9 January 1937. The Norwegian oil tanker Ruth, carrying just three passengers, docks at Tampico, on the Mexican coast. The exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, his wife Natalia and one security guard. After years of exile in several European countries, Mexico became the last home of Trotsky. The father of the October Revolution and Stalin’s most vocal opponent stayed there for three years before Stalin’s long arm finally reached him. He lost his life when a Stalin agent smashed his skull with a cleaver.
But before this fateful end to the life of the man who, alongside Lenin and Stalin, most marked the last years of the old Russia and the first years of the young Soviet Union, a host of new adventures and challenges suddenly awaited him in Mexico. Among other things, he struck up an unlikely friendship with the world’s most famous Mexican left-wing painting couple, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
It was Frida who stood proudly on the shore on the day Trotsky and his wife arrived in their new place of refuge. Her husband, bedridden that day because of illness, had successfully persuaded the Mexican President to grant Trotsky political asylum. Trotsky had been out of favour at home since Lenin’s death in 1924, when he lost the battle for Lenin’s succession against Stalin. Lev and Natalia were finally expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, but Trotsky actively continued his anti-Stalinist activities from abroad. Stalin therefore made it his mission to get him, like so many others, along with his extended family and closest associates, out of the world.
In Mexico, Trotsky was almost in emotional shock, because he and Natalia had had a very strict lifestyle up to that point, but then they found the opposite in Frida and Diego. Frida Kahlo was already a renowned painter when he arrived, but her tragic life story gave her a special tragic charm. At the tender age of eighteen, she was involved in a serious car accident that crushed her spine and, according to all predictions, should have ended in her death. But she survived, and despite the lasting pain, she took life in her stride. The accident helped her discover her incredible talent as a painter and led her into Diego’s arms.
It was bittersweet, as Diego Rivera was one of the most promiscuous men, despite his unattractive appearance. Despite the fact that they could not do without each other, they both shared their beds too often.
Trotsky, a stern, self-confident and naked intellectual, also fell under Frida’s spell. “The old man”, as she affectionately called him, was almost sixty, she barely thirty. In each other they found a temporary escape from reality, Frida from the physical pain and anguish of Diego’s constant cheating, he from the constant psychological pressure, the workload and the fear of execution.
Although the affair did not last long, this brief intertwining of the life stories of two giants of the 20th century had lasting consequences. Frida, under Trotsky’s influence, was artistically freed from Diego’s influence, became more independent and flourished intellectually. Trotsky relaxed, ‘met’ alcohol and behaved like a young man in love. The two shared an incredible will to live. Frida’s struggle to survive was painting, his writing. Until his death, he bravely resisted Stalin, even though he left behind a controversial legacy – he never gave up his belief in communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and stubbornly rejected democracy.
His death caused widespread dismay around the world, and it came as a complete shock to Frida. But Trotsky’s death was “only” one of the more prominent episodes of the Stalinist purges.
The super-rich Trotsky grows up
Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born in 1879 to a peasant Jewish couple in Ukraine. His father was enterprising and soon owned a large amount of land, which was not typical of the Jews there, who, marginalised and impoverished, lived on the fringes of an anti-Semitic society. Lev often witnessed pogroms and was himself a victim of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination, yet he never identified with the Jewish national and religious question. Indeed, as a young man he became a staunch atheist.
At school, he immediately proved to be very bright and hard-working, but also stubborn and headstrong, qualities that marked him throughout his life. He read widely and studied constantly. Fascinated by classical literature, he later even became one of the most renowned literary critics in the Soviet Union.
During his schooling in cosmopolitan and modern Odessa, the young and attractive Bronstein enjoyed the life of a member of the bourgeois class, attending the opera and the theatre, writing poems and short stories and devoting himself to his appearance. His carefully groomed wavy thick hair over piercing blue eyes and modern round eyebrows captivated many a young girl.
