Trotsky, Leon (1879-1940)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1940 Aug 28 p. 1

Birth date: 1879 Nov 7

text of obituary:

LEON TROTSKY, MURDERER OF MILLIONS, KILLED LAST WEEK

For a number of years the name of Leon Trotsky, one time leader of the Bolshevik revolution, struck terror into the hearts of millions of Russions [sic]. A close collaborator with Lenin, Trotsky was ousted from Russia in a quarrel with Stalin soon after Lenin’s death.

He fled to Mexico, where he lived for the last few years. Last week he was brutally slain with a pickax by a man who for months had posed as his friend and admirer.

Born of Jewish parents, Trotsky found many in his own race who cooperated with him in his world-wide activities of intrigue and revolution, and who remained his steadfast followers to the end. It was during his regime in Russia that thousands of Catholics and Protestants there were murdered or sent to Siberian exile. Many others fled to America.

Trotsky now was the leader of the Fourth International.

An exile from Russia since 1929 and a refugee in Mexico since January 9, 1937, the former Soviet war commissar lay today in a casket to which was pinned his ast words:

“I am sure of the final victory of the Fourth International. Go forward.”

Trotsky’s brain was pierced by a pickax wielded by Frank Jackson, who for months posed as a “great admirer” of the chieftain of the Fourth International.

Trotsky’s associates, and Trotsky himself, charged Joseph Stalin, head of the Soviet Union and long time political foe of Trotsky, and the OGUP, Russian secret police, with responsibility for the second assault on Trotsky within three months. May 24 he escaped harm in a machine gun attack for which more that 20 Mexicans were arrested.

Some of Trotsky’s aids said burial “very likely” would be in Mexico City.

In New York, James Cannon, secretary of the Socialist Workers party in the United States — and mentioned by certain Trotsky followers as likely new head of the Fourth International — said:

“We plan to hold the funeral here to give the working people of New York an opportunity to show their reverence for the memory of this great leader and their hatred and contempt for Stalinism.