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 Karakhan statement concerning relations with China called the Karakhan Manifesto. In 1921, he was the Soviet Ambassador to Poland; in 1923-1926, the Ambassador to China; after 1934, the Ambassador to Turkey. Karakhan was arrested and executed in 1937 during the Great Purge. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. His third wife (the civil marriage), Marina Semyonova, died in 2010. Lev Karakhan Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan ("Karakhanian") Armenian Կարախանյան Լեւոն Միքայելի, Russian Лев Михайлович Карахан (20 January 1889, Tiflis – 20 September 1937, Moscow) was an ethnic Armenian-born Russian revolutionary and a Soviet diplomat. A member of the RSDLP from 1904. At first