Lev Davidovich Trotsky is a Russian revolutionary figure of the 20th century, an ideologist of Trotskyism, one of the currents of Marxism. Twice exiled under the monarchy, deprived of all civil rights in 1905. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.

Leon Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 into a family of wealthy landowners and tenants. In 1889, his parents sent him to study in Odessa with his cousin, the owner of a printing house and scientific publishing house, Moses Schnitzer. Trotsky was the first student at the school. He was interested in drawing and literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.

He began to conduct revolutionary propaganda at the age of 17, having joined a revolutionary circle in Nikolaev. On January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time and spent two years in prison, and it was then that he became familiar with the ideas of Marxism. During the investigation, he studied English, German, French and Italian languages, read the works of Marx, became acquainted with the works of Lenin.

Leiba Bronstein at the age of nine, Odessa

A year before going to prison for the first time, Trotsky joined the South Russian Workers' Union. One of its leaders was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became Trotsky's wife in 1898. Together they went into exile in the Irkutsk province, where Trotsky contacted Iskra agents, and soon began collaborating with them, receiving the nickname “Pero” for his penchant for writing.

It was in exile that it was discovered that Trotsky suffered from epilepsy, inherited from his mother. He often lost consciousness and constantly had to be under medical supervision.

“I came to London a big provincial, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kyiv, I lived only in a transit prison.” In 1902, Trotsky decided to escape from exile. It was then, when receiving a false passport, that he entered the name Trotsky (the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison where the revolutionary was kept for two years).
Trotsky left for London, where Vladimir Lenin was then located. The young Marxist quickly gained fame by speaking at meetings of emigrants. He was extremely eloquent, ambitious and educated, everyone without exception considered him an amazing speaker. At the same time, for his support of Lenin, he was nicknamed “Lenin’s club,” while Trotsky himself was often critical of organizational plans Lenin.

In 1904, serious disagreements began between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. By that time, Trotsky had established himself as a follower of the “permanent revolution”, moved away from the Mensheviks and married Natalya Sedova for the second time (the marriage was not registered, but the couple lived together until Trotsky’s death). In 1905, they returned together illegally to Russia, where Trotsky became one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On December 3, he was arrested and, as part of a high-profile trial, was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to Salekhard.

A split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was brewing, supported by Lenin, who in 1912 at the Prague conference of the RSDLP announced the separation of the Bolshevik faction into an independent party. Trotsky continued to advocate for the unification of the party, organizing the "August Bloc", which the Bolsheviks ignored. This cooled Trotsky’s desire for a truce; he preferred to step aside.

In 1917 after February Revolution, Trotsky and his family tried to get to Russia, but were removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp for internment of sailors. The reason for this was the revolutionary’s lack of documents. However, he was soon released at the written request of the Provisional Government as an honored fighter against tsarism. Trotsky criticized the Provisional Government, so he soon became the informal leader of the “Mezhrayontsy”, for which he was accused of espionage. His influence on the masses was enormous, as he played a special role in the transition to the side of the Bolsheviks of the soldiers of the rapidly decaying Petrograd garrison, which had great value in the revolution. In July 1917, the Mezhrayontsy united with the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky was soon released from prison, where he was accused of espionage.

While Lenin was in Finland, Trotsky effectively became the leader of the Bolsheviks. In September 1917, he headed the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and also became a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly. In October, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was formed, consisting mainly of Bolsheviks. It was the committee that was engaged in armed preparations for the revolution: already on October 16, the Red Guards received five thousand rifles; Rallies were held among the undecided, at which Trotsky’s brilliant oratorical talent again showed itself. In fact, he was one of the main leaders of the October Revolution.

Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev

“The uprising of the popular masses does not need justification. What happened was a rebellion, not a conspiracy. We tempered the revolutionary energy of St. Petersburg workers and soldiers. We openly forged the will of the masses for an uprising, and not for a conspiracy.”

After the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee remained the only authority for a long time. Under him, a commission was formed to combat counter-revolution, a commission to combat drunkenness and pogroms, and food supplies were established. At the same time, Leni and Trotsky maintained a tough position towards political opponents. On December 17, 1917, in his address to the cadets, Trotsky announced the beginning of the stage mass terror in relation to the enemies of the revolution in a harsher form: “You should know that no later than in a month, terror will take very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine, and not just prison, will await our enemies.” It was then that the concept of “red terror” appeared, formulated by Trotsky.

