2010b|6pp=2}}

In the Soviet Union, his reputation gradually deteriorated over the course of the succession struggle as his views were presented as sectarian and anti-Leninist.{{cite book |last1=Thatcher |first1=Ian D. |title=Trotsky |date=27 June 2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-57214-4 |pages=1–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC&q=thatcher+trotsky |language=en}} Throughout the Stalin era, his name and image would be erased from history books, museums and films. At the same time, Trotsky became a convenient bogeyman for Soviet affairs and was associated with ideological heresy.{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=208 |language=en}} The works of Trotsky also remained banned until the Gorbachev era.{{cite book |last1=Marples |first1=David R. |title=Russia in the Twentieth Century: The quest for stability |date=14 January 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86228-4 |page=114 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hCSsAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+gorbachev+banned&pg=PA114 |language=en}} Following the de-Stalinization period, later generations of Soviet and Russian historians would reevaluate his role in the history of the revolution with varying interpretations.

Scholarly consensus holds Trotsky to have demonstrated remarkable leadership of the Red Army during the Civil War.{{cite book |last1=Selbin |first1=Eric |title=Modern Latin American Revolutions |date=7 February 2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-429-97459-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AvZKDwAAQBAJ&dq=The+scholarly+consensus+on+Trotsky%27s+handling+of+the+Red+Army+from+1918+to+1920+is+summed+up+in+Rosenberg+and+Young%27s+description+of+his+%22remarkable+leadership%22%3A+Rosenberg+and+Young%2C+Transforming+Russia+and+China%2C+p.+63.&pg=PT290 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Martel |first1=William C. |title=Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy |date=12 January 2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-08206-9 |page=133 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ZvWBQAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+military+theories&pg=PA133 |language=en}} He had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his role in the Red Army such as organising the defence of Petrograd when other members of the Bolshevik leadership were prepared to abandon the former capital.{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=197 |language=en}} Swain asserted that the Bolsheviks would certainly have lost the Civil War within a single year without Trotsky as leader of the Red Army.{{cite book |last1=Swain |first1=Geoffrey |title=Trotsky |date=22 May 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86876-7 |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P-ahAwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+less+terrorised+society&pg=PA3 |language=en}}

A number of scholars and Western socialists have argued that Trotsky represented a more democratic alternative to Stalin with particular emphasis drawn to his activities in the pre-Civil War period and as leader of the Left Opposition.{{sfnm|1a1= Daniels|1y=2008b|1pp=189-198|2a1=Barnett|2y=2013b|2p=101|3a1=Rogovin|3y=2021b|3pp=1-15,497|4a1=Day|4y=1990|4pp=159-188|5a1=Deutscher|5y=2015a|5pp=674-676, 1558}} Deutscher described Trotsky as the "Soviet's moving spirit" in 1905 and highlighted his representation of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and the rest of the Soviets on major occasions.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=6 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-560-0 |pages=141, 674–676 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yN-QEAAAQBAJ |language=en}} Trotsky had also proposed the election of a new Soviet presidium with other socialist parties on the basis of proportional representation in September 1917.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=293 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}} Rogovin argued that the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, represented a "real alternative to Stalinism" and this served as the primary motive of Stalin's Great Terror campaign.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=1–15 |language=en}} Daniels stated that the most distinctive features of Stalin's rule such as his campaigns against "bourgeois experts" as seen with "the Shakhty trials, his contemptuous anti-intellectualism and the dogmatization of Marxism, the purges—run totally counter to Trotsky's thought".{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=189 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}

Conversely, figures such as Volkogonov have strongly criticised his defence of the Red Terror and dictatorship of the proletariat.{{sfn|Volkogonov|1996|p=xxiii}} Service argued that his "ideas and practices laid several foundation stones for the erection of the Stalinist political, economic, social and even cultural edifice".{{sfn|Service|2009|pp=3}} Cherniaev considered Trotsky to be partly responsible for the establishment of a one-party, authoritarian state and initiating several military practices such as summary executions which later became standard practice during the Stalinist era. Thatcher cited his defence of terror in his work, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, but also acknowledged that Trotsky was capable of leniency and had personally urged that White army deserters be treated with understanding.{{cite book |last1=Thatcher |first1=Ian D. |title=Trotsky |date=27 June 2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-57214-4 |page=102 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC&dq=trotsky+leniency+white+soldiers&pg=PT91 |language=en}}

File:Trotsky Bust (by Duncan Ferguson) with Photos - Leon Trotsky Museum - Coyoacan - Mexico City - Mexico (15517085251).jpg in Mexico City, Mexico]]

Other writers believe that Trotsky has been maligned and caricatured as a historical figure which necessitated a historical reappraisal.{{cite book |last1=Dukes|first1=Paul |title="Introductory essay" in The Trotsky Reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |pages=1–20}} French socialist Pierre Broue has criticised Western representations of Trotsky's role in the Kronstadt rebellion which he argued had falsely presented Trotsky as the principal figure that led and was responsible for the repression. He also added that military tribunals and executions for desertions were a common feature of every war and not exclusive to the actions of the Red Army under Trotsky.{{cite book |last1=Broue. |first1=Pierre |title=Trotsky: a biographer's problems in The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |pages=19, 20}} Historian Betrand Patenaude regarded Service's characterisation of Trotsky as a "mass murderer and a terrorist" to be reflective of a wider attempt to discredit Trotsky as a historical figure and noted his work featured several inaccuracies and distortions of the historical record.{{cite journal |last1=Patenaude |first1=Bertrand M. |title=Review of Trotsky: A Biography; In Defense of Leon Trotsky |journal=The American Historical Review |date=2011 |volume=116 |issue=3 |pages=900–902 |doi=10.1086/ahr.116.3.900 |jstor=23308381 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23308381 |issn=0002-8762}}

