Trotsky, Leon (1879–1940) Russian revolutionary leader and theoretician, b. Lev Davidovich Bronstein. A Marxist revolutionary from 1897, he headed the workers' soviet (revolutionary council) in St Petersburg in the Russian Revolution of 1905. Arrested, he escaped abroad and embarked on the work that made him, with Lenin, the leading architect of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Trotsky returned to Russia after the March revolution (1917) and joined the Bolsheviks. As chairman of the Petrograd (St Petersburg) Soviet, he set up the Military Revolutionary Committee to seize power, ostensibly for the Soviet, actually for the Bolsheviks. After the Bolshevik success, he negotiated the peace of Brest-Litovsk, withdrawing Russia from World War I. As commissar of war (1918–25), he created the Red Army, which won the Civil War and made the Bolshevik revolution safe. However, he criticized the growth of bureaucracy in the party, the lack of democracy, and the failure to expand industrialization. He alao disapproved of Lenin's dictatorial tendencies in power and fiercely objected to Stalin's adoption of a policy of “socialism in one country”, rather than the world revolution in which Trotsky believed. He was driven from power, from the party, and eventually from the country. In exile, he continued to write prolifically on many subjects. His ideas, though rejected in the Soviet Union, were extremely influential internationally, especially in Third World countries. In 1936, he settled in Mexico, where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent.

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