Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most controversial figures in the history of the 20th century. He was an ideologist of the revolution, created the Red Army and the Comintern, dreamed of a world revolution, but became a victim of his own ideas...
"Demon of the Revolution"
Trotsky's role in the 1917 revolution was key. One can even say that without his participation it would have failed. According to the American historian Richard Pipes, Trotsky actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the absence of Vladimir Lenin, when he was hiding in Finland.
Trotsky's importance for the revolution is difficult to overestimate. On October 12, 1917, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he formed the Military Revolutionary Committee. Joseph Stalin, who would later become Trotsky's main enemy, wrote in 1918:
“All work on the practical organization of the uprising took place under the direct leadership of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky.”


During the attack on Petrograd by the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov in October (November) 1917, Trotsky personally organized the defense of the city. Trotsky was called the “demon of the revolution,” but he was also one of its economists.
Trotsky came to Petrograd from New York. In the book of the American historian Anthony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” it is written about Trotsky that he was closely associated with Wall Street tycoons and went to Russia with the generous financial support of the then American President Woodrow Wilson. According to Sutton, Wilson personally gave Trotsky a passport and gave the “demon of the revolution” $10,000 (more than $200,000 in today’s money).
This information, however, is controversial. Lev Davidovich himself commented in the newspaper “New Life” on rumors about dollars from bankers:
“Regarding the story of 10 thousand marks or dollars, neither is mine
the government and I knew nothing about this until information about it appeared here, in Russian circles and the Russian press.”


Trotsky further wrote:
“Two days before I left New York for Europe, my German associates gave me a farewell rally.” At this meeting, a gathering for the Russian revolution took place. The collection gave $310.”
However, another historian, again an American, Sam Landers, in the 90s found evidence in the archives that Trotsky did bring money to Russia. In the amount of $32,000 from the Swedish socialist Karl Moor.
Creation of the Red Army
Trotsky is also credited with creating the Red Army. He set a course for building an army on traditional principles: unity of command, restoration of the death penalty, mobilization, restoration of insignia, uniform uniforms and even military parades, the first of which took place on May 1, 1918 in Moscow, on Khodynskoye Field.
An important step in the creation of the Red Army was the fight against the “military anarchism” of the first months of the existence of the new army. Trotsky reinstated executions for desertion. By the end of 1918, the power of the military committees was reduced to nothing. People's Commissar Trotsky, by his personal example, showed the Red commanders how to restore discipline.


On August 10, 1918, he arrived in Sviyazhsk to take part in the battles for Kazan. When the 2nd Petrograd Regiment fled without permission from the battlefield, Trotsky applied the ancient Roman ritual of decimation (execution of every tenth by lot) against deserters.
On August 31, Trotsky personally shot 20 people from among the unauthorized retreating units of the 5th Army. At the instigation of Trotsky, by decree of July 29, the entire population of the country liable for military service between the ages of 18 and 40 was registered, and military conscription was established. This made it possible to sharply increase the size of the armed forces.
In September 1918, there were already about half a million people in the ranks of the Red Army - more than two times more than 5 months ago. By 1920, the number of the Red Army was already more than 5.5 million people.
Barrier detachments
When it comes to barrage detachments, people usually remember Stalin and his famous order number 227 “Not a step back,” however, Leon Trotsky was ahead of his opponent in the creation of barrage detachments.
It was he who was the first ideologist of the punitive barrage detachments of the Red Army. In his memoirs “Around October,” he wrote that he himself substantiated to Lenin the need to create barrier detachments:


“To overcome this disastrous instability, we need strong defensive detachments of communists and militants in general. We must force him to fight. If you wait until the man loses his senses, it will probably be too late.”
Trotsky was generally distinguished by his harsh judgments: “As long as the evil tailless monkeys called people, proud of their technology, build armies and fight, the command will put soldiers between possible death in front and inevitable death behind.”
Over-industrialization
Leon Trotsky was the author of the concept of super-industrialization. The industrialization of the young Soviet state could be carried out in two ways. The first path, which Nikolai Bukharin supported, involved the development of private entrepreneurship by attracting foreign loans.
Trotsky insisted on his concept of super-industrialization, which consisted of growth with the help of internal resources, using the means of agriculture and light industry to develop heavy industry.


The pace of industrialization was accelerated. Everything was given from 5 to 10 years. In this situation, the peasantry had to “pay” for the costs of rapid industrial growth. If the directives drawn up in 1927 for the first five-year plan were guided by the “Bukharin approach,” then by the beginning of 1928 Stalin decided to revise them and gave the green light to accelerated industrialization.
To catch up with the developed countries of the West, it was necessary to “run a distance of 50–100 years” in 10 years. The first (1928-1932) and second (1933-1937) five-year plans were subordinated to this task. That is, Stalin followed the path proposed by Trotsky.
Red five-pointed star
Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most influential “art directors” of Soviet Russia. It was thanks to him that the five-pointed star became the symbol of the USSR.
When it was officially approved by the order of the People's Commissar of Military Affairs of the Republic Leon Trotsky No. 321 dated May 7, 1918, the five-pointed star received the name “Mars star with a plow and hammer.” The order also stated that this sign “is the property of persons serving in the Red Army.”
Seriously interested in esotericism, Trotsky knew that the five-pointed pentagram has a very powerful energy potential and is one of the most powerful symbols.


