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has to do with trotsky's affair with freida. most of you have heard about this if you haven't read it maybe you saw the movie i think it was 2000 more, the movie freida that dwelt on this. the myth that dies hard is not that the affair took place because of course it did and i describe the circumstances in my book in fact the myth is freida's husband, diego rivera, later found out about it and this led him to break off his relationship with trotsky. that is a method. that's the first one. in the second has to do with a certain ice pick and i should say spoiler alert the trotsky does not do well at the end of this book. the book focuses, as mcginn said on the last years of trotsky's life in mexico, so 1937 to 1940.

with flashbacks to pivotal moments in his earlier career as young revolutionary, great orator of the russian revolution in 1917, creator and leader of the red army and then of course vanquished rival stalin but let's start with diego. it was thanks to diego rivera, the great painter the trotsky landed in mexico. stalin had routed trotsky in the battle to succeed lenin who died in 1924 and then sent trotsky into exile. the first went to turkey. from turkey trotsky eventually moved to france in 1933. then norway until 1935 until the political pressure on the norwegian government forced it

to expel trotsky. what do i mean by political pressure? the first of the famous moscow show trials took place in august of 1936, leading bolsheviks or should say leading communists long trial for the most fantastic crimes including assassination of stalin himself attempted assassination any way, espionage and so on. trotsky was portrayed as the mastermind of a group of spies, wreckers and saboteurs, directing their operations from abroad. that trial, the moscow trials of 1936 was the first of three such trials each one involving major political figures time when the trotsky serving as the chief defendant in the absentia.

so what more we wanting to be rid of trotsky, the only country in the world that would take him was mexico thanks to its radical president who thought it was the right thing to do, but also crucially thanks to the intercession of diego rivera who called himself trotskyist, more on that in a moment, and heated by the mexican communists. the decision by mexico to grant asylum was controversy within mexico but nonetheless it happened and trotsky and his wife arrived there in january of 1937. diego and freida about trotsky and natalia to have resided in their blue house than a suburban

site mexico city. now course it has been incorporated into the city. rivera was a vital source of funds for trotsky and his first two years selling off his paintings, and at one point even mortgaging his house and nearby to help raise money for trotsky. for two things; one, to support the household as putting food on the table, but also and of increasing importance money for trotsky's protection to pay for guards, weapons and so on. diego and freida borat trotsky's side during the dewey commission hearings held up the blue house in the spring of 1937. the commission being the independent inquiry into the veracity of the moscow trials led by the american philosopher and public intellectual john

dewey. the dewey commission eventually by the end of 1937 issued a verdict of not guilty. in other words of the outrage charged against trotsky in moscow had not improved. it was after the departure of the diego commission in the spring of 1937 to the coup that trotsky and freida began their affair. freida's extra marital liaisons were several. i wrote numerous and i crossed that out earlier and put several because i should point out they were nowhere near the number of her husband. he was a champion philander. trotsky's relations with freida became known to and i talked about this at some of the length in the book there's a separate chapter devoted to it trotsky facing old age having a fling the chapter title is man of october, trotsky's affair with

freida becomes known to natalia and for a while in the summer of 1937 this threatens the trotsky's marriage. they had a short separation that summer exchanging letters back and forth, some with shockingly explicit sexual language on trotsky's part. this is true i am not trying to sell books. as my father-in-law put it there are some of the pages in this book. trotsky is trying and advancing old age of the with the time, interestingly, trotsky feels he's getting old. he's 57. and in this day and age we look back 57 doesn't seem that old. certainly not from up here it doesn't look that old. 57. but he's called the old man by his acolytes and he is very much feeling that way at this time beginning in the late 1930's it

was during the separation trotsky was staying at a hacienda about 12 our driveway. was during the subornation the trotsky and frida decided to call a halt. we are pretty certain about this. there's an absolutely no evidence that diego town out about any of this, either at the time were later on. when the friendship between trotsky and diego began to disintegrate. had rivera discovered trotsky was having an affair with his wife, trotsky, the great russian revolutionary, trotsky rivera, his hero who he had arranged for, diego might have ended his life before stalin's assassin had a chance to do so. diego was famously jobless of

speed and just generally always threatening people with a gun in his hand. so i speculate here had he found out we would have heard some fireworks. trotsky would have heard fire works. for now the friendship between trotsky and diego remained strong. it was diego who broke the news to trotsky in february of 1948 that his older son, had died in the paris clinic after an operation to remove his appendix. we will probably never know whether foul play was involved in the part of the soviet secret police. most books say of course they knocked him off. it's not clear but what is clear is trotsky had to assume this was the case. trotsky's other children were by now dead or had disappeared.

