Lev Davidovich Trotsky is a Russian revolutionary figure of the 20th century, the ideologist of Trotskyism, one of the currents of Marxism. Twice exiled under the monarchical system, deprived of all civil rights in 1905. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.
Leon Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 into a family of wealthy tenant landowners. In 1889, his parents sent him to study in Odessa to cousin, the owner of the printing house and scientific publishing house Moses Schnitzer. Trotsky was the first student in the school. He was fond of drawing, literature, composed poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian language, participated in the publication of the school handwritten magazine.
He began to conduct revolutionary propaganda at the age of 17, joining a revolutionary circle in Nikolaev. On January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time and spent two years in prison, it was then that he joined the ideas of Marxism. During the investigation, he studied English, German, French and Italian, read the works of Marx, got acquainted with the works of Lenin.
Leiba Bronstein at the age of nine, Odessa
A year before going to prison for the first time, Trotsky joined the South Russian Workers' Union. One of its leaders was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became Trotsky's wife in 1898. Together they went into exile in the Irkutsk province, where Trotsky contacted Iskra agents, and soon began to cooperate with them, receiving the nickname "Pero" for his penchant for writing.
It was in exile that it was discovered that Trotsky was suffering from epilepsy inherited from his mother. He often lost consciousness and constantly had to be under the supervision of doctors.
“I came to London as a big provincial, and in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kyiv, he lived only in a transit prison. In 1902, Trotsky decided to escape from exile. It was then, when receiving a fake passport, that he entered the name Trotsky there (the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison, where the revolutionary was kept for two years).
Trotsky went to London, where Vladimir Lenin was then. The young Marxist quickly gained fame by making presentations at meetings of émigrés. He was extremely eloquent, ambitious and educated, everyone, without exception, considered him an amazing speaker. At the same time, for supporting Lenin, he was nicknamed "Lenin's club", while Trotsky himself was often critical of Lenin's organizational plans.
In 1904, serious disagreements began between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. By that time, Trotsky had established himself as a follower of the "permanent revolution", moved away from the Mensheviks and married a second time to Natalia Sedova (the marriage was not registered, but the couple lived together until Trotsky's death). In 1905, together they illegally returned to Russia, where Trotsky became one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On December 3, he was arrested and, as part of a high-profile trial, was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights, but fled on the way to Salekhard.
The split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks was brewing, supported by Lenin, who in 1912 at the Prague conference of the RSDLP announced the separation of the Bolshevik faction into an independent party. Trotsky continued to advocate unification of the party, organizing the "August Bloc", which the Bolsheviks ignored. This cooled Trotsky's desire for a truce, he preferred to step aside.
In 1917 after February Revolution, Trotsky, along with his family, tried to get into Russia, but was removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp for interned sailors. The reason for this was the lack of documents from the revolutionary. However, he was soon released at the written request of the Provisional Government as a well-deserved fighter against tsarism. Trotsky criticized the Provisional Government, so he soon became informal leader"mezhrayontsev", for which he was accused of espionage. His influence on the masses was enormous, so he played a special role in the transition to the side of the Bolsheviks of the soldiers of the rapidly decomposing Petrograd garrison, which had great importance in the revolution. In July 1917, the Mezhraiontsy united with the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky was soon released from prison, where he was on charges of espionage.
While Lenin was in Finland, Trotsky actually became the leader of the Bolsheviks. In September 1917, he headed the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and also became a delegate to the II Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly. In October, the VRC (Military Revolutionary Committee) was formed, consisting mainly of Bolsheviks. It was the committee that was engaged in armed preparations for the revolution: already on October 16, the Red Guards received five thousand rifles; rallies were held among the hesitant, at which Trotsky's brilliant oratorical talent was again manifested. In fact, he was one of the main leaders of the October Revolution.
Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev
“The uprising of the masses needs no justification. What happened is an uprising, not a conspiracy. We tempered the revolutionary energy of the Petersburg workers and soldiers. We openly forged the will of the masses for an uprising, and not for a conspiracy.”
After the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee remained the only authority for a long time. Under him, a commission for combating counter-revolution, a commission for combating drunkenness and pogroms were formed, and food supplies were established. At the same time, Leni and Trotsky took a tough stance against political opponents. On December 17, 1917, in his address to the Cadets, Trotsky announces the beginning of the stage of mass terror against the enemies of the revolution in a harsher form: “You should know that no later than in a month the terror will take very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine will await our enemies, and not just prison. It was then, formulated by Trotsky, that the concept of "red terror" appeared.
Soon Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first composition of the Bolshevik government. On December 5, 1917, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, Trotsky handed over his affairs to Zinoviev and completely immersed himself in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet. The "counter-revolutionary sabotage" of the civil servants of the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs began, suppressed by the publication of the secret treaties of the tsarist government. The situation in the country was also complicated by diplomatic isolation, which was not easy for Trotsky to overcome.
To improve the situation, he announced that the government would take an intermediate position "neither peace nor war: we do not sign treaties, we stop the war, and we demobilize the army." Germany refused to tolerate such a position and announced an offensive. By this time, the army did not actually exist. Trotsky admitted the failure of his policy and resigned from the post of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
Leon Trotsky with his wife Natalia Sedova and son Lev Sedov
On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of people's commissar for military affairs, on March 28 to the post of chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - military commissar for maritime affairs, and on September 6 - chairman of the revolutionary military council of the RSFSR. At the same time, the formation of a regular army begins. Trotsky became in fact its first commander in chief. In August 1918, Trotsky's regular trips to the front began. Several times Trotsky, risking his life, speaks even to deserters. But practice has shown that the army is not capable, Trotsky is forced to support its reorganization, gradually restoring unity of command, insignia, mobilization, a single uniform, military greetings and awards.
