397. Stalin: Killing Trotsky (Part 3)

16:40Anita Anand:And there's this crucial moment three years later in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920 when the two have a confrontation. Tell us about that, Giles. Yes, the Poles are hoping to regain lands that they've lost in the Great War. They go to war with the new Soviet Union. They do very well at first, but then gradually the Soviet forces, I have to say, under the brilliant command of Trotsky and his Red Army. Remember, Trotsky has built the Red Army from scratch into an incredible fighting force. And by 1920, they're pushing the way across Poland and they are at the gates of Warsaw. They're almost there about to take the Polish capital, but they need more troops.

17:20Where can those troops come from? Well, Stalin has got a load of troops under his command, but Stalin is not interested in Warsaw. He's interested in capturing the city of Lwów. And so he uses all his forces, all his energies, everything at his disposal to take the city of Lvov, which ends in Trotsky and his Red Army being defeated by the Poles. The Poles see a glimmer of opportunity here. They take it. They crush the Red Army outside the gates of Warsaw and the Red Army is forced back into Soviet territory. So this is kind of a moment of humiliation for Trotsky. And he sees that he blames it directly on Stalin, who could have come to his aid, but didn't.

17:56William Dalrymple:I mean, strategically, capturing Lvov is going to be really important in the Second World War because it's going to give Stalin at Yalta a massive bargaining chip when he installs his own sort of alternative Polish government. And when they're talking about what happens to Poland, he says, you know, they're all there. What are you talking about? Forget about these London Poles. You know, we've got we've got the people who are going to take over a de-German-fied, you know, Poland already. But, you know, that's a chat for another time. Trotsky then. The landscape of all this, if you like, is the question of whether the Soviet revolution is a revolution in one country or if this is going to be a revolution that's going to spread right the way across Europe through all the Western democracies.

18:33And there are very different points of view here between Lenin and Trotsky. On the one hand, let's try and promote revolution everywhere. And Stalin, on the other hand, saying, hold on a minute, let's consolidate the revolution within the Soviet Union. So there's a sort of hinterland to this whole story going, what's taking place? Right.

18:51William Dalrymple:So, I mean, let's talk then. It's kind of the power play that will set up the relationship between these two men, which will be sort of Stalin doing everything he can to undermine Trotsky. And I don't know, it looks to me that Stalin is the one with all of the energy and all the impetus. We kind of touched on this in the last episode, but there are a series of dirty tricks that then Stalin uses on Trotsky, starting with the funeral of Lenin, which we covered in glorious detail with the embalming that his wife did not want, did not ask for. The Parma ham machine slicing Lenin's brain as well. Yeah, I know.

19:28William Dalrymple:Yes. Thank you for that, Giles. But just tell us how exactly they manoeuvred it so Trotsky couldn't be there and didn't have his photo taken at this really important moment. Yeah, this is a wonderful piece of stagecraft on the part of Stalin. Stalin saw a unique opportunity at Lenin's funeral to present himself as the natural replacement, the natural leader to step into Lenin's shoes. And so he engineers the funeral. He orchestrates a whole event to make sure that Trotsky will not be there. Trotsky is actually sick in hospital, but obviously wants to be there at the funeral. He wants to be seen by all the thousands of people who are going to attend this funeral.

20:06And so what does Stalin do? He gives Trotsky the wrong date.

20:10Anita Anand:You thought Trotsky would double check or someone else would call him up and say, where are you? Well, Stalin had thought of that as well. He calls his old mate Zsuzhinsky, running the checker, and ensures that any telegrams and any messages sent to Trotsky to tell him the date has been changed don't get through. And so on the day of the funeral, Stalin, centre stage, delivers a eulogy. He presents himself as the obvious natural successor to Lenin. And everyone's thinking, what about Trotsky? Trotsky's not here, you know. Obviously, he doesn't care that much about Lenin. You can sort of see the whispering going on in the crowds, you know.

