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- [00:00]
Grainger Narrator
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- [00:36]
Danny Bird
Mexico City, August 1940. A study door closes, an ice axe is raised, and the Bolshevik Revolution's greatest exile meets a grisly end. But what led to this dramatic moment? In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Danny Bird speaks to Josh Ireland about Joseph Stalin's mortal enemy and. And the story behind their deadly rivalry. From Istanbul to Paris, Norway to Mexico, to Trotsky's affair with the artist Frida Kahlo, and the pitiless destruction of his family, Josh explains how this is a story of exile obsession and the long reach of totalitarian power.
- [01:14]
Interviewer
Josh, for the benefit of listeners who might only know the name, who was Leon Trotsky, and how did he become Stalin's most dangerous enemy?
- [01:22]
Josh Ireland
So. So Leon Trotsky was one of the most significant figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Unlike a lot of the other revolutionaries, he was sort of a figure that emerged from the outer corners of what was then the Russian empire. In his case, he came from what we now know as Ukraine. And he was an incredibly bright, gifted son of illiterate farmers. So there was no sort of sign in his early life that he would go on to have the sort of career or existence that he did. And I think what took him sort of catapulted him into, you know, the center of the 20th century was what catapulted a lot of his comrades into. Into the same space, was that he discovered communism, that he found this animating belief that kind of filled every atom of his body with obsession to create a new world. The Bolsheviks, who were the radical socialists who would eventually seize control of the whole of Russia, they've often been compared to millenarian Christians, and they're animated by exactly the same conviction that a new world is incredibly close. So Trotsky, he had been on the fringes of the revolutionary movement for a while, but the 1917 revolution, when the tsar, whose family had ruled Russia for almost five centuries by that point, was overthrown. He returned to Russia from exile. Trotsky was one of these people that basically no Western government actually liked to have in their country. So he was briefly in England, he was briefly in France, he was briefly in Spain in 1917, found him in States, any place he spent a sort of concerted amount of time in. They were generally quite desperate to expel him as soon as they could. And then he became central to the Bolsheviks plans and eventual ability to overthrow temporary government which had been installed. Suddenly you had a handful of extremists in charge of millions and millions of people and they wouldn't have been able to do that without him. And obviously figures like Len were incredibly significant. But he was absent for a lot of that period and it was Trotsky who was on the ground, he was organizing, he was an incredible speaker. When he talked, it was as if there was sort of electricity filling the room. And he could inspire people, he could organize, he could plot. And so by the time the Bolsheviks had seized power, he was one of their most significant figures. And then in the civil war that followed where counter revolutionary forces tried to seize control back, he ultimately led the Red army, which was the Communists forces. So. Yeah, so he was. You can't really have the Russian Revolution without Trotsky. And that's really what establishes him as a sort of major figure in that period.
- [03:53]
Interviewer
I wondered if, as well, if you could tell me a little bit more about his youth, because he was born into a Jewish family, wasn't he? But they were, I believe, quite a secular family.
- [04:02]
Josh Ireland
Yeah, I mean, he's one of these people where his Jewishness mattered much less to him than it did to other people. Russia, you know, like all of Europe at the time, had deep problems with anti Semitism. So for instance, there were constant pogroms against Jews. Many schools had quotas which governed how many Jews could actually study there. So his life was in some sense hampered by that, not significantly. And I think his sort of sense of his Jewishness wasn't important to him. But it would become a big feature, especially after the revolution, when a lot of the anxieties in the west, in the capitalist west about the Bolsheviks centred would often be paired with the fact that a lot of them were Jews. And then subsequent to that, Stalin, who sort of never met a prejudice he didn't like when he turned viciously against Trotsky, a lot of the propaganda against Trotsky would lean into, you know, the sort of deep currents of anti Semitism that were sort of present in Russian society at the time. So that was one element of him. But I think the thing that really does did distinguish him in his early life was his ambition and his cleverness. And that's what catapulted him out of this humble, illiterate start in life, allowed him to first begin to make a name in revolutionary politics, which was sort of solidified in 1905 when there was the first of the revolutions against the Romanov, who were the czars who ruled Russia. And suddenly he plunged himself right into the middle of it and gained a leading role. And I think that was the beginning of his reputation because he suddenly found he could command an entire room. He could deliver a speech which would rouse thousands of workers. He then begins a sort of peregrination across Europe. He lives like the rest of the Bolsheviks. They're all poor, they're all hunted, they're all constantly short of support. They're unsure whether they're just waiting for the moment when they can rush back to Russia and participate in the revolution that they are convinced is gonna come.
