Stalin vs Trotsky: The Assassination That Changed History, with Josh Ireland

Summary

Intelligence Squared Podcast Summary
Episode: Stalin vs Trotsky: The Assassination That Changed History, with Josh Ireland
Date: April 5, 2026
Host: Tim Bouverie
Guest: Josh Ireland (historian and author of The Death of Trotsky)

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Episode Overview

This episode features historian Josh Ireland discussing his new book, The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy. Alongside fellow historian Tim Bouverie, Ireland unpacks the dramatic and complex tale of Leon Trotsky's assassination in 1940, the multi-year campaign by Stalin and the Soviet secret police (NKVD), the motivations of the main actors, and the broader lessons about power, ideology, and the nature of political violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Challenge of Historical Truth

Disentangling Fact from Myth in Totalitarian Histories

• Ireland describes the layers of myth and bias surrounding Trotsky’s death, particularly due to the secretive nature of the Soviet state and varied personal accounts.
  • "The Soviet Union have been remarkably sort of laconic in their descript, in their accounts of the assassination…what you do have…are lots of people who are very keen to make particular points." (Josh Ireland, 02:47)
• His method is to "take as many versions of the story as you can…and see where there's a preponderance of what feels to you like the truth lies." (03:27)

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Who Was Trotsky & Why Was He Hunted?

Background and Motivation

• Trotsky, a "brilliant, charismatic figure," was driven by an overwhelming belief in revolution, rising from a humble Jewish background in Ukraine to the heights of Soviet power. (Josh Ireland, 05:46)

• Even in exile, his notoriety ensured no country truly welcomed him; his presence was seen as "inviting a virus into your home." (14:09)

• The Moral Complexity of Trotsky:

  • While sympathy is evoked by his victimhood, one must also remember his own ruthlessness:
    • "Violence was an inherent part of the Bolshevik Revolution…they reveled in ruthlessness." (Josh Ireland, 07:28)
  • Trotsky’s ideological motivations were always uncompromising; he was not a man softened by his experiences. "He never lost any…faith in extreme solutions." (26:02)
  • Trotsky held an intellectual snobbery and deep contempt for Stalin, seeing him as a "coarse provincial peasant." (26:49)

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The Trotsky-Stalin Rivalry

Personal Grudge vs. Ideological Battle

• Ireland argues the feud was fundamentally personal, "a compound of jealousy, ambition…a deep, deep antipathy between the two men." (Josh Ireland, 11:03)
• Both men understood that defeat meant not just loss of power but likely death—neither was "naive enough to sort of believe that they'd be allowed to go and read books somewhere in the Caucasus if they lost their battle." (12:03)

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Trotsky’s Exile

Turbulent Years Across Continents

• After expulsion, Trotsky lived in Kazakhstan, Turkey, France, Norway, and finally, Mexico—each stop marked by fear and suspicion. (12:34–14:49)
• Only Mexico, under President Cárdenas and through advocates like Diego Rivera, offered a relatively welcoming refuge.

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Stalin’s Obsession and the Political Context

• Even as Trotsky’s influence waned in Mexico, Stalin remained “burningly obsessed” with his extermination, reflecting both paranoia and the need to be seen as having no rival.
  • "You can't say [Trotsky] is the greatest threat…and then just pretend that person isn't important. You sort of have to…follow through." (Josh Ireland, 22:45)
• The political necessity for the assassination was less about Trotsky’s actual power, more about Stalin's need to erase even the idea of dissent in his totalitarian regime. (24:58)

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Life in Mexico & Final Years

Isolation, Frustration, and a Strange Footnote

• Trotsky's diminished existence included constant surveillance, a shrinking circle of followers, and a famous (and "not natural") affair with Frida Kahlo. (29:50)
  • "He wants to be with the great men of history...he’s living this tiny, circumscribed, diminished existence." (Josh Ireland, 26:49—29:50)
• Despite his exile, Trotsky retained his contempt for lesser followers and remained committed to revolution.

