Ramon Mercader: Assassin or Hero? From the "golden boy" to the Spanish commissioner.

Troll - under this pseudonym, the murderer of Trotsky passed through the NKVD

Troll with ice ax

The fate of Ramon Mercader - the murderer of Leon Trotsky ... No one doubts (Very strongly said about Trotsky as the main opponent of Stalin: there were dofiga and more, and ALL are the main ones. © ) that the main opponent of Stalin in the struggle for power after the death of Lenin was Leon Trotsky. And this is understandable. Lev Davidovich was a close associate of Vladimir Ilyich, enjoyed great prestige in the party (Again, very strong: Lenin had a dofiga and more associates, and EVERYONE used it. Whoever can. © ). In October 1917, he led the uprising, which resulted in the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Trotsky was actually the creator of the Red Army and made a great contribution to its victory over the armies of the Whites. (having blocked lending to the real military needs of the white movement through their banking connections. © ). He was first People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, then from 1918 - People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.

By 1938, Trotsky's supporters were liquidated, even many of those who lived abroad. However, the main goal - Lev Davidovich Trotsky himself, despite all the attempts of the NKVD to destroy him, was still out of reach. And Stalin could not calm down in any way while his main enemy was alive.

In January 1937, Lev Davidovich with his wife Natalya Ivanovna and grandson Seva arrived from Norway in the Mexican port of Tampico. Here a solemn meeting was arranged for him. Then a special train took him to Mexico City. At first he lived in the villa of the world-famous artist Diego Rivera. The owner of the villa sympathized with Trotsky and saw him as the greatest revolutionary of the 20th century. However, Trotsky felt threatened all the time.

To ensure the safety of himself and his family, he bought a large house on the outskirts of Mexico City, Coyocane. (We have proletarian leaders who are Harash, like Lenin and Trotsky: they live for years in foreign resorts, move by trains and steamboats, easily acquire mansions ... © ). It was overhauled, surrounded by a high wall with guard sites. As a result, something like a fortress appeared. Visitors to Lev Davidovich could enter it only through the iron gate, where there was a vigilant guard.

However, agents of the NKVD soon infiltrated this "fortress" of Trotsky. The then head of Soviet intelligence, Spiegelglas, managed to introduce the Spaniard Maria de Las Elas Africa (Patria) into his secretariat. She was recruited in Spain in 1937. Several more agents were urgently sent to Mexico, including Joseph Grigulevich, who took part in the liquidation of the leader of the Spanish Trotskyists, A. Nin. And this was only the beginning of the implementation of the plan to assassinate Trotsky, developed by Spiegelglas. However, this plan immediately failed. In July 1938, the resident in Spain Alexander Orlov (Leiba Lazarevich Feldbin) became a defector. Having received a call to Moscow, he realized that he would be arrested there, and chose to flee to America. He knew some details of the impending operation to liquidate Trotsky. He sent an anonymous letter to the "demon of the revolution", in which he warned of the impending assassination attempt. Moreover, he said that it would be performed by people who had come from Spain.

Upon learning of this letter, Shpigelglas was forced to recall the NKVD agents sent there from Mexico. De Las Heras Africa, Grigulevich and others urgently left Mexico. However, the decision to "freeze" the operation to eliminate Trotsky turned out to be fatal for Spiegelglas. The customer of the murder did not forgive him for not following his order. The leader of the failed killers was arrested and shot.

However, Stalin's order and his order from the NKVD to kill Trotsky remained in place. Moreover, the leader hurried with its implementation (See A. Kolpakidi, D. Prokhorov "KGB: Special Operations of Soviet Intelligence". M, AST publishing house, 2000).

After the arrest of Spiegelglas, the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrenty Beria, faced the question: who should be entrusted with the execution of this operation? He chose Pavel Sudoplatov. Beria brought him with him to the Kremlin "for the bride" to Stalin. The leader, after hearing a brief report from the people's commissar, said:

"There are no important political figures in the Trotskyist movement except Trotsky himself. If Trotsky is done away with, the threat to the Comintern will be eliminated."

