Leon Trotsky. Trotsky - how one of the main leaders of the October Revolution was eliminated Trotsky was expelled from the USSR for what

Expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR

In the meantime, it became obvious to Joseph Vissarionovich that Trotsky did not intend to calm down in Alma-Ata either. “From Central Asia, I had the opportunity to maintain continuous contact with the opposition, which was growing,” Lev Davidovich himself explained. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to apply expulsion 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 admitted several times that my expulsion abroad was “the greatest mistake.”

On January 18, 1929, a special meeting at the OGPU collegium decided to expel Trotsky from the USSR on charges of "organizing an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power." On January 20, Trotsky received this resolution and wrote on it: "Here are the scoundrels!" - adding to this receipt of the following content: "Criminal in essence and lawless in form, the decision of the OS under the collegium of the GPU of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky."

Trotsky was sure that he would not be allowed to take out the archive, but the Chekists who arrived after him had no instructions about the papers and therefore did not interfere.

In the book by Yu. Felshtinsky and G. Chernyavsky “Leo Trotsky. Oppositionist” describes the dramatic departure of Trotsky with his relatives to emigration: “At dawn on January 22, Trotsky, his wife and son Leo were seated in an escorted bus, which set off along a snowy road towards the Kurdai Pass. Through the pass itself managed to pass with great difficulty. Snowdrifts were raging, a powerful tractor, which took the bus and several passing cars in tow, got stuck in the snow itself. Several escorts died of hypothermia. Trotsky's family was loaded into a sledge. The distance of 30 kilometers was covered in more than seven hours. Behind the pass, a new transfer took place in the car, which safely drove all three to Frunze, where they were loaded onto a train. In Aktyubinsk, Trotsky received a government telegram (this was the last government telegram that ended up in his hands) informing him that his destination was the city of Constantinople in Turkey.

Trotsky and his family were not deprived of their citizenship. For the first expenses in Turkey, they were given one and a half thousand dollars.

On January 31, 1929, a joint meeting of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission took place, at which N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and M. P. Tomsky were officially accused of factional activities. In response, they made a statement directed against Stalin. He immediately attacked the factionalists: “This is a group of right-wing deviators, whose platform provides for a slowdown in the pace of industrialization, curtailment of collectivization and freedom of private trade. Members of this group naively believe in the saving role of the kulak. Their trouble is that they do not understand the mechanism of the class struggle and do not see that in reality the kulak is the sworn enemy of Soviet power. Stalin further recalled that even before the revolution, Lenin called Bukharin "devilishly unstable" - and now he justifies this opinion by starting secret negotiations with the Trotskyists.

On July 11, 1929, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the use of the labor of criminal prisoners", which ordered that convicts be sent for a period of three years or more to forced labor camps under the control of the OGPU. The resolution was marked "not subject to publication."

The same resolution of the OGPU pointed out the need to increase the existing camps and create new ones in remote areas of the Soviet Union in order to develop these places and use their natural resources. It was also planned to increase the population of the wild lands by those who were released on parole from the camp for settlement, those who, after serving their sentence, did not have the right to live in large cities or voluntarily wished to stay.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglo-Saxons had two main competitors in the world economy - Russia and Germany.

It was decided to destroy them with an internal explosion. It was necessary to prepare a revolution in these countries, to finance the necessary parties and political forces with their leaders for this.

The real real sponsors of the Russian revolution were the US bankers who created the FRS: Rothschild, Morgan, Wartburg, Schiff.

In 1917, a commission of the Red Cross arrived in Petrograd, which did not consist of doctors, but of bankers and intelligence officers headed by Raymond Robinson.

At first they liked Kerensky (who started the collapse of Russia), but then they fell in love with the Social Democrats (Bolsheviks). This love began to be regularly reinforced by huge financial injections into their activities.

Before Lenin's arrival in Russia, Trotsky was the main organizer of the revolution (this is a well-known historical fact).

Trotsky came to Petrograd to make a revolution from the USA, where he lived quite comfortably.

