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LEV TROTSKY

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was a Russian Soviet leader. He was born in 1877. In 1899 he was arrested at Odessa as a member of the South Russian Workmen's League, and was banished to Siberia for four years, but escaped three years into his exile. During the attempted revolution in Petrograd un 1905 he was president of the Petrograd Council of workmen, was again arrested, and banished to Siberia for life. Six months later he escaped and spent some years living in France, Switzerland and elsewhere, working as a journalist.

At the outbreak of the Great War, he was in Paris editing a Russian Socialist newspaper. At Petrograd during the revolution of 1917, he became a supporter of Lenin, and taking part in the abortive outbreak in July against the government of Kerensky, he was arrested and imprisoned. Liberated in September he began a campaign of intrigue against Kerensky.

Elected president of the Petrograd Soviet, after a time he formed the Bolshevist Revolutionary Committee, which in November started the coup d'etat that led to Kerensky's fall. Later with Lenin he seized power and established the Council of the people's Commissioners, Lenin being its president and Trotsky commissary for foreign affairs. In 1918 he became commissary for war, and in 1921 wrote 'The defence of terrorism'.

Trotsky was later assassinated, while in exile in South America, under orders from Stalin.
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