Then Stalin became stern and, minting words, as if giving an order, said:

"Trotsky must be eliminated within a year before the inevitable war breaks out. Without the elimination of Trotsky, we cannot be sure of supporting our allies in the international communist movement in the event of an attack by the imperialists on the Soviet Union. It will be very difficult for them to fulfill their international duty of destabilization rear of the enemy, launch a guerrilla war."

Iosif Vissarionovich really believed that in the event of an attack on the USSR, for example, Germany, the working class, led by the Communists, would rush to defend the Soviet Union. That's just to remove Trotsky. But in reality, the workers of Germany ran after Hitler with the same enthusiasm as the bourgeoisie ... if not more.

In general, the order-order to kill Trotsky was received, the deadline was set.

Sudoplatov asked for permission to involve veterans of sabotage operations and the Spanish Civil War on the assignment. Stalin replied to this:

"It is your duty and party duty to find and select suitable and reliable people. Any help and support will be provided to you."

In view of the importance of the task assigned to him, Sudoplatov received the post of deputy chief of foreign intelligence of the NKVD of the USSR (See Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Operations. Lubyanka and the Kremlin. 1930-1950. M., Olma-Press, 1999).

Immediately after the audience with Stalin, Sudoplatov began to develop a plan for the operation to eliminate Trotsky, which was called "Duck". The leading role in it was assigned to an experienced intelligence officer Leonid (Naum) Eitingon.

During the development of the operation, its participants carefully read the reports of de Las Heras Afrika and Iosif Grigulevich who arrived in Moscow. They contained detailed information about the system of internal and external security of Trotsky's house and other important details of the life of the "Duck" object. The plan of intelligence-operational measures in the "Duck" case, developed by Sudoplatov and Eitingon in early August 1939, was reported to Stalin and approved by him. Eitingon was directly in charge of the operation. To participate in the assassination of Trotsky, he created two groups of agents and militants of the NKVD. And even a backup.

The first assassination attempt took place at the end of May 1940 as part of Operation Horse. A group of Mexican communists, led by the famous artist David Alvaro Siqueiros, tried to kill the exile. He fought in Spain. He was even commander of the 82nd brigade there.

On the night of May 20, 1940, a group of 20 people dressed in the uniform of the Mexican police and army, led by David Siqueres and Iosif Grigulevich, drove up to Trotsky's villa in four cars. They were armed with grenades, machine guns and even had assault ladders. Protection from such an onslaught was confused and could not resist. The militants broke into the courtyard, pelted the building with grenades and opened furious fire, primarily at Trotsky's bedroom. From imminent death, he and his wife Natalia were saved by the fact that they managed to fall to the floor and lay without moving. Having shot all the cartridges (later it was found that more than 200 bullets were fired at the bedroom alone), the militants left, leaving several incendiary bombs and a charge of dynamite, which never exploded. (See A. Kolpakidi, D. Prokhorov. "Ordered to liquidate". M., Eksmo publishing house, 2004). Upon learning the results of the operation, Beria was furious. So much effort - and everything went down the drain, the whole detachment was mobilized, and the result was zero.

Discouraged by the failure, Sudoplatov and Eitingon assured that there were still reserves and the task would be completed. Leonid Eitingon reported to Moscow:

“You know about our misfortune from the newspapers. So far, all the people are safe and some have left the country. If there are no special complications, in two or three weeks we will begin to correct the mistake, since not all reserves have been exhausted. Taking full responsibility for this nightmarish failure, I am ready to leave at your first request to receive the punishment due for such a failure. (See L. Mlechin. "Why did Stalin kill Trotsky", M., Tsentrpoligraf publishing house, 2010).

The chief of the NKVD decided that "they don't change horses at the crossing" and accepted the explanations and promises of his employees. Moreover, it was impossible to replace them.

In terms of Operation Duck, there were several backup options. One of them said "Mother" and "Raymond." The mother is Carridad Mercader and Raymond is her son Ramon.

