The Youth of the Leader: Leon Trotsky’s Private Life (According to Archival Materials)

• Main Author: Yulia Zorakhovna Kantor
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural Federal University Press 2017-10-01
• Series: Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки
• Subjects: марксизм; Бронштейн; Соколовская; венчание; арест; ссылка; дочери; побег; эмиграция; революция.
• Online Access: https://journals.urfu.ru/index.php/Izvestia2/article/view/2608

This article is based on unpublished documents from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and is devoted to Leon Trotsky’s pre-revolutionary period of life. The author focuses on Trotsky’s personality development and dominant character traits, and his relationship with his family. By analysing archival primary sources, not only can we restore the gaps in the biography of one of the most influential and successful figures of the Russian revolutionary movement but follow his “first steps” of psychosocial transformation from a sentimental Marxist romantic into a cruel and cynical Bolshevik leader. The article draws attention to the causes of the complication of Trotsky’s (then Leiba Bronstein’s) relationship with his parents, and illustrates the height of his romance with his future wife Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. The article includes fragments of letters the young Marxist wrote in prison. Attention is also paid to the history of his escape from exile (with reference to gendarmerie correspondence) and the motivation of his conscious choice between family and political activity. Referring to archival documents (the Petrograd security department), the author reconstructs the “steps” of the political maturation and radicalisation of Trotsky’s views between 1902 and 1907. Archival sources, identified by the author, in conjunction with previously published materials, make it possible to supplement the psychological portrait of Trotsky as the father of two daughters who were born in Siberian exile and grew up during his emigration, and were “obscured” for their father by his ideas of a revolutionary coup.