TROTSKY, LEV DAVIDOVICH ), Russian politician, whose real name was Bronstein, was born near Eliza vetgrad, the son of middle-class Jews. He was educated at the Peter and Paul Real Schule in Odessa and at the university of that town. He was arrested as a revolutionary in 1898, and soon after exiled to Eastern Siberia. In 1902 he escaped to England by means of a forged passport in the name of Trotsky (which name he used thenceforward). In London, despite his youth, he soon became an important member of the small body of social democrats which included Plekhanov and Lenin. He collaborated with the latter and others in the publication of Iskra (Spark), the most famous of the Russian revolutionary newspapers. In 1905 he returned to Russia, was elected a member of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies and was chairman of the meeting at which the whole Soviet was arrested. He was exiled to Tobolsk but escaped immediately on his arrival in Si beria and went to Vienna, where he worked for the Arbeiter Zeitung and the Pravda. He also worked in a chemical factory. In 1910 he attended the Social Democratic congress at Copen hagen, defending a position of his own, midway between that of the Bolsheviks and that of the Mensheviks. In 1913 he was in Constantinople as a war correspondent. The following year found him in Zurich and Paris, taking part in the publication of a revo lutionary paper. He wrote a book on the origins of the World War, published in German, and was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment. But he opposed the War not only in Germany but in the Allied countries, and in 1916 was expelled from France. He was arrested by the Spanish authorities on crossing their fron tier but was allowed to leave for America, where he edited the Russian revolutionary Novy Mir (The New World).
When the revolution broke out in March 1917 Trotsky's friends and subscribers to the paper collected the money for his journey to Russia. He was, however, arrested by the British authorities and taken ashore at Halifax, where he was interned until the Russian Provisional government asked for his release. He arrived in Petrograd soon after Lenin. He was the leader of a small party of social democrats and soon joined the Bolsheviks but did not actually become a member of the Bolshevik party until July 1917, when he was arrested for being concerned in the rising which took place in that month. He played a part hardly less important than that of Lenin in organizing the Bolshevik revolu tion in 1917 and became People's Commissar for foreign affairs in the new Soviet Government.
Trotsky was the most important figure in the Russian delega tion during the negotiation of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. Believing that the moral effect of the revolution had already been such that the Germans would be unable to force their troops to move against Russia, he met the oppressive German demands with the statement that Russia would not sign a treaty on such terms but that she considered the War to be at an end and would demobilize her troops. The Germans thereupon continued their
advance. Lenin had disagreed with Trotsky, considering that the risk was too great since at that time the Germans could easily have taken Petrograd. After a series of debates, Trotsky announced that he now sided with Lenin and by a majority of one it was decided to sign an even more unfavourable treaty than that previously re fused. Trotsky was replaced by Chicherin as Commissar for foreign affairs and took over the Commissariat of war. In spite of opposition he made great use of officers of the old regime in organizing a new Red army. The results obtained were used to justify the employment of "bourgeois" technical experts in the factories. When he had made a new army that showed itself superior to those of the Whites his energies were used in prevent ing the complete collapse of the railways. In 192o he organized as "labour armies" the troops that were not needed for war.
Until the introduction of the new economic policy Trotsky urged industrial conscription, but wholeheartedly accepted the new policy which made such measures impossible. During the Polish war of 192o, he opposed the disastrous advance on War saw but was overruled by Lenin. In the autumn of 1923 he adopted a position that made it possible for the "old guard" of the Communist leaders to accuse him of canvassing for the support of the younger men. He was violently attacked by Stalin, Zinoviev and others. Many of his friends were shifted from their posts and he himself was on the way to the Caucasus to take a cure, when Lenin died. Throughout the revolution the names of Lenin and Trotsky had been coupled and the death of the one seemed to leave the other alone in the field. This was not really so. Seniority counts for much in the Communist party and the older leaders never forgot that Trotsky had only joined the party in 1917. The campaign to discredit him was continued. He lost his post as Commissar of war. When he returned from the Caucasus he was given work of small political significance, being made head of the committee for the development of electric power in Russia. In 1925 he resigned from this post and was made head of the Central Committee for Concessions. In Nov. 1927 he was expelled from the Communist party for his anti-party ac tivities, and in Jan. 1928 he was exiled to Viernie in Turkestan. He was subsequently banished and went to Constantinople (1929).
In 1936 he made his home in Norway; in Jan. 1937 he went to live in Mexico. He was (1936) accused of joining Zinoviev and Kamenev in a plot to murder Stalin but emphatically repudiated the allegation. Trotsky was, after Lenin, the most brilliant of the revolutionary leaders. He wrote books on the revolution, on Lenin, etc. He wrote on Lenin for this Encyclopedia. (A. RA.)