Carridad Mercader was born in 1882 in Santiago de Cuba. Her father was a local governor. Karridad received a good education. She went in for sports, loved horseback riding, she was distinguished by dexterity and courage. There was no shortage of suitors. She preferred Pablo Mercader to Mario. He was a wealthy businessman who owned a textile factory. He adored his young wife, she reciprocated him. They had four sons - Pablo, Ramon, Jorge, Luis and a daughter Montserrat.

But the happy life of the spouses ended when the mother of many children Karridad became interested in politics. At first she joined the anarchists. Participated in their protests against the "exploiting classes". It is unlikely that she thought at the same time how she would like to live without her husband's income. His attempts to reason with his wife did not lead to anything, and the matter ended with the fact that Carridad ended up in a psychiatric clinic. True, she did not stay there for long.

When Carridad was released, the first thing she did was divorce her husband. Then she moved to France with her children. Receiving a fairly decent content from her husband, she decided to take up agriculture. Got a farm. However, it turned out to be little adapted to work on the ground. No experience, of course. The economy could not be established. The farm burned down and brought only losses. Then Carridad bought a small restaurant in Toulouse and made an attempt to establish her business. She was no more lucky with a restaurant than with a farm.

Convinced that business was not her element, Carridad decided to return to politics. Joined the French Communist Party. In 1934 she left for Spain and participated in the uprising in Barcelona, ​​and since 1936 - in the civil war. In 1937, she came to the attention of Leonid Eitingon - at that time the deputy resident of Soviet intelligence in Spain. Since that time, she worked closely with the NKVD. And it was she, the mother of Ramon Mercader, who involved her son, and he also became an agent of the INO NKVD.

Jaime Ramon Mercader del Río Hernández (this is his full name), the second son of Carridad was born on February 7, 1914 in Barcelona. His parents separated when he was five years old. His mother settled in Paris with five children. She was an emotional person, became interested in politics, while adhering to ultra-left views, as we mentioned above. At the same time, she firmly believed that she was defending the cause of freedom and justice. She raised her children in the same spirit.

Ramon joined the revolutionary movement as a young man. A civil war broke out in Spain. In July 1936, Ramon was 22 years old. Together with the brothers Pablo and Jorge, he goes to the front to defend the Republic. Senior Pablo, the commander of the brigade, will soon die in battle near Madrid. Ramon was wounded and ended up in the hospital. Then he was sent as commissar of the 17th sector of the Aragonese front. Here they became seriously interested in the NKVD resident Orlov and his deputy Eitingon. They decided that Ramon, a committed communist, could become a very useful agent for the Soviet intelligence service, for which his mother Carridad was already working. And from February 1937, he began to cooperate in this capacity with the NKVD.

Mercader is sent to Paris. There are many Trotskyists here and preparations are underway for the founding conference of the 4th International, which Trotsky conceived to create. Here, an NKVD agent, secretary to the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Daily Worker" Ruby Weil introduced him to the American Sylvia Ageloff, a psychologist by profession and a Trotskyist by conviction. Her older sister Ruth is Trotsky's secretary. Since she is very busy with work, Sylvia often helps her. And just at that moment in Paris, Sylvia took part in the preparations for the founding conference of the 4th International.

Ruby Weil introduced Sylvia Ramon Mercader as Jacques Mornard, a photojournalist for a Belgian news agency. Sylvia did not shine with beauty and was not spoiled by the attention from men. Ramona favorably accepted courtship, an affair began. Sylvia was the path to Trotsky's house. Meanwhile, after the attack by a group of militants of Siqueiros-Grigulevich, the walls of the villa were covered with sandbags, steel shutters were installed on the windows and doors, and an alarm system was installed. A guardhouse for a detachment of Mexican policemen was built next to the house. Five police patrols were constantly on duty in the immediate vicinity of the house. In general, the exile's villa was turned into a real fortress.

