Essays on Leon Trotsky

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, most commonly known as Leon Trotsky, was a was a Ukrainian-Russian Marxist communist theorist and Soviet politician. He helped ignite the Russian Revolution of 1917, and built the Red Army afterward. He developed a variant of Marxism which has become known as Trotskyism.

On November 7, 1879, Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in Yanovka, Ukraine, in the family of prosperous Jewish farmers. He became enthralled with Marxism in Nikolayev, Ukraine, in 1896. In 1897, Trotsky took role in foundation of the South Russian Workers' Union. In result, he got arrested and spent two years in prison. He escaped in 1902 with a forged passport bearing the name Trotsky, and made his way to London, where he met Vladimir Lenin.

By the end of 1905, he had become a organizator of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. In result, Trotsky was jailed and brought to trial in 1906. In January 1907, he escaped prison and spent next 10 years in Europe. After he arrived in Russia in May 1917, he was admitted to the Bolshevik Party. After the Bolsheviks took control of the Soviet government, Leon Trotsky was appointed as leader of the Red Army. Trotsky was elected a member of the Communist Party central committee after the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922.

After the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky lost his government positions and was expelled from the Soviet Union. He spent the rest of his life in exile and continued to write and criticize Stalin and the Soviet government. Trotsky was assassinated in August 1940 in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, an undercover agent for the Soviet Union's secret police.

Trotsky was undoubtedly the most brilliant intellect of the Communist Revolution with a reputation as a tireless worker and a decisive administrator.

"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end."
"Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures."
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."