That afternoon — 20 August — Volkov entered the garden, passing an agitated guard with his pistol drawn, to find the assassin wailing in a corner, beaten up by police. Entering the house, he caught sight of his fatally wounded grandfather on the floor, before being shooed away.
As his life slipped away, the founder of the Red Army who had become a thorn in the side of Stalin's regime, had managed to choke out an order to prevent his grandson getting too close to the bloody scene. Delivered in the same pleasant garden where so much happened that day, Volkov's account of the last chapter of his grandfather's life provides a glimpse of the person behind the legend, as well as a hint of everyday normality that somehow survived the ideological fervour, historical drama and family tragedy of those extraordinary years.
By then Trotsky had not only lost the battle to direct the course of socialism in the Soviet Union to Stalin, but also all four of his children, and many other relatives besides. But Volkov, who got to Mexico two years later at the age of 13, says his grandfather never appeared downcast. Volkov also remembers Trotsky — the hard-nosed Bolshevik blamed for the brutal suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion — as a loving and attentive grandfather, when he wasn't shut away with his work.
Most of his working hours were spent on a biography of Stalin, because he had been given a substantial advance in dollars, or planning the one he really wanted to write about Lenin. The Old Man, as he was known in the household, would rise early to feed the chickens and rabbits he kept at the bottom of the garden, and then submerge himself in his work, stopping only for short naps and collective meals.
Although Trotsky avoided contact with locals, he always had visitors from Western countries. His supporters came to protect him and many volunteered as bodyguards for the exiled revolutionary. Culture , Life , archive Leon Trotsky: An exile's life in Istanbul This weekend is the anniversary of the Russian revolutionary's unwilling exile in Turkey. AA looks at the legacy of his presence in Istanbul. Please contact us for subscription options.
Troika Plus expresses concern over humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Before being shooed away, Volkov caught sight of his grandfather, lying on the floor of his study, bleeding profusely. Natalia was at his side.
He died the next day in hospital. The young boy was so distraught he refused to go to his grandfather's funeral. Following Trotsky's death, Volkov continued living in Mexico with his grandmother. He went to university, trained as a chemist, married and raised four daughters of his own - a great comfort to Natalia as she mourned her murdered husband. Natalia died in January Volkov, himself now a widower, has turned the old family house into a museum.
It was, he says, his "duty" to honour the memory of his grandfather. Esteban Volkov has turned his home into a museum to his grandfather. In December Trotsky, now 56, and Natalia were put on a freighter to cross the Atlantic to Mexico. There they were warmly welcomed by the Mexican president, the former revolutionary leader Lazaro Cardenas, and taken to live in the Coyoacan area of Mexico City at the home of two other admirers, the painters Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had an affair.
In exile he had continued to work resolutely against Stalinism and his book The Revolution Betrayed was published in Paris in In it he said that under Stalin the Soviet Union had betrayed socialism and become a totalitarian state.
Moscow was determined to destroy him. Trotsky thought sleepily that the noise was just fireworks, but Natalia pulled him out of bed and they hid underneath it while splinters of glass from the shattered windows flew about the room. Everybody liked him and Sylvia as well. Trotsky was ill, suffering from high blood pressure, and not expecting to live much longer. About 5pm on August 20th Mercader arrived at the house with his raincoat over his left arm tucked firmly against his body.
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