The Intellectual Influences of Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory on Leon Trotsky

Polina Popova

Chicago

DePaul University

November 20th 2013

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 Preface

This paper was written for a ten week independent study project in the fall of 2013.

Introduction

Leon Trotsky – one of the leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and a famous Marxist

and political scholar – became aware of Sigmund Freud’s works during a seven-year exile in

Vienna beginning in 1907.1 There he was introduced to Freud’s ideas on the unconscious,

complexes, culture, and religion. Trotsky’s enthusiasm for the study of psychoanalysis and its

application to socialism grew stronger through the years. Interest in psychoanalysis was

extremely high in early Soviet Russia. It was especially popular among Marxist intellectuals like

Trotsky because of the success of Ivan Pavlov’s2 research on physiology and Lev Vigotsky’s3

investigations in psychology and pedagogy. This work’s main argument is that Trotsky was

persistent in his references to Freud’s ideas regarding freedom of education and attitude to

religion. The essay also argues that there was a strong intertextuality in the works of Freud and

Trotsky and a particularly strong influence of Freud’s psychoanalytical theory on Trotsky’s latest

works.

Trotsky understood the revolutionary nature of Freud’s and Pavlov’s ideas, because he

himself was preoccupied by “definite ideas”4 and thought of himself as a person open to

everything new, as he put it in his autobiography. Trotsky viewed the world through the lens of

scientific exploration: “The desire to study has never left me, and many times in my life I felt

1
Lev Trotsky, Moia zhizn’: opit avtobiografii [My Life: An Attempt of Autobiography] (Berlin: Granit, 1930),
Volume I, 235.
2
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) – Russian physiologist, 1904 Noble Prize Winner, who created the concept of
“conditional reflexes”.
3
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) – Russian psychologist, the founder of Russian pedagogy and pedology.
4
This is a translation of words “определенные идеи” from Russian. (Trotsky, Moia zhizn’ [My Life], Volume I,
11.)

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that the revolution interferes with the systematic work of mine.”5 Although Trotsky’s most active

participation in Soviet scientific projects happened in 1920s, here Trotsky was not referring

specifically to any period of his life, but was writing generally about his scientific attitude and

desire to explore.

Scholars in a variety of disciplines have examined Trotsky’s involvement with Russian

psychoanalysis. Issac Deutscher, an author of one of the most comprehensive biographies of

Trotsky, emphasized Trotsky’s “tolerance towards Freudian school,” which soon after Trotsky’s

political downfall became “anathema” in the Stalin era, and was rehabilitated only after Stalin’s

death.6 In his book Eros of the Impossible: The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia, Alexander

Etkind went much further than Deutscher, arguing that Trotsky had a “personal stake in

psychoanalysis” in other countries at that time, Soviet psychoanalysts were “unusually close to

the regime,” Etkind asserts. Trotsky’s admiration for psychoanalysis, his defense of it during the

1920s, and his meetings with Russian psychologists in 1926 were all revealing of his desire for

exploration of the new areas of science and his preoccupation with finding “Philosopher’s Stone”

(as Etkind put it) in the Freudian study of human unconsciousness and Pavlov’s study of

behavior.7 When the liquidation of Trotsky and his supporters in the Communist Party began in

1926 and came to a head in 1929, psychoanalysis (and Freud as its founder and most famous

representative) became not only unnecessary for the regime, but also dangerous because of its

association with Trotsky’s political position and his views on sciences and education in the

USSR.8 Martin Miller’s 1998 book Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia

5
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows : “Стремление учиться никогда не
покидало меня, и у меня много раз в жизни бывало ощущение, что революция мешает мне работать
систематичсеки.” (Ibid, Volume I, 15.)
6
Issac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky: 1921-1929 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 165.
7
Alexander Etkind, Eros of the Impossible: the History of Psychoanalysis in Russia, trans. Noah and Maria Rubins
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 240-3.
8
Ibid, 349.

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and the Soviet Union takes a more moderate position. Miller argues that even though Trotsky’s

writings contained references to Freud, this fact could not be the sole reason for banning the

whole science and closing the Institute of Psychoanalysis, the first and only Russian professional

psychoanalytical group that offered training programs, opened in 1922 in Moscow under

Communist authority.9

As the above suggests, scholars have analyzed Trotsky’s fascination with Freud, how that

fascination was connected to Trotsky’s support for psychoanalysis, and how it became

politicized in the leadership struggle with Stalin. The central concern of this paper is Trotsky’s

intellectual engagement with Freud’s ideas, rather than the political imbroglio of which they

became a part. It analyzes works by Trotsky, in which Freud or his ideas where mentioned

directly, as well as those where Freud’s ideas were presented implicitly. The paper suggests that

Freud’s influence on Trotsky was more significant than others have supposed, particularly in

terms of the commonality of their ideas on religion. The paper argues that Trotsky’s admiration

for Freud was part of a “bigger picture” – his search for truth and objectivity in science, along

with his attempt to improve the Russian pedagogical system by imbuing into the education of the

working class Freudian ideas on freethinking and freedom from religion.

The paper analyzes a variety of books, articles, speeches, and letters written by Leon

Trotsky from 1923 until 1940. Included are works in which Trotsky mentioned Freud or Freud’s

ideas on psychoanalysis openly.10 The study also analyzes works in which Trotsky did not
9
Martin Miller, Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and Soviet Union (New Haven : Yale
University Press, 1998), 59, 87-9.
10
Lev Trotsky, “Letter to academician I. P. Pavlov” in Sochineniia [Works], vol. 21 (Moscow, 1927); Lev Trotsky,
Literatura i revolutsiya [Literature and Revolution] (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literature, 1991); Lev
Trotsky, Kul’tura i sotsializm [Culture and Socialism] (Letchworth, Herts, England: Prideaux Press, 1979); Lev
Trotskii, “Ioffe”, in Portreti revolutsionerov [Portraits of the Revolutionaries], ed. Y. Fel’shtinskii (Benson:
Chalidze, 1988) ; Lev Trotsky, Trotsky, Lev. Chto takoe oktiabr’skaya revolutsiya? [What is the October
Revolution?]. Accessed October 15, 2014; Leon Trotsky, “Shkola chistogo psyhologizma” (“A School of Pure
Psychologism”), in Portreti revolutsionerov, ed. Y. Fel’shtinskii (Benson: Chalidze, 1988); Leon Trotsky, “Sverh-
Bordjiia v Kremle” (“Super-Bordgia in Kremlin”), in Portreti revolutsionerov, ed. Y. Fel’shtinskii (Benson:
Chalidze, 1988); Lev Trotsky, “Eshio i eshio raz o prirode SSSR” [Once again on the nature of the USSR] from V

4
mention Freud, but which nonetheless demonstrate the influence of Freudian ideas, especially

those expressed in Freud’s work on religion The Future of An Illusion.11

Historical Background: The Rise and Fall of Psychoanalysis in Early Soviet Russia

Before considering Trotsky’s work regarding Freudian theory, it is important to

understand more about Freud’s reception in Russia in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Freud’s theory was seen by Russian scholars as revolutionary in nature and in this way

“justified” because of its revolutionary character. Marxist ideology and Freudian

psychoanalytical theory co-existed in a quite successful way in the USSR until the beginning of

the 1930s. It is important for the intellectual purposes of this paper to show such co-existence as

being concordant with Trotsky’s growing admiration for Freud.

Historians Martin Miller and Irina Paperno in their works on the influence of Freudian

theory in Soviet psychology both wrote that the 1920s were years of “cultural revolution” for

Russians, when scholars and scientists tried to originate within Marxist theory and socialistic

political ideology a new kind of human being.12 The Russian physician Ivan Ermakov was the

first to publish Freud’s works in Russian before the Revolution of 1917. Soon after the

zashitu marksizma [In Defense of Marxism], Accessed October 15, 2014.

http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/sochineniia/1939/19391018.html; Lev Trotsky, Notebooks, 1933-1935:
Writings on Lenin, Dialectics, and Evolutionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
11
Lev Trotsky, “Vodka, tserkov’ i kinematograf”, in Voprosi bita: epoha “kul’turnichestva” i eyo zadachi.
(Moskva:Gosudarstvennoye izdatel’stvo, 1923); Lev Trotsky, Rabkor i ego kul’turnaya rol’[The Cultural Role of t
he Worker Correspondent], Acessed on October 15, 2014,
http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl938.html); Lev Trotsky, Moia zhizn’: opit avtobiografii. [My life:
An Attempt of Autobiography] (Berlin: Granit, 1930); Lev Trotsky, “Semeyniy termidor” [“Thermidor in the
family”], in Predannaia revolutsiya: chto takoe SSSR I kuda on idet? (Accessed October 15, 2014,
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/Predannaia /chapter07.html); Lev Trotsky, V redakviyu gazeti “Vida” [To the
newspaper “Vida”], (Accessed on October 15, 2014,
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/sochineniia/1938/19380710.html); Lev Trotsky, Stalin (Moskva: Terra, 1996).

12
Irina Paperno, Stories of The Soviet Experience: Memories, Diaries, Dreams (Ithaca : Cornell University Press,
2009), Introduction, xii, and Martin Miller, Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and Soviet
Union (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1998).

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revolution Ermakov with Moisey Wulff founded the Russian Psychoanalytical Society in

Moscow in 1921, the first official institution that worked directly to promote the ideas of

Sigmund Freud and his school of thought in the USSR. According to psychologist Aldo

Carotenuto, “The Russian Psychoanalytic Society was the third center for training and

psychoanalytic treatment after those of Berlin and Vienna. In 1924 the Institute offered a

program of ten seminars and the staff developed supplementary courses at the University and the

Psychiatric Clinic.”13 Carotenuto noted that the idea of Marxist ideology peacefully coexisting

with Freud’s theory continued in the 1920s: “…the debate over psychoanalysis and Marxism

occupied the center of the stage for Soviet psychoanalysts. In 1924, a volume published in

Moscow sought to provide the connecting link between Marxism and psychology.”14

As others have shown, the birth of Russian psychoanalysis dated from the founding in

1909 of the journal Psichoterapiya [Psychotherapy].15 This fact is important because it highlights

that psychologists in Russia were interested in Freud’s works before the Revolution of 1917

happened and was not a direct result of the Soviet politics toward psychological science. Among

the first followers of Sigmund Freud were later prominent Soviet psychologists Wirubow, Wulff,

Ermakov, Asatiani, and Luria. Later Sabina Spielrein, a Russian born student and admirer of

Sigmund Freud, and Tatiana Rosenthal, a founder of the Institute for Neuropathic Children,

continued the research in a field of psychoanalysis, trying to apply Freud’s ideas into an area of

children’s psychology, and creating new educational techniques. In 1920 Tatiana Rosenthal

delivered a first lecture about the importance of psychoanalysis for psychological treatment of

children.16

13
Aldo Carotenuto, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud, trans. Arno Pomerans, John
Shepley, Krishna Winston (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 201.
14
Ibid, 204.
15
Etkind, Eros of the Impossible, and Carotenuto, A Secret Symmetry, 197-200.
16
Ibid, 200.

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 Rozenthal’s lecture and also the opening of Russian Psychoanalytical Society in 1921,

mentioned earlier, symbolized a beginning of new era in Russian psychology – an Era of deep

research into psychoanalysis, collaboration with Sigmund Freud and his colleagues in Vienna,

creation of a new science – pedology – which studied children’s behavior and psychological

conditions, biological and psychological stages of development. This period of Freud’s theory’s

flourishing in the USSR continued for less than ten years.

In 1929, when Stalin became totally in control of the Communist Party’s leadership, the

Austrian psychoanalytical journal Zeitschrift started publishing fewer reports about the

researches in Russian psychoanalytical science from the USSR. Contrary to Trotsky, Stalin had a

sense of psychology more appropriate for the nineteenth century person; this is why he banned

all Soviet researches that used Freud’s theory or those who developed psychoanalytical theory.