Soon Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first composition of the Bolshevik government. On December 5, 1917, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, Trotsky transferred his affairs to Zinoviev and completely immersed himself in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet. “Counter-revolutionary sabotage” began by civil servants of the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suppressed thanks to the publication of secret treaties of the tsarist government. The situation in the country was also complicated by diplomatic isolation, which was not easy for Trotsky to overcome.

To improve the situation, he said that the government would take an intermediate position of “neither peace nor war: we will not sign an agreement, we will stop the war, and we will demobilize the army.” Germany refused to tolerate this position and announced an offensive. By this time the army virtually did not exist. Trotsky admitted the failure of his policies and resigned from the post of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

Leon Trotsky with his wife Natalya Sedova and son Lev Sedov

On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Military Affairs, on March 28 to the post of Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - Military Commissioner for Naval Affairs and on September 6 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR. Then the formation of a regular army begins. Trotsky became in fact its first commander-in-chief. In August 1918, Trotsky's regular trips to the front began. Several times Trotsky, risking his life, even speaks to deserters. But practice has shown that the army is not capable, Trotsky is forced to support its reorganization, gradually restoring unity of command, insignia, mobilization, a single uniform, military greetings and awards.

In 1922, Joseph Stalin, whose views did not coincide with the views of Trotsky, was elected general secretary of the Bolshevik party. Stalin was supported by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who believed that the rise of Trotsky threatened anti-Semitic attacks on the Soviet regime and condemned him for factionalism.

Lenin died in 1924. Stalin took advantage of Trotsky's absence in Moscow to position himself as the "heir" and strengthen his position.

In 1926, Trotsky teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin began to oppose. However, this did not help him and was soon expelled from the party, deported to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey.

Trotsky regarded Hitler's victory in February 1933 as the greatest defeat of the international labor movement. He concluded that the Comintern was incapacitated due to Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the creation of the Fourth International.

In 1933, Trotsky was given secret asylum in France, which was soon discovered by the Nazis. Trotsky leaves for Norway, where he writes his most significant work, “The Betrayed Revolution.” In 1936, at a show trial in Moscow, Stalin called Trotsky an agent of Hitler. Trotsky is expelled from Norway. The only country that provided the revolutionary with refuge was Mexico: he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City - in the city of Coyocan.

After Stalin's speeches, the International Joint Commission to Investigate the Moscow Trials was organized in Mexico. The commission concluded that the accusations were slanderous and Trotsky was not guilty.

The Soviet intelligence services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances In Paris, his closest ally, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died in a hospital after an operation. His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot.

Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick in his home near Mexico City on August 24, 1940. The perpetrator was an NKVD agent, the Spanish Republican Ramon Mercader (pictured), who infiltrated Trotsky’s entourage under the name of the Canadian journalist Frank Jackson.

Mercader received 20 years in prison for murder. After his release in 1960, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union. According to some estimates, the murder of Trotsky cost the NKVD approximately five million dollars.

The ice pick that killed Trotsky

From the will of Leon Trotsky: “I have no need to refute here again the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents: there is not a single stain on my revolutionary honor. Neither directly nor indirectly, I have never entered into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin's opponents died as victims of similar false accusations.

For forty-three years of my adult life I remained a revolutionary, forty-two of them I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start over, I would, of course, try to avoid certain mistakes, but general direction my life would remain unchanged. I see a bright green strip of grass under the wall, a clear blue sky above the wall and sunlight everywhere. Life is wonderful. May future generations cleanse it from evil, oppression, violence and enjoy it fully.”

Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, old style) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (Ukraine) into a wealthy family. From the age of seven he attended Jewish religious school, which he did not complete. In 1888, he was sent to study in Odessa, then moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he entered the Nikolaev Real School, and upon graduation began attending lectures at the Faculty of Mathematics of Odessa University. Here Trotsky became friends with radical, revolutionary-minded youth and took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union.

In January 1898, Trotsky, along with like-minded people, was arrested and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile, using false documents under the name Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.

In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of Russian social democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed his candidacy for the editorial office of Iskra.

In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion.

In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy, where he supported Martov’s position on the issue of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. Since 1904, Trotsky advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the St. Petersburg Council, becoming one of its three co-chairs.

