Full Name: Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (Leon Trotsky)

Nationality: Russia
Occupation: Activist, Political Leader
Military Service: Red Army
Education: Odessa University

Date of Birth: 7 November 1879
Birth Place: Yanovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire
Date of Death: 21 August 1940 (aged 60)
Death Place: Mexico City, Mexico
Cause of Death: Assassination

Remains: Buried, Trotsky House, Mexico City, Mexico
Gender: Male
Religion: Atheist
Race or Ethnicity: White

Father: David Bronshtein
Mother: Anna
Brother: Alexander
Sister: Liza (d. 1924), Olga (m. Lev Kamenev)
Spouse: Aleksandra Sokolovskaya (m. 1899–1902), Natalia Sedova (m. 1903–1940)
Children: Zinaida Volkova, Lev Sedov, Nina Nevelson, Sergei Sedov

Books: History of the Russian Revolution (1932), Their Morals and Ours, The revolution betrayed (1937), Fascism, Marxism & terrorism, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, The Stalin School of falsification, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky, The Third International after Lenin.

Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, and Soviet politician Leon Trotsky (7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940) was the founder and first leader of the Red Army, the leader in the 1917 Russian Revolution alongside Vladimir Lenin. Trotsky became a disciple of Karl Marx and a friend of future Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin. Leon Trotsky was later unseated and expelled by that nation's leader, Joseph Stalin.

Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (later Leon Trotsky in 1902) was born in Yanovka, Russia, on 7th November, 1879. After living with his father, David Leontyevich Bronstein, (a prosperous Jewish farmer) and his mother, Anna, until he was eight years old, his parents sent Trotsky to Odessa for school. Six years later he was transferred to Nikolayev where he was first introduced to the ideas of Karl Marx. In 1897 he became involved in organizing the underground South Russian Workers' Union. He was sent to Siberia after being arrested for revolutionary activity. After finishing four years in captivity, he escaped and eventually made his way to London. Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution and eventually became a leader within the Party. He was the founder and commander of the Red Army and a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–20).

After failing to lead the struggle against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s he was successively removed from power (1927), thrown out from the Communist Party, and at last relegated from the Soviet Union (1929). In the late 1930s, Trotsky opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler. After departing the Soviet Union, Trotsky lived in Turkey, France, and Norway until he finally arrived in Mexico in 1936. On May 24, 1940, Soviet agents machine-gunned Trotsky's house in the early morning. Although Trotsky and his family were home, all survived the attack. On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was sitting at his desk in his study, Ramon Mercader (known to him as Frank Jackson) punctured Trotsky's skull with a mountaineering ice pick. Trotsky died of his injuries a day later, at age 60.