The more he followed the political developments in the Russian Empire, the more his political consciousness began to awaken. At the end of high school, when he had hardly heard of Marx, he underwent a dramatic transformation and embarked on illegal activities against the rigid regime of Tsar Nicholas II.
His rhetorical talent also began to emerge, and although he had a desire to study mathematics, he could not give up political activity – he spent long hours in hiding writing pamphlets and articles, because he believed passionately in the power of words. His most important legacy is his oeuvre of political and literary works.
The young man, who could not hide his hostility towards the monarchy, was quickly spotted by the police and, as a teenager, he was imprisoned and, according to the old Russian custom, exiled to Siberia without trial. It was also then that he first heard of Lenin and became acquainted with serious works of Marxist thought, including the magazine Iskra, published in Zurich. In it, Lenin and his followers argued for the need to establish a strong centralised, disciplinary and professional party structure, crucial for a successful organised struggle against the monarchy.
In exile, where Lev went with and married his companion Alexandra Sokolovskaya, he had two daughters, Nina and Zinaida. While cockroaches crawled on his head and his two babies cried, Bronstein, also known by the pseudonym “Feather”, fanatically wrote, published and prepared his escape to Europe. When the time came to flee, he left his family behind and, although he rarely saw the girls and separated from his wife, all three remained faithful to him for the rest of their lives.
Lev Bronstein needed a new name to escape Siberia. He became Lev Trotsky – some say it was the name of his jailer in Odessa, but he himself claimed to have liked the word “trotzig”, which means “stubborn” in German. When he got to London, he knocked three times on the door of the house where Lenin was staying, as agreed. “The pen has finally arrived,” announced Lenin’s wife Nadezhda. Thus met the two men who, fifteen years later in Petrograd, led an armed uprising that, like the October Revolution, has become one of the most important historical events of all time.
The irrepressible Frida
But the revolution was also smouldering on the other side of the world. Three years after the birth of Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, during which the Mexicans overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, which had lasted more than thirty years. Despite ten years of bloodshed, for many it was a romantic period when Mexico was returned to the Mexicans. They were rid of foreign influence on the economy, culture and society. Mexico’s past, its indigenous culture and its arts became shared values that gave meaning to national identity and consciousness.
The appearance of a Mexico reborn in this way has been brought to the world by a handful of exceptional artists of this unique period of national awakening. Among them, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo still hold pride of place today. Frida so identified with the Mexican Revolution that she later even adapted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
Frida was one of six daughters of Guillermo Kahl, a German Jewish immigrant, and Matilde, a native of Mexican-Indian descent. She spent her childhood in the Blue House on Avenida Londres (London) in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, the same place where she later lived for a time with Diego and where the Soviet political dissident Leon Trotsky stayed at their invitation between 1937 and 1939.
She was also a very bright child, persistent and stubborn. At the age of seven, she spent long months confined to bed for the first time, having contracted polio, which left her with a lifelong crippling of her right leg. But neither that nor the taunts of her peers stopped her from taking up anything that came to mind, including boxing. Later, she hid her right leg under long traditional Mexican dresses, which became an inseparable part of her personality.
The reserved father was a constant intellectual stimulant, enthusing about Mexican archaeology and national treasures, as well as ancient art. He also taught her photography, through which she developed the eye for detail that later adorned her artwork. In the maelstrom of revolutionary events, she quickly became politically aware and began to take an interest in the fate of her people.
In the 1920s, major reforms finally took place in Mexico, natural resources were returned to domestic hands, the power of the Catholic Church was reduced, hundreds of new schools, libraries, public playgrounds, swimming pools and art academies were built. Mexicans began to proudly embrace and support the local artistic tradition. The government contracted mural painters, muralists such as Diego Rivera, José Orozco, David Siqueiros, and they painted the walls of countless public buildings with themes of Mexican history and culture. Fine art has been the inspiration for social change.
Frida easily passed the entrance exams for the secondary school, which has only recently opened its doors to girls. She chose the course that would lead her to study medicine after five years. She liked to socialise with the boys and took part in many clubs, literary, political, artistic, but her favourite time was spent with a group of adherents of romantic socialism and moderate nationalism. They read a lot, debated, were often subversive and undermined authority. These habits followed Frida throughout her life.
Once upon a time, the then world-famous Diego Rivera was commissioned to paint the auditorium of the Frida School. Even then, she was strangely attracted to this not particularly handsome and very fat, but also charismatic painter. She approached him without a hair on her tongue, even though she had not painted at all herself at that time, and even told a friend that she wanted to have a child with Diego one day. She had always been attracted to successful and charismatic men, but she was not afraid of lesbian relationships, because she was extremely sensual and sexual.
Then, in an instant, her fate was turned upside down and, in an unimaginably tragic way, she became the Frida the world knows today.
The difficult relationship between Lenin and Trotsky
In the years before the great October Revolution, Frida’s future lover more or less successfully paved the way for Bolshevism to dominate. In Europe, while still very young, he quickly gained a reputation as an able writer, orator and organiser, and as such he impressed Lenin. In Paris, Trotsky met his second wife and lifelong companion, Natalia Sedova, an art student at the Sorbonne and a Marxist sympathiser.
Although the Lenin-Trotsky duo went down in history as the victorious face of the October Revolution, their ideologies differed sharply in the years leading up to it. Within the Russian Socialist Workers’ Party, Lenin, as the leader of the Bolsheviks, advocated that the party be as centralised as possible and composed only of elite, professional revolutionaries. He had no wish to cooperate with the liberal allies in the struggle against the Tsar. He demanded the dictatorship of the workers, and bourgeois democracy was almost as repulsive to him as the monarchy.
On the other side were the Mensheviks, who had much more respect for democratic processes and social freedoms. For a long time, Trotsky was somewhere in between – he was in favour of a disciplined party, but at the same time he did not rule out the necessity of cooperation with other anti- Tsarist parties. Lenin’s extremism disturbed him, and in one article he even compared him to the infamous Robespierre, a fact that was to come back to haunt him years later. Trotsky was always a free and independent spirit and refused to be categorically tied to either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks. Their ideological conflict lasted for 14 years.
They were also completely different in character. Lenin was puritanically strict, focused exclusively on the revolution, even boring, while Trotsky enjoyed art and music, read books in many languages, loved fishing and hunting. While Lenin dressed like a bored clerk, the attractive Trotsky had his clothes tailored. He looked like a movie actor and broke many a woman’s heart. His speeches filled the halls to the last inch.
When the first revolution took place in 1905, Trotsky was delighted. After the unexpected Russian defeat against Japan, confidence in the monarchy was shaken and peaceful popular protest turned into a revolt against the autocracy of Tsar Nicholas. Strikes broke out across the Empire and political exiles returned home in droves. Among them was an enthusiastic Trotsky: “The revolution has come at last. We have been waiting for it. We never doubted it.”
The Tsar, frightened, promised reforms, the establishment of a Duma or parliament, and civil liberties and rights. But eventually the promises were watered down and repression continued. Trotsky landed back in prison, where he read, read and read. “As I lay in my prison cell, I devoured European classics with the same sense of physical pleasure that a gourmet gets from sipping fine wines or inhaling the fragrant smoke of a fine cigar.” He later fled Russia and did not return until 1917.
In the decade before the October Revolution, he and his new family – Natalia bore him two sons, Lev and Sergei – lived in various European countries, writing for leftist newspapers, agitating, developing theories, socialising with leading European leftists, speaking at socialist conferences, and publishing his own newspaper, Pravda, in Vienna. He had the reputation of an independent Marxist, belonging neither to the Bolsheviks nor to the Mensheviks, although he advocated reconciliation between the two. At that time he also developed the theory of permanent revolution, which, after its success in Russia, was to spread throughout the world.
Trotsky was an advocate of world socialist revolution, which is where he differed from Stalin. At the same time, he was a source of discomfort in all the countries where he appeared, because he was constantly inciting rebellion.
Trotsky, hero of the October Revolution
In 1913, Trotsky and Stalin met in person for the first time in Vienna, Stalin was already working his way to the top of the party bureaucracy. He despised Trotsky even then, branding him a useless intellectual, and was probably jealous of him and his fame.
Trotsky vehemently opposed the First World War, predicting that, contrary to popular opinion, it would by no means be short-lived. Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate his throne after the February Revolution in 1917 and the left-liberals, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. But the war continued anyway.
The starving Russians were fed up with it and the country was in economic and moral ruin. Then Lenin and Trotsky returned from exile, the former with German help in April 1917 in the famous sealed train, the latter a good month later. They became close again and immediately began calling for the signing of an armistice and, above all, for a new revolution, this time in the name of the workers. The Provisional Government, after continuous defeats on the front, soon proved itself no match for Russia’s difficulties and the Bolsheviks – Trotsky was now officially among them – took power by force during the October Revolution.
Three immediate decrees were proclaimed: peace with Germany, the abolition of land ownership by the nobility, the church and the Tsar’s family, and the appointment of a new government in which Trotsky became first Commissar for Foreign Affairs and then Commissar for Military Affairs. The violent seizure of power and the one-party system were fiercely opposed by the opposition and civil war broke out.
It was then that Trotsky’s ruthlessness also came to light – he encouraged the use of all means to crush the counter-revolution, from terror and intimidation to the abolition of freedoms already won, such as a free media. The new regime finally showed its true colours when the Bolsheviks failed to win a majority in the first elections, and so the Duma was simply dissolved.
Trotsky then showed incredible organisational and strategic talent as a war commissar, and although he had been mainly a speaker and writer with no military experience, he quickly built up the Red Army. This instantly became a real army, and thus saved the revolution. The Red Army, through mass conscription, was given millions of peasant-soldiers, to whom Trotsky was ruthless. The deserters were immediately shot in the head. It was Trotsky who most epitomised the period of Bolshevik terror.
He had his headquarters in a special armoured train, in which he travelled thousands of kilometres and supervised the fighting against the disorganised White Army. The train was set up like a presidential vehicle, with a telegraph, radio, typewriters, printing press, restaurant, library and garage. There was even room for cars and a small aircraft. In addition to a host of security guards, he was often accompanied on the train by journalists, who helped to give him the appearance of an all-powerful warlord.
Trotsky managed to charm most of the important foreign observers, but his methods also disappointed and upset many. Among the latter was the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who argued that this was not a dictatorship of the proletariat but a dictatorship of the party elite. Trotsky, on the other hand, was convinced that in the name of revolution everything was permissible and that the means – terrorism, torture, executions, exile, censorship – justified the end.
In the spring of 1921, the Civil War was over. Trotsky’s role was slowly diminishing and his party colleagues no longer trusted him as much, fearing his popularity and influence in the party. Accusations that he had been a critic of Lenin until recently resurfaced, and the new General Secretary of the Party, the then barely known Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, was particularly fond of raising them. Trotsky’s fate was slowly taking on grim outlines.
The world meets Frida – the painter
That was also the most tragic period of Frida’s life, thousands of kilometres away. Who hasn’t heard about the horrific car accident that befell 18-year-old Frida Kahlo?
Frida and her boyfriend were riding on a modern but wooden bus when a tram crashed into it. Buses were then a new means of transport in Mexico City, and while accidents of this kind were common, Frida’s was of unprecedented proportions. The metal railing of the tram punctured the bus, and one part of the railing dug into her spine, literally piercing the girl’s pelvic bone.
