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
David Bronstein David Bronstein David Ionovich Bronstein (; February 19, 1924 – December 5, 2006) was a Soviet chess grandmaster, who narrowly missed becoming World Chess Champion in 1951. Bronstein was one of the world's strongest players from the mid-1940s into the mid-1970s, and was described by his peers as a creative genius and master of tactics. He was also a renowned chess writer, and his book "Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953" is widely considered one of the greatest chess books ever written. David Bronstein was born in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, to Jewish parents. Growing up in a poor family, he learned