Various historians have credited Trotsky and the Left Opposition with shifting the Soviet economic orientation from the NEP policy towards a planned economy through their proposals for mass industrialization.{{sfnm|1a1=Carr|1a2=Davies|1y=1971|1p=199|2a1=Phillips|2y=2000|2p=23|3a1=Fitzpatrick|3y=2008|3p=110|4a1=Payne|4a2=Phillips|4y=2013|4p=1936|5a1=McDermott|5y=2006|5p=61|6a1=Lee|6y=2005|6p=8|7a1=Deutscher|7y=2003b|7p=468}} Trotsky had delivered a joint report to the April Plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 which proposed a program for national industrialization and the replacement of annual plans with five-year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority which was controlled by the troika and derided by Stalin at the time.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |page=358 |language=en}} The eventual adoption of the five year plans in 1928 would serve as the basis for Soviet modernization.{{cite book |last1=Engerman |first1=David C. |title=Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development |date=15 January 2004 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-27241-5 |page=153 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A7zFEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+1928+five+year+plan+soviet+modernization&pg=PA153 |language=en}}

Several scholars have regarded his historical writings on the Soviet bureaucracy as having a considerable influence in shaping the receptive attitudes of later Marxists and many non-Marxists.{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=1–15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&q=trotsky+and+the+problem+of+soviet+bureaucracy |language=en}} Trotsky associated bureaucratism with authoritarianism, excessive centralism and conservatism. Political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz argued that Trotsky had done more than any other political figure to "show the historical and social roots of Stalinism" as a bureaucratic system. British cybernetician Stafford Beer who worked on a decentralized form of economic planning, Project Cybersyn from 1970 to 1973, was reported to have read and been influenced by Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy."Beer also read Trotsky and found inspiration in Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy".{{cite book |last1=Medina |first1=Eden |title=Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-52596-1 |page=292 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VBC3AgAAQBAJ&dq=Stafford+beer+Trotsky&pg=PA292 |language=en}} Professional historians have noted the literary value of his social analysis with works such as 1905 and The History of the Russian Revolution for wider historiography.{{cite journal |last1=Wolfe |first1=Bertram D. |title=Leon Trotsky as Historian |journal=Slavic Review |date=1961 |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=495–502 |doi=10.2307/3000510 |jstor=3000510 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3000510}}{{cite journal |last1=White |first1=James D. |title=Leon Trotsky and Soviet Historiography of the Russian Revolution (1918–1931) |journal=Revolutionary Russia |date=3 July 2021 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=276–295 |doi=10.1080/09546545.2021.1983938 |language=en|doi-access=free }}

{{Main|Trotskyism|Socialist democracy|Soviet democracy|}}

File:Trotsky reading The Militant, circa 1936.jpg, a socialist newsweekly, circa 1936]]

Trotsky considered himself to be a "Bolshevik-Leninist",{{cite web | author = Leon Trotsky | title = To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew | date = July 1933 | url = https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330715.htm | website = Marxists Internet Archive}} arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. He viewed himself as an advocate of orthodox Marxism.{{sfn|Cox|1992|p=84}} Trotsky also adhered to scientific socialism and viewed this as a conscious expression of historical processes.{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=In Defence of Marxism |date=25 March 2019 |publisher=Wellred Publications |isbn=978-1-913026-03-5 |page=138 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r52JwwEACAAJ |language=en}}

His politics differed in some aspects from those of Stalin or Mao Zedong, most importantly in his rejection of the theory of "socialism in one country" and his declaring of the need for an international "permanent revolution".

In the post-Leninist struggle, Trotsky and the Left-United Opposition had advocated for a programme of rapid industrialization, voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of a worker's democracy.{{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as Alternative |date=5 May 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78960-701-7 |pages=32–66 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVmcEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+as+alternative+mandel&pg=PT80 |language=en}}{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}

In 1936, Trotsky called for the restoration of the right of criticism in areas such as economic matters, the revitalization of trade unions and free elections of the Soviet parties.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1348|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going? |date=1991 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-0-929087-48-1 |page=218 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hiCYS9Z3lDoC |language=en}} In the Transitional Program, which was drafted in 1938 during the founding congress of the Fourth International, Trotsky reiterated the need for political pluralism and worker's control of production.{{cite book |last1=Wiles |first1=Peter |title=The Soviet Economy on the Brink of Reform: Essays in Honor of Alec Nove |date=14 June 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-88190-5 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mHAIEQAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+legalization+of+soviet+parties+worker+control+of+production&pg=PA31 |language=en}}

Supporters of the Fourth International echo Trotsky's opposition to Stalinist totalitarianism, advocating political revolution and arguing that socialism cannot sustain itself without democracy.{{sfn|Ree|1998}}

{{Main|Economic planning|Planned economy|Left Opposition|The Transitional Program}}

File:Graph illustrating the Scissors Crisis.png

Trotsky was an early proponent of economic planning since 1923 and favored an accelerated pace of industrialization.{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=88–113 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA135 |language=en}} In 1921, he had also been a prominent supporter of Gosplan as a newly established body and called for the strengthening of its formal responsibilities to support a balanced level of economic reconstruction after the Civil War.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=587}} Trotsky also urged economic decentralisation between the state, oblast regions and factories to counter structural inefficiency and the problem of bureaucracy.{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=105–106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+decentralized+planning&pg=PA106 |language=en}}

Originally, he had proposed the principles underlying the N.E.P. in 1920 to the Politburo to mitigate urgent economic matters arising from war communism. He would later reproach Lenin privately about the delayed government response in 1921-1922.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=507-508,585}}{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=161}} However, his position differed from the majority of Soviet leaders at the time who fully supported the New Economic policy.{{cite book |last1=Day |first1=Richard B. |title=Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation |date=1973 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-52436-0 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGx-pzsksksC&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA109 |language=en}}

