This biography of Leon Trotsky provides an in-depth look into the life and legacy of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. The book examines Trotsky's life from his birth in 1879 in Ukraine, to his rise to power in the Russian Revolution,
Lev Davidovich Trotsky, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas and beliefs inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.