- [06:04]
Interviewer
Knight, turning to your book itself, what drew you to Trotsky's assassination and what did you discover that changed, perhaps your understanding of the story while researching the book?
- [06:14]
Josh Ireland
Well, I think it was. Cause it was. It's one of those sort of historical events that is, on the one hand, quite famous, but its fame is very limited to sort of two or three specific details. I was someone who, I think, like a lot of people, knew that Trotsky died in Mexico in 1940 and that he was assassinated by someone carrying an ice pick. But I guess what I didn't know was why he had ended up In Mexico in 1940, thousands and thousands of miles away from home, who it was who had assassinated him and why he'd been assassinated, and also why they'd use an ice pick. So I think my research, a lot of the research I did was attempting to answer all of those questions. And one of the sort of big gaps was that a lot of the most sort of notorious murders in history, you know who Lee Harvey Oswald is. But I didn't know who had killed Trotsky. And the more I found out about him, a man called Ramon Mercader, who's a Spanish aristocrat, the more I became interested, but I think also the more I had a sense that this story, although sort of in its own right, is exciting and thrilling, was also a way of thinking about 20th century history.
- [07:23]
Interviewer
And one of the big points of that last century, the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky, feels deeply personal as well as political. Do you think what ultimately happened to Trotsky was inevitable once Stalin had consolidated power in the Soviet Union, or did their personalities and resentment play a bigger role than ideology alone?
- [07:40]
Josh Ireland
I don't think ideology is as significant as you might think. I mean, it's sort of ironic given these were people who were completely consumed by revolution and ideology and their various visions about what Russia should become. But actually, I think that was actually secondary to questions of personality and power. If you look policy by policy, they're not remarkably different. But what is definitely true is that from almost the very first moment they met, they seemed to despise each other. That they had a kind of visceral loading to even like the sheer physical presence, you know, that Trotsky was more of a dandy. He wore bright white cleans with impeccable linen suits and had wore a pound's nest and had beautiful sweeping hair, whereas Stalin wore plain tunics and he smoked a pipe and he had. He was sort of coarse with pockmarked skin. And it was as if their sort of. The way they looked was emblematic of the way that they were as well, that Trotsky had a more cosmopolitan outlook, he was more self consciously sophisticated, whereas Stalin was sort of closer to. I think Trotsky would have seen him as a sort of coarse provincial. And I think then there was jealousy. Both of them knew that Lenin wouldn't rule Russia forever. They knew that his health was failing, and then there was also a failed assassination attempt. So they knew the struggle for succession was imminent. So I think that sharpened their rivalry. And then once Stalin had won that struggle, and even though he'd sort of exiled Trotsky and Trotsky was sort of sitting alone in a compound thousands of miles away, for Stalin, he was deeply, deeply paranoid. I don't think there was any part of him that could rest until he'd extinguished Trotsky. You know, it was a physical need for him.
- [09:27]
Interviewer
Did that jockeying for power between them begin as soon as Lenin was at death's door?
