Mexico, August 1940. As the ice axe fell, the great revolutionary Lev Davydovich Trotsky, the father of the Red Army and known as the "prophet", fell in a pool of blood. This legendary military strategist built the Red Army from scratch, was a key contributor to the October Revolution, and was one of Lenin's most important partners. But in the end, he was exiled and killed by the ** hired by his own country.
So, what did Trotsky contribute?And why did he lose to Stalin in the competition for the leadership of the Soviet Union?What conflicts did he experience with Stalin?
Trotsky joined the revolution long before the birth of the Bolsheviks and was highly regarded by Lenin as "Lenin's stick". Trotsky took part in a series of Lenin's revolutionary activities, including the October Revolution. Of course, Trotsky's most famous achievement is the "father of the Red Army".
Many people often have the misconception that after the October Revolution the Bolsheviks were in complete control of the situation and the revolution was successful. But in fact, after the October Revolution, the revolutionaries only took control of the capital Petrograd, and it took a long time to really control the whole country, which was the tragic ** civil war.
At that time, the White Army, that is, the anti-revolutionary force, once controlled most of the region, and it was the Red Army that went through several bloody battles to turn the tide and finally turn the tide and reunify Soviet Russia. Who was the founder of the Red Army?It was Trotsky.
What is the most important thing in an army?As the saying goes, "a thousand troops are easy to get, but a general is hard to find", recruiting soldiers is not difficult, but the key is to have experienced officers to organize them. Without effective command, a group of soldiers, even if equipped, is just a rabble and can easily be routed by the enemy.
And what the Red Army lacked most at that time was precisely experienced officers. Because after the October Revolution, most of the senior officers of the former Tsarist Russian army sided with the White Army, which led to a serious shortage of officers in the Red Army. It was at this time that Trotsky took up this task, and he presided over the building of the army as chairman of the Supreme Military Council.
On the one hand, Trotsky won the officers of the former Tsarist Russia to the side of the Red Army as much as possible, and on the other hand, he presided over the training of officers in the Red Army, and gradually increased the strength of the Red Army. He also took a special train to inspect various theaters of operations, and personally went to the front line to direct operations, and was almost killed several times, but he was still undaunted, and finally led the Red Army to victory in the first civil war.
Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that Trotsky single-handedly created the Red Army. Every strong army has a "military soul", and the original military soul of the Soviet Russian Red Army was created by Trotsky.
Why, then, did Trotsky, who had made such a significant contribution and was so highly regarded by Lenin, lose the struggle against Stalin?In a word, he is too "soft-hearted". He was typical of "being as cold as winter to the enemy and as warm as spring to his comrades", and Trotsky showed no mercy when directing the Red Army in a confrontation with the White Army. But when confronted with Stalin and others, Trotsky hesitated, and was no longer as decisive and courageous as he had been in the war with the enemy.
The struggle between Trotsky and Stalin actually began during Lenin's lifetime. After Lenin's assassination in 1918, his health has not been very good. When Lenin fell seriously ill in 1922, Stalin seized the opportunity to seize the power to care for Lenin, which facilitated many of his subsequent actions.
At that time, Lenin was not in the Kremlin, but recuperated in a sanatorium on the outskirts. In 1923, Lenin found himself limited in his access to information from the outside world, and the newspapers he saw were often out of date. For this he wrote to Stalin,** and to Trotsky to express his dissatisfaction with this situation.
At this time, Trotsky actually had every chance to defeat Stalin, after all, Lenin had already expressed agreement with Trotsky on a number of issues, and Trotsky's supporters were enough to overwhelm Stalin's supporters. But Trotsky was at this time too loose and seemed to have no concern for power. At this critical juncture of the struggle, Trotsky did not take full advantage of his conditions and went out hunting, so much so that he became ill and could not work, thus missing the opportunity.
Here we can see Trotsky's key weakness, that is, his insensitivity to power, and this insensitivity lies in his "soft-heartedness" towards his comrades in the party. There was a conflict of views between Trotsky and Stalin, between the theory of "continuing the revolution" and the politics of realism, and they had very different views of this conflict.
Despite the threat from Stalin, Trotsky regarded Stalin as a "comrade". He believed that the contradictions between himself and Stalin were completely reconcileable and an internal struggle, and therefore should be resolved as peacefully as possible and should not aggravate the situation. The reason why he had not taken advantage of Lenin's complaint to take action was also because he feared that this would lead to the party's **.
However, Trotsky saw Stalin as a comrade, and Stalin as an enemy. Unlike Trotsky, Stalin had a certain "savior complex", believing that only he could save the Soviet Union, and that he was the only one qualified to lead the Soviet Union. To this end, he can achieve his goals by any means and at any cost, so as to make himself the "savior" of the Soviet Union.
Therefore, although Stalin was not as powerful as Trotsky at the time of the revolution, he was already fully fledged after many years of operation. Lenin died in 1924, but Trotsky still had the opportunity to use the documents given to him by Lenin to overwhelm Stalin, but Trotsky still chose to give up, hoping to reach a compromise with Stalin, and fantasized about a "public debate" with Stalin to settle the dispute between the two.
