Stalin - Trotsky: A Battle to Death (2015) - full transcript

(ominous music)

Mexico, 20th of August, 1940.

Trotsky was murdered,

an ice pick to the head.

With his death came the end of a duel

at the very heart of

the communist movement.

Stalin, at the head of the Kremlin

had finally eliminated

his long-standing rival.

Stalin,

Trotsky.

They were worlds apart.

One was the son of a Georgian cobbler,

the other a Jewish intellectual.

One a methodical, calculating man,

the other a brilliant, enthusiastic mind.

One a cynic, the other an idealist.

It was the end of a duel

that had lasted 20 years.

A political duel, a power duel.

A duel between two men who

were radically different.

But above all, a duel to the death.

But there is one question that lingers.

Why did Joseph Stalin want

to have Leon Trotsky executed

when he had already removed him from power

and exiled him far away?

(bold Russian music)

(crowd screaming)

(tense music)

Petrograd, February 1917.

Czar Nicholas II abdicated

under pressure from the people.

But for Lenin, the revolutionary,

getting rid of the czar wasn't enough.

He needed to establish

a new order, communism.

He methodically orchestrated

his take over in October, 1917,

and this would ensure the

success of his revolution.

He had two lieutenants by his side.

They had been there for 30 years,

and were both promising characters,

but were diametrically opposed.

Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.

But the duel between Stalin and Trotsky

had begun a good decade earlier.

London, 1907,

the congress of the Russian

Social Democratic Labor Party.

Trotsky and Stalin met for the first time.

Trotsky was on the stage,

Stalin in the audience.

Trotsky's brio both

fascinated and exasperated

his frustrated comrade Stalin.

A slow poison began to seep

into their relationship.

(speaking foreign language)

It was Stalin's first time

out of the Caucuses.

It was his first time in London,

the metropolis of the west,

and he couldn't believe his eyes.

He was a party delegate at a congress

of the Social Democratic Party

that brought together all the stars

he had heard talk of in the papers,

and he was going to be

able to speak to them.

And it was clear that Stalin

was in awe of Trotsky,

something he'd struggled

to hide all his life.

He was in awe of the man.

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin had obviously noticed Trotsky.

Trotsky was everything he despised,

an orator, an extrovert,

and a brilliant mind.

He wasn't brilliant.

Stalin was a very poor orator.

When you listen to recording

of him speaking it's amazing.

When he became the leader of the USSR

he'd say a phrase, pause,

and everyone would applaud.

(audience applauding)

(speaking foreign language)

He'd drink some water,

he says a second sentence,

he stops, and everyone applauds.

It's absolutely extraordinary.

He's like some kind of machine.

(speaking foreign language)

Physically Stalin had a great handicap.

He was pockmarked, and he was small.

And Trotsky was, of course,

physically, very imposing.

The two revolutionaries

fought the czarist regime under pseudonyms.

Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

called himself Stalin,

the man of steel.

He had it all figured out.

And Lev Davidovich Bronshtein

hid under the name of Leon Trotsky.

They each dreamed of changing the world,

but socially, they couldn't

have been more different.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky had a supposedly happy childhood

in a family that loved

him, that cared for him,

that supported him through his studies,

and which envisaged a great future for him.

Whereas Stalin was pretty

much born in the gutter,

and he was exposed to a great deal

of violence in his own home.

His father was a drunk

who would beat him badly.

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin is very interesting in terms

of the Russian Social Democrats,

which became the Bolshevik party,

because he's about the only Bolshevik,

and the only Social Democrat,

who was working class.

All the other came from the families

of intellectuals, civil servants.

Stalin would never be quite like them.

They would always feel that he hadn't had

the same education, that

he wasn't one of their own.

Stalin and Trotsky each grew up

in a Russia ruled over by the czar.

For centuries, this autocratic regime

had fostered inequality.

The huge majority of the population

was made up of peasants,

and they lived in very poor

social and economic conditions.

The country dreamed of a different society.

Stalin was 20 years old when he embarked

upon his revolutionary career,

Trotsky was 17.

But their struggles took on

radically different forms.

Through his culture and training

Trotsky had a more intellectual

vision of revolution.

He loved to debate.

He developed theories

on ways to take power.

His analysis was influenced by

the great European socialist

and Marxist thinkers

with whom he was in regular contact.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky was in exile,

and in exile he lived

in a socialist society,

a high society.

He traveled around the whole of Europe,

and he rubbed shoulders with

all the great revolutionaries,

all the great European socialists.

He lived a life that was, one might say,

in high socialist society.

It was during his exile in London

that Trotsky met Lenin and

became one of his collaborators.

His travels and his lengthy discussions

with foreign intellectuals drove Trotsky

to think of revolution on a global scale.

For him, taking power would not be

limited to just one country.

(upbeat Russian music)

On the other hand, Stalin, the Georgian,

was a provincial man.

A willing man who was scorned

by the socialist intelligentsia.

His only priority was revolution in Russia.

For Lenin, Comrade Stalin was the man

to carry out the dirty work.

His delinquent past was

skillfully exploited

to fill the party coffers.

Stalin blanched at nothing.

Extortion, sabotage,

and robbery posed no problems.

(speaking foreign language)

He was the revolutionary

king of the Caucuses.

He played cat and mouse with the police

and he pulled off masterstrokes, holdups,

ran revolutionary rackets,

and murdered people.

And he played a very important role,

because it was through these heists

and this revolutionary racketeering

that he raised the funds

to ensure the survival

of the Bolshevik faction in exile.

Because when you're in exile

and you have no income,

what else do you do?

That's why Lenin referred to him as

the wonderful Georgian,

the wonderful Georgian

who brought him the cash.

It was great.

(ominous music)

In 1913, Stalin and Trotsky met again,

this time in Vienna.

And this encounter confirmed

Stalin's first impressions.

He felt snubbed.

Stalin had a complex,

something gnawing at him

that he never got over,

his desire to eliminate Trotsky.

(speaking foreign language)

The hour of revolution was approaching.

Although Stalin and Trotsky

were now both working for Lenin,

it was already clear that

beyond the ideals they shared

they were totally opposed to one another.

(booming explosions)

1917 was a pivotal year in the history

of the First World War.

Russia was fighting alongside France,

and the British had been

weakened by a conflict

that had already been

going on for three years.

(solemn music)

The soldiers were revolting.

1917 was a year of mutiny in the trenches

and the start of the Russian Revolution.

In February there were increasing numbers

of strikes and protests in Petrograd.

The czar was forced to abdicate.

A provisional government was established

but the Bolsheviks overthrew

it a few months later.

In October, Lenin took his place

at the head of the first

communist regime in history.

He appointed brilliant

revolutionaries to support him.

Trotsky, of course,

along with Lev Kamenev,

Grigory Zinoviev,

and Nikolai Bukharin.

Stalin, the man of the people,

stood out among these intellectuals.

In the face of this new regime,

the czar's partisans dreamed

of their return to power.

They ended up fighting the Bolsheviks

in a civil war that lasted five years.

During this struggle, Lenin realized

that he needed Trotsky's

eloquence and charisma.

Stalin was relegated to the background.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky had some eminent qualities.

He was a great orator,

a great revolutionary,

and a great leader of men.

Physically he was scared of nothing.

He moved around in his armored train

to the front during the civil war.

That wasn't a problem for him.

As for Stalin, he was

developing his own method.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky would turn up

at Bolshevik or Soviet Party congresses

and would stir up the crowd

with his brilliant oratory.

People would applaud, and

he'd already have left.

Stalin would go around shaking hands,

paying attention to the lowly militants,

being interested in what

was happening to them,

knowing their names even.

All kinds of things that were

totally foreign to Trotsky,

so Stalin gained a

reputation as a good guy.

(speaking foreign language)

You have to remember

that as soon as the Bolsheviks

moved from Saint Petersberg to Moscow

in the spring of 1918, and

moved into the Kremlin,

Stalin had his own

apartments in the Kremlin

and worked out of the

office next to Lenin's.

It was really no coincidence that Lenin

appointed him Secretary General.

He was the party man,

close by Lenin's side.

(speaking foreign language)

And Stalin, in that role,

gradually started weaving

his network of contacts

that would give him free reign

over the party officials

and their appointment.

(ominous music)

Stalin understood

what he could get out of the party.

But for the time being,

Trotsky was the hero of the

Revolution and the Civil War.

He traveled thousands of

miles to rally the troops

that would make up the Red Army.

On his armored train Trotsky traveled

back and forth across the country

using the weapon he understood best, words.

He gave hope to the Reds

while demoralizing the

counterrevolutionary Whites.

For Trotsky, the train was

as much a weapon of war

as it was a weapon of propaganda.

Each day he wrote a journal

that he had printed on board

and he distributed it as he went.

Like a real war chief,

he shared stories of the

soldier's daily lives,

encouraging them and rewarding them.

But Trotsky also used force and repression

to make men sign up for the Red Army,

which went from one

million soldiers in 1918,

to five million two years later.

He had no hesitations about

having anyone who opposed him shot.

Empowered by his success in Russia,

Trotsky hoped to spread

revolution across Europe.

In 1920, he launched an offensive

on the Polish army in Warsaw,

which was allied to the

White counterrevolutionaries.

But just when victory was within his grasp,

Stalin thwarted his plans.

(speaking foreign language)

As head of the Red Army,

Trotsky ordered the troops to attack.

Tukhachevsky, who was

the commander in chief,

was attacking from east to

west directly on Warsaw.

To the south, there was a

column under Stalin's command

that was supposed to come up from the south

directly to Warsaw.

But Stalin never listened

to anyone else, as usual,

and instead of heading for Warsaw

to take the Poles in a pincer movement,

he stopped in front of a

different city and besieged it.

He just didn't show up.

Rather than obeying orders,

Stalin wanted a personal victory

by taking the Polish city of Lvov.

His stubbornness led to a Soviet defeat.

They were subsequently obliged to make

important territorial

concessions to Poland.

Between Stalin and Trotsky,

this episode felt like

a declaration of war.

(speaking foreign language)

And there were some fierce

disputes after that,

which explained what happened next.

Because obviously, Lenin demanded

reports of what had happened,

and Trotsky presented a report

that was highly critical of Stalin.

Tukhachevsky also presented a report

that was highly critical of Stalin,

and it goes without

saying that Comrade Stalin

would settle his scores 15 years later.

(ominous music)

Stalin pondered his revenge,

but for the moment he just

had to grin and bear it.

Trotsky ensured the Bolsheviks

were able to seize power

across the country.

The Red Army final defeated

the partisan soldiers

of the former czarist regime, the Whites.

But this also reduced Russia

to a devastated battleground.

In 1921, after a terrible drought,

famine ravished the country,

and 1.5 million people starved to death.

However, within the party,

Trotsky was at the peak of his popularity.

He emerged as the natural heir to Lenin,

who was seriously ill,

and who would soon need to be replaced.

In his post as secretary general,

Stalin knew that he wasn't

a favorite for the job,

but he had already planned

how he was going to get back in the race.

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin, who was less brilliant

than the others, was nonetheless

a remarkable strategist.

Not just a remarkable pragmatist,

but also a remarkable strategist.

He had a veritable strategy

for the creation of the Lenin myth,

in which he made sure he had his place.

(somber music)

Creating the Lenin myth

was the Machiavellian idea

hatched by Stalin to deflect any criticism,

and win the battle against Trotsky.

His plan had two phases.

The first took place on

the day of Lenin's funeral.

Lenin had been incapacitated

by a series of three strokes

that had left him weakened,

and the founder of Soviet

Russia eventually died

on the 21st of January, 1924.

He was 53.

A huge crowed gathered

in Gorki, near Moscow,

to pay homage to the revolutionary.

His faithful companions

were also in attendance,

Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin.

They carried the coffin, along with Stalin.

These three Bolsheviks,

old friends of Lenin's,

may also have been thinking

about succeeding him,

but what they didn't know was that

Stalin was counting on using them

to take power for himself,

and that he had already

sealed their own deadly fates.

Only one top party figure

was missing, Trotsky.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky was fairly

seriously ill at the time,

and was being treated in a

seaside resort in the Caucasus.

We now know, and they knew at the time,

that Stalin had lied to him,

telling him not to come back,

that there was no point,

as Lenin would be buried immediately.

However, the decision

had already been taken

to construct a mausoleum.

So Trotsky did was Stalin said,

thinking he wouldn't get back in time,

as it would have taken

several days by train.

He took a decision not to return

which had lasting consequences.

(somber music)

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin had organized

an absolutely extraordinary funeral.

This was a new kind of event.

They were no longer in an imperial system,

now they were in a revolutionary system.

Embalming Lenin,

so he could be on display

forever to the bedazzled public

was an aberrant idea,

and it came from Stalin.

Lenin's widow tried to stop the embalming,

and the funeral arrangements.

She was against it all.

And that was when Stalin said,

"Be careful.

"I can find another widow

for Lenin immediately."

That was a threat, and not an implicit one.

That was what he actually said.

(solemn music)

Krupskaya, Lenin's widow,

had to bow to all of Stalin's wishes.

The second phase of his plan to seize power

involved Lenin's testament.

On the 23rd of May, 1924,

four months after the funeral,

the 13th Communist Party Congress was held

and Stalin read out the document.

A few months before he died,

aware that he didn't have much time left,

the father of the revolution dictated

a few words to his secretary.

Without specifically naming his successor,

Lenin gave his opinion on

the qualities and flaws

of those Bolsheviks that might succeed him.

(speaking foreign language)

This is what he said,

"Comrade Stalin, having

become Secretary General,"

and remember, it was Lenin who appointed

Stalin Secretary General in early 1922,

a few months earlier.

"Comrade Stalin, having

become Secretary General,

"has unlimited authority

concentrated in his hands."

That is a strong statement.

He continues, "And I am not sure

"whether he will be capable

of using that authority

"with sufficient caution."

And what happened afterwards

proves he was right.

(speaking foreign language)

The paradox is that in his testament

Lenin flagged up the dangerous

character that Stalin was.

But at the time, Stalin was a lesser player

in the minds of the three

other Bolshevik leaders.

Initially, the fight for succession

wasn't between Stalin and Trotsky,

it was between Trotsky, Zinoviev,

Kamenev, and Bukharin,

and at that time, Stalin

was still in the background.

(speaking foreign language)

So that was

between the 23rd and 31st of December.

And on the 4th of January, a week later,

Lenin was feeling better,

and said the last thing he

would say about this matter.

It's pretty amazing what he said.

"Stalin is too rude."

About time too, that somebody noticed,

in the middle of all these

extremely rude Bolsheviks,

"Stalin is too rude, and this defect,

"although quite tolerable in our midst,

"and in dealings among us communists,

"becomes intolerable

in a secretary general.

"That is why I suggest that the comrades

think about a way of removing

Stalin from that post."

In this testament,

Lenin is much more lenient with Trotsky.

Granted, he reproaches

his excessive confidence,

but he also commends his

intellectual qualities.

He presents him as the most capable

man in the central committee.

However, Trotsky would never profit

from Lenin's appreciation.

Against all expectations, it was Stalin

who pushed his advantage.

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin was

very cunning.

He staged the revelation

of Lenin's will and said,

"Comrades, the last words of

Comrade Lenin," et cetera.

"Comrade Lenin said I should

be removed from my post,

"so therefore I propose

to resign from my post."

And of course, because it was

he who organized the congress,

all the congress cried out,

"Comrade Stalin, no, stay with us."

It was a nice little show.

And so faced with that

situation, Trotsky was stuck,

and this is what he said,

and what finished him off for good.

"We can only be right

with, and by the party."

Clearly, the party is always right.

Of course, if the party is run by Stalin,

then it's Stalin who will always be right.

(ominous music)

(speaking foreign language)

From the point on,

he created a kind of legacy for Lenin.

He created Leninist thinking.

That was what they called it.

Like the thinking of Marx, Engels, Lenin,

and then Stalin too.

(triumphant music)

(crowd cheering)

So, while Lenin himself

was recommending the utmost caution

with regard to Stalin,

Stalin pulled off the amazing feat

of emerging as his heir.

Trotsky realized that he

had underestimated Stalin,

and there were more

surprises in store for him.

(solemn music)

In 1926, Stalin and Trotsky met up

at the burial of a former

Bolshevik, Gorczynski,

someone to whom they'd been close.

Stalin was walking up ahead,

Trotsky, farther behind.

The man who had led the

revolution a decade previously

no doubt knew that his

days high up in the party

were now numbered.

This was the last time

that Stalin and Trotsky

would appear together in public.

Now that the Civil War

had left millions dead,

Stalin, like the majority of the Bolsheviks

had abandoned the idea

of a global revolution.

However, this was still

an obsession for Trotsky.

He wanted to take up arms again.

Stalin had understood that in the country,

as within the Communist Party,

it was not the right time

to export the revolution.

(speaking foreign language)

Because the people in the system

wanted a quiet life.

They wanted to benefit from the advantages

that Stalin, as Secretary

of the Central Committee, had granted.

These were material advantages,

advantages in a country that was hungry.

Remember, the USSR had

always known shortages.

So having a job where you

have material advantages,

a food parcel every month,

or a salary that is doubled, then tripled,

then quadrupled, et

cetera, was very important.

And what's Trotsky going

to say to those people,

that they have to help

the revolution in Germany,

in China, in Britain?

No, leave us in peace.

It's the same for any political machinery.

They want to be left in peace.

(speaking foreign language)

Stalin had a very good understanding

of the triggers of human psychology,

and I think that with a

certain number of people

who were of a similar character to him

he knew how to manipulate

the triggers of ambition,

the triggers of jealousy, envy,

the triggers for violence.

He knew how to bring out

the psychological traits in these people

that would drive them to action.

To action for Stalin's own benefit.

(ominous music)

To reach the very top of the party

Stalin had to use the

members of the politburo

and play them off against each other.

First he managed to convince

Zinoviev and Kamenev

to team up with him to sideline Trotsky.

Then his manipulation continued.

He got Bukharin on side against Trotsky,

Zinoviev, and Kamenev.

He was a brilliant dissembler,

and slowly but surely

managed to rid himself

of all the old Bolshevik

revolutionaries in his way.

At the same time, he used his

position as Secretary General

to appoint people he could manipulate.

He even went as far as to organize

an intake dedicated to Lenin

of low-ranking soldiers into the party,

which, until then, had been

the reserve of the elite of 1917.

(speaking foreign language)

It was in fact

a key position because it allowed Stalin,

through a succession of

brilliantly managed appointments,

to gradually replace those

who had led the Revolution,

and the Civil War especially,

by a certain number of accomplices

who owed their careers to him.

They owed their careers,

not to their revolutionary achievements,

but to the prince of

Moscow, Stalin himself.

Stalin created a court of the faithful.

However much Trotsky denounced

the bureaucratization of the party,

however much he criticized Stalin

for being a man of the

system, it was too late.

The czar's trap had remorselessly

closed around the prophet.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky was his own worst enemy,

a victim of his remarkable intelligence,

of his brilliant mind, that

had indisputably led him,

like others, to underestimate Stalin.

"He is mediocrity," Trotsky said.

That's how he described Stalin.

Never in history have we seen such a host

of brilliant, cultivated,

and extraordinary minds

that shared the same aim,

to destroy the old order,

and establish a new one.

And among them, there was mediocrity,

and it was the mediocrity that won the day.

(ominous music)

In 1927, Stalin settled

his score with Trotsky.

He expelled him from the party.

Trotsky was then sent by force

to Alma-Ata in deepest Kazakhstan.

Stalin wanted to rid himself of his rival,

but he couldn't kill him, not yet.

Barley 10 years after

the Russian Revolution

nobody in the party

understood such a decision.

Then Stalin exiled Trotsky,

chasing him out of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky didn't know then that he'd

never return to his country again.

Although it seemed that

Stalin had won over the party,

the confrontation between the two men

was far from finished.

The duel would continue long distance.

In February, 1929,

Trotsky arrived in Turkey

on the island of Buyukada,

off the coast of Istanbul.

His wife, Natalia, was with him,

as well as his son Leon Sedov.

Trotsky thought that Stalin

had exiled him to Turkey

to isolate him even more,

and to render him powerless.

He knew nobody in the country

and didn't speak the language.

But Trotsky wasn't too downhearted.

By July 1929, he had created

the Bulletin of the Opposition

in which he denounced Stalin's

behavior and policies.

(speaking foreign language)

The paradox is

that theyexiled Trotsky, or

politically eliminated him,

or so they believed.

But from that point onwards,

and through the 1930s,

Trotsky would continue his activities

and would be a reference point.

The only one to oppose Stalin

and the power of the

Russian state in such a way.

He was exiled, not just

because he was an irritation,

but also because he refused

political compromises,

or to be silenced.

(somber music)

Trotsky tried to form an opposition,

but from outside the USSR he had

much less chance of being

heard than from within.

Stalin, the little

hoodlum from the Caucuses,

to whom nobody paid any attention,

became the uncontested

master of the Soviet Union.

He was given the nickname "The

Little Father of the People,"

an expression that hitherto had

been reserved for the czars.

(triumphant music)

He gradually established his strategy,

his networks, and his men

to hold the USSR in an iron grip.

Stalin had rid himself of any opposition,

and from then on his aim was

to industrialize the country

as quickly as possible so

that it could defend itself

if there were another war.

In a few years, Stalin would completely

change the face of the Soviet Union.

He built the Moscow Underground,

constructed new towns,

dug canals, and erected dams.

It was all part of the

edification of socialism.

The aura he constructed

around the Soviet Union

was greeted enthusiastically by most

communist parties in Western Europe,

in particular in Italy and France.

(speaking French)

(triumphant music)

(speaking foreign language)

No secretary

of a communist party at that

time, from the early 1930s,

could be appointed without

Moscow's agreement.

So it was either Stalin

who personally oversaw it,

or a secretary,

and they usually chose these

secretaries very carefully.

Someone about whom they had some

compromising information

they could use again them.

(triumphant music)

Stalin became a hero

for communists the world over.

Moscow was a synonym for the promised land.

Empowered by his strength and his success,

Stalin had joined the big league,

and his portrait now hung besides those

of Lenin, Marx, and Engels.

(speaking foreign language)

But in order to have absolute power,

he had to get rid of anyone

who in any way would

cast a shadow over him.

(ominous music)

Once again, Comrade Stalin pulled off

a Machiavellian coup.

He took advantage of the

assassination of Kirov,

a key member of the politburo

who was executed in shady circumstances,

to launch the systematic

elimination of every enemy,

and to set in motion a reign of terror.

(speaking foreign language)

As soon as he had the information

he immediately understood

the political advantages

he would be able to gain

from this assassination.

He headed off in his special

train to Saint Petersberg,

or Leningrad as it was called at the time.

He tidied things up,

got rid of the witnesses who might have

contradicted his version,

and said that Kirov was assassinated

by traitors of the party, and

that Zinoviev was responsible,

and so was Kamenev, and

above them it was Trotsky.

That allowed him to order the assassination

of party members, which until that point

had been virtually unthinkable.

And from then on, obviously,

it took on huge proportions.

(ominous music)

As with Lenin's succession,

Stalin proceeded in a

very methodical manner.

His strategy began with a

huge propaganda campaign

that went far beyond the

borders of the Soviet Union.

In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany.

For communists around the world,

the Fuhrer became the number one enemy.

Stalin didn't hesitate to draw comparisons

between Trotsky and the

Chancellor of the Third Reich.

(speaking foreign language)

The anti-Trotsky propaganda

was extremely violent.

For example, the French Communist Party

published a brochure,

an anti-Dorio brochure,

with Dorio behind a Trotsky mask,

or a Hitler mask, et cetera.

You can imagine during the

height of the popular front,

if you associated Hitler with Trotskyites

and said they were Hitler's allies,

the people were petrified.

You couldn't support Trotsky,

that would be unthinkable.

So Stalin set an extraordinary

propaganda steamroller in motion.

In Vietnam as well, and China, everywhere.

During the years 1933 to 1936,

if a communist came across a Trotskyite,

they would attack them, and liquidate them,

if necessary, physically.

(ominous music)

Stalin gradually managed

to discredit the men who

embodied the party's old guard,

or who showed any kind

of loyalty to Trotsky.

The second phase of their elimination

was carried out through three trials

held in Moscow between

August 1936, and March 1938.

Stalin had constructed the cases

against the defendants in minute detail.

He ordered the agents of the NKVD,

his political law enforcement agency,

to extract confessions

from the old Bolsheviks.

During their public examinations,

Zinoviev, Kamanev, and

Bukharin, among others,

had to endure the haranguing and insults

of prosecutor Vyshinsky,

a close ally of Stalin's.

(speaking foreign language)

(audience applauds)

(speaking foreign language)

We now know

that these trials were totally rigged.

Totally rigged.

They were complete fiction.

The accused learned their parts,

the prosecutor learned his,

and they gave a performance.

It was very well done, because,

as you know, when you're

dealing with terror,

you can get people to do

exactly what you want.

(speaking French)

There are awful

stories of them saying to the accused,

"Did you place nails in

the butter of the people?"

And these intelligent men,

these great intellectuals,

would reply, "Yes, we placed nails

"in the butter of the people."

And did you put nails in

the eggs of the people?

And these brilliant men would reply,

"Uh, no we couldn't

because they had shells."

The foreign press corps was at the trials

and thought it was completely normal.

(speaking foreign language)

(tense music)

(gunshots cracking)

Trotsky was also condemned to death

in absentia, and he knew

that Stalin had no intention

of leaving the punishment undelivered.

These trials developed, not from communism,

not from socialism, but from Stalinism,

that is from the irresponsible despotism

of the bureaucracy over the people.

What is now my principal task?

To reveal the truth,

to show and to demonstrate

that the true criminals

hide under the cloak of the accusers.

(solemn music)

But Trotsky's protests

counted for little in the

face of the Stalinist machine

crushing everything in its path.

All Trotsky's books, all the works in which

Trotsky appeared as a

hero of the revolution

were removed from libraries,

until the image of the

founder of the Red Army

had been completely erased.

(speaking foreign language)

And there is

that famous photo that has been retouched

of one of Lenin's speeches

on an open-air stage.

And there's a little

staircase up to the stage,

and Trotsky is on the staircase.

Then one day, he disappears.

There's nobody on the staircase,

and everything was like that.

That was typical of Stalin's methods,

the retouching of photographs.

(ominous music)

(speaking foreign language)

Those photos

weren't intended to

trick the old Bolsheviks,

to trick the heads of the party.

They were there to send a message,

and the message was

don't talk about these people any more.

Now, talking about so-and-so,

and talking about Trotsky in particular

is not only punishable, but

can be dangerous for you.

(solemn music)

After Turkey,

Trotsky was given asylum in

France, and then in Norway.

But gradually, he became

undesirable right across Europe.

No leader wanted to risk offending Stalin

by welcoming Trotsky to their country.

Only Mexico agreed to take him in.

Trotsky arrived in Mexico

City in January, 1937.

He and his wife Natalia were put up

by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

These two Mexican painters

and militant communists

agreed to welcome them.

Trotsky still hoped to unify

the partisans behind him.

He created a new organization,

the Fourth International.

He also set up a commission to pull apart

the accusations of the Moscow trials.

But even thousands of miles

away from the Soviet Union,

Trotsky could feel the noose

tightening around his neck.

In 1938, he learned of the

death of his son, Leon Sedov.

He had undergone surgery in Paris

for a simple case of appendicitis,

but Sedov died on the operating table.

For Trotsky, how he died

left no room for doubt.

Stalin had assassinated his son,

and now he was next on the list.

(speaking foreign language)

He retreated into his bedroom

for several days with Natalia.

He took a little tea,

and then afterwards he emerged.

He had aged a great deal

during those days of mourning.

Often, when the secretaries,

the comrades and the guards talked to me,

he would tell them, "Don't talk

politics with my grandson."

He wanted to keep me away from all that.

His whole family had succumbed,

perished as part of that struggle,

so with me, he wanted

his grandson to survive.

And he succeeded.

Nobody else in my family

lived to be 88, as I am now.

(tense music)

But Trotsky could still

be a threat to Stalin.

At least that's what the

head of the Kremlin feared.

In 1939, Stalin, who just

a few years previously

had denounced the Hitler Trotskyites,

signed a non-aggression

pact with Hitler's Germany

to general amazement.

He wanted to give himself

time to fight the Nazis,

but he knew his strategy

hadn't been understood

by a good number of militant

communists around the world.

(speaking foreign language)

Hostility towards

the German-Soviet pact ran deep.

Everyone toed the line to a certain extent,

but if they could get out of this

unlikely alliance with Hitler,

they would all have been in agreement.

Trotsky was a known quantity,

he was credible, he had

the revolutionary prestige.

He'd never negotiated with

Stalin since he'd been exiled.

And just imagine if he'd clearly

and determinedly taken up a position

calling on all militant communists

to bury their differences

and reject the German-Soviet pact.

(solemn music)

Despite being politically defeated

and condemned to exile,

Trotsky was still a danger to Stalin.

By 1939, his physical elimination

had become a priority.

On the 24th of May, 1940,

around 20 men dressed as Mexican police

entered Leon Trotsky's house.

Armed with machine guns,

they fired into the bedroom where he was

sleeping with his wife Natalia.

Esteban, Trotsky's grandson,

woke with a start in the neighboring room.

(speaking foreign language)

My grandfather

was half-asleep because he

used to take sleeping pills.

Natalia quickly dragged him out of bed

and pushed him into a corner,

the southern, south-eastern

corner of the bedroom

under the table, and

that's what saved his life.

(solemn music)

Miraculously,

Leon Trotsky and Natalia were spared.

The investigation showed that Siqueiros,

a member of the Mexican Communist Party

and a fervent partisan of

Stalin, had led the attack.

He and his accomplices were arrested,

but quickly released due

to a lack of evidence.

In the days following the attack

security at the house was improved.

Bulletproof doors were installed,

along with an electric

fence, and an alarm system.

But Trotsky knew that the attack

of the 24th of May was

just a dress rehearsal.

The next time it would succeed.

That's when Ramon Mercader

entered the scene.

This young Spanish communist,

an agent of the Soviet Secret Services

who went by the names Jacques

Mornard and Frank Jackson,

had been plotting to

assassinate Trotsky for months.

First, he seduced a young militant

by the name of Sylvia Ageloff.

She introduced him into

Trotsky's household.

Ramon Mercader gradually

became a familiar figure.

(speaking foreign language)

Sometimes he'd take us out for a drive

through the Mexican countryside.

Yes, he'd give us gifts too.

(speaking foreign language)

Trotsky was so isolated

in his locked down Mexican house.

He saw this young guy turn up,

he seemed to be Belgian, or maybe Canadian.

Nobody really knows anymore,

and it doesn't really matter,

but he was a great admirer of Leon Trotsky.

I don't really know much about politics,

but I'd love to learn,

and I'd really like to

try writing an article in support of you.

And there you have it.

(ominous music)

On the 20th of August, 1940,

Ramon Mercader said he

wanted to show Trotsky

an article he had written.

Trotsky was sitting at his desk.

When he leant over to read it,

Mercader grabbed the ice pick

he'd been hiding in his raincoat,

and plunged it deep into Trotsky's skull.

Then, Esteban, Trotsky's grandson,

who was 13 at the time, was

coming home from school.

(speaking foreign language)

Immediately I felt this anguish

that something terrible had happened.

So I hurried home, I went into the garden,

and immediately bumped

into one of the guards,

and through the half-open door

I could see my grandfather,

lying there on the wooden

floor, covered in blood

with Natalia and the guards.

And when Grandfather heard me coming,

he said to the guards, "Get

Esteban away from here.

"My grandson mustn't see this."

And at the same time he said to the guards

when he heard the moans of his killer,

"Don't kill him, he has to speak."

(solemn music)

Trotsky was immediately taken to hospital.

He died from his wounds the following day.

300,000 people attended

his funeral in Mexico.

Before he died, he spoke

the following words,

"Tell our friends I'm

certain of the victory

"of the Fourth International."

Ramon Mercader was sentenced

20 years in prison.

When he returned to Moscow in the 1960s

he was greeted as a hero

of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky went down in history

as the thwarted heir,

the man of a different communism.

But his death also bears

testimony to the power of Stalin,

capable of murdering an enemy

thousands of miles away from Moscow.

Killing him politically wasn't enough.

The czar had to slay the prophet.

After Hitler broke the

German-Soviet pact in 1941

Stalin fought an epic

fight against Nazi Germany

to stake his place as one of

the great post-war victors,

right up there with Churchill,

and Roosevelt.

Stalin had not only vanquished Trotsky,

but he had carved out a definitive

place for himself in history.

(stately music)