The tram was moving very slowly and almost inaudibly crashed into the bus, whose wooden structure stretched and stretched and then broke into thousands of pieces. During the impact, Frida’s dress was ripped off and the golden dust that a painter had carried with him scattered over her naked, bleeding body. This unusual scene is forever etched in the minds of the witnesses.
Someone boldly pulled the metal handle out of her body and Frida screamed louder than the ambulance’s siren. No one thought she would survive the accident. Her pelvis was fractured in three places, she suffered a broken collarbone and two ribs, she had eleven fractures in her right leg and a broken foot, a dislocated left shoulder and much more. Her body was crushed, crushed.
The doctors shook their heads and operated, operated, operated. A friend said, “They put it back together piece by piece, like they were doing a photomontage.” Her parents could not come to terms with their daughter’s accident, her father fell ill and her mother did not speak for a whole month. When she lay motionless on her back in a plaster cast in hospital for a month, it was mainly her sisters who stood by her side.
But Frida would not be worthy of her reputation if she had not fought with all the energy in her life to survive. Miraculously, three months after the accident, she has already made a good recovery. After missing a semester, she decided not to continue her medical studies and, as the cost of her treatment was astronomical, she decided to help her father in the photography studio.
For the remaining 29 years of her life, she was essentially dying – living in almost constant physical torment and going under the knife at least thirty-two times. She wore special plaster corsets to hold her spine together to prevent it from collapsing. Most of the time she had to be still, and it was almost by accident that she discovered a hidden talent which turned into a passion and launched her into the ranks of the most famous Mexicans, if not personalities, of the 20th century. In her sickbed, Frida Kahlo began to paint.
She was, of course, very talented, but she also developed a very particular style, which was marked by the accident and the suffering that came with it. She became obsessed with her image and her being, and at least 55 self-portraits of Frida Kahlo were created to show the world her complex inner self. Lying in one of the countless patient rooms, with a mirror placed not far away, she said: “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
She became politically active again. She socialised with leftists, activists, Cuban revolutionaries and soon joined the Communist Party. Thus, her path once again crossed with that of the man who became the love and the curse of her life. Diego Rivera was 41 years old and Mexico’s most famous mural painter. A workaholic who could not do without painting, a womaniser who could not do without mistresses, a convinced leftist and an activist who could not do without public controversy. He never respected loyalty as a value in his life. But Frida’s personality captivated him completely and a strange love story was born.
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Diego Rivera, genius and womaniser
When he met her, he had just returned from celebrating the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, under the romantic influence of communism. Leon Trotsky, whom he befriended a decade later, was already a fallen man in the eyes of the Party. But Diego was very naive and often inconsistent in his political convictions about internal party differences and disputes, and especially about Stalin’s purges. For a time he was even General Secretary of the Mexican Communist Party, but he was expelled for being a “millionaire painter” and selling himself too much to the imperialists and capitalists – for he often received commissions from them.
Despite his unattractive appearance and obesity, he was a magnet for women. Of course, fame contributed to this, and for American female tourists, the Diego affair was at least as important as a visit to the famous Mexican pyramids. But Diego Rivera was also a workaholic, often painting for days on end, sleeping and eating right on the painting stage.
Rivera found inspiration for his art in Mexican folk traditions and landscapes, highlighting the little man in the struggle for independence, rights and freedoms. This theme also spilled over into his political work as a defender of the masses. Pre-Columbian art, such as Aztec and Mayan statuary, which had previously been considered primitive, became very popular with his support, and collectors from all over the world flocked to Mexico to ‘discover’ its soul.
She and Frida have shared a lifelong passion for Mexican authenticity, and Frida preferred to dress in the typical brightly coloured costumes of the Tehuana people and to style her hair in the Mexican tradition. She was like a lavish ornament to her huge and unkempt husband.
