Speech by Esteban Volkov (Sieva)
on the 69th anniversary of the Assassination of Leon Trotsky

We publish below the words of Esteban Volkov (Sieva), the grandson of Leon Trotsky, on the anniversary of the death of the co-leader, together with Vladimir Lenin, of the October Revolution of 1917. His speech was given in front of the funeral monument designed by the Mexican muralist Juan O’Gorman in the garden of the Museo Casa León Trotsky in Coyoacán, Mexico. This was where the great Russian and internationalist revolutionary lived the last years of his exile, before being assassinated by a Stalinist agent in August 1940. Among those who attended the ceremony were a dozen comrades of the League for the Fourth International. A spokeswoman for the Grupo Internacionalista, the Mexican section of the LFI, gave some brief remarks and at the end The Internationale was sung in Spanish, English, French and Russian.

Esteban Volkov reading his speech commemorating the 69th anniversary of the assassination of his grandfather, Leon Trotsky, Coyoacán, Mexico, August 2009.
Photo: El Internacionalista

On August 20th, it will be 69 years since the day when on a hot summer afternoon, returning from school after a long walk to our house at Viena 19, in Coyoacán, I was able to see alive, for the last time, my grandfather, Lev Davidovitch, better known as Leon Trotsky.

It still seems to me as if it was yesterday, when on that afternoon, through a half-opened door of the library, I saw my grandfather, mortally wounded, lying on the kitchen floor with his head bloodied, and at his side his inseparable companion Natalia, who was applying ice to the head wound, attempting to stop the hemorrhaging. Also at his side, if I remember correctly, were the American comrades, Charlie Cornell and Joe Hansen.

Upon hearing my steps in the room next door, motioning in that direction, he said, “Keep Sieva away, he must not see this.” Shortly before, he had also admonished the comrades upon hearing the groans and cries of Stalin’s agent coming from his office where he was being beaten by one of the comrades: “Don’t kill him, he must talk,” were his words.

By the time he was in the hospital, in his last conscious moment, before going into surgery, he gave his last message to Joe Hansen: “I am sure of the triumph of the Fourth International. Forward!”

Stalin, the bloody tyrant of the Kremlin, supreme leader of the counterrevolution, had finally managed to assassinate one of the most noteworthy revolutionaries which humanity has produced, who together with Lenin played a decisive role in the preparation, execution and triumph of the first socialist revolution on the planet.

The assassination of Trotsky was the culmination of the extermination of Lenin’s comrades in struggle, and of the great majority of the generation which made possible the victory of October. These were the methods that Stalin used to maintain his usurping and illegitimate bureaucratic regime.

Scarcely three months earlier, in the early morning of May 24, we had suffered a first, failed attempt on the life of Leon Trotsky in the big house in Coyoacán. On that occasion the painter Alfaro Siqueiros together with 20 or so Stalinist fanatics had stormed the house at Viena 19, preventing the comrade guards from leaving their quarters, raking it with intense fire while  pouring machine-gun fire into the bedroom of my grandparents from three different directions, using Thompson sub-machine guns. Quick thinking by Natalia, who immediately pushed grandfather out of the bed and kept him in a corner of the dark bedroom, was what saved both of their lives. At the time I slept in the neighboring bedroom, and was grazed by a bullet on the big toe of my right foot.

Firebombs thrown into my bedroom, in order to burn the cabinets and destroy archives were the unmistakable calling card of Stalin, since only he could have been interested in their destruction.

It is difficult to describe on this occasion, how filled with joy and euphoria grandfather was at having emerged alive from this first failed attempt at assassination. Only the discovery of the absence of the guard on duty, Sheldon Hart, cast a shadow over the atmosphere.

But Lev Davidovitch knew that the break would be short and that his days were numbered. Every day when he got up he said, “Natasha, they have given us one more day of life.”

The question was, where would the next attempt come from? So much so that when he suffered the fatal attack, covered with blood, his glasses broken, standing in the door frame, when Natalia rushed up to him, he only exclaimed: “Jackson!” and pointed to the assassin who was pinned down by the guards, as if to say, “That’s where what we were expecting came from”!

My reuniting with grandfather was in Mexico, in August 1939, a year before his assassination. I was 13 years old at the time, and arrived from France with the Rosmers, old friends of my grandparents.

My memories of Lev Davidovitch during this last chapter, this last year of his existence, are very sharp and clear. It is difficult for me to describe with words, to impart the image of the living being, of the revolutionary with the magnitude and the brilliance of Leon Trotsky.

He was a human being of exceptional intelligence, and of total, absolute commitment to the struggle for socialism. His whole personality was shaped by the framework of this struggle. He was generous, supportive, patiently explaining and politically educating the comrades, with a great sense of humor, creating a jovial and warm atmosphere around him.

He was a tireless worker, not wasting a minute of his existence, radiating vitality and optimism. He had great admiration for human labor, where he did not permit privileges or distinctions. The word fear did not exist in his vocabulary.

What most impressed me about his person was his absolute certainty, his immovable confidence in the coming of socialism in the future of humanity.

A certainty that he acquired through his experiences of life, of having participated as a key personage and privileged observer in one of the most notable and astounding events in the history of humanity, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, which in its beginning laid the basis for genuine socialism, and which later due to the adverse historical circumstances of the time degenerated under the blows of a counterrevolution. At least it demonstrated once and for all that socialism is a tangible and achievable reality.

Those of us who do not accept that there is eternal life, do believe that in the immortality of ideas.

Leon Trotsky had such an active and prolific mind in analyzing, elaborating theses and political slogans, that he transcribed and bequeathed to us an immense and inexhaustible arsenal of Marxist ideology and theory, the fruit of more than 40 years of revolutionary struggle, such that I venture to say that Leon Trotsky is still with us. His immense Marxist legacy enables us to analyze and understand all the past and present historical happenings, and to plan the future.

In the face of the increasingly voracious and brutal capitalist regime of today, in speaking of the socialist revolution, the words of Leon Trotsky come to mind: “Never was there a greater task on earth. The Party demands everything of us, totally and completely. In exchange, it gives us the immense satisfaction of participating in building a better future and carrying on our backs a particle of humanity’s greatest dream, and that our life will not have been lived in vain.”

Leon Trotsky’s last message to Joe Hansen was: “I am sure of the triumph of the Fourth International. Forward!”

This has not yet been accomplished. This is the duty and it is also the task to be carried out by the comrades who fight with the example and the ideas of the great revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Let us remember his words:

“My faith in the socialist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.

“Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room.  I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere.  Life is beautiful.  Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

Thank you.

Esteban Volkov
21 August 2009