My Life

Leon Trotsky is one of the brightest, most mysterious, controversial, and influential figures in the political history of Russia, a personality that has given rise to many myths. Under Stalin, Trotsky was cast as the enemy of the revolution, against whom an uncompromising struggle was waged; he was attributed all sorts of crimes—terror, espionage, betrayal of the Motherland. In the post-Stalin era, Trotsky transitioned from the vanguard of counter-revolutionary forces to the "conveyance of reaction," and during Perestroika, he became the "demon" of the revolution and a representative of the "world backstage." In the subsequent years, interest in Trotsky did not fade, and his image took on new colors. He became the embodiment of destructive forces that, much to the delight of enemies, wish to plunge Russia into the abyss of chaos. What relation does this have to the real Trotsky? The answer to this question, the reader may find in the book "My Life," the autobiography of Leon Trotsky, who was not only a key figure in the October Revolution of 1917 and the main opponent of Stalin in political struggle, but also a brilliant writer and original thinker. The book was written in 1929–1930, after Trotsky's expulsion from the Soviet Union, achieved enormous success among readers worldwide, and instantly became a bestseller; however, in the author's homeland, the memoirs were published for the first time only in 1991.