20:46It's a brilliant and totally malevolent sort of act on the part of Stalin. And, you know, he loved pieces of theatre, Stalin. and this is perhaps his most malign piece of theatre to date, is simply airbrushing Trotsky out of the most important event in the Soviet Union to take place in years, you know.

21:06Anita Anand:It's an extraordinary story. So what happens next? How does he build on this to manoeuvre Trotsky out of the succession? So what happens in the aftermath of Lenin's death is Stalin begins to consolidate his grip on power. Now, we spoke in the last episode about he has this role in the mechanisms of the party, which enables him to place his own supporters in key positions. And he really begins to form what becomes known as a Troika around him. There's Stalin, there's Zinoviev and there's Kamenev, two loyal supporters of Stalin. And they begin to engineer Trotsky out of the picture. And so Trotsky is removed of Commissar for Military Affairs.

21:44That happens in 1920, January 1925, soon after Lenin's death. Then he's voted off the Politburo. This is a pretty big step. Then he's expelled from the party completely by 1927. And then he's sent into exile in 1928. So in the space of four years, or actually three years, really, Trotsky is outmaneuvered and just pushed out of the picture. You make it sound very easy, Giles.

22:06Anita Anand:I mean, is there no counter coup by Trotsky? Because he's got the whole army on his side. He presumably could march in and sort of, you know, drive some tanks into the middle of proceedings if he wanted to. Yeah, he could have done that, but he didn't. There are, of course, all sorts of shenanigans and manoeuvrings taking place. What's extraordinary is who backs Stalin as well. If you look at this, Kamenev, one of his key supporters, one of the members of this troika, Kamenev was married to Trotsky's sister, Olga. So this has the elements of sort of family feud about it, that actually individual members of the family are turning against their own.

22:41And this is what Trotsky was to find.

22:43Anita Anand:So simply because they recognise Stalin's overwhelming power, he's packed the whole party with his men.

22:50William Dalrymple:Maybe he didn't like his brother-in-law. I mean, you know, he wouldn't be the first to shape against a family member. I think Mr. Self-interest comes into play here as well. You know, they see which ways the wind is blowing. You know, it's very, this is typical of politicians, isn't it? They see who's on the winning, who's got the winning streak and they back them to the hilt, you know. And these guys know that if they back Stalin and Stalin wins, they're going to be in with a very good job at the end of it. Yeah, and Kamenev lived happily ever after. No, he didn't. Join us after the break before you find out what happens next.

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24:32William Dalrymple:Welcome back. So Trotsky realizes everybody's against him. Stalin has all the winning pieces. So he basically goes into exile. Where does he go, Giles? This is a problem for Trotsky, because if you're Trotsky, no one particularly likes you, particularly in the West. And so he tries, he goes to Turkey, then he goes to France, then he goes to Norway. What about the lady with her calipers? Did she not take him in for a while? Maybe. But maybe I think MI6 were keeping such a close watch on her by this point, that that wasn't a possibility. So yeah, he goes to these various countries and he stays for a few months.

25:07And then he starts producing revolutionary material and they all think, well, actually, we don't want this guy in our country. And so he ends up in the only place that will actually give him a home and that's Mexico. And so this is where he settles in 1937. So it's quite a long time has passed, but he ends up there with his wife who's followed him loyally, even though he's had a string of affairs, not very well documented. So we don't know much about them, but clearly he's been having affairs. But anyway, she's loyal. She follows him and he is living in Mexico and very, very worried. Trotsky is a frightened man because he knows that Stalin bears his grudges and Stalin will surely come after him at some point in the future.

25:47Anita Anand:Now, one of the more jolly sort of diversions in Mexico when you're not dodging Stalin's assassins is hobnobbing with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, which would be quite fun, presumably. Yes, the famous artists. Many people will be familiar with Frida Kahlo's famous paintings.

26:07William Dalrymple:The woman with the monobrow who's on lots of cushions at the moment. She's a favourite of illustrated cushions at the moment. I mean, a terrific painter who sort of documented her own pain through painting. She had a terrible spinal problem and a lot of them are hugely graphic depictions what pain feels like. As you were, just sort of fill that in.

