transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Stalin vs. Trotsky. Whoever wins, we lose. This is a battle for control of global revolution, for control of the Soviet Union. The winner becomes one of the most influential figures in modern history. The loser, well, winds up dead. His line wiped out. We got Trotsky, a revolutionary, electrifying, a commander of men. He helped orchestrate the Bolshevik Revolution. He led the Red Army to victory in the brutal Russian Civil War. He dreamed of spreading revolution across the world. But that brilliance provoked jealousy, hatred, enmity, and he was unlucky enough to draw the rage of one Joseph Stalin. He ended up exiled, hunted across continents. Trotsky's life became a deadly game of sex, betrayal, and survival. From the streets of Petrograd to the sun-soaked shores of Mexico, this story is one of ambition, ideology, farce, honey traps, and relentless danger. In this episode, we're going to follow every twist of our extraordinary journey, from the revolutions of the early 20th century to the shocking events of his assassination itself. Spoiler alert, sorry. For all this, I'm joined by Josh Ireland. He's just written a fantastic book, The Death of Trotsky, the true story of the plot to kill Stalin's greatest enemy. Josh, thanks for coming on. This is a crazy story.

Speaker 2:
[01:17] I'm delighted to be here. I think it's one of the most amazing stories of the 20th century because it is one of those stories where everyone knows a few details about it. You know that Trotsky dies in Mexico. You know it's an ice axe, but you don't know why he's in Mexico. You don't know who's wielding the ice axe. We all know who killed Julius Caesar or we all know who killed JFK. The thing I was fascinated by was how did Trotsky get to Mexico and who's the man wielding the axe that day in August 1940.

Speaker 1:
[01:45] Well, you're going to tell us right now. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2:
[01:47] Brilliant.

Speaker 1:
[01:53] Josh, good to see you.

Speaker 2:
[01:53] I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 1:
[01:55] Tell me about Trotsky. Where was he? In the mighty Russian Empire, where was he born?

Speaker 2:
[01:59] So he's kind of comes from the edges of the Russian Empire.

Speaker 1:
[02:02] Another one, interesting. Like Stalin.

Speaker 2:
[02:04] Like Stalin. So there is a kind of weird, I mean, obviously they go on to develop this like fierce, vicious rivalry, but you can see quite a lot of similarities. They're both bright boys who come from the edges of what was once the Russian Empire. So in Trotsky's case, he comes from what is now Ukraine, and Stalin is from Georgia. And both of them come from quite humble, provincial families, both of them from illiterate families. So Trotsky's father was a farmer, and Stalin's was a sort of alcoholic boot maker. So there isn't any sign that they will go on to become the sorts of people that will sort of grab the 20th century by the scruff of the neck and sort of shake it. But I think there's two things about them, both of them incredibly bright, both of them incredibly ambitious, but also when they're young, both of them get seized by a sort of overwhelming passion for world revolution.

Speaker 1:
[02:59] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[03:00] In a way that I don't think we can quite understand that the sort of force with which it hits them.

Speaker 1:
[03:04] It's in the air.

Speaker 2:
[03:04] It's in the air, but I think there are some people for whom it hits more, it lands more, more securely and it drives them and it pushes them and it pushes them and pushes them.

Speaker 1:
[03:14] But I guess it would do, because if they're hyper-intelligent, they're in a system, they're in the Russian Empire where people like them really aren't going to get on.

Speaker 2:
[03:21] I mean, Trotsky is Jewish, which I think for him wasn't particularly significant. He was a believer in communism, but he sort of shrugged off his past when he became Trotsky rather than Leon Bronstein. But it was also something that marked him in the eyes of almost everyone he met when he was younger. There were quotas when he was younger at school for how many Jewish kids could go to the local school. And it would also become an anti-Semitic trope in the way that he was talked about later.

Speaker 1:
[03:51] So he's in the Russian Empire, but he's Ukrainian, he's Jewish and he's poor. So of course he wants to rip the system up.

Speaker 2:
[03:57] Well, I think so. And I think also, I think the thing that we can't understand from our perspective in a kind of liberal democracy is the excitement of it all and the power and the importance of it. It's so distant from our fairly lukewarm relationship with politics. And even now, when we sort of talk about things being overheated and being tribal, it still doesn't even come close to the passion and the devotion they felt. I mean, lots of people have compared them to sort of early Christians because it's not just the passion, but it's also this belief that paradise is so close. All you need to do is push a little bit more to get paradise. But what marks them apart from Christians is that whereas Christians believe in peace and generosity and forgiveness, the Bolsheviks were sort of addicted to ruthlessness and violence because that's what they felt was necessary to achieve the thing that they had dreamed of.

Speaker 1:
[04:55] Just one more push and we're going to bring about the biggest change in human relations.

Speaker 2:
[04:58] I think that's something that always, yeah, exactly. It's just one more push, one more push.

Speaker 1:
[05:01] And where does the communist, where does he start? Does he get to high school? Does he go to university? Where does it, he's not one of these kids that goes to university and goes all liberal, is he?

Speaker 2:
[05:10] No, it's early on. And to begin with, I think he's just a sort of, the thing about Trotsky is he's so bright that he also is desperate for everyone to know how bright he is. So he's admirable in many ways, but also I imagine insufferable. But at some point he meets a woman who is a communist. And to begin with, he's skeptical of what she's telling him. And then at some point it just flips. And that is his damascene moment. He marries this woman, but more than that, he marries this faith.

Speaker 1:
[05:44] And so it's a heady combination. You're in love.

Speaker 2:
[05:47] You're in love.

Speaker 1:
[05:48] You're together. You're newly married.

Speaker 2:
[05:51] And also just the excitement of the thought of being a revolutionary. I mean, that's the other thing that Trotsky realizes is when he's in his early 20s is not just that he's fired by this passion, but also that he has an incredible gift for speaking, that he can stand up in front of thousands of people and sway them. He can persuade people. He can rise them to the pitches of fury. And all of this comes to a head in 1905, when Russia experiences the first of its revolutions in the 20th century. And suddenly Trotsky, this sort of tiny figure from the provinces, like this dandy who's never worked a day in his life, who doesn't know what it's like to work in a factory.

Speaker 1:
[06:29] I'm thinking of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent. It's so glamorous, but sordid to do with... Anyways, is it fascinating?

Speaker 2:
[06:36] There is something very Conradian about all of these people, because that's the world that Conrad builds in the Secret Agent, of slightly shabby rooms and plotting and the smell of sulphur, and the sordidness, but also that lives alongside idealism and excitement.

Speaker 1:
[06:53] There's a sordidness, but a bit of a romance to it, but an excitement. Yeah, a bit of a damp room, so yeah.

Speaker 2:
[06:58] And so he suddenly becomes a central figure in this revolution. This first sort of sign that the rule of the tsars, which has lasted just over 500 years, the Romanov family have ruled Russia. There have been one or two attempts to sort of unseat them, but never particularly serious. And then this is the first rumble of something. And in one sense, the revolution is a failure, because the Romanovs, at the end of it, the Romanovs are still in power. They give some sort of limited concessions. And people like Trotsky and other revolutionaries are sent into exile in Siberia, like the classic Russian story.

