IV.

Exile

Trotsky was second only to Lenin in the Politburo, and Lenin viewed him as exceptionally able. He backed Lenin's major policy innovations, but had his own plans for industrializing Russia. When a stroke removed Lenin from active politics in May 1922, Trotsky was not in a position to take over. Never particularly adept at party politics, he failed to outmanoeuvre the troika of Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin that took power. Although he put himself at the head of a loosely knit left opposition, Trotsky's polemic salvos were no match for Stalin's bureaucratic party machine. In 1925 his adversaries removed him from the Commissariat of War; in 1926 they expelled him from the Politburo; and in 1928 Stalin exiled him to Central Asia. In 1929 he was expelled from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Trotsky spent the rest of his life seeking a safe place to compose his savage critiques of Stalinist Russia. In Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico he produced a flood of publications, including an autobiography, My Life (1930; trans. 1930); an unmatched History of the Russian Revolution (3 vols., 1931-1933; trans. 1932-1933); The Revolution Betrayed (1937); and powerful articles on the major issues of his day (Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, the Spanish Civil War). A Stalinist agent fatally wounded Trotsky on August 20, 1940, in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the following day.