DOI: 10.25549/satjrnl-m142
title: Leon Davidovich Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein), 1879-1940.
title: Лев Давидович Троцкий (Лeв Давидович Бронштéйн), 1879-1940.

description: Leon Davidovich Trotsky (or Trotskii; pseudonym of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein), 1879-1940. Major revolutionary leader. Born 7.XI.1879 in Iankova, Russian Empire. Died 20.VIII.1940 in Mexico City. Age 17 went to school in Nikolaev where he became interested in socialism and joined a study group where he met his future wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaia, with whom he organized the South Russia Workers’ Union; 1891 police halted their Union efforts, sending Bronshtein to prison in Odessa and a subsequent four years in Siberia. Bronstein escaped from Siberia with a fake passport in the name of one of his Odessa jailers, Trotsky; 1902 Trotsky arrived in London, the home of many socialist leaders, to continue his political efforts. There, he was assigned to embark on a fundraising trip for the newspaper Iskra, during which he met his second wife, Natalia Sedov; 1903 took part in the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in London; February 1905 returned to Russia after a massive workers’ strike in St. Petersburg. Trotsky contributed to Bolshevik and Menshevik papers until fleeing from police to Finland; October 1905 returned to Russia and joined the Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, in which he took a major organizational role; December 1905 the Petersburg Soviet was forcibly disbanded by the police and its leaders arrested. Trotsky was jailed in the Peter-Paul Fortress, and in 1906 Trotsky and other Petersburg Soviet leaders were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment;1906 wrote Results and Prospects, which details his theory of “permanent revolution”; 1907 Trotsky escaped on the way to Siberia, fleeing again to Finland; 1907-1909 wrote 1905, which was first published as part of Our Revolution in 1907 and translated into German in 1909. The full, revised edition was published in Russian in 1922; 1914 broke relations with Mensheviks due to their increasing nationalism at the outbreak of World War I; September 1915 met with other anti-war socialists, including Lenin, at the Zimmerwald Conference in Switzerland. Trotsky drafted a manifesto for the group;; March 1915 deported from France to Spain for anti-war activities; December 1916 deported from France to the United States; January 1917 arrives in New York, where he contributed to Russian and Yiddish Socialist newspapers; February 1917 revolution overthrows Tsar Nicholas II, and Trotsky decides to return to Russia; May 1917 Trotsky arrives in Petrograd; he joins the Bolshevik faction following Lenin’s return to Russia in April; July 1917 Trotsky arrested by the Provisional Government after a workers’ armed demonstration; September 1917 Trotsky elected president of the Petrograd Soviet; October 24, 1917 Trotsky and the Bolsheviks led the Soviet revolution; March 1918 negotiations led by Trotsky, serving as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, result in the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, despite much opposition; 1918-1921 Trotsky organizes and leads a Red Army of five million to counter the Tsarist “White” army and foreign intervention in Russia during the civil war; 1919 Trotsky presents the founding manifesto of the Third International, or Communist International, in Moscow; Trotsky proposed a “united front” of international Communist solidarity in order to spread revolutionary ideas among workers; 1920 Trotsky opposes the “war communist” tactic of confiscating grain from peasants; other Bolshevik leaders disagree with Trotsky’s idea for positive incentives. Peasant rebellions ensue; 1921 the White Army is defeated, but not without huge damage to the country; the Bolsheviks ban all other political parties; 1921 at the Tenth Party Congress Lenin announces the New Economic Policy (NEP), which ended grain confiscation and allowed a partially free market; 1922 Stalin elected general secretary at the Eleventh Party Congress; 1923 Trotsky published Literature and Revolution; 1923 Trotsky decided not to release the dying Lenin’s political testament at the Twelfth Party Congress.  Stalin was able to appoint his allies to key positions