(1879 – 1940)

Leon Davidovich Trotsky (November 7, 1879 – August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. An influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union, Trotsky served as the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and the People’s Commissar of War and was the founder and commander of the Red Army. He was also a founding member of the Politburo, the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Following a power struggle with Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union. Ramon Mercader assassinated Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. Trotsky’s ideas form the basis of the Communist theory of Trotskyism, which remains a major school of Marxist thought theoretically opposed to Stalinism and Maoism.

Childhood and Family (1879-1896)

Trotsky was born in…