Vladimir Lenin
Born Vladimir Ilich Ulanov in 1870, Lenin was the founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the architect, builder, and first head of the Soviet Union. Lenin spent the years leading up to the 1917 revolution in exile, within Russia and abroad. The Bolshevik’s quickly consolidated power; privatizing all aspects of the Soviet economy, cracking down on dissent through the Cheka, or secret police and instituting the Red Terror, aimed at destroying monarchist and anti-Bolshevik sympathizers during the Russian Civil War. Despite a series of strokes in his final years, Lenin attempted to shape the future of the Soviet Union, warning against the unchecked power of party members, including Joseph Stalin. His warnings went unheeded, and Stalin emerged victorious from the protracted power struggle following Lenin’s 1924 death.
Leon Trotsky
byname of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (born November 7 [October 26, Old Style], 1879, Yanovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died August 21, 1940, Coyoacán, Mexico), communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union (1917–24). In the struggle for power following Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent.