MessageToEagle. com – On August 20, 1940, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally stabbed by a pick of an ice axe in his skull. The next day Leon Trotsky died. His assassin, Ramon Mercader, was a Spanish communist and a secret service agent of the Soviet Union.
Trotsky was the leading man in the 1917 Russian Revolution, the architect of the Red Army and a powerful war commissioner. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a bitter fight for power broke out between Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Eventually the majority of Bolshevik party members sided with Stalin, who became the Communist leader and exiled Trotsky first internally and then abroad in 1929.
During the next 10 years Trotsky traveled through various countries of Europe. Being very cautious, he constantly changed homes while engaging in subversive activities. He emerged as a scathing critic of Soviet leadership and wrote many articles incriminating the new leader.
He also established the Fourth International, an international communist organization which opposed capitalism and Stalin. All the time Trotsky was living in exile, the Soviet NKVD secret police kept a watchful eye on him. When he finally settled in Mexico, Stalin gave an order to kill his old enemy, declaring him a spy and a terrorist.
Mercader was first sent to Paris under the guise of a businessman named Frank Jacson. There the handsome agent befriended Sylvia Argeloff, a woman who was working in Trotsky’s entourage, providing Mercader with the perfect opportunity for gaining access to Trotsky’s inner circle.
In Mexico, Mercader posed as a supporter of the Fourth International and Trotskyism, writing papers on the subject. He had often visited Trotsky, asking for criticism on his manuscripts. The guards at Trotsky’s villa became so familiar with Mercader that they didn’t bother searching him when he came to the house on the day he finally put into action his devious plan.
As Trotsky was reading over the manuscripts that day, Mercader struck him in the skull and according to his later testimony, heard the longest and loudest scream he had ever heard in his life.
“I have been through the guerilla war and had stabbed a guard during the Spanish civil war, but Trotsky’s scream literally paralyzed me,” Mercader later said. “That scream will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Mercader thought that the blow would take care of Trotsky, but it didn’t. Trotsky got up, managed to bite the hand of his assassin, ran through the door and collapsed in the next room. The bodyguards set upon Mercader and beat him savagely, but Trotsky stopped them. He said “Don’t kill him! He has a story to tell.”
But Trotsky would never hear it. The best surgeons in Mexico operated on his skull, but the damage to his brain was too severe. Leon Trotsky died on the August 21, 1940. A telegraph message addressed to Sudoplatov was sent to Moscow that same day reading,
“The duck has flown away!”, confirming the success of the operation.
Mercader was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in jail. After serving his full sentence in a Mexican jail, Mercader was released in 1960 and flown to Cuba and then secretly transferred to Moscow, where he was awarded. In the 1970s, Mercader moved to Cuba where he lived until his death in 1978. His ashes were transported to Moscow and buried in the Kuntsevo Cemetery under the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.
Only after the fall of the Soviet Union, when KGB achieves were opened, were historians able to discover details of the assassination and trace all the steps taken in preparation for Trotsky’s murder.
MessageToEagle.com
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