Assasination of Leon Trotsky - 516 Words

The Assassination of Leon Trotsky During the power struggle in Russia, an escaped prisoner of the name Lev Bronstein, was murdered on August 20th, 1940 by Ramon Mercader. Bronstein was a Russian marxist who went against Stalin’s beliefs. He was forced to leave the country by Stalin’s wishes. However, before he left he accomplished many things such as helping the Bolsheviks into power and creating the South Russian Workers Union. Lev Bronstein was born on November 8th, 1879 and grew up in a small town in Yanovka, present day Ukraine. He was the 5th child of a well off Jewish farmer. When Bronstein was 9, he was sent to finish his schooling in Nikolayev. As a teenager he was very interested in socialism and helped create the South Russia Worker’s Union. He was later arrested along with 200 other union workers and was sent to jail for four years. While he was in prison, he married a woman named Aleksandra Soklovskaya and together they had two daughters . He abandoned his wife and kids. He then escaped prison, obtained a forged passport and changed his name to Leon Trotsky. He then moved to London, England where he joined with Lenin and his group of Russian Social Democrats. He began working on a revolutionary newspaper called Iskra. That same year, he met a woman named Natalia Sedova. They married and had two sons together. Later, while Russia was in the middle of a revolution, Trotsky escaped into the capital of Russia and became a spokesperson for the city