The swastika, the cult of which was very strong in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, could also become a symbol of Soviet Russia. She was depicted on the “Kerenki”, swastikas were painted on the wall of the Ipatiev House by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna before the execution, but by Trotsky’s sole decision the Bolsheviks settled on a five-pointed star.
The history of the 20th century has shown that the “star” is stronger than the “swastika”. Later, the stars shone over the Kremlin, replacing the double-headed eagles.
Alexey Rudevich

On February 27, a general strike in Petrograd developed into an armed uprising. Workers and soldiers captured the Arsenal plant and the Peter and Paul Fortress, members of the government were arrested, and the formation of new government bodies began: the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and the Provisional Government. On March 2, 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, who also signed the abdication the next day.

Soldiers during the February Revolution of 1917

During the days of the February Revolution, Leon Trotsky was in New York and worked in the newspaper for Russian emigrants “New World”. Having received news about the events in Petrograd, he went to Russia.

Road<...>to Petrograd passed unnoticed, like a tunnel. This was the tunnel - into the revolution

Trotsky L.
"My life"

On May 4, 1917, Trotsky arrived in Petrograd at the Finlyandsky Station, where he was met by a large delegation. He immediately launched a vigorous activity: he sits on the Petrograd Soviet, speaks at anti-war rallies in educational institutions, factories, theaters and squares. Trotsky arrived in Petrograd. May 4 (17), 1917

I returned, exhausted, after midnight, in an anxious half-sleep I opened the best arguments against political opponents, and at about seven in the morning, sometimes earlier, I was torn from sleep by a hateful, unbearable knock on the door: I was summoned to a meeting in Peterhof, or the Kronstadters were sent for me a boat

Trotsky L.
"My life"

The Modern circus became Trotsky’s especially favorite performance venue. The speaker's speeches were so popular that the hall was always completely packed. However, when Trotsky tried to speak in the Petrograd Soviet, he was interrupted by shouts: “This is not a Modern circus for you here!”

Every square inch was occupied, every human body was compacted. The galleries threatened every minute to collapse under the unbearable human weight. I spoke as if from a warm cave of human bodies. When I made a broad gesture, I certainly hurt someone, and the response of a grateful movement let me know not to get upset, not to break away, but to continue

Trotsky L.
"My life"

July demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt, Petrograd, 1917 Newsreel

From July 3 to July 5, armed demonstrations took place in Petrograd. The soldiers, propagated by the Bolsheviks, demanded the resignation of the Provisional Government. Repressions began against the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The authorities introduced martial law in the city, disarmed soldiers and workers, and issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders. Kerensky, the Minister of War of the Provisional Government, began to persecute the Bolsheviks and accused them of spying for Germany. Lenin had to flee. Trotsky was arrested and placed in the Petrograd Kresty prison.

In early August, at the illegal VI Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the Bolsheviks proclaimed a course for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. At the same time, both Lenin and Trotsky were elected honorary chairmen of the congress in absentia.

Bolshevism seemed like an insignificant bunch. This is how he was officially treated. The party itself did not yet realize its tomorrow's strength. And at the same time, Lenin confidently led her to the greatest tasks. I got to work and helped him

Trotsky L.
"My life"

Another revolt changed the state of affairs. On August 25, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Kornilov, sent troops to Petrograd with the aim of establishing a military dictatorship. This forced Kerensky to seek help from the Bolsheviks to stop the offensive. Trotsky was released from Kresty.

Lavr Kornilov is welcomed in Moscow, 1917.

Straight from the “Crosses” I went to the newly created committee for the defense of the revolution, where I sat with the very gentlemen who put me in prison as a Hohenzollern agent and had not yet managed to drop the charges against me

Trotsky L.
"My life"

Kornilov's defeat benefited the Bolsheviks. The party's influence and numbers began to grow sharply. The Bolshevization of the Soviets began.

Persecuted, persecuted, slandered, our party has never grown so quickly as lately. We have barely kept up with the tide. The number of Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet grew from day to day

Trotsky L.
"My life"

In September, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. He actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and began active preparations for the uprising. Trotsky remained the leader of the party virtually until Lenin, who had been hiding in Finland all this time, returned to Russia.
On October 12, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was formed under the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Trotsky. The Military Revolutionary Committee became the organizer of the October Revolution.

Smolny, Bolshevik headquarters during the days of the revolution

On October 24 (November 6), soldiers and sailors, Red Guard workers blocked key facilities in the city - bridges, train stations, telegraph and power plants. Trotsky directed what was happening from Smolny.

On the night of October 26-27 (November 8-9), the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which more than half consisted of Bolsheviks, proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power. Trotsky was elected to the presidium.

Late in the evening, while waiting for the opening of the meeting of the Congress of Soviets, Lenin and I rested next to the meeting hall, in an empty room with nothing but chairs. Someone laid a blanket for us on the floor, someone - I think Lenin's sister - got us pillows. We lay side by side, body and soul moving away like an over-tensioned spring. It was a well-deserved break!