- [09:33]
Josh Ireland
Essentially, I think it began even, you know, five or six years beforehand. I think it was always. They were always conscious of their rivalry, so they would look to undermine each other. The thing about the Bolsheviks is they were always incredibly rude, deeply, deeply, viciously rude about each other. And no one was ruder than Stalin about Trotsky or Trotsky about Stalin. I mean, it kind of puts all the sort of political rivalries we think we know, like Blair and Brand, into perspective because it was a kind of like explosive, poisonous loathing. The problem for Trotsky was that although he nominally seemed better placed to succeed Lenin, you know, he had a more senior position. He was the figure that was internationally known. He was the person that could talk to huge, adoring audiences. None of these things were particularly useful when it came to building power. What Stalin was incredibly good at was working out who he needed to appoint into particular positions, what committees he should be part of. And then there's this other sort of aspect of Stalin where we remember him as a sociopathic murderer who is responsible for the death of millions of people. But there's this weird paradox about him, is that on a sort of individual level, he was incredibly good at cultivating networks. He remembered people's birthdays, he bought presents for people. And so that by the time Lenin died, there was this contest. But actually it was a contest in which Stalin had set all the rules, had sort of paid the referees. It wasn't a contest at all, because he'd won it before it begun.
- [11:09]
Interviewer
Trotsky spent years in exile, constantly moving across the world, and he was increasingly isolated. Could you tell me a little bit about some of the places he lived in and how exile reshaped him? And did he expect that Stalin would eventually succeed in killing him?
- [11:24]
Josh Ireland
Two things happened. The second that Trotsky actually left for exile at the end of the 20s. One was that Stalin instantly regretted it. And I think the second thing is that Trotsky knew that his days were numbered, that at some point he wouldn't be able to run anymore. And I think for him, it was just a question of how long that would be. He began with a sort of phase of internal exile in what's now Kazakhstan. And then before long, he was actually sort of thrown out of the Soviet Union entirely, firstly to Turkey, where he lived on a sort of small island just off Istanbul. Then France, where the French government allowed him in briefly, but were adamant that he couldn't come anywhere near Paris after that, Norway, and then finally Mexico. And I think he was. To the extent that he. I mean, I think he was used to exile because he'd spent a lot of the time before the First World War in exile. And I think on some level, he accepted it as a sort of facet of revolutionary existence. Then it was just part of the sort of cycle that there's an exile, then you return for revolution, and then you're exiled again. But I think the big change was that I think steadily he became more and more cognizant at his impotence, that as every year went by, he had fewer and fewer supporters that could have grind with this Grinding relentlessness, but then also, one by one, his family, who either were executed or sort of pushed into death, really, there is a sense of a sort of gathering hopelessness as trots. He becomes more and more isolated as he begins, you know, that he has no connection, really, with the country that he was born in. He doesn't. Has no one he can communicate with there. And also he's in this world where there isn't a single country in the world that really wants to have him. Because he was so prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, that translated into almost paranoid terror on the part of Western governments that he might be coming to start a revolution in their countries. And no country wanted that. And so the only country, really, that by 1937, that even plausibly might have been a home for him was Mexico.
- [13:32]
Interviewer
I was wondering also if you could perhaps tell me a little bit about what he was doing in exile, because, as you mentioned, he was this figure very much associated with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. And he felt very acutely a desire to defend what that revolution had hoped to achieve, which he felt was being portrayed by Stalin, didn't he?
- [13:51]
Josh Ireland
Yeah, exactly. I think he had a kind of slightly complex tightrope to walk because on the one hand, he wanted to defend the revolution as he saw its achievements and what he felt it still had the capacity to do. But on the other hand, the person in charge of that revolution now was the person that he felt was betraying and was his greatest enemy. So I think he was, on the one hand, desperately trying to defend the revolution against his enemies, which were the governments of most of the countries in Western Europe, but at the same time offer a criticism of what was happening in the country. Even for a very, very clever, sophisticated thinker is a difficult balancing act. And I think the problem he found was that his voice became increasingly less relevant the further away he got from power. When people realize that you are not there to create a revolution, you're not there because you have any power. You're there because you don't have power. People's interest in listening to you diminishes quite quickly, I think.
- [14:57]
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- [15:05]
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- [15:06]
Josh Ireland
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- [15:08]
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- [15:09]
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- [15:18]
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- [15:21]
Josh Ireland
This should be tons of fun.