26:31Anita Anand:And Diego, we should also say less famous today, but more famous at the time. And doing extraordinary pictures of workers, but in a rather more sort of human workers than the kind of Soviet kitsch that we see of sort of chaps in steelworks and that sort of thing. But they lived in Mexico. They lived a very bohemian, artistic lifestyle. Everyone was pretty chilled out and Trotsky fell into this lifestyle. He actually rather enjoyed it. He enjoyed it to the extent where he begins a relationship with Frida Kahlo. And so all goes well for the time being. But as I say, he's always aware that there's a shadow hanging over him.

27:10And this, you know, constantly... Does he know this? I mean, are there earlier attempts that go wrong? He has seen what's happened in the Soviet Union with Stalin, the Great Purge, where Stalin systematically kills off his enemies. And we mentioned a few minutes earlier, we mentioned Zinoviev, we mentioned Kalmanov. All of these people, all of these commissars, the people who've supported Stalin's rise to power, virtually all of them will end up liquidated in Stalin's great purge. Stalin is utterly merciless. He will kill off anyone who he thinks is a challenge to his supreme authority. And the grudges he bears go way beyond just his inner circle in Moscow surrounding him.

27:50He will kill off anyone who he thinks might could damage him. And Trotsky has the power to damage Stalin while in exile because Trotsky, remember, loves writing. He's writing all sorts of stuff and he's writing how he views the events that took place in the aftermath of the revolution. And Stalin is not going to come out of this very well. And Stalin does not want this published. He wants Trotsky silenced.

28:12William Dalrymple:This is not exactly about Trotsky, but Stalin does sort of give his manifesto, if you like. And this is a, again, Robert Service's biography is a treasure trove of these wonderful quotes from Stalin. To pick out one's enemy, to prepare all the details of the blow, to slake one's thirst for a cruel revenge and then go home to be. There is nothing sweeter. So you've got, you know, the roadmap ahead for Trotsky and his life is, you know, being made hell because he's always looking over his shoulder. And also Diego Rivera is not too happy with him anymore. And so, you know, his friend circle is getting smaller.

28:50William Dalrymple:Must be quite suffocating for him in Mexico. And at the same time Stalin is making Trotsky's life hell, he's pretty much doing the same thing to that young wife that we met in the last episode. Nadia. Nadia. Tell us a little bit about how this is all unfolding for her. Poor thing. Poor old Nadia, who wanted just desperately to be more than just a housewife and doing the cooking and stuff. And already during the revolution, she's played quite a role. She's been transcribing telegrams. She's been working for Lenin's personal office as well. She's played a role and now she's got kind of nothing to do, but she wants to do something.

29:27So she enrolls on the Industrial Academy in Moscow, taking a course in textiles. We get a little glimmer of the home life. It's really fascinating in the letters she writes to Stalin. She describes, you know, going into college in the morning and the tram breaks down or the bus breaks down. And this sort of all these domestic details. And you realize that what's so strange about these people, particularly Stalin, the monstrous Stalin, is he had a kind of quite a normal domestic life. You know, life went on, they had their family meals, they had their picnics, they went mushroom hunting, they did all the sort of stuff that people usually do.

30:02And then he'd go into work and sign off an order to killing 50 ,000 people. And it reminds me a little bit like the sort of guards of the concentration camps who would go into the camp in the morning, order 50 ,000 people to be gassed in the gas chambers. And then they come home for lunch with their wife. And then go and listen to a string quartet in the evening. That's what I found extraordinary with Stalin, is this ability to separate these two things. Let's murder 50 ,000 people in the morning and then have a really nice picnic in the afternoon, you know.