In 1922 general secretary The party of the Bolsheviks elected Joseph Stalin, whose views did not coincide with the views of Trotsky. Stalin was supported by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who believed that the rise of Trotsky threatened anti-Semitic attacks on Soviet regime, condemned him for factionalism.
Lenin dies in 1924. Stalin took advantage of Trotsky's absence from Moscow to nominate himself as "heir" and consolidate his position.
In 1926, Trotsky allied himself with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin began to oppose. However, this did not help him, and soon followed by exclusion from the party, deportation to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey.
Hitler's victory in February 1933 was regarded by Trotsky as the biggest defeat of the international workers' movement. He concluded that the Comintern was rendered incapacitated by Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the creation of the Fourth International.
In 1933, Trotsky was granted a secret asylum in France, which the Nazis soon discovered. Trotsky leaves for Norway, where he writes his most significant work, The Revolution Betrayed. In 1936, at a show trial in Moscow, Stalin called Trotsky an agent of Hitler. Trotsky is expelled from Norway. The only country that gave refuge to the revolutionary was Mexico: he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City - in the city of Coyocan.
After Stalin's speeches in Mexico, an International Joint Commission to Investigate the Moscow Trials was organized. The commission concluded that the accusations were slanderous and that Trotsky was not guilty.
The Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris, his closest colleague, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died after an operation in a hospital. His first wife and his younger son Sergei Sedov.
Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick in his home near Mexico City on August 24, 1940. The executor was an NKVD agent, the Spanish Republican Ramon Mercader (pictured), who infiltrated Trotsky's entourage under the name of Canadian journalist Frank Jackson.
Mercader received 20 years in prison for the murder. After his release in 1960, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union. According to some estimates, the assassination of Trotsky cost the NKVD about five million dollars.
The ice pick that killed Trotsky
From the testament of Leon Trotsky: “There is no need for me to refute the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents here again: there is not a single spot on my revolutionary honor. Neither directly nor indirectly have I entered into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin's opponents died victims of similar false accusations.
For forty-three years of my conscious life I remained a revolutionary, of which forty-two I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start over, I would, of course, try to avoid these or those mistakes, but the general direction of my life would remain unchanged. I see a bright green strip of grass under the wall, a clear blue sky above the wall and sunlight everywhere. Life is Beautiful. May future generations cleanse it of evil, oppression, violence, and enjoy it fully.
In 1927, Joseph Stalin, along with his associates, tried to get rid of Leon Trotsky, who fell into serious disgrace due to an alternative demonstration in the decade of the October Revolution, sending the latter into exile in Kazakhstan.
“In 1928, when I was expelled from the party and exiled to Central Asia, it was still impossible to talk not only about execution, but also about arrest: the generation with which I went through October revolution and the Civil War, was still alive,” wrote Trotsky himself, explaining why Stalin was forced to confine himself to exile for the first time.
Expelled from the party, Trotsky did not stop communicating with his supporters, many of whom were also sent into exile. In addition, he was in active correspondence with many leaders of the Marxist movement, which led to the fact that in October 1928 they tried to ban Trotsky from writing letters and demanded to stop all political activity. However, he did not go for it. And in January 1929, it was decided to send Trotsky out of the country.
Together with him, the revolutionary took his own archive, which contained many secret documents.
Trotsky hoped to get to Germany, but only Turkey agreed to accept him. From the Soviet Union, he sailed on a steamer with the symbolic name "Ilyich". It is interesting that Trotsky was accepted in Turkey. By the way, back in 1912, long before the expulsion, Trotsky wrote an article under the loud title “Decomposition of Turkey and the Armenian Question”, in which he described the situation in this country in a rather critical form. Now he was to see Turkey reborn as a result of Atatürk's reforms.
At first Trotsky lived in Istanbul. And then, fearing both Soviet agents and figures white movement, settled in Turkey after the October Revolution, he moved to the island of Buyukada, located near Istanbul. In early March 1931, a fire broke out in his villa, as a result, the archive was damaged, which Stalin for some reason allowed Trotsky to take with him.
In 1933, deprived of Soviet citizenship and gifted with a French visa, Trotsky moved to Marseille. Nobody liked this: those controlled by Stalin and Hitler, under various formulations, accused him of trying to kindle the flames of revolution in France and quarrel it with the USSR and Germany, respectively. In addition, at the beginning of the year, Trotsky's daughter Zinaida committed suicide, which could not but leave an imprint on his activities.
On December 27, 1933, Trotsky finished the draft of the Fourth International and War program and sent it to his supporters.
And he spent 1934 wandering around France, never settling in any of the cities or villages, in order to leave this country already in June 1935. Trotsky went to Norway, where he was invited by the Social Democrats who came to power. Nevertheless, pressure from Stalin forced the Norwegian authorities to place Trotsky under house arrest.
Already after Lazaro Cardenas won the elections in Mexico, he immediately sent Trotsky an invitation to his country. In December 1936, the Norwegians put the restless revolutionary on a freighter and sent him across the ocean. In Mexico, Trotsky was expected and received pompously. And he settled in a villa with the artist Diego Rivera, an active supporter of the left and the husband of Frida Kahlo.