In February 1939, Sylvia went home to New York, while Mercader remained in Paris for the time being. In Moscow, they decided to create a task force "Mother" under the leadership of Karridad. In June 1939, Sudoplatov and Eitingon arrived in Paris. They conducted a thorough briefing of Mercader, after which, on September 1, 1939, with documents in the name of a Canadian citizen Frank Jackson, he went to New York, where he was supposed to meet with Sylvia and through her go to Trotsky. Sudoplatov returned to Moscow, Eitingon went to America to direct Operation Duck on the spot. In October 1939 he arrived in New York. Here he founded an import-export company, which they decided to use as a communications center. At the same time, she served as a roof for Ramon, who could now make frequent trips from Mexico to the United States to meet with Eitingon, who supplied him with money. To ensure communication with Mexico, an additional intelligence officer of the NKVD P. Pastelnyak was sent to New York, who was officially listed as an employee of the Consulate General of the USSR under the name Klarin.

In November 1939, Eitingon arrived in Mexico, Carridad Mercader also arrived there from France. After the failure of the attack on Trotsky's villa, having received instructions from Moscow, Eitingon began to implement a backup plan in which Ramon Mercader was given the main role.

Ramón met Sylvia in New York and told her that he had found a profitable job with a reputable firm in Mexico. She agreed to go with him to Mexico City. In addition, her sister and friends have long called her there.

Ramon was fluent not only in Spanish, but also in French and English. Very tall and strong, outwardly attractive, cold-blooded. He was suited for the role assigned to him by the Soviet secret services: to seduce one of Trotsky's devoted women to bring him to the house of a future victim. Already five days after the unsuccessful assassination attempt, the future killer entered the house of Lev Davidovich.

Trotsky liked the young man, helpful and charming, besides Sylvia's fiancé. And Mercader began to visit the villa often. He became familiar to the guards and did not pay much attention to him.

On July 29, Trotsky and his wife invited Sylvia Ageloff and Ramon Mercader for tea. This meeting lasted about an hour and at it Mercader showed himself to be a good actor. He was moderately shy and mostly talked about mountaineering, which he was fond of. Only 22 days remained before Trotsky's assassination. After the militant raid on the villa, Trotsky's friends gave him a bulletproof vest, which he never put on. Trotsky disregarded the advice of his guards, who insisted on a thorough search of all persons who entered the house. He forbade it, not wanting to embarrass his guests.

On August 17, 1940, Ramon held a "dress rehearsal" for the upcoming assassination attempt. He turned to Lev Davidovich with an unexpected request to read an article he had written on the situation in France and express his opinion whether it deserved to be published. Trotsky agreed.

On August 20, Trotsky was doing what he loved - feeding rabbits. Mercader brought his article. Despite the terrible heat, he was wearing a raincoat and hat. Natalya Sedova said later:

"Lev Davidovich did not want to part with the rabbits and he was not interested in the article. However, he closed the cages, took off his work gloves and went with me and "Jackson" to the house. I accompanied them to the door of Lev Davidovich's office. The door closed, and I went into the next room. Entering the office, Trotsky took the papers about the article and sat down at his desk. At the trial later, Ramon testified: “I put my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to take out the ice pick that was in my pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself to me.

Mercader stood behind Lev Davidovich and with all his might brought down an ice ax with a shortened handle on his head. He also had a gun and a knife. But he preferred an ice ax to avoid unnecessary noise. Mercader was a ruthless and insensitive man. Not every professional killer is able to act so cold-bloodedly. He hoped to kill Trotsky with one blow and run away. His car was parked right in front of the gate. Literally 100 meters from the villa there was a second car, in which Karridad and Eitingon were sitting. However, the mortally wounded Trotsky, whose skull was pierced, the wound reached 7 centimeters in depth, screamed terribly and joined the fight. Mercader did not expect such a turn, he was confused and failed to use a pistol or a knife. The noise was heard by the guards, who ran in and grabbed the killer. They began to beat him, but Trotsky, who was conscious, stopped them. He said:

"Leave him, don't kill him. Let him tell everything."

Lev Davidovich was taken to the hospital. He underwent a craniotomy. The right parietal bone was pierced, fragments pierced into the brain. The operation was performed by five surgeons. However, she didn't help. He died a day later.

In the Kremlin, the news of Trotsky's death caused great joy, the Soviet press did not hide it.