Trotsky L.
"My life"

At the Congress, a new government was created - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
At the same time, two Decrees were put forward - the “Decree on Peace,” which called for concluding a just peace between the warring countries without indemnities and annexations, and the “Decree on Land,” which announced the abolition of private property and the confiscation of landowners’ lands and estates.

— In his memoirs, Leon Trotsky wrote: “If it had not been for me in St. Petersburg in 1917, the October Revolution would have occurred, provided Lenin had the presence and leadership. If there had been neither Lenin nor me in St. Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution... If Lenin had not been in St. Petersburg, I would hardly have been able to cope... the outcome of the revolution would have been a question mark.” So what is Trotsky's actual role in the October events?

— The main difficulty in our understanding of the events of October 1917 is that for several decades we were lied to about our history. They lied out of ignorance or intentionally, out of stupidity and underdevelopment. Bad historians and good ones lied, that is, those who, against the general nightmare background, were considered “decent people.” And over these decades, so many cultural layers of this lie have accumulated that it is very difficult to get rid of it.

The point is not at all whether Trotsky was good or bad, but that everything was not as Soviet historiography described.

"Everything was hanging by a thread"

The Petrograd October Revolution of 1917 was an operation amazing in its audacity. Everything was so hanging by a thread that we can say with confidence: only Lenin’s tactical agreement with Trotsky made possible the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, which laid the foundation for the events that would later go down in history as the October Revolution.

By October 1917, Trotsky, who arrived in Petrograd, held the position of chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In general, it was a rather toothless organization. Trotsky was elected chairman “out of old memory”: in the first Russian revolution, Lev Davidovich, together with Alexander Parvus, came up with this form of government and created the first council in Russia. In 1917, in order not to reinvent the wheel, Trotsky again stood at the head of the council.

The council had no power, and no one would have been interested in this organization and its leader (just as it was not of interest until the time of Lenin), if not for the idiotic decision of the Provisional Government to send the Petrograd garrison to the front. Of course, the government had serious reasons for this. People died at the fronts, and the Petrograd garrison fattened in the capital and “decayed.”

The garrison, understandably, did not want to go to the front. And someone came up with a wise idea - to conclude an agreement with the Petrograd Soviet: the council (headed by Trotsky) would prohibit the Provisional Government from withdrawing the garrison from the capital, and the garrison would not be supported for this by the Provisional Government (why support it, since it wants to send this garrison to the front?), and the Petrograd Soviet. So it happened as in the anthem “Internationale” - “who was nothing will become everything.” At that moment, Trotsky’s Petrograd Soviet became “everything”—the only force in the city.

“Lenin was considered a burden”

At this time, Lenin was holed up in Finland, afraid to show his nose in Petrograd, since after an unsuccessful attempt to seize power in July 1917 and the publication in the press of information that Lenin was a German spy in Petrograd, only a cell could wait for him. But the moment came when Lenin, despite the risk of arrest, had to return to Petrograd.

Remember Ilyich’s famous phrase, replicated in literature and cinema: “Yesterday it was early, tomorrow it will be late”? The phrase absolutely adequately reflected the situation. Let's forget about the storming of the Winter Palace, which never happened as an assault, about the cadets and the women's battalion...

The point was not the Provisional Government, which existed, of course, but had no power without a garrison. The threat to Lenin came not from the government, but from the Congress of Soviets scheduled for November 8, according to the new style.

The agenda was already known: the congress was supposed to declare the Provisional Government overthrown and form a Homogeneous socialist government, including representatives of all socialist parties: “from the Socialist Socialists (Party of People’s Socialists - Gazeta.Ru) to the Bolsheviks.” That is why “tomorrow was too late.” The coup had to be done “today” - on the night of November 7-8. Otherwise, power would have left Lenin’s hands, most likely forever. But Lenin was only interested in power.

The Bolshevik elite was always burdened by Lenin. His “indisputable authority” is the second falsified page of Soviet history after Trotsky. Lenin was an unprincipled manipulator and authoritarian leader. He was not for a minute ready to submit to anyone's leadership. He split any revolutionary organization, for example the once united RSDLP, until he created a group of like-minded people who agreed to consider him their leader.

In the pre-October days, Lenin was considered more of a liability by the Bolshevik leadership. Lenin was not going to be included in the Homogeneous Socialist Government as an extremist. For the same reason, by the way, they were not going to include Trotsky there. And Lev Davidovich didn’t have a party.

Trotsky delicately writes that on the eve of the coup he concluded a bloc with Lenin. It seems to me that the block was concluded on November 7th. Lenin’s “yesterday was early” meant exactly this. “Yesterday”—November 6—there was no bloc with Trotsky, there was no support from the Petrograd Soviet, behind which stood the capital’s garrison. “Tomorrow will be too late” - tomorrow the Congress of Soviets will take away power. The revolution must be done “today”. And on the night of November 8, absolutely fantastic events took place: Lenin and Trotsky agreed, firstly, on Trotsky’s admission to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party; on the admission into the Bolshevik Party of all Trotsky’s supporters (the so-called “Mezhraiontsy” - those who stood “between” the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks); about the formation of a purely Bolshevik government exclusively from Lenin’s supporters called the “Council of People’s Commissars” and that in this government Lenin would take the post of chairman, and Trotsky would take the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“Revolutionaries have never been nice and gentle people”

At the same time, soldiers of the Petrograd garrison seize the unarmed Winter Palace and declare the Provisional Government overthrown, several hours ahead of the Congress of Soviets. When the absolutely confused Congress of Soviets nevertheless gathers and helplessly grumbles about how this can be, after all, today the congress was supposed to declare the Provisional Government overthrown and form a Homogeneous Socialist Government, it turns out that the train of history has already left.

