Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Stalin versus Trotsky. Whoever wins, we lose. This is a battle for control of global revolution, for control of the Soviet Union.
The winner becomes one of the most influential figures in modern history. The loser, well, winds up dead. His line wiped out. We got Trotsky, a revolutionary, electrifying, a commander of men. He helped orchestrate the Bolshevik Revolution. He led the Red Army to victory in the brutal Russian Civil War. He dreamed of spreading revolution across the world.
But that brilliance provoked jealousy, hatred, enmity. And he was unlucky enough to draw the rage of one Joseph Stalin. He ended up exiled, hunted across continents. Trotsky's life became a deadly game of sex betrayal. and survival. From the streets of Petrograd to the sun-soaked shores of Mexico, this story is one of ambition, ideology, farce, honey traps, and relentless danger.
In this episode, we're going to follow every twist of that extraordinary journey, from the revolutions of the early 20th century to the shocking events of his assassination itself. Spoiler alert, sorry. For all this, I'm joined by Josh Ireland. He's just written a fantastic book, The Death of Trotsky, the true story of the plot to kill Stalin's greatest enemy. Josh, thanks for coming on.
This is a crazy story.
I'm delighted to be here. I think it's one of the most amazing stories of the 20th century because it's one of those stories where everyone knows a few details about it. You know that Trotsky dies in Mexico.
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Chapter 2: What led to the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky?
You know it's an ice axe. But you don't know why he's in Mexico. You don't know who's wielding the ice axe. We all know who killed Julius Caesar or we all know who killed JFK. The thing I was fascinated by was how did Trotsky get to Mexico and who's the man wielding the axe that day in August 1940?
Well, you're going to tell us right now. Let's get into it.
Brilliant.
Josh, good to see you. I'm delighted to be here. Tell me about Trotsky. Where was he? In the mighty Russian Empire, where was he born?
So he kind of comes from the edges of the Russian Empire.
Another one, interesting.
Like Stalin. Like Stalin. So there is a kind of weird, I mean, obviously they go on to develop this fierce, vicious rivalry, but you can see quite a lot of similarities. They're both bright boys who come from the edges of what was once the Russian Empire. So in Trotsky's case, he comes from what is now Ukraine. And Stalin is from Georgia.
And both of them come from quite humble provincial families, both of them from illiterate families. So Trotsky's father was a farmer and Stalin's was a sort of alcoholic bootmaker. So there isn't any sign that they will go on to become the sorts of people that will, you know, sort of grab the 20th century by the scruff of the neck and sort of shake it. But I think there's two things about them.
Both of them are incredibly bright. Both of them are incredibly ambitious. But also, when they're young, both of them get seized by a sort of overwhelming passion for world revolution. In a way that I don't think we can quite understand the sort of force with which it hits them. It's in the air.
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Chapter 3: How did Trotsky's early life influence his revolutionary ambitions?
Does he go to university? He's not one of these kids that goes to university and goes all liberal, is he?
No, it's early on. And to begin with, I think he's just a sort of... The thing about Trotsky is he's so bright that he also is desperate for everyone to know how bright he is. So he's admirable in many ways, but also I imagine insufferable. But at some point he meets a woman who is a communist. And to begin with, he's sceptical of what she's telling him. And then at some point it just flips.
And that is his Damascene moment. He marries this woman, but more than that, he marries this faith.
And so it's a heady combination. You're in love. You're in love. You know, you're together, you're newly married. And also just the excitement of the thought of being a revolutionary.
I mean, that's the other thing that Trotsky realises is when he's in his early 20s is not just that he's, fired by this pattern, but also that he has an incredible gift for speaking, that he can stand up in front of thousands of people and sway them. He can persuade people. He can rise them to the pitches of fury.
And all of this comes to a head in 1905 when Russia experiences the first of its revolutions in the 20th century. And suddenly Trotsky, this sort of tiny figure from the provinces, like this dandy who's never worked a day in his life, who doesn't know what it's like to work.
It's so like Conrad. I'm thinking of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent. It's so glamorous but sordid to do with... Anyway, is it fascinating? There is something very Conradian about Conrad.
all of these people, because that's the world that Conrad builds in The Secret Agent of slightly shabby rooms and plotting and the smell of sulphur and the sordidness, but also that lives alongside idealism and excitement.
