I don't believe that Joseph Stalin ordered the murder of his own father. When in March of 1909 the cobbler Besarion Vanovis (above) was found dead on a back street in Tifil, Georgia, there were few tears shed. But Stalin himself spread the rumor that his corpse had a huge hole smashed into his skull, because Stalin ordered it. And that was just the sort of wound Stalin now insisted upon inflicting on his other old enemy, Leon Trotsky.
One of Stalin's (above) favorite pastime was contemplating the method and timing of the murder of his enemies, as he explained in 1923 to his frightened comrades, “To choose the victim,” he told them, “to prepare the blow with care, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed....there is nothing sweeter in life.”.
After the raid of 24 May, the American Socialist Workers Party were only able collect $2,250 to improve security at Leon Trotsky's home. A guard house (above) was constructed above the front entrance to the house,
All windows facing Morelos Street (above) were bricked up, as were the doors in the portico which opened on Viena Street. The windows that remained were now guarded by iron bars. Wooden interior doors, which had proved easily smashed, were replaced with steel. Clearly, it was not enough.
Trotsky had previously been approached by Harvard University to donate his papers, and he now had two reasons to close the deal quickly, to protect his own life, and to move his papers to where Stalin could not destroy them. In exchange for his communications and notes between 1917 and 1937, Trotsky was to be paid $6,000 cash.
It was during the confusion and trauma immediately following the 24 May attack that an old friend appeared at the Viena Streeet villa, a young blond woman named Slyvia Ageloff (above). Her sister, Ruth, had once worked for Trotsky as a typist, and both sisters had met the Old Man and Natalia during his Paris exile. Trotsky had taken an interest in the young socialists because he was, in the words of a close family friend, an “experienced philanderer”. But Natalia also found the girls a pleasant diversion, and now Slyvia was doubly so.
Sylvia (above left) explained she had come to Mexico to visit her mysterious Canadian boyfriend, Frank Jackson (above right), who had recently started a new job in Mexico. She was welcomed to tea with the Trotskys, Although Frank's schedule prevented him from joining them, his absence only added to his mystery.
At first the only time members of the household saw Frank (above) was when his Buick sedan pulled to the curb to pick up Sylvia. Eventually Frank became familiar with the guards, and even drove the house-bound Leon and Natalia Trotsky on an outing to Vera Cruz. That kindness, and a gift of chocolates for Natalia, made it easier when Sylvia asked if Trotsky could offer some advice on a political article Frank was writing
The article which Jackson wanted Trotsky to read was titled “The Third Camp and the Popular Front”, referring to Trotsky's argument that workers must reject both capitalism and the gangster state Stalin had created. But as he read Jackson's words in his study, Trotsky grew uneasy.
Frank Jackson was sitting too close, right behind him, on the edge of his desk, with his coat folded across his lap. Since the 24 May attack, Trotsky kept a .25 caliber pistol, always within reach on the desk top. But his reach to an alarm switch was blocked by Jackson. Besides, Trotsky found the article obvious and dull. And after he had made comments and sent Jackson on his way, The Old Man told Natalia he did not want to see the Canadian again.
But Sylvia begged, and Trotsky agreed to read the rewrites Jackson had made. So about 5:20, on Tuesday afternoon, 20 August, 1940, Jackson pulled up again in front of the villa. It would be his 10th visit. Getting out of his Buick he called up to the guard shack above the foray (above), asking if Sylvia had arrived yet. The guards answered no, but opened the front door without question. Again they noted he carried a raincoat.
Trotsky was in the garden, feeding his rabbits and chickens, so Jackson stepped back to the kitchen, to tell Natalia that he and Sylvia would be leaving Mexico the next day. But Trotsky's wife had also grown suspicious of Jackson, and asked him why he was wearing a hat and coat on such a hot day. Jackson answered, “It might rain.” Abruptly, Trotsky appeared and invited Jackson back to his study to read the rewrites. Natalia let them go, despite her uneasiness.
Once in the study Jackson waited only a few moments, before drawing out a cut-down climbers pick ax hanging off the rear of his belt, hidden beneath his jacket. Nervously, he wrapped his raincoat around it, and raising it over his head, drove it with all his might into the very top of Leon Trotsky's head.
