Trotsky

Thirty years on the front lines mapping Bolshevism with Lenin, although often disagreeing with him, Leon Trotsky fought for revolution with his pen. Exiled, imprisoned, exiled again to Vienna, to Switzerland, to France, to Spain, to New York, he read, corresponded, and, above all, wrote.

Come the revolution, he returned to Russia, became commissar and then head of the Red Army. Rebuilt the railroads, argued for state unions, attempted to heal factional rifts, made enemies. Chief among them, Josef Stalin.

When Lenin died in '23, the power vacuum grew in intensity. Brains gave in to brawn and within four years Stalin had secured his base, founded the secret police and sent Trotsky into exile again: to Kazakhstan, to Istanbul, to France, to Norway and finally to Mexico City. In Mexico, he finally had time to write the history of the revolution and the failed Soviet state. It was here, too, his head was cleaved by an ice axe wielded by a Stalinist hack.