Mexico. 1940 The operation to physically destroy the prominent politician Leon Trotsky, which was carefully and painstakingly prepared at least three years before its implementation, involved a large group of carefully selected people, among whom were many Spaniards, for which there was an explanation. Trotsky lived in Mexico from the beginning of 1937. The action against him required people who spoke Spanish well, whose appearance would not arouse suspicion among the police. The Spanish Republicans were well suited for this role, and from the end of 1938 they began to emigrate to Mexico, as the war in Spain was coming to an end. At that time, many Spanish communists perceived the Trotskyists and their leader as an enemy worse than even the fascists - in their eyes they were traitors to a holy and just cause. The Spanish Trotskyist party, which was part of the Fourth International, together with the anarchists, raised an uprising deep in the rear of the Republican army in Barcelona. Just at that time, units of the Spanish Republican Army, including those commanded by the Mexicans, were engaged in intense battles with the enemy on the fronts. The Trotskyist putsch cost the Republicans five thousand killed in Barcelona alone, and over 30 thousand soldiers were deployed there to suppress the rebellion. And soon the foreigners were ordered to leave Spain... Trotsky turned his house in Mexico into a real fortress. Every exit from the house was extremely difficult; Trotsky was forced to hide almost in the bottom of the car so that passers-by would not see him and would not be able to recognize him. Trotsky’s entourage had long noticed that strangers began to appear more and more often around the house. At one time, a real observation post appeared near one of the neighboring houses. Some people seemed to be digging something, but it soon became clear that this was an imitation of activity, because each new shift was not so much working as looking at Trotsky’s house, who was entering, who was leaving, when, etc. There was no doubt that these were NKVD employees who were forced to leave Spain after the defeat. Security and secretaries increasingly noticed people and cars slowly walking or driving past Trotsky's house, carefully examining the mansion. At the request of the politician, Mexico City authorities strengthened police security at the mansion. A letter Trotsky received from an unknown person about a conspiracy against him also dates back to this time. Many of Trotsky's close supporters were under the surveillance of secret agents. On May 24, 1940, another assassination attempt was made on Trotsky. More than two dozen people in police and army uniforms and with weapons (there was even a machine gun) suddenly drove up and instantly disarmed the guards. Robert Sheldon Hart, who was standing at the gate, immediately opened the gate at the request of the “Major”. The people who burst in also disarmed the internal guards, opening furious fire at the windows and doors of Trotsky’s office and bedroom. The machine gun fired in long bursts directly into the bedroom window. It seemed incredible that the Trotsky couple remained alive. The fact is that a small “dead” space that formed in the corner, below the window, saved the couple. And numerous bullets ricocheted into the bed covering them. Fate was again favorable to them. The secret police, led by their chief Leonardo Sanchez Salazar, arrived in the morning and were surprised to note that more than 200 bullets were fired into the bedroom, but the inhabitants of the house were not injured. This circumstance soon gave rise to a version being put forward in print. Trotsky organized the assassination attempt in order to discredit Stalin in the eyes of the world community. Moreover, journalists became aware of the words of the miraculously surviving Trotsky, which he said to Salazar that morning: “The attack was carried out by Joseph Stalin with the help of the GPU... Precisely Stalin.” June 8, 1940 L.D. Trotsky wrote the article “Stalin’s Mistake”: “To the uninitiated it may seem incomprehensible why Stalin’s clique first sent me abroad and then is trying to kill me abroad. Wouldn't it be easier to have me shot in Moscow, like many of my friends? The explanation is this. In 1928, when I was expelled from the party and exiled to Central Asia, it was still impossible to talk not only about execution, but also about arrest: the generation with which I went through the October Revolution and the civil war was still alive. The Politburo felt under siege from all sides. From Central Asia I was able to maintain continuous contact with the opposition. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to resort to deportation abroad as a lesser evil. His arguments were: isolated from the USSR, deprived of apparatus and material resources, Trotsky would be powerless to do anything. Stalin hoped, moreover, that when he succeeded in completely denigrating me in the eyes of the country, he could easily get the friendly Turkish government to return me to Moscow for reprisals. Events showed, however, that it is possible to participate in political life without having either an apparatus or material means. As I was informed, Stalin admitted several times that my deportation abroad was a “great mistake.” To correct the mistake, there was nothing else left but a terrorist act...” The famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros took responsibility for the assassination attempt. When he learned about the failure, he exclaimed