Leon Trotsky

Trotsky, Leon (Lev Davidovic Bronstein; 1879–1940), Russian revolutionary Communist, a founder of the USSR. President of the Petrograd (Leningrad) soviet in the abortive 1905 revolution, he escaped from prison to France, Spain, and New York. In 1917 he returned, went over to Bolshevism, and led the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Russian Revolution. As commissar of foreign affairs (1917–18) he resigned in protest over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and became commissar of war (1918–25), organizing the Red Army into an effective force. After V.I. Lenin's death (1924), he lost power to Joseph Stalin and was deported (1929). Bitterly opposed to Stalin's “socialism in one country,” he continued to advocate international revolution, founded the Fourth International, and attacked Stalinism in The Revolution Betrayed (1937). He was murdered in Mexico City by a Stalinist agent.

See also: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Russian Revolution.