roup, where he met Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a fellow Marxist who later became his wife. Together Leon and Alexandra founded the Southern Workers Union and began to distribute pamphlets condemning the terrible factory conditions occurring. Unfortunately, in 1898, Trotsky was arrested by police and sent to serve over one year in jail and sentenced to four years in Siberia. Since he had married Alexandra in jail, they were both sent together to Siberia. However, Trotsky escaped two years later to London, England, leaving his beloved wife and new children behind. While in London, Trotsky joined VI Lenin and was assigned his first duty. His assignment was to go on a fundraising trip for the newspaper Iskra to different regions around Europe. On a stop at Paris, France, Leon met Natalia Sedov, who became his second wife. Then in 1903, he participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democratic Worker’s Party in London, where the separation between the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martiv. Trotsky believed Lenin’s stubbornness caused the split between the parties to worsen and warned that government discipline would lead to tyranny. With little of himself and Lenin, Trotsky admitted his error on the issue of organization and decided to join the Bolsheviks. The Petrograd Soviet elected Trotsky as president. Leon then led the October Revolution in 1917 where “he would fight to the limit of endurance” (Flachmann p. 359). A year later, Trotsky was assigned to organize the military. Then he built a Red Army of five million soldiers.Although Trotsky enjoyed prestige as a military leader, Stalin controlled the party organization. After Lenin’s death, Stalin established an alliance with Grigory Zinovyev and Lev Kamenev, other communist leaders. Together the three turned against their threat as leader, Leon Trotsky. Leon was unable to defend himself against damaging criticism h...