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The Assassin: Ramón Mercader

Recruitment, Motivation, and Aftermath

• Mercader, largely recruited by his mother Caridad (a former math teacher and committed communist), was shaped by the Spanish Civil War—a "laboratory" for Soviet espionage methods. (31:33)
• His path to assassin began as an NKVD asset seducing an American Trotskyist and infiltrating Trotsky's circle, never knowing at first he'd become the killer.
  • "Ramon doesn't know that this is his fate…he doesn't know this is going to be the end result of his life." (Josh Ireland, 31:33)
• After serving 20 years in Mexican prison, Mercader was “haunted” by Trotsky’s death, notably by the memory of his final scream. Yet he also took pride in his historical role.
  • "He was sort of immersing himself in Trotsky’s life and his ideas, as if trying to grapple with what he'd done." (Josh Ireland, 36:05)

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Memorable Quotes

• "Violence was an inherent part of the Bolshevik Revolution from the very first day...they reveled in ruthlessness." (Josh Ireland, 07:28)
• "There's a sort of intellectual snobbery at the heart of Trotsky...It was just intolerable to him that he'd been bested so comprehensively by this person he saw as this sort of coarse provincial peasant." (Josh Ireland, 26:49)
• "If you declare somebody public enemy number one, it's a test of your competence that you can find them and deal with them." (Tim Bouverie, 24:58)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Disentangling the record: 02:47–04:00
• Trotsky’s early life and ascent: 05:46–06:31
• Moral complexity and violence of Bolsheviks: 07:07–08:25
• Nature of the Stalin-Trotsky rivalry: 10:26–12:13
• Trotsky’s odyssey in exile: 12:34–14:49
• Political necessity of assassination: 22:06–24:58
• Trotsky’s life in Mexico: 25:38–29:50
• Trotsky and Frida Kahlo: 29:50
• Ramón Mercader’s recruitment: 31:33–35:24
• Mercader’s aftermath and haunted conscience: 36:05–38:32

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Notable Moments

• The discussion of Trotsky’s affair with Frida Kahlo, a convergence of historical and artistic icons in the "Blue House", provides a vivid human detail. (29:50)
• A description of Stalin’s paranoia and determination—“more Khrushchev called him sickly suspicious than Stalin”—frames the assassination as a product of deep psychological and political calculation. (16:06)
• The haunting detail that Mercader spent time after his release in Moscow’s elite library, poring over books about Trotsky, underscores the personal toll and complexity of political murder. (36:05)

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Conclusion & Relevance

Tim Bouverie closes by connecting the historic assassination to contemporary echoes of political violence and state-sponsored assassination, commenting on its renewed modern relevance, especially in light of modern Russia.

"Trotsky and his demise at the hands of Stalin and of Ramón Mercader is all the more relevant...political assassination...is now back in fashion." (Tim Bouverie, 38:32)

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Recommended Action

Read Josh Ireland’s The Death of Trotsky for the full, dramatized story and further insight into this pivotal historic event.

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Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer mia Sorrenti. On August 20, 1940, in a quiet study in Mexico, one of the 20th century's most consequential political exiles was assassinated with an ice pick. The killing of Leon Trotsky marked the culmination of a relentless campaign orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, stretching across continents and years of pursuit. But how did the plot unfold? And who was the man who carried it out? On today's episode, Josh Ireland, historian, author, joins fellow historian and author Tim Bouverie to discuss Ireland's new book, the Death of Trotsky and the extraordinary story behind one of the most consequential assassinations in modern history. Let's join our host, Tim Bouverie now with more.

[Tim Bouverie]

Well Josh, it's great to speak to you because I've been hugely enjoyed this book that you've written and is now available, the Death of Trotsky the True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy. It's an incredible read about one of the most famous assassinations in history. Before we get into the detail about the plot itself and Trotsky's rift with Stalin that led to it, I wanted to ask a bit about the process because this is a very complex story, largely based on the number of characters and the number of aliases they had. And it's intimately connected with possibly the most complex, secretive and in, in many ways distorting organization that the world has ever known. The Soviet secret police, the nkvd. How do you go about disentangling all the lies from. From the myth and the truth, that is?