a daughter died of natural -- no, nina died of natural causes in the u.s.s.r., tuberculosis in the 1920's and other daughter by a suicide in berlin died in 1933 and another was arrested in moscow that the trotsky's new but what they didn't know is he was shot while trotsky was in mexico and still alive. other family members of the trotsky's had to endure a similar fate. as did most of trotsky's followers. this after all was the period of the great terror. trotsky's paris organization had been penetrated by the space. in fact, the closest confidante was a nkvd agent, so it is conceivable that his death was in fact murder.

beginning especially in 1938 trotsky now had to worry about this nkvd's presence in mexico and the reason for this is the spanish civil war was under way and had been since the summer of 1936. and speaking in this to years had become a recruiting ground for the nkvd. and as general franco's for largesse forces rolled to victory mexico becomes a haven for refugees from the war, defenders of the republic to be sure that the include nkvd agents or if not agents certainly stalin sympathizers. diego's hope building up the defenses of the blue house and in hiring guards at this time becomes critically important. those guards were mostly young americans from new york, and i

mean new york city. but also from minneapolis where the trotskyist had put down roots along the teamsters organization. it was the only place where they had a falling among what trotsky called proletariat. some of the teams came to serve as guards and some less successfully than others. the teamsters it turns out were not all cut out to be guards of trotsky or anybody else. despite diego's generosity the shortage of funds in the trotsky household just to run the household but also for his protection is quite shocking. one of the things i discovered in researching the book there were always running out of money. the guard fund runs out of money and they are asking natalia for from this, please don't tell trotsky and back and forth and all around.

also when you sort of get what you pay for when you see is the poor quality of some of the guards and there's quite scandalous as well. you can believe it. reading the documents or reading the book that this is the best the great trotsky could attract or the most money he could attract to the tail. trotsky himself is constantly complaining about the quality of his guards and because of this, by 1939 he's really resisting being guarded. very important part of the story, to support himself and household trotsky is writing as he has done through the 1930's the period of his exile he established his reputation in the west with his epic history of the russian revolution and his memoirs, my life both published in the early 1930's.

now in 1938 out of desperation trotsky agrees to write a biography of stalin, the publisher is carper, predecessor of my publisher, harpercollins. trotsky finds this very distasteful. he drags his feet about taking it on but ultimately he decides that he has to do it because he needs to protect himself from trotsky's this assassins' so we have a situation he is writing a biography of a man who's trying to have him killed very interesting. trotsky gets off to a fast start with the biography in 1938. but the work becomes bogged down not surprisingly when trotsky reaches the part of the story where stalin and trotsky face off in soviet russia after 1917. she just can't write this chapters. he gets serious writers block

and also his health begins to fail. the return of a mysterious illness that plagued him critical moments in the struggle for power in the 1920's, lethargy high blood pressure extremely high blood pressure, loss of appetite, not the fever, the fever that characterize his illness in the 1920's does not return to read this entire situation, the pressure for funds, the health concerns, publisher literary agent on his back, that is the worst of it becomes actually worse in the fall of 1938 when the friendship between trotsky and diego begins. now this has nothing to do with frida kahlo away in new york and then paris exciting her work. this is the time she comes into her own as an artist she had

been up her husband's shadow until this time. she would track his presence in mexico for having her career take off. inspiration to paint and so on. so trotsky is a way. so what explains the break? the friendship between trotsky and diego seems from the beginning dustin to go sour. you have on the one hand trotsky, rigid, prickly, angular and all the other diego, reckless, right, gargantuan, a lion and the elephant. diego days it irregularly, dressed carelessly, seldom are arrived on time for anything. trotsky meanwhile was a stickler for neatness, regimen and routine. both men had tremendous work

ethics diego's self discipline was restricted to his painting and with a brush in hand he tended to lose track of nearly everything else. on the day of the dead, november 2nd, today and 1938 diego walked into trotsky's study of the blue house and presented him with a sugar school, not an unusual thing to do on the day of the dead. this had the name stalin spelled out across the forehead. trotsky was not amused and as soon as he had left the house he ordered his assistant to have the offending object destroyed. a year ago i speculate trotsky might have let that go but at this point he had become sort of fed up. it was all unraveling. the split came that winter when diego went off the real politically in advance of mexico's presidential elections.

