author
Leon Trotsky
1879–1940
A brilliant and controversial revolutionary thinker, this Russian Marxist helped shape the 1917 Revolution, built the Red Army, and spent his final years in exile fighting Stalin with words as fiercely as he once fought with politics.
4 Audiobooks
From October to Brest-Litovsk
by Leon Trotsky
The Bolsheviki and World Peace
by Leon Trotsky
About the author
Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in 1879 in what is now Ukraine, Leon Trotsky became one of the best-known figures of the Russian revolutionary movement. He was arrested and exiled for his early political activity, escaped Siberia, and went on to become a powerful writer, speaker, and organizer.
Trotsky played a major role in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. After the Bolsheviks took power, he served as commissar of foreign affairs and then commissar of war, helping organize the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. His fierce intellect and talent for argument made him a central force in early Soviet politics.
After Lenin's death, Trotsky lost the struggle for power to Joseph Stalin. He was pushed out of public life, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and lived in exile in Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico. Even in exile he kept writing influential political works, including My Life and The History of the Russian Revolution, until he was assassinated in Coyoacán in 1940.