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think one of the things is actually the Soviet Union have been remarkably sort of laconic in their descript, in their accounts of the assassination. They have actually kind of in the way that you see with Putin's Russia, they like you to know what they've done, but they don't really give you an explanation of how or when or where. So actually, you don't have that sense of trying to sort of, sort of find your way through thickets of ideology. What you do have, though, are lots of people who are very keen to make particular points, often people who. Former supporters of Trotsky who are anxious to try and make sure that their story is the one that people listen to. I think it's one of those situations where you try and take as many versions of the story as you can and then work a balance, hold them in a balance and see where there's a preponderance of what you. What feels to you like the truth lies.

[Tim Bouverie]

What was it that drew you to this particular moment and this particular man, the victim of your story?

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think it was because I did a level history, so I had this sort of vague sense of what had happened. But I think by the time I'd reached the sort of advanced age I am now, all that really remained was a sort of a kind of collection of small details. You meant it was that Trotsky, for some reason, was assassinated in Mexico in 1940, and that the assassin carried an ice pick or an ice axe. And I think one of the things that drew me to the story was that I realized that these were sort of compelling details, but I knew very little beyond them. You know, that many of the other sort of most notorious murders in history, you know, whether that's Julius Caesar or jfk, you know, the person who wielded the knife or, you know, pulled the trigger. But actually, I thought, I don't know who the person wielding the ice axe was. I don't know why they were in a study with Trotsky in Mexico. I don't actually know why. Why Trotsky ended up in Mexico. So I think when you sort of. You have these threads and you start pulling them and then you realize that the threads lead you to this sort of really exciting story which kind of begins with a sort of Shakespearean psychodrama and then kind of morphs into like a. A kind of Le Carre style sort of Manhunt, you know, follow. I felt like this was a story that I wanted to tell and that needed to be told.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yes. He's definitely got shades of the night manager running throughout.

[Josh Ireland]

Yeah.

[Tim Bouverie]

What? Just for any listeners who may not know, could you just give us 30 seconds a minute on Tropsy's background prior to his falling out with Stalin.

[Josh Ireland]

So Trotsky's this sort of brilliant, charismatic figure who was born in Ukraine on the edges of what was once the Russian Empire. And then basically what propels him to the sort of center of world events is this kind of overwhelming, passionate, consuming belief in the importance and the necessity and the historical inevitability of revolution. And he was one of these people, like Stalin, who genuinely wanted to turn the word upside down and remake it anew. And that's why this person who. He was Jewish, he was from a poor. A reasonably poor, illiterate family, suddenly found himself one of the most notorious and most feared figures in the whole world.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yes. And I was thinking about that as I was reading your book, because there are moments, in fact, for a lot of the book, one can have a lot of sympathy with Trotsky. He's on the run. His family are suffering incredibly due to him, not due to anything that they have done. They're being killed or they're dying, they're ill. And yet, at the same time, one has to remember the enormous number of people that he killed, which you talk about in the earlier part of the book, when he was at the top of the revolutionary apparatus of the nascent Soviet Union.

[Josh Ireland]

Yeah. I think whenever you're writing about the Soviet Union and the figures within it, there's a sort of complex balancing act of your empathy and sympathy. Because on the one hand, you want to treat them on their own terms as human beings with their own sort of tragedies that they sort of drag around with them. But you also can't write those stories without being very, very aware and needing to foreground the tragedies for which they were responsible. I think there's been a kind of. A lot of people have compared the Bolsheviks to sort of millenarian Christians in the way that they want to sort of transform the universe, transform the world. You know, that they've a sense of, like, there is a sort of utopia just within reach, but the difference between millenarian Christians and the Bolsheviks. So the Bolsheviks felt as if it was absolutely necessary, let alone, you know, there was no part of them that ever sort of stepped back from the need to violence. Violence was an inherent Part of the Bolshevik Revolution. From the very first day, they sort of reveled in ruthlessness. This was an important part of the revolutionary aura. To be a revolutionary was to be a ruthless person who was willing to do whatever it took to bring about

