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Leon Trotsky
photographs of Trotsky from the 1920s
Photograph of Trotsky that appeared on the cover of the magazine Prozhektor in January 1924
People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union
In office
13 March 1918 – 6 January 1925
Premier
Preceded by Nikolai Podvoisky
Succeeded by Mikhail Frunze
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR
In office
8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918
Premier Vladimir Lenin
Preceded by Mikhail Tereshchenko
Succeeded by Georgy Chicherin
Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet
In office
8 October – 8 November 1917
Preceded by Nikolay Chkheidze
Succeeded by Grigory Zinoviev
Full member of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th Politburo
In office
10 October 1917 – 23 October 1926
Personal details
Born
Lev Davidovich Bronstein

(1879-11-07)7 November 1879
Yanovka, Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine)
Died 21 August 1940(1940-08-21) (aged 60)
Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Cause of death Assassination
Citizenship
  • Russian (1879–1917)
  • Soviet (1917–1932)
  • Stateless (1932–1940)
Nationality
Political party
Spouses
  • Aleksandra Sokolovskaya
    (m. 1899; div. 1902)
  • Natalia Sedova
    (m. 1903)
Children
  • Zinaida Volkova
  • Nina Nevelson
  • Lev Sedov
  • Sergei Sedov
Signature Trotsky's signature

Leon Davidovich Trotsky (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий; also transliterated Leo, Lev, Trotskii, Trotski, Trotskij and Trotzky; October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 in Kropyvnytskyi (nowadays Ukraine) - August 21, 1940 in Coyoacán, Mexico) was the public name of Leib or Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He was a Russian revolutionary and political theoretician. He was of Jewish-Ukrainian descent. After leading the Red Army in the Russian Civil War he disagreed with other Bolsheviks and had to leave Russia.

Trotsky was a socialist and a Marxist. In 1905 there was a revolution in Russia. Trotsky helped organize a committee of workers in St Petersburg which was called the Soviet. When the leader of the Soviet was arrested, Trotsky became leader of the Soviet in his place. Trotsky helped to expand on the idea of Permanent Revolution, which is a theory originally thought up by Karl Marx.

After the revolution Trotsky left Russia for his own safety. In 1917, he returned to Russia because of the Russian Revolution. He helped to bring about communism in Russia and defend it during the Russian Civil War. He was in charge of the army at this time. When the leader of the Bolsheviks (the party who led the revolution) Vladimir Lenin died, Trotsky became involved in a power struggle with Joseph Stalin for the leadership of the party. He lost, and Stalin came to power. He had to leave Russia because of Stalin, who was now his own enemy and wanted to harm Trotsky. In 1938 Trotsky founded the Fourth International. Stalin had one of his spies, Spaniard Ramón Mercarder, stab Trotsky to death in Mexico in 1940.

Childhood and family (1879–1895)

Leo Trotzki 1888
8-year-old Lev Bronstein, 1888

Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to David Leontyevich Bronstein (1847–1922) and Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya, 1850–1910) on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a wealthy Jewish landowner family in Yanovka, Kherson governorate, Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, Ukraine).

When Trotsky was eight, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated. He was enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school (Realschule zum Heiligen Paulus or school of the Lutheran St. Pauls Cathedral, a school of Black Sea Germans which also admitted students of other faiths and backgrounds,) which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial government's policy of Russification.

Political career and life (1896–1940)

In 1898, Trotsky was arrested for revolutionary activities and exiled to Siberia, but in 1902 escaped to London, where he met Lenin and wrote for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's paper Iskra. During the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky returned to Russia and became chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was again exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1907 and spent time in London, Vienna, Switzerland, Paris, and New York. After the February Revolution of 1917 which overthrew the tsar, Trotsky returned to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks. As chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he played an important role in the October Revolution which overthrew the Provisional Government.

In Lenin's first government, Trotsky was appointed the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and led the negotiations for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. From 1918 to 1925, he served as the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, founding the Red Army; establishing conscription, training, and discipline; and leading it to victory in the Russian Civil War. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky was outmaneuvered by Joseph Stalin and his allies and lost his positions: he was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927, internally exiled to Alma Ata in 1928, and deported in 1929. He lived in Turkey, France, and Norway before settling in Mexico in 1937.

In exile, Trotsky wrote extensively and polemically against Stalinism. In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union had become a "degenerated workers' state" due to its isolation, and called for an end to Stalin's dictatorship. He founded the Fourth International in 1938 as an alternative to the Comintern. In 1936, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia at the first of the Moscow show trials, and in 1940, he was assassinated at his home in Mexico City by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.

Legacy

People who believe in Trotsky's ideas are called Trotskyists and follow Trotskyism. The main Trotskyist organizations today are the Fourth International (post - Reunification), the Socialist Workers Party in the UK and the International Socialist Tendency.

In popular culture

In the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, Trotsky is represented by Snowball the pig and Stalin is represented by Napoleon who was also a pig.

Images for kids

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: León Trotski para niños

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