Allan Todd - Trotsky, The Passionate Revolutionary

TROTSKY

THE PASSIONATE REVOLUTIONARY

Dedication

For all those who believe that, despite hell-black nights, another kinder and fairer world is possible.

THE PASSIONATE REVOLUTIONARY

ALLAN TODD

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Allan Todd, 2022

ISBN 978 1 39901 076 4

ePUB ISBN 978 1 39901 077 1

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39901 077 1

The right of Allan Todd to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Work on this book started at the end of August 2020, just a few days after the 80th anniversary of Trotskys death in Mexico City, on 21 August 1940, following a dramatic and ultimately successful assassination attempt the previous day.

I would like to thank Jacqui Petrie, Ken and Di Barrell, Chrissie Parfitt, Ian Rycroft, Paul Wilmott, Tony Lywood and two of my ex-History students, Nicky Barrell and Patrick Fitzgerald for kindly reading, and offering constructive criticism on early drafts of various chapters.

Thanks are also due to Chris Evan Brown for shaping my proposal, and to Claire Hopkins, Laura Hirst and the rest of the team at Pen & Sword for pre-publication improvements. Thanks are also due to Thomas Bohm, of Design, Illustration & Typesetting, for his skill and patience! in drawing up the Family Tree and the various maps.

Any remaining faults and errors are down to me.

I would also like to thank our daughters, Megan and Vanessa, and our grandchildren, Alexander and Emilia, for their support and encouragement especially over the past eleven years, and during what was a difficult year for so many.

And finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Cyn who, for Christmas 1972, bought me Wyndham and Kings Trotsky: A Documentary which, 50 years later, helped me shape and complete this book.

Allan Todd

June 2021

Keswick

Names

(a) Trotskys name was Leon Davidovitch Bronstein; but Trotsky is the name by which he is known to History, so to avoid confusion with any of the other members of his family, he will be referred to as Trotsky throughout the book.

(b) As will become apparent, most Russian first names have several diminutives which were used by family and friends. Trotsky was frequently referred to as Lev or Lyova; whilst Natalya Sedova was often called Natasha.

Dates

Russian History is complicated by the fact that, before February 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of Europe. Three months after the November Revolution of 1917, Soviet Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar the introduction of which was overseen by Trotsky. This is why the March and November Revolutions of 1917 are referred to in some books as the February and October Revolutions. To avoid any (mathematical) confusions, this book uses the Gregorian calendar throughout including for the years before 1918.

Soviet/Soviets

Twentieth century Russian history is littered with Soviets. Unless otherwise stated, where Soviet is used in the singular, it refers to the Petrograd Soviet; where Soviets is used, it refers to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The term dictatorship when used in this Marxist phrase has a very precise meaning: quite different from its usual one. Here, it means the overall dominance or hegemony of a particular social classs interests which can exist within either a democratic or an undemocratic political system. Thus, for Marxists, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie capitalism can operate within either a parliamentary democracy (such as Britain) or an authoritarian one-party state (such as Nazi Germany).

For the Bolsheviks, whilst Britain was a political democracy, with a parliament and universal suffrage, the economic interests of the capitalist (bourgeois) class always predominated because of their much greater wealth and power reflected by laws and the dominant values. Consequently, there was no conflict between Trotskys call for the dictatorship of the proletariat and for socialist democracy.

Secret Police

During the period covered by this book, Russias secret police underwent several name changes. From 1881, under the Tsars, it was known as the Okhrana (The Guard Department). After the November Revolution in 1917, such work was taken over by the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission) until 1922, when it became the GPU (State Political Administration) which, in 1923, became the OGPU (United State Political Administration). In 1934, the NKVD (Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs) took over the secret police.

TROTSKYS FATAL FAMILY TREE

Notes

Dates in bold font = shot/assassinated/mysterious circumstances/suicide. ? = fate unknown.

Main Characters

Trotskys Family

David Bronstein (18741922) father

Anna Bronstein (18501910) mother

Alexander Bronstein (1870 1938 ) older brother

Yelizaveta Bronstein (18751924) older sister

Olga Bronstein (1883 1941 ) younger sister; an Oppositionist

Aleksandra Sokolovskaya (1872 1938 ) Marxist revolutionary; Trotskys (first) wife; an Oppositionist

Zina Trotsky (1901) elder daughter; an Oppositionist

Nina Trotsky (190228) younger daughter; an Oppositionist

Natalya Sedova (18821962) Trotskys (common-law) wife; an Oppositionist

Lyova Sedov (1906) elder son; an Oppositionist

Sergei Sedov (1908) younger son

Zakhar Moglin (1897 1937 ) Zinas first husband; an Oppositionist

Platon Volkov (1898 1938 ) Zinas second husband; an Oppositionist

Man Nevelson (1896 1937 ) Ninas husband; an Oppositionist

Anya Riabukhana (1899 1938 ) Lyovas wife

Seva (Esteban) Volkov (1926) grandson

Aleksandra Moglin (192389) granddaughter (she met Seva her half-brother who travelled from Mexico to Russia just before she died; but they couldnt communicate, as she had no Spanish or English, and he had forgotten Russian)