30:30William Dalrymple:Although, Giles, he wasn't lovely. He wasn't the picnicking sort. I mean, he constantly, if we are to believe, you know, sort of the documents, belittled her, made her feel stupid, got in the way of any kind of progress that she might make. I mean, 1926, she actually goes to Leningrad intending to divorce him, but he manages to talk her back. So this isn't love's young, stroke, very old dream. I mean, it's not that either. I mean, she's not happy. She's not happy here. No. And I think this is compounded by the fact, and this is something we don't know much about, that clearly Stalin was having mistresses.

31:04He was having affairs. You know, he had this dacha in the countryside. He could pop off there with some attractive young woman. He received letters, begging letters from women all across the Soviet Union. Oh, Stalin, dear Stalin, I want to be in your embrace, you know. So pretty peculiar, really. But he did. And he acted on some of these, at least. And clearly, poor Nadia knew about this. And it left her absolutely distraught. She just couldn't deal with it. And remember, she was not the most stable of individuals at the best of times, as there was a history of this running in the family. Her brother had been really ill with psychological disorders.

31:38She was not as strong in terms of her mind, you know. And so every affair, every rumour that she heard would chip away at that stability.

31:47Anita Anand:Now, this ends obviously very badly. And there's an extraordinary story about the night of her suicide when she eventually takes her own life. So take us there to the night of the 7th of November, 1932. Yeah, this is indeed a tragic story. All the party commissars have gathered for they had this dinner every year to celebrate their great victory in the revolution. And at this dinner, Stalin begins to behave, I think we'd say just boorishly, you know, he begins to flirt with the women at the table, you know, sending out compliments to them and at the same time, completely ignoring poor Nadia, who's sitting there looking at him, just horrified at Stalin, the more he drinks, the worse he gets.

32:31And at the end, she's so in despair that she gets, she storms off away from the table and rushes outside. And this should have rung warning bells in Stalin's head, but it doesn't. He carries on flirting. The wife of Molotov, the commissar for foreign affairs, she realises something is seriously awry here. And she runs out after Nadia and tries to calm her down. Nadia's in a terrible state. She's in tears. She can't bear it any longer. And Paulina takes her, they walk around the Kremlin several times and she eventually calms her down and she takes her back to her apartment in the Kremlin. Her and Stalin incidentally have separate bedrooms, quite common at the time, and she goes to bed.

33:13Stalin that night, we don't know his exact movements, but it is believed that he went off to one of the datches in the countryside, perhaps owned by one of his friends, and has an affair with one of the women he's been flirting with. He doesn't come back to his own apartment until the early hours of the morning. In fact, probably before four or five a.m. in the morning, goes straight to bed, doesn't even look in on checkup on Nadia, sees how she is. So the maids and domestics come into Nadia's bedroom that morning and they can't believe what they see. Nadia is lying in a pool of blood. She shot herself through the heart.

33:46And this in itself is obviously devastating news. But now they have to break that news to Joseph Stalin. Not a job anyone would envy doing. There are two ways of breaking the news.

33:57William Dalrymple:So, you know, on the one hand, we'll come to Stalin's reaction in a moment because it may not be as you expect. But certainly, you know, the official announcement in Pravda will not say that there was a gun involved. You know, they say she died of complications through appendicitis. And you have this whole sort of charade of the Politburo wives signing a public letter of condolence to Stalin. That gets published as well. There is such a tiny, tight circle that knows this poor, poor woman. And Anita, just to add one thing to that as well, which astonished me and actually horrified me, Svetlana, the daughter of Stalin, was never told the truth either.

34:34She was told that her mother had died of an illness. And it was many years later, I think she was reading Time magazine, which had done a profile of Stalin. And it said, You know, of course, his wife, Nadia, you know, shot herself through the heart. And Svetlana was devastated because all her life she'd been told this lie by her own father that her mother had died from natural causes.

34:55William Dalrymple:Yeah. And I mean, it's so paranoid is this circle of keeping this news under wraps that actually, you know, a maid is sent to a labour camp for repeating a rumour that she thought Stalin had killed her. I mean, you know, he hadn't. She'd done it herself. But still, so what privately he is shattered by this. I mean, you'd think a philanderer would go free at last, free at last. But he isn't, is he? I mean, he's kind of haunted by how he treated her. It's kind of odd. I've never really. And there's many things that we cannot understand about Stalin. I think this is one of them, because in one sense, on one hand, he really genuinely seemed horrified and grief stricken by what had taken place and perhaps saw that he had played a role in this.