It so happened that Trotsky had an affair with her, which the wife of the revolutionary did not immediately notice, the reason for this was that her husband and the artist communicated in English, which she did not speak. It even entailed a brief break between Trotsky and Natalia Sedova.
The expected reconciliation came after Trotsky wrote to his wife a letter that became known as "Trotsky's letter to his wife dated July 19, 1937." Because of the rules Russian legislation it is not possible to quote the text. Life in Mexico seemed to get better, but in February 1938 in Paris, under mysterious circumstances, after an operation, Lev Sedov, the son and main ally of Trotsky, died. This event forced Trotsky to act: already in September in Paris, his comrades-in-arms established the Fourth International, the goal of which is world revolution.
It is quite logical that such a development of events could not but upset Stalin, who instructed Beria to eliminate the restless revolutionary. Similar attempts have been made before, but none of them has been successful. They decided to liquidate Trotsky with the help of veterans of the partisan struggle in Spain. The operation was led by the deputy head of Soviet intelligence Pavel Sudoplatov and intelligence officer Naum Eitingon.
After some time, they tried to kill Trotsky with the help of a group led by the Stalinist artist José David Alfaro Siqueiros. On May 24, 1940, the Mexican, along with his comrades, arrived at the house of the revolutionary. The attackers were dressed in Mexican police uniforms, thanks to which they easily entered the territory of the villa where Trotsky lived. The attackers fired about 200 bullets from machine guns from the street in the direction of the bedroom, but Trotsky remained alive and well. It was decided to use a different version of the murder, for which Ramon Mercader, a Spanish communist recruited back in 1937, was involved.
Mercader took part in the war in Spain and had sufficient combat experience to eliminate Trotsky. He attracted the attention of the Soviet special services thanks to his mother, Caridad Mercader del Rio, who began working for them even earlier than her son. It was she who blessed her son to commit murder.
However, Mercader first went to Paris, where he seduced Sylvia Ageloff, who was Trotsky's translator and partly acted as personal secretary. Mercader traveled under the name of Canadian businessman Frank Jackson. Together with his "beloved" Mercader went to Mexico and became a member of Trotsky's house.
On August 20, 1940, Mercader arrived at Trotsky's villa in order to show him his article on the surrender of France. Mercader had a climbing ice ax under his cloak, which he did not fail to use to hit the back of Trotsky's head when he began to read the text he had brought. Mercader inflicted a wound 7 cm deep on Trotsky, but did not kill the revolutionary: he attacked the killer and choked him until the guards came running.
Nevertheless, Trotsky's days were numbered: on August 21, he died, despite the attempts of doctors to save his life.
“A man has descended into the grave, whose name is uttered with contempt and curse by the working people all over the world, a man who for many years fought against the cause of the working class and its vanguard, the Bolshevik Party. The ruling classes of the capitalist countries have lost their faithful servant. Foreign intelligence services have lost a long-term, inveterate agent, an organizer of murderers who did not disdain any means to achieve their counter-revolutionary goals, ”the issue of the Pravda newspaper, published on August 24, 1940, said.
This article, entitled "The Death of an International Spy", was personally edited by Stalin. He also wrote its final paragraph: “Trotsky became a victim of his own intrigues, betrayals, betrayals. So ingloriously ended his life this despicable man, descending into the grave with the seal of an international spy on his forehead.
Ramon Mercader was captured by Trotsky's guards and beaten. He spent 20 years in a Mexican prison, and at the trial denied any connection with the USSR: Mercader insisted that Trotsky prevented his intention to marry Sylvia Ageloff and tried to involve him in a secret terrorist organization whose members set as their ultimate goal the assassination of Stalin. The killer claimed that Trotsky's death was the only way to avoid this.
Mercader spent his first six years in a windowless cell and was regularly beaten.
Subsequently, the conditions of his detention changed, and Mercader began to live in a kind of VIP cell, without denying himself anything and even getting married. The Mexican authorities tried to establish his identity and nationality, but could only come to the conclusion that Mercader is neither Belgian, nor French, nor Canadian. It was possible to expose him only by the beginning of the 1950s, but Mercader refused to recognize the true motives that prompted him to kill Trotsky.
On May 6, 1960, the killer was released: he had a Czechoslovak passport and a ticket to Cuba, from where he was supposed to go to the USSR. Upon arrival in Moscow, he received a passport in the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez. And already on May 31, an order was issued: Ramon Mercader received the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union from the hands of the then head of the KGB Alexander Shelepin and the chairman of the presidium Supreme Council USSR Leonid Brezhnev.
Subsequently, Mercader was enrolled as a senior fellow at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, where he studied the history of the Spanish Civil War. In addition, he received a pension from the KGB, as well as an apartment in Moscow and a state dacha. In the mid-1970s, Ramon Mercader moved to Cuba, where he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mercader died in 1978 on the Island of Freedom, and his ashes were buried with honors in Moscow, and Trotsky was not rehabilitated even during perestroika. The decision to rehabilitate him was made already in 1992, when the country in the creation of which Trotsky was directly involved no longer existed.
The documentary tells about the events of 1937 and Stalin's confrontation with the destroyers of the Soviet state. Lenin's entourage did not expect that after the death of the leader of the world proletariat, Stalin would come to the fore - a man not of their clan, for whom the ideas of the world revolution would fade before the desire to revive great Russia. Exactly 75 years old, Stalin defeated the 5th column in the USSR. The final chord was the liquidation of Lev (Leiba) Trotsky-Bronstein.