- [15:22]
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- [15:57]
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- [16:14]
Interviewer
Your book is full of people caught in the crossfire, from family members to figures like Frida Kahlo and even Trotsky's eventual murderer. Which of those human stories has stayed with you the most since writing the book?
- [16:25]
Josh Ireland
So I think maybe the most melancholy strand in my book for me certainly is the story of Trotsky's eldest son, Lev, who bore a huge burden in terms of trying to organize Trotsky's life and to try to keep it running, to try and allow Trotsky to be able to communicate with people, likely supporters across the whole of Europe. And while Trotsky was in Mexico for two or three quite complex reasons, Lev was in Paris, where he was part of a sort of small community of expats. But in addition to his work, he was constantly trying to elude scrutiny from the nkvd, who were one of the iterations of the Soviet Secret Service, which I think in the 20th century we most commonly associate it with the KGB. It was reorganized several times across the 20th century. And he was always being criticized by his father, always trying to please his father. But at the same time, he was being betrayed by his best friend, who was another NKVD agent. And the weight of it all crushed him, really. He became sick, so sick that he eventually had to go into hospital. And it was in hospital that he died, possibly as a result of poisoning by the nkbd. And I think it's just an example of the way in which, as you say, people get caught up in other people's lives. Everyone is collateral damage in this rivalry.
- [17:48]
Interviewer
And I just want to talk about another figure who I referenced in my previous question, because a lot of people will be very familiar with her, Frida Kahlo. And I was wondering if you could tell me about the circumstances in which she. She And Trotsky forged a relationship. And perhaps how their relationship was also affected by the manhunt against him.
- [18:07]
Josh Ireland
Well, this was one of the things that surprised me most. Frida Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, who isn't particularly well known now, but at the time was probably the more famous of the two, was sort of Mexico's great muralist. And he's this incredible, incredible painter and incredibly charismatic personality, but he was infatuated by Trotsky, and so he was fairly instrumental in securing Trotsky's arrival in Mexico. And when Trotsky arrived in Mexico, he and his family, or what was left of his family by that point, lived in the Blue House, which was Frida Kahlo's childhood home. And it was here that Trotsky and Frida Kahlo began a relationship under the noses of both Trotsky's wife and Diego Rivera. And I think it's. It's a sort of strange episode in this sort of last period of his life, because there was a sort of element of quite high, fast, the relationship. You know, they would leave notes to each other hidden in books. They would communicate in English so no one else could understand it. It felt as if Frida Kahlo had pursued the relationship as a way of taking revenge against Diego Rivera because he'd slept with so many people, including her own sister. And on Trotsky's part, it almost feels like a sort of expression of his own understanding of the sort of futility of his situation that, you know, almost for the first time in his life, he allows himself to get distracted from his desire to create revolution and sort of ends up in this slightly sordid, slightly pathetic relationship with a woman who almost as soon as the relationship has begun, ends it, leaving him crushed and trying to sort of rebuild his marriage. So it's a sort of sign, really, of what exile and impotence does to you. I mean, impotence in the sense of having no power, you know, that's all you're left with. That's the only way you can do anything exciting. Because by that point, his life was incredibly circumscribed. He couldn't go out by himself in the streets of Mexico City. You know, when he went in a car, he'd have to duck beneath the seats. He lived in this sort of compound surrounded by walls, and, you know, he couldn't move without his guards. But he also knew that every second of every day, people were watching him. You know, every letter he sent or received was probably read someone in the Russian secret service that probably members of his entourage had been turned. It was this kind of atmosphere of constant betrayal and constant fear and constant anxiety, and, like, who could blame anyone for sort of seeking some release from that?
- [20:37]
Interviewer
And, of course, this all culminates in the summer of 1940. Can you take us inside the assassination
- [20:43]
Daredevil Character
itself, how it unfolded, where it nearly
- [20:46]
Interviewer
failed, and how we should understand the man who carried it out. What was his motive in targeting Trotsky?
