abstract
| - In 1898, at the age of 22, a young Leon Trotsky was traveling from his hometown of Yanovka to the town Nikolayev. Trotsky stopped for the night at the estate of a wealthy landowner friend. Trotsky carried a briefcase full of illegal manuscripts on his person. These manuscripts identified him as a member of the Communist party, which was illegal in 1898. The morning after his night at the estate, the police came and arrested Trotsky and around 200 of his colleagues. Among those colleagues was Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a fellow Russian Marxist revolutionary. Sokolovskaya was a spirited woman. Trotsky recalled her gaiety and affinity for music in his autobiography "My Life." Trotsky and Sokolovskaya were bound by their passion for their work, his admiration for her limitless commitment, and his unwillingness to separate with such a vital partner. His admiration for her commitment and moral compass led to their marriage in 1899. Trotsky and Sokolovskaya were exiled to Siberia shortly after they wed. There, they parented two daughters, Zinaida and Nina. When Nina was merely four months old, Vladimir Lenin’s “What is to be Done?” had been published. This marked the passage of time that made Trotsky’s former writings obsolete; the revolution was moving in a direction that Trotsky couldn’t support. He needed to escape and divert what he thought was systematic political misinformation. Sokolovskaya, according to Trotsky, was the wise voice that silenced all his doubts and inhibitions regarding his escape. As a matter of fact, Trotsky recalls her as being the one to suggest that he escape in the first place. “Life separated us, but nothing could destroy our friendship and our intellectual kinship.” After Trotsky’s escape, Sokolovskaya continued to live in exile until she was given freedom. Their daughters were raised by their paternal grandparents and Sokolovskaya was last seen in a labor camp at the age of 60, where she probably died. Trotsky’s two daughters died in their twenties, Nina of Tuberculosis and Zinadia of suicide. Both were married, and Zinaida had one daughter.
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