8/20/1940 - A headache for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin for decades, former Marxist theorist and exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, is given a headache of his own at his villa in the Coyoacan region of Mexico City, Mexico, by Spanish NKVD agent Ramon Mercader ... by way of a blow to the cranium while Trotsky's back is turned with a mountaineer's ice axe.
Trotsky
The fifth child of a rich Jewish farming family living in the Yanovka region of the Russia Ukraine, Lev Davidovich Bronstein is born to David Leontyevich Bronstein and Anna Lvovna Zhivotovskaya Bronstein on November 11, 1879. A gifted intellect from an early age (in his life, he will be fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, French, English, and German), young Lev is sent to the port city of Odessa to further his education at the age of eight. Pursuing a mathematics degree in the Black Sea harbor town of Nikolayev, his life changes forever when he falls in love with the devout Marxist that will become his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. By 1897, he is a Marxist too ... a philosophy the authorities frown upon, and in 1898 Bronstein is arrested (for organizing workers into a union), waits two years to go on trial, marries Sokolovskaya while in prison, and is sentenced to four years of exile in Siberia (which he gets to spend with his also exiled wife, the two have two daughters, Zinaida and Nina, both of whom die before their parents). Urged on by his wife, in the summer of 1902, he escapes Siberia hidden in a wagon beneath a load of hay, makes his way to London, England, and joins a group of revolutionaries living there that write foe the paper, Iskra, one of which is Vladimir Lenin. Bronstein no longer, he is now Leon Trotsky.
Bronstein At Eight
1897
First Wife Aleksandra
Aleksandra far away, the couple divorce in 1902 (she will eventually be arrested and murdered in the Stalin purges of the late 1930s) and Trotsky marries his second wife, Natalia Ivanova Sedova in 1903 ... she will be with him for the rest of his life (they also have two children together, Lev and Sergei, both of whom perish before their parents do). Calling himself a "non-factional social democrat," from 1904 to 1917, Trotsky butts heads from time to time with almost every founding member of the Russian communist party, including Lenin, who calls him a "Judas," a "scoundrel," and a "swine." Despite differences with both the Bolsheviks (wanting a small, highly organized party) and the Mensheviks (wanting a larger, less disciplined party), Trotsky secretly returns to Russia and participates in the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, arrested again and sentenced to more Siberian exile (this time for supporting armed rebellion), and en route to more bad times, he escapes again. London once more, he moves to Vienna in 1908 and begins writing for Pravda. Without a country for the moment, Trotsky's WWI years are filled with international travel ... from Vienna to neutral Switzerland (he is still considered a Russian, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is now at war with Russia), he is a war correspondent in France, for his anti-war activities, he is kicked out of France and lands in Spain, but Spain doesn't want him either, and he is deported to the United States of America, setting up shop in the Bronx. But not for long, Tsar Nicholas II overthrown, with a stop in Nova Scotia at a British internment camp, Trotsky is back in Russia by 1917 and joining forces with Lennin, becomes one of the first seven members of the Soviet Politburo and plays a major role in the Bolshevik's overthrow of the Provisional Government of Aleksandr Kerensky.
Trotsky And Daughter Nina - 1915
Lenin - 1916
Kerensky
Communists in, Kerensky out, supporting the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky is the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1917 into 1918. Resigning the position after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk makes a temporary peace between Russia and Germany, Trotsky next becomes the People's Commissar of Army and Naval Affairs, and Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, effectively becoming the head of the new Red Army. As such, in the civil war that breaks out from 1918 until 1923, he grows the army from a force of under 300,000 soldiers, into a force of 5,400,000 that not only defeats the anti-Bolshevek Russian White Army, but also bests the foreign interventions of eight nations (including the United States of America) ... at a horrible cost, military actions, terror on both sides, drought, disease and famine cause between 7,000,000 and 12,000,000 casualties. Victorious, Trotsky appears to be the presumptive heir to Lenin (in failing health, he suffers three strokes from 1922 to 1923, passes into a coma, and dies in 1924 in Moscow at the age of 53), but is soon out maneuvered to succeed the Soviet leader by the murderous machinations of Joseph Stalin.
Speaking Atop An Armored Train
Pinnacle of his powers reached, Trotsky is slowly undone by his enemy, Stalin. He is removed as Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs in January of 1925, removed from the Politburo in October of 1926, removed from the Central Committee in October of 1927, expelled from the Communist Party in November of 1927, exiled to the Alma-Ata region (now the largest city in the country of Kazakhstan), and finally expelled from the Soviet Union too in 1929. A human tumbleweed and political football, Trotsky then moves from Turkey, to the island of Buyukada, to France, on to Norway, before finally arriving in Mexico City, Mexico (he arrives in the port of Tampico and is greeted by Mexican president, Lazaro Cardenas, on January 9, 1937) ... all the while continuing to prod at Stalin, through establishment of the Trotskyism of the Fourth International, established in France in 1938, his written works, History of the Russian Revolution and The Revolution Betrayed, and letters and interviews that keep his philosophy viable to an international audience of admirers. Realizing he has made a serious mistake in letting Trotsky escape his clutches, a Moscow show trial is set up sixteen former Bolshevek's all confess to plotting with Trotsky to kill Stalin ... all are found guilty, and Trotsky is sentenced to death in absentia.
