When Trotsky Got the Axe

Most readers of Josh Ireland's Death of Trotsky will already know the basic outline of the story: Leon Trotsky falls out with Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. He proves no match to Stalin; his faction loses critical Politburo debates; he is exiled, eventually lands in Mexico City, where he is assassinated on August 20, 1940, by a Stalin agent, wielding a pickaxe to the skull, no less. His assassin, Ramon Mercader, had wormed his way into Trotsky's inner circle while at the same time serving as an agent of Stalin's secret police. He would be jailed in Mexico while treated like a hero in the Soviet Union.

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