[Tim Bouverie]

this utopia and constant struggle as well. Communism has not been shown to be an attainable or, in most people's view, a desirable state, but even, say, some of its aims had been realized. It's very hard to imagine any of these people, certainly not Stalin, but also Trotsky, leaning back and enjoying life and enjoying an idyllic brotherly experience. It's this idea of constant struggle. And for all this championship of what they called the proletariat, one gets a sense that they're far more motivated by hatred of elite classes within society and the world than with love for their working man or not fellow working man in the factories, on the streets.

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think. Yeah, I think the problem was that no actual human being could ever measure up to the sort of idealized sense of what the proletariat should. Should have been in sort of Marxist ideology, that there's that kind of clash between theory and reality. And it must have created incredible disappointment. I think the fact that the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 is one of the most astonishing sort of coups in world history. There's this tiny group of fanatics suddenly find themselves at the helm of this enormous empire, know, millions and millions of people, huge tracts of land, and almost. No, it wasn't as if they had, you know, what we would now call a mandate. People weren't desperate for a Bolshevik revolution. You know, they'd just been more than czars anymore. And I think so much of this violence that followed 1917 is this frustration. But I think that frustration very quickly becomes hatred. You know, hatred is. Hatred along with violence is just such a sort of. It's so woven into the fabric of the Soviet Union, especially In those first 10 years, first 10, 15 years, in

[Tim Bouverie]

the early stages of the revolution, in the early stages of the Soviet Union, Trotsky is a far more famous, far more influential, far more talented figure in many ways than Stalin. But he's so easily outmaneuvered by Stalin. To what extent do you think the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky was a neat battle for supremacy? Stalin realized that only one person could succeed to Lenin's throne, and he wanted it to be him, not Trotsky. Or do you think there was a genuine ideological difference between the two men that was at the core of this?

[Josh Ireland]

I mean, I think there were ideological differences, and I think one of Stalin's greatest talents was his ability to sort of turn minor ideological distance differences into sort of things he could present as existential threats to Lenin's legacy. But I think fundamentally, it was a personal. I mean, I think other scholars. Scholars will have different views on this. My sense is that the rival between Stalin and Chocky was, at his heart, a personal rivalry. It was a compound of jealousy, ambition, a kind of a terror that the other person might succeed rather than them. And, you know, this deep, deep, deep antipathy between the two men.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yes. And a terror, not just that the other person might succeed because they don't like the way the revolution would go, but presumably they can see their own lives being potentially forfeit to that person's victory.

[Josh Ireland]

Yeah. I think neither of them were naive enough to sort of believe that they'd be allowed to go and, you know, read books somewhere in the Caucasus if they lost their battle.

[Tim Bouverie]

So could you just give us, so that we can then dive into the detail, a quick chronological sketch of Trotsky's movements from his defenestration from the Politburo and all the way to him taking up residence in Mexico City.

[Josh Ireland]

So it's kind of one of those stories where nothing happens, but a lot happens. So he first is sent out into internal exile in the Soviet Union in what's now Kazakhstan. Then in 1929, he's taken over the border to Turkey. He lives three or four years in a small island just off the coast of Istanbul, and from there he goes to France for another couple of years, then Norway, and then finally makes his way to Mexico. And I think the sort of the thread that goes right through all of those years is that the notoriety he achieved in 1917 and the years that following stayed with him. There was no country that wanted to have him or host him for any sustained amount of time, because it was tantamount to inviting a virus into your home. People were terrified that this human being, who they held responsible for the death of thousands, for the bloody anarchy that they saw the Bolshevik Revolution as having represented, the idea of inviting him willingly into your country, where he might start fermenting revolution or chaos. For the sort of bourgeois politicians that led France and Britain and Germany, it was anathema to them. But Mexico was a much more welcoming home. It was led by President Cardenas, who was a reforming socialist. And then, crucially, Petrotsky, there was a group of his followers, notable amongst them the great muralist Diego Rivera, who actively petitioned for his Arrival?

