Why was leon trotsky important?
In early October, 1917, he was elected Chariman of the Soviet and in this role he sided with Lenin when the question of armed revolution split the revolutionary movement apart. Following that decision, it was Trotsky who led the armed overthrow of the provisional Government in October 1917, and he who acted as commander of the Bolshevik troops who fought off Kerensky’s forces in the days folowing the capture of the Winter palace and the arrest of Ministers of the Provisional Government. Following the October Revolution, Trotsky became the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and led the Russian delegation who agreed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. He then took charge of the newly formed Red Army and led it in its victory over the White army in the Russian Civil War. Throughout the revolutionary period and beyond, Trotsky remained an intellectual with clear views about the way that revolution should occur and develop. Upon Lenin’s death in 1922 many considered Trotsky to be the most obvi