The police confronted Ramon with Sylvia Ageloff, who he used to break into Trotsky's house. Mercader could not look her in the eyes and bowed his head low, silent. Sylvia called out to him:

"You're a traitor! In love, in friendship, in everything. Don't lie, traitor!"

Three hundred thousand people came to say goodbye to Trotsky - in a country far from Russia, where he lived for only a few years.

Eight months later, 6 participants in Operation Duck were awarded orders. Including the Order of Lenin, Ramon's mother, Karridad and Eitingon, Sudoplatov and Vasilevsky received the Order of the Red Banner (he was responsible for technical issues, for example, provided false documents), The killer himself, Ramon, was awarded many years later, after he was released from prison.

After his arrest, Ramon identified himself as a Belgian subject, Jacques Mornard. He explained the motives for the murder by the fact that in the past he was a supporter of Trotsky, but was very disappointed in him. However, Police Colonel Salazar, who led the investigation, with the help of the Belgian envoy in Mexico City, quickly proved that the killer was not a Belgian citizen, Jacques Mornard. However, the police established his real name much later. The dossier of Ramon Mercader was brought to Mexico from the Spanish police archives and his identity was established, it made no sense to deny it.

According to Sudoplatov, Beria instructed not to spare money to protect Mercader. The lawyers had to convince the court that the murder of Trotsky was the result of squabbles and confusion among his supporters.

At the trial, Ramon was defended by two lawyers - Mexican Eduardo Seniceros and Cuban Ofelia Dominguez. However, their efforts did not help. 20 years in prison, then in Mexico it was the highest penalty - such was the sentence passed by the court to Ramon Mercader.

Moscow tried to help Mercader. Since May 1943, Vasilevsky, a participant in Operation Duck, has been a resident of Soviet intelligence in Mexico. He even tried to organize Ramon's escape. However, the carefully and well-prepared operation failed. The Chekists blamed Karridad for this. She was outraged by the "slowness" of the Soviet special services, believed that through their fault her son was imprisoned for many years. And she began to act on her own, without even consulting with the residency of the INO NKVD. Carridad has been to Mexico City before. In 1936, she came on behalf of the government of the Spanish Republic to purchase weapons. And her appearance did not go unnoticed. She was under constant surveillance. The head of the Lucumberri prison, where Ramon was kept, was warned. As a result, the prison regime became more stringent, additional guards were assigned to Ramon. In addition, two criminals escaped from the Lookberry at that time. The general regime was tightened, some guards were replaced.

Carridad was forced to leave Mexico City. Escape preparations continued. However, making sure that the chances of success were minimal, the residency postponed the operation to free Ramon until better times, but these times never came. 10 months after the assassination of Trotsky, the Patriotic War began. All the activities of Soviet intelligence were aimed at fulfilling the tasks associated with it. Other tasks after June 22 all at once lost priority. It was not up to the Troll - under this pseudonym, the murderer of Trotsky passed in the NKVD. He was visited either on the instructions of the NKVD, or on behalf of Carridad, the previously unfamiliar cabaret artist Roquelia, she wore transfers to him.

Ramon Mercader served 20 years in prison from bell to bell. On May 6, 1960, he walked out of the gates of Lecumberri Prison to freedom. At the request of the KGB, he was met by a resident of the Czechoslovak intelligence. Together they flew to Havana. Stayed here for several days. Ramon met with Fidel and Raul Castro. The Cuban leaders saw in Mercader not a cruel killer, a killer who carried out Stalin's order, but considered him a revolutionary, a comrade in the struggle. From Havana Ramon went to Prague. Well, then Moscow was waiting for him. Here he turned into Ramon Ivanovich Lopez. All Soviet documents were issued to him in this name, and he became a citizen of the USSR.

The then chairman of the KGB of the USSR Alexander Shelepin sent a memorandum to Nikita Khrushchev, in which Ramon was praised, it was said:

"Because of his boundless devotion to communism and the Soviet Union during the investigation and trial, as well as for almost 20 years in prison under the conditions of an unceasing campaign of threats and provocations against him, he showed the courage, steadfastness and high ideological nature inherent in a real communist and kept secret his connection with the organs of state security of the Soviet Union.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated May 31, 1960, Lopez Ramon Ivanovich "for the performance of a special task and the courage and heroism shown in doing so" was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The Decree was not published in the press. The killer was settled in a four-room apartment near the Sokol metro station; the Chekists furnished it with furniture and even arranged books. They got him a job in a radio equipment repair shop. He mastered this business during his stay in prison. However, this occupation quickly became boring to him.