[Tim Bouverie]

Yeah, I mean, I was really struck by his journey through Europe before, which I didn't know much about before. I'm particularly struck by the idea that the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, granted him asylum. I mean, Daladier is not a communist. I mean, what on earth. I mean, if he hadn't been killed by American Israeli airstrikes, I can't see many countries wanting to take the Ayatollah of Iran in. What on earth were these people thinking that they could have Trotsky there? And what was in it for them? Because admittedly he did, as you say, move on, but he was housed in Turkey, in France and then in Norway for a while.

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think in some cases he had sort of pre existing relationships with, with people who were advocates for him within the government. And I think very often his arrival was hedged with lots of conditions. So for instance, he wasn't allowed to go anywhere near Paris. He spent most of his time being monitored by the secret police in Norway. He was under house arrest for quite a lot of the time. So I think you could never say he was welcome into these places. His accommodation was kind of the most grudging sort of form imaginable.

[Tim Bouverie]

Turning to the other major figure in your story, Stalin, it strikes us as odd, almost quaint, considering this man's capacity for ruthlessness and penchant for murder and terror, that he doesn't decide to execute Trotsky straight away, he simply exiles him. And that admittedly, well, that might have been just due to him trying to shore up his own power base in Moscow. But the idea that he doesn't make a wholehearted effort to exterminate Trotsky during this European phase of his exile.

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think, yeah, so I mean, I think sort of famously he regretted not having executed Trotsky the very second he sort of left the Soviet Union. I think Stalin sort of began to pace around his study of complaining that he'd made realizing he made a mistake. Because I think that the two things terrified him about Trotsky. One is, I think for all that Trotsky's actual physical power was diminished almost to nothing by 1929. He still had this symbolic power as being one of the avatars of the 1917 Revolution. But also when he left, he left with this huge archive and I think one of Stalin's great terrors and one of the Stalin unique. The thing you need to know about Stalin is he's one of the most paranoid figures of the 20th century. I mean, it's difficult to Think of many more people who are more paranoid, who are more Khrushchev called him sickly suspicious than Stalin, and who married that with a very acute understanding of his own power and the limit and how limited or not that power was. And I think he was always terrified that there might be some document within these big crates of documents that Trotsky took with him that might be the thing that somehow brought him down. So I think it wouldn't be true to say that he didn't make a wholehearted attempt to assassinate him before then. But I think in sort of, as it were, liberal democracies, his sort of his room to maneuver was maybe more limited than in somewhere like Mexico. But I think it's a measure of his desire to exterminate Trotsky that well before he arrived in Mexico or by the time he'd arrived in Mexico, by the time he did his assassination, at least two heads of his secret police had been executed. And one of the reasons given for that were their failure to remove Trotsky from the face of the earth. But I think it certainly accelerates that desire, that passion, that kind of like burning obsession becomes more acute the further as time goes on, as Trotsky becomes this sort of lone voice really criticizing Stalin.

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[Tim Bouverie]

Not to take anything away from your book, which again, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed and think that everyone should read because it's talking about a very, very major event in history and two of the most famous people in history. But historically speaking, the assassination is politically unnecessary. Is it? I mean, this is a revenge job by Stalin by the time Trotsky's in Mexico City and as time moves on, he is becoming less and less significant and then people are distracted by the outbreak of the Second World War. He has not got a vast amount of support. He is not posing a genuine challenge to the Communist world order as dictated by Stalin. Is he.

