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.