Leon Sedov
Encyclopedia
Lev Lvovich Sedov was the son of the Russian Communist leader Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and his second wife Natalia Sedova
Natalia Sedova
Natalia Ivanovna Sedova is best known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. She was, however, also an active revolutionary in her own right and wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism...
. He was born when his father was in prison facing life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
for having led the first Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates was a workers' council, or soviet in St. Petersburg in 1905.-Origins:The idea of a Soviet as an organ to coordinate workers' strike activities arose during the January–February 1905 meetings of workers at the apartment of Voline during the abortive...
Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
.
Life
He lived separately from his parents after the October RevolutionOctober Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
in order not to be seen as privileged. He married in 1925 at the age of 19, and had a son, Lev, the following year. He supported his father in the struggle against Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and became a leader of the Trotskyist movement in his own right.
Sedov accompanied his father into exile in 1928, and then moved to Berlin in 1931. Just before Hitler came to power in 1933, Sedov was able to move to Paris where he went to work as a Parisian laborer and became important activist in the Trotskyist movement. He was frequently followed by agents of the Soviet NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
.
Death
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
with connections to Soviet intelligence, who performed an appendectomy. Complications set in after the operation, but Sedov apparently received no further treatment. He was later taken to a Paris hospital, where he died.
Some historians who have analyzed the matter believe Sedov was murdered by agents of Stalin who were in Paris watching him, either while in hospital or by poisoning him causing his condition. In 1956, an NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
agent, Mark Zborowski
Mark Zborowski
Mark Zborowski was an anthropologist and an NKVD agent...
, who had posed as Sedov’s comrade and friend, testified in a United States court that he had reported to the NKVD as soon as Sedov had entered the hospital under a secret name. However, Pavel Sudoplatov
Pavel Sudoplatov
Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general...
, a lieutenant general in the NKVD who at that time was in charge of planning assassinations abroad, including the one of Sedov's father, claimed in his memoirs, Special Tasks
Special Tasks
Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster is the autobiography of Pavel Sudoplatov, who was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of major general; when it was published in 1994, it caused a considerable uproar, for a number of...
, that Soviet agents played no part in his death.
Sedov's grave is at the Parisian cemetery at Thiais
Thiais
Thiais is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The name Thiais comes from Medieval Latin Theodasium or Theodaxium, meaning "estate of Theodasius", a Gallo-Roman landowner....
.
Writings
Lev Sedov's major political work is The Red Book on the Moscow Trials (1936). This book analyzed the Moscow trialsMoscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
with the aim of discrediting them, at a time when a wide consensus accepted the verdicts of the trials.
External links
- The Red Book on the Moscow Trial
- Obituary. Leon Sedov by Victor SergeVictor SergeVictor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...