A government has been created, and it is headed by two extremists: Lenin and Trotsky.

So without Lenin and Trotsky there would not have been that October Revolution, which determined the life of the country for the next 75 years.

— In many ways, the fate of the revolution of 1917, and the fate of Trotsky, depended on the latter’s relationship with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. What kind of people were these? What were the relations between the two Social Democrats before 1917?

“Revolutionaries have never been nice and gentle people.”

Let me say that in general the revolutionaries were quarrelsome, vile, predatory, dishonest people...

There were definitely no romantic idealists among the Bolsheviks. Let us not repeat all the nasty things that Lenin wrote about Trotsky, and Trotsky about Lenin. Lenin fought for power and for leadership in the revolutionary community. He rightly saw Trotsky as a competitor. It is clear that he “watered” as best he could. Trotsky considered Lenin to be an unprincipled and dishonest person by revolutionary standards. Consider, for example, Lenin’s well-known trick when he began to publish a newspaper parallel to Trotsky under the same name as Trotsky’s newspaper - “Pravda”. How should Trotsky speak of Lenin after such treachery?

— What can you say about their relationship at the end of Lenin’s life? And what was the role of Joseph Stalin in them?

— Any political bloc exists only as long as it is beneficial to its participants. The political bloc of Lenin and Trotsky was, of course, beneficial to Trotsky: in the blink of an eye he became a member of the leadership of a serious party to which he had never had anything to do. But in October 1917, this bloc turned out to be vital for Lenin: only such a political combination provided him with not just participation in the government, but undeniable leadership. It was undeniable because the power and authority of the second person in the government - Trotsky - rested solely on the authority of Lenin within the Bolshevik Party.

In other words, if Lenin had died on November 9, Trotsky would have been left without power on the 10th. Therefore, Lenin knew that Trotsky was his constant and most devoted ally. And Trotsky knew that Lenin was his only ally in the party and government. So they lived and worked like Siamese twins.

If only competitors don't come

Particular attention should be paid to the history of the conflict during the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty in March 1918. This is the third most falsified page of Soviet history. The majority of the party was for the revolutionary war, for the all-in game, all or nothing: world revolution or death. Since it was well known that the revolution in Russia could not be sustained, it had to begin (according to Karl Marx) in Germany. But Lenin understood: in the event of a global revolution, he personally would lose power - no one would be interested in the leader of backward Russia while there was a communist government led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany. Therefore, Lenin advocated signing peace with the Kaiser’s Germany. In other words, he deliberately intended to provide assistance to the German government, stabbing the communists in the back, so that a competitor, Liebknecht, would not gain power in Germany. This is how Lenin’s position was assessed by both the Bolsheviks in Russia and the communists in Germany.

To save Lenin, without whom, as we have already mentioned, Trotsky could not live in the Bolshevik Party, the quick-witted Trotsky came up with the cunning formula “neither peace nor war.” Gradually, the majority of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which was also afraid of being left without Lenin at a critical moment for the revolution, moved from supporting Bukharin’s point of view (“immediate revolutionary war”) to supporting Trotsky’s line (“no peace, no war”).

And when Lenin realized that the majority of the Central Committee was following Trotsky, he bluffed like a good poker player: he declared that if the Central Committee did not vote for his point of view, he would resign (this was all recorded in the minutes of the meetings of the Party Central Committee). The threat of resignation made no impression on the members of the Central Committee. On the contrary, everyone breathed a sigh of relief: the “old man” would no longer interfere with the cause of the world revolution. But the bluff of the brilliant manipulator Lenin was not aimed at members of the Central Committee at all, but exclusively at Trotsky. Trotsky understood: if Lenin really left, Trotsky himself would be expelled from the Central Committee the next day. And at the historic meeting of the Central Committee, which voted for the acceptance of German peace conditions, he declared: with the threat of Lenin’s resignation, he would not take upon himself the courage to vote against the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty and abstained from voting (along with his supporters). Lenin won by one vote.

During negotiations with the Germans, Lenin betrayed Trotsky. They agreed that Trotsky would stall for as long as he could and then refuse to sign the “humiliating” document, running the risk of breaking with the Germans. This is exactly what Trotsky did. And Lenin accused Trotsky of sabotaging the peace agreement. This was absolute slander, proven by documents. But Lenin knew: Trotsky would never dare to openly criticize him, since he was Trotsky’s only ally and support in the Bolshevik Central Committee. And Trotsky remained cowardly silent...