in his hearts: “It’s all in vain!” Siqueiros recalled that it did not occur to him that a man like Trotsky would be hiding under a bed. Siqueiros spent a year in prison and then was expelled from the country. Years later he said, "My participation in the attack on Trotsky's house on May 24, 1940 is a crime." “All of us, participants in the war in Spain, who sought the liquidation of Trotsky’s headquarters in Mexico,” wrote Siqueiros, “understood that our actions would in any case be considered illegal. And we decided to split into several groups so that no one group knew about the composition of the others. The group leader had to know only the members of his group, each group had a specific specific task. Our main goal, or the global task of the entire operation, was the following: to capture all documents if possible, but to avoid bloodshed at all costs. We believed that the death of Trotsky or any of his accomplices not only would not stop the development of Trotskyism as an international movement, the anti-Soviet and anti-communist character of which was already clearly defined, but would have the opposite effect.” After the turmoil in the fortress subsided, it became clear: Trotsky was doomed. Stalin's order to destroy Trotsky was carried out by a group led by Colonel N. Eitington, who previously headed a special unit of the NKVD in Spain (under the pseudonym Kotov). His mistress was the beautiful Spanish communist Caridad Mercader, whose son, Republican Army Major Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez, carried out Stalin's order. Ramon's biography is typical for children of his circle - studying at a lyceum, army. In 1935, while in Spain, he participated in the youth movement. He was arrested, but was soon released by the Popular Front government that came to power. After his release, Mercader, under the name of the Belgian Jacques Mornard, moved to France. In the summer of 1938 in Paris, Mercader met a US citizen, Russian by birth, Sylvia Angelova-Maslova, an ardent Trotskyist. She became interested in him and soon introduced Mercadera to her sister, Trotsky’s secretary, who was shuttling between Paris and Mexico City. My sister was greatly impressed by the appearance of the young man and his impeccable manners. In February 1939, Sylvia returned to the United States. Three or four months later, Mercader arrived there, explaining his arrival in the interests of commerce. But now he was already the Canadian Frank Jackson. He explained this metamorphosis to his friend by the need to avoid conscription. Soon Mercader moved to Mexico and summoned Sylvia there. At the beginning of 1940, Angelova-Maslova got a job with Trotsky as a secretary. Since Sylvia shared a room at the Montejo Hotel with Ramon, he soon began driving her to work in his elegant Buick. Mercader first crossed the threshold of Trotsky’s house around the end of April 1940, when he took the politician’s friends Margarita and Alfred Rosmer to the city on some important matter. He helped carry Margarita’s suitcase into their room and immediately returned to the car. On May 28, on the eve of the departure of the Rosmers, Mercader was invited to dinner at Trotsky’s house. He was introduced as Sylvia's "friend" who would take the Rosmers in his car to the port. At the request of the Rosmers and by order of Trotsky, Mercader was brought into the dining room by the head of the house security, Harold Robinet. Under various pretexts, Mercader began to appear at the politician’s house. According to the entries of Trotsky's secretaries in the log of visits to the villa, he visited there 12 times. The total amount of time he spent in the villa was also calculated: 4 hours 12 minutes. 12 days before the assassination attempt, Mercader again communicated with Trotsky. Moreover, the record time for all visits is about an hour. Moreover, for the first time - alone. Despite the heat, he had a raincoat in his hands. The formal reason for the visit was a request to Trotsky to edit an article that criticized the American Trotskyists M. Shachtman and J. Bernheim for apostasy from the “movement.” In the villa owner's office, Mercader sat behind Trotsky, who was reading his article. Trotsky especially did not like this; what he told his wife that same evening. In general, this whole idea with the article and the visit quite alarmed Trotsky. But no precautions were taken... On August 20, Mercader again came to see Trotsky. The guest was again with a cloak on his arm and wearing a hat. Trotsky led him into his office. From Mercader's testimony at the trial: “I put my raincoat on the table in such a way that I could take out the ice ax that was in my pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself to me. At that moment, when Trotsky began to read the article that served as my pretext, I pulled the ice pick out of my raincoat, squeezed it in my hand and, closing my eyes, struck a terrible blow to the head with it... Trotsky let out a scream that I will never forget in my life. It was a very long “Ahhhh”, an endlessly long one, and it seems to me that this scream is still piercing my brain. Trotsky jumped up impulsively, rushed at me and bit my hand. Look: you can still see the marks of his teeth. I pushed him away and he fell to the floor. Then he got up and, stumbling, ran out of the room...” From Sedova’s book “So It Was”: “... As soon as 3-4 minutes had passed, I heard a terrible, stunning scream... Not realizing whose scream it was, I rushed at him... Lev Davidovich stood... with a