Leon Trotsky

Political activity 1919-1921

When the Comintern was created in 1919, Leon Trotsky was the author of its Manifesto.

In March 1919, the VIII Congress of the RCP(b) recreated the Bolshevik Politburo as a permanent body, and Trotsky became a member of the first Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b).

On May 16, 1921, newspapers wrote about a possible coup by Trotsky and Kamenev.

In 1922, on the basis of dissatisfaction with the activities of the Rabkrin and the solution of the national question, an alliance between Trotsky and Lenin began to take shape again, but Lenin fell ill and retired from political life.

After expulsion from Spain, Trotsky, along with his family, arrived in the United States on January 13, 1917. The next ten weeks was in New York. His arrival was widely covered in the local press. In the United States, Trotsky collaborated with the émigré newspapers Novy Mir, Nashe Slovo, and the Jewish workers' newspaper Vorverts, criticizing liberal views and opposing America's participation in the First World War. The revolutionary did not expect an imminent change of power in the Russian Empire and was going to stay in the United States for a long time. Trotsky's study of US statistics from that period led him to think about America's decisive role in post-war world development. He was also active in politics: his speeches at rallies and "political banquets" were successful - in addition, he gathered around him a group of supporters from among the members of the Socialist Party and took part in the creation of the newspaper "Class Struggle". Trotsky left the US after the amnesty for political emigrants announced in Russia after the February Revolution.

IN USA

After expulsion from Spain, Trotsky, along with his family, arrived in the United States on January 13, 1917. The next ten weeks was in New York. His arrival was widely covered in the local press. In the United States, Trotsky collaborated with the émigré newspapers Novy Mir, Nashe Slovo, and the Jewish workers' newspaper Vorverts, criticizing liberal views and opposing America's participation in the First World War. The revolutionary did not expect an imminent change of power in the Russian Empire and was going to stay in the United States for a long time.

In 1906, at the widely publicized trial of the St. Petersburg Soviet, Trotsky was sentenced to permanent settlement in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights. On the way to Obdorsk (today Salekhard) he fled from Berezov. Biographers of the revolutionary wrote about the events of 1905 as a "turning point" in the life of one of the future organizers of the October Revolution.

In the autumn, even before the announcement of the October Manifesto, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg, where he began to take an active part in the work of the newly created elected body - the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies; in addition, he was engaged in journalism, collaborating simultaneously in three newspapers: Russkaya Gazeta, Nachalo and Izvestia of the Council. After the arrest of the chairman of the Soviet, G. Khrustalev-Nosar, Trotsky joined the new "three-member" leadership of this body and actually headed it. After the publication of the Financial Manifesto, edited by Trotsky, on December 3 (16), 1905, the members of the Council were arrested by the authorities of the Russian Empire and put on trial.

In the midst of a revolution

At the moment of the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1905-1907 (on the day of "Bloody Sunday") Trotsky was in exile in Switzerland. He was the first of the socialist emigrants to arrive on the territory of the Russian Empire - from Kiev in late February or early March 1905, he went to St. Petersburg, where he began to defend his slogan about the "Provisional Revolutionary Government", which was part of his theory of permanent revolution. After the failure of the capital's Social Democratic organization, the revolutionary was forced to flee to Finland.

Arriving in London to Lenin, Trotsky became a regular contributor to the newspaper, spoke with essays at meetings of emigrants and quickly gained fame. As Trotsky himself recalled: “I arrived in London as a big provincial, and, moreover, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kiev, he lived only in a transit prison".

Bronstein's works, published in Europe as well as his public speeches in Irkutsk, attracted the attention of the leaders of the RSDLP to the young revolutionary: in the fall of 1902, he was escaping from Siberia. In Irkutsk, local Marxists gave him a genuine passport form, where he himself entered the name "Trotsky" (after the senior warden of the Odessa prison). I made a stop in Samara, where I met with the head of the Iskra Center, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky. On behalf of the latter, he visited Kharkov, Poltava and Kiev, where he unsuccessfully tried to establish contact with local Social Democrats or create appropriate organizations. Near Kamenetz-Podolsky, with the help of smugglers, he crossed the Hungarian border and went by train to Vienna. Then he arrived in Zurich, where he established warm relations with Pavel Axelrod. At the end of autumn he reached London, where he first met Vladimir Lenin, who had recently published his book What Is To Be Done? The researchers believed that staying in Siberia and contacts with local revolutionaries were of great importance for the formation of the political views of the future people's commissar - for "his party self-determination".

First emigration

Leon Trotsky in London, late 1902

Bronstein's works, published in Europe as well as his public speeches in Irkutsk, attracted the attention of the leaders of the RSDLP to the young revolutionary: in the fall of 1902, he was escaping from Siberia. In Irkutsk, local Marxists gave him a genuine passport form, where he himself entered the name "Trotsky" (after the senior warden of the Odessa prison). I made a stop in Samara, where I met with the head of the Iskra Center, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky. On behalf of the latter, he visited Kharkov, Poltava and Kiev, where he unsuccessfully tried to establish contact with local Social Democrats or create appropriate organizations.

Arriving in London to Lenin, Trotsky became a regular contributor to the newspaper, spoke with essays at meetings of emigrants and quickly gained fame. As Trotsky himself recalled: “I arrived in London as a big provincial, and, moreover, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kiev, he lived only in a transit prison" .

The period from 1900 to 1902 Bronstein spent in the Irkutsk province; while imprisoned and in exile, he married Sokolovskaya and was actively engaged in both self-education (including acquaintance with the works of the classics of Marxism) and journalistic activities: under the pseudonym Antid Oto, he collaborated with the Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper, the editors of which published three a dozen of his articles and essays, "warmly" received by the public. Moving between the villages of Ust-Kut, Nizhne-Ilimskoye and the city of Verkholensk, Bronstein came into contact with many former and future revolutionary figures - including M. Uritsky and F. Dzerzhinsky.

In 1896, in Nikolaev, Lev Bronstein (later Trotsky) participated in a revolutionary circle and conducted propaganda among local workers. In 1897, he took part in the founding of the South Russian Workers' Union, and on January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time by the tsarist authorities. Bronstein spent two years in the Odessa prison; On October 10, 1899, a “relatively mild” sentence was pronounced in the Odessa court in the case of the South Russian Workers’ Union: the four main defendants (Bronstein, Alexandra Sokolovskaya and her two brothers) were subject to exile in Eastern Siberia (Irkutsk province) for four years, and the rest the defendants “got off” with a two-year exile (Sholom Abramov (Grigory Abramovich) Ziv and Shmuil Berkov Gurevich) or even simply deportation from Nikolaev under open police supervision.

Beginning of revolutionary activity, first exile and emigration

Arriving in London to Lenin, Trotsky became a regular contributor to the newspaper, spoke with essays at meetings of emigrants and quickly gained fame. As Trotsky himself recalled: “I arrived in London as a big provincial, and, moreover, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kiev, he lived only in a transit prison"

In December 1919, the Kolchak front finally collapsed. In 1920, the Red Army managed to achieve a decisive turning point in the course of the Civil War (“red flood”). The end of the Civil War shifted priorities from armed struggle to economic construction.