Operation "Duck": how Trotsky was eliminated
In 1929, Leon Trotsky was expelled from the USSR. Very soon, Stalin became convinced that this was a mistake. Once in the West, Trotsky, with his inherent energy and talent, launched a large-scale struggle against the Stalinist USSR and personally against Stalin, gathering more and more supporters among foreign communists under his banner. By the end of the 1930s, Stalin succeeded in completely destroying all the Bolshevik leaders who seized power together with Lenin inside the country. Only Trotsky survived.
Having destroyed the core of the “fifth column”, Stalin delayed the collapse of the Soviet Union for half a century and won before the Great patriotic war a serious victory, equal by its standards to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Leaving the USSR, Leon Trotsky eventually settled in Mexico, under heavy guard both by the local police and by his own supporters. The hunt for him began in the spring of 1939. The coordination of all work to eliminate Leon Trotsky was entrusted by Stalin to the deputy head of the foreign intelligence of the NKVD, Pavel Sudoplatov, who had to report directly to Lavrenty Beria about all the details of the preparation of the operation, codenamed "Duck".
The leading role in the preparation of the operation was assigned to a friend and colleague of Sudoplatov - Naum Eitingon. In a short time, Eitingon managed to deploy a wide agent network in the United States and Mexico, completely independent of the residents of Soviet intelligence (it is this network that will later be used in the operation to obtain US "atomic secrets").
Directly for the assassination of Trotsky, Eitingon created two independent groups. The first group (the Horse group) was led by the prominent Mexican artist David Siqueiros. The second group (the “Mother” group) was headed by Caridad Mercader, in whose family were the vice-governor of Cuba and the Spanish ambassador to Russia. Fascinated by the ideas of the anarchists, she fled from her rich husband with four children and in 1938 began to cooperate with Soviet intelligence. Her eldest son died in Spain, her middle son, Ramon, fought there in a partisan detachment.
At the beginning of 1940, Iosif Grigulevich was sent to Mexico, who created a third group there, a reserve one. Grigulevich knew about the existence of the Siqueiros group and collaborated with it. It was Grigulevich who got in touch with a certain Sheldon Hart recruited in New York, one of Trotsky's bodyguards. And when, in the early morning of May 23, 1940, Grigulevich knocked on the gates of Trotsky's villa, Sheldon Hart, recognizing him, opened the gates. This was his fatal mistake: Siqueiros' militants were behind Grigulevich's back.
David Siqueiros and his men broke into the territory of the villa and fired machine guns at the windows for twenty minutes, and closed doors. These people were not professionals and did not check what they got as a result. But a miracle happened: Leon Trotsky and his relatives managed to lie on the floor and did not suffer at all. Only Sheldon Hart was "injured": his corpse was later found in the garden...
When, many years later, Iosif Grigulevich was asked why it was necessary to kill his own agent, he answered very logically:
- And what was to be done with him? After all, it had to be hidden and then illegally taken out of Mexico. In a word, you won't have any trouble! And then - get into the skin of Siqueiros. After all, he telegraphed to Moscow that Bob Sheldon had betrayed them, and therefore they shot at an empty bed. Moscow ordered: to shoot the traitor! Which is what we did...
Mexican police soon arrested David Siqueiros. He was tried and, in the end, acquitted: Siqueiros explained the failed assassination attempt by the fact that, in fact, there was no real assassination at all, but only a peculiar, with noise and shooting, demonstration of a negative attitude towards Trotsky (in addition to " Self-portrait" in 1943, in the title of this article you see the picture of Siqueiros "New Democracy", 1945).
Late in May 1940, after listening to Beria and Sudoplatov, Stalin authorized the completion of the operation by the forces of the Mother group.
To avoid another failure, Eitingon this time personally prepared Caridad Mercader and her son Ramon. All the nuances of the upcoming operation were carefully discussed. As a murder weapon, they decided to use either an ordinary knife or a climbing ice ax with a shortened handle.
The murder was supposed to look like an act of revenge on Trotsky on the part of a man in love and completely lost his head young man- for this purpose, it was decided to use Sylvia Agelof, an employee of Trotsky, whom the handsome Ramon had already managed to seduce by that time and whom he promised to marry.
Everything was prepared. Caridad blessed her son. She and Naum Eitingon were supposed to be waiting for Ramon in the car.
And on August 20, 1940, Frank Jackson (then no one knew anything about the Spanish partisan Ramon Mercader), a close friend of Sylvia Agelof and a Canadian businessman sympathetic to the Trotskyists, entered Trotsky's office. When Trotsky, sitting at his desk, immersed himself in reading the Jackson-Mercader article, Ramon hit him on the head with an ice pick. Trotsky was not killed on the spot and screamed wildly. “Imagine, after all, I went through a guerrilla war and stabbed a sentry on a bridge during the Spanish Civil War, but Trotsky’s cry literally paralyzed me,” Mercader later described what happened in a conversation with Pavel Sudoplatov. The bodyguards, who came running to the scream, twisted Mercader.
The next day, despite the best efforts of the best doctors, Leon Trotsky died.
Dog - dog death. Lynching of Trotsky carried out, Stalin's task completed. Glory to the heroes!
A multi-year investigation began. During daily interrogations, Ramon Mercader (then, however, none of the policemen knew his real name) categorically denied any connection with Soviet intelligence, explaining the murder he had committed by reasons of a purely personal nature - jealousy. The previously prepared version with the “bride” worked. Of course, Sylvia Agelof did not even suspect that Mercader already had one bride in Moscow (she died of tuberculosis in 1942).