The development of the so-called theory by Trotsky together with Alexander Parvus (Gelfand) dates back to this time. “permanent” (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the revolution will win only with the help of the world proletariat, which, having completed its bourgeois stage, will move on to the socialist one.

During the revolution of 1905-1907, Trotsky proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and editor of its newspaper Izvestia.

In 1907, he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to his place of exile.

From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna and tried to create an “August bloc” of social democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judass”.

In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for Kyiv Thought in the Balkans; two years later, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland, and then to France and Spain. Here he joined the editorial office of the left-wing socialist newspaper Nashe Slovo.

In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States.

Trotsky hailed the February Revolution of 1917 as the beginning of the long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia, and in July he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He was chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.

After the Bolshevik victory on October 25 (November 7), 1917, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for foreign affairs. Supported Lenin in the fight against plans to create coalition government all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Krasnov advancing on it.

In 1918-1925, Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army and personally supervised its actions on many fronts of the Civil War. Done great job to attract former royal officers and generals (“military experts”). He widely used repression to maintain discipline and “establish revolutionary order” at the front and in the rear, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the “Red Terror.”

Member of the Central Committee in 1917-1927, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-1926.

At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.

In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In the famous "Letter to the Congress", noting Trotsky's shortcomings, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable person from the entire composition of the Central Committee at that time.

Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. After Lenin's death, Leon Trotsky's bitter struggle with Joseph Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat.

In 1924, Trotsky’s views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a “petty-bourgeois deviation” in the RCP(b). For his leftist opposition views, he was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma Ata, and in 1929, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.

In 1929-1933, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of ​​Marmara). In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. At the end of 1936, he left Europe and settled in Mexico, in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.

He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership and refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics.
Trotsky was the initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938), the author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, books “Lessons of October”, “History of the Russian Revolution”, “The Betrayed Revolution”, memoirs “My Life”, etc.

In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia; his first wife and youngest son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate Leon Trotsky. In May 1940, the first attempt to kill him, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed.

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of his house in Coyocan, where his museum is now located.

The material was prepared based on open sources

"Traitor to the Revolution" Leon Trotsky

This man, whom Lenin called an “outstanding leader,” was one of the most colorful and controversial figures among those who led the Russian revolutionary movement, the construction and defense of the world’s first “state of workers and peasants.”

Lev Davidovich Trotsky

Leiba Bronstein (Lev Davidovich Trotsky) was born on October 25 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province. His father, David Leontievich, from among the Jewish colonists, rented 400 acres (about 440 hectares) of land in those parts. He was a successful farmer, but only learned to read in his old age. Mother, Anna, came from urban bourgeoisie.

Trotsky's childhood languages ​​were Ukrainian and Russian; he never mastered Yiddish. Leiba studied at a real school in Odessa and Nikolaev, where he was the first student in all disciplines. He was interested in drawing and literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.

How he joined the revolutionary struggle

In 1896, in Nikolaev, Leiba, who changed his name to Lev, joined a circle of lovers of scientific and popular literature. At first, he sympathized with the ideas of the populists and vehemently rejected Marxism, considering it a dry and alien teaching. Already at that time, many traits of his personality appeared - a sharp mind, polemical gift, energy, self-confidence, ambition, and a penchant for leadership. Together with other members of the circle, young Bronstein engaged in political education with workers, wrote proclamations, published newspapers, and spoke at rallies.

In January 1898, he was arrested along with several like-minded people. During the investigation, Lev studied English, German, French and Italian, using as a means of access... the Gospels. Having begun to study the works of Marx, he became a fanatical adherent of his teachings, and became acquainted with the works of Lenin. He was convicted and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

Since the fall of 1900, the young family was in exile in the Irkutsk province. Bronstein worked as a clerk for a millionaire Siberian merchant, then collaborated with the Irkutsk newspaper Eastern Review, where he published literary critical articles and essays about Siberian life. It was here that his extraordinary ability to use a pen first appeared. In 1902, Bronstein, with the consent of his wife, left her with two small daughters, Zina and Nina, and fled abroad alone. When escaping, he entered into a false passport his new last name, borrowed from the warden of an Odessa prison - Trotsky. It was as Trotsky that he became known throughout the world.

Arriving in London, Trotsky became close to the leaders of Russian Social Democracy who lived in exile. At the suggestion of Lenin, who highly appreciated his abilities and energy, he was co-opted to the editorial office of Iskra.