35:38you know, he's appalling behaviour. At the same time, he starts to blame Nadia for being the cause of all his woes. I mean, he says, she made a cripple out of me. Now, is this grief speaking? Was he genuinely grief stricken? Or was he now going to blame Nadia for everything that happened? It's very, very hard to know.

35:56Anita Anand:There are those descriptions, Giles, which we should put into the picture of him sitting in the room with her body, spitting at the floor. And I think he doesn't eat for four days or something. He sits there with the corpse, doesn't he, for an incredible amount of time. And no one knows what to do, whether no one dares to go in and sort of fish him out. And we see this in moments of great crisis in Stalin's life. So this is one of them where simply he almost seems to fall apart. He seems like an empty vessel almost, you know. And we have it again, of course, famously, when the Hitler's tanks roll over the Soviet front in 1941.

36:32Now, this is a moment of great crisis. Stalin is the leader, the ultimate leader of the Soviet Union. He should be addressing the nation. He should be acting on this great invasion. What does he do? He disappears again. He does exactly what he does when Nadia commits suicide. He disappears and no one sees him for four days. You know, they can't get hold of him or anything. It's a peculiar way for somebody who's so in control, so dominant, you know, this all-powerful dictator. And at moments of the greatest crisis, he seems unable to cope and he just disappears.

37:06William Dalrymple:Well, I mean, what follows that is the great terror. And we're going to go into the terror a lot more in episode four. And, you know, what you need to know is that Zinoviev and Kamenev, the people who sort of helped Stalin to get rid of Trotsky, they come to a dreadful end. And we'll go into the details of that. Let us cast our eyes to Trotsky, who, you know, all this is going on on the home front. What is going on in Mexico? Because, you know, he must be saying as somebody who can wreak this much havoc on the lives of people he loves, it's not looking good for him, is it? It's not looking good.

37:43And of course, Trotsky is getting very good intelligence of what's taking place inside the Soviet Union. So he knows absolutely everything about Stalin's purges taking place. And he knows, as we said earlier, that Stalin bears his grudges over many, many years. And so if we want to imagine, picture Trotsky in Mexico now, he's effectively living in a fortified compound. He's got guards there. He's got a watchtower.

38:06Anita Anand:Have there been sort of Soviet assassins spotted in the bushes outside his home? Or is he just expecting that there would be? Well, I think he expects there is going to be. And particularly because he set up this newspaper, if you like, or pamphlet called Bulletin of the Opposition, in which he is overtly attacking Stalin and everything he's done. So look, you know, Trotsky is almost inviting himself to be a target at this point, knowing full well what's already taken place in Moscow. But as I say, he's living behind a barricade. He's almost in his own little prison camp, you know, and fearful that at some point assassins are going to come knocking on his door.

38:45Anita Anand:So, Charles, just give us a picture of where Trotsky is holed up. He's got it with his watch tower, his guarded gate, his own alarm system. This is in, what, Coyoacan, which is a suburb of Mexico City. It's about 25 miles away. Yeah, I think it's Coyoacan. It's very close to Mexico City. As you say, yeah, he's in this almost fortified compound and really still living the still living the bohemian life, but increasingly worried that Stalin's hitmen are going to come for him.

39:16William Dalrymple:And, you know, he's writing still, but he's writing under a pseudonym, which I always find, you know, sad. Old man is what he writes under. And he knows that everything he's writing, Soviet intelligence is reading his mail, they're reading, you know, getting hold of any scrap of paper that he writes on. But he goes on publishing his journal, The Bulletin of the Opposition is what it's called. And it's one of these Bette Noire publications that Stalin absolutely spits teeth about. So you know, you know there is an attempt coming. Now, before the famous ice pick, ice axe, everybody, ice axe to the brain, there is another attempt on Trotsky's life that people don't know about.

