(1879-1940)
Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and theorist, and one of the leaders of the
Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia. Also quite gifted in
abstract mathematics, but he spurned a life of numbers in favor of
revolt. During the
civil war, Trotsky organized and led the vaunted
Red Army. After
Lenin's death and the subsequent rise of
Stalin, Trotsky became the leader of the Left Opposition to Stalin's bureaucratic regime. He lost the power struggle, and was expelled from the
USSR. Trotsky believed in a
democratic (
interal democracy only) Bolshevik Party and some participation of the
proletariat in economic decisions. Also crucial to
Trotskyism is the theory of
Permanent Revolution, the idea that an isolated
USSR could not have stood on its own, but needed aid from a
Socialist Western
Europe - compare to
Stalin's "
Socialism in one country." With the failure of the Spartakus revolt in
Berlin and the
French general
strike of 1920, that aid did not come. A
Stalinist agent buried an
ice pick in his head in
1940.
Trotsky was something of a
Menshevik before the revolution. His earlier pamphlets warned against what Russia would become; later, inexplicably, he would become a
Bolshevik. His betrayal of the ideals of which he had formerly adhered so firmly culminated in the
Kronstadt massacre.