Leon Trotsky Military Commander

• Gender: Male
• Citizenship: Russian Empire
• Born: Nov 7, 1879
• Died: Aug 21, 1940

Leon Trotsky was a Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.

Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. During the early days of the RSFSR and the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army with the title of People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. He also became one of the first members of the Politburo.

After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and against the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was removed from power, expelled from the Communist Party, and finally deported from the Soviet Union in 1929.