[Josh Ireland]

No, I mean, I think. I think one of the things that. One of the really interesting things about this story and the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky is Trotsky is such a useful map to Stalin's mind. Stalin's quite laconic. He doesn't really talk a great deal. You know him by his actions. And I think the fact that he felt absolutely necessary to sort of turn the apparatus of this enormous state against one figure tells you a lot about what was going on in his mind and how he assigned importance. But I think on one level, the political necessity wasn't so much that Trotsky might, by himself, ferment a revolution, but if you're creating a totalitarian state, any kind of dissenting voice, no matter how marginalized or no matter how much energy you've put into trying to blacken that person's reputation, any dissenting voice is intolerable, especially someone with a kind of long history like Trotsky. And I think although it wasn't politically necessary in the sort of strictest possible sense, it was logically completely necessary because so much of Stalin's rhetoric and so much of the propaganda in the Soviet Union, so much of the actual things he'd done, had been directed against Trotsky for over a decade. The Great Purges, the show trials, Trotsky, the sort of nefarious role that Trotsky allegedly played was at the heart of those. He was the person that man after man who would stand up in these sort of mad show trials saying that they've been plotting with Trotsky and Hitler and Japan and the Western capitalist nations to bring down the Soviet Union. So you kind of can't say that and then just pretend that that person isn't important. You sort of have to. If you. If you're pretend, if you're presenting him as being the sort of greatest threat that exists to the great socialist experiment, then you kind of logically, you have to follow through. Even though in a very sort of pragmatic sense, it doesn't make any difference whether he lives or dies.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yeah, it's a bit like. Or slightly less on a practical level, but it's slightly analogous to the United States failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden for so many years after 9, 11. If you declare someone, that's really good. If you declare somebody public enemy number one, it's a test of your competence that you can find them and deal with them.

[Josh Ireland]

Yeah. Because if you're presenting yourself as the protector of the millions of people in the Soviet Union and you've said this person is the greatest threat, whether it's Osama Bin Laden or Trotsky, you can't not carry on doing everything within your grasp to exterminate them.

[Tim Bouverie]

Tell us about Trotsky in Mexico. What's his life like? What is he doing? Is he changing his views at all? It doesn't seem ideologically he changes very much and that his own experience of being at the receiving end of the brutality of Bolshevism isn't in any way dimming his faith in extreme solutions.

[Josh Ireland]

I mean, I don't think he ever lost any. I mean, I think whatever his criticisms of, the criticisms of Stalin, it was never that he was too brutal. I think it was more that, you know, he saw him as incompetent. You know, he described him as the great grave digger of the revolution. But he, his, yeah, his, his frame of reference was so unbelievably different to ours. You know, whether or not Trotsky was no, Stalin was, was starving millions of Ukrainians to death wasn't particularly of interest to him. It was whether he was competently, you know, implementing the great, you know, the four year plans.

[Tim Bouverie]

It's sort of there's an intellectual snobbery at the heart of Trotsky and the Trotsky Stalin fight, isn't there? And who's the greatest theoretician of Marx who really understands what Lenin wanted to do and all of that is agree.

[Josh Ireland]

Yeah, I mean, I think snobbery is sort of absolutely at the core of Trotsky's being. You know, he never really stopped being this sort of clever schoolboy who liked shelling off in front of other people. And I think it was just intolerable to him that he'd been bested so comprehensively by this person he saw as this sort of coarse provincial peasant. You know, I think some of his, the facility with which Stalin outmaneuvered Trotsky was, was entirely due to Trotsky seeing him as, you know, he described him as a gray blur. I don't think he, and I think there was, people talk about sort of disbelief on his face as he was expelled. You know, I think it was like, you know, it was like to being beaten by a child at chess or something. You know, I think, I think he just couldn't believe this, this disaster happened. But, and so I think that that sort of disbelief, that rage, that resentment stayed with him alongside this sort of constant commitment to building a new world. I don't think either of those things, you know, those two things could coexist quite happily. But I think the sort of. This is where I guess what your once of empathy with him is engaged more fully, that it's easy to forget that he's this person who has the death of thousands on his hands, because he's this once great figure, this person who once led armies, who once could stride around the Kremlin followed by people who could talk in front of thousands of people whose photo was in every home from Moscow to the Urals. He's now living this tiny, circumscribed, diminished existence with a handful of followers, you know, who he. And he never stops being incredibly sort of dismissive and contemptuous of the people that he now is surrounded by. You know, he wants to be with the great men of history that he. With whom the people that he feels are his peers. He's also haunted by the deaths of, you know, his former comrades and even more sort of distressed by those who haven't died, but have sort of been compelled by Stalin to recant any past positions as support of Trotsky. But then there's sort of weird coda as well, where he's living with in die. So Diego Rivera, the artist who invited him to Mexico, is married to Frida Kahlo, who is now, by some distance, the more famous figure. But then Diego Rivera was the sort of great. Probably one of the greatest artists in Mexican history and was the person with international reputation. But they were living in Frida Kahlo's old home called the Blue House. And it was here that Trotsky and Frida Kahlo begin an affair which sort of feels like one of the sort of strangest footnotes in history.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yes, it's not a natural pairing. You don't feel just aesthetically, you're looking at the two of them.