In 1903, in Paris, Trotsky married a second time - to Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion and shared all the ups and downs that abounded in his life.

In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). After the congress, together with the Mensheviks, he accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of Social Democracy. However, in the fall of 1904, a conflict also broke out between the leaders of Menshevism and Trotsky over the issue of attitude towards the liberal bourgeoisie, and he became a “non-factional” Social Democrat, claiming to create a movement that would stand above the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

When the Revolution of 1905 began in Russia, Trotsky returned to his homeland illegally. In October he became deputy chairman, then chairman of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. And in December he was arrested along with the Council.

In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to his place of exile he fled again. From 1908 to 1912, he published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (this name was later borrowed by Lenin), and in 1912 he tried to create an “August bloc” of Social Democrats. His most acute clashes with Lenin dated back to this period.

In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for the newspaper “Kyiv Mysl” in the Balkans, and after the outbreak of World War I - in France (this work gave him military experience that was later useful). Taking a sharply “anti-imperialist” position, he attacked the governments of the warring powers with all the might of his political temperament. In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States, where he continued to appear in print.

How he fought and led

Having learned about the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky left the United States. In May he arrived in Russia and took a position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July he joined the Bolsheviks and joined the RSDLP (b), acted as a publicist in factories, in educational institutions, in theaters, in squares. After the July events he was arrested and ended up in prison. In September, after his liberation, he became the idol of the Baltic sailors and soldiers of the city garrison, and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In addition, he became the chairman of the military revolutionary committee created by the Council.

Trotsky actually led the October armed uprising. After the Bolsheviks came to power, he became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Participating in separate negotiations with the powers of the “Four Bloc,” he put forward the formula: “We stop the war, we don’t sign peace, we demobilize the army,” which was supported by the Bolshevik Central Committee (Lenin was against it). Somewhat later, after the offensive was resumed German troops, Lenin managed to achieve the acceptance and signing of the terms of the “obscene” Brest Peace.

Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic at the beginning of 1918. In this post, he showed himself to be a talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he used decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment in prisons and concentration camps of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline, and no exception was made for the Bolsheviks. Trotsky did a great job of recruiting former Tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army and defending them from attacks by some high-ranking communists.

During the Civil War, his train ran through railways on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military and Marine supervised the actions of the fronts, made fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, and rewarded those who distinguished themselves. At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, the popularity and influence of Lev Davidovich reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.

In 1920–1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP.

In general, during this period there was close cooperation between Trotsky and Lenin, although they had serious disagreements on a number of issues of a political and military-strategic nature.

Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. Trotsky was opposed by the majority of party leaders, led by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, who suspected him of dictatorial, Bonapartist plans.

Trotsky's opponents, showing great determination, unprincipledness and cunning, speculating on the topic of his previous disagreements with Lenin, dealt a strong blow to Trotsky's authority. He was removed from his posts; his supporters are ousted from the leadership of the party and state. Trotsky's views (“Trotskyism”) were declared a petty-bourgeois movement hostile to Leninism.

In the mid-1920s, Trotsky, joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev, continued to sharply criticize the Soviet leadership, accusing it of betraying the ideals of the October Revolution, including refusing to implement the world revolution. Trotsky also demanded the restoration of internal party democracy, the strengthening of the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat and an attack on the positions of the Nepmen and kulaks. However, the majority of the party again took Stalin's side.

How he was overthrown and expelled

In 1927, Trotsky was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, expelled from the party and in January 1928 exiled to Alma-Ata, and next year By decision of the Politburo he was expelled from the USSR.

Together with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov, Trotsky first found himself on the Turkish island of Prinkipo in the Sea of ​​Marmara, then in France and Norway.

He tirelessly criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership, exposed “the adventurism and cruelty of industrialization and collectivization,” and refuted the claims of official Soviet propaganda and Soviet statistics. In 1935, Trotsky completed his most important work on the analysis of Soviet society, “The Revolution Betrayed,” where he revealed the contradictions between the interests of the main population of the country and the bureaucratic caste led by Stalin.

At the end of 1936, Trotsky settled in Mexico, where he lived in the house of the famous artist Diego Rivera, and then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa in the city of Coyocan. Having turned into a “Koyokan recluse,” Trotsky worked on a book about Stalin, in which he described his hero as a figure fatal to socialism. And after high-profile trials against the opposition took place in the USSR in 1937–1938, in which he himself was tried in absentia, Trotsky paid a lot of attention to exposing them as falsified.