While in the 1930s psychoanalyses became a “taboo” (as Laura Engelstein and Stephanie

Sandler called it17), Freud’s theory was still very well-known to the psychologist, psychiatrists,

and physicians in 1930s, because in order to debate and refuse Freud they had to research almost

all of his works. Ironically, even a prominent leader of Soviet psychology and a founder of

Soviet neurophysiology Alexander Luria in 1920s as a young scientist joined other Russian

psychologists who supported the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Nevertheless, in 1930, he distanced

himself from such supporters by political or some other reasons. Since 1930 psychoanalysis did

not exist in Soviet scholarly establishment, however, pedology 18 survived and continued to be a

part of Soviet Educational science after 1930. It was a unique area of knowledge on how to

transform human nature during the childhood. The people who founded pedology and who

17
Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler, Self and Story in Russian History (Ithaca : Cornell University Press,
2000), Introduction, 3.
18
Pedology was a scholarly area closely related to modern educational psychology, however, was not the same as
pedagogy. Pedology was widely developed by psychologists in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia study of
children, their development and behavior. Pedologists mostly concentrated on the children with special needs.

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continued their researches in it after 1930 were professional psychologists usually well-trained in

psychoanalysis.19

The short overview of the rise and fall of psychoanalysis in early Soviet Russia is

important, because it explains the intellectual milieu of which Trotsky was a significant part. The

next section will demonstrate how Trotsky first approached Freud’s ideas with doubtful respect,

but later, his skepticism grew into a desire to use Freud’s theory as a tool for socialistic progress.

Freud’s influence on Trotsky

Trotsky changed his position regarding Freud over time: from the skeptical comparison

of Freud to Pavlov; to an admiration of Freud’s method that “uncovers the veil” of a human soul.

As the paper demonstrates Trotsky highly embraced Freud’s ideas about religion and education,

but not as much he [Trotsky] admired Freud’s methodology and the theory of sexuality.

Nevertheless, Freud’s direct influence on Trotsky’s attitude to psychology and sciences should

not be underestimated. Trotsky respected Freud for his analysis of a person’s mentality and in

this way Trotsky considered Freud a true Marxist.

On September 27, 1923, Leon Trotsky wrote to academician Ivan Pavlov, the founder of

physiology and a 1904 Noble Prize Winner:

During several years of my living in Vienna, I got in touch quite closely with the
freudists, read their works and even participated in their meetings. I have always been
struck by their approach to psychological problems in which they combine physiological
realism and an almost imaginative analysis of mental phenomenon.20

19
Etkind, Eros of the Impossible, 5.
20
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: «В течение нескольких лет моего
пребывания в Вене я довольно близко соприкасался с фрейдистами, читал их работы и даже посещал тогда
их заседания. Меня всегда поражало в их подходе к проблемам психологии сочетание физиологическго
реализма с почти беллетристическим анализом душевных явлений.» Leon Trotsky, “Pis’mo Akademiku I.P.
Pavlovu” [“Letter to academician I. P. Pavlov”] in Sochineniia [Works], vol. 21 (Moscow, 1927), 260.

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 Although Trotsky used the word “struck” to describe his feelings about Freud and

freudists whom he met in Vienna, Trotsky’s fascinations came from his admiration for Freud and

his followers’ style of writing and use of imagination in constructing their theories. He was less

interested in the facts and the real meaning of psychoanalysis for examining the nature of

mentality.

Trotsky revealed the same kind of skepticism, as in the letter to Pavlov a year later, in

1924 he wrote about Freud in his book Literature and Revolution: “Even the most paradoxical

exaggerations of Freud are more significant and fruitful than the broad surmises of Rozanov…” 21

While Trotsky’s critique was aimed at Russian philosopher Rozanov22 in particular, he mentions

Freud as being paradoxical, and calls Freud’s method exaggeration, which demonstrates again

how dubious Trotsky was about the future of psychoanalysis. However, in spite of such

uncertainty about psychoanalysis, Trotsky had already stated his position quite clearly – that he

believed that psycho-analytic theory could potentially be reconciled “along the line of

materialism.” According to Trotsky in 1924, psychoanalysis was not yet materialistic enough, in

contrast to Pavlov’s theory, but it could become such in the future. 23 Additionally, with all his

skepticism about Freud, Trotsky admitted that his school of thought “brought an immeasurably

big contribution” to the clarification of the sexual question and how one’ sexuality affects this

person’s character and his or her social consciousness.24

21
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Даже и парадоксальные
преувеличения Фрейда куда более значительны и плодотворны, чем размашистые догадки Розанова...”Lev
(Trotsky, Literatura I revolutsiya [Literature and Revolution] (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literature, 1991),
46).
22
Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919) – Russian writer and philosopher. Trotsky referred to him in a passage about Freud,
Rozanov tried to reconcile an idea of sexuality with Christian philosophy. Rozanov is most famous for his two-
volume work Fallen Leaves.
23
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “идут по линии материализма”
(Trotsky, Literatura i revolutsiya [Literature and Revolution], 171).
24
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Австрийская
психоаналитическая школа (Фрейд, Юнг, Альберт Адлер и др.) внесла неизмеримо большой вклад в вопрос
о роли полового момента в формировании личного характера и общественного сознания.” (Trotsky,
Literatura i revolutsiya [Literature and Revolution], 171).

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 A few years later in 1926 Trotsky came back again to Freud and psychoanalysis in his

work Culture and Socialism. The work is crucial for the historiography of Trtosky’s writings,

because it was the first writing where Trotsky specifically emphasized the underestimated value

of spiritual culture and somewhat contradictory nature of the material culture. “Spiritual culture

is as much contradicting as material one.”25 Certainly, in that work Trotsky was more confident

of Freud as being not only a “true” scholar (and this time without adding an adjective

“paradoxical”), but as a “Marxist scientist,” which for that time in the USSR meant being a

“progressive” materialist thinker. He compared Pavlov’s physiological theory with Freud’s

psychoanalytical one. In such comparison, more than in the earlier letter to Pavlov, we can see

that Trotsky became more knowledgeable (or at least he was more willing to demonstrate his

knowledge) in psychoanalytical theory and even more confident in its importance and

application to Soviet psychology:

…the school of the Viennese psychoanalyst Freud … assumes in advance that the driving
force of the complicated and sophisticated mental processes is a physiological drive. In
this way it is materialistic, if we put aside the question whether it gives too much room
to the sexual factor at the expenses of others...26

It is especially important that 1926 was a peak of flourishing for Russian psychoanalysis,

which fell into stagnation at the end of 1920s and came to an end in 1930. 27 Trotsky continued to

compare Pavlov and Freud, not in order to depreciate Freud, but mostly in order to prove that

Freud was in some way Pavlov’s follower, hence, a follower of a pure Marxist science and in

this way – a Marxist scholar as well. Although Trotsky viewed Freud’s ideas as a

25
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Духовная кульутра так же
противоречсива, как и материальная.” (Lev Trotsky, Kul’tura i sotsializm [Culture and Socialism], (Letchworth,
Herts, England: Prideaux Press, 1979), 6.)
26
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “…школа Венского
психоаналитика Фрейда... заранее исходит из того, что движущей силой сложнейших и утонченнейших
психических процессов явяляется физиологическая потребность. В этом общем смысле она
материалистичная - если оставить в стороне вопрос о том, не отводит ли она слишком много места половому
моменту за счет других...” (Ibid, 8.)
27
Etkind, Eros of the Impossible, 241.