There's a sort of sordidness, but a bit of a romance to it. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What role did Trotsky play in the Russian Revolution?
Sort of bad for the wife and two children he leaves behind. Oh, that she's not coming with him? They don't come with him. For the revolution, darling. Exactly, this is the first sign that these are people that could justify anything to themselves and to anyone else in the name of what they're doing.
And so he leaves this wife and two daughters who he will barely see again for the rest of their lives. and then begins a sort of peregrination across Europe. And one very significant meeting he has during this period is with Lenin, who is the leader of the Social Democratic Party in Russia.
But he's not in Russia.
They meet in London for the first time. So all of them are in exile, either in Siberia or sort of dotted around Europe. So over the next 10 years, Trotsky will be in Paris where he meets his second wife, life partner. He refers to his wife, but they never marry. He's in Vienna. I mean, this is an extraordinary time.
Endless smoke-filled rooms. Yeah, smoke-filled rooms. They're poverty-stricken.
They're printing newspapers. They're writing screeds.
They're pretty hopeless because the Russian Empire actually seems to sort of bounce back. You know, there's industrialisation. It slowly
there's a man called Stolipin who seems to be writing the foundations of the empire and I think the thing they all had trying to reconcile is that they are Marxists so they have absorbed everything that Karl Marx has said the sort of iron laws of the world so they think revolution is going to happen and they think it's going to come from the working classes And it's only a matter of time.
But until it happens, they have to wait. And what they do while they wait is really is write articles, smoke, argue, read, think. I mean, Trotsky meets his new partner. I think the odd thing about Trotsky is he's sort of
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Chapter 5: How did Trotsky's exile affect his political stance?
But what happens is that Trotsky arrives, and so does Stalin, and the Bolsheviks. Trotsky has been on the edge of this movement for quite a long time.
About 10 years previously, there's this vicious, vicious dispute over the kind of detail which now seems like impossibly remote and tiny, but it was about what the ideal revolutionary strategy should be, whether it should be a sort of small cadre of elite revolutionaries or a sort of wider...
a wider attempt to engage the population so anyway Lenin and his followers within the party became a group called the Bolsheviks and they supported this idea of a tiny elite Trotsky wasn't entirely in one party or the next, but he was broadly aligned with the Mensheviks, who were the sort of smaller group.
But eventually, the excitement, the possibility, this suddenly, this thing that, you know, that fate has handed them, they're all able to even...
at least temporarily to put aside these differences because this is the moment this is the thing they've been waiting for and it's not the revolution they expected but it's a revolution it's like there's been a sort of chasm and then they can suddenly see into a different future and so they begin plotting they begin and this is one of Trotsky's other great gifts he's an incredible organiser he knows how to set up a coup
We don't want to get off topic here, but this is one of those really interesting examples of the impact a small group of very well-organised people can have. And determined, completely determined, completely ruthless. There was no gigantic popular movement in Russia for communism and Bolshevism at that time.
People in Vladivostok weren't saying, I like that Lenin, I think we should give him a chance. No one knew who these people were. These were incredibly obscure figures. They would, I mean, it would be as if, you know, we woke up tomorrow and a Marxist sect had sort of, had stormed into Downing Street and said, we're now in charge.
And it's, now knowing what we know, it's difficult to sort of applaud it because what follows is the death of millions, but it's an incredible feat of all that. Astonishingly effective. It's the confidence, but it's because they know this is their one chance.
This is the one moment they will get when everything, there is chaos, when nobody is sure what to do next, when everybody in the country is unhappy, where... if you are just confident enough if you're bold enough you can it's all up for grabs it's all up for grabs so this is what they do you're listening to Dan Snow's history we'll be back after this break So this is what they do.
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Chapter 6: What were the circumstances of Trotsky's assassination?
He's been sick, he's had strokes, there's been a failed assassination attempt which has left him incredibly weak. So what Trotsky and all the Bolsheviks know is that Lenin's time on this planet is numbered, that at some point there's going to be a succession struggle.
And this is where the rivalry that already exists between Trotsky and Stalin begins to become sharpened and fierce because they know that both of them are prime candidates to... Well, Trotsky certainly sees himself as a prime candidate and most of the world would agree with him. Assume that he was the heir apparent.