Together with Trotsky, a huge number of revolutionaries arrived from America (several hundred people). First of all, these include Uritsky, Volodarsky, Larin, Melnichansky, Zalkind, Ioffe, Chudnovsky, Gomberg, Yarchuk, Borovsky, Minkin-Menson, Voskov and many others. I wonder who kept them abroad if their only profession was that of a revolutionary?

Trotsky sailed to Russia with an American passport (genuine), since he was a US citizen. It is interesting that the passport was handed to him personally by US President Woodrow Wilson (the one who signed the FRS Act).

In July 1917, Trotsky and his American team join the RSDLP and become Bolsheviks. Lenin, although he could not stand Trotsky (he called him “Judas”), welcomed this massive impulse.

Moreover, Trotsky's people, having barely become Bolsheviks, literally the next day receive responsible and even leading positions in the party.

It is the people from Trotsky's American team who take the revolutionary initiative upon themselves: Antonov-Ovseenko arrests the Provisional Government, Uritsky heads the St. Petersburg Cheka, and so on. One gets the impression that before them there were no real Bolsheviks and leaders in the party, and the revolution would not have happened without them.

But why do American bankers need this team of revolutionaries, why do they generously finance the Bolshevik Party - the party, as they used to say, of the “gravediggers of the bourgeoisie”?

But this is strange and illogical only at first glance. The logic, as they say, is ironclad here. After all, the revolutionary, and, therefore, anti-state forces of the competing country are financed (remember the pace of economic development in pre-revolutionary Russia).

Funded from America and the party of revolutionaries in Germany (Germany is also America's strongest competitor). But in the USA, England and France, no money was allocated for the revolution. And without money, there will be no revolution, no matter how acute the revolutionary situation in the country is. It is through financing that constant contact is maintained with the leaders of the revolution, their work is controlled, and their revolutionary activities are managed. But a banker is always a banker and he must definitely get back the invested money, and even with interest.

Let us consider how this was done after October 1917 in Russia. How our ardent revolutionaries settled with the American bankers.

Before the revolution, the English company "Lena Goldfields" worked in Russia, which mined 30% of Russian gold (remember, the "Lena execution" of working mines).

From abroad, Lenin very sharply condemned the executioners-capitalists for the execution of the Lena workers, for their ruthless exploitation and miserable miserable existence.

But the story of the Lena mines is just beginning. After the October Revolution, the Soviet government transfers the concession for the development of the Lena mines to the same company that shot the workers, Lena Goldfields.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky became the leader of the party.

It is he who pushes through all the "concession cases" in the government. In addition to gold, Lena Goldfields was allowed to mine silver, copper, lead, etc. It was to this company that the Revdinsky, Bisserdsky, Seversky metallurgical plants, Degtyarsky, Zyuzelsky, Yegorshinsky coal mines, etc. were transferred.

But the strangest thing in this story is that the share of Soviet power was only 7%, and the share of Lena Goldfields was 93%. Why was such a contract signed?

Why did the socialist revolution take place, if all the same London and American bankers continued to pump out Russia's resources for next to nothing?

"Lena Goldfields" behaved extremely impudently: demanded government subsidies, did not pay taxes, refused any investment in Russia.

And until 1929 there was no government for this company. It was in 1929 that she was deprived of her concession. The fact is that it was in February 1929 that Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.

Since 1930, a state-owned company began to mine gold in Siberia, and all profits went to the state budget. But Lena Goldfields filed a lawsuit in international arbitration and the USSR was ordered to pay her 12 million 965 pounds sterling.

But what upset the overseas bankers the most was that they had lost their ties to the proletarian state. All capitalist countries immediately introduced restrictions on the import of Soviet goods.

This is only one case of Trotsky, but there is a second one.

In the 1920s, Trotsky headed the People's Commissariat of Railways. It was then that this department concluded with representatives of the capitalist world an agreement as absurd as with Lena Goldfields. This agreement is about the launch of a thousand steam locomotives at a price of 200 million gold rubles.

It is also interesting that the agreement was concluded with Sweden, which itself produced 40 steam locomotives a year. The price was too high, and the steam locomotives had to wait as long as 5 years.

