ABSTRACT
Trotsky's own version contained in his autobiography My Life and in his History of the Russian Revolution. The quotations from Sukhanov are from Prof Carmichael's useful abbreviation The Russian Revolution 1917. The facts of Trotsky's life are pretty generally known. The turn of the century saw the revival in Russia of revolutionary activity, assassinations, strikes, demonstrations. The rest of Trotsky's life, the carrying through of the October coup d'état, the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, creation of the Red Army, the victory in the Civil War, the crushing of the Kronstadt rising, the event that made the one party state and one part government inevitable, the death of Lenin, the quarrels, less over the succession than over perpetuation of oligarchy at the risk of tyranny, the vicissitudes of the long fierce struggle which rent the party of Lenin asunder, defeat, persecution and finally the death by the hand of a cheap assassin, all that is history.