Speaker 1:
[07:35] I'm sorry, had he got himself to St. Petersburg? Was he addressing crowds now in the centre of the empire?

Speaker 2:
[07:40] Yeah, right in the centre of the empire. He's suddenly there on a stage, just talking. And he's a really striking figure. People have always remarked on his dandyness, dandyishness. He would wear beautiful white linen suits. He had this sort of sweep of black hair that sort of swept back from his head. These tiny little pounds and airs. And then these glittering eyes that were sort of hypnotic, apparently.

Speaker 1:
[08:06] And this is a revolution of social media. It's spoken word. So it's commanding the street with your voice.

Speaker 2:
[08:14] Yeah, exactly. And I think this is the root of his power. But later, I think his understanding of how you build power and hold on to power is formed in this time. But it will also later prove to be quite an outmoded way of seizing and holding on to power.

Speaker 1:
[08:32] So he's in Siberia.

Speaker 2:
[08:33] Siberia. And then he decides, along with his wife, that he should escape Siberia. So he puts on a disguise and then finds his way. He then hops onto a carriage and then finds his way out of Siberia.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] Well done him. That's not easy.

Speaker 2:
[08:49] Incredibly good. Sort of bad for the wife and two children he's behind.

Speaker 1:
[08:52] Oh, she's not coming with him.

Speaker 2:
[08:54] They don't come with them.

Speaker 1:
[08:55] For the revolution, darling.

Speaker 2:
[08:56] Exactly. This is the first sign that these are people that could justify anything to themselves and to anyone else in the name of what they're doing. And so he leaves his wife and two daughters, who he will barely see again for the rest of their lives, and then begins a sort of peregrination across Europe. And one very significant meeting he has during this period is with Lenin, who is the leader of the Social Democratic Party in Russia.

Speaker 1:
[09:24] But he's not in Russia, though. He's what?

Speaker 2:
[09:26] They meet in London for the first time. So all of them are in exile, either in Siberia or sort of dotted around Europe. So over the next 10 years, Trotsky will be in Paris, where he meets his second life partner. He refers to her as wife, but they never marry. He's in Vienna. I mean, this is an extraordinary time.

Speaker 1:
[09:47] Endless smoke-filled rooms.

Speaker 2:
[09:49] Yes, smoke-filled rooms, they're poverty-stricken. They're printing newspapers, they're writing screeds.

Speaker 1:
[09:55] They're pretty hopeless because the Russian Empire actually seems to have sort of bounced back. You know, there's industrialisation.

Speaker 2:
[10:00] Slowly, there's a man called Stolypin, who seems to be writing the foundations of the Empire. And I think that the thing they all are trying to reconcile is that they are Marxists. So they have absorbed everything that Karl Marxists had, the sort of iron laws of the world. So they think revolution is going to happen, and they think it's going to come from the working classes. And it's only a matter of time. But until it happens, they have to wait. And what they do while they wait is really is write articles, smoke, argue, read.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] Warm an ice.

Speaker 2:
[10:36] I mean, Trotsky, so we'll get on to it. Trotsky meets his new partner. I think the odd thing about Trotsky is he sort of, like all interesting people, like a man of deep contrasts. He's a man who believes in this beautiful future where people are liberated to be creative and make beautiful art, but also thinks that if you're going to have a revolution, it has to be drenched in blood. He's the sort of person that gets incredibly cross when people swear in front of children or tell like rude stories in front of children or women. But at the same time, I think he does have an eye for women. I mean, this will become a feature later in his story.

Speaker 1:
[11:23] And then, so these guys are sort of living this Conradian existence in Europe, and then the First World War breaks out. And we do not have to get into the First World War on this podcast, so people can find other podcasts on this feed that will do that, but it just shatters, just smashes everything to bits. And suddenly everything's up for grabs.

Speaker 2:
[11:40] It's a disaster for the Russian Empire. It's been badly led for decades by a weak, indecisive incompetence, our Nicholas II, and eventually, after sort of the death of millions, a wasteful death of millions, and the collapse of the economy in 1917, there's a revolution. And it's not the revolution that Bolsheviks expected. And in fact, they're all so surprised by it, that none of them are in Russia. Lenin is in Switzerland, Trotsky is in the United States, and so all of them are desperate to get there. So Lenin is famously taken in the train by the Germans.

Speaker 1:
[12:15] Yeah, the German Empire, one of the most extraordinary own goals in history. The German Empire put Lenin on a sealed train. I think he does actually stop to go to the Louvre. But anyway, and they whiz him through the German Empire and inject him like a virus.

Speaker 2:
[12:27] I mean, it's so, it's so virus-like. It's so kind of, this is a basilisk we're going to drop into the empire.

Speaker 1:
[12:32] Just push it into the Russian Empire. And he arrives and gives a barnstorming speech in St. Petersburg, and they're off.

Speaker 2:
[12:38] Well, they kind of are, and they aren't. Because then quite quickly, Lenin has to go to Finland to avoid arrest. So there is this brief window of a liberal, free, sort of near democracy in Russia. And it looks like maybe Russia is going to have a sort of different future, and then maybe it's going to resemble, it's neighbors like, no, well, not neighbors, it's continental neighbors. But what happens is that Trotsky arrives, and so does Stalin. And the Bolsheviks, so Trotsky has been on the edge of this movement for quite a long time. About 10 years previously, there's this vicious, vicious dispute over the kind of detail which now seems like impossibly remote and tiny, but it was about what the ideal revolutionary strategy should be, whether it should be as a sort of small cadre of elite revolutionaries or a sort of wider, a wider attempt to engage the population. So anyway, Lenin and his followers within the party became a group called the Bolsheviks, and they supported this idea of a tiny elite. Trotsky wasn't entirely in one party or the next, but he was broadly aligned with the Menshviks, who were the sort of smaller group. But the excitement, the possibility, this suddenly this thing that fate has handed them, they're all able to even at least temporarily to put aside these differences, because this is the moment, this is the thing they've been waiting for. It's not the revolution they expected, but it's a revolution.

Speaker 1:
[14:06] And they'll take it.

Speaker 2:
[14:07] It's like there's been a sort of chasm, and then they can suddenly see into a different future. And so they begin plotting, they begin, and this is one of Trotsky's other great guests. He's an incredible organizer. He knows how to set up a coup.

Speaker 1:
[14:18] And we don't want to get off topic here, but this is one of those really interesting examples of the impact a small group of very well-organized people can have.

Speaker 2:
[14:25] Yeah, and determined, completely determined, completely ruthless.

Speaker 1:
[14:28] There was no gigantic popular movement in Russia for communism Bolshevism at that time.

Speaker 2:
[14:34] Yeah, people in Vadovostok weren't saying, I like that Lenin, I think we should give him a chance. No one knew who these people were. These were incredibly obscure figures. They were, I mean, it would be as if, you know, we woke up tomorrow and a Marxist sect had sort of had stormed into Downing Street and we're now in charge. And it's, now knowing what we know, it's difficult to sort of applaud it because what follows is the death of millions, but it's an incredible feat of astonishingly effective confidence. But it's because they know this is their one chance. This is the one moment they will get when everything, there is chaos, when nobody is sure what to do next, when everybody in the country is unhappy, where if you are just confident enough, if you're bold enough, you can.

