Esteban Volkov remembers daily life in Trotsky household

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Esteban Volkov with a photo of his grandfather, Leon Trotsky, behind him SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1989 13 Esteban (Sieva) Volkov, the grandson of Bolshevik Party leader Leon Trotsky, recently participated in a speaking tour of the United States sponsored by Walnut Publishing Co. and Socialist Action. We reprint below excerpts of one of the speeches that Volkov presented on the tour.

I was really one of the most fortunate members of Trotsky's family, because most of my relatives were exterminated, assassinated, or sent to concentration camps. I was very lucky to get out of the Soviet Union.

I left the Soviet Union at the age of five in 1931 with my mother (Zina Volkova], who had to leave to receive medical treatment. She had a very bad case of tuberculosis and she also had serious nervous problems. We reached the Old Man (my grandfather, Leon Trotsky) and his wife Natalya in Prinkipo, Turkey, in 1931.

My mother left my older half-sister, Alexandra, in the Soviet Union. This was not her choice. Stalin ordered that she could only bring the smaller child, me, with her.

After some months of living with Trotsky and Natalya and some European secretaries— Jan Frankel, Jean Van Heijenoort, and Leon Sedov (Trotsky's oldest son)-my mother left for Berlin to receive treatment. I stayed maybe two or three months with my grandparents until Van Heijenoort brought me to Berlin to be with my mother. I stayed for perhaps two months.

Suddenly one day, my uncle Lyova [Leon Sedov] came to pick me up from my school. He told me that my mother was sick and that she was in the hospital. I did not know until one year later, when I was living in Vienna, that she had in fact committed suicide. This period coincided with the coming to power of Hitler in Germany. My mother's suicide was the result of these difficult times and of being forbidden to return to Russia to see her daughter, Alexandra.

I stayed for two years in Vienna in a little home for children which was maintained by a Freudian psychologist. Also in the home, if I remember correctly, was a daughter of Wilhelm Reich-and also a young lady who was a daughter of Freud.

Leon Sedov is murdered After two years, I was taken by one of Trotsky's Czech secretaries, Jan Frankel, and we traveled by train to Paris. I stayed in the apartment of Leon Sedov and his French companion [Jeanne Martin].

Unfortunately, the family did not last very long. About one-and-a-half years or two years later, Lyova [Leon Sedov] had a strong appendicitis attack and was placed in the hospital operated by Russian emigres.

Later, it was discovered that one of his closest Russian emigre collaborators, Etienne, was really a GPU agent. [He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.] Sedov was recovering very well from the operation when suddenly his condition got much worse, and he died. Now it is perfectly well known that he was poisoned by the GPU [Stalin's secret police].

I lived for several years in Paris with Sedov's former companion—a very sad and lonely woman. It was a very difficult time for a young boy as well. Finally, Alfred and Margarite Rosmer (very old friends of Leon Trotsky) took me to New York by boat.

Trotsky's household in Mexico We arrived in New York in 1939, when there was a World's Fair. From there we reached Mexico by train. Suddenly, I was in the middle of a very active household filled with young European and American supporters of Trotsky. It was a very lively environment, which I very much enjoyed after the sad days in Paris.

None of the secretaries and guards were paid a wage, it was all volunteer. It was like a big family, with the Old Man as a kind of patriarch or father of this community of young comrades (most of them Americans).

Trotsky was a very warm person, very friendly, very interested in the personal welfare of all the friends around him. He had a very great sense of humor. We were always joking.

And, of course, he was also a very hard worker, he was very disciplined. He would start very early in his office, he would read his correspondence from around the world, and he would write articles. He was actually working on a biography of Stalin when he was killed.

Usually at night he would have political discussions with comrades. At that time, there were great polemics. One debate was whether the Soviet Union was still a country which should still be defended as a worlers' state or whether it had degenerated to the point where it had nothing to do with socialism.

Trotsky said that the Soviet Union was a "degenerated workers' state" but that, nonetheless, the remaining gains of the revolution made it closer to socialism than any capitalist country. The means of production had been nationalized and capitalist private ownership eliminated. This was a transitional stage.

Stalin's terrorists attack

During the first months at Coyoacan in the Trotsky household, life was very nice. We usually went out to the country on the weekends to collect cactuses. Trotsky was the first to carry the heavy plants up and down the hills; he did not want any young comrades to help him. Later, we would plant them in the garden.

Soon, however, problems developed. There were always slanderous attacks against Trotsky in the Stalinist press in Mexicoas was true throughout the world. But Trotsky began to notice a drastic escalation of these attacks. They became more frequent and more virulent.

