How important was Trotsky to the Bolshevik success in the Civil War?

Question by Plop ♥            : How important was Leon Trotsky to the Bolshevik success in the Russian Civil War?

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Answer by Donny
Uh, hugely important. Trotsky, unlike Stalin, was actually a man of ideas. Perhaps this was his weakness. Although he himself would probably have said he was less important than Lenin, an argument could be made that the Soviet experiment would not have even taken off without Trotsky. Trotsky, though he had practically no experience, built the Red Army from a just a bunch of peasants, defeated the Whites and their Western Allies, enforced Soviet rule throughout most of the territories of the former Russian Empire, and set an important foundation for the evolution of the Communist Party apparatus. Long after his exile he maintained such an influence on Communists globally that Stalin felt he had to send a KGB hitman to Mexico to kill him. He died from an ice pick blow to the back of the head.

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