Speaker 1:
[15:16] It's all up for grabs.

Speaker 2:
[15:17] It's all up for grabs. So this is what they do. They form a government, you know, there's a coup.

Speaker 1:
[15:22] And Trotsky is part of this.

Speaker 2:
[15:24] Trotsky is absolutely essential.

Speaker 1:
[15:25] A key organizer.

Speaker 2:
[15:26] You can't imagine that revolution without Trotsky, I don't think. And obviously, this will all be rewritten later because for Stalin, the idea that Trotsky could ever have played a positive role in it.

Speaker 1:
[15:36] But you've peeled back the layers of propaganda you've got to the truth here. So we've got Lenin in charge, Trotsky's what organizing, getting everyone ready, right, we're going to storm this building on that day, here we go, some weapons, these people are reliable. Okay, fine.

Speaker 2:
[15:48] And what's sort of weird is it's quite a bloodless coup. I mean, what their instinct is right, that actually this is a sort of house of cards that you just need to give a tiny push to. And suddenly everyone wakes up and this has happened, that there is this group of, in the eyes of many, maniacs who are in charge of the country.

Speaker 1:
[16:08] They've stormed the former Imperial Palace in St. Petersburg, they've got the key buildings, they move on to Moscow and that's it. They've got the sort of cerebral cortex of the state.

Speaker 2:
[16:18] Exactly, that's a really good way of putting it. And then it's only later that there's a sort of belated reaction to it. And this is sort of Trotsky's second great moment. So Russia descends into like absurdly brutal civil wars. The kind of thing, it's a kind of real prefiguring of the sort of bloodiness and the viciousness and the brutality that will follow in the rest later in the 20th century. It's the kind of war where people are being, prisoners are being skinned alive, where people are boiled to death, where there are massacres and it's terrible and it's vicious and for a while it looks as if the counter revolutionary forces, who are known as the White Armies, are going to seize power again, that the Bolsheviks are going to fall. And this is where Trotsky is appointed leader of the Red Army.

Speaker 1:
[17:02] And he's got no military experience.

Speaker 2:
[17:04] There's no military background. Again, it's like putting a podcaster in charge of.

Speaker 1:
[17:07] Well, hang on, hang on lads, wait a sec.

Speaker 2:
[17:10] It's like, he's an incredibly good speaker, you know, a talented person.

Speaker 1:
[17:14] Oh, hang on.

Speaker 2:
[17:15] Charismatic, but, you know, I don't-

Speaker 1:
[17:17] Very good at math, so. That's fine.

Speaker 2:
[17:20] But, you know, wouldn't know how to load a rifle, I'm pretty sure. But takes to it with aplomb, you know, he wears, he kind of, he embraces the look, which is, you know, you wear cool, long leather suits. You have this huge armored train, which kind of careers around the country and you descend upon particular areas and you give out, you know, revolvers to people who thought, well, you shoot the people who've, you know, taken a single step backwards. And it's a kind of combination of this bravado and sheer force of will, which helps the Bolsheviks eventually. And it takes years from it. I think it's not until the mid, the early 20s that this war is finally won, that finally they have, they feel as if they have a handle on this huge, huge country because the problem they had is that Marxist theory says that there is various stages of a state's development. And it's only when the working class could have achieved what they described as political consciousness that a revolution had take place. But Russia is this enormous country that's almost entirely populated by peasant farmers. They're not the working classes that-

Speaker 1:
[18:34] Of Manchester.

Speaker 2:
[18:35] Exactly. There is no proletariat really whose loyalty they can rely on. So they have to impose their will on this massive country.

Speaker 1:
[18:44] It's sort of reconquer the Russian Empire again.

Speaker 2:
[18:48] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[18:49] And so Trotsky's riding high. They've won the war. Lenin's in shy. He's maintaining relations with Lenin.

Speaker 2:
[18:56] Yeah, there's always a certain distance between the two. Trotsky will later try and present a picture of how close and intimate they were. But they had spent most of the previous decade exchanging vicious letters and throwing insults at each other. And they're both strong-willed, egotistical, ambitious figures who have very strong ideas about how the world should be organized.

Speaker 1:
[19:23] But Lenin has the good judgment to give him the top job.

Speaker 2:
[19:26] Yeah, Lenin is, I mean, amidst a sort of cast of incredibly ruthless people, Lenin is very good at understanding what a situation needs and who is best equipped to deal with that situation. But Lenin is also ailing. He's been sick, he's had strokes. There's been a failed assassination attempt, which has left him incredibly weak. So what Trotsky and all the Bolsheviks know is that Lenin's time on this planet is numbered. At some point, there's going to be a succession struggle. And this is where the rivalry that has already existed, that already exists between Trotsky and Stalin begins to become sharpened and fiercer, because they know that both of them are prime candidates to... Well, Trotsky certainly sees himself as a prime candidate and most of the world would agree with him.

Speaker 1:
[20:17] Assume that he was the heir apparent.

Speaker 2:
[20:18] So what Trotsky will do later is he will present a vision of Stalin as what he describes him as a graybler, as a kind of mediocrity, a bureaucratic mediocrity who somehow accidentally became powerful, who stumbled into the top job in the Soviet Union, which is half true in so much as Stalin wasn't as charismatic as...

Speaker 1:
[20:41] A little bit Vladimir Putin-y, weirdly, sort of.

Speaker 2:
[20:44] Yeah, I mean, there were similarities. There was, I mean, both have a kind of a weird obsessive interest in Russian history and a kind of... So I think there was this very diff... Stalin and Trotsky have very different personalities. They have a kind of physical loathing for each other, because whereas Trotsky is a kind of cosmopolitan who's lived in Vienna, you know, who knows about psychoanalysis, who writes literary criticism, who has an interest in science and things like that. So Stalin is a big reader, and is by most definition an intellectual, but he doesn't speak much. He's this sort of strange short figure with a limp and pockmarked cheeks. You know, Trotsky would sort of denigrate him as a coarse provincial. He doesn't talk when he doesn't need to talk, but he's always planning, he's always thinking. And this is kind of where their understanding of what power is in the 20th century is significant, because for Trotsky, it's being able to deliver a sort of sparkling speech, inspire people, and then that's how you get people to follow you. Whereas what Stalin understands is that, you know, actually you acquire power by forming alliances, by...

Speaker 1:
[21:57] Sitting on the committees.

Speaker 2:
[21:58] By sitting on committees, by sort of stockpiling bureaucratic power so that you have the right to appoint editors in newspapers or, you know, the minor functionaries in some city far outside Moscow. Like that's where real power lies.

Speaker 1:
[22:15] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[22:16] And also by being able to sort of negotiate, you know, different personalities, different people's ambitions. Because what Stalin also is incredibly good at is understanding where people's weaknesses lie. You know, he's one of the people that can read a human being instantly and know what they want and what they need, but also how you can take advantage of them.

