Seventy-five years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky [View all]

[font color=330099]Note: While this article is not completely in line with the SOP of this group, I am posting it for historical context about one of the lead figures on socialism. If the hosts of this forum want the article deleted, then I will oblige; however, I will be in a medical appointment throughout the morning and possibly early afternoon.[/font]

Seventy-five years ago today, on August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution and founder of the Fourth International, was assaulted with an ice pick by Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader. The attack took place at Trotsky’s villa in Coyoacán, Mexico, his final place of exile. The great revolutionary died the next day from his wounds, at the age of 60.

The murder of Trotsky came at the high point of international political reaction that included the victory of fascism in Germany in 1933, the defeat of the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39, the Moscow Trials and Great Terror of 1936-38, and the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. The assassination of Trotsky was the response of the Stalinist bureaucracy—which, as Trotsky explained, was a political agency of imperialism—to the danger posed by the Marxist principles for which he fought. As long as Trotsky lived, Stalin would have to contend with his most implacable opponent.

Against incredible odds, however, Trotsky had managed to form the Fourth International, which has outlived the assassins who struck him down. Seventy-five years later, Trotsky’s unique position in the history of international socialism is indisputable. He emerges ever more clearly as a world historical figure who not only influenced the course of the 20th century, but whose writings and ideas remain an essential guide for orienting the working class as it enters a new period of revolutionary struggle.

Trotsky’s life and fate were inextricably tied to the great events of the first half of the 20th century. Trotsky and Lenin were the principal leaders of the Russian Revolution, the pinnacle of an enormous upsurge of international working-class struggle against the depredations of capitalism and the horrific slaughter of the First World War. The political theory of the revolution itself was provided by Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, forged in the midst of the 1905 Russian Revolution, which explained that the democratic tasks in underdeveloped countries such as Russia could be completed only by the working class taking power as part of a world socialist revolution.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/20/pers-a20.html