Leon Trotsky Leon Trotsky Leon Trotsky (; born Lev Davidovich Bronstein; – 21 August 1940) was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. Initially supporting the Menshevik Internationalists faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he joined the Bolsheviks ("majority") just before the 1917 October Revolution, immediately becoming a leader within the Communist Party. He would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. During the early days of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and
Ivan Davidovich Lazarev Ivan Davidovich Lazarev Ivan Davidovich Lazarev (, Hovhannes Davti Lazarian; ; 17 October 1820 – 14 August 1879) was an Imperial Russian Army general of Armenian origin. Hovhnanes Lazarian (Ivan Lazarev) was born on 17 October 1820 in Shusha in Nagorno Karabakh, then part of the Russian Empire, and studied at a school in that city. In 1839 he began his military career in the Caucasus, where, for his actions, he was made an officer in 1842. Before the war in Western Armenia in 1877, General Lazarian made his name in the northern Caucasus. He was assigned, like many officers,