they will take place until the summer of 1940 there is a grown-up they cannot run again and so there is a struggle for power. diego wasn't a trotskyist and even his marxism was open to question. diego was a free spirit if anything he was a populist. given diego's very public and political freelancing trotsky called it zigzagging, trotsky velte had no choice but to move out of the house and in a new velo was found a few blocks away and trotsky moved in in may of 1939. diego and trotsky would never meet again. at this point in the story, another of the big three mexican muralists interest the story. trotsky had a brief and very stimulating meeting with the

other great mexican muralist trotsky was immediately in fact we did with him. this was the late starter of the three great muralists partly because he was so heavily into communist politics. he took it very seriously. he wasn't a dilettante like diego. he wanted nothing to do with not only communist politics but in the body's politics by the 1930's. in fact he was diego's nemesis. here the 2004 frida film is quite accurate. this is winding story but he goes off to fight in spain. that should tell a lot about his

commitment. it is said it's very hard to determine for sure but it said that he commanded brigade and then division of the republican army in spain and he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was in spain he is likely recruited by the nkvd. after his return to mexico in january, 1939, he began work on one of his most important minerals. it's in the stairwell of the mexican obstetricians unit, still there. i went to see it when i was researching the book. it's a fantastic thing. a portrait of the bourgeoisie. it's nothing like it sounds, it is violent and epic. really one of the masterpieces of the 1930's mural art. so this was a major activity for him. however, he was also involved in

a different kind of activity on the side. this one sponsored by the nkvd. he was enlisted to lead an armed commando raid on trotsky's home. this took place in the hours before dawn which is about 4 a.m. on may 24, 1940. 20 men dressed in police and military uniforms armed with machine guns, sacaros had on the uniform of an army maj. the man entered the grounds. how did they get in? wasn't trotsky well guarded? one of the american guards from new york had been recruited by the nkvd. he opened the gate. once in place inside the courtyard, the commandos, the intruders set themselves up outside of trotsky's the durham and with trotsky's guards pinned

down in their quarters by machine-gun fire as the on least a barrage of machine-gun fire into the trotsky's bedroom from three directions. rooms on either side and the outside window. he also carried with them three homemade bombs, only one of which went off in a room adjacent to the bedroom. clearly they were trying to set the place on fire. they left after 15 minutes. be leasing the had done the job. trotsky must be dead in fact they had failed to meet trotsky and natalia were not hurt. they ducked down and survive to. trotsky's comrades called this the miraculous escapes, and that is the title of the prologue to the book because i began with this attack dramatic attacked on may 24th 1940.

now comes the frantic preparation for the next attack. and in the anticipation is that it will be with bombs. the film must be transformed into a fortress. torrence must be constructed on top of the high walls, double iron doors must replace the wooden entrance to the garage. steel shutters must cover the windows. bombproof warrior netting must be raised and barbwire barriers must be moved into position. but even as those fortification's began to rise up the nkvd decided to resort to its fallback plan. the assignment of liquidating trotsky, and the orders come directly from the kremlin. that assignment would be interested to a loan operative. they had managed to penetrate

trotsky's inner circle. he was ramon mccotter, a spaniard recruited by the space in spain during the spanish civil war. in paris in the summer of 1938 disguised as a belgian student using the alias he seduced by a sister of one of trotsky's former secretaries, former assistants. she was a brooklyn trotskyist -- she was visiting paris -- bidinotto sylvia. mccotter menard arrived in new york in the fall of 1939 now using the name frank jackson, a canadian businessman. that was his new identity. silvia of new about this as a front and decided to go along with it for her own reasons. she had no idea what she was up

to no idea he belonged to the nkvd. he maneuvered sylvia down to mexico city and used her to incinerate himself into trotsky's household. he claimed to be a heavy financial supporter of the french trotskyist in paris. of course by the summer of 1940 there is no way to verify this, there's no way to contact the french trotskyist because they are on the run from the invading germans. the outbreak of the world war which really starts, it was made possible by the nazis soviet pact of august, 1939 struck a big blow against trotsky and his followers in new york city. new york city being at this time the center of the international trotsky movement. certainly wasn't to paris at this point.

although i see the center of the movement and this is something else quite shocking the total number of trotsky's in the u.s. is probably never more than 2,000. they paid their members. when the war broke out trotsky insisted his followers to support the soviet union despite the fact that the stalin regime wiped out his family and comrades and of course was trying to have trotsky killed. trotsky tried to justify the soviet occupation of eastern poland as a result of the pact. the baltics, the invasion of finland in the winter war of 1939 to 40, which gave the red army a bloody nose so to speak. trotsky said we may not like, but the red army is in fact spreading socialism.

