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
Lev Lvovich Tolstoy Lev Lvovich Tolstoy Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (; 1 June (Old style: 20 May) 1869 – 18 October 1945) was a Russian writer, and the fourth son of Leo Tolstoy. Lev Lvovich, whom his father once called "Leo Tolstoy, Junior" was a fairly well known and respected belletristic author and playwright in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Although he had enjoyed good relations with his parents, by the 1890s Lev Lvovich had come to doubt his father’s religious and moral teachings, eventually becoming an ardent monarchist and Russian patriot. While living in exile after the Russian Revolution in Sweden, he became a vocal