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“simplification” of Pavlov’s, Trotsky’s critics of Freud’s theory appears to be more

knowledgeable and “friendly” than before:

Both Pavlov and Freud think that psychology lies at the bottom of the “soul”. But Pavlov,
like a diver, descends to the bottom and laboriously explores the well from there
upwards. While Freud stands above the well and with his penetrating gaze tries to see or
guess the bottom’s contour through the thickness of the forever vibrating turbid
water.Pavlov’s method is experiment. Freud’s method is guessing that can sometimes be
fantastic. The attempts to declare psychoanalysis being “incompatible” with Marxism and
to turn our backs to Freudism (sic!) are too simple or rather, rustic. But we do not in any
way obliged to adopt Freudism (sic!)…28

Culture and Socialism is crucial for understanding of Trotsky’s influence and support for

Russian psychoanalysis in 1920s. Only here Trotsky openly spoke about the attempts of

orthodox Marxist scholars to ban psychoanalysis in the USSR and call it anti-Marxist, and

Trotsky’s protection was highly important for psychoanalysts at that time. “……we have neither

a base, nor a right to put a ban on the alternative, even though it may be less reliable, way that

tries to anticipate the conclusions to which the experimental path leads, only very slowly.,” –

wrote Leon Trotsky.29 By calling psychoanalysis “Marxist” science, Trotsky justified it for the

conditions in the USSR. His position obviously spoke of Trotsky as being dedicated Marxist and

communist, however it can be seen in his other works that he tried not to become too extreme in

his politicized attitude toward science. For example, in his book Literature and Revolution

Trotsky tried to defend the freedom of culture and literature and to clean those areas from

becoming too much interconnected with the ideology. Trotsky cautioned his readers against the

28
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Идеалисты учат, что психика
самостоятельна, что "душа" есть колодезь без дна. И Павлов и Фрейд считают, что дном "души" является
физиология. Но Павлов, как водолаз, спускается на дно и кропотливо исследует колодезь снизу вверх. А
Фрейд стоит над колодцем и проницательным взглядом старается сквозь толщу вечно колеблющейся
замутненной воды разглядеть или разгадать очертания дна. Метод Павлова - эксперимент. Метод Фрейда -
догадка, иногда фантастическая. Попытка объявить психоанализ "несовместимым" с марксизмом и попросту
повернуться к фрейдизму спиной слишком проста или, вернее, простовата. Но мы ни в каком случае не
обязаны и усыновлять фрейдизм...” (Trotsky, Kul’tura i sotsializm [Culture and Socialism], 8).
29
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “…мы не имеем ни основания, ни
права налагать запрет на другой путь, хотя бы и менее надежный, но пытающийся предвосхитить выводы, к
которым экспериментальный путь ведет лишь крайне медленно.” (Ibid, 8).

11
fashionable in 1920s tendency of “politization” of art and culture, since it suppresses culture and

narrows art:

This is why such term as “proletarian literature” and “proletarian culture” are dangerous,
since they erroneously push the cultural future into the narrow limits of the present day,
falsifying perspectives, violating proportions, distorting standards and cultivating the
dangerous arrogance of small circles.30

The brightest example of psychoanalysis’ explicit influence on Trotsky can be seen in

Trotsky’s essay entitled “Ioffe” from 1927. The piece was dedicated to his friend Adolf

Abramovich Ioffe, who was in 1920s one of Trotsky’s supporters and who committed suicide

after Stalin declared Trotsky the Party’s enemy. Moreover, Ioffe was one of the leaders of

Russian revolution: in 1908, while living in Vienna, together with Trotsky Ioffe founded the

newspaper Pravda. Ioffe lived in Vienna for several years and that time he was a student and a

patient of Alfred Adler – one of Freud’s students. This was how Leon Trotsky and Adolf Ioffe

got acquainted with the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society - this fact can be driven from closer

reading of Trotsky’s essay on Ioffe and his letter to academician Pavlov. In “Ioffe” Trotsky

wrote that he had met Adler a few times, while living in Vienna. Trotsky described how he

received his “first initiation into the secrets of psychoanalysis” from Adler in person.31

In autumn of 1932 while speaking in front of students at Copenhagen University on the

occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky came back to the

problem of the importance of psychology for the Revolution. Once again he used the Freudian

word “conscious” and, even without mentioning Freud himself, spoke about the key concept of

30
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Тем и опасны такие термины, как
«пролетарская литература», «пролетарская культура», что они фиктивно вдвигают культурное будущее в
узкие рамки нынешнего дня, фальсифицируют перспективы, нарушают пропорции, искажают масштабы и
культивируют опаснейшее кружковое высокомерие.” (Trotsky, Literatura i revolutsiya [Literature and
Revolution], 161).
31
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: «Первое посвящение... в тайны
психоанализа.» Leon Trotskii, “Ioffe”, in Portreti revolutsionerov [Portraits of the Revolutionaries], ed. Y.
Fel’shtinskii (Benson: Chalidze, 1988), 250.

12
psychoanalytical theory – the problem of unconsciousness. Without naming them, Trotsky put

Pavlov, the founder of physiology, and Freud, the founder of modern psychology (i.e.

psychoanalysis) in one sentence, which demonstrated his equal keenness on both sciences.

