Working Class Calendar

Leon Trotsky Assassinated (1940)

Wed Aug 21, 1940

Leon Trotsky was a revolutionary Soviet politician and Marxist theorist who was assassinated by an NKVD (Soviet secret police) agent on this day in 1940 in Mexico City, where he had been writing and organizing in exile.

Key characteristics of Trotskyist thought include the concepts of "Permanent Revolution" and the "United Front" of revolutionaries and reformers against common enemies.

Trotsky joined the Bolshevik Party in the fall of 1917 and quickly became a leader within it, thus also playing a key role in the October Revolution. In the following years, Trotsky served as the leader of the Red Army and became one of the seven members of the first Bolshevik Politburo in 1919.

After the rise of Joseph Stalin, Trotsky was removed from his positions and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in February 1929. He spent the rest of his life in exile, authoring works such as "The Revolution Betrayed" (1936) and organizing with American Trotskyists such as James P. Cannon.

On August 21st, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet NKVD agent. He was one of the few Soviet political personalities that Khrushchev's government did not rehabilitate in the 1950s.

"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."

- Leon Trotsky

• Date: 1940-08-21
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, spartacus-educational.com, www.marxists.org.
• Tags: #Marxism, #Assassinations.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org