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A child of the revolution says nyet to movie union

February 26 2003

Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo

Volkov doubts that Leon Trotsky, left, had an affair with Frida Kahlo.

Did Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky have an affair? Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov, remains unconvinced. Phillip Hall reports.


After Lenin, Trotsky was the most important leader of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. But, vigorously opposed to Stalin's bureaucratic dictatorship, he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, constantly vilified and finally assassinated in 1940.

I met Volkov in the same Mexico City house he shared all those years ago, as an adolescent, with his grandfather and his grandfather's second wife, Natalia, plus several bodyguards and secretaries. The same home from which Trotsky kept up his ceaseless struggle against Stalin. To preserve his grandfather's memory, Volkov has since turned the house into the Leon Trotsky museum.

Volkov is in his mid-70s, slim and very fit-looking. A retired chemist, he is widowed, with four daughters and five grandchildren. He is at first reserved, and speaks his Mexican Spanish with a slight accent that hints at a family history out of the ordinary.


Stalin was responsible for the death of practically all of Trotsky's family, whatever their political stance. Trotsky's first wife, his sister, his brother, a son, two sons-in-law and three nephews were arrested and later shot. Another son was assassinated. His two daughters were harried to their deaths. Others disappeared without trace.

In 1939, Volkov, a 13-year-old orphan - his father had been shot by Stalin and his mother had committed suicide - joined his grandfather in Mexico. It was a difficult and confusing time, not only emotionally but linguistically. It was his sixth country, following Russia, Turkey (where he had spent two years with Trotsky), Germany, Austria and France, and Spanish was the fifth language he had to deal with.

"I had forgotten my Russian, so I had to speak French to Trotsky and Natalia," he says. "Spanish is now my native language."

In Mexico, he became Esteban, the Spanish equivalent of his Russian first name, Vsevolod, or Seva for short.

It might seem strange that someone of Trotsky's stature will now be better known to many as a footnote in the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, thanks to the movie Frida. In it Trotsky (played by Geoffrey Rush) is shown, newly arrived in Mexico with his wife, becoming the lover of Kahlo (Salma Hayek) in what can safely be assumed is the only Trotsky sex scene ever filmed.

Volkov is sceptical about the affair. One of Trotsky's Mexican bodyguards once told Volkov: "Trotsky was never alone long enough to conduct an affair without it being known." Volkov got to know Kahlo and her circle very well, starting in the mid-1940s, about five years after his grandfather's death.

"She was a really wonderfully warm and remarkable personality," he says. "I liked her a lot."

Whatever happened between her and Trotsky, there is no doubt that afterwards Trotsky maintained excellent relations with her husband, the left-wing muralist Diego Rivera, who had successfully lobbied to win asylum for Trotsky in Mexico.

When the two men finally fell out, it was because of political differences, Volkov insists. Trotsky and Natalia moved out of "the Blue House" (now the Frida Kahlo museum) where they had stayed as guests of Kahlo and Rivera and moved to just outside Mexico City.

However, Volkov says, Trotsky could not risk strolling the streets for fear of an assassin's bullet from an NKVD agent.


However cautious he was, Trotsky and those around him were in danger from Stalin's agents. In May 1940, a year after young Volkov's arrival in Mexico, there was a night-time assault on the house. Volkov attributes his survival to a decision to dive under the bed.

A large group of Mexican communists, under orders from Moscow and led by the artist David Siqueiros, fired Thompson machine-guns into his bedroom and that of Trotsky and Natalia. All three miraculously survived, with only Volkov slightly hurt in the foot.

For the moment there was elation fed by relief, but for Trotsky, 60, it provided a reprieve of just three months.



Entering, he saw police holding Mercader in the middle of the garden. Volkov knew the assassin, who had formed a relationship with one of Trotsky's secretaries to gain entry to the household.

"He was dishevelled, his face unrecognisable; a man disfigured, groaning and sobbing," Volkov recalls. Mercader had been attacked by Trotsky's guards, who rushed to the scene after hearing his scream.

"I had no idea what was happening," says Volkov. "When I went into the study, I saw Lev Davidovich (Trotsky) wounded, lying on the ground, but the guards and others stopped me from going any closer. My grandfather had said: 'Don't let Seva in, the child mustn't see this'. Later, Trotsky crossed the garden for the last time, on a stretcher." He died in hospital the next day.

Volkov maintains that even as a child and adolescent, he had a clear awareness that Stalin was "a bloody dictator responsible for the death of millions, who had betrayed the revolution, and that Trotsky reminded the world of this fact. This is what made him afraid of my grandfather." It also made Trotsky's death an obsession for Stalin.

After the traumas of his early years, Volkov led a relatively normal life with a family; a middle-class professional doing interesting work synthesising hormones. He has stayed unswervingly faithful to the memory of his grandfather. This has not taken the form of political activity, but through the museum which Geoffrey Rush visited while researching his role in Frida.

Like the 24,000 other visitors a year, Rush saw the bullet holes and the study where Trotsky was murdered. It provides a chilling reminder of how Stalin used his power to crush any opposition. Photographs and captions plus a modest collection of documents and artefacts tell the story of Trotsky's life.

Volkov argues that Trotsky's real legacy is "of a genuine socialism which is democratic, which still needs to be on the political agenda". "The more grotesque lies about Trotsky have disappeared with the regime that manufactured them," he says. "Stalin was the builder of a bloody, oppressive system. Trotsky led and defended a revolution. There is no comparison."

- Guardian



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