POLITICS AS MURDER Chapter Three

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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POLITICS AS MURDER Chapter One

 

I am certain Robert Harte died knowing he had made the wrong choice Of course, by then it was far too late.  He should have acted before the man came around the corner from Morelos Street, and approached the two Police officers guarding the front door of the single story hacienda at 19 Avenida Viena (above). It was just after four on Friday morning, 24 May, 1940, in the quiet farming 

Mexico City suburb of Carranza.  

The man raised an arm in greeting. The officers were deceived for a moment by his large military looking overcoat.  And then, as he came closer, they saw his comical false mustache.  But before they could say anything, the man suddenly shouted “Viva Almazan!”, and pulled his pistol.  

The right wing revolutionary Juan Almazan (above) was one of the richest and most famous men in Mexico, and currently a very unpopular candidate for the Presidency.  The use of his name, the comical makeup and the military overcoat kept the two officers bewildered just long enough to be disarmed.

A half dozen men appeared out of the darkness and shoved the officers through the front door of the villa.  In the reception hall were three more police officers, sleeping.  At the same time the telephone lines into the villa were cut. All five prisoners were quickly gagged and tied up, and left on the floor, under guard, while yet another score of armed men filed silently into the dimly lit foray. The mustached man knocked heavily on the left hand inside door.  After a moment, a voice was heard from inside the villa, asking “Qué es ?” The mustached man demanded, “Abra la puerta! La policía de la ciudad de México.” There was a hesitation, and then the voice said, “Un momento”, followed by the sound of a bolt being lifted, and a lock being turned.

The second it began to move the door was violently shoved fully open, bowling over young Robert Harte, who had just opened the inside door. Instantly, eager hands lifted him up and spun him around. Without pause he was hustled across the Villa's 100 yard long garden (above) 

There was a seven foot wall to the left (above, right), topped by barbed wire, and a series of doors to the villa's separate rooms to the right (above, left).  At the end of the garden stood a small, two story red brick guest house, painted white (below). 

With military precision the men divided. Several spread out in front of the guest house (above), while others filtered through the gate beyond, which opened on Churubusco street. Still  more men ran through the back gate to a Ford pickup and a Dodge passenger car, parked there.  At that moment, the electrical power to the villa was cut off.  

At the same time  a third, smaller group of armed men men raced through the front door, turned left in the hall and out into the garden, where they split up, one man stopping in front of each of the villa's doors.  

Just as they did so, a voice called out from the guest house, “Es que usted , Roberto?. Lo que está mal?” A loud blasts of automatic gunfire ripped the suburban night apart.  Over the next two minutes, the only exit from the guest house was blocked by a continuous hail of lead.

As soon as they heard the gunfire, the figure outside the farthest entrance,  bent down and crashed through the five foot high door and into the study beyond (above). As he did so the man in front of the middle room, stood and pulled the bolt of his MP 35 German made machine gun, and the third man bent over and crashed through the remaining door into a bedroom. (below) 

 Immediately all three men opened fire, blasting the adobe and plaster walls separating the rooms, filling the bedroom sandwiched between with 200 deadly 9mm lead missiles. 

The firing went on for less than fifteen seconds, while over 70 bullets thudding into the wall and the bed's headboard. Then the middle gunman dropped his weapon, pulled a pistol and burst through the French doors, emptying a clip directly into the lumps on the bed (below).

As he did so the men in the foray silently filtered toward the back gate, followed in their turn by the kill squad, who dropped incendiary grenades behind them, and then the squad assigned to suppress the guards in the guest house. 

The raiding party then piled into the two stolen vehicles and disappeared into the night. Within five minutes of the two police officers being surprised at the front door, the raid was over.  It would be some hours before the raiders realized they had failed.

The target had survived. His wife Natalia had been awakened by the crash of the inner door. She shook her husband and then pulled him onto the floor beside her. The hail of bullets, when it came, passed over their heads, and the pistol fire punctured the mattress they had been sleeping on, but the two elderly intended victims were safe, unseen, on the floor of their dark bedroom.

