Trotsky, Leon

A Russian revolutionary leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Trotsky rose to power alongside Lenin after the Russian Revolution, taking charge of foreign affairs. In favoring world communist revolution (see Trotskyism), Trotsky found himself in opposition to Lenin and to Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, both of whom insisted that the development of communism within the Soviet Union came first. Stalin exiled Trotsky in the late 1920s and had him assassinated in Mexico City in 1940.