bloody face and bright blue eyes without glasses and his hands hanging down...” A turmoil began in the house. The guards, led by Robins, grabbed Mercader and began beating him. Finally, the bloodied killer screamed: “I had to do it! They're holding my mother! I was forced to! Kill right away or stop hitting!” After the assassination attempt, Trotsky lived in the hospital for 26 hours. The doctors tried to do everything possible and impossible to save him, although it was clear that the blow had struck the vital centers of the brain. Two hours after the assassination attempt, Trotsky fell into a coma. * Trotsky's funeral resulted in a gigantic anti-Stalinist demonstration. Soon after the funeral, at a meeting of the leaders of the American section of the Fourth International, they decided to erect an obelisk at Trotsky’s grave. Three and a half months later, Natalya Ivanovna Sedova wrote to General Lazaro Cardenas, President of the Republic: “...You extended the life of Leon Trotsky by 43 months. My heart will remain grateful to you for these 43 months...” All the conspirators, except Mercader, managed to escape. A car with a running engine, standing at a distance from Trotsky’s house, as soon as the running around near the gate began and the alarm started blaring, it took off and disappeared around the nearest bend. Eitington, Mercader's mother, Caridad, and several other persons supporting the operation escaped from Mexico City in different ways that same day. Eithington and Caridad waited out the search in California. They were waiting for orders from Moscow. Within a day, they learned from radio messages that the strike had reached its target. Eithington was afraid that the impulsive Caridad, who had lost her son, might lose her temper and do something stupid. A month later, Moscow reported through its special channels: thank you for completing the task, through those remaining in Mexico City, establish the condition of the “patient” and find out how you can help him. After completing this auxiliary task, they were allowed to return. In May 1941, a month before the start of the war, Eithington and Caridad returned to Moscow via China. In 1941, before the start of the war, Kalinin presented her with the Order of Lenin. In 1944 she left for France. | She died in Paris at eighty-two under a portrait of Stalin. Eithington was given the rank of general, and in 1953 he ended up in Stalin's camps. Over the many years of investigation and trial, Mercader claimed that he had no accomplices... Secret police agents led by General Sanchez Salazar who arrived at the crime scene found several pages of typewritten text in Mercader's coat pocket. Below them was the killer’s signature and the date 08/20/1940. In the investigation materials, this text appeared under the name “Jackson-Mornar letter.” It details the motives for the murder. They boiled down to three points: disappointment in Trotsky as a “great proletarian revolutionary”; Mercader's protest against Trotsky's attempts to recruit him to be sent to the USSR to commit terrorist and sabotage acts; Trotsky's objections to Mercader's marriage to Angelova. This set of motives for the murder in different combinations, with different variations in details, was then repeated by Mercader during the investigation, which took place three years later in the Mexico City court, and also published during the trial in his article “Why I Killed Trotsky.” A Mexican court sentenced Mercader to 20 years in prison, the maximum penalty under Mexican law. For the first year and a half of his stay in prison, he was often beaten in an attempt to find out who he really was. For five years he was kept in solitary confinement without windows. After serving his entire sentence, Mercader was released from prison in 1960. He ended up in Cuba with his wife, Raquel Mendoza, an Indian woman whom he married in prison. He went to Prague, then to the Soviet Union. In 1961 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee. He was one of the authors of the history of the Spanish Communist Party. Mercader spent the last years of his life in Cuba. He died in 1978; at his request, his ashes were buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo cemetery. In 1987, a granite slab appeared on the grave, on which was engraved in gold letters: “Lopez Ramon Ivanovich, Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Lev Davidovich Trotsky is a Russian revolutionary figure of the 20th century, an ideologist of Trotskyism, one of the currents of Marxism. Twice exiled under the monarchy, deprived of all civil rights in 1905. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.
Leon Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 into a family of wealthy landowners and tenants. In 1889, his parents sent him to study in Odessa with his cousin, the owner of a printing house and scientific publishing house, Moses Schnitzer. Trotsky was the first student at the school. He was interested in drawing and literature, wrote poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, and participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.
He began to conduct revolutionary propaganda at the age of 17, having joined a revolutionary circle in Nikolaev. On January 28, 1898, he was first arrested and spent two years in prison, it was then that he became familiar with the ideas of Marxism. During the investigation, he studied English, German, French and Italian from the Gospels, read the works of Marx, and became acquainted with the works of Lenin.