Moreover he spoke about them in a manner that the reader can almost feel how Trotsky was

carried away by them, almost emotionally delighted by their benefits for the human being:

“Anthropology, biology, physiology, and psychology have accumulated mountains of materials

in order to raise up before mankind in their full scope the tasks of perfecting and developing

body and spirit.”32

While speaking to the students about Freud, Trotsky did it without criticizing Freud’s

theory, as he did before, when he brought up Freud in his writings such as letter to Pavlov or in

“Culture and Socialism.” Here, in the speech to the students, Trotsky appeared to be more of

Freud’s advocate and admirer, than a strict critic that we saw in his earlier works:

With the inspired hand of Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis, has lifted the cover of that
deep well which is poetically called the “soul”. It turned out that our conscious thought is
only a small part of the work of the dark psychic forces. Learned divers descend to the
bottom of the ocean and there take photographs of mysterious fishes. Human thought,
descending to the bottom of its own psychic well, must led light on the most mysterious
driving forces of the soul and subject them to reason and to will.33

Interestingly enough that just like in his 1926 work, Trotsky depicted psychoanalysts and

physiologists as the “divers” of human soul, nevertheless, unlike in 1926, this time, in 1932,

32
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Антропология, биология,
физиология, психология накопила горы материалов, чтобы поставить перед человеком во всем объеме
задачу его собственного физического и духовного совершенствования и роста.” (Lev Trotsky, “Chto takoe
oktiabr’skaya revolutsiya?” [“What is The October Revolution?”], Accessed October 15, 2014,
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/sochineniia/1932/19321127.html).

33
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Психоанализ приподнял
гениальной рукой Зигмунда Фрейда крышку над тем колодцем, который называется поэтически «душой»
человека. Оказалось, что наша сознательная мысль составляет только частицу в работе темных психических
сил. Ученые-водолазы спускаются на дно океана и фотографируют таинственных рыб. Мысль человека,
спустившись на дно его собственного душевного колодца, должна осветить наиболее таинственные
движущие силы психики и подчинить их разуму и воле.” (Ibid.)

13
Trotsky did not put Pavlov’s theory on a higher footstep of the development of scientific

knowledge, but spoke of it the same way he used to speak about Pavlov’s theory. It is not a

coincidence that between 1926 and 1927 Trotsky personally actively supported Russian

Psychoanalytic Society, and even after Trotsky’s downfall, Lenin’s wife Nadejda Krupskaya 34

and one of Trotsky’s supporters Karl Radek 35 supported the society until 1930. Thus, Trotsky’s

enthusiasm and support for psychoanalysis grew bigger, as we can see by analyzing his earlier

and later works. Since in 1923 (“Letter to Pavlov”) up to 1932 his respect for psychoanalysis in

general and for Freud in particular grew bigger. While in 1923 he called psychoanalytical

approach “imaginative;” and in 1926 he, although with a respect to both scholars, compares

Pavlov and Freud (and such comparison is not to the benefit of Freud); in 1932 Trotsky sounded

like a faithful adherent of Sigmund Freud.36

This particular idea can be demonstrated by closer reading of Trotsky’s “School of Pure

Psychologism”. In this work on psychological biographies in 1932 Trotsky openly expressed his

admiration for Sigmund Freud by calling him a “surgeon” of human being: “The great

psychoanalyst is merciless,” - wrote Trotsky, mentally carried away by the freedom of Freud’s

thoughts. Trotsky continues: “While working, he [Freud] looks like a surgeon, or almost a

butcher with his sleeves rolled up. …He cares least about his patient’s prestige, considerations

34
Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) was Russian revolutionary and political activist. She married Vladimir Lenin in
1898. After the Revolution of 1917 Krupskaya became an apologist of education and liquidation of
“bezgramotnost’” (illiteracy) among peasants and workers. Later she was a supporter for the pedology and other
educational programs in the USSR.
35
Karl Radek (1885-1939) – Soviet politician, close friend of Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky’s
opposition’s supporter. Radek was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927 and arrested. Was one of the accused
during the Second Moscow trial in 1937 and later was killed in the labor camp.
36
Alexander Etkind in his book Eros of the Impossible even calls Trotsky “Kremlin dreamer.” Etkind considers that
the reason of such keenness of Trotsky by Freud lies in the fact that Trotsky was hoping to find the Philosopher’s
Stone among Freud’s theory. Etkind suggests that Trotsky’s goal was to combine Pavlov and Freud in one theory
that would explain human being and give the opportunity for an unlimited power for Trotsky over it [human being].
(Etkind, Eros of the Impossible, 240-3.)

14
of good form, any falsity and trumpery.” 37 The admiration for Freud came to a head in one of

Trotsky’s very last works In Defense of Marxism, written in 1939-1940 and published after his

death in 1942, where he endowed Freud with the epithet “perspicacious.”38

It is important to emphasize that be examining Trotsky’s notebooks, where he referred to

the Viennese scholar three times, the research about Freud’s intellectual influence on Trotsky

will be comprehensive enough. In his notes from 1933-1935 Trotsky repeated the ideas on how

psychoanalysis does not contradict Marxism. Trotsky defended Freud from the Marxists’

accusations in idealism and mysticism. 39 Trotsky raised a rhetorical question that was driven

from the Nineteenth-century debates in the Western Philosophy: “Dualists divide the world onto

independent substances: matter and consciousness. Where should we do with unconscious

then?”40 Trotsky’s approach to Marxist dualism obviously went much further than he initially

intended it to go. Simply debating on whether psychoanalysis is materialistic or not, Trotsky

went well beyond his own discourse, raising an important issue of what unconsciousness is. It

seems that Trotsky’s natural curiosity and his “desire to learn” was not only with him in the

middle of 1930s, but it grew bigger, just as his interest in psychoanalysis.

Even in his later works, while living far away from his home country and from Europe,

Trotsky mentions Freud casually, but doing so he referred to the psychoanalyst with a great

respect, demonstrating comprehensive knowledge of his works. For example, Trotsky wrote to

37
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Великий психоаналитик
беспощаден. За работой он похож на хирурга, почти на мясника с засученными рукавами... Фрейда меньше
всего заботят престиж пациента, соображения хорошего тона, всякая вообще фальшь и мишура.” Leon
Trotsky, “Shkola chistogo psyhologizma” (“A School of Pure Psychologism”), in Portreti revolutsionerov, ed. Y.
Fel’shtinskii (Benson: Chalidze, 1988), 202-3.
38
Lev Trotsky, “Eshio i eshio raz o prirode SSSR” from V zashitu marksizma, Accessed October 15, 2014
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/sochineniia/1939/19391018.html.
39
Lev Trotsky, Notebooks, 1933-1935: Writings on Lenin, Dialectics, and Evolutionism. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), 132, 148.
40
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Дуалисты делят мир на
самостоятельные субстанцииЖ материю и сознание. Куда девать при этом бессознательное?” (Ibid, 149).