Comparatively, Trotsky believed that planning and N.E.P should develop within a mixed framework until the socialist sector gradually superseded the private industry.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=646}} He found allies among a circle of economic theorists and administrators which included Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Georgy Pyatakov, deputy chairman of the Council of the National Economy.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=592}} More broadly, intellectuals would constitute the core of the Left Opposition during the succession period.{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press|page=189|isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}

Trotsky had specified the need for the "overall guidance in planning i.e. the systematic co-ordination of the fundamental sectors of the state economy in the process of adapting to the present market" and urged for a national plan{{cite web |title=Trotsky: The Single Economic Plan |url=https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/russian/id/8044/ |website=wdc.contentdm.oclc.org |language=en}} alongside currency stabilization.{{cite book |last1=Nove |first1=Alec |title=Socialism, Economics and Development (Routledge Revivals) |date=12 November 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-58266-0 |pages=89–90 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWn4BbCEH6gC&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA89 |language=en}} He also rejected the Stalinist conception of industrialisation which favoured heavy industry. Rather, he proposed the use of foreign trade as an accelerator and to direct investments by means of a system of comparative coefficients.{{cite book |last1=Gueullette |first1=Agota |title=Trotsky and foreign economic relations. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=212}}

File:Л. Д. Троцкий, Л. Б. Каменев и Г. Е. Зиновьев. Середина 1920-х годов.jpg and Zinoviev pictured in the mid-1920s as members of the United Opposition]]

Trotsky and the Left Opposition developed a number of economic proposals in response to the scissor crisis which had undermined relations between the workers and peasants in 1923–1924. This included a progressive tax on the wealthier sections of populations such as the kulaks and NEPmen alongside an equilibrium of the import-export balance to access accumulated reserves to purchase machinery from abroad to increase the pace of industrialization.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=62}}{{cite web |title=Documents of the 1923 opposition |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ilo/1923-lo/index.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}

In 1932–33, Trotsky maintained the need for mass participation in the operationalisation of the planned economy.{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Writings of Leon Trotsky. [Edited by George Breitman and Evelyn Reed: 1932-33 |date=1972 |publisher=Merit Publishers |page=96 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WUo8AAAAIAAJ&q=even%20if%20the%20Politburo%20consisted%20of%20seven%20universal%20geniuses,%20of%20seven%20Marxes,%20or%20seven%20Lenins,%20it%20will%20still%20be%20unable,%20all%20on%20its%20own,%20with%20all%20its%20creative%20imagination,%20to%20assert%20command%20over%20the%20economy%20of%20170%20million%20people |language=en}} He elaborated on the need of Soviet democracy for the industrialization period when questioned by the Dewey Commission in 1937:

The successes are very important, and I affirmed it every time. They are due to the abolition of private property and to the possibilities inherent in planned economy. But, they – I cannot say exactly – but I will say two or three times less than they could be under a regime of Soviet democracy{{cite book |last1=Woods |first1=Alan |last2=Grant |first2=Ted |title=Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For |date=1976 |publisher=Wellred Books |pages=50–151 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O6zRDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT174 |language=en}}

According to Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation.{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}} Other scholars have argued that the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced policy of collectivisation implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=59}}

{{Main|Permanent revolution}}

File:Diego rivera Commies.jpg mural (Man, Controller of the Universe) depicts Trotsky with Marx and Engels as a true champion of the workers' struggle]]

The Permanent Revolution concept is the theory that the bourgeois democratic tasks in countries with delayed bourgeois democratic development can only be accomplished through the establishment of a workers' state, and that the creation of a workers' state would inevitably involve inroads against capitalist property. Thus, the accomplishment of bourgeois democratic tasks passes over into proletarian tasks. Although most closely associated with Leon Trotsky, the call for a "Permanent Revolution" is first found in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in March 1850, in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution, in their [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm Address] of the Central Committee to the Communist League:

{{Blockquote|It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. ... Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.}}

Trotsky's conception of the Permanent Revolution is based on his understanding, drawing on the work of the founder of Russian Marxism Georgy Plekhanov, that in "backward" countries the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution could not be achieved by the bourgeoisie itself. Trotsky first developed this conception in collaboration with Alexander Parvus in late 1904–1905. The relevant articles were later collected in Trotsky's books 1905 and in "Permanent Revolution", which also contains his essay "Results and Prospects". Some Trotskyists have argued that the state of the Third World shows that capitalism offers no way forward for underdeveloped countries, thus again proving the central tenet of the theory.{{cite web|title=The mass uprising in Tunisia and the perspective of permanent revolution|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/01/pers-j17.html|work=World Socialist Web Site|date=17 January 2011 |publisher=International Committee of the Fourth International|access-date=3 June 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130529173202/http://wsws.org/en/articles/2011/01/pers-j17.html|archive-date=29 May 2013|url-status=live}}

According to his biographer, Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky explicitly supported revolution through proletarian internationalism but was opposed to achieving this via military conquest with documented references made to his

personal opposition to the war with Poland in 1920, proposed armistice with the Entente and temperance with staging anti-British revolts in the Middle East.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=472–473 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky |language=en}}

{{Main|United front|The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany}}

File:Fascism.png: What it is and how to fight it" published posthumously which elaborated on the need of a united front for mass mobilisation.]]

Trotsky was a central figure in the Comintern during its first four congresses. During this time, he helped to generalize the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks to newly formed Communist parties across Europe and further afield. From 1921 onwards, the united front, a method of uniting revolutionaries and reformists in the common struggle while winning some of the workers to revolution, was the central tactic put forward by the Comintern after the defeat of the German revolution.

