Leon Trotsky was a Communist theorist, prolific writer, and a leader in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Although second only to Lenin in the formative years of the new Soviet government, Trotsky was outmaneuvered after Lenin's death in 1924.

Exiled from the Soviet Union after losing the power struggle over Lenin's successorship to Stalin, Trotsky was brutally assassinated while in exile in Mexico in 1940.