Speaker 1:
[22:37] So that's so interesting. So Trotsky is a believer. You go out, you give a banshee, you win over the Senate, you win over the parliament, you win over the streets. That's the job done. Stalin's using this sort of 20th century massive state bureaucracy and pulling levers. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:50] So although, you know, if you were to ask someone in London or Paris or Washington, who is the most significant figure in Bolshevik Russia after Lenin, if you'd ask that question in, say, 1922, they would have said Trotsky. Because they haven't seen what Stalin is doing. No one can see what Stalin is doing, at least of all Trotsky. And if he does see, he doesn't rate it. He doesn't understand it.

Speaker 1:
[23:13] This guy, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[23:14] So events begin to move quickly. So Lenin's health deteriorates further and further. And in 1924, he finally dies. And this is one of the key moments in the Trotsky-Stalin rivalry because he's sickly. He often falls victim to these mysterious illnesses that sort of seem to afflict him when the moment's of greatest strength. And so when Lenin dies, he's in the Caucasus recovering. And then there's a kind of myth about this. So some people, for a long time, I think there was a belief that Stalin deliberately told Trotsky the incorrect date for Lenin's funeral, so that Trotsky would be too late to arrive. But it seems now that Trotsky actually did know what the right funeral was. The right day of the funeral was, but just didn't think it was important to attend. And this was kind of significant mostly because one of the kind of key plank in Stalin's strategy was to identify himself incredibly closely with Lenin and Lenin's legacy.

Speaker 1:
[24:15] Yeah, it's like Mark Antony, go out and give the big speech after Caesar's gone, man.

Speaker 2:
[24:18] So you present yourself as the guardian of Lenin's. The person that is loved or at least respected across the empire, you present yourself as being the only person that could protect his legacy. And by contrast, you say that Trotsky, he's a strange person who spent too much time in Europe. He has strange ideas. He doesn't turn up to the funeral. He wants to change things, but I'm going to keep things the same. You don't trust him.

Speaker 1:
[24:48] It's funny on him being ill, whether it's hypercontroversial, but the more I think about history, I think sometimes, yes, leaders got to be lucky. I think also you could have the resilience of a bull elephant. Yeah, I mean, that's what we underestimated, because the water is bad, food is bad, and people are sick all the time. Also, I couldn't be a leader. I wouldn't sleep at night. I'd come out in hives. These people have got to have the ability to barrel through Christ.

Speaker 2:
[25:11] Well, look at Churchill in the Second World War. They're sort of small, on the face of it, frail figure, but who works phenomenal hours and doesn't ever stop. I mean, I wouldn't have lasted until sort of June 1940.

Speaker 1:
[25:23] Yeah. So okay, so Trotsky, he's in trouble now. He's in trouble at this point.

Speaker 2:
[25:27] Yeah. So I think, I remember when I was at school, it was sort of presented as a contest between Stalin and Trotsky that somehow Stalin won. But actually, I think the more you look at it, the more you realise it's like they both started playing a game, but by the time the whistle's been blown, Stalin's already sort of bought the referee, he's actually changed the rules of the game. He's got sort of 20 players on his team and Trotsky only has one player on his team. It wasn't a contest. He was so comprehensively, so quickly, so ruthlessly out of the game.

Speaker 1:
[26:04] So it wasn't even a contest.

Speaker 2:
[26:05] Yeah. And I think he was bewildered by the speed with which that happened.

Speaker 1:
[26:08] How funny. He hasn't done all the hard work, he hasn't built a power base. He just delivers the barnstorming speeches and goes on.

Speaker 2:
[26:14] There's this weird thing about Trotsky, completely indifferent to other human beings. There's one of his closest friends writes a memoir later on where he says, I realized that after two decades of friendship, he'd never asked me a single question about myself. He had no interest in me. He barely knew what my name was. Whereas Stalin, though we later learned that he's one of the great monsters of history, was this paradoxical thing of someone who understood how to, he remembered people's birthdays, he bought presents for my function.

Speaker 1:
[26:45] He charmed the pants of the British Americans during the war.

Speaker 2:
[26:47] Yeah, he's incredibly clever at that sort of thing. Obviously, he will then turn against them. But when he needs people, he knows what he needs to do to give them. He knows what they want. He knows that this person will want a promotion, this person wants a nice flat near the Kremlin. He's very good at that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1:
[27:06] Right, and Trotsky's nowhere. That's so fascinating. And when does Trotsky find out that he's been titling out Medieval? So currently, he has a job title. Is he still in charge of the army?

Speaker 2:
[27:15] No, he resigns from that. And this is the thing. Lenin even offered him the chance to be his nominal second commander in the party, and he didn't take it. So he takes a succession of slightly less important jobs, and then becomes a minister without a portfolio in the time period.

Speaker 1:
[27:37] So Stalin keeps him around for a bit?

Speaker 2:
[27:39] Well, I think the thing about Trotsky and Stalin is Trotsky is a really good analog for how confident Stalin feels at any given moment. So at the beginning, because Trotsky is the much more famous figure, the person whose photo is still in party offices far, far, far near South Korea, he can't move against him publicly. He can start to chip away at his reputation, which he does, relentlessly. They start pumping out propaganda against him. Pravda starts writing vicious editorials about him, but he can't actually move against him. He can't do the thing that he will do to people later on without a second thought. So he's very, very cautious about what he does. But it culminates in 1928 when Trotsky is sent into internal exile in Kazakhstan.

Speaker 1:
[28:32] So he actually really does move against him at that point.

Speaker 2:
[28:33] And that's pretty decisive. I think whether Trotsky understands it or not, there's no way back after that.

Speaker 1:
[28:39] Okay. And it's not like Trotsky has to support it. Like he's...

Speaker 2:
[28:43] Well, he has a small group of supporters, but most of them either very quickly understand the drift of things. There is absolutely no value in continuing to argue for Trotsky and to keep believing in him. And also you get nothing back. He never says thank you. He never writes to you to say, well done.

Speaker 1:
[29:04] And he can't give you...

Speaker 2:
[29:05] And he can't give you anything. If you're interested in joining the Politburo or rising up in the party, he's not your person.

Speaker 1:
[29:11] Okay. So he's in Siberia.

Speaker 2:
[29:13] He's in Kazakhstan.

Speaker 1:
[29:14] He's in Kazakhstan.

Speaker 2:
[29:16] For a year. And then that's the beginning that suddenly he realizes that he gets fewer and fewer letters. And the people he does, who also write in to him, are writing to him from places like Siberia, from the Gulag, as it will become. And then in 1929, he is shipped out of Russia. He goes first to Istanbul, a small island called Prinkopo of Istanbul.

Speaker 1:
[29:43] Allegedly for what purpose? Is he just sort of...