Why did Trotsky sign this particular treaty?

It is also surprising that Russia paid these 200 million gold rubles in advance so that Sweden would build a factory for the production of steam locomotives.

At the beginning of 1922, an article appeared in the Soviet magazine The Economist about the "strangeness" of the locomotive deal. Its author Frolov L.N. wondered why the locomotives were ordered in Sweden; why they cost twice as much; why they do not develop the domestic steam locomotive industry (before the war, the Putilov plant produced 250 steam locomotives a year); why are our factories idle and there is unemployment in the country (1 million people)?

Lenin, of course, was in Trotsky's subject, and therefore his quick reaction to the article followed:

— magazine "Economist" to close;
- the author of the article is an accomplice of the Entente;
- such authors should be immediately expelled from the country.

All this suggests that Lenin was aware of Trotsky's affairs in paying debts for supporting the revolution. It was through the Swedish banking system that money was pumped into the revolution in Russia.

Now through it and returned back. 200 million gold rubles is a huge amount, it is 25% of the country's gold reserves.

But what to do - the money allocated by the American bankers for the destruction of the Russian Empire must be returned in any case.

But for the American bankers, Lenin turned out to be not just a simple man, placed at the helm of Russia in order to destroy the empire, he was slowly restoring its territory. So Lenin is worthy of respect that, contrary to the wishes of his foreign sponsors, he did not dismantle the country, but reunited it again. It was Lenin who refused to pay royal debts, did not give power to anyone, and even allocated money for a revolution in Germany.

In addition, the Bolsheviks paid for the revolution with their overseas patrons and through concessions.

The first banker of the proletarian state was Olof Aschberg (this is the one through whom the money for the revolution was transferred to Russia, and then from Russia).

Concessions were issued in great numbers and for a period of 60 years.

And if Trotsky, and not Stalin, had won in the USSR, then the concessions would have ended only in 1980 (if they had ended).

At the same time, the USSR received only 7% from each contract.

Thus, the revolution is also a profitable business. After all, all the wealth of a country destroyed by an internal explosion goes to the full disposal of the forces that sponsored this explosion.

Therefore, the internal party struggle between Trotsky and Stalin was in fact a struggle for control over the natural resources of the USSR.

I.C.: I will clarify about Oloff Aschberg. Aschberg established close cooperation with Trotsky, his older brother Alexander Bronstein (according to the writer Anatoly Rybakov, who was shot in 1937 in the Kursk prison) and their Parisian relative. One of the joint projects is the creation in August 1922 of the first Soviet commercial bank, which went down in history under the name "Russian Commercial Bank". Olof Aschberg became its first director.

Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin is a Russian historian, sociologist and publicist whose main research topic was the 1930s in the USSR. The book you are about to read shows the confrontation between two leaders of the Communist Party - I.V. Stalin and L.D. Trotsky. It did not end after the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR in 1929; on the contrary, it became even more acute. Trotsky sharply opposed Stalin's policies, published exposing documents, and organized resistance to the Stalinist regime. It is not surprising that assassination attempts were made on Trotsky, the next of them in 1940 was successful. In his book, Vadim Rogovin not only provides facts and documents about this struggle and the murder itself, but also analyzes in detail the causes of the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky.

* * *

The following excerpt from the book The main enemy of Stalin. How Trotsky was killed (V. Z. Rogovin, 2017) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR

In order to completely isolate Trotsky from his like-minded people, from October 1928 the GPU suddenly interrupted all his correspondence with associates, friends, and relatives. Even a letter from a Moscow hospital from a hopelessly ill daughter, expelled from the party, Trotsky received 73 days after it was sent, and the answer no longer caught her alive.

On November 26, the Politburo, having discussed the question "On the counter-revolutionary activities of Trotsky," instructed the OGPU to convey to Trotsky an ultimatum to stop all political activity. For this purpose, Volynsky, an authorized secret political department of the OGPU, was sent to Alma-Ata, who read to Trotsky a memorandum in which it was reported that the OGPU collegium had evidence that his activities were "taking on the character of direct counter-revolution" and the organization of "the second party ". Therefore, in the event of Trotsky's refusal to lead the "so-called opposition", the OGPU "will be made necessary" to change the conditions of his detention in order to isolate him as much as possible from political life.

