Mr. Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician. He was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in 1879 and adopted the pseudonym Leon Trotsky in 1902. He was one of the leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, which brought the Bolsheviks to power. He was also the founder and first leader of the Red Army and served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1924. He was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and assassinated in Mexico in 1940.