Bullet marks are still visible on the facade of the house in Mexico where Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated 80 years ago. Although this first attempt on his life failed, the second, on August 20, 1940, accomplished Stalin's goal. "I am already familiar" with death, Leon Trotsky told the Mexican newspaper El Universal after surviving the first attack on May 24, 1940 at his home in the Mexican capital, where he had gone into self-imposed exile. "Stalin's black hatred chased me halfway around the world," he declared.
A few months later, on August 20, death overtook him. A Spanish communist, Ramon Mercander, acting on the orders of the Soviet leader, would then fatally wound him with a climbing axe. "It was an ideological, symbolic crime," Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, who researched the subject for his book "The Man Who Loved Dogs," published in 2009, told AFP. of Trotsky and Mercander through the person of a writer who meets the assassin in Havana, where Ramon Mercander (1913-1978) actually lived.
Leon Trotsky's house is located in the green district of Coyoacan. It was turned into a museum and there is his grave, which is engraved with a hammer and sickle. The watchtowers, high walls and bullet marks left by Stalin's team allow one to understand how this key figure of the Bolshevik revolution spent the last days of his life.
Leon Trotsky was born on November 7, 1879 in the Ukraine, his real name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, and he was the founder of the Red Army. Along with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known by the pseudonym Lenin, he was one of the instigators of the October 1917 Bolshevik uprising that led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II. After his break with Stalin, who in 1929 expelled him from the USSR, he was forced into exile. He went to Turkey, lived in France and then Norway, before fleeing in 1937 to Mexico.
A divisive physiognomy
There Mexican painter Diego Rivera helps convince the government of General Lázaro Cárdenas to grant him asylum. Leon Trotsky, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova, is welcomed at the airport of Tampico by the painter Frida Kahlo. "When he arrived, he met a group of people who were then involved in the effervescence that prevailed in Mexico, with Rivera and Kahlo being the first," underlines Leonardo Padura. But even thousands of kilometers away, the Russian revolutionary was not safe from Stalin's regime.
Leon Trotsky and his wife survived the first assassination attempt by falling to the floor under their bed. The attack forced the pair to beef up the venue's security, but that wasn't enough to stop Ramon Mercander. This Spanish communist turned NKVD agent manages to infiltrate Trotsky's circle by pretending to be in love with a New York Trotskyite.
In order to act without attracting attention, he will choose to kill the Russian revolutionary using a pickaxe. However, the latter, although seriously wounded in the head, calls for help and the murderer is arrested. But the next day the father of the "permanent revolution" succumbs to his wounds at the age of 60. Eight decades after his death, the character of the Russian politician is still divisive.
The 2019 series “Trotsky” distributed by Netflix, but produced by the main channel of Russian state television, portrays him as a villain. The family also refused to film the series in the house-museum. During the tours he made to present his novel, the Cuban author says he felt what the popular verdict is for this historic battle. "Because he was no longer in power, Trotsky's personality took on the dimensions it still has, and today you find people who tell you, 'I am a Trotskyist' or 'I like Trotskyism'; but it is very difficult to find someone who tells you that is a Stalinist or that he sympathizes with Stalinism", concludes the novelist.
SOURCE:APE-ME