Life of a lion

A new exhibition about Trotsky reveals unseen aspects of his legacy.

By Sasha de Vogel

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: November 20, 2009 (Issue # 1528)

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was virtually erased from the Stalinist version of Soviet history, is the focus of a new local exhibition.

“Revolutionary Lion,” a new exhibition at the Museum of Political History, pays tribute to the life and work of Leon Trotsky. On Nov. 6, the museum unveiled a modest but concise exhibition of rare photographs, manuscripts, letters and other artifacts in honor of the 130th anniversary of Trotsky’s birth, on Nov. 7, 1879. The collection, which includes several pieces being displayed for the first time, reveals the complexities of this revolutionary mastermind’s rise and fall.

A leading figure in the October Revolution, Trotsky was widely considered to be second in power only to Lenin. He served as Commissar for Foreign Affairs following the Revolution, and in 1918 became the head of the Red Army, which he reformed and guided through the Civil War.

A prominent Marxist theorist, Trotsky is particularly known for his theory of permanent revolution. Following Lenin’s death, Trotsky’s longtime rivalry with Stalin ended with Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist Party and exile to Kazakhstan, then to Turkey, Norway and Mexico. In 1940, he died in Mexico, after being attacked with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent. Unlike many other victims of the Purges, Trotsky was never rehabilitated, and it was not until 1987 that his books were published in the Soviet Union.

After Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist Party, the museum — then known as the Museum of the Revolution — expunged him from its records, leaving only documents and artifacts that showed the revolutionary leader in a highly negative light. These items, such as anti-Trotsky caricatures and critical writings, are displayed alongside previously unseen pro-Trotsky documents and photographs.

Thanks to a gift donated to the museum in 2000 and new access to a formerly sealed special archive, the exhibition includes items such as a rough draft of the announcement of Trotsky’s death in Pravda newspaper, complete with Stalin’s written corrections and manuscripts of Trotsky’s work criticizing the party leadership.

The exhibition is particularly effective at capturing the complexities of Trotsky’s public image through the careful juxtaposition of artifacts. A pair of contradictory Civil War-era pieces of propaganda conveys the threatening and inspiring power of Trotsky’s image, as well as the significance of his Jewish background. In one print, Trotsky as a bespectacled St. George slays the dragon of the counter-revolutionary movement; another, anti-revolutionary, anti-Semitic propaganda image depicts a long-nosed and devilish Trotsky, presiding over a Communist hell of chaos and violence.

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times A visitor to the Trotsky exhibition looks at propaganda posters depicting the revolutionary leader in a positive light.

The tension between his role as an intellectual and as a military leader is captured by a commemorative scarf from the 1925 All-Soviet Scholastic Conference, decorated with the faces of the major intellectuals of Communism. Trotsky’s image has been carefully cut out from the lower left corner, leaving a conspicuous hole, but the preserved scrap shows him wearing a Red Army helmet and looking more like a general than a thinker.

Although Trotsky can be seen in several photographs addressing Red Army soldiers with a steely passion, he is not represented as a military man in his portraits, which are also on display. Instead, he is represented as a philosopher, in the grips of a powerful idea behind his ever-present glasses. It is little wonder, then, that his likeness decorated the covers of notebooks for schoolchildren and his name was used on Komsomol certificates and diplomas, which are also exhibited here.

Materials from Trotsky’s time in exile round out the small display, beginning with a decree from January 1929 announcing his expulsion from Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, and from the U.S.S.R. as a whole. Also on view are rare letters that were recently acquired by the museum. The letters written by Trotsky in the early 1930s to his son, Lev Sedov, were discovered during a journalistic investigation and given to the museum; they are on display for the first time.

The exhibition concludes with an engraving by Vladimir Kibalchich, also known as Vladi, a Mexican artist of Russian origin and descendent of a prominent member of the terrorist organization, Narodnaya Volya. The engraving, titled “Memories of Trotsky, No. 3,” was inspired by the artist’s memories of Trotsky, whom he encountered in Mexico as a child, and by Trotsky’s horrible demise. The print shows Trotsky’s office in chaos, with papers, shoes and a desk flying through the air. It is an appropriate metaphor for a man whose life saw such highs and lows, whose work was celebrated then censored, and whose exile banished him from the country that he was instrumental in founding.

“Revolutionary Lion” can be seen until Dec. 9 at the Museum of Political History, Ulitsa Kuibysheva 2-4, www.polithistory.ru. Information available in Russian only.