Blackwell Reference Online

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Leon Trotsky was one of the most impressive revolutionaries of the twentieth century, and his example and ideas have profoundly affected successive generations of labor and socialist activists. Born in the Ukraine, then part of the Russian empire, the scope of his thought and activism became quintessentially global. Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, he adopted the underground name “Trotsky” (the pen) and became known not only for his eloquence as a writer, but also as an orator. These talents were inseparable, however, from his role as a political activist. At the age of 18 Trotsky first become active in the revolutionary socialist movement in the Russian empire, and he was soon drawn to the revolutionary Marxist current around the newspaper Iskra , initiated by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , Georgi Plekhanov , and Julius Martov . Initially close to Lenin, he broke with him when the newly reformed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903, lining up with the anti-Leninist Mensheviks. In the course of the revolutionary upsurge of 1905 , in which he played a central role, Trotsky developed the theory of permanent revolution (discussed below) which caused him to become independent of the Mensheviks in the complex factional line-up in the RSDLP. Although in some ways drawing closer to Lenin's Bolsheviks, he was a firm partisan of ... log in or subscribe to read full text