[Josh Ireland]

Not aesthetically, but I think it's one of these two people who are kind of comfortable with transgression, with sort of energetic sex lives. I felt like, you know, it was inevitable. And I think. I think it was a sort of, you know, Trotsky was on with a huge amount of energy and ambition and. And actually, he's just reduced to sort of wandering around this. This beautiful compound surrounded by bougainvilleas and exotic birds and occasionally making trips out to the desert to pick cactuses. But even every time he leaves the house, he's surrounded by guards. He has to duck beneath the seats of the car to avoid anyone following him. There's something really pathetic in the purest sense of the word about how he ends his life.

[Tim Bouverie]

Well, that is not a word that could be used to describe his assassin who figures naturally very prominently in your book, Raymond McCada. Tell us about him, how he was recruited. And without giving away, I mean, we all do know how the story ends. Actually, one of the great things about this book and talents that you have is that we read it almost as if we don't know how it's going to end. And is this plot going to succeed? And it's not the only plot. There are multiple plots which the NKVD have set up to get Trotsky. And obviously the earlier ones do not succeed. But tell us a little bit about Raymond Mercado, where he comes from, what his plan is.

[Josh Ireland]

Well, I think that's. I mean, I think the ones in terms of the narrative, the ability to kind of have that sense of avoid that sense of foreshadowing too heavily, of kind of inevitability is that, know Ramon doesn't know that this is his fate. You know, he doesn't know this is going to be the end result of his life. He has a sort of, I think by most standards, a kind of strange entry into the. Into the sort of embrace of the Soviet Union because basically he was functionally recruited by his mother, who's this extraordinary figure called Karadad. This is a tall, sort of handsome woman whose family had sort of fallen apart when they lost their money. And she sort of took the sort of odd route of becoming a maths teacher followed by a heroin rabbit and then a communist.

[Tim Bouverie]

Feels like a natural trajectory.

[Josh Ireland]

I mean, I feel like, who knows how divorce. I mean, divorce affects everyone in very different ways. And she was just dealing with it in the best way she had she could. And so there's this extraordinary moment when both Ramon and Caridad are fighting in the Spanish Civil War. And Ramon's in a sort of remote part of Spain and his mother travels to meet him. His mother, who'd already was in contact with the NKVD and maybe already having an affair with a man called Leonid Eitingen, who was central to the plotting of the eventual assassination of Trotsky. And. And so she travels to this sort of mountainous region where her son is and with one of her other younger sons, he's left in the car. And the younger son watches Ramel and his mother walk a few yards away. And it's sort of snowing and it's early morning, so it was dark. And they talk and they talk and every time anyone approaches them they move a bit further away so no one can listen to what they're saying. And then they come back to the car and nothing's said, nothing is explained to the younger son. Son. But the son understands from that moment that his brother is with us with. With what they. They call los sobieticos. So. And I think what the NKVAD and the Soviet Union did with the Spanish Civil War is they kind of used it as this big laboratory, really. They sort of employed a lot of the techniques they would use in other countries in the coming decades. They. They sort of refined a lot of their. The sort of oppressive apparatus, apparatus that would be employed on their own population during the purges. But they also recruited a huge number of people that they thought might be useful. They found people that they didn't know what they could do, they didn't know what they might use them for. But they sort of recognized then people like Ramon, who was brave. He been trained in the use of weapons. He was an incredibly accomplished. He spoke many, several languages. He was charming. He was all these qualities that in the round that sort of made him, I guess, a kind of perfect spy. And so initially he's just brought in as someone that they might be. You know, they train him in sabotage, they help him. He might go to Moscow, he might not. It's not clear. But then they find him a small role on the edges of the sort of wider conspiracy against tribes Trotsky, which is to infiltrate the Trotskyist movement by seducing a sort of naive young American Trotskyist called Sylvia Agilov. And that's the sort of his beginning. That's the first step he takes to that study in Mexico City in 1940. But at the time, he doesn't know that's where his feet are leading him. He's just there to gather intelligence. You know, it's only as events change and as the sort of the. You have this pace that he suddenly realizes he's in a very different position.