Leiba Bronstein at the age of nine, Odessa
A year before going to prison for the first time, Trotsky joined the South Russian Workers' Union. One of its leaders was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became Trotsky's wife in 1898. Together they went into exile in the Irkutsk province, where Trotsky contacted Iskra agents, and soon began collaborating with them, receiving the nickname “Pero” for his penchant for writing.
It was in exile that it was discovered that Trotsky suffered from epilepsy, inherited from his mother. He often lost consciousness and constantly had to be under medical supervision.
“I came to London a big provincial, in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kyiv, I lived only in a transit prison.” In 1902, Trotsky decided to escape from exile. It was then, when receiving a false passport, that he entered the name Trotsky (the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison where the revolutionary was kept for two years).
Trotsky left for London, where Vladimir Lenin was then located. The young Marxist quickly gained fame by speaking at meetings of emigrants. He was extremely eloquent, ambitious and educated, everyone without exception considered him an amazing speaker. At the same time, for his support of Lenin, he was nicknamed “Lenin’s club,” while Trotsky himself was often critical of Lenin’s organizational plans.
In 1904, serious disagreements began between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. By that time, Trotsky had established himself as a follower of the “permanent revolution”, moved away from the Mensheviks and married Natalya Sedova for the second time (the marriage was not registered, but the couple lived together until Trotsky’s death). In 1905, they returned together illegally to Russia, where Trotsky became one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On December 3, he was arrested and, as part of a high-profile trial, was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to Salekhard.
A split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was brewing, supported by Lenin, who in 1912, at the Prague conference of the RSDLP, announced the separation of the Bolshevik faction into an independent party. Trotsky continued to advocate for the unification of the party, organizing the "August Bloc", which the Bolsheviks ignored. This cooled Trotsky’s desire for a truce; he preferred to step aside.
In 1917, after the February Revolution, Trotsky and his family tried to get to Russia, but were removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp for internment of sailors. The reason for this was the revolutionary’s lack of documents. However, he was soon released at the written request of the Provisional Government as an honored fighter against tsarism. Trotsky criticized the Provisional Government, so he soon became the informal leader of the “Mezhrayontsy”, for which he was accused of espionage. His influence on the masses was enormous, as he played a special role in the transition of the soldiers of the rapidly decaying Petrograd garrison to the side of the Bolsheviks, which was of great importance in the revolution. In July 1917, the Mezhrayontsy united with the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky was soon released from prison, where he was accused of espionage.
While Lenin was in Finland, Trotsky effectively became the leader of the Bolsheviks. In September 1917, he headed the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and also became a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly. In October, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was formed, consisting mainly of Bolsheviks. It was the committee that was engaged in armed preparations for the revolution: already on October 16, the Red Guards received five thousand rifles; Rallies were held among the undecided, at which Trotsky’s brilliant oratorical talent again showed itself. In fact, he was one of the main leaders of the October Revolution.
Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev
“The uprising of the popular masses does not need justification. What happened was a rebellion, not a conspiracy. We tempered the revolutionary energy of St. Petersburg workers and soldiers. We openly forged the will of the masses for an uprising, and not for a conspiracy.”
After the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee remained the only authority for a long time. Under him, a commission was formed to combat counter-revolution, a commission to combat drunkenness and pogroms, and food supplies were established. At the same time, Leni and Trotsky maintained a tough position towards political opponents. On December 17, 1917, in his address to the cadets, Trotsky announced the beginning of the stage of mass terror against the enemies of the revolution in a more severe form: “You should know that no later than in a month, terror will take very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine, and not just prison, will await our enemies.” It was then that the concept of “red terror” appeared, formulated by Trotsky.
Soon Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first composition of the Bolshevik government. On December 5, 1917, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, Trotsky transferred his affairs to Zinoviev and completely immersed himself in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet. “Counter-revolutionary sabotage” began by civil servants of the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suppressed thanks to the publication of secret treaties of the tsarist government. The situation in the country was also complicated by diplomatic isolation, which was not easy for Trotsky to overcome.
To improve the situation, he said that the government would take an intermediate position of “neither peace nor war: we will not sign an agreement, we will stop the war, and we will demobilize the army.” Germany refused to tolerate this position and announced an offensive. By this time the army virtually did not exist. Trotsky admitted the failure of his policies and resigned from the post of People's Commissariat.