Trotsky was a strong critic of the shifting Comintern policy position under Stalin which directed German Communists to treat social democrats as "social fascists". Historian Bertrand Patenaude believed that the Comintern policy following the "Great Break" facilitated the rise of Hitler's party.{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=203 |language=en}} Marxist theorist and economist Hillel Ticktin argued that Trotsky's political strategy and approach to fascism such as the emphasis on an organisational bloc between the German Communist Party and Social-Democratic party during the interwar period would very likely have prevented Hitler from ascending to political power.{{cite book |last1=Ticktin |first1=Hillel |title=Trotsky's political economy of capitalism. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=227}}

Trotsky also formulated a theory of fascism based on a dialectical interpretation of events to analyze the manifestation of Italian fascism and the early emergence of Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1933.{{cite journal |last1=Wistrich |first1=Robert S. |title=Leon Trotsky's Theory of Fascism |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=1976 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=157–184 |doi=10.1177/002200947601100409 |jstor=260195 |s2cid=140420352 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260195 |issn=0022-0094}}

After he was exiled and politically marginalized by Stalinism, Trotsky continued to argue for a united front against fascism in Germany and Spain. According to Joseph Choonara of the British Socialist Workers Party in International Socialism, his articles on the united front represent an essential part of his political legacy.Joseph Choonara, [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=397&issue=117 "The United Front"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080107230355/http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=397&issue=117 |date=7 January 2008}}, International Socialism, 117.

{{Main|Uneven and combined development}}

The concept of uneven and combined development derived from the political theories of Trotsky.{{cite journal |last1=Peck |first1=Jamie |last2=Varadarajan |first2=Latha |title=Uneven Regional Development |journal=International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology |date=6 March 2017 |pages=1–13 |doi=10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |isbn=9780470659632 |language=en}} This concept was developed in combination with the related theory of permanent revolution to explain the historical context of Russia. He would later elaborate on this theory to explain the specific laws of uneven development in 1930 and the conditions for a possible revolutionary scenario.{{cite book |title=Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature |date=8 July 2019 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-38473-6 |pages=1–20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMqiDwAAQBAJ&q=Trotsky+uneven+and+combined+development |language=en}} According to biographer Ian Thatcher, this theory would be later generalised to "the entire history of mankind"."Talk of uneven development becomes dominant in Trotskii's writings from 1927 onwards. From this date, whenever the law is mentioned, the claim consistently made for it is that 'the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development'." – Ian D. Thatcher, "Uneven and combined development", Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 4 No. 2, 1991, p. 237.

Political scientists Emanuele Saccarelli and Latha Varadarajan valued his theory as a "signal contribution" to the discipline of international relations. They argued his theory presented "a specific understanding of capitalist development as 'uneven', insofar as it systematically featured geographically divergent 'advanced' and 'backward' regions" across the world economy.{{cite journal |last1=Saccarelli |first1=Emanuele |last2=Varadarajan |first2=Latha |title=Leon Trotsky and the political conundrum of international relations |journal=Global Social Challenges Journal |date=7 June 2023 |volume=-1 |issue=aop |pages=105–126 |doi=10.1332/CBXB8720 |url=https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/gsc/configurable/content/journals$002fgscj$002faop$002farticle-10.1332-CBXB8720$002farticle-10.1332-CBXB8720.xml |language=en|doi-access=free }}

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing 'on faith', is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and artistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in nature.|source=—Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 1924{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Literature and Revolution |date=2005 |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=978-1-931859-16-5 |page=204 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MG-981usVQEC&dq=man+will+occupy+himself+with+re+registering+mountains+and+rivers+and+will+earnestly+and+repeatedly+make+improvements+in+nature&pg=PA204 |language=en}}}}

In Literature and Revolution, Trotsky examined aesthetic issues in relation to class and the Russian revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work as the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later, Marxist cultural and critical theories.{{cite journal |last1=Bird |first1=Robert |title=Culture as permanent revolution: Lev Trotsky's Literature and Revolution |journal=Studies in East European Thought |date=1 September 2018 |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=181–193 |doi=10.1007/s11212-018-9304-6 |s2cid=207809829 |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11212-018-9304-6 |language=en |issn=1573-0948}} Trotsky also defended intellectual autonomy in regards to literary movements as well scientific theories such as Freudian psychoanalytic theory and Einstein's theory of relativity during the succession period. However, these theories were increasingly marginalised during the Stalin era.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=729–730 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}

He would later co-author the 1938 Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art with the signed endorsement of Andre Breton and Rivera.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015a|pp=1474}} Trotsky's writings on literature such as his 1923 survey which advocated tolerance, limited censorship and respect for literary tradition had strong appeal to the New York Intellectuals.{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941R |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=204 |language=en}}

{{Multiple image

| total_width = 350

| image1 = Trotsky Annenkow 1922 cartoon.jpg|thumb|300px|Cubist

| image2 = Trotsky-Annenkov 1921 Red Army.jpg|thumb right|300px|Trotsky-Annenkov 1921 Red Army

| footer = Cubist, stylized depictions of Trotsky which have been attributed to Yury Annenkov, 1921}}

Trotsky presented a critique of contemporary literary movements such as Futurism and emphasised a need of cultural autonomy for the development of a socialist culture. According to literary critic Terry Eagleton, Trotsky recognised "like Lenin on the need for a socialist culture to absorb the finest products of bourgeois art".{{cite book |last1=Eagleton |first1=Terry |title=Marxism and Literary Criticism |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-94783-6 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h7k8t09BbIQC&q=trotsky+literature+and+revolution+socialist+realism |language=en}} Trotsky himself viewed the proletarian culture as "temporary and transitional" which would provide the foundations for a culture above classes. He also argued that the pre-conditions for artistic creativity were economic well-being and emancipation from material constraints.{{cite book |last1=Knei-Paz |first1=Baruch |title=The social and political thought of Leon Trotsky |date=1978 |location=Oxford [Eng.] |publisher= Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-827233-5 |pages=289–301 |url=https://archive.org/details/socialpoliticalt0000knei/page/300/mode/2up?q=proletarian+culture}}

Political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz characterised his view on the role of the party as transmitters of culture to the masses and raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. Knei-Paz also noted key distinctions between Trotsky's approach on cultural matters and Stalin's policy in the 1930s.