15
the editor of Life magazine41: “The late Freud quite severely criticized such kinds of cheap

psychoanalysis. Hate is in a way a form of personal relationship. Yet I and Stalin were divided

by such fiery events, that they burned down to ashes everything personal.”42

As the above discussion suggests psychoanalytical theory in general and Freud’s method

in particular had a deep influence on Leon Trotsky, for which he highlighted in his different

writings from 1923 until 1932. While explicit influences are important to be recognized, the

research of Freud’s influence on Trotsky would not be full enough without acknowledging

another type of intellectual influence – those which were not openly in Trotsky’s works; but

were without naming Freud, Trotsky expressed Freudian ideas and projected them onto Soviet

reality.

Trotsky and Freud: implicit influences

It was previously proved that Leon Trotsky was deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud.

Quite often, Trotsky demonstrated his knowledge and appreciation of Freud along with a desire

to “fit” Freud, along with Pavlov, into Marxist theory. At other times, Trotsky’s ideas seemed to

only refer to Freud, - in such cases the influence can be called implicit, but it was still there and

can be demonstrated by comparing Freud’s and Trotsky’s ideas. The following section will

analyze essays, articles, and speeches of Leon Trotsky where he expressed the ideas on religion’s

damaging character to non-educated people and the importance of atheistic education among

them. Freud’s implicit influence on Trotsky can be traced in comparison of those two thinkers’

41
In 1939 the editor called Trotsky “Stalin’s old enemy” and referred to Trotsky’s “hate toward Stalin” in the
preface to Leon Trotsky’s first article in “Life.”
42
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: «Покойный Фрейд очень сурово
относился к такого рода дешевому психоанализу. Ненавиcть есть все же форма личной связи. Между тем
нас со Сталиным разъединили такие огненные события, которые успели выжечь и испепелить без остатка
всё лишнее.» (Leon Trotsky, “Sverh-Bordjiia v Kremle” (“Super-Bordgia in Kremlin”), in Portreti revolutsionerov,
ed. Y. Fel’shtinskii (Benson: Chalidze, 1988), 54).

16
ideas on sexuality, sexual education, religion, and their vision of the atheistic future of human

culture. In particular, Trotsky’s ideas on the future of the Orthodox religion in the USSR will be

compared to the ideas of the future of Christianity and any other religion for civilization in

Freud’s The Future of An Illusion. Comparison of Freud’s work from 1927 and Trotsky’s works

is crucial for the argument of this research, since The Future of An Illusion was Freud’s key work

in establishing his concept of religion as an illusion made for humans as a substitution of science,

and church as unnecessary cultural institution.43

Tracking the influences of one historical figure on another is a complicated scholarly

task. The reason for such difficulty is that researching intellectual history lies in the fact that the

intellectual influences on any one individual are numerous and complex. It is hard to say now

how deeply Freud’s ideas influenced Trotsky’s world view, however with such influence or

without them Trotsky was a curious author. Some of his ideas about freedom in the educational

system or freedom of speaking about sex could have been developed under the influence of his

passion for psychoanalysis and physiology. It is quite possible that both Freud and Trotsky were

influenced by Karl Marx’s philosophy of religion (even though Freud never proclaimed himself

a Marxist.) Marx’s most famous work on religion was Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

written in 1843. There Marx compared religion with opium that soothes pain instead of curing its

cause. Marx’s understanding of religion was that it is “indeed, the self-consciousness and self-

esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.”
44
The notion of religion as a self-consciousness of person, or in other words – a product of a

43
Two other crucial works of Freud were Moses and Monotheism and Totem and Taboo - both written in 1913.
Those works were not analyzed in this paper; however Freud’s earliest ideas on religion and church were initially
described exactly in those two works.
44
Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), Introduction
accessed December 1, 2013,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critique_of_Hegels_Philosophy_of_Right.pdf.

17
human conscious, was later developed and greatly expanded by Freud, as well as it was

mentioned as such in Trotsky’s writings.

In his essay “Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema,” published on July 12, 1923 Trotsky

brought up the idea that the Orthodox Church has always been for Russian working class not

more than a “habit,”45 and the church institution was a branch of governmental institution, thus,

the religious traditions were more of the daily customs, and less of a deep faith in the existence

of god. Trotsky argued that the reason for a close devotion to the Orthodox Church can be

explained by lack of culture and education among workers and peasants: “The workers’ …

connection to the church in most cases is based on the thread of habit, predominantly a female

one. Icons are hanging on the walls in the house because they are already there. They decorate

the walls, because without them it is too bare – thus, unusual. <…> At any rate, there is no

respect for the clergy or belief in the magic force of ritual.” Trotsky not only spoke in a Freudian

manner about a conflict between education and religion, but also used the Freudian term

“consciousness” while analyzing the importance of the cinema for the education of Soviet

workers and peasants: “Meaningless rituals …cannot be destroyed by criticism alone, but can be

extruded by the new forms of life, new amusements, new and more cultured theaters.”46

For the purpose of this argument it is even more important to look at how Trotsky

devalued religious beliefs and the Orthodox Church’s institution. With preciously Freudian

passion, Trotsky wrote: “There is almost no religiousness in the Russian working class. <…>

Orthodox Church had been a domestic ritual and governmental institution. It failed to penetrate

45
This word is a translation of the word “привычка” [privichka] from Russian.
46
The quotes were translated from Russian. The original citations were as follows: “У рабочего <…> связь с
церковью держится в большинстве случаев на нитке привычки, преимущественно женской привычки.
Иконы висят в доме, потому что они уже есть. Они украшают стены, без них слишком голо – непривычно
<…> Вот эту безыдейную обрядность, которая ложится на сознание косным грузом, нельзя разрушить
одной лишь критикой, а можно вытеснить новыми формами быта, новыми развлечениями, новой, более
культурной театральностью.” (Lev Trotsky, “Vodka, tserkov’ i kinematograf”, in Voprosi bita: epoha
“kul’turnichestva” i eyo zadachi. (Moskva:Gosudarstvennoye izdatel’stvo, 1923), 46-48).