But apparently his hopes were dashed, and Stalin did not care at all about any debates. He first united with Zinoviev and other party elders to overwhelm Trotsky, and then broke Zinoviev and others individually, and finally controlled the supreme power of the Soviet Union. In the end, through a "suppression" campaign, he completely swept away all opponents and made his position unshakable.
It is worth mentioning that Lenin did not explicitly designate a party heir before his death, and during his serious illness, the Soviet Union was actually jointly ruled by the "Group of Seven", namely Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Kuibyshev and Kuibyshev. But all seven of them, with the exception of Stalin, died unnatural deaths, either by dubious causes, or by Stalin himself ordered to be executed.
There was no Trotsky in the Group of Seven, because he had already been squeezed out by Stalin. Even so, relying on his high prestige as the "father of the Red Army", he still has a chance to turn the tables. It is a pity that at this time he still had illusions of reconciliation with Stalin, and focused on long-term work such as training young people, but ignored Stalin's imminent threat.
It was not until 1925, when Trotsky was completely stripped of his practical duties by Stalin, that he gradually came to his senses. In 1926, he joined forces with Zinoviev, Kamenev and others to try to confront Stalin, but it was too late. During the three years that Trotsky was content with the status quo, Stalin had gained absolute superiority. Soon after, Zinoviev and Kamenev were defeated by Stalin, and Trotsky became an "idler" completely.
In 1927, Trotsky made a last-ditch effort to save the situation. At that time, China's Northern Expedition was victorious, but the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party had already appeared at risk. Trotsky proposed that the Third International should strongly support the CCP and guard against the Kuomintang betrayal of the revolution, while Stalin still had illusions about the Kuomintang and mainly supported the Kuomintang.
In the end, as Trotsky predicted, Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Ching-wei and others betrayed the revolution one after another, and the National Revolution failed. Stalin had previously invested a lot of resources in support of the Kuomintang, which were now being used by the Kuomintang to suppress the revolution. Trotsky had many such accurate predictions in his lifetime, which is why he was called a "prophet".
At this time, the internal contradictions in the Soviet Union were also unprecedentedly intensified, and Lenin's wife Krupskaya was also dissatisfied with Stalin's policies, and privately complained to Trotsky that Stalin should be sent to the gallows, and some of Trotsky's former comrades-in-arms even suggested that he launch another armed uprising to overthrow Stalin.
Trotsky, however, still believed that the scope of the struggle should be controlled, rejected the proposal to settle the struggle by force, and instead began to organize peaceful marches in an attempt to change Stalin's mind. As you can imagine, on November 7, 1927, Trotsky launched a march to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution and Stalin's policies, which were finally severely suppressed by Stalin.
In 1928 Trotsky was dismissed from all posts and exiled to Almaty, expelled from the country in 1929 and by 1932 had his Soviet citizenship revoked. But Trotsky also refused to be naturalized and became an "international exile". After several travels, Trotsky went into exile in Mexico.
At this point, Trotsky was completely defeated in the struggle against Stalin. It should be noted, however, that later Stalin, in the course of his fight against the opposition, classified many of his opponents as "Trotskyists", that is, Trotskyists. In reality, however, the Trotskyists and Trotsky did not necessarily share the same ideas, and some of them were even Trotsky's opponents. It was only because they were all against Stalin that they were labeled with this label.
Trotsky continued to write books and theories in exile and opposed Stalin's ideas. In the early 30s, when Germany was in serious turmoil, Trotsky pointed out that Stalin and the Third International had ignored the Nazi threat and given wrong guidance to the KPD, which could well lead to the rise of the Nazis and cause great harm to the Soviet Union.
By the end of the 30s, the former fathers of the October Revolution had either long since died or had fallen to Stalin's sword, leaving only Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky himself had a premonition of his fate, but he refused to give in to Stalin, preferring to fight until the last moment rather than give up his ideas. Trotsky was assassinated several times during his exile, but he was ready to die at any time and refused to survive.
In the end, Trotsky, who had escaped several assassinations, did not escape his fate. In August 1940, a Spaniard named Ramon McArder, bribed by the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs to enter his home disguised as a supporter of Trotsky, and then suddenly slammed Trotsky on the head with an ice axe while he was immersed in his work. Trotsky collapsed in a pool of blood and died the next day after failing to resuscitate, but until the last moment he did not give in.
Seeing this, I believe everyone will understand why Trotsky lost to Stalin, which is actually an idealistic tragedy. Trotsky was not a soft-hearted man, and he could use all means to fight the White Army. But in the intra-party struggle with Stalin, Trotsky was too weak, because he always wanted to be unanimous with the outside world.
It has been pointed out that if the Soviet Union had been led by Trotsky and not Stalin after Lenin's death, there might have been no World War II, or that World War II would have erupted in a completely different form, and the KPD might have taken control of Germany and become an ally of the Soviet Union. But there are also those who believe that without Stalin's construction, probably the Soviet Union would have collapsed before World War II. But in any case, Trotsky, as the father of the Red Army, was a revolutionary who still adhered to his ideals until the end and did not give up hope.
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