Trotsky’s grandson recalls ice pick killing

Trotsky’s grandson recalls ice pick killing
2012 08 29

It’s 75 years since Trotsky, already expelled from the Soviet Communist Party and exiled, went to start a new life in Mexico. But he was hunted down in Mexico City by Stalinist assassins, as his grandson, who was living with him when he died, recalls.

To some people Leon Trotsky was the true hero of the Bolshevik revolution. To others he was one of the most dangerous men of his era.

But to his grandson, Esteban Volkov, he was a father figure who brought the young boy rare moments of happiness and stability at a time of family turmoil and political persecution.

"I was constantly changing father and mother figures," says Volkov, 86. With "the Old Man", as he affectionately calls his grandfather, "I finally found something stable, though it did not last very long."

Speaking from the house in Mexico City where he lived with the exiled revolutionary and his second wife, Natalia, for more than a year before Trotsky’s assassination on 20 August 1940, Volkov recalls his excitement at arriving in the Americas from Europe.

He was just 13 years old and had spent most of his childhood moving from one country to the next with his mother Zinaida, Trotsky’s daughter, seeking refuge from Stalin’s persecution.

"Mexico was an absolute change, it was full of colour, full of sun, so unlike Europe," he says. "I began going to school by myself, on foot. No-one at school knew who my family was."

Life in his grandfather’s large and well-guarded home in the leafy Coyoacan neighbourhood was "full of excitement," he says.

Trotsky would spend his days writing at his desk, being interviewed by visiting journalists, or debating politics with the foreign activists and bodyguards who lived with the family.

At meal times, the young boy would listen keenly to the jokes and the heated discussions around the table. But his grandfather would sternly warn the others - do not talk politics in front of the boy.

"All his family had been assassinated, or died because of politics, and I think he wanted his grandson to survive." Volkov’s father, Trotsky’s son-in-law, had been sent to the gulag in the 1930s. Zinaida had committed suicide when they lived in exile in Paris.

[...]

For Volkov, these were days of relative normality, and of a family life that he had previously not known. But it would soon come to an abrupt end.

Read the full article at: bbc.co.uk

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves
2013 06 18
The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer ...

Atacama Humanoid: Stanford-Geneticist Says Specimen "not worth scrutiny"
2013 06 18
The documentary SIRIUS has intrigued and shocked many, and has stirred debate about the scientific findings regarding the ’Atacama Humanoid’. Recently, daily German science news site GreWi.de followed up with Dr. Garry Nolan, the Stanford geneticist that headed the investigation into the mummified remains. grenz|wissenschaft-aktuell reports: Since the documentary movie "Sirius" showed the first results of an investigation of a just 15 ...

The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda
2013 06 18
While the global elite construct underground bunkers, eat organic and hoard seeds in Arctic vaults; the global poor are being slowly starved thanks to high commodity prices and poisoned with genetically modified (GMO) food. Austerity measures aimed largely at the poor are being imposed on all the nations of the world. Weather events grow more deadly and brushfire wars more ...

Ron Paul on Syria: This Is How Vietnam and Iraq Started
2013 06 18
President Barack Obama’s pledge to initiate a limited operation in Syria will likely escalate into a full-blown war, with Americans supporting a rebel cause that is backed by al-Qaida, retired Texas Rep. Ron Paul is arguing. "The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multibillion dollar war has begun," Paul ...

Google’s deep CIA and NSA connections
2013 06 18
The Western media is currently full of articles reporting Google’s denial that it cooperated in a government program to massively spy on American and foreign citizens by accessing data from Googles servers and those of other U.S. software companies. The mainstream media has, however, almost completely failed to report that Google’s denial, and its surface concern over ’human ...

More News »