Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a politician and revolutionary of Russian origin
Although he initially sympathized with the Mensheviks[4] and had ideological and personal disputes with the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky was one of the key organizers of the October Revolution, which allowed the Bolsheviks to take power in November 1917 in Russia. During the subsequent civil war, he served as the commissioner of military affairs
He negotiated Russia's withdrawal from World War I through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He was in charge of creating the Red Army which would definitively consolidate the revolutionary achievements by defeating poor support from foreign armies and the White armies during the Russian civil war; he supported the Red Terror and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner
Subsequently, he politically and ideologically confronted Joseph Stalin, leading the left opposition, which caused him exile and later assassination. After his exile from the Soviet Union, he was the leader of an international left-wing revolutionary movement identified with the name of Trotskyism and characterized by the idea of the "permanent revolution". In 1938, he founded the Fourth International
He was assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish agent of the Soviet NKVD, by order of Stalin.
See more
See less