Leon Trotsky with his wife Natalya Sedova and son Lev Sedov
On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Military Affairs, on March 28 to the post of Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - Military Commissioner for Naval Affairs and on September 6 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR. Then the formation of a regular army begins. Trotsky became in fact its first commander-in-chief. In August 1918, Trotsky's regular trips to the front began. Several times Trotsky, risking his life, even speaks to deserters. But practice has shown that the army is not capable, Trotsky is forced to support its reorganization, gradually restoring unity of command, insignia, mobilization, a single uniform, military greetings and awards.
In 1922, Joseph Stalin, whose views did not coincide with the views of Trotsky, was elected general secretary of the Bolshevik party. Stalin was supported by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who believed that the rise of Trotsky threatened anti-Semitic attacks on the Soviet regime and condemned him for factionalism.
Lenin died in 1924. Stalin took advantage of Trotsky's absence in Moscow to put himself forward as the "heir" and strengthen his position.
In 1926, Trotsky teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin began to oppose. However, this did not help him and was soon expelled from the party, deported to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey.
Trotsky regarded Hitler's victory in February 1933 as the greatest defeat of the international labor movement. He concluded that the Comintern was ineffective due to Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the creation of the Fourth International.
In 1933, Trotsky was given secret asylum in France, which was soon discovered by the Nazis. Trotsky leaves for Norway, where he writes his most significant work, “The Betrayed Revolution.” In 1936, at a show trial in Moscow, Stalin called Trotsky an agent of Hitler. Trotsky is expelled from Norway. The only country that provided the revolutionary with refuge was Mexico: he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City - in the city of Coyocan.
After Stalin's speeches, the International Joint Commission to Investigate the Moscow Trials was organized in Mexico. The commission concluded that the accusations were slanderous and Trotsky was not guilty.
The Soviet intelligence services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris, his closest ally, his eldest son Lev Sedov, died in a hospital after surgery. His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot.
Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick in his home near Mexico City on August 24, 1940. The perpetrator was an NKVD agent, Spanish Republican Ramon Mercader (pictured), who infiltrated Trotsky's entourage under the name of Canadian journalist Frank Jackson.
Mercader received 20 years in prison for murder. After his release in 1960, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. According to some estimates, the murder of Trotsky cost the NKVD approximately five million dollars.
The ice pick that killed Trotsky
From the will of Leon Trotsky: “I have no need to refute here again the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents: there is not a single stain on my revolutionary honor. Neither directly nor indirectly, I have never entered into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin's opponents died as victims of similar false accusations.
For forty-three years of my adult life I remained a revolutionary, forty-two of which I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start over, I would, of course, try to avoid certain mistakes, but the general direction of my life would remain unchanged. I see a bright green strip of grass under the wall, a clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is Beautiful. May future generations cleanse it of evil, oppression, violence and enjoy it fully.”
... After serving 19 years, 8 months and 14 days in prison, Ramon Mercader was released from prison on May 6, 1960. After his release, he married a Mexican woman, Roquelia Mendoza, and together with his wife he was transported to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he received Soviet citizenship and documents in the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez, the rank of general and Hero of the Soviet Union.
On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico. The killer, who had documents in the name of Jacques Mornard, a Belgian by nationality, despite torture during the preliminary investigation and then at the trial, did not give his real name and explained that he committed the crime because he was jealous of his fiancée of Trotsky. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mexican intelligence services intensively searched for a Soviet trace in the murder of Trotsky and tried to find out the real name of the arrested man. However, no amount of interrogation could force him to admit his connections with Soviet intelligence. Only many years later, one of the former activists of the Spanish Communist Party and participant in the Spanish Civil War betrayed him, informing the Mexican intelligence services that Ramon Mercader was in prison. The Mexicans were able to obtain a detailed dossier on him from Spanish police archives.
Hero of the Soviet Union Ramon Ivanovich Lopez (Ramon Mercader). Moscow, 1970s. Photo courtesy of the author
"LOVER HERO"
When Jacques Mornard's identity was finally established, in the face of overwhelming evidence, he admitted that he was in fact Ramon Mercader and came from a wealthy Spanish family. At the same time, until the last day of his imprisonment, he denied that he killed Trotsky on instructions from Soviet intelligence. In all his statements, Mercader invariably emphasized the personal motive for the murder.
From the intelligence investigation case:
“Ramon Mercader del Rio was born on February 7, 1914 in Barcelona into a large family of a textile factory owner. In 1925, the parents divorced. From a young age, Ramon took an active part in the revolutionary movement - he was one of the Komsomol leaders of Catalonia, a member of the Communist Party.