- [20:51]
Josh Ireland
Raml Mekhadar. He's very different from other similar assassins in that he wasn't acting by himself. He wasn't acting according to his own interests. He was part of a system, and he was part of an organization, and he was part of a plan, and he was really just playing his role within it. But I think to understand him, you have to kind of go back to the beginning of his life where his family falls apart, his parents divorce, and his mother becomes involved in revolutionary politics, and that's really his way in. Eventually, it's his mother who facilitates his recruitment by the nkvd. It's his mother who is at his side right through this, the whole operation, really, which is a great name. I don't know how many other assassinations have that particular dynamic. So he is representative of another sort of strand in revolutionary politics in the 20th century, you know, so someone from the bourgeoisie who is at the same time as committed to revolution as. As any member of the working class is desperate to establish their credentials, to show that they are as pure and as committed as anybody else. There was obviously always ego, and there's always an element of narcissism in people like this, But I think he was as genuinely ideologically committed. He was desperate to do anything he could to support the Soviet Union, which he had never visited by this point. But as far as he was concerned, it was the great hope for mankind. And when he was first brought into the operation, it wasn't with a view to him assassinating Trotsky himself. He was really used as not quite a honey trap, but he was being used to seduce a young American woman called Sylvia Agarloff, who was a young person who was on the fringes of the American Trotskyist movement. And the theory was that by seducing her and becoming part of her life, it would be a way into Trotsky's entourage, and which eventually it was, you know, that she helped him insinuate himself into Trotsky's household. She was the person that effectively opened doors for him. But even then, once they arrived in Mexico, he was really only there to find out how the household operated, you know, when the doors were guarded, how many guards were there, you know, the disposition, layout of the rooms, Trotsky's lifestyle, when he did, when he got up, when he went to bed. This was the prelude to the first significant attempt in Mexico to kill Trotsky. So one of Diego Rivera's rival painters, a man called David Siqueiros, in conjunction with a couple of Soviet agents and a group of incredibly drunk Mexican communists, tried to storm Trotsky's compound, and they succeeded in getting through the doors. I think they fired something like 300 bullets in Trotsky's bedroom, but they somehow left without having either killed Trotsky or destroyed his archive, which was the other thing they were desperate to. To achieve. So I think after that blunt force attempt to assassinate Trotsky, the people who were responsible for running the operation on the ground realized that they needed to find a more subtle way of taking Trotsky out. And which is why eventually that role fell to Remal Mekkada.
- [24:04]
Interviewer
And I wonder if you could go into the circumstances of his bid to actually kill Trotsky in August 1940 and the immediate aftermath of what followed.
- [24:15]
Josh Ireland
By this point, Ramon Merkadar. He'd spent the last two years pretending to be a sort of dissolute Belgian playboy called Jacques Mount, and that's how everyone knew him. He was well liked by everyone in Trotsky's circle, but not taken entirely seriously. And then at some point in the summer of 1940, he Suddenly, having displayed no interest in politics or Trotsky as a politician or a revolutionary, he suddenly seemed to have a burning passion to participate in their movement, which is why on that morning of August 20, 1940, he arrived at Trotsky's compound, which was in the suburb in the south of Mexico City. And one thing everyone noticed at the time was they were not just two things, really. One, he looked green and sick. He'd normally been incredibly polite and kind and. And friendly, but he was stuttering, he was rude, he was acting very strangely. And also, this was Mexico in the summer. But he was wearing a large raincoat and a hat which he refused to take off. But in his hands, he was holding an article that he'd written about revolutionary politics that he wanted a particularly obscure split in the American Trotskyist movement, which he wanted to show Trotsky and for Trotsky to read. So he was ushered into Trotsky's study. He handed him the article Trotsky sat down, began to read it. And while Trotsky was doing this, Ramon removed his raincoat. And inside the raincoat were four things. There was a pistol, loaded bullets, a long knife, an ice axe, and also a long letter in which he was explaining what he was doing and why, which was entirely fabricated explanation. And then he waited until Trotsky was entirely absorbed. He picked up the pickaxe and he smashed it down on Trotsky's skull. And he should, in theory, have killed Trotsky instantly, but because just before the ax smashed into Trotsky's head, Trotsky turned a fraction of an inch and that was enough to slightly divert the