Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on November 7, 1879, was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, serving as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and leading the military effort to overthrow the Russian Provisional Government. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1917 to 1918, negotiating the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs from 1918 to 1925, during which he built and commanded the Red Army, while sitting on the Politburo and Central Committee from 1917 to 1927. After Lenin's death in 1924 he became Stalin's most prominent critic, but Stalin outmaneuvered him politically, and Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the Communist Party in 1927. Exiled to Alma-Ata in 1928 and deported the following year, he lived in Turkey, France and Norway before settling in Mexico in 1937, where he continued writing against Stalinism until he was assassinated by the Stalinist operative Ramon Mercader in Mexico City on August 21, 1940.