My Review of John Ireland's "The Death of Trotsky"

 Stalin’s Long Arm

Stalin’s long arm reached into suburban Mexico City in August 1940 to assassinate Leon Trotsky, his former rival for power in the Soviet Union. Here author John Ireland examines how Stalin used his NKVD security service to infiltrate Trotsky’s inner sanctum to allow Ramon Mercader to smash an ice ax into the back of Trotsky’s skull thereby killing him.

Ireland tells us how the mother son team of Caridad Mercader and Ramon Mercader were recruited during the Spanish Civil War. Though both of them were stone-cold communists, they enjoyed the finer things in life. They were aided by Iosif Grigulevich, the NKVD’s super spy who assisted in the plot. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/05/my-review-of-shaun-walkers-illegals.html )

 

The operation had a very long tail. For example, Ramon Mercador first had to seduce Sylvia Ageloff, a Brooklyn social worker who was the sister of one of Trotsky’s secretaries. It was the connection to Sylvia that enabled Ramon to enter Trotsky’s household.

 

Ireland goes into the background as to how Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, lost his fight with Stalin. Trotsky was too much of an intellectual to get involved in the day-today nitty gritty of Soviet politics. On the other hand, Stalin coldly and methodically accumulated power to best all of his rivals. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of "Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878 -1928" and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Steven Kotkin's "Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941" ) Although, by the time Trotsky was assassinated he had little power being in charge of a very small sect revolving around his personality, Stalin was so paranoid that he feared him as a potential rival. Trotsky wasn’t the only one because during the Purge Trials Stalin finished off his old Bolshevik comrades in the early leadership including Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin.

 

So how did Trotsky end up in Mexico?  Stalin first exiled him to Turkey and Trotsky moved on to Paris and Soviet diplomacy forced him out. He then went to Norway. From Norway the new revolutionary regime of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico invited him in. Initially he stayed with the painter Diego Rivera and had an affair with Frida Khalo, Rivera’s wife. Of course this did not please Natalia, Trotsky’s wife.  With so much tension the Rivera household Trotsky moved on to a villa in suburban Mexico City.

 

While there Stalin sent three assassination teams into Mexico. The first attempt failed, but not for the lack of trying; 200 bullets rained into the Trotsky household. The second attempt succeeded. After the assassination Ramon was jailed, a Stalin had no interest in pursuing the remainder of Trotsky’s following.

 

At times Ireland’s book reads like a spy thriller. However, at other times it gets bogged down in minutia. A better editing job would have been helpful. Nevertheless, we get a very real glimpse as of what happened to people who got on the wrong side of Stalin.