Speaker 2:
[29:45] Well, this is exile. This is it. You know, Stalin's sort of growing in confidence, but still doesn't quite feel as if he can assassinate him. Although I think what people say is that the second, the second that the train leaves for Istanbul, Stalin begins to regret that he's let Trotsky escape. Because he's done two things. He's let Trotsky escape, but Trotsky has also taken his archive with him. At the back of his mind, Stalin is absolutely terrified that somewhere in that archive will be some nugget of information which might bring him down. So this is the sort of beginning of his obsession with both killing Trotsky and also destroying his archive. Because he, as I said earlier, I think Trotsky is a good way of understanding how confident or not Stalin feels at any given moment in his power. And although we sort of now know him as being the sort of all conquering leader, right through the 20s into the 30s, his hold on the power was still quite provisional. He was the most important figure within the Soviet Union, but he's still trying to consolidate power. He still is conscious that the mechanisms exist and the personalities exist. Who could shove him out any moment? So he's cautious in a way that he always is.

Speaker 1:
[31:03] And does Trotsky go into opposition? Does he start organizing and writing?

Speaker 2:
[31:09] He does almost instantly. He's in a weird position in that, because his belief in the revolution and the necessity of the revolution and the importance of the revolution remains completely undimmed. He still thinks this is the greatest experiment in mankind's history. So he has to sort of toe this awkward line where he has to be incredibly, he wants to be supportive of the Russian Revolution, which is still under attack from most of the West, at least rhetorically. It's still seen as one of the great threats in Europe. But at the same time, he has to denigrate Stalin and what Stalin is doing and present him as being a failure. He describes him as being the grave digger of the Revolution. So he has to try and sort of nuance his messages. But this is the other thing that Stalin, especially as time goes by and as dissent within the Soviet Union shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and to the point where there is almost no one else presenting any other perspective other than the story that Stalin wants to be told. That Trotsky is one of the only people that is saying something different. And he's also this person who has this lingering aura because of the role he played in 1917, that he has an authority. And I think that is one of the things that Stalin can't bear and sends him into a fury that he will know. He reads everything that, this is the weird thing, he reads everything that Trotsky writes. He's probably one of the only people in the Soviet Union that actually doesn't hear Trotsky's speeches or read his articles because the censorship is so sort of fierce by this point.

Speaker 1:
[32:47] So Trotsky famously ends up in Mexico. Just get him to Mexico for us.

Speaker 2:
[32:51] So he has brief periods of exile in first France, after he leaves Istanbul for France, where, and then Norway. And he's never a happy, he's no one's idea of a good guest. People are always terrified he's there to ferment revolution. So no government really wants him to stay if they can avoid it. But one government that is reasonably friendly towards him is the revolutionary or socialist government of Cárdenas in Mexico, which is enacting huge land reforms. And one of the figures who's quite close to the government is Diego Rivera, the leading muralist in the country, which in Mexico is a huge deal. He's an amazing, incredible painter who has synthesized like 18th century artists like Goya with Aztec heart, and also infused it with his political passion. And part of his political passion is Trotsky. So he helps secure a visa for Trotsky. So Trotsky and his wife get on a boat.

Speaker 1:
[33:53] This is his French wife.

Speaker 2:
[33:54] This is the second wife. Who's not French. She's also Russian. She's Russian. Another passionate revolutionary called Natalia Sidove.

Speaker 1:
[34:01] All right. So we're in Mexico with Trotsky. He's living in a house comfortably with Diego Rivera.

Speaker 2:
[34:08] To begin with, they live in this sort of idyllic home called the Blue House, which was Frida Kahlo's. Frida Kahlo, who is married to Diego Rivera, is her child at home, and it's this kind of oasis with sort of butterflies and beautiful tropical plants. And to begin with, the sort of trauma and terror of what's happening in Russia, which by this point, the terror is in full swing.

Speaker 1:
[34:32] Late 30s.

Speaker 2:
[34:33] Late 30s. So Stalin is relentlessly, mercilessly just eliminating every single one of his enemies, and also anyone who was even close to being an enemy. And specifically, the people he is eliminating are Trotskyists. So if anyone has ever sort of shared a glass of tea with Trotsky, they're dead. If they've ever been on a train with Trotsky, if they've ever been seen speaking with him.

Speaker 1:
[34:57] Okay. Brutal.

Speaker 2:
[34:58] So Trotsky is kind of churned up by the knowledge of what's happening in his own country. He's haunted by ghosts of the people that have either been murdered already, or even worse as far as he sees as sort of have turned on him, kind of recanted and have started his former allies who are now standing up in pulpits, slagging him off. So they kind of, on the one hand, they feel very distant from that. And if this is a weird time where Trotsky begins an affair with Frida Kahlo. So this is, you know, Trotsky, the upright family man, also a man who likes sort of touching people's knees under the table. And Frida Kahlo, you know, one of the most seductive, fascinating figures of the 20th century, who seems to have initiated the affair as a way of taking revenge on her own husband, Diego Rivera, who had been sleeping with her sister.

Speaker 1:
[35:52] Crikey.

Speaker 2:
[35:53] So it's a very sort of febrile atmosphere. Yeah, say that again. And the affair lasts for a while, you know, they sort of, it's kind of high-fast, really. They're exchanging notes, you know, they're talking in English so no one else can understand what they're saying. And then it doesn't last because it can't last. So they leave the Blue House for another home, probably because I imagine it was quite tense, but also because Rivera began as quite a sort of fulsome ally of Trotsky. But he's, you know, you can't rely on muralists if you're trying to build a revenue.

Speaker 1:
[36:28] Two reasonably unreliable people, I mentioned.

Speaker 2:
[36:31] Well, there's a thing like, Trotsky is incredibly right. He's punk-tilius, you know, he's famously the only person that ever turned up on time in the Soviet Union. He allegedly once shot a driver for being late. Don't think that's true, but I think it gives a good sense of who he was and his personality. You know, he likes order, he needs order. And people like Rivera exist in chaos.

Speaker 1:
[36:50] Right, so competitive.

Speaker 2:
[36:51] So they fall out, and Trotsky moves to the house he will die in. And it's chief attraction is it has, it's a kind of compound, you know, like the kind of thing you might see in Afghanistan or something, you know, so there's high walls around it.

Speaker 1:
[37:06] So you're worried about being assassinated?

Speaker 2:
[37:08] I think he knows from the moment he leaves Russia that at some point they're going to catch up. And Stalin has spent the last 10 years trying to organize his assassination. So part of the frustration that feeds, that drives the terror is Stalin's rage, that the thing he wants to be done hasn't been done. It's a kind of medieval king's irrational, why hasn't this, why are we not following my orders? Why are you not doing this? And because he's paranoid, he assumes that it's not incompetent, it's a plot. So one leader after the other of the Secret Service is assassinated.

Speaker 1:
[37:42] It's like being a Defense Against Dark Arch teacher at Hogwarts.

