Question by : What was Trotsky’s significance in the October revolution?
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Answer by Spellbound
Trotsky was a charismatic and influential Marxist writer and theorist long before the October Revolution. He had been instrumental in setting up the forerunner to the Petrograd Soviet during the 1905 Revolution – the St Petersburg Soviet. He had both infuriated and charmed both the Menshevik and Bolshevik leadership calling for party unity and an end to this division. Even when the two factions finally split into separate parties, Trotsky refused to join either one, preferring to continue to call for unity and to write about the merits and demerits of policies of both parties. As such he was seen be many Russians as a figure of unity among the factional infighting of Russian Marxist politics. By deciding between Menshevik or Bolshevik, he would bring with him many supporters. He only joined the Bolsheviks in October 1917.
After the February Revolution Trotsky hurried back from New York to Petrograd, where he became involved in the Petrograd Soviet, he was soon made the chairman of the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee (the Milrevkom). It was this organisation that, under Lenin’s direction, that staged the takeover of the state known as the October Revolution.
As the Revolution descended into Civil War, Trotsky was given the task of organising the Bolshevik Red Army to fight the anti-Bolshevik forces, the Whites and other groups hostile to the Bolshevik takeover – including the UK, USA, France and Japanese who took over ports around the country trying to force Russia back into WWI – and later to try to depose the new regime.
After the Civil War he was considered one of the front runners for the role of leading the country after the death of Lenin – but he fell foul of the master manipulator (who hated his popularity, his organisational skills and was wary that the army may be loyal to him – Stalin). Stalin had him exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929.
Trotsky wrote a number of books, articles and pamphlets decrying what had happened to the revolution and proposed alternative policies for the country – leading to the branch of communism known as Trotskyism. Stalin took action against him, and, in 1940, in Mexico, he was stabbed to death.
See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/trotsky_leon.shtml
For an in depth examination of his life, works and ideas see:
http://www.trotsky.net/
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