• The comedic film, The Trotsky, centers on a protagonist named Leon Bronstein, played by Jay Baruchel, who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.{{cite web |url=https://tiff.net/events/the-trotsky |title=The Trotsky |publisher=Toronto International Film Festival |access-date=30 December 2022}}
• The characters of Snowball and Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell's novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four respectively, are based on Trotsky.{{cite book |last1=Corney |first1=Frederick |title=Trotsky's Challenge: The 'Literary Discussion' of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution |date=24 November 2015 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-30666-0 |page=82 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3pADCwAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+snowball+Goldstein&pg=PA82 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Shaffer |first1=Brian W. |title=A Companion to the British and Irish Novel, 1945 – 2000 |date=15 April 2008 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4051-5616-5 |page=247 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1BAc_RuD34MC&dq=Trotsky+snowball+Goldstein&pg=PA247 |language=en}}
• Trotsky's final days and death was dramatized in the 1972 film The Assassination of Trotsky, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Richard Burton as Trotsky.{{cite book |last1=Gardner |first1=Colin |title=Joseph Losey |date=11 January 2019 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-4156-9 |page=265 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cXICEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA265 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Flanagan |first1=Kevin M. |title=War Representation in British Cinema and Television: From Suez to Thatcher, and Beyond |date=25 October 2019 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-30203-0 |page=51 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aDy5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 |language=en}}
• The 8-episode biographical drama Trotsky debuted on the Russian Channel One in 2017, Netflix purchased the distribution rights to the series in 2018 and made it available on its platform.{{Cite web |title=Trotsky coming soon to Netflix: Russian revolutionary series to go on online streaming |url=https://tass.com/society/1036412 |access-date=29 April 2023 |website=TASS}}
• The 1980s UK band The Redskins's debut single was entitled "Lev Bronstein", released on the CNT record label in 1982.{{cite web|url=http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/27/struggling-for-soul-cialism |title=Struggling for soul-cialism |website=SocialistWorker.org |date=27 May 2010 |access-date=1 June 2020}}
• Satirist and playwright David Ives wrote a short play titled Variations on the Death of Trotsky, which was published in his 1994 collection All in the Timing.
• Punk band The Stranglers refer to Trotsky in their single "No More Heroes" with the lyric "Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? He got an ice pick That made his ears burn".

{{Div col}}

• Entryism
• Fourth International
• French Turn
• Leon Trotsky bibliography
• Predictions of the collapse of the Soviet Union
• Scissors Crisis
• Socialist democracy
• Trotsky's train, armoured train carriage which was used for logistical travel and oration speeches.
• World socialism

{{Div col end}}

; In popular culture

• The Assassination of Trotsky, 1972 film
• Reds, 1981 film about the October Revolution
• Variations on the Death of Trotsky, 1991 play
• Frida, 2002 film
• The Chosen, 2016 film
• Trotsky, 2017 TV series

{{notelist}}

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

• {{Cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |title=1905 |publisher=Vintage Books |location=New York |year=1971 |isbn=978-0394471778}}