“I considered everyone my opponents”

The last months of Lenin's life - 1922-1923 - are a most interesting and absolutely detective story, worthy of many monographs and novels. At the risk of repeating myself:

They were burdened by Lenin. He was disturbing everyone. He interfered with Yakov Sverdlov, interfered with Joseph Stalin, interfered with Felix Dzerzhinsky.

The revolutionaries were not soft, law-abiding, intelligent people. Many of them were murderers in the literal sense of the word. I am not saying this with condemnation at all: among the revolutionaries there were people who personally killed. It is clear that for ideological, and not criminal reasons (although it happened differently). In general, revolutionaries never had problems with killing the enemy. Who is considered an enemy is another question. Stalin took this concept to its logical conclusion and considered everyone as opponents - the whole world and each individual person. And this approach to enemies had its own clear logic.

When, towards the end of 1921, Lenin began to have health problems, the entire Bolshevik leadership took a turn to push the “beloved leader” to the grave. Except for Trotsky. Trotsky turns into the only desperate supporter and defender of Lenin. But by 1922, Stalin was so omnipotent in the party, and Dzerzhinsky in the special services, that Lenin could not win the battle against them, even with the support of Trotsky.

Lenin’s poisoning is “a statement of fact”

— You are suggesting that Lenin was poisoned. What is this hypothesis, what is it based on?
- Yes, in general, this is not an assumption. This is a statement of fact. Of course, one should not have expected that the topic of “Lenin’s poisoning” would receive the attention of Soviet historians. They told us and wrote nonsense about the last months and weeks of Lenin’s life. In 1999, I published the book “Leaders in Law,”

where it is described in detail how exactly Lenin was killed. By days, sometimes by hours and minutes. Only unlike many other historians who touched on this topic, I show that it was not a conspiracy of Stalin, but a conspiracy of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky.

Then the ease with which the conspirators managed to isolate Lenin becomes clear. The day when exactly this happened is known: March 5, 1923. I believe that on this day Lenin and Krupskaya were arrested. And then Lenin was slowly, sophisticatedly, sadistically killed, and on January 21, 1924, he was finally killed. And the sadist Stalin mocked Krupskaya for some time before poisoning her too: on her birthday he gave her her favorite cake. She ate a piece and died on her birthday.

"A world revolutionary is worse than a dictator"

— From the second person in the state, Trotsky turns into a political exile in 4 years. What is the reason for such a rapid fall of one of the leaders of October?

— The answer follows from what has already been said. Since Trotsky’s authority and position in the Bolshevik leadership rested only on a personal union with Lenin, Trotsky, after Lenin’s removal, could not help but lose power. There was also some criminality. Lev Davidovich hints that just before Lenin’s death an attempt was made to poison him too. Looks like it's true. So the reprisal against Trotsky began already in 1923, during the lifetime of Lenin, who was pushed out of power. Then they buried Lenin, they began to bury Trotsky. Just as not a single (I emphasize - not a single) voice was raised in the party leadership in defense of Lenin, except for Trotsky, so no voices were raised in defense of the arrogant outsider Trotsky. Krupskaya spoke out in his defense a couple of times, but no one heard her. First, Trotsky was demoted, then expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee, then from the party. Then they exiled me. Then they sent me away. They killed all the children. Daughter Zina was driven to suicide, son Sergei was shot in the USSR, and son Leva was killed in Paris.

— Did Leon Trotsky offer an effective alternative to the development of the Soviet state after 1924?

- No, I didn’t offer it. Until 1939, he generally seemed to the entire world community to be a greater threat than Stalin, because Stalin, in contrast to Trotsky with his incomprehensible “permanent revolution,” began to preach the theory of “socialism in one country.” The civilized community rightly decided: the world revolutionary Trotsky is worse than the dictator who planned to carry out a socialist experiment within the framework of one, albeit large, country. There was no way to understand the ideological differences between Lev Davidovich and Joseph Vissarionovich.

Gradually, the “right” Stalin found himself to the left of Trotsky. Instead of industrialization, Stalin carried out super-industrialization. Instead of collectivization - complete collectivization. He introduced surplus appropriation in such a way that it killed millions of people (Trotsky’s war communism now seemed to be the height of liberalism); he built such concentration camps that prisoners could only dream of Trotsky’s labor armies.

— In a relatively short period after the expulsion of Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union, a quite influential Trotskyist movement, taking into account the lack of financial resources of the Comintern, was formed in many countries of the world - from French Indochina to the United States. What is the reason for its rapid growth and significant activity before the outbreak of World War II?

— The influence of Trotsky and his movement abroad after his expulsion from the USSR in January 1929 is a myth generated, on the one hand, by Stalin’s propaganda machine, which accused Trotsky of all mortal sins, seeing the machinations of “Trotskyists” everywhere and in everything; but on the other hand, by Trotsky himself, an enthusiastic optimist of the revolution.

Trotsky did not believe in power. Trotsky did not believe in the apparatus. That is why he was never able to understand what Stalin’s strength was and why this little bureaucrat from the revolution outplayed absolutely everyone.

There were only a few thousand active Trotskyists around the world. This, of course, is not enough. Trotsky remained a lone revolutionary even after his expulsion.