18
deeply into the consciousness and connect its dogmas with the inner experience of the masses.” 47

It is clearly seen from the above sentences how Trotsky used Freudian terminology: the words

“religiousness,” “consciousness,” and “masses.” Since we know that Trotsky was well

acquainted with some of the people from Freud’s circle, it is easy to perceive that by 1923

Trotsky was well aware of the Freudian theory of mass psychology. Freud’s famous Group

Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego was published in 1921, ergo, Trotsky had most probably

had a chance to read or at least review that work; and such familiarization with that work could

even lead him to the ideas that he expressed in the “Vodka, The Church, and The Cinema.”

In “The Cultural Role of the Worker Correspondent” – Trotsky’s work from 1924 – he

put the question of sex and necessity of sexual education among youth. Trotsky’s position was

very bold and contemporary for that time and for Russian rural people and workers, who for ages

lived in the mystical environment of Orthodox Church’s prohibitions for any sexual education

and for whom discussing such questions was taboo. Trotsky spoke about an issue of sexual

literacy with Freudian transparency and openness: “Needless to say that we will consider the

sexual problem openly, without mysticism, without conventional lie and hypocrisy – but then

certainly without criticism. The young generation has to be informed in a timely manner about

the psychology and the social hygiene of sex.” Moreover, Trotsky put sexual literacy on the

same level of importance as political literacy, which was one of the goals (proclaimed and not

always presented, but still officially discussed by Trotsky, and other Soviet politicians like

Vladimir Lenin, his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, and feminist Alexandra Kollontai) of the

revolutionaries and early communists in Russia. He wrote about it with great enthusiasm, using

the word “must” demonstrates his emotional involvement in understanding of the question of
47
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Религиозности в русском рабочем
классе почти нет совершенно. Да ее и не было никогда по-настоящему. Православная церковь была
бытовым обрядом и казенной организацией. Проникнуть же глубоко в сознание и связать свои догматы и
каноны с внутренними переживаниями народных масс ей не удалось.” (Ibid, 46).

19
sexual education: “There must be sexual as well as political literacy. This is the minimum we

must provide.”48

In order to take a closer look at how Freud’s theory and his terminology influenced

Trotsky, we have to look at Trotsky’s autobiography published in 1930. This book is the most

vivid example of Trotsky’s adaptation of Freud. The work is interesting from a philological point

of view, since it has numerous implicit references to psychoanalytical theory. This book is

especially important for the purposes of this essay, since in it Trotsky referred to a few notions of

the Freudian theory.

Marxism considers itself to be a conscious expression of the unconscious

historical process. <…> The creative combination of the consciousness and
unconsciousness is what usually is called inspiration. Revolution is a furious inspiration
of history.
Every true writer knows the moment of creativity, when someone else, someone
stronger, drives his hand. Every true public speaker knows the minutes, when his mouth
is spoken by something more stronger than him in his everyday hours. This is the
“inspiration.” It appears from the highest creative tension of all forces. Unconsciousness
arises from the deep den and subdues conscious work of thought, amalgamates it with
itself in some sort of higher unity.
The hours of the spiritual forces’ higher tension at certain moments encompasses
all aspects of personal activities associated with the masses’ movement. The days of
October were such days for the “leaders.” The body’s hidden forces, its deep instincts,
scents, inherited from the animal ancestors - all these arose, broke down the doors of
psychic routine and <…> came to the service of revolution. Both of these processes,
personal and mass, were based on the combination of consciousness with
unconsciousness; instinct, constituting the spring of will, with the highest generalization
of thought.49
48
The quote was translated from Russian. The original citations were as follows: “Мы и половой вопрос
рассматриваем открыто, без мистицизма, без условной лжи и лицемерия, - но уж, разумеется, и без цинизма.
Молодое поколение должно быть своевременно ознакомлено с физиологией и общественной гигиеной пола,
- нужна половая грамотность, как и политическая. Это минимум того, что мы должны дать. (Lev Trotsky,
Rabkor i ego kul’turnaya rol’[The Cultural Role of t he Worker Correspondent], Accessed on October 15, 2014,
http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl938.html).

49
The quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Марксизм считает себя
сознательным выражением бессознательного исторического процесса. <…> Творческое соединение
сознания с бессознательным есть то, что называют обычно вдохновением. Революция есть неистовое
вдохновение истории. Каждый действительный писатель знает моменты творчества, когда кто-то другой,
более сильный, водит его рукой. Каждый настоящий оратор знает минуты, когда его устами говорит что-то
более сильное, чем он сам в свои обыденные часы. Это есть "вдохновение". Оно возникает из высшего

20
 From the quotation above it is seen that Trotsky’s phrases like “conscious expression of

the unconscious historical process,” or his depiction of how “unconscious arises” through the

inspiration, coincide with Freud’s explanation of some historical events through the lens of

psychoanalysis, as, for example, he did in his last work from 1939 Moses and Monotheism. At

the same time Trotsky’s allegory of the revolution as the awoken instincts, inherited from the

animal ancestors, clearly refers to the 1921 Group Psychology. One needs not to be a specialist

in the history of psychoanalysis or read all Freud’s works to see the intertextual Trotsky’s

references to Freud.