Trotsky responded to this ultimatum with a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which, in particular, stated: “Theoretical reason and political experience testify that the period of historical return, rollback, i.e. reaction, can come not only after the bourgeois, but also after the proletarian revolution. For six years we have been living in the USSR under the conditions of a growing reaction against October and thus clearing the way for Thermidor. The most obvious and complete expression of this reaction within the party is the wild persecution and organizational destruction of the left wing...

The threat to change the conditions of my existence and isolate me from political activity sounds like this... as if Stalin's faction, of which the GPU is the direct organ, had not done everything it could to isolate me not only from political life, but from any other life... In this In the same and even worse situation are thousands of impeccable Bolshevik-Leninists, whose merits to the October Revolution and the international proletariat immeasurably exceed the merits of those who imprisoned or exiled them ... Violence, beatings, torture, physical and moral, are applied to the best Bolshevik workers for their loyalty decrees of October. These are the general conditions which, according to the collegium of the GPU, "do not hinder" the political activity of the opposition and mine in particular.

The pitiful threat to change these conditions for me in the direction of further isolation means nothing more than the decision of the Stalin faction to replace exile with prison. This solution, as mentioned above, is not new to me. Planned in perspective as far back as 1924, it is being put into practice gradually, through a series of steps, in order to surreptitiously accustom the suppressed and deceived party to Stalinist methods, in which gross disloyalty has now matured to poisoned bureaucratic dishonor.

The reaction to this letter was the decision of the Politburo to expel Trotsky abroad. Motivating this decision, Stalin stated that it was necessary in order to debunk Trotsky in the eyes of the Soviet people and the foreign labor movement: if Trotsky comes out abroad with further denunciations of the party leadership, "then we will portray him as a traitor." This decision was made by majority vote. Only Rykov and Voroshilov voted for an even tougher measure - the imprisonment of Trotsky.

On January 7, 1929, the resolution of the Politburo was sent to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky. On January 18, the decision to exile was formalized by the Special Meeting of the OGPU Collegium. Two days later, Volynsky presented Trotsky with the resolution of the OSO, which stated: “We heard: The case of citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, under Art. 58/10 of the Criminal Code on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have recently been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. Decided: Citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, to be expelled from the USSR. Thus, the expulsion of Trotsky was an act of extrajudicial reprisal on trumped-up charges, to which the accused was not given the right to respond. After Volynsky invited Trotsky to sign his acquaintance with this document, Trotsky wrote: "The decision of the GPU has been announced to me, criminal in essence and lawless in form."

In an official report on the fulfillment of his order, Volynsky reported that Trotsky told him: “There was a dilemma before the GPU - either put me in prison or send me abroad. The first, of course, is less convenient, since it will cause noise and the inevitable unrest and agitation among the workers for emancipation. Therefore, Stalin decided to send me abroad. I could, of course, refuse, because from the point of view of my internal position it would be more advantageous for me to go to prison. If I had reasoned like Stalin, who never understood what revolutionary emigration meant, I would have refused to go. For Stalin, “emigrant” is a swear word, and to go into exile for him means political death ... he is not able to understand with his limited brain that it is the same for a Leninist in which part of the working class to work.

On the basis of a directive received from Yagoda, Volynsky, immediately after the presentation of the OSO decree, announced that Trotsky and his family were under house arrest, and gave them 48 hours to pack for the journey. After that, they were loaded under escort from specially selected employees of the GPU into a wagon, the route of which was not announced to them.

