1879 - 1940 LEON TROTSKY (BRONSTEIN) (Russia)
Trotsky was the son of a Jewish Odessian farmer. Believing there was no future for the Jewish people as a people, he became a contemporary of Lenin, helping him with his publication of Iskra (Spark). He was exiled and arrested many times before the Revolution. Trotsky played an important role in the Communist government and only after Lenin's death did Stalin expel him from the party. He was exiled in 1928 first to Turkey then Norway and finally to Mexico. Trotsky was assassinated on August 21, 1940 by a friend, presumably on Stalin's orders. Trotzky did not accept the concept of Jewish identity and was violently opposed to Zionism.
|