Leon Trotsky 1879-1940Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a Ukrainian-Jewish family of wealthy farmers in Yanovka or Yanivka, in the Kherson governorate of the Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, in Ukraine), a small village 24 kilometres (15 mi) from the nearest post office.
Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, theorist, and Soviet politician. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, he later developed his own version of Marxism, Trotskyism.