In order to avoid demonstrations of protest during Trotsky's expulsion, such as the one that accompanied his exile in Alma-Ata a year earlier, the expulsion took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy. However, the Zinoviev group was informed about it, from which Stalin expected approval of this action. When the Zinovievites gathered to discuss this news, Bakaev suggested that they protest against the expulsion. To this, Zinoviev declared that "there is no one to protest to," since "there is no master." The next day, Zinoviev visited Krupskaya, who informed him that she, too, had heard of the impending expulsion. "What are you going to do with him?" Zinoviev asked her, meaning that Krupskaya was on the Presidium of the Central Control Commission. "First of all, don't you, a they, - answered Krupskaya, - and secondly, even if we decided to protest, who is listening to us?

Only a few days later, Trotsky was informed that Constantinople had been assigned as the place of his deportation. During these days, the Soviet government turned to many governments with a request to receive Trotsky, but only Turkey, after long negotiations, gave a positive answer. Unaware of this, Trotsky refused to voluntarily follow to Turkey and demanded to be sent to Germany. For 12 days, the train stood at a dead stop in the Kursk region, until Bulanov, the new authorized representative of the OGPU, who replaced Volynsky, announced that the German government had categorically refused to let Trotsky into their country and that a final order had been received to deliver him to Constantinople. In official reports, Bulanov, reporting on his conversations with Trotsky on the train, mentioned his extremely harsh tone and expressions "addressed to the big master."

Along the way, the convoy increased all the time and Trotsky was forbidden to leave the train, which stopped only at small stations to get water and fuel. Meanwhile, an OGPU officer, Fokin, who was sent to Odessa to organize the secret loading of Trotsky on the ship, informed his superiors that he had done everything to prevent a possible demonstration in the city. A thorough check of the crew of the Ilyich steamer was carried out, the "unreliable" ones were written off from it and a reserve team was trained, "able to drive the steamer even with a complete failure of the rest of the crew."

Arrived in Odessa, the wagon was served directly to the pier. Despite the deep night, the pier was cordoned off by GPU troops. On February 12, “Ilyich” entered the border waters, where Trotsky handed a statement to the Turkish officer for transmission to the President of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Pasha: “Dear Sir. At the gates of Constantinople, I have the honor to inform you that I arrived at the Turkish border by no means of my own choice, and that I can cross this border only by submitting to violence.

Only a week after this, Pravda published a brief note: “L. D. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR for anti-Soviet activities by a resolution of the Special Meeting of the OGPU. With him, according to his desire, his family left. This report did not contain the accusation contained in the OSO resolution that Trotsky was preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. In one of the first articles published in exile, Trotsky wrote: “Why did Stalin not dare to repeat in Pravda what was said in the GPU resolution? Because he knew that no one would believe him ... But why, in that case, was this obvious lie included in the decision of the GPU? Not for the USSR, but for Europe and for the whole world. Stalin could not explain the deportation and countless arrests otherwise than as an indication that the opposition was preparing an armed struggle. With this monstrous lie, he caused the greatest harm to the Soviet Republic. The entire bourgeois press said that Trotsky, Rakovsky, Smilga, Radek, I. N. Smirnov, Beloborodov, Muralov, Mrachkovsky and many others who built the Republic and defended it, were now preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. It is clear to what extent such a thought must weaken the Soviet Republic in the eyes of the whole world!”

background

With the end of the Civil War, a fierce struggle for power flared up within the CPSU(b). One of the main Bolshevik leaders in 1917-1921, Trotsky L.D. is gradually inferior to his political competitors. A feature of these processes was that they were often accompanied by heated ideological discussions; Since Lenin's final retirement in 1923, the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin "troika" has been widely critical of Trotsky, accusing him of attempting to "replace Leninism with Trotskyism," which they call "a petty-bourgeois current hostile to Leninism."

As a result of the "literary discussion" in the autumn of 1924, Trotsky was defeated. In January 1925, after a long struggle, he lost the key posts of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the Pre-revolutionary Military Council. However, having "destroyed" Trotsky, the ruling "troika" itself immediately splits. At the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) in December 1925, Stalin manages to win over the majority of the delegates to his side; at the beginning of 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev themselves lose their key posts.