In Trotskyist periodicals he was the main and, in general, the only interesting author. He cannot be considered an ideological opponent of Stalin. Trotsky was against Stalin, but not against Stalinism in the broad sense of the word. Therefore, Trotsky’s position always looked contradictory and ambivalent. He opposed the creation of a second communist party in the USSR (as opposed to the Stalinist CPSU /b/). For a long time I did not dare to advocate the creation of the 4th International. He considered the Soviet Union a workers' socialist state, putting a formal dogmatic meaning into this definition. For his convenience, he came up with the theory that the bureaucracy had seized power in the USSR. So the attempts of Trotsky and the Trotskyists to form a mass revolutionary party make an overall pitiful impression.

“He didn’t care about his own son’s life.”

— Why was the leadership of the Soviet Union attached such great importance to operations to infiltrate the Trotskyist movement with agents of the Soviet secret services, and then eliminate first supporters, then Leon Trotsky himself?

“Stalin was an exceptionally cruel man. It is well known that he either killed his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva himself or drove her to suicide. Stalin's son Yakov tried to commit suicide at one point. Did not work out. Stalin then teased Yakov: he couldn’t even commit suicide. Not every father would humiliate his son like that. If he didn’t care about the life of his own son, why be surprised at the cruelty towards the rest of humanity?..

It was very important for Stalin to take revenge on Trotsky. To take revenge in the Stalinist way: kill all his friends, associates, close and distant acquaintances, children, and only then, at the very end, himself. Eliminating Trotsky at some point became the priority task of the Soviet intelligence services, because Stalin liked to see everything through to the end.

I think that Stalin could not forgive Trotsky for two things: the support that he provided to Lenin, when it was clear to absolutely everyone in the party leadership that it was he, Stalin, who was trying to eliminate Lenin; and his own weakness - the weakness of Stalin, who, instead of killing Trotsky in the USSR, chickened out and released Trotsky abroad. And Stalin could never forgive Trotsky for this cowardice.

— You have been researching Trotsky’s works and studying his biography for a very long time. Is there anything that strikes and surprises you in Trotsky's biography?

— What strikes me most in Trotsky’s biography and in himself is his absolute inability to realize his own guilt and his responsibility for what happened in the Soviet Union. I am absolutely convinced that if he were asked to live his life again, he would find himself unable to change anything about it.

