TROTSKY, LEON

born Nov. 7 [Oct. 26, Old Style], 1879, Yanovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire died Aug. 20, 1940, Coyoacn, Mex., near Mexico City byname of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein Communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia's October Revolution in 1917 and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union (191724). In the struggle for power following Vladimir Ilich Lenin's death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent. Additional reading Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 18791921; The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 19211929; and The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 19291940 (195463), is a major biography of Trotsky from a sympathetic, neo-Marxist point of view. Max Eastman, Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth (1925), provides a sympathetic treatment. See also Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution (1948), a triple biography of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky to 1914; and E.V. Wolfenstein, The Revolutionary Personality: Lenin, Trotsky, Gandhi (1967), a psychoanalytic study. Robert D. Warth, Leon Trotsky (1977), is an introductory biography for the general reader. Irving Howe, Leon Trotsky (1978), is a biographical and political essay; Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (1978), examines the ideas that motivated him. Leon Trotsky, The Case of Leon Trotsky (1937), contains Trotsky's testimony to the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey, concerning the Moscow Trials. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, 3 vol. (193233; originally published in Russian, 193133), treats his own role in the third person, and The Revolution Betrayed (1937), is his major polemic against Stalin. Jan. M. Meijer (ed.), The Trotsky Papers, 19171922 (1964), contains documents from the Trotsky Archive, including the Lenin-Trotsky correspondence. Also of interest is Irving Howe (ed.), The Basic Writings of Trotsky (1963).