All this time, the Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, recruiting agents among his closest associates. In 1938, under strange circumstances, his closest and tireless ally, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died after an operation in a Paris hospital. At the same time, news came from the Soviet Union not only about unprecedentedly cruel repressions against the “Trotskyists”. His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot. The accusation of Trotskyism became the most terrible and dangerous in the USSR.

How they killed him

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate his longtime enemy.

And even earlier, in the summer of 1938, a charming young man appeared in Paris, a “macho”, as they would say now - a Belgian named Jacques Mornard. There he was soon introduced to a US citizen, Russian by birth, Sylvia Agelof (Agelova), an ardent Trotskyist. Inexpressive in appearance, not spoiled by the attention of men, and also several years older than her new acquaintance, Sylvia became seriously interested in him. Moreover, he diligently portrayed himself as an adherent of Trotskyism, took her to restaurants and theaters, without being shy about his means, and most importantly, he promised Sylvia to marry her. Agelova introduced her lover to her sister Ruth, who worked as Trotsky’s secretary and shuttled between Paris and Mexico City. The appearance and impeccable manners of Sylvia’s “boyfriend” made great impression and on Ruth.

Well, who exactly was this charming and wealthy suitor?

Spaniard Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez was hiding under the name Jacques Mornar. He was born in 1913 into a fairly wealthy family, where besides him there were four more children. During the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from July 1936 to March 1939, Eustacia Maria Caridad del Rio, Ramon's mother, divorced her husband, joined the Spanish Communist Party and became an agent of the Soviet OGPU. Soon Caridad moved to Paris with her children.

As for Ramon, after graduating from the lyceum, he served in the army, participated in the youth movement, and was arrested in 1935, but was soon released by the Spanish Popular Front government that came to power. During the war, he fought on the side of the Republicans with the rank of lieutenant (according to other sources, major).

Caridad was attracted to cooperation with the OGPU by Naum Isaakovich Eitingon (aka Naumov, Kotov, Leonid Aleksandrovich), who died in the late 90s, one of the then leaders of the Soviet station in Spain (according to one version, Eitingon began the recruitment chain by doing Caridad with his mistress). With the assistance of Caridad, her son, Ramon, was also recruited.

After three happy months of romance with Jacques Mornard, Sylvia Agelof returned to her homeland in the USA in February 1939. About three months later, Jacques also arrived there “on film business business,” but... as the Canadian Frank Jackson. He explained his transformation by the desire to avoid conscription. And an “almost real” passport was made for him in Moscow, in a special NKVD laboratory, using the documents of a Canadian volunteer who died in Spain. Ramon, now Frank, was given a new passport in Paris in the spring of 1939 by the same Eitingon.

Soon after arriving in the United States, Ramon moved to Mexico City and settled there, and at the beginning of 1940 he called Sylvia to join him. After some time, Sylvia managed to get a job with Trotsky as a secretary. This happened quite easily, because her sister Ruth, whom Mercader-Mornar-Jackson had so charmed in Paris, had previously worked for him.

Lev Davidovich liked a modest, inconspicuous and unattractive young woman, ready to help him with everything: shorthand, typing, selecting materials, making newspaper clippings, and carrying out various small assignments. And besides, Sylvia spoke languages ​​- English, French, Spanish and Russian.

When Eitingon learned that Sylvia had begun working for Trotsky, he was very pleased: the process of “infiltration” had begun.

Since Sylvia lived at the Montejo Hotel with Ramon, he soon began driving her to work in his elegant Buick. A smartly dressed businessman got out of the car, opened the door, helped Sylvia out, kissed her on the cheek and waved goodbye. Often he came for her. The guards who replaced each other at the gates of Trotsky’s “fortress” gradually got used to Sylvia’s handsome, tall, smiling “groom”. Gradually he became his own man for the protection.

One day, Ramon had to give the Rosmer spouses, close friends of Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, who came to visit them from France, to the center of Mexico City. After this, the Rosmers told Trotsky that Sylvia “has a very handsome, pleasant fiancé.” With the help of Margarita Rosmer, Ramon managed to visit the territory of the “fortress”: she, having toured the capital’s shops, asked for a “pleasant young man» bring shopping into the house. Having visited the house, Mercader confirmed the data of the female Soviet agent (who had previously been introduced into the staff of servants) regarding the location of rooms, doors, external alarms, constipations, etc.