39:54William Dalrymple:Can you tell us a little bit about that? I can. Yes, it's dawn on 24th of May 1940. The sun is just coming up over Mexico. And an artist named David Sequeros is approaching this compound, this armed compound. He has 20 armed men with him, and he is determined to break in. And he's got some help because Trotsky has a young American volunteer who's been working for him for ages called Robert Sheldon Hart. As I said, he's loyal. He's been helping Trotsky out. And Trotsky has no doubts that, you know, to Hart's loyalty. But what he doesn't know is that Hart is working for Soviet intelligence. And when this assassin would be assassin, David Sequeros, with his 20 armed men, come to the villa with its watchtowers, its barbed wire, etc., Hart lets them into the compound.

40:48They burst in. Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, are in their bedroom. They burst in with their guns. They fire, spray the room with gunfire. Extraordinarily, Trotsky and Natalia roll out of bed onto the floor and escape being hit by the gunfire. And bullets go through the wall. And actually, one of the grandchildren, actually Trotsky's grandchildren, is hit by a stray bullet. But these two, the couple, Trotsky and his wife, are safe. The assassins leave the place, probably thinking they've done their work, but they haven't. Trotsky gets up completely unharmed. So Stalin's first assassination attempt has failed miserably.

41:27We should say it doesn't end well for Hart either, the guy who let them in. It doesn't end well for him because he finds himself with a bullet in his head. As so often happens, the men who have proved servants to Stalin then get, you know, pay the price as well. So he's killed. And yeah, Trotsky, amazing survivor, has survived this first assassination attempt on his life.

41:52William Dalrymple:Willie, ask him about the ice axe. Ask him about the ice axe.

41:54Anita Anand:Tell us about the ice axe. What is the final showdown? Well, who finally...

42:00William Dalrymple:What is an ice axe? What does it look like? Can you describe an ice axe?

42:04Anita Anand:You probably don't need many ice axes in Mexico. I mean, it's not like it's sort of, you know, the Falkland Islands or something.

42:09William Dalrymple:Can you describe what it looks like? Well, hold on a minute. Just wait a minute, because this news gets back to Stalin. Can you imagine Stalin being told 20 men armed with machine guns, burst into Trotsky's villa, burst into his bedroom, fire at the double bed and actually completely missed their target. You know, Stalin... It's like Trotsky! It's like trying to kill Rasputin. You know, the guy simply won't die, you know. Anyway, so, of course, there is going to be a second attempt. And this time it's a Spanish communist named Raman Mercader. He decides not to go with the familiar machine gun technique.

42:44he decides to buy himself an ice axe. What is the difference between an ice axe and an ice pick? Now, I'm not a mountaineer, I have to say. Who tell? But I believe, and you're going to have so many people correcting this, I'm sure, but an ice pick, I believe, has two sharp ends, which would be a pretty effective way of killing somebody, I guess, if you sink it into their head. An ice axe has a pick on one end and a blunt sort of like a spade on the other end.

43:11William Dalrymple:It's the thing that people, climbers use. I know now I know exactly. It's the kind of thing that they sort of shove into a glacier and then pull themselves up. I mean, there's a nasty bit of kit.

43:21Anita Anand:But there are no glaciers in Mexico. What is this object doing? No, he brings it with him.

43:25William Dalrymple:He brings it with him. I don't know. Maybe he bought it in Spain. I'm not sure where he bought it is terrifically important in the story. You know, Stalin won't be saying, where did you buy it, by the way? I'm with you, Giles. I'm not interested in the receipt either. It's a kind of improbable way of being assassinated anyway. Yes, but Mercadette, he's obviously quite a clever guy. He has built up a very close relationship with one of the maids who works in the household. She's called Sylvia Agoloff. I think she's a very good friend of Trotsky's wife, actually. He makes friends with her, befriends her, and she allows him into the villa to, because he says he wants to talk with, have a little chat with Trotsky about something he's written, gets into Trotsky's study.

