Leon Trotsky: The Last Prophet | Part 2 | Ancient to Recent | Episode 62

Leon Trotsky has helped seize power, built the Red Army, and defeated the enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Now he is about to lose everything.

By 1927, the man who had once stood beside Lenin at the centre of the Russian Revolution has been transformed from revolutionary hero into Stalin's most dangerous political rival.

In this second episode of our series, we follow Trotsky through the Russian Civil War and the violent birth of the Soviet state, as he attempts to save the revolution he helped create.

We explore the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the creation of the Cheka, and the brutal campaign of terror unleashed against the revolution's enemies.

We examine the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where Trotsky's vision of worldwide revolution collided with Lenin's determination to preserve the fragile Soviet state.

As Russia descends into civil war, Trotsky transforms himself from revolutionary intellectual into military commander.

Travelling across the country aboard his famous armoured train, he builds the Red Army, recruits former Tsarist officers, imposes ruthless discipline, and helps turn the tide against the White armies.

But victory comes at an enormous cost.

The episode also examines the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921, when sailors who had once been celebrated as heroes of the Revolution rose against Bolshevik rule. Trotsky and Lenin responded with force, crushing the uprising and revealing just how far the revolution had travelled from the ideals of 1917.

Then, with the Civil War over and Lenin dying, a new struggle begins.

Joseph Stalin is quietly building a network of loyal supporters throughout the Communist Party, while Trotsky assumes that his revolutionary reputation and intellectual brilliance will make him Lenin's natural successor.

It is a fatal mistake.

As Lenin's death approaches, Stalin steadily isolates his rival. Trotsky loses influence, his supporters are removed, and his role in the Revolution and Civil War is increasingly rewritten.

By the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1927, the outcome is no longer in doubt.

Trotsky is expelled from the Communist Party, arrested by the Soviet secret police, and sent into exile in Kazakhstan.

How did the revolutionary who helped create the Soviet state become its most famous exile?

Why did Trotsky underestimate Stalin so catastrophically?

And how did the man who helped build the Red Army become the greatest political enemy of the man who would eventually rule the Soviet Union?

Join Joseph Parkinson as Ancient to Recent continues the extraordinary story of Leon Trotsky, the revolutionary who helped make the Soviet Union, only to find himself hunted by the regime he had helped create.

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