{{See also|Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{cite book |last=Ackerman |first=Kenneth D. |title=Trotsky in New York, 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution |year=2017 |publisher=Counterpoint |isbn=978-1-64009-003-3}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Avrich |first1=Paul |author-link=Paul Avrich |title=Kronstadt, 1921 |date=1970 |language=en |isbn=0-691-08721-0 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton, N.J. |oclc=67322 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Barnett |first1=Vincent |title=A History of Russian Economic Thought |year= 2013b |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-26191-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s71uK9sB27AC&dq=Trotsky+alternative+historians&pg=PA101 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Beilharz | first = Peter | title = Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism | year = 1987 | publisher = Barnes & Noble | isbn = 978-0-389-20698-9}}
• {{cite journal | last = Blackledge | first = Paul | date = 2006 | title = Leon Trotsky's Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History | journal = Studies in East European Thought | volume = 58 | issue= 1 | pages = 1–31 | doi = 10.1007/s11212-005-3677-z | s2cid = 85504744}}
• {{cite book |last1=Bullock |first1=Alan |url=https://archive.org/details/hitlerstalinpara0000bull/page/132/mode/2up |title=Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives |year=1991b |location=London |publisher= HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-215494-9}}
• {{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |last2=Davies |first2=Robert William |title=Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 |date=1971 |publisher=Macmillan |page=199 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8dEmAQAAMAAJ&q=Trotsky+five+year+plan+stole |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |title=Socialism in One Country: 1924-1926. Vol. 1 |date=1978 |publisher=Macmillan Press |isbn=978-0-333-24216-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jeIbzwEACAAJ |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Cliff | first = Tony | title = Trotsky: Towards October 1879–1917 | year = 1989 | location = London | publisher = Bookmarks}}
• {{cite book | last = Cliff | first = Tony | title = Trotsky: The Sword of the Revolution 1917–1923 | year = 1990 | location = London | publisher = Bookmarks}}
• {{cite book | last = Cliff | first = Tony | title = Trotsky: Fighting the rising Stalinist bureaucracy 1923–1927 | year = 1991 | location = London | publisher = Bookmarks}}
• {{cite book | last = Cliff | first = Tony | title = Trotsky: The darker the night the brighter the star 1927–1940 | year = 1993 | location = London | publisher = Bookmarks}}
• {{cite book | last = Conquest | first = Robert | title = The Great Terror: A Reassessment | year = 1992 | publisher = Oxford University Pgress | isbn = 0-19-507132-8}}
• {{cite journal | last = Cox | first = Michael | title = Trotsky and His Interpreters; or, Will the Real Leon Trotsky Please Stand up? | journal = Russian Review | volume = 51 | year = 1992 | issue = 1 | pages = 84–102 | doi = 10.2307/131248 | jstor = 131248}}
• {{cite book |last1=D'Agostino |first1=Anthony |title=The Russian Revolution, 1917-1945 |date=2011 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-38622-0 |page=67 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uD1-0Gxw0NMC&dq=trotsky+lenin+bloc+1922+d%27agostino&pg=PA67 |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert |title=The New Encyclopædia Britannica: Micropædia |date=1993 |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica |isbn=978-0-85229-571-7 |page=946 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eUQuAAAAMAAJ&q=%E2%80%9CHad%20Trotsky%20won%20the%20struggle%20to%20succeed%20Lenin,%20the%20character%20of%20the%20Soviet%20regime%20would%20almost%20certainly%20have%20been%20substantially%20different,%20particularly%20in%20foreign%20policy,%20cultural%20policy,%20and%20the%20extent%20of%20terroristic%20repression.%20Trotsky%E2%80%99s%20failure,%20however,%20seems%20to%20have%20been%20almost%20inevitable,%20considering%20his%20own%20qualities%20and%20the%20conditions%20of%20authoritarian%20rule%20by%20the%20Communist%20Party%20organization |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |year=2008b |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Daniels| first = Robert V | year = 1991 | title = Trotsky, Stalin & Socialism | publisher = Westview Press | isbn = 0-8133-1223-X}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Day |first1=Richard B. |title=The Blackmail of the Single Alternative: Bukharin, Trotsky and Perestrojka |journal=Studies in Soviet Thought |date=1990 |volume=40 |issue=1/3 |pages=159–188 |doi=10.1007/BF00818977 |jstor=20100543 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100543 |issn=0039-3797}}
• {{cite book | last = Deutscher | first = Isaac | author-link = Isaac Deutscher | title = Trotsky: The Prophet Armed | year = 2003a | orig-year = 1954 | publisher = Verso Books | isbn = 978-1-85984-441-0}}
• {{cite book | last = Deutscher | first = Isaac | title = Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed | year = 2003b | orig-year = 1959 | publisher = Verso Books | isbn = 978-1-85984-446-5}}
• {{cite book | last = Deutscher | first = Isaac | title = Trotsky: The Prophet Outcast | year = 2003c | orig-year = 1963 | publisher = Verso Books | isbn = 978-1-85984-451-9}}
• {{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1= Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |year = 2015a |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-560-0 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Deutscher | first = Isaac | title = Ironies of History: Essays on contemporary communism | year = 1966 | asin = B0000CN8J6 |isbn=}} {{ISBN?}}
• {{cite book |last1=Douds |first1=Lara |title=Inside Lenin's Government: Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet State |year= 2019b |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-12649-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yf5aEAAAQBAJ&dq=on+lenin%27s+initiative+trotsky+deputy&pg=PA165 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last1 = Dunn | first1= Bill | last2 = Radice | first2 = Hugo | title = Permanent Revolution – Results and Prospects 100 Years On | year = 2006 | location = London | publisher = Pluto Press | isbn = 978-0-7453-2522-4}}
• {{cite report |first1=Yuri |last1=Feofanov |first2=Donald |last2=Barry |url=http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1995-808-02-9-Feofanov.pdf |title=Arbitrary Justice: Courts and Politics in Post-Stalin Russia |publisher=National Council for Soviet and East European Research and Lehigh University |location=Washington, D. C. |year=1995 |access-date=19 July 2007}}
• {{cite book |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution – centenary edition with new introduction |date=26 January 2017 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-1-4481-1264-7 |pages=796–797 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d7i-DQAAQBAJ |language=en}}