44:06Trotsky starts talking about what he's writing about, the new thing he's writing about Stalin, in, at which point Mercader pulls out his ice axe, which he's kept concealed beneath his coat, raises it above his head and slams it into Trotsky's brain. You might think that would kind of do you in, but Trotsky seems, as we say, like Rasputin, seems to be made of stronger stuff. He's not killed by this blow to the head. In fact, he goes down, he sinks his teeth into Mercader's arm, bites him really, really hard, so hard that he draws blood. Well done, Trotsky. And at this point, The alarm is raised and Mercader makes his escape.

44:45But unfortunately for Trotsky, that ice axe, I almost said ice pick there, has done its business. It's bitten deep into Trotsky's brain. He's rushed to hospital. Doctors try to save him, but all to no avail. On the following day, he succumbs to his wounds. He's dead. And Stalin finally has had his revenge.

45:05Anita Anand:Now, Giles, is this actually a direct emissary from Stalin or is this just someone who disagrees with Trotsky? We don't know that directly, but we do know that Soviet intelligence have got bureaus all over the West now, including in the United States, in Canada, in Mexico, certainly. And so it's almost certainly it will have come through official channels and will, of course, have had Stalin's orders at the top of it. Of course, Mercader, he doesn't come out of this very well because he's arrested and will spend… With an almost bite mark in his arm. With a very nasty, nasty teeth marks in his arm.

45:41And he will spend 20 years in a Mexican prison for having…

45:46William Dalrymple:Although, although when he's released Giles in 1960, he's basically back palmed, you know, the hero of the Soviet Union medal in Moscow. So, you know, to answer your question, Willie, I don't think you'd have got that if it wasn't, you know, sort of some kind of state-sanctioned thing. But, you know, Anita, he has spent 20 years in prison and for British listeners, then you get a Blue Peter badge at the end of it, you know. I mean, it's not great, is it? Fair point. OK, but it's something, isn't it? You know, it might get him into the zoo.

46:19Anita Anand:I got a Blue Peter badge, I should say.

46:20William Dalrymple:Yeah, I know. For a drawing of a whale. Did you?

46:26Anita Anand:I still got it in a drawer somewhere.

46:28William Dalrymple:Have you still got the drawing? No, actually, I've got the drawing, right? I've got the bag. Oh, okay. They're lovely. Listen, so Stalin, you know, revenge is best served cold. He waited over a decade to finish this man off. Just, you know, again, remind us why did it matter so much to him? This one man, this far away, Trotsky really had, you know, lost every scrap of real power. Why do away with him now? Ah, because Trotsky was pretty much the only person who could contest what Stalin was saying and could write a very, very different narrative of actually what had taken place. Trotsky was there from the very beginning.

47:09He knew everyone involved in what had taken place during the revolution after Lenin's death, how Stalin had dealt with his enemies. From that point of view, he is extremely dangerous to Stalin. Stalin, remember, always wanted to control the narrative of how he came to power, of how he became ruler of the Soviet Union. Trotsky could undermine that. And so, from Stalin's point of view, he had to be done away with.

47:34William Dalrymple:So that's Trotsky, the rival who never stopped being dangerous, even with no army and no country left.

47:40Anita Anand:And Stalin, who intriguingly never quite stopped being afraid of him right to the very end. Well, in the next episode, we go to a murder in Leningrad in December 1934 that Stalin used to unleash the Great Terror. We follow that story through to the war that nearly destroyed the country he ruled.

48:02William Dalrymple:And if you can't wait, EmpirePodUK.com is the place to go. EmpirePodUK.com. Just become a member of our gang. You get so many things. You get to listen to things when you want. You Don't Have to Wait, and the fantastic newsletter. Till the next time we meet, then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durrumpel.

48:28Anita Anand:Every week, the Snap Judgment podcast drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line, what do you believe? What do you want? And what would you risk to get it? Find out. Tap to listen now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify.

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