The ice ax that killed Trotsky mysteriously disappeared afterwards. According to recent reports, police officer Alfredo Salas, determined to keep the historic ice pick, secretly hid it all these years.
The real name of the killer would probably have remained unknown to Mexican justice, if not for an accident: Ramon's mother, Caridad Mercader, confidentially opened the veil of secrecy to her good friend, a prominent Spanish communist. When a prominent Spanish communist defected from the USSR to the West, he told the secret services the real name of the murderer of Leon Trotsky. This happened only in 1946. Having familiarized himself with his Spanish dossier, Ramon Mercader stopped denying and hiding his real name, but he continued to strongly deny his connection with Soviet intelligence until his release.
Maybe also Navalny to slam? LYNIC JUDGMENT IS ALIVE!
By the way, about Caridad Mercader. Immediately after the assassination attempt, Eitingon and Caridad went underground and hid in Cuba for six months. Then they ended up together in New York, then in Los Angeles and San Francisco, then in China, and finally, in May 1941, they arrived in Moscow. In his memoirs, Pavel Sudoplatov strongly denies that Caridad Mercader was Eitingon's mistress. Maybe so - who knows now ...
Ramon Mercader was sentenced in Mexico to twenty years in prison. After the events of 1946, the conditions of his detention in prison improved dramatically. Even earlier, in Moscow, it was decided, in the words of Pavel Sudoplatov, "to spare no means." In prison, Mercader had his own separate cell or hotel room with all amenities, including his own patio and TV. From time to time he was taken out to dine at a restaurant in the capital. A certain Roquel Mendoza - a woman who helped Ramon "with the housework", a former cabaret artist - soon fell in love with her ward, and Ramon Mercader was allowed to retire with her twice a week. Later, Roquel Mendoza became the wife of Mercader and, after his release, came to Moscow with him, where she worked as an announcer in the Spanish edition of Moscow Radio.
Of course, Stalin was quite pleased with the results of Operation Duck, but he prudently decided to distribute awards only after returning. actors and performers" to Moscow. Immediately, according to Pavel Sudoplatov, "Beria asked me if Caridad, Eitingon and Grigulevich managed to escape and hide safely." I have already told about Nahum Eitingon and Caridad Mercader: having made an almost round-the-world trip, they arrived in Moscow in May 1941. Grigulevich immediately after the assassination attempt fled from Mexico to California.
At the beginning of June 1941, by a secret decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mercader Karidad Ramonovna and Eitingon Naum Isakovich, at the suggestion of Beria, were awarded the Orders of Lenin "for performing a special task." By the same decree, Sudoplatov Pavel Anatolyevich received the Order of the Red Banner, and Grigulevich Iosif Romualdovich received the Order of the Red Star. Two more participants in the operation also received awards, but - but Ramon Mercader was not among them: after all, he was somewhere far, far away, in a Mexican prison, and, according to the leadership, there was no need to hurry with the official award.
Ramon Mercader spent exactly twenty years in prison, from bell to bell, categorically refusing, as reported, all tempting offers to organize his escape. He was released on May 6, 1960, and soon from revolutionary Havana he headed for the USSR by ship. Some time later, he already received documents in Moscow in the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez. The Soviet intelligence operation, codenamed "Duck", was finally completed. And the then chairman of the KGB of the USSR Alexander Shelepin introduced N.S. Khrushchev a petition for awarding Comrade Lopez the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The fact that for all 20 years Ramon Ivanovich "kept secret his connection with the state security organs of the Soviet Union" was especially emphasized.
A secret decree conferring a high rank on Lopez was signed by L.I. Brezhnev on May 31, 1960. By a special decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Ramon Ivanovich Lopez was enrolled in the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU as a senior researcher. He received a state dacha, a spacious apartment in Moscow, and then a solid pension. A few years later, in the early 70s, he was allowed to travel with his family to Cuba. There he advised Cuban comrades on issues of labor re-education. In the same place, in Cuba, Ramon Mercader died in October 1978.
But he was not buried in Cuba. According to the last will of the deceased, his ashes - without undue publicity - were transported to Moscow. Here, at the Kuntsevo cemetery, is his grave. On the granite monument is his photograph with the star of the Hero and the inscription: “Lopez Ramon Ivanovich. 1913-1978". And a little lower is his real name: "Ramón Merkader del Río".
Awards for the success of Operation Duck were presented to Nahum Eitingon, Caridad Mercader and Pavel Sudoplatov on June 17, 1941, just four days before the German attack on the USSR. Soon Caridad Mercader was evacuated. In 1944, she was allowed to leave for Mexico, subsequently Caridad settled in France. She, as well as her children, received special pensions from the USSR state security agencies. Caridad Mercader died in Paris in 1975.
"After my death ... ungrateful descendants will pile heaps of garbage on my grave, but after many years the wind of history will scatter them" (I.V. Stalin)
Taken from: www.vilavi.ru/prot/card/card1.shtml
He was born on February 7, 1913 in Barcelona and died in 1978 in Cuba. Now his ashes lie at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. On the grave is written: "Lopez Ramon Ivanovich."
It would seem that everything was overgrown with past ... But recently a wreath appeared on the grave with the inscription: "From the grateful Cossacks", which caused, to put it mildly, an ambiguous reaction.
