Trotsky, Leon (1879–1940)

LEON TROTSKY, one of the seminal figures in the history of the communist left, was born in the southern part of the Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Named Lev Davidovich Bronstein, his father was a prosperous farmer, or kulak. It was an era when the Russian government was becoming increasingly oppressive toward the Jews. Often, in order to shift attention from the inequalities of Russian life, regime agents provocateurs (hired by the secret police to foment trouble) would stir up the Russian Orthodox Black Hun-dreds gangs to launch bloody pogroms, or genocidal riots, against the Jewish community. On many occasions, the anti-Semitic Cossacks would join in, using their swords and wicked whips, the knouts. Hence, liberal intellectuals soon said that the Russian tzars ruled by “the Cossacks and the knout.” It was against this background, immortalized in Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer, that Trotsky became a member of revolutionary [Page 455]groups dedicated to overthrow the autocratic tzarist regime. In fact, according to Avrahm Yarmolinsky in his Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, in the capital of St. Petersburg, “the nucleus of a revolutionary organization of a purely proletarian complexion: The Northern Union of Russian Workers” had already been formed late in 1878.

Seeing great potential in their son, Trotsky's parents sent him to primary school in Odessa, and then to Nicolayev, Russia, for his secondary education. In 1898, while not yet 20, Trotsky became one of the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). Arrested by the regime, he was sent to internal exile to Russian Siberia, the “finishing school” for opponents of tzarist despotism since the Decembrists had been sent there after opposing the coronation of Tzar Nicholas I in 1825. In 1902, Trotsky managed to escape Siberia and flee to London, England, at which time he took the revolutionary name of Trotsky. London in Victorian times (1837–1901) had been hospitable to political refugees from troubled Central and Eastern Europe. Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism, had done much of his research in the British Museum.

It was in London that Trotsky met the fellow Russian refugee with which his name would forever be intertwined, Vladimir I. Lenin. When Lenin met Trotsky, according to David Shub in Lenin, Lenin observed, “the man is capable of learning and will prove very useful.” In March 1903, Lenin invited Trotsky to join the staff of the progressive newspaper Iskra, or the Spark. How-ever, as was common in Russian revolutionary politics, views diverged among the members of the movement. In 1903, at the RSDLP's Second Congress, the split led to Lenin siding with the Bolshevik, or majority wing, and Trotsky choosing the minority Mensheviks. How-ever, the ideological disagreement did not affect their comradeship or working together.

Lenin and Trotsky both found themselves radicalized by the events of Bloody Sunday, January 22, 1905. On that day, incited by Father Gapon, a Russian secret police agitator, workers in St. Petersburg attempted to present their grievances to their “Little Father,” Tzar Nicholas II, at his Winter Palace. The massacre that resulted set off the Revolution of 1905. Lenin attempted to get arms from his new haven in Geneva, Switzerland, to the rebels, but the shipment was lost. Trotsky arrived by subterfuge back in Russia in February, according to historian Edmund Wilson. Later, Wilson wrote, Trotsky “organized—the first meeting took place the night of October 13—a Soviet [Council] of Workers' Delegates.” It was the first time that revolutionary soviets appeared in Russian revolutionary history. Both Menshe-viks and Bolsheviks joined in supporting the Revolution. Lenin, however, would not arrive in Russia until November 1905.

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