An attempt by former enemies, Trotsky and Zinoviev-Kamenev, to unite ends in failure; in October, Stalin, with the support of Bukharin, removes Trotsky from the Politburo of the Central Committee. The “United Opposition” is widely criticizing the doctrine of “building socialism in one country” developed by Stalin in opposition to the “world revolution”, demands “super-industrialization” in the USSR, “shift fire to the left - against the Nepman, the kulak and the bureaucrat”. In turn, Bukharin accuses the opposition of intending to "rob the countryside" and of planting "internal colonialism." The future leaders of the "right opposition" Bukharin - Rykov - Tomsky in 1926 make even more "bloodthirsty" statements against Trotsky than Stalin; Thus, Tomsky, himself subsequently repressed, in November 1927 speaks to the “Left Opposition” as follows:

The opposition is spreading rumors very widely about repressions, about expected prisons, about Solovki, etc. We will say to nervous people: If you still don’t calm down when we took you out of the party, then now we say: shut up, we’re just politely We ask you to sit down, because it is uncomfortable for you to stand. If you try to go out to the factories now, we will say "please sit down" ( Thunderous applause), for, comrades, in the situation of the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be two or four parties, but only on one condition: one party will be in power, and all the rest in prison. ( Applause).

By the autumn of 1927, Trotsky was finally defeated in the struggle for power. On November 12, 1927, at the same time as Zinoviev, he was expelled from the party. Their further destinies, however, differed. If Zinoviev chose to publicly repent of his "mistakes", Trotsky flatly refused to repent of anything. On November 14, 1927, Trotsky was evicted from his service apartment in the Kremlin, and stayed with his supporter A. G. Beloborodov.

Delivery to Alma-Ata

Leon Trotsky, his wife Natalya and son Lev in exile in Alma-Ata, 1928

On January 18, 1928, Trotsky was taken by force to the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, and exiled to Alma-Ata, and the GPU officers had to carry Trotsky in their arms, since he refused to go. In addition, according to the memoirs of Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, Trotsky and his family barricaded themselves in one of the rooms, and the GPU had to break down the doors. According to the memoirs of Trotsky himself, he was carried out in the arms of three people, “it was hard for them, they were incredibly puffing all the time and often stopped to rest.” During the delivery of Trotsky to the Yaroslavl station, both of his sons were present; the eldest, Lev, shouted to the railroad workers to no avail: “Comrade workers, look how Comrade Trotsky is being carried,” and the youngest, Sergei, hit the GPU officer Barychkin, who was holding his father, in the face.

According to the memoirs of Lev Sedov, immediately after the train was sent, Trotsky came to the convoy, and declared that he “had nothing against them, as simple performers,” and “the demonstration was purely political in nature”:

Link

A number of researchers note that Trotsky's exile in Alma-Ata was an exceptionally mild measure for Stalin. Even the former secretary of Stalin Bazhanov B. G. in his memoirs expresses extreme surprise why Stalin only sent Trotsky to Alma-Ata, and then abroad: “Stalin has at his disposal any number of ways to poison Trotsky (well, not directly, it would be signed, but with the help of viruses, cultures of microbes, radioactive substances), and then bury him with pomp on Red Square and make speeches. Instead, he sent him abroad.” Trotsky himself explains this contradiction as follows:

In 1928 ... not only about execution, but also about arrest, it was still impossible to talk: 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 keep in touch with the growing opposition. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to apply expulsion 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 admitted several times that my expulsion abroad was "the greatest mistake."

Historian Dmitry Volkogonov notes that “Stalin in 1928 could not only shoot Trotsky, but even judge. He was not ready to present him with serious accusations, he was afraid of him. The conditions for 1937-1938 were not yet ripe. While the old party guard remembered well what this unusual exile did for the revolution.

Other few stubborn supporters of Trotsky were also exiled to remote regions of the USSR. Sosnovsky L.S. also in 1928 was exiled to Barnaul, Rakovsky H.G. to Kustanai, Muralov N.I. to the city of Tara in the Omsk region. However, the lion's share of the defeated oppositionists (G. E. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev, I. T. Smilga, G. I. Safarov, K. B. Radek, A. G. Beloborodov, V. K. Putna, Ya. E. Rudzutak, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, S. A. Sarkisov) recognized in 1928-1930. the correctness of the "general line of the party". Both those and others were repressed in 1936-1941. shot in droves.