As soon as he was certain the raiders had left, the intended target, "the old man man" (above, right), as everyone called him, asked Natalia (above left) to check on their 14 year old grandson Seva (above, center), who was sleeping in the bedroom next to theirs. Even after pushing aside a burning chest of drawers, Natalia could not find her grandson. Her first panicked thought was that he had been kidnapped. 

But then she heard his voice from the library at the front end of the house, calling out in Russian, “Ded?” - grandfather? She found Seva clutching his bleeding foot. He had been awakened when the gunfire at the guest house erupted, and had hidden under his bed.  A ricochet had clipped his toe. And that was the only blood spilled that night at 19 Avenida Viena.

Meanwhile, the bearded old man retrieved his wire rimmed glasses, and then ran into his study, next to the bedroom. Inside he found two small fires, which he quickly extinguished. That saved the secondary target of the would-be assassins – the biography  of his rival which the old man was writing .  Then he joined his wife and grandson in the library. He warmly hugged them both, and told his wife, “Natalia, they have given us one more day of life.” 

It was a favorite phrase the old man, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, would repeat every morning for the rest of his life. He had been known for 20 years now as Leon Trotsky, and as such was reviled, feared and despised by most of the world. Trotsky was the one of those who had engineered the October Communist revolution in Russia for Lenin, who had ordered the massacre of the Russian Tasar Nicolas Romanoff, his wife and six children, who had murdered thousands of his own countrymen,, and was now in exile, hiding from  the revenge of his old partner in terror, Joseph Stalin.   

There was one resident of the villa missing after the raid,  25 year old New Yorker, Robert Harte (above).  But had he left with his fellow conspirators,  or was he the victim of a kidnapping?  

The day after the raid the Communist newspaper in Mexico City spread the lie that the shooting had been staged to garner public sympathy for Trotsky.  The next day the police brought in   “The Old Man's” bodyguards for two grueling days of questioning.  

But at the same time they began taking a hard look at the communist members of the International Brigade,  veterans of the Spanish Civil War, just ended.  First step in this line was to interview the chauffeurs for the Mexican Communist Party. And the name that kept popping was their old commander and the famous Mexican mural painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros (above). 

Siqueiros had recently been paying visits to an isolated farm a few miles south of Carranza, rented by Siqueiros' sister. And the morning after the attack, not far from the farm, the stolen pickup truck had been found abandoned and burned. A week after the assault, the farm house and property were searched by the Mexican government.

On the property, beside the road from Carranza, recently disturbed earth was spotted. A month after the attack, in a shallow grave, the police found the disfigured corpse of Robert Harte (above).  He had been shot twice, and then quick lime had been poured over the body.  It burned some his features, but it also preserved most of the flesh and bones.

A warrant for Siqueiros' arrest was issued. But rather than surrender, Siqueiros (above) fled the country and began issuing written statements to the communist newspaper, at first protesting his innocence, and condemning police incompetence. But as 27 members of the International Brigade were arrested, and their confessions and connections to Siqueiros appeared in the general press,  

Siqueiros' statements to the Communist press began to shift to defiant and arrogant,  justifying the attempted murder of Leon Trotsky. And then, finally, Siqueiros turned himself in.  He was immediately released without bail. And then promptly fled the country and disappeared.

Trotsky was not surprised by the ease with which his attempted assassin escaped justice. Nor was he in any doubt that Siqueiros was the actor but not the author of the murderous attack on his home and family. 

As “Bugs” Moran had insisted after the Chicago St. Valentines Day Massacre that “Only Al Capone kills like that”,  four years before the May 1940 attack on his own life,  Leon Trotsky had prophetically written, "(Joseph) Stalin...seeks to strike not at the ideas of the opponent,  but at his skull.”

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