In the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, L. Trotsky undoubtedly played an important role as the ideologist of spontaneous Victory, with its transfer to Europe, and then to the world space. This moment of Victory (at any cost!) was clearly presented to me after watching the TV movie “Trotsky”. However, the glorification of one of the most brutal leaders of the October Revolution is completely inappropriate in the year of its centenary. Yes, it was Lev Davidovich who played a significant role in the October Revolution in Petrograd in 17, heading the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The revolution in Russia was inevitable, no matter who led the uprising itself: Stalin, Zinoviev or Kamenev. Most likely, Comrade Koba would have done this, since V.I. Lenin personally could not participate in the uprising (the provisional government ordered his arrest). But the entire prehistory of his activities, after he returned from emigration to Russia in April, was aimed at preparing an uprising. No matter who and what nasty things they say about the leader of the Bolshevik Party, but in the terrible period between the two revolutions - the February and October, it was he, and no one else, who prepared the transition of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the proletarian one.
Yes, Trotsky was able, six months earlier, to catch the smell of victory in the upcoming revolutionary events and appreciate the role of the Bolsheviks, defecting from the camp of the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks. The well-groomed esthete, who appeared before television viewers in a tuxedo, with a bow tie and a proud posture, not subject to anyone (the role of Trotsky was played superbly by Khabensky), who overthrew (?) Sigmund Freud himself, looks so convincing and bright that you begin to believe him - Lev Davidovich, and not some leader of the Bolshevik Party, who actually prepared and carried out the revolution in Russia. In fact, this is far from true, or rather not at all true. The scriptwriters did everything to make the modest boy, a small-town Jew, the standard of the Russian Revolution. Trotsky himself meant nothing until the October Revolution. But, in the absence of V.I. Lenin, he quickly won the trust of soldiers and revolutionary sailors with his mesmerizing rhetoric about world revolution. Lev Davidovich found himself in the right place and at the right time, when the question of the day of the revolutionary uprising in Petrograd was being debated among the leadership of the Bolshevik Central Committee. It was Lenin who owned the catchphrase that defines the entire genius of this man: “Today is early, tomorrow is late, we perform at night!” Zinoviev and Kamenev, who did not agree with Lenin’s opinion, immediately published their thoughts in the Bolshevik newspaper, which, naturally, was read by the secret police of the provisional government. Lenin had no choice but to hide in safe houses, knowing that an order had been given for his arrest and destruction. In this situation, Lev Davidovich made a completely logical decision - to lead the uprising. Since the revolution is inevitable, Lenin is underground, Zinoviev and Kamenev are not fighters, and Comrade Koba-Stalin is not so popular among the soldiers who did not support him, tired of the war. The sailors and soldiers did not want to go to the front again; they were captivated by Trotsky’s bewitching speeches and the idea of ​​taking power into their own hands throughout the world.
The curly-haired revolutionary, wearing glasses and a leather cap, and the same leather pants and jacket, with a hot look and absolutely sweet speeches about the end of the war, about the land for the peasants, about the power of the soldiers' and workers' councils, was clearly to the liking of the soldier masses.
Everything else became a matter of technology and revolutionary impulse. The Aurora shot, the seizure of banks, the post office, the telegraph and the Winter Palace, almost without blood or resistance. But in fact, the development of the uprising and all subsequent revolutionary events were carefully calculated by the Bolsheviks, led by V.I. Lenin. By the way, unloved by the scriptwriters, Comrade Koba, in work overalls, with a mustache and a grin on his face, this is how the authors of the series showed him, was one of the developers of the accomplished revolution. But his role in the revolution, like Lenin’s, is almost not shown at all! So, a successful participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia, who accidentally appeared on the historical stage of those fateful events, nothing more. The historical truth is completely different: Comrade Koba-Stalin is a professional revolutionary, with extensive experience working with the proletarian masses. The persecution of the tsarist regime, arrests, prisons and exiles could not break him; he turned from a militant revolutionary into a consistent Bolshevik revolutionary. Stalin had authority among the Bolshevik elite and among workers in factories. He was much closer to the simple worker than Trotsky, and had a very direct connection to the revolution in Petrograd. The detachments of workers' squads, which were subordinate to Comrade Stalin, were, of course, controlled by the Bolsheviks. Therefore, it was not in vain that workers’ detachments operated in all important places during the uprising, establishing revolutionary order.
Although, it was Leon Trotsky who gave the soldiers and sailors permission to plunder. This is his: “Rob - loot!” became the favorite slogan of drunken sailors and opened Pandora's box in the very first days of the revolution in Petrograd. However, the detachments of workers led by Koba, as the most united and responsible participants in the revolution, prevented mass robberies and looting.
The role of Stalin, and even more so V.I. Lenin, in the October Revolution of 1917, in this series is hushed up or presented as not significant, but the figure of Trotsky is elevated - this means moving away from the historical truth, It is V.I. Lenin developed and theoretically substantiated the possibility of carrying out a revolution in one country, if there were appropriate prerequisites for this.
But Trotsky, obsessed with the thirst to win always and everywhere, especially after the October Revolution in Petrograd, he, like a card player, continued to gamble, putting the “world revolution” at stake. All or nothing! This is the essence of Trotsky! While the card was going into suit, he got a taste and became furious at the spilled blood of his opponents. “Don’t spare any of the enemies of the revolution!” – Trotsky’s main slogan during the years of the revolution and the Civil War in Russia.
Yes, of course, Trotsky created, or rather, was one of the creators of the Red Army, but the Red Terror, with the execution of soldiers who escaped from the battlefield, or for the sake of mischief, is somehow mentioned in passing in the film. But regarding the sending of the intelligentsia, the elite of Russia, abroad, by the way, the role of Lev Davidovich in this matter has not been proven, but it has been well shown. He would have gladly shot them with the help of Dzerzhinsky in the basements of the Lubyanka, but Trotsky was haunted by the idea of ​​world revolution and the Russian intelligentsia abroad could be useful to him as a catalyst. By the way, it came in handy. Many Russian emigrants and philosophers supported Trotsky when he found himself abroad and became an ardent fighter against the Soviet vassal. In particular, the famous philosopher Ivan Ilyin wrote letters to Adolf Hitler, urging him to put an end to the commissars in Russia
I already wrote above that in the film the role of V.I. Lenin is shown in fits and starts and not convincingly. Like the one where Trotsky, after a successful military coup in Petrograd, imagined himself superior to Lenin and the party. Indicative is the scene, which did not happen in real life, about when, allegedly, V.I. Lenin says to Trotsky: “You will never become the ruler of Russia, you are a Jew, and in Russia a Russian peasant will not obey a Jew!” Strictly speaking, the authors of the film were lying: V.I. Lenin had the Jewish blood of his mother, and even after the Bolsheviks came to power, Soviet Russia was ruled for almost thirty years by a Georgian, that same comrade Koba - Joseph Dzhugashvili.
And the last years of Trotsky’s life abroad, in Mexico, are shown somehow not convincingly: forgotten and abandoned by everyone, he writes incriminating evidence against Stalin and awaits his death every day, every hour. He is afraid of everything, his loved ones and even his mistress Frida. And he died, not as a hero of the revolution, but killed by a communist artist with a mountaineering ice ax, as a traitor. In his dying memories, Trotsky saw himself as a murderer of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the name of the world revolution and rejoiced at it.
Unfortunately, a viewer who does not know history will completely misunderstand the role and significance of Trotsky in the Russian revolution. This is actually what I wanted to say!

Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most controversial figures in the history of the 20th century. He was an ideologist of the revolution, created the Red Army and the Comintern, dreamed of a world revolution, but became a victim of his own ideas.

"Demon of the Revolution"

Trotsky's role in the 1917 revolution was key. One can even say that without his participation it would have failed. According to the American historian Richard Pipes, Trotsky actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the absence of Vladimir Lenin, when he was hiding in Finland.

