397. Stalin: Killing Trotsky (Part 3)

In August 1940, a Spanish communist named Ramon Mercader walked into Leon Trotsky’s fortified study in a Mexico City suburb, pulled an ice axe from beneath his coat, and drove it into Trotsky’s skull. The blow did not kill him instantly. Trotsky sank his teeth into Mercader’s arm and drew blood. He was rushed to hospital but died the next day. Joseph Stalin, who had stripped Trotsky of his army, his party, and his country over the previous decade, had finally finished him off. The murder was the culmination of a rivalry that defined the early Soviet state — and that Stalin, even as absolute dictator, could not let go.

The Man Stalin Couldn’t Stand

Trotsky was born Lev Bronstein in 1879 in Ukraine, the son of wealthy but illiterate yeoman farmers. He was the intellectually gifted child in a large family — a fastidious, elegant young man with swept-back hair and a habit of putting people down. Lenin’s wife disliked him intensely. One fellow revolutionary wrote that Trotsky was “totally uncongenial.” But he had one quality that marked him out from Stalin: he was a brilliant public orator, capable of whipping a crowd of a thousand into a frenzy without a script. Stalin, by contrast, had a thick Georgian accent, hated public speaking, and was physically awkward on a stage. The contrast between the two men ran deeper than style. During the October Revolution of 1917, Trotsky wa