Stalin - 1937
Mexico City Home
And Stalin will see that the "in absentia" takes place, assigning NKVD deputy director of the Foreign Department, assassin Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatev (he blows up Ukrainian nationalist leader Yevhen Konovalets using a bomb in a box of chocolates) the task of removing Trotsky from life. In turn, Sudoplatev gives the assignment to Soviet intelligence officer Nahum Eitingon. Eitingon concocts three different plots to kill the exile. The first takes place on May 20, 1940, when twenty armed assassins led by NKVD officer Iosif Grigulevich and Mexica painter David Alfaro Siqueiros attack Trotsky's home with machine guns and explosives, but are beaten back by the bodyguards that surround the exile. In the attack, Trotsky's 14-year-old grandson, Vsevolod Volkov is shot in the foot, bodyguard Robert Sheldon Harte is kidnapped and later murdered (after, house converted into a fortress, the compound's exterior walls are heightened, windows in are bricked over, watchtowers are added, and a siren is placed on the roof by money from wealthy American benefactors), and Trotsky has the basis for a new article attacking Stalin which he calls, Stalin Seeks My Death. Indeed he does!
Sudoplatev
Grigulevich
The next attempt on Trotsky's life takes place three months later and comes at the exile as if it were the plot of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Born Jamie Ramon Mercader del Rio on Febrauary 7, 1913, in Barcelona, Spain, the next assassin leads a life that slowly draws him into Trotsky's inner circle. Better known as Ramon Mercader, the 27-year-old NKVD agent becomes an ardent Communist while fighting in the Spanish Civil War, is recruited and trained as a Soviet killer in Moscow by Eitingon, is set up as a student at the Sorbonne, where with the help of NKVD agent Mark Zborowski, he begins wooing Jewish American intellectual, Sylvia Ageloff, a confidante of Trotsky, while using the name, Frank Jacson (he also holds the forged passport of Tony Babich, a Canadian killed in the Spanish Civil War), a Canadian. Following Ageloff to America, he romances her in Brooklyn, and when he moves to Mexico City, convinces Ageloff to join him there. A friend of Trotsky's, Ageloff is of course granted access to the exile, and she soon is bringing Mercader along ... and he in turn begins to meet with Trotsky, pretending to sympathize with his ideas, befriending the bodyguards, and doing small favors for the compound's servants. As planned, everyone has been lulled to sleep.
Mercader
Ageloff
On the afternoon of August 20, 1940, as Jacson, arrying a rain coat over his left arm, Mercader shows up at the compound's gate as Trotsky is feeding his pet bunny rabbits, and a familiar face, is let in (it is his tenth visit to the house). Also carrying an article he has written that he asks Trotsky to review, Mercader and his target retreat to the exile's study. There, after sharing a taste of tea, when Trotsky turns to look at the article, Mercader suddenly drops the rain coat, and clutching a mountaineer's ice axe in his hand, strikes his target in the head, penetrating two inches into the man's skull and brain (his intent is to kill Trotsky while the two men are alone, and then guest visit over, walk out and disappear before his deed is discovered). But Trotsky reacts immediately, and though blood pours from his wound, he fights off his attacker while screaming for help (and showing what he now thinks of the man, spits in Mercader's face and bites his hand while the men struggle to control the ice axe). Help there almost immediately, the bodyguards prevent Mercader from using the dagger and small automatic pistol he has also brought to the attack, and using Mercader's own weapon, almost beat the assassin to death, prevented only by Trotsky himself telling the men to desist as he wants Mercader who has hired him for the murderous deed ... already contemplating another article attacking Stalin. There will be no more writings from Trotsky however, rushed to a nearby hospital and operated on, it is at first believed that Trotsky will make a full recovery, but he slips into a coma and dies the next day at the age of 60.
Where The Struggle Took Place
Murder Weapon
Deathbed
The Crying Begins
Two doors down in the same hospital, Mercader is treated for his own wounds. Saved by Trotsky stopping the pummeling of his bodyguards, the assassin makes a full recovery, goes on trial for murder, is found guilty, and sentenced to twenty years behind bars in Mexico City's Palacio de Lecumberri prison. But all is not too grim for the killer and his family ... shortly after the assassination, Stalin presents Mercader's mother with his Order of Lenin, and when Mercader is eventually released to Cuba in 1960, and then moves to Moscow in 1961, he is presented with the Soviet Union's highest decoration, Hero of the Soviet Union, presented to him personally by the head of the KGB, Alexander Shelepin. He dies of lung cancer in Havana, Cuba on October 18, 1978 at the age of 65. Still haunted by his deed, his last words are, "I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he's waiting for me on the other side."
Head Shaved To Treat His Wounds
Mercader
Murderer
White - 1924
White
White Plot In Plassy