Leon Trotsky was born on 26 October 1879 in Bereslavka. A Russian Marxist revolutionary born Lev Bronstein, Trotsky became prominent in the Petrograd Soviet during the 1905 revolution and again in 1917, when he organized the Bolshevik seizure of power. As the first Soviet commissar for war he created the Red Army and led it to victory in the civil war. After Lenin's death he lost the struggle for leadership to Stalin, was expelled from the party and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. He formed the Fourth International in opposition to Stalinism and lived in Turkey, France, Norway and finally Mexico. A Soviet agent, Ramón Mercader, attacked him with an ice axe in Mexico City, and he died the next day.
Before and after
- 26 April 1879Birth of Owen Willans Richardson
- from August 1879 to October 1880Victorio's War
- 9 October 1879Birth of Max von Laue
- 22 October 1879Edison's carbon-filament lamp burns for 13 hours
- 26 October 1879Birth of Leon Trotsky
- 5 November 1879Death of James Clerk Maxwell
- from 17 November 1879 to 29 May 1885International Association of the Congo
- 1880Discovery of Oxus Treasure
- 1880Publication of The Brothers Karamazov
More in Wars, politics & history
- 4 July 1776United States Declaration of Independence
- 1815Congress of Vienna
- from October 1853 to February 1856Crimean War
- from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871Franco-Prussian War
- from 1885 to 1914Scramble for Africa
- from 8 February 1904 to 5 September 1905Russo-Japanese War
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.