Some months after the heightened campaign of slanders, at 4 a.m., there was an attack by 20 to 25 terrorists. It was led by the famous Mexican painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros.

I was sleeping in the room beside my grandparents. Suddenly, I saw a silhouette in the moonlight; someone pushed open the French windows. It made a lot of noise and I was awakened. It was someone in a uniform. Then there was heavy machine-gun fire and the smell of powder. It was like awakening from a sound, comfortable sleep and being thrown into the middle of a battle.

After some minutes of shooting, other terrorists came into the room and threw some incendiary bombs, which made a big explosion. At this point, my fear turned into panic and I jumped from under the bed where I was hiding. [Later, several bullet holes were found in the bed. Fortunately, Volkov only received a minor bullet wound in the foot].

As I was running, I collided with one of the terrorists who was running away. He did not pay any attention to the small boy who was running in the garden. I passed through the library and dining room over on the east side of the house and got out onto the patio and reached the room of one the guards, Harold Robbins. I stayed there petrified.

Fortunately, the shooting stopped and the terrorists left the house. Some minutes later we heard the voice of Trotsky—full of life and gaity. He was grateful to be alive. He was surrounded by all of us in the household and we all began to comment on the attack. Everyone seemed to be okay. But then we discovered that one of the North American guards, Sheldon Harte, had been kidnapped. His dead body was found later.

"We have lived one more day"

After that, life in the house was very tense. The North American party collected a defense fund for Trotsky to fortify the defense of the house. Iron doors were installed. Concrete guard posts with peep holes were constructed above the house. Visits to the countryside were eliminated. We were all expecting another attack.

Trotsky was absolutely sure that Stalin would not stop until he finished the job. Each morning when he would wake up, he'd say to Natalya: "Natasha, we have lived one more day."

There was a young North American comrade, Sylvia Agelof, in the household. She had the great admiration of all of us in the house; she was very friendly and hardworking. She had a companion, Ramon Mercader ("Monard" or "Jacson"), a Belgian journalist who had suddenly arrived in Coyoacan. He did not show any interest in approaching Trotsky, but developed a relationship with the guards. He invited them sightseeing and sometimes lent them his car and other favors. And he often gave me some presents when he visited.

One day, after months and months of doing favors and giving the image of being a very generous man who always wanted to help, Jacson asked if Trotsky could comment on an essay he was writing on the current debate over the nature of the Soviet state. Trotsky thought that he was a friendly man, the companion of a comrade, and someone who was interested in politics. So how could he refuse this little favor?

In the afternoon, Trotsky reviewed the essay in his office. The visit lasted 20 minutes or so, and then Mercader left. Afterwards, Trotsky told Natalya that he felt something strange about Jacson. Trotsky said that his mannerisms were not like a Belgian.

Jacson was supposed to come back for another appointment to review the final version of his article with Trotsky. Soon, he came again in the afternoon. He was carrying a raincoat draped over his arm. Natalya greeted him and said, "You look so pale, you are perhaps working so hard, you don't look well. What happened? You should take more care, you should not work so much. And why are you carrying this raincoat? There is a blue sky."

Jacson said that you can never know the weather in Mexico. He asked for a glass of water, which Natalya brought to him. Then he entered the office with Trotsky. But this Mercader, alias Jacson, just after his fatal attack on Trotsky time he intended to complete his mission— which Stalin had ordered.

"The Fourth International-Go forward!"

Some minutes elapsed, and there was a terrible cry that was heard throughout the house. Trotsky came out of the room filled with blood and without his glasses. Natalya arrived, and he told her: "Jacson, it was Jacson! What we were expecting has happened." He then lay on the floor in the arms of Natalya.

At this time, the guards were beating Jacson very violently. A Mexican guard was even pointing a gun at him from the roof and was ready to shoot him. But Trotsky was able to tell the guards, "Don't kill him, he must talk." And that was probably the reason he wasn't killed.

While lying on the floor fatally wounded, according to Joseph Hansen [chief of Trotsky's guards], Trotsky also said, "I am absolutely sure of the triumph of the Fourth International. Go forward!"

At that moment, I was a little boy returning from school. As I approached the house, 1 knew something was wrong because of all the commotion outside the house. I entered the room where Trotsky was lying, and Trotsky said to a guard, "Keep the boy away. He should not see this." It is a small point perhaps, but one I think shows the humanity of Trotsky even in his dying moments.

About one hour later, he was taken by ambulance to a Mexico City hospital. He was