So what Trotsky will do later is he will present a vision of Stalin as what he describes him as a grey blur, as a kind of mediocrity, a bureaucratic mediocrity who somehow accidentally became powerful, who sort of stumbled into the top job in the Soviet Union. Which is half true in so much as Stalin wasn't as charismatic as... A little bit Vladimir Putin-y, weirdly.
Yeah, I mean, there are similarities. I mean, both have a kind of weird, obsessive interest in Russian history and a kind of... So I think Stalin and Trotsky have very different personalities. They have a kind of physical loathing for each other.
Whereas Trotsky is a kind of cosmopolitan who's lived in Vienna, who knows about psychoanalysis, who writes literary criticism, who has an interest in science and things like that. Stalin is...
is a big reader but and is by most definition an intellectual but he doesn't speak much he kind of he's this sort of strange short figure with limp and pockmarked cheeks you know Trotsky would sort of denigrate him as a coarse provincial character He doesn't talk when he doesn't need to talk, but he's always planning. He's always thinking.
And this is kind of where their understanding of what power is in the 20th century is significant. Because for Trotsky, it's being able to deliver a sort of sparkling speech, inspire people. And then that's how you get people to follow you. Whereas what Stalin understands is that, you know, actually you acquire power by forming alliances, by building Sitting on the committees.
Sitting on committees by sort of stockpiling bureaucratic power so that you have the right to appoint editors in newspapers or the minor functionaries in some city far outside Moscow. That's where real power lies. Interesting. And also by being able to negotiate different personalities, different people's ambitions.
Because what Stalin also is incredibly good at is understanding where people's weaknesses lie. He's one of the people that can read a human being instantly and know what they want and what they need, but also how you can take advantage of them.
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Chapter 7: Who was Ramón Mercader and what was his mission?
But I'm going to keep things the same. Don't trust him.
It's funny, on him being ill, whether it's hypochondria, but I do, the more I think about history, I think sometimes, yes, a leader's got to be lucky. I think also, you've got to have the resilience of a bull elephant. Yeah, I mean, that's... I think we underestimate, you know, because the water's bad, food's bad, and people are sick all the time. And also, I don't, you know...
I couldn't be a leader. I wouldn't sleep at night. I'd come out at night. These people have got to have the ability to sort of barrel through.
Well, look at Churchill in the Second World War. This sort of small, on the face of it, frail figure, but who works phenomenal hours and doesn't ever stop. I mean, I wouldn't have lasted until sort of June 1940.
So, okay, so Trotsky, he's in trouble now. He's in trouble at this point.
Yeah, so I think... I remember when I was at school, it was sort of presented as a contest between Stalin and Trotsky that somehow Stalin won. But actually, I think the more you look at it, the more you realise it's like they've both started playing a game, but... But by the time the whistle's been blown, Stalin's already sort of bought the referee. He's actually changed the rules of the game.
He's got sort of 20 players on his team and Trotsky only has one player on his team. It wasn't a contest. You know, he was so comprehensively, so quickly, so ruthlessly outmoving. So it wasn't even a... Yeah, it was. And I think he was bewildered by the speed with which that happened.
How funny. He hasn't done all the hard work. He hasn't built a power base.
He just delivers the brainstorming speeches. There's this weird thing about... So Trotsky, completely indifferent to other human beings. You know, there's... There's one of his closest friends writes a memoir later on where he says, I realised that after two decades of friendship, he'd never asked me a single question about myself. He had no interest in me. He barely knew what my name was.
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Chapter 8: What happened during the assassination attempt on Trotsky?
And it's not like Trotsky has to support it.
He has a small group of supporters, but most of them either very quickly understand the drift of things. There is absolutely no value in continuing to argue for Trotsky and to keep believing him. And also, you get nothing back. He never says thank you. He never writes to you to say, well done.
And he can't give you... He can't give you anything.
If you're interested in joining the Politburo or rising up in the party, he's not your person. Okay, so he's in Siberia. He's in Kazakhstan.
He's in Kazakhstan.
For a year. And then, you know, that's the beginning that suddenly he realises that... He gets fewer and fewer letters. And the people who are still writing to him are writing to him from places like Siberia, from the Gulag, as it will become. And then in 1929, he is shipped out of Russia. He goes first to Istanbul, a small island called Principo of Istanbul. Allegedly for what purpose?
Well, this is exile.
This is it.
You know, Stalin's sort of growing in confidence, but still doesn't quite feel as if he can assassinate him. Although, I think what people say is that the second the train leaves for...
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