“He killed the great bastard, the executioner of the Cossacks and the entire Russian people,” the Cossacks justified their position.
- He carried out the order of another executioner - Stalin, others objected to them.
And still others said:
- For every hater of Russia there is his own Mercader.
In general, the story turned out to be closer than it seemed ...
On August 20, 1940, the NKVD agent Mercader arrived at the villa Trotsky in Mexico City on the pretext that he wants to show him his article. When Trotsky began to read, Mercader hit him on the head with an ice pick. Trotsky did not die immediately - he managed to call for help. Guards burst in, Mercader was tied up, taking away from him, in addition to the murder weapon, a pistol. Why didn't he launch it right away?
Pavel Sudoplatov, one of the organizers of the murder (the other was Nahum Eitingon), wrote about this in his memoirs: “We came to the conclusion that it is best to use a mountaineer’s knife or small ice ax: firstly, they are easier to hide from the guard, and secondly, these murder weapons are silent.”
Mercader penetrated Trotsky's entourage ridiculously simply - he seduced his secretary's sister Sylvia Ageloff. Much more curious is how he lulled the vigilance of the guards.
Mercader posed as a Canadian businessman Frank Jackson, real person who died during the Spanish Civil War. The object of his interests was not politics, but commerce, sports and, of course, Sylvia. A clear suspicion might arise if, at the very first acquaintance with the guards, he expressed his sympathy for Trotsky and his comrades-in-arms. But he did not seem to notice the existence in this world of the great Lev Davidovich.
For several months he kept in the background and did not seek acquaintance with the inhabitants of this fortified house. As a result, after dry greetings, the guards began to greet Frank cordially when he brought Sylvia to the house. A successful businessman began to treat the guards with expensive cigars.
He was finally invited to the house, introduced to Trotsky, who saw in him an intelligent, but indifferent to politics, typical young businessman - and no more. In response, Frank began to show interest in the personality of Trotsky and his activities, began to read his journalism, and then write his own. It was on this that Mercader caught Trotsky, who, after several assassination attempts, was inclined to manic suspicion.
According to the recollections of all who knew him, Ramon Mercader had a charming appearance and noble manners, it is not for nothing that he is played in one movie. Alain Delon. He possessed powerful physical strength, with a height of 185 centimeters he could bend a copper coin with three fingers. In prison, he was subjected not only to torture, but also to lengthy psychological testing. It showed that Mercader had an unusually fast reaction time, an almost photographic memory, the ability to navigate in the dark, the ability to quickly absorb and remember complex instructions. In the dark, he could disassemble and assemble a Mauser rifle in 3 minutes 45 seconds. Mercader did not admit that he was a Soviet intelligence agent. After 20 years in prison, he was released and became a secret Hero of the Soviet Union.
In 1961-1974 he worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU (IML).
I spoke with veterans - employees of the archive of the former IML, who met with Mercader. He is remembered as an elegant man with beautiful eyes. He immediately recognized a foreigner. They did not notice the complacency on the face of Lopez (that was his official name) and the constant presence of his Hero star. He was modest and charming, but a man of few words. He said that the Hero was given to him for military merits, he put on a star for official events or to help friends in purchasing tickets to the theater or to a concert.
And he resolutely asked the main Soviet ideologist Mikhail Suslov to release comrades-in-arms Sudoplatov and Eitingon from prison. Under Khrushchev, they were condemned as Beria's people. Suslov was indignant and rudely replied: "Don't poke your nose into other people's business." Mercader was a man of strong endurance, but still offended.
In the mid 70s by invitation Fidel Castro he went to Cuba. He worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, died of cancer in 1978. According to his will, he was buried in the USSR. Shortly before his death, Ramon Mercader said: "If I had to live the forties again, I would do everything I did."
Mexico. 1940 In the operation for the physical destruction of the prominent politician Leon Trotsky, which was carefully and painstakingly prepared at least three years before its implementation, participated large group carefully selected people, among whom there were many Spaniards, which had its own explanation. Trotsky lived in Mexico from the beginning of 1937. For the action against him, people were needed who spoke Spanish well, whose appearance would not arouse the suspicions of the police. For this role, the Spanish Republicans were well suited, who from the end of 1938 began to arrive in Mexico in exile, as the war in Spain was coming to an end. Many Spanish communists then perceived the Trotskyists and their leader as a worse enemy than even the fascists - in their eyes they were traitors to a holy and just cause. The Spanish Trotskyist Party, which was part of the Fourth International, together with the anarchists, raised an uprising deep in the rear of the Republican army in Barcelona. Just at that time, parts of the Spanish Republican army, including those commanded by the Mexicans, fought intense battles with the enemy on the fronts. The Trotskyist putsch cost the Republicans 5,000 dead in Barcelona alone, and over 30,000 fighters were deployed there to suppress the rebellion. And soon the foreigners were ordered to leave Spain ... Trotsky turned his house in Mexico into a real fortress. Each exit from the house was extremely difficult, Trotsky was forced to hide almost at the bottom of the car so that passers-by could not see him and could not recognize him. Trotsky's entourage had long noticed that around the house more and more people began to appear strangers . At one time, a real observation post appeared near one of the neighboring houses. Some people seemed to be digging something, but it soon became clear that this was an imitation of activity, because each new shift was not so much working as looking at Trotsky's house, who was entering, who was leaving, when, etc. There was no doubt that these were NKVD officers who were forced to leave Spain after the defeat. Security and secretaries increasingly