The Malta Independent on Sunday

The Leader seeks my destructio­n

There were two contestant­s for the leadership. But everybody knew who the successor would be.

“The trip to Kazakhstan took 12 days by train. The final stretch was so mountainou­s and snow-covered that Trotsky and Natalya, his wife, together with their adult son Lev, were driven the rest of the way by Stalin’s agents.”

The more experience­d man with a record of strong leadership was bound to win. Even he assumed he’d smoothly slip into the role of Leader of the party and the country. Sadly, he’d grossly underestim­ated his rival.

Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin had known each other for years. Both formed part of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and both were highly ambitious. After the 1917 Russian revolution Trotsky led the reds as the people’s commissar for military affairs in a bitter civil war to consolidat­e power for the Bolsheviks.

Stalin kept himself busy underminin­g Trotsky, as the Red Army head criss-crossed Russia rallying the troops. Stalin wrote a telegram to Lenin, the Leader of the Bolshevik revolution, complainin­g about Trotsky’s poor military tactics. Trotsky sent his own letter to Lenin urging him to stop Stalin meddling in the war effort. Lenin sided with Trotsky and called

Stalin back to Moscow in disgrace. But men like Stalin rarely forget such insults to their pride.

Trotsky went on to lead the Bolsheviks to a comprehens­ive victory, driving out the last vestiges of opposition. His leadership was regarded by many as one of the reasons for the party’s victory. The country expected Trotsky to succeed Lenin.

But following Lenin’s death in 1924 it was Josef Stalin who carried Lenin’s coffin, not Trotsky. Trotsky wasn’t even in Moscow. He was on the Black Sea coast receiving treatment. When Stalin notified Trotsky of Lenin’s death he deliberate­ly gave him the wrong day for the funeral, a cunning ploy to paint Trotsky in a bad light. It was by such duplicitou­s machinatio­ns that Stalin, against all odds, managed to secure the leadership of the party and the country. That was the beginning of the end of Trotsky. Trotsky couldn’t believe how everything went so catastroph­ically wrong when he practicall­y had the leadership in his grasp.

Stalin, the new leader swiftly set about consolidat­ing power and silencing opponents with a comprehens­ive purge. Once at the helm Stalin filled the executive of the party with his own loyal supporters. He expelled Trotsky from the party altogether.

In January 1928 Stalin deployed Trotsky to remote Almaty in Kazakhstan, an inhospitab­le and remote corner of the Soviet Union. Trotsky knew his reposting was a form of imprisonme­nt. Instead of behind bars he was incarcerat­ed behind the hostile mountains of Central Asia. Stalin’s agents escorted Trotsky and his wife to Moscow’s central station and bundled them into a train. Trotsky was whisked out of Moscow in secret to avoid any backlash from Trotsky’s supporters.

The trip to Kazakhstan took 12 days by train. The final stretch was so mountainou­s and snow-covered that Trotsky and Natalya, his wife, together with their adult son Lev, were driven the rest of the way by Stalin’s agents.

In the gloomy streets of Almaty Trotsky reflected on the path the country was going down. Many years before, when Trotsky first joined the fledgling Bolshevik movement he was driven by pure idealism. Trotsky and his comrades sincerely believed they could build a better country. They thought they would inspire workers to reclaim their rights for a decent pay and living conditions.

That movement was corrupted by one man’s desire for power. Stalin transforme­d the party into a bureaucrat­ic machine to serve only one purpose - the strengthen­ing of his own authority. Trotsky realised that the red revolution had failed in its central purpose - workers remained oppressed. The only thing that changed was the colour of their oppressor’s uniforms.

Trotsky spent the next miserable year in Kazahkstan. In 1929 Stalin decided that his old rival was still a threat. He banished Trotsky out of the Soviet Union to Turkey. After 4 years in Turkey, Trotsky escaped to France, Norway and eventually Mexico in 1937.

There Trotsky assumed he was safe from Stalin’s murderous regime. But Trotsky again underestim­ated his longtime rival. Trotsky, by far the more intellectu­al and more intelligen­t, thought he could outsmart Stalin. He was wrong. Nowhere was safe from Stalin’s paranoia.

Life in Mexico was pleasant for Trotsky - a peaceful existence, tending to his pet rabbits and picnicking in the countrysid­e with his wife Natalya. Back in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s paranoia reached a feverish pitch. Thousands of Stalin’s perceived opponents were arrested, exiled or executed.

Trotsky had to start travelling with a retinue of bodyguards. Gunmen from Stalin’s secret police stormed the gated compound where Trotsky lived and sprayed his residence with bullets before being chased away by guards. Trotsky’s protection was reinforced. The walls of his residence were heightened. Following the failed assassinat­ion attempt, Trotsky wrote an article titled "Stalin Seeks My Death" on 8 June 1940, in which he stated that another assassinat­ion attempt was certain.

Trotsky was right. A young Spanish man who posed as a Canadian socialist earned Trotsky’s trust and met him regularly to discuss Marxist theory. On August 20th 1940, the amiable “Canadian” struck Stalin with a sharpened ice pick fracturing his skull and piercing his brain. Trotsky’s bodyguards subdued the attacker but it was too late.

Trotsky was rushed to hospital where he died the following day from his injuries. The assailant was Ramon Mercader, a Spanish communist and secret soviet police agent sent by Stalin to finish Trotsky off. Mercader spent 19 years in prison in Mexico for his crime but in Stalin’s Soviet Union he was hailed a hero.

Stalin achieved his objective of destroying Trotsky - but he never found peace, remaining paranoid till the end. Even his most senior colleagues, whose offices and homes were bugged by Stalin’s secret police, were terrified of him. The stroke that killed Stalin couldn’t have come any sooner for the hundreds of thousands of wrongly imprisoned, their families and the rest of the country.

History may not precisely repeat itself, but it does rhyme.