It should be said here that Mercader was considered as a potential murderer of Trotsky as a “understudy” for those terrorists who were supposed to carry out the assassination attempt first. Its organizer and leader was the famous Mexican artist Alfaro Siqueiros, who later became famous throughout the world. The command to “start liquidation” was given, of course, from Moscow.

Early in the morning of May 24, 1940, a group of “unknowns” in police uniforms disarmed the guards and attacked the house where Trotsky lived.

“We, participants in the national revolutionary war in Spain,” Siqueiros later wrote, “considered that the time had come to carry out the operation we had planned to capture the so-called Trotsky fortress in the Coyoacan quarter.”

The attackers literally shot up the room where Trotsky, his wife and grandson were hiding. But they managed to hide in a corner, behind the bed. Several dozen bullet holes appeared in the place where they had just been. None of them were injured.

After this assassination attempt, Siqueiros himself had to hide for a long time; he was in prison and in exile. Years later, he had the courage to admit: “My participation in the attack on Trotsky’s house on May 24, 1940 was a crime.”

The news of the failure infuriated Stalin. All the organizers of the operation had to listen to many angry words from the leader. Now the bet was placed on a double - the lone fighter Mercader-Jackson.

In May 1940, he finally managed to meet Trotsky personally. After this, he occasionally visited Coyoacan and in private conversations made it clear that he liked the political position of the Bolshevik exile. Gradually, Jackson managed to gain his trust.

One day, in mid-August, he asked Trotsky to correct his article on some minor issue. Trotsky made several comments. On the evening of August 20, Jackson came again with the already corrected article, went to Trotsky’s office and asked him to look over the text. He put aside the manuscript of the second volume of his monumental work “Stalin”, took the sheets of paper with Jackson’s article and began to read.

He put a folded raincoat on a chair, which until that moment he had been holding on his arm, took out a climbing ice ax from under it and, closing his eyes, brought it down with all his might on the head of the reading Trotsky. A terrible, piercing scream was heard...

The guards ran in at the scream, grabbed Mercader and began to beat him, but Trotsky was still able to say: “Don’t kill him! Let him tell who sent him..."

When the terrorist was searched, in addition to the ice pick, they also found a pistol and a dagger.

After the assassination attempt, Trotsky lived in the hospital for another 26 hours. Despite all the efforts of doctors, they could not save him.

The funeral took place a few days later. During this time, over thirty thousand people visited the coffin with Trotsky’s body. Even those who did not share his communist beliefs paid tribute to this fierce revolutionary. He was cremated and buried in the garden of his villa. His museum is still located here.

The fate of the killers

The entire “support group” - Eitingon, Caridad and several other individuals who were waiting for Mercader’s return near Trotsky’s villa, immediately after the assassination attempt managed to get out of Mexico City and “get lost.” Eitingon and Caridad “went to the bottom” in California. They were waiting for instructions from Moscow. A month later, Moscow thanked them through special channels for completing the task and allowed them to return. They returned to Moscow via China in May 1941, a month before the start of the war.

Mercader-Jackson received the maximum penalty under Mexican law - 20 years in prison, the first five of which he spent in solitary confinement. After serving his entire sentence, he was released in 1960 and ended up in Cuba with his wife Raquel Mendoza, an Indian woman whom he married while still in prison. From Cuba the couple headed to Prague, and from there to the Soviet Union. In 1961, Ramon Mercader was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, given a pension of 400 rubles, a small apartment in Moscow, on Sokol, and allowed to use a dacha in Malakhovka. Ramon Ivanovich Lopez (now his name was that) worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee, and was one of the authors of the “History of the Spanish Communist Party.”

Mercader spent the last years of his life in Cuba, where he died in 1978. According to his will, his ashes were buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo cemetery.

Mercader's mother, Caridad, after arriving in Moscow, sought to meet with Stalin, but the leader did not accept her. However, she was still invited to the Kremlin. Just before the start of the war, the Chairman of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR Kalinin presented her with the Order of Lenin. Beria (we will talk about him later) sent for this occasion a box of Georgian wine “Napareuli” bottling in 1907 with royal eagles on wax seals. During the war, Caridad was evacuated in Ufa and lived in the best hotel in the city, “Bashkiria”. After the war she lived in France.

Caridad died in 1976 in Paris, under a portrait of Stalin. She was 82 years old.