Their romance began when Frida showed her paintings to the renowned artist. He was impressed and later repeatedly claimed that Frida was a better painter than him. The chemistry between them was instant and they also clicked intellectually. Only Frida’s father came to the wedding, because her mother was completely out of her depth – how could her daughter share a bed with this old and fat man who was an atheist on top of everything else?
Love on trial
The marriage was stormy. Diego enjoyed fame, work and mistresses, while Frida often suffered physical pain. She was deeply hurt by Diego’s infidelity, although she also had many lovers and mistresses. She once said: “I have had two serious accidents in my life, one was a car accident, the other was Diego.” Her desire to have a child was never realised because of the accident and the many miscarriages made her even sadder. She also disliked the United States, where they spent four years because everywhere wanted Diego’s mural.
The Rockefeller Centre controversy was the most significant event of this period. As a sign of Mexican-American friendship and to encourage cultural relations between the two countries, Rockefeller Jr. invited Diego to visit the reception desk of the famous Manhattan centre. True to his provocative nature, Rivera added an image of Lenin to the painting at the last minute. In a building that was a monument to world capitalism, this was of course unacceptable and led to public protests by opponents as well as supporters of Rivera’s art. The fresco was destroyed, but Rivera later painted a copy of it in the Mexican Palace of Fine Arts.
After returning to Mexico, the couple lived in two separate houses, connected by a bridge. This kind of arrangement best embodied their relationship, one of interconnectedness and independence at the same time. Diego’s infidelity continued and he even took Frida’s younger sister Cristina as his mistress. This affair affected Frida the most and she finally wanted to get out of Diego’s shadow. But they could not do without each other and, even during the worst of their personal crises, they still saw each other regularly. Years later, they divorced, but then remarried.
While Frida herself was becoming an increasingly renowned painter, her health was visibly failing. Later, her right leg was even amputated. She drank a lot and always carried a small bottle of cognac in her closet. But it was always fun with the Kahlo-Rivera couple. In their strange surreal home, full of Aztec statues, Frida’s ornaments – she had paper skeletons hanging on her bed, for example – and monkeys and parrots, all the most important intellectuals of the time gathered, writers, painters, photographers, musicians, actors, political refugees and activists, and they even befriended the Mexican President.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began, and their political consciousness was once again stirred. And these were the circumstances in which Trotsky arrived in Mexico.
Trotsky vs. Stalin
Lenin died in 1924 from the effects of an assassination attempt, exhaustion and a series of strokes. The struggle for his succession was fought mainly between Stalin and Trotsky, with the former proving far more skilful. Trotsky had been marginalised by Stalin ever since he became General Secretary of the Party, and even Trotsky did not seem to have bothered too much about it. He turned his attention back to books, became a literary critic and lectured on economics. He did not even fight for power, and many historians today believe that he may have naively expected that he would automatically and without much effort become Lenin’s successor. But if this is true, he grossly underestimated Stalin and his ambitions.
Lenin, too, had long vacillated between the two men, but although he found Trotsky overconfident, he knew he was far more capable. At the same time, he found Stalin’s character too questionable. In his political will, he even called for Stalin’s expulsion, saying that he was primitive, capricious and intolerant. But the public did not find out, and Stalin’s apparatus effectively undermined Trotsky’s reputation with lies and propaganda. His services during the October Revolution and the Civil War were denounced and letters were published in which Trotsky was critical of Lenin.
Trotsky sought to publish Lenin’s will and said bluntly in front of the members of the Central Committee, “Stalin is the gravedigger of the revolution.” The next day he was expelled from the Party. His friends warned him that Stalin would never forgive him and that his “betrayal” would be paid for by generations to come. How right they were.
Trotsky was first exiled to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan, inside the Soviet Union, and had to leave the country in 1929. He was accused of counter-revolutionary activity, of organising an illegal anti-Soviet party, and of preparing an armed attack on Soviet power. Over the next decade, he made his way through Turkey to France and finally to Norway. All these countries were under severe pressure from the Kremlin and all wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. Most governments also feared the spread of revolutionary ideas and therefore rejected his asylum requests. However, he did have many followers around the world and a multitude of Trotskyist parties emerged.
