Liquidation: Who Killed Trotsky and Why

Abstract

"Death of an International Spy"—an editorial with this title appeared in Pravda of August 24, 1940. It stated: "The telegraph has brought news of Trotsky's death. According to a report from American newspapers, a successful attempt has been made on the life of Trotsky, who has been living the past few years in Mexico." The editorial gave the first and last names and political affiliation of the assassin: Jacques Mortan van den Draish, "one of Trotsky's closest persons and followers." Then followed a brief presentation of the political biography of the deceased, and a description of his activity: "A man whose name is uttered with contempt and damnation by workers throughout the world, has gone to his grave, a person who struggled for many years against the cause of the working class and its vanguard, the Bolshevik Party. The ruling classes of the capitalist countries have lost a faithful servant. Foreign intelligence services have been deprived of a perennial and experienced agent, an organizer of murders, who shunned no means to achieve his counterrevolutionary ends. … Trotsky was caught in his own web, having carried human degradation to its extreme."