Trotsky continuously "bombs" the GPU, the Central Executive Committee and the Central Control Commission with complaints about the lack of housing, the loss of suitcases along the way, and even that "the GPU is preventing you from going hunting." Already on January 31, 1928, in a telegram to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Kalinin, he demanded to provide him with housing.

Trotsky reports that Moscow newspapers were delivered ten days late, and letters could be delayed up to three months. Nevertheless, the conditions of exile, compared to what Stalin subsequently introduced in the 1930s, were rather mild, the exile was even able to withdraw his personal archive, which includes a number of documents on the history of the USSR that are most valuable for historians, including documents secret. Trotsky was not limited in any way to correspondence, which allowed him to develop a stormy activity, constantly communicating with a few of his supporters who did not renounce (Preobrazhensky, Rakovsky, Muralov, Sosnovsky, Smirnov, Kasparova, etc.). From his exile, Trotsky even managed to organize the printing and distribution of "Bolshevik-Leninist" opposition leaflets. Trotsky's most active assistance in this activity was provided by his eldest son, Lev Sedov, whom he called "our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Police and Minister of Communications".

In August 1928, a message appeared about Trotsky's alleged illness with malaria, and his associates organized the release of an illegal leaflet on this occasion, demanding his return to Moscow from "malarial Alma-Ata."

From his exile, Trotsky observes the gradually unfolding in 1928-1929 Stalin's defeat of his yesterday's allies and ardent opponents of Trotsky, the "right deviators" Bukharin - Rykov - Tomsky. According to the researcher V. Z. Rogozin, the sharp turn of the Stalinist majority towards industrialization and collectivization was due to the “grain procurement crisis” of 1927, during which the peasants, dissatisfied with the understated, in their opinion, purchase prices for bread, massively refused to hand it over to the state ( see also Grain procurement in the USSR). On January 15, 1928, Stalin personally leaves for Siberia to agitate the peasants to hand over their bread. N. Krotov claims that in the Omsk village one of the peasants told him: “And you, katso, dance a lezginka for us - maybe we’ll give you some bread.” One way or another, Stalin returned from Siberia extremely embittered, and the party takes a course towards “super-industrialization” and collectivization, previously condemned by Bukharin, with the support of Stalin himself, as “Trotskyist”. To justify the turn to the left, Stalin developed the doctrine of "the sharpening of the class struggle as we move towards socialism." In Pravda, controlled by Bukharin, an article by the "Rights" is published condemning Stalin for trying to "follow the Trotskyist path", Bukharin is trying to form a bloc with the already defeated Kamenev, is negotiating with Yagoda and Trilisser.

At the same time, the defeat of the “rightists” was no longer difficult for Stalin; if the Red Army and even a significant part of the OGPU officers once stood behind Trotsky, and Zinoviev was the chairman of the Comintern and the head of the influential Leningrad party organization, there was practically nothing behind the Bukharinites.

Expulsion from the USSR

Trotsky's violent activity, which continued in the meantime even in exile, aroused more and more irritation of Stalin. As the historian Dmitry Volkogonov points out, Trotsky “…received hundreds of letters every month…In Alma-Ata, a whole Trotskyist headquarters formed around him.” In October 1928, his correspondence with the outside world was completely suspended; on December 16, Volynsky, a representative of the OGPU, presented Trotsky with an "ultimatum" demanding that he stop political activity. Trotsky responded to such a proposal with a lengthy letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, in which he flatly refused to stop "the struggle for the interests of the international proletariat", and accused Stalin's supporters of "carrying out suggestions of class forces hostile to the proletariat." Judging by the correspondence with like-minded people preserved in the archives of Trotsky, which was conducted from exile in 1928, he assessed the prospects of his own “admission of mistakes to the party” skeptically, judging by what happened to the “disarmed” oppositionists: “Zinoviev is not published”, “centrists "Demand from the former oppositionists, according to Trotsky, not even to support the "general line of the party", but to "keep silent".