• {{cite book|last=Fitzpatrick|first=Sheila|title=The Russian Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v0-1p3thZyMC|year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press US|isbn=978-0-19-923767-8 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |title=Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition |year = 2013b |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-16929-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RaYzAAAAQBAJ&dq=Lenin+Trotsky+chairman+gosplan+1923&pg=PA53 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Gilbert | first = Helen | title = Leon Trotsky: His Life and Ideas | year = 2003 | publisher = Red Letter Press | isbn = 0-932323-17-0}}
• {{cite book | last = Hallas | first = Duncan | title = Trotsky's Marxism | year = 1979 | location = London | publisher = Pluto Press}}
• {{cite book | last = Hansen | first = Joseph | title = Leon Trotsky: the Man and His Work. Reminiscences and Appraisals | year = 1969 | location = New York | publisher = Merit Publishers}}
• {{cite book | last = Heijenoort | first = Jean van | author-link = Jean van Heijenoort | title = With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacan | year = 2013 | publisher = Harvard University Press | isbn = 978-0-674-43668-8}}
• {{cite book | last = Howe | first = Irving | year = 1964 | title = The Basic Writings of Trotsky | asin = B0018ES7TI |isbn=}} {{ISBN?}}
• {{cite book |last1=Kosheleva |first1=L |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B4WLvA5-9hQC&dq=To+the+Secretary+of+the+Central+Committee,+Com.+Stalin.+Since+Com.+Rykov+was+given+a+vacation+before+the+return+of+Tsiurupa+(he+is+expected+to+arrive+on+20+September),+and+the+doctors+are+promising+me+(of+course,+only+in+the+event+that+nothing+bad+happens)+a+return+to+work+(at+first+very+limited)+by+I+October,+I+think+that+it+is+impossible+to+burden+Com.+Tsiurupa+with+all+the+ongoing+work,+and+I+propose+appointing+two+more+deputies+(deputy+to+the+chairman+of+the+Council+of+Commissars+and+deputy+to+the+chairman+of+the+Labor+Defense+Council),+that+is,+Comrades+Trotsky+and+Kamenev.+Distribute+the+work+between+them+with+my+clearance+and,+of+course,+with+the+Politburo+as+the+highest+authority.+%22+11th+September+1922.+V.+Ulianov+(Lenin).%22++++Com.+Trotsky+must+be+aware+that+there+were+no+other+offers+then+or+now+from+Com.+Lenin+regarding+his+appointment+to+the+leadership+of+the+Council+of+Commissars+or+the+Labor+Defense+Council.+Com.+Trotsky+thus+turned+down,+not+the+post+of+chairman+of+the+Council+of+Commissars+or+the+Labor+Defense+Council,+but+the+post+of+one+of+the+four+deputies+of+the+chairman.+Com.+Trotsky+must+be+aware+that+the+Politburo+voted+on+Lenin%27s+proposal+as+follows:+those+in+favor+of+Lenin%27s+proposal+were+Stalin,+Rykov,+Kalinin;+those+who+abstained+were+Tomskii,+Kamenev;+and+Com.+Trotsky+%22categorically+refused%22;+(Zinoviev+was+absent).+Com.+Trotsky+must+be+aware+that+the+Politburo+passed+the+following+resolution+on+this+matter:+%22The+Central+Commit-tee+Politburo+with+regret+notes+the+categorical+refusal+of+Com.+Trotsky+and+proposes+to+Com.+Kamenev+that+he+assume+the+fulfillment+of+the+duties+of+deputy+until+the+return+of+Com.+Tsiurupa&pg=PA80 |title=Stalin's Letters to Molotov: 1925–1936 |year=1995b |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-06211-3|language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1= Kivelson |first1=Valerie Ann |last2=Neuberger |first2=Joan|title=Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture |year= 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-11961-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IKYl576odbgC&dq=trotsky+everyday+life&pg=PA149 |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last=Knei-Paz |first=Baruch |title=The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky |year=1979 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-827234-2}}
• {{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Bertrand |title=Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky |year=2010b |publisher=Faber & Faber |isbn=978-0-571-25834-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=81Se6bj7D0YC |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Kort |first1=Michael G. |title=The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath |date=18 May 2015 |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |isbn=978-0-7656-2845-9 |page=166 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BHaWGEZA5zMC |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Laqueur | first = Walter | title = Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations | year = 1990 | publisher = Scribner's | isbn = 978-0-684-19203-1}}
• {{cite book | last = Le Blanc | first = Paul | title = Leon Trotsky | year = 2015 | location = London | publisher = Reaktion Books | isbn = 978-1-78023-430-4}}
• {{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Stephen J. |title=Stalin and the Soviet Union |date=20 June 2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-66574-7 |page=8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cmKFAgAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+five+year+plan+stole&pg=PA8 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Levine | first = Isaac Don | title = The Mind of an Assassin | year = 1960 | location = New York | publisher = New American Library/Signet Book}}
• {{cite book |last1=Lewin |first1=Moshe |title=Lenin's Last Struggle |date=4 May 2005 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-03052-1 |page=67 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iheBbViwVksC&q=moshe+lewin+lenin%27s+last+struggle+trotsky+bloc |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Mandel | first = Ernest | title = La pensée politique de Leon Trotsky | year = 1980 | publisher = La Découverte | language = fr | isbn = 978-2707139788}}
• {{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as alternative |date=1995 |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=978-1859840856 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=The Soviet Union 1917-1991 |date=4 February 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90178-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PEHKAgAAQBAJ&q=martin+mccauley+soviet+union |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=McDermott |first1=Kevin |title=Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War |date=23 January 2006 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-0-230-20478-2 |page=61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpJKEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+stalin+steal+industrialisation&pg=PA61 |language=en}}
• {{cite journal | last = McNeal | first = Robert H. | title = Trotsky's Interpretation of Stalin | journal = Canadian Slavonic Papers | year = 2015 | volume = 5 | pages = 87–97 | doi = 10.1080/00085006.1961.11417867}}
• {{cite book |last=Medvedev |first=Roy |author-link=Roy Medvedev |title=Let History Judge |publisher=Spokesman Books |location=Nottingham |year=1976 |isbn=978-0-85124-150-0}}
• {{cite book | last = Molyneux | first = John | title = Leon Trotsky's Theory of Revolution | year = 1981 | location = Brighton | publisher = Harvester Press | isbn = 978-0-312-47994-7}}
• {{cite book | last = North | first = David | title = In Defense of Leon Trotsky | year = 2010 | publisher = Mehring Books | isbn = 978-1-893638-05-1|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=mVqvouA22IkC&q=david+north+in+defence+of+trotsky}}
• {{cite book | last = Parrish | first = Michael | title = The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–53 | year = 1996 | publisher = Praeger | isbn = 978-0-275-95113-9}}
• {{cite book | last = Patenaude | first = Bertrand M. | title = Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary | year = 2010 | location = New York | publisher = Harper Perennial | isbn = 978-0-06-082069-5}}