He earned his money by writing, and during this time he also wrote one of the best books on the history of the Russian Revolution, exposing Stalin’s non-role in its success. He built a real support mechanism for his opposition activities, with his son Lev as his right-hand man, and he also had translators, secretaries, researchers, security guards and chauffeurs. His aim was to convince the world that he and Lenin wanted a different Soviet Union from the one created by Stalin and that Stalinism was not a natural consequence of Leninism and Bolshevism. He warned of the danger posed by the rapidly ascending Hitler and described the two totalitarianisms, Stalinism and Nazism, as “deadly similar”.
In August 1936, the infamous Moscow Staged Trials began, during which many leading Communists were accused of treason against Communism. Behind it all, of course, from abroad – he was living in Norway at the time – was the mastermind Trotsky, who, with his son Lev, was considered to be at the heart of the anti-Stalinist terrorist cell. All the accused were executed. All this was too much for the Norwegian government, and it wanted to get rid of Trotsky as soon as possible. Two unlikely benefactors offered him a lifeline.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo persuaded Mexican President Cárdenas to offer Trotsky political asylum.
Trocki in Mexico
Thus began the last period of Leon Trotsky’s life, which was even more turbulent and tragic than anything he had already experienced.
Fearing assassins, Lev and Natalia hardly dared to land on the Mexican coast, but were met by a smiling Frida, accompanied by American Trotskyists. They were taken by luxury train to Mexico City, where they were honourably welcomed by a large crowd of supporters. Rivera and Kahlo welcomed the couple to the famous Blue House in the suburb of Coyoacán, where Frida grew up. The warm welcome, the pleasant climate, the stunningly beautiful scenery, the relaxed nature of the inhabitants, all heralded the possibility of a new beginning for a mentally exhausted person.
Trotsky, of course, immediately went to work and set up his “Trotskyist” headquarters again, with secretaries, translators and security guards. He wrote extensively, and it was then that his epic history of the Russian Revolution and his autobiography, My Life, were written. Both sold very well. The irony of fate was that, for the sake of money, he accepted a commission to write two biographies of Stalin, a man who was increasingly hungry for life.
Meanwhile, the staged trials continued in Moscow and the accusations became increasingly absurd – including that Trotsky had even met with Hitler’s aide Rudolf Hess and planned the surrender of Soviet territory to Germany and Japan. Both sons were also accused as accomplices.
Trotsky demanded that an independent international commission be convened to examine the evidence against him and reach its own conclusions on his guilt. He was convinced that his honour would be laundered in the eyes of the world public. Under the leadership of the American leftist philosopher John Dewey, the commission met at the Blue House and finally concluded that Stalin’s accusations were unfounded. Trotsky’s well-prepared defence and charismatic performance charmed everyone present, especially Frida.
Thus began a love affair between an elderly Russian and a young Frida. He was unsuccessful in his conquest of her sister Cristina. The union brought some freshness into both their lives and they flirted in front of everyone. They spoke English and because Natalia did not speak the language, she felt alienated. Trotsky had not always been faithful to Natalia before, but when she found out about the affair, she was heartbroken. It had been a difficult life for the couple and Natalia had always stood by Leo loyally. Trotsky quickly regretted the affair and wrote her some extremely erotic letters, in which he described in very graphic terms how he would have made love to her.
Rivera, on the other hand, almost certainly never found out about the affair, because he would have thrown Trotsky out of the house, if not something worse. He liked to threaten Frida’s lovers with the gun he always carried.