Lev (Leiba) Davidovich Trotsky (real name - Bronstein) was born on October 26, 1879 near Yanovka (Kherson province, Little Russia), in the family of a wealthy Jewish landowner. Already in his early youth, he became interested in revolutionary ideas and began their propaganda among the workers of Nikolaev, where he took a course at a real school. In January 1898, Leo was arrested, spent about two years in prison, and then was exiled to Lena.

In 1902, he escaped from exile on a false passport issued under the name Trotsky, went to London and began to work there in the Marxist newspaper " Spark". In terms of his views, Trotsky stood closer to the left wing of the Iskra editorial board. But, not wanting to submit to the primacy of the leader of this wing, Lenin, he II Congress of the RSDLP(1903) joined not to Bolsheviks, and to Mensheviks. Soon, Trotsky put forward the theory of "permanent revolution", according to which in Russia the working class should take power before the bourgeoisie, assist the proletarian revolution in Europe and, together with it, go towards socialism.

Leon Trotsky. Photo ok. 1920-1921

Trotsky. TV series. Series 1-2

Trotsky and Bolshevism. Polish poster, 1920

After education Council of People's Commissars Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs there. In December 1917 - January 1918, he led the Soviet delegation in negotiations with the Germans on the Brest Peace. During them, Trotsky put forward the famous slogan: "no peace, no war, but disband the army" - that is, stop the war without recognizing the German conquests as a formal peace treaty.

In March 1918 Trotsky assumed the post of military people's commissar and took an active part in the creation of the Red Army. Leading it during the Civil War, he acted with merciless cruelty. Trotsky reinforced the discipline of the Red Army by shooting every tenth in badly fought units, and ordered the whites and the insurgent people to be destroyed without pity. Through " decossackization"He tried to exterminate the Cossacks - the most organized and militant part of the Russians. At the end of the Civil War, Trotsky was going to drive the entire population of the Soviet state into military prisons arranged according to the model " labor armies", but the growth of widespread uprisings in 1920 - early 1921 forced the Bolsheviks to make a "strategic retreat" and proclaim NEP.

Leon Trotsky and the Red Army

In 1922-1923, due to Lenin's illness, a struggle for power began in the RCP (b). The "troika" of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The Trotskyists were defeated in a fight with her at the top. In January 1925, Trotsky lost the posts of military people's commissar and chairman Revolutionary Military Council.

Trotsky. TV series. Series 3-4

However, soon after this, Stalin entered into rivalry with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The last two began to seek support from their former enemy Trotsky and formed with him " united opposition”, mainly from the “old Bolsheviks”. She demanded to start "accelerated industrialization" by plundering the "petty-bourgeois" village - that is, to roll up the NEP. Stalin, at this stage, for personal purposes, deceitfully presented himself as a supporter of its preservation.

Dispersed November 7, 1927 demonstrations, arranged by the opposition in honor of the 10th anniversary of October, Stalin achieved the expulsion of Trotsky to Alma-Ata (January 1928), and then his deportation from the USSR (February 1929).

Trotsky settled in Turkey, on the island of Prinkipo (near Istanbul). He did not stop his political and writing activities there, vehemently condemning the "gravedigger of the revolution" Stalin. Trotsky conducted his agitation not only for the USSR, but also for Western communists. He won over to his side a considerable part of them, which broke with the "Stalinist" Comintern and founded her own Fourth International.

In 1933 Trotsky moved to France, and in 1935 to Norway. Forced to leave this country because of Soviet pressure, he moved (1937) to Mexico, to the "left" President Lazaro Cardenas. Trotsky lived there in a villa in Coyoacan, a guest of the radical artist Diego Rivera.

Stalin, meanwhile, ordered an operation to assassinate him. In May 1940, Trotsky survived a dangerous attack by a group led by a famous artist. A. Siqueiros, but on August 20, 1940, another NKVD agent, Ramon Mercader, dealt him a fatal blow with an ice ax on the head.

See also articles: