Leon Trotsky (Russian; born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (7 November 1879 - 21 August 1940) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist; Soviet politician; and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.Trotsky was initially a supporter of 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 Party. During the early days of the Soviet Union; he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army as People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918-23). He was also among 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 the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union; Trotsky was successively removed from power in 1927; expelled from the Communist Party; and finally deported from the Soviet Union in 1929. As the head of the Fourth International; Trotsky continued in exile in Mexico to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism; in the late 1930s; Trotsky opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico; by Ram髇 Mercader; a Spanish-born Soviet agent in August 1940. Pictures From History