The steel point smashed through the top of the Old Man's skull, tore through the living soft layer beneath, and was driven three inches into his brain.
Jackson said in his confession, “As long as I live I can never forget his cry ...he screamed very long, infinitely long,” Jackson had expected the man to die instantly. He carried a pistol, and a knife, but had used the axe because the NKVD said a sever blow to the head would bring instant death. But the sound of the old man's cry terrorized the murderer, and everybody else in the villa.
As Jackson pulled the ax back out, to raise it again, Trotsky stood and turned on his assassin. They struggled over the ax, destroying much of the furniture, and throwing Trotsky's blood all around the room. (above) The younger man managed to slice Trotsky's cheek, before the 60 year old Russian pulled the ax out of his hands.
As Natalia and a bodyguard rushed into the room they discovered Trotsky standing over his attacker, the ax in his hand, blood pouring over his eyes. Trotsky said to his wife, “Look what they've done to me!” He told the guard he'd been shot. Then Natalia guided him out to the garden.
The guards fell upon Jackson (above), beating him while he cried, “They made me do it. They're holding my mother. They have put my mother in jail” When he tried to pull a pistol out of his pocket, they beat him again. Again he cried out, “They have imprisoned my mother” Then he added, “Sylvia Ageloff had nothing to do with this.” Then he insisted neither did the NKVD. No one ever believed him.
Trotsky was driven two miles to Cruz Verde Hospital in Mexico City. A team of neurosurgeons operated to release pressure on his brain. His last words were, “I think Stalin has finished the job he started.” Suffering from shock and blood loss, and severe brain damage, Leon Trotsky never woke up from the surgery, and died half past seven the next evening. He was buried on the villa's grounds, which have become a museum, dedicated to his memory.
Later, the police, led the bewildered and terrified Sylvia into a hotel room crowded with reporters, where she was surprised to confront Jackson (above). He began yelling, telling her to go away. But she was under arrest.
Jackson (above, right) later re-enacted his crime, and even admitted to being Jacques Mornard. And under that name he was convicted of murder, and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He served every day of it, if under luxurious conditions, with female companionship, and servants, all paid for by Stalin's NKVD.
We know now that Leonid Ettingon told Ramon Mercader just before his final meeting with Trotsky, that if he failed to murder the Old Man, his mother Caridad Mercader (above) , would be sent to a gulag in Siberia. After Trotsky was dead, Caridad was ordered back to Moscow, where Stalin himself presented her with the Order of Lenin. The honor was tainted when she realized she would never be free again.
Twelve years after the murder, Mexican police finally pierced Ramon's disguises, and his true identity was finally revealed. But he kept his silence during his 20 years in jail. Caridad knew that not only had she turned her own son into a murderer, she would have been arrested and likely executed by Soviet NKVD if he ever talked. She became a drug addict, her heroin supplied by the NKVD.
Joseph Stalin, perhaps the greatest thug of all time, died in his own bed on 5 March, 1953, possibly poisoned by the head of his NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria. Beria was arrested and executed on 23 December, 1953 - just another gangster rubbed out. That left only the flotsam to record the damage the gangsters had done.
Ramon was released from prison in May of 1960, and traveled immediately to the Soviet Union where he was honored and rewarded for his loyalty and silence. He would never reconcile with his mother (above), who said she was “only good for destroying capitalism, but no good for building Communism.” She hated living in the Soviet Union, and left soon after her son returned, dying in Paris in 1975. Her son, Ramon, died three years later, in Havana, Cuba. His last words were reported as, “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”
And Seva, Trotsky's grandson, going by the name Esteban Volkov (above), still lives in Mexico City,. He made his living as a chemist, but as of 2019, he was the custodian of the Trotsky Museum (the Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky) in the villa in which the old man died. Esteban still suffers from occasional nightmares of his grandfather's brutal murder. He told a British newspaper, “I still remember looking through the open door and seeing my grandfather lying on the floor with his head bathed in blood and hearing him tell somebody to ‘keep the boy away, he shouldn’t see this'. I always thought that was a sign of his humanity. Even in a moment like that he was worried about me.” And to a point, I'm sure that was true. However, no one should doubt that given the opportunity, Trotsky would have been just as brutal as Stalin. It is the nature of gangsters.
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