blade. So what happened was that Trotsky was left this vicious, horrible 7 inch gash in his head, but he was still alive. So he stood up and began to grapple with Ramel and started throwing everything that was on his desk, you know, like ink stands, pens, books. And then Rommel fled from the room chased by Trotsky. He was sort of bleeding profusely, his glasses were smashed. And suddenly Trotsky's guards realized that something terrible had happened and they rushed down and they found Raml and began to beat him to death. Tried effectively with trying to beat him to death before Trotsky intervened and said, told him to leave him alive. And as all this was happening, Trotsky begins to get weaker and weaker. He talks, you know, in a hoarse whisper to his wife and his closest friends in the house, and then they take him to hospital where the following day he finally dies. There was actually another murder by another Soviet agent about three or four years before Trotsky's. An ice pick was used. And I think there was no question that there would have been more efficient or cleaner ways to kill Trotsky. But there were two sort of impulses behind the choice of an ice pick. One was that in theory, if everything went well, the idea was that Ramon Merceda would be able to go into Trotsky's study, murder Trotsky, and then walk out without anyone knowing the difference. Two streets away, his mother was waiting with another NKVD agent in a car ready to. To whisk them away. But I think also the sort of crudeness and the brutality of that murder was also part of the point, part of the statement is the cruelty and the brutality of the murder. And like, what is more brutal than an axe and a head?
- [27:58]
Interviewer
Yeah, and the theatricality of it.
- [28:00]
Josh Ireland
Yeah, it's exactly the theatricality, yeah.
- [28:03]
Daredevil Character
Of course, Trotsky's assassination was one of the most brutal and shocking in history. But for those listening today, why not go beyond the podcast from Julius Caesar and Indira Gandhi to Empress Sisi of Austria and Martin Luther King? Be sure to check out History Extra's list of the 50 assassinations that changed the world via the link in the description to this episode. Josh, following Trotsky's murder, what happened to his wife and members of his family? Did they continue to be hunted by Stalin?
- [28:32]
Josh Ireland
Well, the sort of. I mean, this is sort of another extra element of tragedy, but. So by the time Trotsky was assassinated, there were only two members left of his family, his wife and his grandson. So he had two families. I mean, this is sort of a mark of, I guess, of the sort of weird form the revolutionary exiled life takes that he. He left his first wife and two daughters. He just walked out one day and escaped. They were in Siberia. It was part of his escape. And then he began a new family in Paris about five or six years later. So he had four children, his two daughters. One of them died in about 1927. She was ill. No doctor was brave enough to treat her because by that point, Trotsky was already Persona non grata. His second daughter committed suicide in Berlin in 1933. Again, the entire family had had their Soviet citizenship stripped from them. They were all being watched all the time, they were all being persecuted. Then his youngest son, Sergei, who was perhaps the least political of the family. I mean, he was desperate to keep a distance between what he did and what his father did without ever betraying him. He was a scientist and a mathematician. He disappeared into the Gulags and was murdered in the 30s. And then in 1938, Trotsky's remaining child, Lev, either dies or is murdered, depending on what you want to believe. So the only person left is his grandson, who was the child of one of his daughters, who actually only died maybe two years ago. And he had a reasonably happy, content existence in Mexico. He was one of the baby in the most assiduous sort of keepers of Trotsky's memory. And Natalio, I think, was sort of left broken and quite bereft by this death. You know, the man he cheated devoted her entire life to him, and then suddenly he was gone. She really just fades away. She dies in Paris, she's exiled from her own country. She can't go back. Everyone that she really loved is dead. So it's just another sort of sad strand in the story. And then the odd sort of counterpoint to that is Ramon's Mother, the person who was as integral as anyone else into embroiling him in all of this. She goes to Russia for the first time, and then it's as if as soon as she gets there, she realizes what she's done. She's assailed by this huge guilt, having persuaded her son to throw his life away. So she begins to rail against the Soviets. She drinks, she smokes, she sort of becomes increasingly erratic. And eventually she manages to sneak into Mexico, where she launches this failed and sort of fairly quixotic attempt to rescue Ramon from prison, which fails and basically only serves to ensure that he serves the full extent of his term and any chance of escaping is completely removed. So, yeah, it's gonna be. I feel like the stories of these two women of a similar age are kind of interesting counterpoints. You know, no one escapes intact from these episodes.