Speaker 2:
[37:45] Exactly. While they fall, they all fall because they're not doing, they're not working hard enough to kill Trotsky. So there are various attempts in Europe to bump him off. None of them come really that close. But what they have done is they've penetrated the Trotskyists. What remains of the Trotskyist organization is so riddled with spies. There's the person who in Paris is Trotsky's son's best friend, who's also feed everything. Every letter that Trotsky sends is read by the NKBD. Every letter he receives, they know where they're going, what they're doing. There's nothing, they can't really move without being watched or being monitored. So the net's getting tighter and tighter, and Trotsky knows he's going to be killed. And the people around him seem much more anxious about this than Trotsky does. I think Trotsky, he's sort of torn between a sort of sense of fatalism, in which he thinks what's going to happen is going to happen. I'm one person. He's perhaps, no, Stalin is this man who controls an empire, but is effectively an empire of millions of people. I can't outrun him forever. But I think what keeps Trotsky going is the thing we've talked about earlier, that passion, that desire for revolution, because although he is in exile, although he has hardly any followers left, hardly any money, he can barely leave the house without because they're so afraid that he, an assassin will be waiting for him. If he gets in a car, he has to bend down and hide behind the seats. He still believes that his time might come again. He has been a revolutionary in exile before, twice.

Speaker 1:
[39:16] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:17] And he's come back both times. So I think there's part of him that believes this. But stuff happens, you know? And when the Second World War begins, this is what he thinks stuff is happening. But all this time, the sort of wheels are turning and the terrorists are still sort of consuming millions or thousands and thousands of Russian lives. But after cycling through sort of various different people who the NKBD want to head up the operation against Trotsky, they sort of finally find two very competent, slightly chilling figures. The most significant of them is a man called Leonid Itingon, who is the link between Stalin and the man that will eventually kill Trotsky.

Speaker 1:
[40:04] And so he will recruit an actual assassin, will he?

Speaker 2:
[40:07] Yeah. Well, so that he is in charge of organizing the attack on Trotsky. And it's a fairly multi-layered effort. And there are parts of it that begin in ways that don't seem particularly significant. And one of the most important ones for this story is a meeting in Spain between Itingon and a family called the Mercaders. So Itingon is out there to help the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, which Stalin is using as a sort of proving ground for some of the methods that they will use, the methods of repression that will be employed later on. He doesn't, you know, Stalin is not a man who lets a sort of war go to waste. And the Mercaders are this fascinating family. They're bourgeois, semi-aristocratic from Barcelona. And their family business falls apart, so they're sort of thrown into poverty. She begins teaching and very quickly gets, I guess we would call radicalized. She's always been this sort of reckless, thrill-seeking personality and very quickly she becomes both a communist and a heroin addict. So the marriage doesn't last very long. She leaves, takes with her the children who were all brought up to sort of imbibe her philosophy. And then when the Civil War comes around, her eldest son Ramón, who's this tall, handsome, charismatic figure, starts fighting. He's part of a sort of communist brigade. And we can't precisely locate the moment when the NKBD recruited him, but there's this extraordinary moment where his younger brother's watching. And it's a cold, snowy day, somewhere in the hills of Russia. And he sees his mother and his brother talking. And every time anyone comes closer to me, they edge away. They edge away as if they've got this incredible secret. And then he said, from that moment on, I understood my brother was working for Los Sovieticos. And so that's when Ramón unwittingly becomes the sort of, he becomes embroiled in this bigger thing. And the Russian, the NKB do what the KGB would later do after the war, and also the FSB, you know, the future iterations of the Russian secret services would do, is they recruit people who they think are useful. They don't know what they're going to, they want them to do, but they just think, well, this person speaks Spanish, that could be useful.

Speaker 1:
[42:38] Tall strapping lad.

Speaker 2:
[42:39] Yeah, and he's, you know, apparently he can strip a rifle in the dark, he's got a photographic memory, he's a great, he can speak several languages, he's very strong, he's very athletic, he's-

Speaker 1:
[42:52] So just keep him on the books.

Speaker 2:
[42:53] He's a good liar, I mean, why not? You know, you don't know what he could be useful for.

Speaker 1:
[42:56] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[42:57] The thing that they decide to use him for is to seduce a young American Trotskyist called Sylvia Agaloff, who's traveling from New York to Paris to observe a sort of Trotskyist meeting called the Fourth International. Actually, the NKVD have got it wrong. They think she's a much more significant figure than she is. They think, I think they've got her confused with one of her sisters, Ruth, who was actually Trotskyist, Trotsky's secretary.

Speaker 1:
[43:25] Oh my goodness, okay.

Speaker 2:
[43:27] And so the family is sort of adjacent to Trotsky, but she is not really part of it. But their plan is that Ramón will seduce her, become her girlfriend or her husband, and then see what happens then. I mean, it's a real pun. They don't know what's going to happen. And it's unclear quite how much they told him and what he's supposed to do and what his brief is. So he has to assume a different personality. He emerges in the Ritz Bar in the summer of 1938, where Sylvia is with one of her friends, who is also an NKVD agent and has been persuaded to bring her to this bar for a chance meeting with this man who approaches them, who introduces himself as Jacques Mournard. He presents himself as being not the committed fanatical communist that he is, but as a sort of feckless Belgian playboy, a sports reporter who has no interest in politics, who just likes girls and fast cars and nice suits. And Sylvia is, you know, she's well traveled. She's an intellectual, but she's, I think, quite naïve, has led in a weird way, quite a sheltered existence. She's sort of swept away by this figure.

Speaker 1:
[44:41] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[44:43] And so swept away that no matter how many times there are sort of funny little hints that something strange is afoot, she never really questions it. And even as they get closer and closer to Trotsky, so they moved to Mexico where Jacques claims to be working for an import-export business. The oldest trick in the book, like the most suspicious job you could have to have.

Speaker 1:
[45:05] Well, but yeah, being a journalist to import-export, two absolutely indefinable jobs.

Speaker 2:
[45:11] They moved to Mexico City where Trotsky already is, and Sylvia, completely unaware of what is happening, makes contact with the Trotskyists out there because she knows them.

Speaker 1:
[45:22] Yeah, I know the Trotskyists.

Speaker 2:
[45:23] Exactly. They think fondly of her. And so she begins to visit the compound. And what Ramón does, which is very, very clever, is he doesn't force himself on the Trotskys. He doesn't seem too keen or too interested. What he does is he has this beautiful car, and he'll drop Sylvia off. And, well, Sylvia's inside chatting to Trotsky or Trotsky's wife or another family who live there. He'll just chat to the guards, or he'll give them cigarettes, or he'll offer to do them little favors. And all the time, what he's doing is he's getting closer and closer and he's earning their trust, and he's observing what's happening. Because at the moment, all he's there is to gather intelligence. He's just a spy at this stage. He's there to see, are there any doors that anyone leaves unlocked? Are there any guards that get drunk when they're supposed to be on watch? And the other thing you need to know is that his mother is still there, his mother is this extraordinary figure in this journey. She's like, you can't have this story without this mad woman, this force of nature who has embroiled her son in this bigger plot. And who may well be having an affair with Leonor Diting, the NKVD agent, who is on one hand like a friendly, charming, kind human being who loves to dance and chat, but is also capable of shooting anyone in cold blood if necessary. So the plot begins to thicken, they get closer and closer to Trotsky. Ramón is beginning to get the respect and also the trust of the people around Trotsky.

