Evening star., 1940-08-22
7rotsky a Wonderer After Fall From Power
CoIeoder Boshevst Revolution Fought Ston ReIenesy
In Exile After Expulsion From Russio in 1929
py the Associated Press.

most powerful assistant ana COLI
fidant when the bolsheviks seized
power in Russia in 1917 in World
War days, following the collapse of
the Czarist regime and the bloody
days thereafter.
AS Lenin's right-hand man-he
was the first commissar of foreign
affairs and when war minister-it
was generally believed that he would
succeed his master upon the latter'S
death, in 1924 But Joseph Stain,
present head of the Union Of Social
list Soviet Republics. wrested the
power from him.
They became sworn enemies.
Trotsky was stripped from his Office
and banished. He became a wan
derer-driven from country to cOun-
try-until 1887, when Mexico gave
him refuge.
Below the Rio Grande this stormy
petrol was almost always in trouble
of some kind He wrote voluminous-
ly; called Stain ano his followers
IAN unprincipled gang of wreck
ers":: declared the Comintern was
doomed and cnarge1 that he was
being bounded by ths Russian secret
police.
Had Row With Rivera.
He was often in personal danger.
Shortly after his arrival in Mexico
guard at his nome was shot by
unknown aSSailantS. Ht was guard
ed after anti-Jewish disturbances in
Mexico City in 1889. He had a row
with Diego Rivera, the famous Mex
ican painter, at whose home he first
lived in Mexico, and moved to Mex
leo City's suburbs il. house that
was described as fortress.
He narrowly escaped death on
May "a, 1910, when Salvo OF
machine gun bullets swept through
his bedroom. He and his wife were
unharmed, but his guard, Robert
Sheldon Harte of New York City,
was kidnapped and later found dead.
The police arrested 20 Mexicans, but
were unable to fix definite blame
on any one. Trotsky asserted That
Stain instigated the plot through
the Mexican Communist party.
On Aug. 20, he was savagely at
tackled in his home with pickax
by a man who posed as an admirer
The police arrested man identified
first as Jacques M. Vandenreischd
and later as Frank Jackson. He
confessed. the police said, that he
struck him during violent argu-
ment. Trotsky's skull was fractured
his hip and shoulders injured. An
emergency operation was performed
in a Mexico City hospital in an ef-
fort to save his life.
Trotsky, whose real name was Lev
Davydovich BronStein, was native
of the Ukraine, where his father was
prosperous Jewish farmer. He
embraced Socialism when he was
II and left home.
Two years later he was arrested
in a police roundup and thereafter
was frequently in trouble with au-
thorities. He wandered In various
countries and met Lenin in Fin
land
Helped Overthrow Kerensky.
During the World War he was
shipped from one country to an
other and was living in New York,
writing for various papers, when the
Car abdicated. He sailed for
Europe where he met Lenin and
others in st. Petersburg and engi-
neered the coup that resulted in
the overthrow of the Kerensky
regime.
Lenin made him Commissar OF
Foreign Affairs. later transferring
him as War Minister. He revived
Russia's war-weary soldiery and
built a powerful military machine.
His army held off japanese attacks
in Siberia, checked Allied troops at
Archangel, smashed White Russian
armies on the east, south and west
and carried the red banner of Com
munism to the very gates Of War
saw.
Called in those days "the Napoleon
of Bolshevism" and war lord OF the
Soviets," his name constantly was
coupled with Lenin's. When the
latter died in January, 1924, it
seemed that the mantle of power
would fall gracefully upon the shoul-
ders of the Junior member Of the
firm, and he tried to don it. But,
always an individualist in Com
munist party councils, he had made
enemies. Besides, he had not for
mally joined the bolshevist wing
until 1917 and elders of that faction,
henchmen of Lenin since 1908,
deemed him an upstart. They rail-
lied to Joseph Stain, executive sec
retary of the Communist party,
stripped Trotsky of his Offices, ex-
PEELED him from the party late in
1927 and banished him and his chief
political lieutenants. The span of
his rise and fall was 10 years.
Fought Against Stain Regime.
Yet his was voice which misfor-
tune could not still From exile in
Turkestan, Turkey, France, Sweden,
Norway and Mexico, he carried on
against the Stain regime. He wrote,
gave interviews and, on occasion,
made public addresses in Russian,
French, German or English. Polyglot
secretaries translated his fulmina-
tions into yet other languages.
Meanwhile, most of his fellow exiles
had recanted and been readmitted
to the Soviet fold.
That Trotsky remained potent
force was revealed when the Stalin-
ties turned on his erstwhile adher-
ents and, in the 1935-37 interval,
obtained plot confessions from them
and executed them in squads.
At these political trials, in which
defendants sealed their own dooms
by acknowledging sabotage, treason
and murder schemes, he was named
as the arch-conspirator and the
Moscow government moved to have
him extradited from Norway. That
country would not surrender him to
the certain death that awaited his
return to Moscow, but it did find he
had violated his status as political
refugee by interfering in the affairs
of a nation with which his host was