Stalin Banishes Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and early architect of the Soviet state, is deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lives there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin. Trotsky, born of Jewish-Russian parents, was first arrested by the czarist government for revolutionary activities in 1898. Two years later, he was exiled to Siberia but escaped to London, where he collaborated with Vladimir Lenin.

Expelled from several countries, he lived in Switzerland, Paris and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Trotsky played no less a role than Lenin in the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, but lost out to Joseph Stalin in the power struggle after Lenin's death in 1924. He criticised Stalin's regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for its economic policies, and Stalin fought back, expelling him from the Politburo in 1926, from the party in 1927, from Moscow in 1928, and from the USSR in 1929.

During his exile, Trotsky criticised the Soviet state for falling short of its Marxist ideals, and was found guilty of treason in absentia. In 1940, he was assassinated in Mexico City by a Spanish communist, allegedly under Stalin's orders.