Speaker 1:
[46:59] And then he at some stage, presumably, they decide to make him an active assassin rather than just an intelligence gatherer.

Speaker 2:
[47:08] So we're into 1940 now. Ramón is closer and closer to the family. He's met Trotsky for the first time. He does things like he'll take Trotsky's grandson, who's the last surviving member of Trotsky's family, for days out, he'll take Trotsky's wife on shopping trips. No one particularly respects him or is interested in him, because he's this weird, strange guy. He's Sylvia's, you know, nubio boyfriend. They all think he's a bit of an idiot, but a nice idiot. And then in May of 1940, the NKV decide to strike. And what they do is, there's another spy within Trotsky's household, one of his guards, a naive young American college boy. And he is persuaded to open the door to the compound. And when he does so, a sort of force of about 20 men led by another Mexican muralist. There's quite a lot of muralists who are all drunk, who are all over excited, none of whom are particularly trained, but they're wearing Mexican army uniforms. They're all pretending to be Mexican army. And they rush in. Trotsky's asleep. He can't sleep without sleeping pills, so he's knocked out. They smash in, and his wife, Natalia, instantly realizes something terrible, something shocking is happening. And so she grabs Trotsky and they dive under the bed. And there's kind of chaos everywhere. There's bullets. I think they will find later 200 bullets have fired in the household. The walls are kind of shot, you know, turned into sort of lace by the number of shells that are being fired. But miraculously, they kind of sweep in, they sweep out. No one's hurt. Trotsky's grand sign has a sort of small scratch on his ankle where I think a bullet ricocheted and caught him. But they're kind of idiots. They've basically given the job to people who shouldn't have been given the job.

Speaker 1:
[49:01] Crikey. Thoughts and prayers for whoever delivers that news to Stalin. Crikey.

Speaker 2:
[49:07] Stalin obviously incredibly upset. And this is the other sort of strand that runs across the story. So the terror is seems to be in Russia, it seems to be directed almost indiscriminately, except the people that it really goes for are the people in the secret services, the spies, the agents. You know, they're wiped out. I mean, there's so many wiped out across Europe that basically ceases to function for a while. But what that means is that anyone who has a job, anyone who's given a job knows that the price of failure is death. And they also know that they're trapped because Stalin's clever. And he knows that if you give these people who are the only people that are allowed to leave the Soviet Union, who have access to networks and money, if they feel threatened, they might try and escape. So what he does is he issues a directive which says that if any of these agents defect or leave, their entire family will be liquidated. So he has this sort of bargaining power. They all live in this constant... No, this terror is just trick... No, it's not tricking, it's sort of coursing down from the top. Everybody in the entire Soviet Union must have spent the 30s existing in a state of permanent terror, waiting for a knock on the door or the phone call. And the people charged with Trotsky's assassination are no different. They know that if they fail, they'll be poisoned or they'll just have a sort of bullet in the back of their head or one of the terrible accidents that are such a sort of regular feature.

Speaker 1:
[50:38] Fall out of a window.

Speaker 2:
[50:39] Fall out of a window. So, Itingon turns to Ramón and says, so this is the second sort of, there are two significant meetings and there were two encounters in their life. There's this first time when Ramón is first recruited and there's the second time when he goes to him and says, I need you to do this thing. I need you. You are the person that will help.

Speaker 1:
[51:02] So he's worried about him, Iting is now worried about him getting killed.

Speaker 2:
[51:04] Yeah, I mean they're all worried. I think they're all terrified. Iting knows that the first person against the wall is going to be him.

Speaker 1:
[51:10] Okay, so I'm going to use my other asset.

Speaker 2:
[51:13] And there is a close friendship between the two men, which will persist for decades afterwards. So there is a genuine attachment, a genuine sentimental connection between them, which may or may not be to do with the fact that he's effectively his stepdad or might not be.

Speaker 1:
[51:26] Sure, it's just complicated.

Speaker 2:
[51:28] And so they come up with a plan. And the first, there are a couple of terrible plans. I think they initially think about bombing the compound. Then they try and think about poison, but then they realize that no one knows how to make poison. And there's always, like with all these things, there's always like a note of Grand Fast, of like they're only one step away from a kind of healing style comedy. And then the plan that they eventually settle on sort of two attractive features as far as they're concerned. What the idea is that Ramón will find a way of getting himself alone in Trotsky's study and then will kill him, not with a pistol, but with either a knife or the weapon that they decide to choose, which is an ice axe. And the appeal of the ice axe is that it's not a subtle weapon, it's not a surgical weapon, that if anyone is killed with an ice axe, that it will create carnage on their head. And an incredibly visceral symbol of the price you pay for standing up for Stalin. And I think there had actually been an NKVD assassination a year or two before using an ice pick. So there is some sort of precedent for it. And also, weird thing you learn about Mexico, quite a lot of mountains, quite a lot of mountaineering.

Speaker 1:
[52:48] So a lot of ice axes around.

Speaker 2:
[52:50] A lot of ice axes, quite easy to get hold of an ice axe. Well, he seems to have had the ice axe for quite a long time. And then at some point, they file, they shorten it so that it can be easily hidden underneath his big coat. And the other thing that's happened during this time is that Ramón disappears to America for a bit. Effectively, he says, to deal with some problems that have arisen in this mysterious import-export business. And when he returns, something significant has changed about him. One thing is that this person who hadn't been interested at all in politics is suddenly a passionate Trotskyist, who's sort of throwing himself into all these sort of strange arcane arguments that Trotskyists have. And the second is that his personality seems to be changed. So that before he was this confident, sunny, helpful person, and now he seems quite withdrawn. His skin seems to have acquired this sort of greenish pallor. He's nervous. He sort of trembles. He will sometimes, you know, he won't notice when someone else is talking to him. And people, again, have registered this change. They notice that something is a bit different about it, but they don't understand what it means. And, you know, their business is persuading people. So Trotsky knows that he's a bit unreliable, he's a bit strange. But Trotsky, his whole thing is that I'm one of the great communicators of the 20th century. I can take people with me. I don't care if he might be an NKVD spy, I reckon I can persuade him. So there's a couple of flickers of suspicion, and Sylvia has had her own moments of suspicion, which Ramón has been able to assuage. And then one day in August, Ramón arrives at Trotsky's house. He drives up in his car, and he crashes, he dents his car. There's something odd, something off. You know, he's never done this before. He's this flash man, like he takes it to what, there is something strange. But the guards on the gate that day, they welcome him in, because by this point he's trusted. They all know him, you know, the compound is like a fortress. You know, there's electric gates, there's turrets. It's designed to keep people out. It's designed to keep an army out, but it's not designed to keep out someone who has so cleverly sort of worked his way right into the middle of it. And the other strange thing that people notice about him is it's Mexico. It's a hot country. It's August. It's a hot day. But for some reason he's got a big raincoat on and a hat. And there's a bit of cloud in the sky, but nothing, you know.

Speaker 1:
[55:25] So he's behaving really weirdly. He's nervous. He's crashed his car, got a huge raincoat on, and they just wave him in.