From October 1936 he participated in the Spanish Civil War as Commissar of the 27th Brigade on the Aragonese Front, Major. He was wounded in the battles.
In 1938, he was recruited by the NKVD resident in Spain Naum Eitingon (operational pseudonym “Tom”) to cooperate with Soviet intelligence. Since February 1939, he has been involved in the operation to organize the physical elimination of Trotsky.”
Under the guise of a rich playboy, the son of a Belgian diplomat involved in sports photojournalism, “Raymond” (this was Mercader’s operational pseudonym) illegally arrived in Paris, where he “accidentally” met US citizen Sylvia Agelof, who was there on vacation. The new friend "Raymond" had a reputation as an old maid and an impeccable past. But most importantly, she periodically acted as Trotsky’s secretary and translator.
Following his beloved, “Raymond” goes to Mexico. After her vacation, Sylvia returns to work for Trotsky. The romance that began under the skies of France is taking on more and more serious forms. “Raymond” offers Sylvia his hand and heart and enters Trotsky’s house as a groom.
The whole world learned about what happened later. Stalin settled scores with his long-time hated enemy...
EXPELL FROM THE USSR
After Lenin's death in January 1924, Trotsky turned out to be Stalin's main opponent in his struggle for power. He was Lenin's closest associate and enjoyed great authority and popularity in the party. Suffice it to recall that Trotsky from 1918 to 1924 was the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. From September 1918 to December 1924, he simultaneously headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, that is, he actually led the Red Army. Until the end of October 1926, he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
Using his position as the party's general secretary, Stalin managed to reduce Trotsky's influence to a minimum. In January 1925, the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks relieved Trotsky from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. And already on October 23, 1926, at the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he was removed from the Politburo.
Trotsky's supporters in the early summer of 1926 created a secret center of the “united opposition” in Moscow. It was led by Trotsky and Zinoviev. The center had its people in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in the OGPU and among representatives of the senior military leadership. Similar centers were also organized in Leningrad, Kyiv, Kharkov, Sverdlovsk and other cities. The activities of the “united opposition” caused serious concern among Stalin’s supporters, as the Trotskyists were increasingly slipping into anti-Soviet positions.
Stalin won his final victory over Trotsky in 1927. In October he was removed from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. And on November 14, Trotsky was expelled from the party for organizing an opposition demonstration on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. At the XV Congress of the CPSU(b), which took place in December 1927, Trotskyism was outlawed.
Trotsky refused to admit defeat and in January 1928 was exiled to Kazakhstan, to the city of Alma-Ata. However, even in Kazakhstan he did not stop his active struggle against Stalin. On December 16, 1928, Trotsky was conveyed the demand of the OGPU collegium for a “categorical obligation to stop counter-revolutionary activities.” The message indicated that otherwise he would be deported abroad.
It should be noted that back in 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee gave the GPU the right to expel from the country persons engaged in anti-Soviet activities, and Trotsky actively supported this decision. But this time he officially declared that he would not obey the OGPU ultimatum. A month later, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, by a majority vote, decided to expel Trotsky abroad. And on January 18, 1929, a Special Meeting of the OGPU Collegium decided: “For counter-revolutionary activities, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, the activities of which have recently been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet protests and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power, citizen Lev Davidovich Trotsky should be expelled from the borders.” THE USSR".
On February 10, 1929, Trotsky, his wife Natalya Ivanovna Sedova and their eldest son Lev Sedov, who fully shared his father’s political views, departed on the steamship Ilyich for Turkey, the only country that agreed to temporarily accept them.
GOAL – LIQUIDATION
However, Trotsky's expulsion abroad did not weaken his influence among members of the opposition and his associates in the USSR. Their activities were purposefully anti-state in nature. At the same time, Trotskyist groups began to appear and actively operate in a number of foreign communist parties (USA, Germany, Greece and Spain). Only the emerging defeat of the Trotskyists in the ranks of the CPSU (b) was a stimulant for their expulsion from other communist parties.
And in the USSR, Stalin and his supporters in the country's leadership continued their irreconcilable struggle with Trotsky. On February 20, 1932, Leon Trotsky and his son Lev Sedov were deprived of Soviet citizenship. Türkiye decided to get rid of unwanted exiles. In the summer of 1933, Trotsky and his family moved to France, near Paris, and in the fall of the same year to the resort town of Saint-Palais. Trotsky's French period did not last long. Already in the summer of 1935 he went to Norway. The Norwegian government granted Trotsky a residence permit on the condition that he would not engage in political activities. But Trotsky ignored this demand, so on December 19, 1936, he was put on the merchant ship Ruth, which headed for Mexico.
