During the 10th Party Congress ( March 1921 ) Lenin condemned the Workers Opposition, a faction within the Communist Party, for deviating from communism and accused Trotsky of factionalism.

* 1937 – In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders.

* January 23 – In Moscow, seventeen leading Communists go on trial, accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders.

They and their supporters accused Trotsky of various mistakes and worse during the Russian Civil War and damaged his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council in January 1925.

They and their supporters accused Trotsky of various mistakes and worse during the Russian Civil War and damaged his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council in January 1925.

* The second trial in January 1937 involved 17 lesser figures known as the " anti-Soviet Trotskyite-centre " which included Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov, and were accused of plotting with Trotsky, who was said to be conspiring with Nazi Germany.

* That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

In reply, Russian Marxist journalist Leon Trotsky accused him of wishing to bury all left-wing contributions to culture, and local socialist Henric Sanielevici wrote that Iorga's literary doctrine did not live up to its moral goals.

The Formalists were thus accused of being politically reactionary because of such unpatriotic remarks as Shklovsky's ( quoted by Trotsky ) that " Art was always free of life, and its color never reflected the color of the flag which waved over the fortress of the City " ( 164 ).

* That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

By power Trotsky argued Lenin meant administrative power rather than political influence within the Party and pointed out that Lenin had effectively accused Stalin of a lack of loyalty.

Writing to his main collaborator Leon Trotsky in May 1915, he accused Ionescu of " making a political principle out of venality ", and of being " a man of vulgar ambitions and unmeasurable vanity, a politician of no faith, no convictions, who considers political programs to be each a cause to plead ".

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.

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.

In August 1936 the NKVD arrested Putna and accused him of maintaining contacts with Leon Trotsky, from whom he had allegedly received " terrorist directives.

The Formalists were thus accused of being politically reactionary because of such unpatriotic remarks as Shklovsky's ( quoted by Trotsky ) that " Art was always free of life, and its color never reflected the color of the flag which waved over the fortress of the City " ( 164 ).

In his autobiography, Smith accused Trotsky of attempting to betray the Russian Revolution, alleging that he had been in the " in the service of British agents " in 1926.

In 1935 he was already accused of links with Leon Trotsky.

* Leon Trotsky was accused of meeting with others to plot against Stalin in the Hotel Bristol ( Copenhagen ).

The final compromise proposed by the triumvirate at the Council of the Elders of the 13th Congress after Kamenev read out the text of the document was to make Lenin's testament available to the delegates on the following conditions ( first made public in a pamphlet by Trotsky published in 1934 and confirmed by documents released during and after glasnost ):

The SDF chose to seek international affiliation immediately with the Socialist International, over the objections of some delegates like William Karlin of New York, who urged his fellows to wait the short time until " the Trotsky Communists who call themselves the Socialist Party " joined the 4th International before seeking admission.

The eight delegates who introduced the Left Zimmerwald draft resolution, along with Roland-Holst and Trotsky tried to add an amendment stating that the proposal to mention war credits had to be excised from the manifesto and that Ledebours statement that the " manifesto contains all that is implied such a proposal ".

During the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) leadership in Catalonia.

Trotsky was not elected as a delegate to the 13th Party Congress ( 23 – 31 May 1924 ).

At the 14th Party Congress ( 18 – 31 December 1925 ) Kamenev and Zinoviev were forced into the same position that Trotsky had been forced into previously ; they proclaimed that the center was usurping power from the regional branches, and that Stalin was a danger to inner-party democracy.

Major figures in the Communist Party such as Trotsky and Red Army leaders, were killed, convicted of participating in plots to overthrow the Soviet government and Stalin.

Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power ( 1927 ), expelled from the Communist Party, and finally deported from the Soviet Union ( 1929 ).

Two months into his imprisonment, the first Congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party ( RSDLP ) was held, and from then on Trotsky considered himself a member of the party.

The most serious disagreement that Trotsky and the Mensheviks had with Lenin at the time was over the issue of " expropriations ", i. e., armed robberies of banks and other companies by Bolshevik groups to procure money for the Party, which had been banned by the 5th Congress, but continued by the Bolsheviks.

In Switzerland, Trotsky briefly worked within the Swiss Socialist Party, prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution, and wrote a book against the war, The War and the International.

By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the second man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin, overshadowing the ambitious Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant over the previous decade, but whose star appeared to be fading.

Lenin warned that Stalin has “ unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution ”, and formed a factional bloc with Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Despite advice to refuse “ any rotten compromise ”, Trotsky did not heed Lenin ’ s advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet government.

After Lenin ’ s death ( 21 January 1924 ), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party ( with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai Bukharin, and then by himself ) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards.

The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin ’ s opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the Party — thus, the re-instatement of democratic centralism and free speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky ’ s Left Opposition, and the later Joint Opposition.

In 1925, Stalin's policy won the support of the 14th Party Congress while Trotsky was defeated.

The 1927 Party Conference gave official endorsement to the policy of Socialism in One Country, while Trotsky along with Kamenev and Zinoviev ( both now allied with Trotsky against Stalin ) were expelled from the Party's Politburo.

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

In the subsequent power struggle among Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin, Bukharin allied himself with Stalin, who positioned himself as centrist of the Party and supported NEP against the Left Opposition, which wanted more rapid industrialization, escalation of class struggle against the kulaks, and agitation for world revolution.

Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Lev Kamenev at the Second Communist Party Congress, 1919.

** Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev are removed from the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.