This Week in History: Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky Assassinated in Mexico in 1940 Vancouver Sun - Vancouver Sun
go to original August 19, 2016

Trotsky's assassination remembered by his grandson (The Guardian) tgmxlt0819162

Most political assassinations are carried out with a gun or rifle. Occasionally a leader is blown up or poisoned.

Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated with an ice pick to the head.

“Leon Trotsky, exiled ‘Napoleon of the Bolsheviks’ who fled to a haven in Mexico was near death today, victim of a pick-axe attack by a man who had posed as his ‘great admirer,’ ” said an Associated Press story in the Vancouver Province on Aug. 21, 1940.

“The one-time Russian war minister had a wound in the skull which exposed his brain and a fracture at the base of the skull. Two other blows from the axe injured his right shoulder and his right hip.”

Trotsky struggled with his assassin after being hit, biting him in the hand before a bodyguard heard commotion and came into the room to subdue his assailant. He fought for his life for 26 hours before dying on Aug. 22.

The New York Times reported the 60-year-old remained a revolutionary to the end, whispering to his secretary “Please say to our friends I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International. Go forward!”

The Fourth International was an international communist organization formed by Trotsky and his followers as a counterpoint to the Comintern, or Third International, an organization loyal to Trotsky’s arch-rival, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

On his deathbed Trotsky accused his assassin, “Frank Jacson,” of being an agent of Stalin. And he was right.

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