On January 9, 1937, Trotsky, along with his wife and grandson, arrived in the Mexican port of Tampico. From there, travelers were taken to Mexico City on a special train. For some time they lived in the villa of the famous painter Diego Rivera, who sympathized with Trotskyists. But soon Trotsky rented and then bought a large house on the outskirts of the Mexican capital Coyoacan on Vienna Street. The house was surrounded by a high wall with guard platforms. Anyone who wished to visit Trotsky in his “fortress” had to pass through iron gates under the watchful eye of guards - American Trotskyists.
Meanwhile, Lev Sedov, who lived in Paris, began publishing the “Bulletin of the Opposition,” in which his father actively published. At the same time, he established a reliable connection with his father’s supporters in the USSR. And in Mexico, Trotsky began to maintain close contact with employees of the American consulate and transmit to them confidential information about figures of the communist movement known to him and representatives of the Comintern.
It should be emphasized that, while abroad, Trotsky openly expressed his anti-Soviet views. He sharply opposed the first five-year plan, the industrialization of the country and the collectivization of agriculture. In the 30s, Trotsky predicted the “inevitable defeat” of the USSR in the war with Nazi Germany. Naturally, Trotsky’s active work irritated Stalin more and more. In the end, he came to the conclusion that only the death of the “tribune of the revolution” could put an end to his anti-Soviet activities. In this regard, we note that in the decision of the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in February–March 1937 and discussing the activities of Trotsky and his followers, in particular, it was emphasized:
“To oblige the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs to bring the matter of exposing and defeating Trotskyist and other agents to the end, in order to suppress the slightest manifestation of their anti-Soviet activity. Strengthen the staff of the GUGB and the Secret Political Department with reliable people. To achieve the organization of reliable agents in the country and abroad. Strengthen intelligence cadres."
He was born on February 7, 1913 in Barcelona, and died in 1978 in Cuba. Now his ashes lie in the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. On the grave it is written: “Lopez Ramon Ivanovich.”
It would seem that everything has become a thing of the past... But recently a wreath appeared on the grave with the inscription: “From grateful Cossacks,” which caused, to put it mildly, a mixed reaction.
“He killed the great bastard, the executioner of the Cossacks and the entire Russian people,” the Cossacks justified their position.
- He carried out the order of another executioner - Stalin, others objected to them.
And still others generally stated:
— For every hater of Russia there is one Mercader.
In general, the story turned out to be closer than it seemed...
Charming killer
On August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Mercader arrived at the villa Trotsky in Mexico City under the pretext that he wanted to show him his article. When Trotsky began to read, Mercader hit him on the head with an ice pick. Trotsky did not die immediately - he managed to call for help. The guards burst in, they tied up Mercader, taking away his pistol in addition to the murder weapon. Why didn't he use it right away?
Pavel Sudoplatov, one of the organizers of the murder (the other was Nahum Eitingon), wrote about this in his memoirs: “We came to the conclusion that it is best to use a knife or a small climber’s ice ax: firstly, they are easier to hide from the guard, and secondly, these murder weapons are silent.”
Mercader infiltrated Trotsky's circle in a ridiculously simple way - he seduced the sister of his secretary Sylvia Ageloff. Much more curious is how he lulled the guards' vigilance.
Mercader introduced himself as a Canadian businessman Frank Jackson, a real person who died during the Spanish Civil War. The object of his interests was not politics, but commerce, sports and, of course, Sylvia. Clear suspicion could have arisen if, at the first meeting with the guards, he had expressed his sympathies for Trotsky and his comrades. But he seemed not to notice the existence of the great Lev Davidovich in this world.
For several months he kept a low profile and did not seek to make acquaintance with the inhabitants of this fortified house. As a result, after dry greetings, the guards began to warmly welcome Frank when he brought Sylvia to the house. The successful businessman began treating his guards to expensive cigars.
He was finally invited into the house and introduced to Trotsky, who saw in him an intelligent, but indifferent to politics, a typical young businessman - and nothing more. In response, Frank began to show interest in Trotsky’s personality and activities, began reading his journalism, and then writing his own. It was on this that Mercader caught Trotsky, who, after several assassination attempts, was prone to manic suspicion.