the fact is in the soviet union we have a workers' state. it is a degenerated worker state trotsky called it but nonetheless the state, there is state ownership of the means of production and so the occupied territories are getting socialism at the end of a bayonet so to speak with the red army bringing in from the soviet union. this is very curious because at this very time trotsky was singing workers' state degenerated workers' state but at the same time trotsky was very openly calling the stalin regime totalitarian and what is the other totalitarian regime? nazi germany. so for his followers in new york primero we now there's a lot of confusion they can't follow the old man, not all of them. on this line and trotsky is insistent and this is taking up all the time, the biography of stalin is on hold, the world war

really end of what to do, what position to take on the soviet union and the invasion of finland and so on that a center stage now. the debate among the american trotskyists leads to a split. the party is small enough but there is a sort of rule of the parties on the left that if they are small the ought to split into become smaller. and this is what happens now. there is a majority for those of you who know your russian history read bolsheviks because that is all trotskyite referred to the two groups. the majority supporting trotsky, although really shaky at times, especially after finland and which begins in december, 1939 and leads to expulsion of the soviet union from the league of

nations. the minority, capital m., want to condemn the soviet military aggression all right and do my the u.s.s.r. was a workers' state of any kind and they were very angry with not only trotsky's position but the way he argued it. basically comparing the minority to the old mensheviks calling them petty bourgeois complainers and so on and when they got mad about that, calling him enraged which got a really mad. sylvia, the brooklyn trotskyist, who is the cat's paw in the story took the side of the minority and when she got to mexico city, she was invited to debate, come to trotsky's house and debate with him and the guards in trotsky's study.

this is where hormone and -- monona saw his opening. he was a supporter of trotsky and majority. he saw very little about politics. he was very awkward about it and should have been clear and it was clear to everyone around trotsky on the less they went along with it. the carter wrote in a draft of an article defending the majority position and he had it ready in august, 1940 and asked trotsky to read it. he maneuvered to be alone with trotsky just the two of them in the late afternoon of august 20th as the guards were busy installing a new siren had been received from the comrades in los angeles. mccotter, who trotsky assumed was a canadian businessman by the name of frank jackson, someone who sympathized with the cause and was a potential source

of much-needed funds mccotter entered the study with him at about 5:30 that afternoon of august 20 of carrying his trench coat. inside the coat was a dagger, handgun and pickax, not a nice one, a pickax. one and was pointed like an ice pick, the other was flat and wide. the handle about 1 foot long had been cut down for concealing. trotsky and his assassin all alone, and the rest is up to you. thank you. [applause] if you have questions, if he would step up to the microphone right over here and we have a question.

>> this is a long look for a question that it's worth the. i'm curious about stalin's role as a young man and financing -- can you hear this? it doesn't sound as though it's on. >> we can all hear you. >> i'm curious about stalin's role as a young man in georgia engaged in all of this criminal activity, they are bombing oil fields and robbing banks and the san that. if he was financing trotsky's exile or existence prior to the russian revolution. >> whether stalin financed trotsky's existence prior to the russian revolution? >> i've written biographies that stalin financed linen prior to the revolution, and i wonder if the money he was generating through his nefarious activities

but also supporting trotsky. >> interesting question and much written about it recently there is a biography of a call young stalin by simon monte for ray that talks about this, still controversy will whether this is overdone. trotsky -- sorry, austal and's role in bank robberies before the war robbing banks in order to support bolshevik operations. without sort of waiting into that quagmire i can tell you trotsky wasn't a bolshevik until 1917. so not even indirectly was he funded by that. in fact let me say trotsky was an early acolyte of land -- lenin but when the party split into bolsheviks and mensheviks

at a congress, the second congress of the party in 1903 trotsky in the up on the side of the mensheviks. if he were here he would immediately but in and say but i didn't stay with them and in fact she broke with the mensheviks as well. trotsky, talk about free spirits, he was a kind of freelance or as well in a very serious way. but the fact is for all of those years from 1903 up to 1917 trotsky was one of lenin's vocal critics. in all of those criticisms would come back to haunt trotsky after lenin by some 1924 and stalin and the others around stalin who want to make sure trotsky doesn't succeed lenin de u.s those quotes, so in a way trotsky joins the bolshevik party 1917 and realizes it is the only show in town.

he's the great orator of the russian revolution. he's in fact the mastermind of the october coup de taha if you will, and not all of you will, but the coup de taha of 1917 so he becomes a very important bolshevik but trotsky remains an outsider within the party. and he had enough in his background enough political baggage so that his mentioned some is always dragged out against him and he would always say i didn't belong to the mensheviks but nonetheless it was antibolshevism. other questions? anybody want stepup? here we have one here. and if he would use the microphone with a gentleman coming around here actually might want to wait a moment. here we go.