• {{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Anthony |last2=Phillips |first2=Nicola |title=Development |date=23 April 2013 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-7456-5735-6 |page=1936 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IMLjKIAlpb8C&dq=stalin+steal+trotsky+five+year+plan&pg=PA1936 |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Phillips |first1=Steve |title=Stalinist Russia |date=2000 |publisher=Heinemann |isbn=978-0-435-32720-0 |page=23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OjCF88H-yS4C&dq=Trotsky+five+year+plan+stole&pg=PA23 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | first = Pierre | last =Brouè | title = Trotsky | editor = Fayard | place = Paris | date = 1988 | language = fr}}
• {{cite book | last = Pipes | first = Richard | title = The Unknown Lenin | year = 1996 | publisher = Yale University Press | isbn = 0-300-06919-7}}
• {{cite book |last1=Pipes |first1=Richard |title=Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime |date=1993 |publisher=A.A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-394-50242-7 |page=469 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hr5oAAAAMAAJ&q=richard+pipes+trotsky+lenin+bloc |language=en}}
• {{cite journal | last = Ree | first = Erik Van | title = Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment | year = 1998 | journal = Studies in East European Thought | volume = 50 | issue = 2 | pages = 77–117 | doi = 10.1023/A:1008651325136 | jstor = 20099669 | s2cid = 189785735 | url = https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/3355782/34907_1998_Socialism_in_One_Country_met_offprint_pagina.pdf}}
• {{cite book |last1=Rees |first1=E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05h9DAAAQBAJ&dq=Bazhanov+deputy+chairman+trotsky&pg=PA129 |title=The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray: The XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |last2=Rosa |first2=Cristina F. |year = 1992b |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-230-38920-5 |language=en}}
• {{cite book | last = Renton | first = David | title = Trotsky | year = 2004 | publisher = Haus | isbn = 978-1-904341-62-8}}
• {{cite book | last = Rogovin | first = Vadim Z | title = 1937 Stalin's Year of Terror | year = 1998 | location = Oak Park, MI | publisher = Mehring Books Inc | isbn = 0-929087-77-1}}
• {{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |year=2021b |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1MakzgEACAAJ |language=en}}
• {{Cite book|last=Rubenstein|first=Joshua|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/758390021|title=Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2011a|isbn=978-0-300-17841-8|location=New Haven|oclc=758390021}}
• {{cite book | last = Rubenstein | first = Joshua | title = Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life | year = 2013 | publisher = Yale University Press | isbn = 978-0-300-19832-4}}
• {{cite book | last = Schapiro | first = Leonard | title = Communist Party of the Soviet Union | orig-year = 1960 | year = 1970 | publisher = Methuen | isbn = 978-0-416-18380-1}}
• {{cite book | last = Service | first = Robert | title = Stalin: A Biography | year = 2005 | publisher = Cambridge: Belknap Press | isbn = 0-674-01697-1}}
• {{cite book | last = Service | first = Robert | title = Trotsky: A Biography | year = 2010 | publisher = Macmillan Publishers | isbn = 978-0-330-43969-5}}
• {{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Trotsky: a biography |date=2009 |publisher=Pan |location=London |isbn=978-0330439695 }}
• {{cite journal | last = Soto-Pérez-de-Celis | first = Enrique | title = The Death of Leon Trotsky | journal = Neurosurgery | date = 1 August 2010 | volume = 67 | issue = 2 | pages = 417–423 | doi = 10.1227/01.NEU.0000371968.27560.6C | pmid = 20644428 | doi-access = free}}
• {{cite book |last=Serge |first=Victor |title=Life and Death of Leon Trotsky |year=2016 |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=978-1-60846-469-2}}
• {{cite book | last = Swain | first = Geoffrey | title = Trotsky | year = 2006 | publisher = Routledge | isbn = 978-0-582-77190-1}}
• {{Cite book | last = Swain | first = Geoffrey | title = Trotsky and the Russian Revolution | year = 2014a | publisher = Routledge | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-415-73667-1}}
• {{cite book |last1=Swain |first1=Geoffrey |title=Trotsky |date=22 May 2014b |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86875-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Im2hAwAAQBAJ}}
• {{cite book | last = Thatcher | first = Ian D. | title = Trotsky | year = 2003 | publisher = Routledge | isbn = 0-415-23251-1}}
• {{cite book |last1=Tucker |first1=Robert C. (Robert Charles) |title=Stalin as revolutionary, 1879-1929: a study in history and personality |date=1973 |location=New York |publisher= W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. |isbn=978-0-393-05487-3 |page=336 |url=https://archive.org/details/stalinasrevoluti0000unse/page/336/mode/2up?q=bloc}}
• {{cite book | last = Volkogonov | first = Dmitri | title = Trotsky, the Eternal Revolutionary | year = 1996 | publisher = HarperCollins | isbn = 978-0-00-729166-3}}
• {{cite book | last = Warth | first = Robert D. | title = Leon Trotsky | year = 1978 | publisher = Twayne Publishers | isbn = 978-0-8057-7720-8}}
• {{cite book | last = Wade | first= Rex A. | title = Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches | year = 2004 | publisher = Psychology Press | isbn = 978-0-415-30748-2}}
• {{cite book | last = Wieczynski | first = Joseph L. | title = The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History | year = 1976 | volume = 39 | publisher = Academic International Press}}
• {{cite book|title=Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary|publisher=Stein & Day|location=New York|date=1982|isbn=0-8128-2774-0|author-last=Wistrich|author-first=Robert S.|author-link=Robert Wistrich}}
• {{cite book | last = Wolfe | first = Bertram D | title = Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin | year = 2001 | publisher = Rowman & Littlefield | isbn = 978-0-8154-1177-2}}

{{refend}}

{{Sister project links|author=yes|wikt=no|b=no|commons=Лев Троцкий|n=no|v=no|d=Q33391}}

{{EB1922 Poster|Trotsky, Lev}}

• {{YouTube|fKI9oi1YJNM|Trotsky speaks about the Moscow Trials}}
• [http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=6621 Trotsky in Havana] by Dimitri Prieto from Havana Times
• [http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/trotsky.htm FBI records relating to Trotsky's murder]
• [http://libcom.org/library/contradiction-trotsky-claude-lefort The Contradiction of Trotsky] by Claude Lefort
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzXR-5w4Qk Uncommon Knowledge]. Interview with Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service about Leon Trotsky
• {{PM20|FID=pe/017601}}
• [http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/article-summary/leon_trotsky_october_revolution-1917#.Xs_u8GhKizk "How We Made the October Revolution"] by Leon Trotsky. The New York Times, 1919.

• {{marxists.org|trotsky|Leon Trotsky}}
• {{Gutenberg author |id=2030| name=Leon Trotsky}}
• {{FadedPage|id=Trotsky, Leon|name=Leon Trotsky|author=yes}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Leon Trotsky}}
• {{Librivox author |id=4200}}

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