- [31:38]
Interviewer
Finally, Josh Stalin wanted more than Trotsky's death. He wanted him erased from memory.
- [31:44]
Daredevil Character
What does this story still tell us
- [31:45]
Interviewer
about power, propaganda, and political violence today?
- [31:48]
Josh Ireland
What Stalin wanted to create in the Soviet Union was effectively an alternate reality in which everything that the Communist Party said became fact instantly, where they could change history to suit their own stories that. Where they could dominate the information that was allowed to reach normal men and women in the cities, in the countryside. They were trying to create a totalitarian state. And a totalitarian state relies on there being no dissenting voices, there being no one willing or able to offer a different perspective to tell a different story. And Trotsky was an incredibly flawed human being. He was as committed to violence and ruthlessness as any other figure who was a contemporary of his. What he was offering was criticism of Stalin and Stalin's regime. And that was intolerable to Stalin as it is to, you know, a country like Russia now, where Putin is desperately trying to repress any independent voices in the media or in the population at large or any other country that, you know, any sign of an alternative narrative or a different perspective is intolerable to a totalitarian state. And I think Trotsky's murder is a sort of very vivid example of the lengths to which a totalitarian state will go or an authoritarian state will go to ensure that theirs is the only narrative and the only story that's being heard. So I think the problem that Trotsky has in terms of his sort of legacy within Russia was the demonization of Trotsky was so integral to the Communist Party's messaging and the story they told about the 30s that to try and affect any kind of reassessment of who he was would have really been to undermine everything that they had told their population for three or four decades that he wasn't. They couldn't dismiss it as, you know, an administrative mistake or, you know, a functionary overreaching themselves, that if you pull away this demonization of Trotsky, then the whole edifice collapses as well. You know, that they defined themselves against Trotsky for a decade in the way that they presented him. They said that he was the person who was conspiring to destroy the revolution. And I just don't. I don't think there was a way back for his reputation in that circumstance. As much as Stalin devoted so many of the resources of his state and also his own sort of mental energy to the extinguishing of Trotsky. On another level, he needed him, this scapegoat, this demon figure around whom he could build a narrative, you know, to justify the terror, to justify all the repressions he brought against his own people. So it's the sort of. This sort of odd sense in which they are. Even when they're thousands of miles of each away from each other, they're completely bound to each other. They can't. They can't ever really escape from each other.
- [34:46]
Interviewer
Does beg the question, if it was of such utility to Stalin to keep him alive, why did he eventually resolve to have him snuffed out?
- [34:53]
Josh Ireland
Well, I think you can't portray someone as being the greatest villain in the world without making an effort to kill him. I guess, like, the logical consistency of that position would collapse if you didn't also try and extinguish him. And, you know, I think as the story of Trotsky is a really good way of understanding or beginning to try and understand Stalin because he's such a complex mix of paranoia, but also of cunning. He's part maniac, but part Machiavellian planner. And I think his relationship with Trotsky is a really good example of that. On the one hand, he's able, when Trotsky's still in Russia, to meticulously, cleverly, in minute detail, sort of minimize him, push him to the margins of the government and get. Really understand the exact limits of his power. But then as soon as Trotsky's nominally safe away in another country, he sort of expands in Stalin's mind and gains weird, complex powers.
- [35:59]
Danny Bird
That was Josh island speaking to Danny Bird. Josh is a rock writer and editor, and his most recent book is the Death of Trotsky. The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's. Greatest enemy.