ABSTRACT
Atireless revolutionary and a rousing orator, Leon Trotsky helped organize the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Although driven from his homeland by political intrigue, he managed to form an independent communist movement until he was finally murdered. Sentenced to prison in 1898, he married Sokolovskaia in jail and was accompanied by her to exile in Siberia. Adopting the name Trotsky in ironic commemoration of one of his guards, he broke out of prison camp in 1902 and fled to England. Trotsky's reputation was very strong at the time of Lenin's death in 1924. With the rise of Joseph Stalin in the years that followed, however, Trotsky was increasingly excluded from political life. At the time of Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky was regarded as the most influential and powerful member of the Soviet government. He was celebrated for his sharp oratory and writings, and he had proven his devotion to communism during the civil war as leader of the Red Army.