[Tim Bouverie]

Yeah. And that is where this book just becomes so engrossing. You can't put it down for various reasons as we go into this tale of deceit and future assassination with all these different figures moving around the metaphorical chessboard. I don't want to detract from the pleasure people are going to have by getting you to describe that in detail. They should read it. But what. What was it that Ramon do we know, thought about his deed laser? Because he. He had time to think about it. He was in prison for 20 years. Did he. I mean, would he have thought, was he such an ideologue still by the end that he thought this was worth it? This was worth 20 years of my life?

[Josh Ireland]

I think. I think one thing is like, he was, like so many of the other figures in this book, a very sort of mori. Complex, sort of bifurcated character where who could hold two opposing ideas in his brain at any one time. So I think on the one hand, I think, you know, he. He did feel it was. What he did was historically necessary. You know, he'd grown up being told that Trotsky was this. Of this great villain, you know, the great threat to the. The social experiment. So I think there was part of him that could always have justified what he did, whether that was to himself or to other people. But there are kind of two or there are other hints of something else that imply that maybe he was more troubled than he would let on. One is that. And he talked about this, and he said that when he struck Trotsky with the ice pick, he let out a scream. And he could have described the scream and said, I'm not going to inflict it on you. And that stayed with him until the day he died. It was kind of there, reverberating around his screen skull wherever he went, and it was still there. And there's this other very strange vignette far it was after he'd spent 20 years in a Mexican prison when the Soviet Union had brought him back to Moscow. And he was in this sort of library, the kind of library that only the sort of nomenclature could gain access to, only the sort of place that had the sort of forbidden literature that only the elite were allowed access to. And there's another academic goes there and he's doing some research, and he notices there's this sort of hunched figure at another desk reading books about Trotsky. And he's fascinated. And he goes. He's there day after day after day for weeks. And eventually he sort of gives in to his curiosity and goes to ask the librarian, who's this man? Who is this person reading about Trotsky? And the man says. The librarian says, oh, don't you know, it's Ramon Makada, you know. And so it's as if he's 20 years after this would have been 20, 25 years after he murdered Trotsky. He was sort of immersing himself in Trotsky's life and his ideas, as if trying to grapple with what he'd done and who this person was, you know, who he had been, you know, who he'd known only fleetingly. So, yeah, I think he was haunted by what he did, but that coexisted with a pride in what he'd achieved.

[Tim Bouverie]

Well, speaking of achievement, this is a really great book, the Death of Trotsky. Josh. I can't recommend it more highly and I think it's particularly relevant now when we have moved into a new age where political assassination, having really dropped off as a means of advancing state or ideological agendas, is now back in fashion. It's obviously been back in fashion in Russia for a long time, but further afield as well. So Trotsky and his demise at the hands of Stalin and of Raymond Makanda is all the more relevant. Thank you very much, Josh.

[Josh Ireland]

Thank you very much. I really enjoyed being on the show. Thank you.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a [e-mail] membership and if you'd like to join us at any future live events, you can see our full events program and buy your tickets [e-mail] attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

[Tim Bouverie]

Sam.