Leon Trotsky

[Lev Davidovich Bronstein]

Born into a Jewish family on 7th Nov, 1879.
Grew up in Yanokva, Ukraine.
1888-1896, educated at St. Paul’s in
Odessa & then final year in Nikolaev.
1896-1897, begins involvement in political
movements and ideas
1902 – adopts the name ‘Trotsky’ after
escaping exile in Siberia
1917 – 1927, leading personality and
participant in Russian Revolution &
consolidation of Bolshevik power.
1928 – 1940, Revolutionary in exile, prolific
writer, assassinated in August, 1940, Mexico.
 David Bronstein - Trotsky’s father
 Owned and leased about 265
hectares of good mixed farming
land
 Illiterate
 Unusual for Jews to be farmers
 No significant ties to Jewish
background
 Quite anti-religious
 Trotsky saw in his father’s
disagreements with local officials
the bureaucratic mismanagement
& racism of local tsarist Russian
officials towards minorities
 Anna Bronstein – Trotsky’s mother
 Middle-class Jew from Odessa on Black sea
coast
 Observed basic orthodox Jewish traditions
 Could read and write in a limited fashion
 Helped Trotsky develop sense of world
beyond the steppes & an understanding of
the differences between country and city
 Family entertained visitors from above &
below their social status – led to Trotsky soon
developing dislike of members of hereditary
nobility and local aristocracy. He saw them as
‘robbers by nature’
 Trotsky’s socialists ideals developed at an
early age
 Childhood life
 One of 3/7 surviving children
 Comfortable
 Many servants & workers on the estate
 Trotsky – had a nanny. Family had a cook and maid to look after them.
 A mechanic & assistants looked after farm machinery. Trotsky spent time with
mechanic & admired his skills.
 Farm buildings – numerous, including a mill used by local peasants
 One of Trotsky’s earliest jobs – keep records of the weight & cost of grinding
the peasant’s grain. Able to observe connection between peasants prepared to
work hard & achieve good production and those who didn’t. Also, revealed to
Trotsky the power of the landholder over the peasants.
 The family was, in the language of later years, kulak.
 Farm was quite isolated, news often being delayed.
 suffered from colic / missed some schooling / imaginary illnesses?
 Formal education began at a nearby Trotsky’s
Jewish school in 1886 – quickly learned to
read and write. Unhappy at school – returned education
home.
For entry into school he was coached by
Moissey Filippovich Spentzer, a relative.
 Trotsky greatly admired Moissey who he
described as ‘a fine and intelligent person who
for a minor political offense had been barred
from university on his graduation from high
school. This was an early warning to Trotsky
about the lack of freedoms in the Tsarist state.
 Moissey also contributed to Trotsky’s
‘political’ education by introducing him to
great Russian writers such as Pushkin and
Tolstoy. Trotsky in 1888, aged 9
Education cont.
 1888 sent to Odessa to
study at St Paul’s with
encouragement of Spentzer.
At St Paul’s Trotsky learnt
history, mathematics, Russian
language and literature,
physics, geography, German &
French.
 Graduated as leading
scholar.
 Took 6th Year at school in
Nikolayev in prep. for uni. With
the aspiration of undertaking a
degree in pure mathematics.
Attitudes and
experiences of youth
Trotsky - brief expulsion from
school – accused of insulting
one of the teachers. Claimed a
lesson learnt – 3 types of
people, [1]’ tale-bearers and
the envious... [2] the frank and
courageous, and [3] the
neutral, vacillating mass in the
middle’. Trotsky had trouble
with ‘trust’ and ignored gossip
and innuendo.
 Attitudes and experiences of youth
 Trotsky questioned
authority and never accepted
status quo for its own sake.
 Developed a lack of
interest in views of others
 Trotsky’s time in Odessa –
intellectual awakening. A
cosmopolitan city which
challenged Trotsky with a
spectrum of new ideas.
 Life in Spentzer household
was infused with an
undercurrent of liberalism.
 Spentzer disseminated liberal ideas and
anti-Tsarist propaganda via personal
printing press.
 Trotsky denied his own Jewishness.
Later he wrote, ‘My Jewishness never
played a leading part – nor even a
recognised one – in the list of my
grievances’.
 Developed a taste for Italian opera and
foreign literary classics
 Fell out with father who viewed his
son’s debates and discussions with his
revolutionary friends as mere dilettantism
(playing at).