Speaker 2:
[55:31] And then there's this tragic moment where Trotsky, that morning, had woken up. He says he wakes, he woke up, and for the first time for months, he said he felt confident and he felt happy and he felt... And he felt free of anxiety. And there's a moment when he works relentlessly. He has this very rigid work schedule and his wife can see him in his office working. And she thinks everything's going to be okay. This is good. He's happy, I'm happy. What could possibly go wrong? And then Ramón arrives and he's still strange. He says, I've got this article I want Trotsky to read. Can I take it through to him? Trotsky comes out, he's wearing this classic blue worker's outfit. And he sees Ramón. Apparently he looks quite cross to be interrupted, but because he's polite, because he wants to encourage him, he says, yeah, I'll look at your article. So they go through into Trotsky's study. And just as they go through, Trotsky thinks, I think he's going to kill me. But then he sort of shoves it away because he thinks that a lot. Things happen a lot, people come in a lot. Who is this man? He's this foolish Belgian.

Speaker 1:
[56:43] He's the exile revolution. I can imagine it's a sort of messy, yeah, there's always people.

Speaker 2:
[56:47] So they get in. Ramón takes his coat off, balances it on the table. Trotsky sits down. He hands him the typewritten sheet. And it's garbage. It's an idiotic squeed, really. So Ramón has three things in the... four things, in fact, in his great coat, his raincoat. He has the ice axe. He has a long dagger. He has a pistol, fully loaded. And he has this slightly factuous document, which purports to give his reasons for what he's about to do. So this is all part of the sort of NKVD plot, which is again, like so consistent with the way that, you know, the FSB act now is that you try and introduce confusion and deniability. So what he says is that I was a passionate Trotskyist, but now I've seen the true depth of this, the squalor of his thinking, and I need to take revenge on him. So he puts this all down and Trotsky starts reading. And then there's a moment when Ramón sort of stands above him and thinks, then he realizes, then he thinks to himself, everything's going really well. Now is my moment. He raises his hand, grabs the ice axe and slams it towards Trotsky. And what happens is that Trotsky moves his head just a millimeter, maybe a fraction of a millimeter, but that's enough to deflect the actual force of the blow. He should have killed him with one blow, but what he actually does is he plunges it into Trotsky's skull. It was a deep, horrible, vicious, seven inch wound inside, but it's not enough to kill him. So Trotsky stands, Trotsky screams, and Ramón will, until the day he dies, he says he cannot get the precise quality and intensity of the scream out of his head. And then Trotsky stands up and starts grabbing everything he can from his desk, tossing it at Ramón, and he's bleeding, his glasses are shattered, his blood all over him, but both of them are covered in blood by this point. And Ramón tries to escape, Trotsky follows him, and then Ramón doesn't get very far when Trotsky's guards, who suddenly realize, they hear the scream too, they realize something terrible has happened, they realize that they've failed to do the thing that they're there for. So they rush down, start to sort of try and beat, I mean, effectively beat Ramón to death. And as they're doing so, Trotsky, who sort of claps in a heap, being sort of nursed by Natalia, says, leave him, leave him, we need to find out who sent him. And Ramón, who has remained reasonably cool, has this weird flash where he sort of lets on something different. He says, they are saying, the NKVD sent you, the NKVD sent you. He said, no, no, no. But then he says, fairly enigmatically, they have my mother, they have my mother, they won't let her go. And then he comes up again and they just, I mean, he's being sort of, they're just taking out all of their frustration and rage out on him. And then he's taken away into prison, into custody. And Trotsky goes to the hospital where he lingers for another day. I mean, it sounds ghastly. They Japan him in an attempt to try and, it's one of the things where you're so pleased to be in the 21st century with 21st medicine, where they don't think cutting off a big chunk of your skull is the best way of...

Speaker 1:
[60:13] And he's, but he's conscious? He's able to talk about it?

Speaker 2:
[60:15] He's conscious briefly and then he sort of subsides into basically a coma. And then, you know, there's a very sad sort of coda because Natalia, his wife, who's loyal, adores him, watches him, you know, his breathing becomes slowly more shallow. Then finally he sort of slips away and that's it.

Speaker 1:
[60:38] What happens to the assassin?

Speaker 2:
[60:40] He's arrested and his trial begins quite briskly. And so he is, there is kind of a couple of strange extra moments. One moment is that part of the Mexican justice system is they recreate the attack so that he comes back in and he has to go through it again. Apparently looks terrified about what's happening, but not as terrified as he is when he's forced to confront Sylvia Agaloff, who is completely bereft, is completely destroyed by the knowledge of what she has unwittingly done. She starts to attack him, has to be dragged off him.

Speaker 1:
[61:18] His girlfriend is his wife.

Speaker 2:
[61:20] Yeah, his girlfriend wife. And she is also sort of swept up by the police quite quickly, who assume that she is in on it. And then she eventually is cleared and ends up as a sort of, I think she lives in obscurity as a primary school teacher for the rest of her life. Whereas Ramón spends 20 years in prison, in a prison which is now sort of fascinatingly is the archive, the central archives in Mexico. So when I went out to do the research of the book, you're also in the prison where Ramón spent 20 years. And he holds fast to his alibi. He never ever gives any hint that he's anything other than Jacques Mournard, a Belgian. He won't speak Spanish or he, as it were, pretends to slowly learn Spanish rather. Because it's Mexican justice system and it's slightly different to ours, he marries a woman in prison. And the other thing element is although the NKVD and later the KGB officially keep their distance, they make sure he lives comfortably. He has the best lawyers you can get in Mexico. He lives, has a good cell. And after that, he comes to the Soviet Union, again, the first time he's ever been. So this is a weird thing in that he's given his life for this country. He's given 20 years of his life, he's killed a person, but he's never been there. He's not even a member of the NKVD officially until he arrives there. And so many fellow travelers, when he actually encounters what the Soviet Union is actually like, the sort of grim, boring, repressive reality of... So I think he arrives when it's the beginning of the Brezhnev regime, when it's beginning to decay, but it's still malicious. It's still... Everyone is... There's still very, very fierce limits on what you can and can't say, where you can and can't go. But there's no... The optimism and the excitement and the passion that has sort of animated the early years of the Soviet Union has disappeared, is ossified. And he wants to leave after a while. And he gets to Cuba. And there he dies of an astonishingly painful bone cancer, which a lot of people think was actually brought on by a poisoned watch that the NKVD gave him. So, I mean, they get everyone in the end. And he's buried as a hero. But yeah, it's a very sort of Russian end to a Spanish story.

Speaker 1:
[63:48] You join up to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War and you end up like that. Jeepers, creepers. Well, what a story. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:
[63:55] Oh no, I really enjoyed being on. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[63:57] And the book is out now?

Speaker 2:
[63:58] Out now, right now, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[63:59] What's it called?

Speaker 2:
[64:00] It's called The Death of Trotsky.

Speaker 1:
[64:01] Going to get it, folks. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:
[64:03] Brilliant.

Speaker 1:
[64:04] Thanks very much for watching, folks. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And while you're here, why not check out some of these videos that are appearing around me? We're covering the whole of human history we're not messing about. See you next time.