noticed people, cars that slowly passed or drove past Trotsky's house, carefully examining the mansion. At the request of the politician, the authorities in Mexico City have increased the police protection of the mansion. The letter received by Trotsky from an unknown person about a conspiracy against him dates back to this time. Under the surveillance of secret agents were many close supporters of Trotsky. On May 24, 1940, another assassination attempt was made on Trotsky. More than two dozen people in police and army uniforms and with weapons (there was even a machine gun) suddenly drove up and instantly disarmed the guards. Robert Sheldon Hart, who was standing at the gate, at the request of the "major" immediately opened the gate. The people who burst in disarmed the internal guards, while opening furious fire on the windows and doors of Trotsky's office and bedroom. The machine gun fired in long bursts right into the bedroom window. It seemed incredible that the Trotsky couple survived. The fact is that a small "dead" space formed in the corner, below the window, saved the spouses. And numerous bullets ricocheted into the bed covering them. Fate was kind to them again. The secret police arrived in the morning, led by its chief, Leonardo Sanchez Salazar, with surprise, ascertained that more than 200 bullets were fired at the bedroom, but the inhabitants of the house were not injured. This circumstance soon gave grounds to put forward a version in print. Trotsky organized the assassination attempt in order to compromise Stalin in the eyes of the world community. Moreover, journalists became aware of the words of Trotsky, who miraculously survived, that he said to Salazar that morning: “The attack was carried out by Joseph Stalin with the help of the GPU ... Exactly, Stalin.” June 8, 1940 L.D. Trotsky wrote the article “Stalin’s Mistake”: “It may seem incomprehensible to the uninitiated why the Stalin clique first sent me abroad, and then tries to kill me abroad. Wouldn't it be easier to shoot me in Moscow, like many friends? The explanation is this. In 1928, when I was expelled from the party and exiled to Central Asia, it was still impossible to talk not only about execution, but also about arrest: the generation with which I went through the October Revolution and civil war was still alive. The Politburo felt under siege from all sides. From Central Asia, I had the opportunity to maintain continuous contact with the opposition. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to apply expulsion abroad as a lesser evil. His arguments were: isolated from the USSR, deprived of apparatus and material means, Trotsky would be powerless to do anything. Stalin hoped, moreover, that when he succeeded in completely denigrating me in the eyes of the country, he would be able to easily obtain from the friendly Turkish government my return to Moscow for reprisal. Events have shown, however, that it is possible to participate in political life, having neither the apparatus nor the material means. I was informed that Stalin admitted on several occasions that my deportation abroad was "the greatest mistake." To correct the mistake, there was nothing left but terrorist act... "The famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros took responsibility for the assassination attempt. When he learned about the failure, he exclaimed in his hearts: “All for nothing!” Siqueiros recalled that it never occurred to him that a man like Trotsky would hide under a bed. Siqueiros spent a year in prison, and then was expelled from the country. Years later, he said, "My participation in the attack on Trotsky's house on May 24, 1940 is a crime." “All of us, the participants in the war in Spain, who sought the liquidation of Trotsky’s headquarters in Mexico,” wrote Siqueiros, “understood that our actions would in any case be considered illegal. And we decided to split into several groups so that none of the groups knew about the composition of the others. The group leader had to know only the members of his group, each of the groups had a certain specific task. Our the main objective, or the global task of the entire operation, was as follows: to capture all the documents if possible, but at all costs to avoid bloodshed. We believed that the death of Trotsky or any of his accomplices would not only not stop the development of Trotskyism, but international movement, whose anti-Soviet and anti-communist character has already been clearly defined, but will have the opposite effect. After the turmoil in the fortress subsided, it became clear: Trotsky was doomed. Stalin's order to destroy Trotsky was carried out by a group led by Colonel N. Eitington, who previously headed special part NKVD in Spain (under the pseudonym Kotov). His mistress was the beautiful Spanish communist Caridad Mercader, whose son, Major of the Republican Army Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez, carried out Stalin's order. Ramon's biography is typical for the children of his circle - studying at the Lyceum, the army. In 1935, while in Spain, he participated in the youth movement. He was arrested, but soon released by the Popular Front government that came to power. After his release, Mercader, under the name of the Belgian Jacques Mornard, moved to France. In the summer of 1938 in Paris, Mercader met a US citizen, Russian by birth, Sylvia Angelova-Maslova, an ardent Trotskyite. She was carried away by him and soon introduced Mercade-ra sister, Trotsky's secretary, who traveled between Paris and Mexico City. The young man's appearance and impeccable manners made a great impression on her sister. In February 1939, Sylvia returned to the United States. Three or four months later, Mercader arrived there, explaining his arrival by the interests of commerce. But now he was the Canadian Frank Jackson. He explained this metamorphosis to his girlfriend by the need to avoid being drafted to military service. Mercader soon moved to Mexico and summoned Sylvia there. In early 1940, Angelova-Maslova got a job with Trotsky as a secretary. Since Sylvia shared a room at the Montejo Hotel with Ramon, he soon began driving her to work in his elegant Buick. For the first time, Mercader crossed the threshold of Trotsky's house around the end of April 1940, when he took the politician's friends Margarita and Alfred Rosmer to the city on some important business. He helped carry Marguerite's bag into their room and immediately returned to the car. On May 28, on the eve of the departure of the Rosmers, Mercader was invited to dinner at Trotsky's house. He was introduced as a "friend of Sylvia", who would take the Rosmers in his car to the port. At the request of the Rosmers and by order of Trotsky, Mercader was brought into the dining room by the head of the guard of the house, Harold Robins. Under various pretexts, Mercader began to appear in the politician's house. According to the notes of Trotsky's secretaries in the log of visits to the villa, he visited there 12 times. The total amount of time he spent at the villa was also calculated: 4 hours 12 minutes. 