Trotsky's importance for the revolution is difficult to overestimate. On October 12, 1917, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he formed the Military Revolutionary Committee. Joseph Stalin, who in the future would become Trotsky’s main enemy, wrote in 1918: “All work on the practical organization of the uprising took place under the direct leadership of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky.” During the attack on Petrograd by the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov in October (November) 1917, Trotsky personally organized the defense of the city.

Trotsky was called the “demon of the revolution,” but he was also one of its economists.

Trotsky came to Petrograd from New York. In the book of the American historian Anthony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” it is written about Trotsky that he was closely associated with Wall Street tycoons and went to Russia with the generous financial support of the then American President Woodrow Wilson. According to Sutton, Wilson personally gave Trotsky a passport and gave the “demon of the revolution” $10,000 (more than $200,000 in today’s money).

This information, however, is controversial. Lev Davidovich himself commented in the newspaper “New Life” on rumors about dollars from bankers:

“Regarding the story of 10 thousand marks or dollars, neither is mine
the government and I knew nothing about it until information about it appeared
already here, in Russian circles and the Russian press.” Trotsky further wrote:

“Two days before I left New York for Europe, my German associates gave me a farewell rally.” At this meeting, a gathering for the Russian revolution took place. The collection gave $310.”

However, another historian, again an American, Sam Landers, in the 90s found evidence in the archives that Trotsky did bring money to Russia. In the amount of $32,000 from the Swedish socialist Karl Moor.

Creation of the Red Army

Trotsky is also credited with creating the Red Army. He set a course for building an army on traditional principles: unity of command, restoration of the death penalty, mobilization, restoration of insignia, uniform uniforms and even military parades, the first of which took place on May 1, 1918 in Moscow, on Khodynskoye Field.

An important step in the creation of the Red Army was the fight against the “military anarchism” of the first months of the existence of the new army. Trotsky reinstated executions for desertion. By the end of 1918, the power of the military committees was reduced to nothing. People's Commissar Trotsky, by his personal example, showed the Red commanders how to restore discipline.

On August 10, 1918, he arrived in Sviyazhsk to take part in the battles for Kazan. When the 2nd Petrograd Regiment fled without permission from the battlefield, Trotsky applied the ancient Roman ritual of decimation (execution of every tenth by lot) against deserters.

On August 31, Trotsky personally shot 20 people from among the unauthorized retreating units of the 5th Army. At the instigation of Trotsky, by decree of July 29, the entire population of the country liable for military service between the ages of 18 and 40 was registered, and military conscription was established. This made it possible to sharply increase the size of the armed forces. In September 1918, there were already about half a million people in the ranks of the Red Army - more than two times more than 5 months ago. By 1920, the number of the Red Army was already more than 5.5 million people.

Barrier detachments

When it comes to barrage detachments, people usually remember Stalin and his famous order number 227 “Not a step back,” however, Leon Trotsky was ahead of his opponent in the creation of barrage detachments. It was he who was the first ideologist of the punitive barrage detachments of the Red Army. In his memoirs “Around October,” he wrote that he himself substantiated to Lenin the need to create barrier detachments:

“To overcome this disastrous instability, we need strong defensive detachments of communists and militants in general. We must force him to fight. If you wait until the man loses his senses, it will probably be too late.”

Trotsky was generally distinguished by his harsh judgments: “As long as the evil tailless monkeys called people, proud of their technology, build armies and fight, the command will put soldiers between possible death in front and inevitable death behind.”

Over-industrialization

Leon Trotsky was the author of the concept of super-industrialization. The industrialization of the young Soviet state could be carried out in two ways. The first path, which Nikolai Bukharin supported, involved the development of private entrepreneurship by attracting foreign loans.

Trotsky insisted on his concept of super-industrialization, which consisted of growth with the help of internal resources, using the means of agriculture and light industry to develop heavy industry.

The pace of industrialization was accelerated. Everything was given from 5 to 10 years. In this situation, the peasantry had to “pay” for the costs of rapid industrial growth. If the directives drawn up in 1927 for the first five-year plan were guided by the “Bukharin approach,” then by the beginning of 1928 Stalin decided to revise them and gave the green light to accelerated industrialization. To catch up with the developed countries of the West, it was necessary to “run a distance of 50–100 years” in 10 years. The first (1928-1932) and second (1933-1937) five-year plans were subordinated to this task. That is, Stalin followed the path proposed by Trotsky.

Red five-pointed star

Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most influential “art directors” of Soviet Russia. It was thanks to him that the five-pointed star became the symbol of the USSR. When it was officially approved by the order of the People's Commissar of Military Affairs of the Republic Leon Trotsky No. 321 dated May 7, 1918, the five-pointed star received the name “Mars star with a plow and hammer.” The order also stated that this sign “is the property of persons serving in the Red Army.”

Seriously interested in esotericism, Trotsky knew that the five-pointed pentagram has a very powerful energy potential and is one of the most powerful symbols.

The swastika, the cult of which was very strong in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, could also become a symbol of Soviet Russia. She was depicted on the “Kerenki”, swastikas were painted on the wall of the Ipatiev House by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna before the execution, but by Trotsky’s sole decision the Bolsheviks settled on a five-pointed star. The history of the 20th century has shown that the “star” is stronger than the “swastika”. Later, the stars shone over the Kremlin, replacing the double-headed eagles.