The NKVD nearly annihilated the family of Leon Trotsky before killing him in Mexico ; the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Stalin.

It responded to the assassination of Leon Trotsky by a Soviet agent with an article on 23 August 1940 entitled " A Counter Revolutionary Gangster Passes ", written by former editor Campbell.

Since the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940, the theory of Permanent Revolution has been maintained by the various Trotskyist groups which have developed since then.

* David Ives ' play Variations on the Death of Trotsky is a comedy based on Mercader's assassination of Trotsky.

* Cuban author Leonardo Padura Fuentes ' novel El hombre que amaba a los perros (" The Man Who Loved Dogs "), Tusquets, Barcelona, 2009, refers to the lives of both Trotsky and Mercader, exploring the motivations and historical context of the assassination.

A mountaineering ice axe, often incorrectly referred to as an " ice pick ", was used in the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader in Mexico City in 1940.

The ICFI thought this reaction was surprising, given the role that state infiltration had played in the Trotskyist movement, including in the assassination of Trotsky.

In May 1975, the sixth congress of the ICFI initiated a " Security and the Fourth International " investigation into " the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Leon Trotsky ".

They noted that Joseph Hansen had met FBI agents numerous times over a number of months in 1940 to give them information about Stalinists in the US alleged to have participated in the assassination of Trotsky, and claimed that this was done without the knowledge of the Trotskyist movement.

In the 1970s they issued a report titled " Security and the Fourth International " which alleged, amongst other things, that leading SWP member Joseph Hansen, who had been an assistant to Leon Trotsky during his Mexico City exile, was an accomplice in his assassination alleging that he and, by implication the SWP, were agents of the Soviet secret police ( GPU ).

After his release from serving a 20-year sentence in a Mexican prison for the assassination of Leon Trotsky, Ramon Mercader moved to the Soviet Union in 1961 and was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal from the then head of the KGB Alexander Shelepin.

Measures used against opposition and suspected opposition ranged from imprisonment in work camps ( Gulags ) to execution to assassination ( of Trotsky's son Lev Sedov and likely of Sergei Kirov — Trotsky himself was to die at the hands of one of Stalin's assassins in 1940 ).

He was accused of stealing $ 60, 000 in operational funds from the embassy safe before fleeing Spain and of taking part in the assassination of Rudolf Klement, a former secretary of Leon Trotsky, in Paris on 13 July 1938-the day he left Paris for Quebec.

For many years Wilmers worked on a book, published in 2009 as The Eitingons: A Twentieth Century Story ( London, Faber ; ISBN 978-0-571-23472-1 ), recounting the story of her mother's Russian relations, including the psychoanalyst Max Eitingon as well as her grandfather's cousin, Leonid Eitingon, an agent in Joseph Stalin ’ s NKVD who was responsible for masterminding the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

After the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, a protégé of Joseph Stalin accused of conspiring with Leon Trotsky to wrest control of the party, Weil found himself on very shaky ground in Moscow and in the Communist party.

Although the murder weapon in the assassination of Leon Trotsky was an ice axe, it is often described as an ice pick, which is incorrect in the United States ( though quite correct outside the U. S .).

Golos ' controller was the head of the NKVD's American desk, Gaik Ovakimian, also known as " The Puppetmaster ", who would later serve a key role in the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

While in the United States, Ovakimian ran the Golos spy ring and is credited with facilitating the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky criticised this view, stating " our rules represent ' organisational nonconfidence ' of the party toward its parts, that is, supervision over all local, district, national and other organisations ... the organisation of the party takes place of the party itself ; the Central Committee takes the place of the organisation ; and finally the dictator takes the place of the Central Committee.

The authors state that " when he is bad ... well, he's just the pits " and list several " bad " films he has appeared in: The Sandpiper, Hammersmith Is Out, The Voyage, The Medusa Touch and The Assassination of Trotsky.

* 1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

* 1908 – The Pravda newspaper is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.

The foremost document of this tendency within Surrealism is the Manifesto for a Free Revolutionary Art, published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera, but actually co-authored by Breton and Leon Trotsky.

It is interesting to note that when in 1938 André Breton traveled with his wife the painter Jacqueline Lamba to Mexico to meet Trotsky ; staying as the guest of Diego Rivera's former wife Guadalupe Marin ; he met Frida Kahlo and saw her paintings for the first time.

* July 16 – July 18 – Serious clashes in St. Petersburg in July Days ; Lenin escapes to Finland ; Trotsky is arrested.

* January 31 – Trotsky is exiled to Alma Ata.

** Leon Trotsky is attacked with an ice axe in his Mexico home by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.

** Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

This belief, or the fervor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other Chinese Communists and led Mao onto the path of what Leon Trotsky called, " Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism " which was central to his personal philosophy and is demonstrated in his long-standing hostile relationship with ComIntern.

" Similarly, Stein commented at 1938 on Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky: " There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky.

In his 1914 article “ Disruption of Unity ”, Lenin wrote, " Under cover of ‘ non-factionalism ’ Trotsky is championing the interests of a group abroad which particularly lacks definite principles and has no basis in the working-class movement in Russia.

There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky ’ s phrases, but they are meaningless.

Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote, " Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible.

It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized.

Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was caused by the failure of the revolution to successfully spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

Before his death in 1924, Lenin, while describing Trotsky as " distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee ", and also maintaining that " his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him ", criticized him for " showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work ", and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.

" Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later, in 1926, " Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against ' Trotskyism ', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution.

The Fourth International ( FI ) ( founded in 1938 ) is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky ( Trotskyists ), with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism.

He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs.

Trotsky also argued that in popular fronts, working class demands are reduced to their bare minimum, and the ability of the working class to put forward its own independent set of politics is compromised.