Leon Trotsky

Trotsky’s first marriage was during his tenure in prison in 1900, to Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, with whom he had two daughters, Zinaida and Nina. The marriage was short-lived and the couple soon got divorced. His daughters were taken care of by his parents.

In 1902, he met Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, who became his companion and second wife, till his death. They had two children, Lev Sedov and Sergei Sedov, both of whom died before their parents.

On August 20, 1940, while he was sitting at his desk, he was attacked by Ramon Mercader, an undercover agent for the Soviet secret police. He was hit by an ice pick which punctured his skull, injuring him severely and killing him eventually.

Born on November 7, 1879, as Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, Leon Trotsky was the fifth of the eight children born to David Leontyevich Bronshtein, and Anna Bronshtein. His was a well-to-do family with his father being a farmer and, despite being Jewish, they were not very religious.

His father sent him to Odessa, in a German school, for him to commence his education. Odessa was a bustling cosmopolitan city, and it was from here that Trotsky developed an international outlook, very early in his childhood.

Revolutionary activities had increased pace in Russia around that time. In 1896, Trotsky too became involved in revolutionary politics after moving to Nikolayev.

He had enrolled for pursuing a pure Mathematics degree in college, but he soon quit. Instead, he got involved and helped in setting up the South Russian Worker’s Union in 1897.

Leon Trotsky wrote pamphlets and leaflets professing socialistic ideas and distributed them among the people. In 1898, he was imprisoned along with several other members of the Union, for two years.

In 1900, he was sentenced to a four-year exile and had to leave to Siberia, along with his wife. His two daughters, Zinaida and Nina, were both born in Siberia, but escaped from there with their mother.

He associated himself with a London based newspaper ‘Iskra’ and began writing for it. In 1902, he escaped from Siberia and moved to London, where he changed his name to Trotsky, and worked with socialist stalwarts like Lenin.

In 1903, the Iskra members split into two factions, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were led by Lenin, and the Mensheviks, by Martov, whom Trotsky followed.

Members of the two factions kept changing sides, and Trotsky decided to leave the Mensheviks due to a difference in their policies and their reluctance to reconcile with Lenin.

Leon Trotsky’s book, ‘The History of Russian Revolution’ is a classic account of the political, social and economical situations that led and governed the Russian Revolution. In the book, he has described how the unrest among the oppressed classes led to the overthrowing of the monarchist rule, and heralded a new era of socialist government under Lenin’s leadership.

Published in 1930, Trotsky’s ‘My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography’ is the only autobiography written by a Bolshevik. He wrote this book while on his long exile from the Soviet Union; it highlighted not only his lifelong struggle, but also the horrors of the Stalinist regime.