12 days before the assassination attempt, Mercader again spoke with Trotsky. Moreover, the record time for all visits is about an hour. And for the first time, alone. Despite the heat, he had a raincoat in his hands. The formal reason for the visit was a request to Trotsky to edit an article that criticized the American Trotskyists M. Shachtman and J. Bernheim for apostasy from the "movement". In the office of the owner of the villa, Mercader sat behind Trotsky, who was reading his article. Trotsky especially disliked this; about which he told his wife that same evening. In general, this whole idea with the article and the visit put Trotsky on his guard. But no precautions were taken... August 20 Mercader again came to Trotsky. The guest was again with a cloak on his arm and a hat. Trotsky led him into his office. From the testimony of Mercader at the trial: “I put my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to take out the ice pick that was in my pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself to me. At the moment when Trotsky began to read the article that served me as a pretext, I pulled an ice pick from my raincoat, squeezed it in my hand and, closing my eyes, inflicted terrible blow on the head ... Trotsky uttered a cry that I will never forget in my life. It was a very long “aa-a-a-ah”, infinitely long, and it seems to me that this cry is still piercing my brain. Trotsky jumped up impetuously, rushed at me and bit my hand. Look: you can still see the marks of his teeth. I pushed him away and he fell to the floor. Then he got up and, stumbling, ran out of the room ... ”From Sedova’s book“ So it was ”:“ ... As soon as 3-4 minutes had elapsed, I heard a terrible, amazing scream ... Without realizing whose cry it was, I rushed at him ... standing Lev Davidovich ... with a bloody face and bright blue eyes without glasses and lowered hands ... "The house began to turmoil. The guards, led by Robins, grabbed Mercader and began to beat him. Finally, the bloody killer screamed, “I should have done it! They're holding my mother! I was forced to! Kill immediately or stop hitting!" After the assassination attempt, Trotsky lived in the hospital for 26 hours. Doctors tried to do everything possible and impossible to save him, although it was clear that the stroke hit the vital centers of the brain. Two hours after the assassination attempt, Trotsky fell into a coma. * Trotsky's funeral turned into a gigantic anti-Stalinist demonstration. Shortly after the funeral, at a meeting of the leaders of the American section of the Fourth International, it was decided to erect an obelisk on Trotsky's grave. Three and a half months later, Natalya Ivanovna Sedova wrote to General Lazaro Cardenas, President of the Republic: “... You have extended the life of Leon Trotsky by 43 months. Gratitude to you for these 43 months will remain in my heart ... ”The conspirators managed to escape, except for Mercader. The car with a running engine, which was standing at a distance from Trotsky's house, as soon as the bustle began near the gate and the alarm roared, took off and disappeared around the nearest turn. Eitington, Mercader's mother, Caridad, and several other persons providing the operation on the same day different ways got out of Mexico City. Eitington and Caridad waited out their search in California. They were waiting for orders from Moscow. A day later, from radio messages, they learned that the strike had reached its goal. Eitington was afraid that the impulsive Caridad, who had lost her son, might break loose and do something stupid. A month later, Moscow reported through its special channels: thank you for completing the task, through those who remained in Mexico City, establish the state of the “patient” and find out how you can help him. After solving this auxiliary problem, they were allowed to return. In May 1941, a month before the start of the war, Eitington and Caridad returned to Moscow via China. In 1941, before the start of the war, Kalinin presented her with the Order of Lenin. In 1944 she left for France. | She died in Paris at the age of eighty-two under a portrait of Stalin. Eitington was promoted to the rank of general, and in 1953 he ended up in Stalin's camps. For many years of investigation and trial, Mercader claimed that he had no accomplices ... The agents of the secret police, led by General Sanchez Salazar, who arrived at the crime scene, found several pages of typewritten text in the pocket of Mercader's raincoat. Below them were the killer's signature and the date 08/20/1940. In the materials of the investigation, this text appeared under the title "Jackson-Mornar's letter." It details the motives for the murder. They boiled down to three points: disappointment in Trotsky as a "great proletarian revolutionary"; Mercader's protest against Trotsky's attempts to recruit him to be sent to the USSR to commit terrorist and sabotage acts; Trotsky's objections to Mercader's marriage to Angelova. This set of motives for the murder, in various combinations, with various variations of details, was then repeated by Mercader during the investigation, which took place three years later in the Mexico City court, and also published during the trial in his article "Why I killed Trotsky." A Mexican court sentenced Mercader to 20 years in prison, the maximum penalty under Mexican law. During the first year and a half of his stay in prison, he was often beaten, trying to find out who he really was. For five years he was kept in solitary confinement without windows. After serving the entire term, Mercader was released from prison in 1960. With his wife, Raquel Mendoza, an Indian, whom he married in prison, ended up in Cuba. I went to Prague, then to the Soviet Union. In 1961 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was one of the authors of the history of the Spanish communist party. Last years Mercader spent his life in Cuba. He died in 1978, at his request, the ashes were buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo cemetery. In 1987, a granite slab appeared on the grave, on which was engraved in gold letters: "Lopez Ramon Ivanovich, Hero of the Soviet Union."
