TROTSKY PASSSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 227, 23 August 1940, Page 6

TROTSKY PASSSES.

That Leorr Trotsky should die by the hand of a murderer will not cause surprise ; that he should have escaped death so long after the numerous attempts on his life is perhaps the more surprising. From his early life to his last days he was the forceful Socialist, always ready for the revolution that would bring worldwide achievement to his ill-direct-ed ambitions. His story is in many respects typical of those Socialists who tried to wreck the Czarist regime in Russia and who paid the penalty either by their lives or by imprisonment in dreaded Siberia. Rut Trotsky in many respects stood well above his compatriots. As the architect of the Russian Revolution with Lenin he was accredited by the latter as the genius behind the movement. Lenin planned and Trotsky built. He had considerable military ability, and realised that from the officers of the Czarist Army could be built the strength of the Red Army in contending in the earliest days of the revolution with the countries which could not look with favour upon Bolshevism and all its evils. Trotsky, however, did not inspire the same confidence among numerous Bolsheviks as Lenin received. and it eventually caused no surprise to find him at enmity with the more powerful Stalin. When Germany forced the BrestLitovsk Treaty on Russia it was Trotsky who refused to sign, and Lenin directed his friend Joffe to affix his signature on behalf of Russia. Both Joffe and Sokolnikoff, who later became Ambassador in Britain, were Lenin’s strongest friends, but after his death both fell from their place in the nation’s counsels. Joffe in fact committed suicide and Sokolnikoff was sent to London to be out of the way. Trotsky similarly lost his prestige and after occupying minor posts was banished from the country.' Like Sokolnikoff he favoured the democratisation of the party, but Stalin was the dictator who had to resist a plan which must have - meant his own downfall. He argued the country still required a dictator —and won — but not before some plain words had been spoken. Lenin, he said, had often ignored the voice of the majority. Sokolnikoff agreed, but observed that Lenin was in a class by himself and deserved confidence ; whereas Stalin would need to be controlled by the majority. which did not regard him with the confidence that it had in Lenin. This observation so wounded Stalin’s pride that he never forgot it. So when the great Russian trial of 1937 came Stalin was able to get rid of several of the old/Bolsheviks, who pleaded guilty or innocent of treasonable dealings with Trotsky against the State. Meanwhile the originator of these plottings was seeking sanctuary to carry oh his nefarious work, and after many vicissitudes it was found in Mexico City where, having survived attacks on his life, Trotsky has at last fallen before his enemies.