Tall brunette
According to the recollections of everyone who knew him, Ramon Mercader had a charming appearance and noble manners; it’s not for nothing that he plays him in one movie Alain Delon. He had powerful physical strength; at 185 centimeters tall, he could bend a copper coin with three fingers. In prison he was subjected not only to torture, but also to lengthy psychological testing. It showed that Mercader had an unusually fast reaction, an almost photographic memory, the ability to navigate in the dark, and the ability to quickly assimilate and remember complex instructions. In the dark, he could disassemble and reassemble a Mauser rifle in 3 minutes 45 seconds. Mercader did not admit that he was a Soviet intelligence agent. After 20 years in prison, he was released and became a secret Hero of the Soviet Union.
In 1961-1974 he worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee (IML).
I talked with veterans - employees of the archive of the former IML, who met with Mercader. He was remembered as an elegant man with beautiful eyes. He was immediately recognizable as a foreigner. They did not notice the complacency on the face of Lopez (that was his official name) and the constant presence of the Hero star. He was modest and charming, but a man of few words. He said that he was given the Hero for his military merits; he wore the star at official events or to help friends purchase tickets to a theater or concert.
He also resolutely asked the main Soviet ideologist Mikhail Suslov release comrades Sudoplatov and Eitingon from prison. Under Khrushchev they were condemned as Beria's people. Suslov was indignant and rudely replied: “Don’t stick your nose into things that aren’t your own.” Mercader was a man of strong self-control, but he was still offended.
In the mid-70s by invitation Fidel Castro he went to Cuba. He worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, died of cancer in 1978. According to his will, he was buried in the USSR. Shortly before his death, Ramon Mercader said: “If I had to relive the forties, I would do everything I did.”
Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, old style) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (Ukraine) into a wealthy family. From the age of seven he attended Jewish religious school, which he did not complete. In 1888, he was sent to study in Odessa, then moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he entered the Nikolaev Real School, and upon graduation began attending lectures at the Faculty of Mathematics of Odessa University. Here Trotsky became friends with radical, revolutionary-minded youth and took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union.
In January 1898, Trotsky, along with like-minded people, was arrested and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.
In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile, using false documents under the name of Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.
In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of Russian social democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed his candidacy for the editorial office of Iskra.
In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion.
In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy, where he supported Martov’s position on the issue of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. Since 1904, Trotsky advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.
When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the St. Petersburg Council, becoming one of its three co-chairs.
The development of the so-called theory by Trotsky, together with Alexander Parvus (Gelfand), dates back to this time. “permanent” (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the revolution will win only with the help of the world proletariat, which, having completed its bourgeois stage, will move on to the socialist one.
During the revolution of 1905-1907, Trotsky proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and editor of its newspaper Izvestia.
In 1907, he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to his place of exile.
From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna and tried to create an “August bloc” of social democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judass”.
In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for Kiev Thought in the Balkans; two years later, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland, and then to France and Spain. Here he joined the editorial office of the left-wing socialist newspaper Nashe Slovo.
In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States.
Trotsky hailed the February Revolution of 1917 as the beginning of the long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia, and in July he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He was chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.
After the Bolshevik victory on October 25 (November 7), 1917, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Supported Lenin in the fight against plans to create a coalition government of all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Krasnov advancing on it.
In 1918-1925, Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army and personally supervised its actions on many fronts of the Civil War. He did a great job of recruiting former tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army. He widely used repression to maintain discipline and “establish revolutionary order” at the front and in the rear, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the “Red Terror.”
Member of the Central Committee in 1917-1927, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-1926.
At the end of the civil war and the beginning of the 1920s, Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In the famous “Letter to the Congress,” noting Trotsky’s shortcomings, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable person from the entire composition of the Central Committee at that time.
Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. After Lenin's death, Leon Trotsky's bitter struggle with Joseph Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat.
In 1924, Trotsky’s views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a “petty-bourgeois deviation” in the RCP(b). For his leftist opposition views, he was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma Ata, and in 1929, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.
In 1929-1933, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of Marmara). In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. At the end of 1936, he left Europe and settled in Mexico, in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.
He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership and refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics.
Trotsky was the initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938), the author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, books “Lessons of October”, “History of the Russian Revolution”, “The Betrayed Revolution”, memoirs “My Life”, etc.
In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia; his first wife and youngest son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, were shot.
In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate Leon Trotsky. In May 1940, the first attempt to kill him, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed.
On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of his house in Coyocan, where his museum is now located.
The material was prepared based on open sources
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