Leon: The Essential

Leon Trotsky 
A Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army

Leon Trotsky helped ignite the Russian Revolution of 1917, and built the Red Army afterward. He was exiled and later assassinated by Soviet agents.

Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein on November 7, 1879, Leon Trotsky’s revolutionary activity as a young man spurred his first of several ordered exiles to Siberia. He waged Russia’s 1917 revolution alongside Vladimir Lenin. As commissar of war in the new Soviet government, he helped defeat forces opposed to Bolshevik control. As the Soviet government developed, he engaged in a power struggle against Joseph Stalin, which he lost, leading to his exile again and, eventually, his murder.

- Text: bio. www.biography.com