Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution (The Battle of the Cowshed), whose rank was subsequent to Vladimir Lenin (Old Major).
"Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Vladimir Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War, he was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo.
After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power, expelled from the Communist Party, deported from the Soviet Union and assassinated on Stalin's orders. An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism,[2] Trotsky also opposed Stalin's peace agreements with Adolf Hitlerin the 1930s.
As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile to oppose the Stalinistbureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico, by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet agent.[3] Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism. He was one of the few Soviet political figures who was never rehabilitated by the Gorbachev administration."