>> just sort of continuing with the struggle between stalin and trotsky and the developments from the time of the russian civil war and all the work i haven't read the book sufficiently yet or much of trotsky's riding. by the end of his life when he was in exile in mexico for these years -- this microphone needs -- >> i will repeat the question. >> what opinion if any have trotsky come to regarding his defeat in the internal struggle? how did he explain it to himself and what lessons did he draw from that? >> very good question. how did trotsky explain his defeat to stall when, how did you rationalize it? infrared this is a central part of my book, what really bothered trotsky is there's nobody stalin defeated him, stalin was the

blur in 1917. he wasn't one of the stars of the bolshevik party. yet stollen pretty handily defeated trotsky in the 1920's. we talk about conflict. really there was no conflict. he went down very quickly in part because trotsky was a poor politician. stalin was a very able politician. and also trotsky's antibolshevik past which i told you about and other political idea what to call issues were brought in. those were the big ones. but for trotsky, the idea that stalin, the georgian, you know, the peasant, asiatic eastern by defeated the great trotsky, one of the great leaders of the revolution really obviously bugged him. and the brief he explained at was saying that stalin was

really nobody still but he represented a bureaucracy that have essentially taken over the soviet organisms were captured it, a broker at stratton that had hijacked the revolution and was still a workers' state but this bureaucratic class was a parasitic entity that had to be removed. so for trotsky he wasn't defeated by a person. he always hated the question. how did you lose power? he to the question and i was asked all the time. he would meet somebody on the street randomly and there is a semite describing turkey somebody's is the great trotsky and bodyguards are there and he shakes hand, how did you lose power. he ate it -- he did it like how did you lose your wallet and he had to basically say and he

would talk your year off it wasn't about stalin the individual, it was about the impersonal forces of history. much easier to deal with it personally if you describe it that way. question right here. >> just on a sarcastic note, you have the russian revolution, and then you have the battle between stalin and trotsky. stalin takes power and kills millions and millions of people, right? okay. was all this worth revolution? why not just stick with the russian aristocracy? why did russia go through this? and isn't a typical of history that this type of thing happens? just your opinion?

>> that is one of those big questions. i'm actually teaching a course in the stanford history department, modern russia and this is sort of like the theme of the course, and would take a long time to answer the question. the fact is trotsky always said everything was worth it through the october revolution and a few years beyond and that all you had to do was to oust the pair acidic regime and he would have the restoration of democracy, workers democracy and truth soviet democracy. in fact trotsky's problem is he wasn't a proponent of democracy while he was in the soviet leadership. only when he was being defeated did he recognize the virtue of the inner party democracy and he wasn't talking about democracy beyond that. and in fact, if you get the

first trials these are not the show trials but trials began in 1928, 29, 30. a lot of people don't know about these. they are not the trials of the bolshevik leaders but engineers, specialists in various fields of the mensheviks 1931 and for those trials, trotsky is living abroad in turkey and supported with stalin is doing criticizing stalin later he would apologize for this but trotsky had a credibility problem and he came to be a quote on quote democrat and that is sort of part of the larger question you are asking which is more of a rhetorical question that it would take a long time to answer. other questions? yes, sir.

>> have the archives after the fall of the soviet union added additional one formation on your story -- additional information on your story? what would be the income part of it and the mexican side, as mexican residents? >> free good question. the question is whether the opening up of the archives, the former soviet archives influenced my book, and i will open in generally and talk about other scholarship. a short version is when the soviet union collapses and boris yeltsin becomes president there is a period not to go back and say that yeltsin were idyllic. but there was a period when we had, and when i say we i mean western researchers as well as russian, have a lot of access to the soviet archives including

some nkvd, kgb archives. they had access that has come to an end since the ascendancy of putin. apply dennett to greatly from the access that was given influx say the first eight years of the 1990's or the first years after the fall of the soviet union because what happened is when you didn't have western scholars going into the archives, which remained mostly closed during this period, you had russian scholars and others attacked russian agencies, the russian successor to the kgb itself publishing books of documents, and here i agree it material come out about the plot to assassinate trotsky, the earlier attempt and the whole network the nkvd put together, how much

money they spent on it, right up until i was finishing the book there was a biography that cannot adjust caught in time to be able to use it a biography of one of the key members of the hit squad that went after the organized the commando raid. wonderfully informative biography. so we can't get especially the last decade but others did and i believe if you believe the reviews my account of the trotsky murders is the most complete that we have so far and helped in part because i found a great materials here as the archives where i do a lot of my research. also the harvard archives where his papers are. all use the exile points. trotsky's point have been there for a very long time. in fact he sold his papers