Page 218 - The Chief Culprit

Trotsky Murdered, Molotov in Berlin y 179

former Russian capital. Trotsky was effectively the founder and leader of the Red Army
during the entire Civil War. However, already during the Civil War, he was not the most
important man. He shared the top powers with Lenin. Gradually, Trotsky was relegated to
secondary roles. His slide from the top accelerated and turned into a rapid fall. By 1923,
Trotsky was the head of a leftist opposition within the Communist party, meaning that he
was in the minority. By 1927, Trotsky was ousted from all his posts and deprived of all duties
and privileges. On November 7, 1927, Trotsky tried to give a speech in front of a column
of demonstrators headed for Red Square, but he was pelted with empty bottles and stones.
Killing Trotsky was not a challenge. ere would have been plenty of volunteers. Why didn’t
Stalin kill Trotsky then?
In early 1928, Stalin exiled Trotsky to Kazakhstan. A year later, he sent Trotsky to
Turkey. Again, we ask: what for? In Kazakhstan, Trotsky was completely isolated and fully
monitored by Stalin’s secret police. e Soviet Union’s borders were hermetically sealed, and
running out of the country was extremely difficult. For Trotsky, it would have been com-
pletely impossible, since he was under constant surveillance. He could not run away from
Stalin. He did not even exhibit any desire to do so. As a political opponent, Trotsky was
completely disarmed. He had no power strings, no influence, no money, and no means of
communication. No one published anything he wrote. His letters were checked, detained
for several months, and in most cases simply disappeared. Trotsky’s followers were harshly
persecuted. Monstrous beatings of Trotskyites in dark alleys were just the earliest and most
modest manifestations of Stalin’s aversion. Later on, there were exiles, prisons, torture, public
trials, and executions. Millions disassociated themselves from Trotsky. Only a few individuals
remained true to him.
Human nature is such that people befriend those who are rich and powerful, but when
someone falls from the top to the bottom of the power ladder, the number of his friends and
supporters falls drastically. Suddenly volunteers appear to kick yesterday’s boss. Stalin exter-
minated millions whom he considered to be his enemies or potential enemies. Stalin sent his
opponents to Siberia, to the Far East, to Kazakhstan, to Sakhalin and Kolyma, or directly to
the execution cellars. Only one enemy, Trotsky, the most significant one, Stalin brought out
of Kazakhstan and sent to the heavenly islands in Turkey’s Sea of Marmara.
If Trotsky had been dangerous, Stalin could have isolated him the same way he isolated
Lenin in the last years of his life. Trotsky could have perished on the operating table, like
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Michael Frunze, who replaced Trotsky as the leader of the Red Army, in 1925. Trotsky could
have drowned in a lake, like Efraim Skliansky, Trotsky’s deputy commander of the Red Army
during the Civil War, in 1925.
Stalin, at that time, had three secretaries: Bazhanov for “daylight operations,” Mekhlis
for “twilight” ones, and Grigoryi Kanner for “dark” operations. Bazhanov remembered that
Michael Frunze had to be placed on the operating table by force; that was how much Stalin
cared for the health of his buddy. Frunze was right to put up a fight. Death awaited him on
the operating table. He must have guessed this. e arrangements for the operation were
handled by Kanner. When the secretary for “daylight operations” Bazhanov heard about
this, everything was clear to him. Bazhanov described how he received news of Skliansky’s
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puzzling death: “Mekhlis and I immediately went to Kanner and unanimously said: ‘Grisha,
it is you who drowned Skliansky.’ Mekhlis and I were completely certain that Skliansky was