Without naming Freud, in 1936 Trotsky in his famous work The Revolution Betrayed

included a chapter on the family, where he applied Freud’s ideas from the famous The Future of

an Illusion.50 Like Freud in the earlier book, Trotsky saw the future of culture in denial of God

and a proper atheistic education: “The denial of God, his assistants, and his miracles was the

sharpest wedge of all that the revolutionary power put between children and parents.” 51

According to Trotsky, parents believe in god and make their children believe in god, empowered

by longtime habit of generations. This idea almost repeats Freud’s words about parents

introducing children to the doctrines of religion “at an age when he is neither interested in them

творческого напряжения всех сил. Бессознательное поднимается из глубокого логова и подчиняет себе
сознательную работу мысли, сливает ее с собой в каком-то высшем единстве. Часы высшего напряжения
духовных сил охватывают в известные моменты все стороны личной деятельности, связанной с движением
масс. Такими днями были для "вождей" дни октября. Подспудные силы организма, его глубокие инстинкты,
унаследованное от звериных предков чутье -- все это поднялось, взломало двери психической рутины и <…
> стало на службу революции. Оба эти процесса, личный и массовый, были основаны на сочетании сознания
с бессознательным, инстинкта, составляющего пружину воли, с высшими обобщениями мысли.” (Lev
Trotsky, Moia zhizn’: opit avtobiografii. [My life: An Attempt of Autobiography] (Berlin: Granit, 1930), 56).

50
The Future of an Illusion is one of the most famous Sigmund Freud’s books written in 1927, where Freud review
religion as being a false and harmful for human society. Along with blaming religion for its false doctrines and
inhibition of progress, Freud argues that education has to be freed of any religion, since religion is no more than an
illusion, and science is not.
51
Lev Trotsky, “Semeyniy termidor” [“Thermidor in the family”], in Predannaia revolutsiya: chto takoe SSSR I
kuda on idet? Accessed October 15, 2014, http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/Predannaia /chapter07.html.

21
nor capable of grasping their import. “Thus, - according to Freud, - by the time the child’s

intellect awakens, the doctrines of religion have already become unassailable.”52

In one of his latest works in the framework of his life from 1938, dedicated to freedom in

education, Leon Trotsky wrote: “A task of cultural education lies in awakening and developing

the critical individuality among the oppressed and downtrodden masses. The educator’s

personality, developed in the critical sense, is a necessary condition for that” 53Such a view of

education could be the result of Trotsky’s reflections on Freud’s ideas of “education freed from

the burden of religious doctrines” and science being not an illusion. To exemplify this argument

we have to look at how Freud concluded his The Future of an Illusion. He employed such words:

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot

give us we can get elsewhere.”54

Finally, Trotsky’s very last and unfinished work – his biography of Stalin – needs to be

mentioned. This work can demonstrate Trotsky’s growth in psychological erudition: “The aim of

this political biography, - he wrote, – is to demonstrate how this sort of personality [Stalin’s] was

formed, how it won and took a right for such exclusive role.” 55 In the first chapter of his work,

dedicated to Stalin’s family and early school years, Trotsky mentioned a famous biographer of

Stalin – Emil Ludwig, who paid great attention to analytical method similar to the one that used

Freud in his work with the patients. At the same time Trotsky compared Ludwig’s and Freud’s

methodologies, recognizing Freud’s indisputable authority in the area of psychoanalysis. 56 Later,

in the second volume of his work, Trotsky reestablished the initial goal of the work – to picture a

52
Sigmund Freud. The Future of an Illusion (New York: Norton & Company, 1989), 60.
53
Lev Trotsky, V redakviyu gazeti “Vida” [To the newspaper “Vida”], Accessed on October 15, 2014,
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/www/Trotsky/sochineniia/1938/19380710.html.
54
Freud. The Future of an Illusion, 70-1.
55
This quote was translated from Russian. The original citation was as follows: “Цель этой политической
биографии – показать, каким образом сформировалась такого рода личность, каким образом она завоевала и
получила право на столь исключительную роль.” (Lev Trotsky, Stalin (Moskva: Terra, 1996), Volume 1, 5.)
56
Ibid, Volume 1, 27-28.

22
deep psychological portrait of Stalin. 57 Thus, the readers can see how Trotsky succeeded in his

study if psychology.

Intertextual similarities of Freud’s and Trotsky’s writings can be proved by looking at

their writings, where both defended the same ideas of the necessity of freedom from religious

“bonds.” While Freud spoke of Western civilization in a more general way, Trotsky

implemented that idea onto Soviet education and culture. The implicit intellectual influence of

Freud on Trotsky was established from a closer look at Trotsky’s works regarding some

“Freudian” themes as openness of the question of sexuality and sexual education, atheistic

education, and the future of science.

Conclusion

The historian Ruben Gallo in his book Freud’s Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis

reveals a Freudian interpretation of Trotsky’s assassination given by the detective Quiroz

Cuaron, who investigated Ramon Mercader’s murder of Leon Trotsky taken place in 1940 in

Trotsky’s Mexican residence. For example, Cuaron’s article states that Ramon Mercader had a

sacred attitude to his own name, considering it to be dangerous. Cuaron argued that such beliefs

were analyzed by Sigmund Freud in his most famous work among the general public Totem and

Taboo (1913).58 Additionally, in favor of Cuaron’s theory was the fact that Caridad Marcader,

Ramon’s mother, had sexual relationships with the officer of Soviet secret service, Naum

Eitingon. It was Caridad Mercader who, being under Eitingon’s influence, persuaded her son to

kill Leon Trotsky. Such circumstances bring Freudian dimension to the assassination, since as

Cuaron put it – Ramon Mercader was driven by Oedipal complex. 59Cuaron’s article can be

57
Ibid, Volume 2, 154.
58
Ruben Gallo, Freud’s Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2010), 220-3.
59
Ibid, 224.

23
disputable, but what is beyond any doubt – the irony of the fact that Trotsky’s life until its very

end was deeply interconnected with Freud.

This paper demonstrated how profoundly was Leon Trotsky influenced by the ideas of

Sigmund Freud, and how those intellectual influences were not only direct, but also indirect.

That enormous effect of psychoanalysis on Trotsky’s perception of the future of Soviet science

expands the historical view of Leon Trotsky’s personality. “[T]he reception of Freud varied

greatly by country, and was influenced by the local political and historical context. In France the

most influential readers of psychoanalytic theory were avant-garde artists; in Russia they were

revolutionary intellectuals,” – wrote Ruben Gallo expressing the idea of the intellectual

influences of Freud on European intellectuals. 60 In case of Leon Trotsky the influence of Freud

was crucial for shaping his attitude to religion, education, and questions of sexuality. The paper

traced explicit and implicit intellectual influences of Freud on Trotsky, preciously analyzing

every work written by Trotsky, where Freud was mentioned, or where his ideas were expressed

evidently or tacitly.

Bibliography

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