Soon, the Trotsky family’s life took another tragic turn. A few days after an innocent appendectomy, their son Lev died in Paris under suspicious circumstances. Stalin’s agents had already infiltrated their son’s life by then, but they were never successfully proven guilty of his death. All four children were now dead – one daughter from the first marriage died of tuberculosis, another committed suicide, the son Sergei from the marriage to Natalia was deported to Siberia and shot, and Lev died in Paris. They then took custody of their grandson Seva as a consolation – the boy came to Mexico at the age of thirteen and lived as normal a life as possible. At least Stalin’s hand never reached him, as he lived to be 92. Other family members and closest associates became victims of Stalin’s period of great terror.
The political disagreements between Rivera and Trotsky grew, and Trotsky branded the artist a dilettante, hopelessly ignorant of politics. Once, Diego, who loved gallows humour, left a typical Mexican sugar cake on Trotsky’s desk – it was in the shape of a skull and had the name Stalin written on it. Trotsky did not want to laugh. Lev and Natalia soon left the Blue House and settled a few blocks away. Diego and Trotsky never met again. Frida, however, was not involved with either of them at the time, she was in Paris, where the Surrealists took her as their own and organised the first exhibition of her work on European soil.
Stalin’s noose tightens
Stalin’s obsession with Trotsky never waned and he was determined to get him out of the world. In May 1940, Trotsky’s otherwise well-guarded house was attacked by twenty armed men who broke in with the help of one of his bodyguards. By a miraculous series of coincidences, however, despite dozens of bullets being fired and numerous incendiary bombs being set off, they did not succeed in murdering anyone.
Their leader was none other than another world-famous Mexican muralist, David Siqueiros. Siqueiros, who fought in the International Brigades against General Franco in Spain, was a convinced Stalinist. Although he was captured, he returned after a brief exile as a national hero and no one accused him of having a terrorist past. Frida and Diego were briefly among the suspects in the attack, and Frida even spent two days in prison.
In general, there were many Stalin sympathisers and former fighters in the Spanish Civil War in Mexico at the time, who had retreated there after Franco’s victory. One of them was Ramón Mercader, who presented himself as a Trotskyist sympathiser of Frank Jacson. He infiltrated Trotsky’s inner circle through a love affair with one of his aides, Sylvia Ageloff. For two years he patiently won the confidence of the household and carried out various errands and favours for them.
One day he asked Trotsky to review an article on political developments in France. Trotsky was not particularly impressed with the text and suggested a number of changes to “Jackson”. When he brought the revised text a few days later, the two men retired to Trotsky’s study. No one thought it unusual that the visitor had a coat over his arm in the middle of a warm Mexican summer.
Suddenly, a terrible scream went through the house. When the security guards arrived at the scene of the crime, they found a bloody Trotsky standing upright, holding Mercader. Then he collapsed. He had a seven centimetre deep wound on his head. While Trotsky was reading a corrected article, Mercader pulled a large cleaver from under his coat and plunged it into the revolutionary’s skull. Several pages of Stalin’s biography, which he was working on at the time, were splattered with blood beyond recognition.
“I think they’ve succeeded this time,” Trotsky told his wife. Twenty-six hours after the attack, Leon Trotsky died. In his will, he wrote: “I shall die a proletarian revolutionary, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an unrepentant atheist. My faith in the communist future is no less fervent, in fact it is stronger today than it was in my youth.”
His death stunned the world. Tens of thousands of supporters flocked to the streets of Mexico City. And in Moscow, the Soviet media proclaimed the inglorious end of a “murderer, traitor and international spy”. His grave is in the courtyard of his last residence, beneath a tall granite monument decorated with a hammer and sickle.
Frida and Leo, heralds of a new century
In their own way, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky marked the 20th century. Generations of artists, students, politicians and intellectuals are still inspired by their rich legacy. The paths of two people so different, yet so similar and so remarkable, crossed in an equally remarkable and unusual way. Both of them, with their penetrating minds and tenacious characters, marked by personal tragedies and always convinced of their own rightness, they can be an example of the struggle for survival, of perseverance and courage, despite the often controversial choices they made in life.
