The assassination of Leon Trotsky
Sixty five years ago, on 20 August 1940 Leon Trotsky was struck with a fatal blow from an ice-pick by an agent sent by the CPU, Stalin’s secret police in the USSR. Here, Trotsky’s partner for four decades Natalia Sedov Trotsky tells the story of Trotsky’s death. The article was first published in the Fourth International in May 1947. On 8 June 1940 Leon Trotsky wrote “I can therefore state that I live on this earth not in accordance with the rule but as an exception to the rule.” Everything we have said in connection with the crime that cut short his life is today [mid-1947] being wholly...