Leon Trotsky in a Mexican prison for the murder. Stalin presented Mercader with an Order of Lenin in absentia. Trotsky's ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the history books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a Ukrainian-Jewish family of wealthy farmers in Yanovka or Yanivka, in the Kherson governorate of the Russian
Semyon Davidovich Kirlian Semyon Davidovich Kirlian Semyon Davidovich Kirlian (; ; ; 20 February 1898 – 4 April 1978) was a Soviet inventor and researcher of Armenian descent, who along with his wife Valentina Khrisanovna Kirlian (; died 1972), a teacher and journalist, discovered and developed Kirlian photography. Kirlian was born in 1898 Yekaterinodar, Russian Empire (now Krasnodar, Russia) in an Armenian family. He possessed an early interest in, and aptitude for, work with electricity. Just before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Kirlian attended a conference in his home city at which Nikola Tesla gave talks and demonstrations; Tesla was one of Kirlian's