The leader of the Communists of Spain, Dolores Ibarruri, helped Ramon to be taken to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU, where Spanish emigrants wrote the history of their Communist Party and the civil war. He joined them. Ramon married the Mexican Roquelia Mendoza, who carried him parcels to prison and came to Moscow on Ramon's call. She soon began working as an announcer for the Spanish edition of Moscow radio. In 1963 they adopted two children - a boy, Arthur, 12 years old, and a girl, Laura, six months old. Their parents were friends of Mercader. His father, a participant in the Spanish Civil War, fled to Moscow after the defeat of the Republicans, and later returned to his homeland as an illegal agent, was captured by the Francoists and shot. Mother died in Moscow during childbirth.

When Mercader appeared in Moscow, his friends and mentors in the operation "Duck" Sudoplatov and Eitingon were in prison. They were arrested in connection with the Beria case. They were later released and often met with Ramon.

However, Moscow was alien and unusual for Ramon. The Chekists who took care of him treated him politely and coldly. His brother Louis recalled that he was gloomy, overwhelmed by his personal drama. And the Soviet reality did not arouse his enthusiasm.

In October 1974, Ramon Mercader left for Cuba. Here the climate is milder, there is no snow and frost. In addition, everyone spoke Spanish - his native language. He received the rank of general and the position of adviser to the Ministry of the Interior. It is difficult to say what he advised there, hardly something valuable and useful. In 1977, he came to Moscow for the last time to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution.

Ramon saw his mother occasionally. According to Brother Luis, he did not forgive her. He said: "It was her fault that I spent 20 years in prison."

Carridad died in 1975 at her home in France, lying on a bed under a large portrait of Stalin at the head. Ramon outlived her by only three years. He died in Cuba from a sarcoma on October 18, 1978, he passed away in terrible agony. He lived only 59 years - spent a third of his life in prison. Did the assassin have a conscience? According to Professor Zlatopolsky, who often talked with Ramon in Moscow, he only once remembered what he had done, said:

Until the grave, I will not forget how he screamed after my blow.

Fate was not very favorable to the murderer of Trotsky. The urn with his ashes was delivered to Moscow. They buried Hero of the Soviet Union Ramon Ivanovich Lopez with full military honors at the Kuntsevo cemetery. Mercader spent most of his life under false names. And they buried him under a false name.

Until his death, he and his mother received a pension from the KGB. Tombstones on their graves were also installed at the expense of the KGB: hers - at the Pantin cemetery in Paris, and his - at Kuntsevsky in Moscow.

The life story of Ramon Mercader in the USSR was unexpectedly continued. In 1991, his younger brother Louis claimed that Ramon had been poisoned by Chekists in Moscow. And he told a whole detective story. According to him, Ramon became disillusioned with Soviet reality and sought to leave the USSR. And he criticized the order in the country.

On May 9, 1974, Ramon was invited to a reception at the KGB club on the occasion of Victory Day. He was handed a gold watch with the inscription "Hero of the Soviet Union Ramon Lopez in memory of Victory Day." A few days later, he suddenly fell seriously ill. Three months was in the hospital between life and death. Then miraculously survived. According to Louis, Mercader fell ill as a result of poisoning with radioactive thallium, which was in a donated watch. This caused first a lung disease and then a sarcoma of the bone of the left hand on which he wore the watch.

It is hardly possible to accept this version. The KGB had no reason to kill Ramon. He always emphasized his fidelity to communist ideals and also justified his "crime of the century" by this fidelity.

Stalin killed his main enemy with his hands and the Mercader ice ax. But many Trotskyists remained alive abroad. For Stalin, they remained among the main enemies whom he pursued without stopping at anything. Apparently, the last liquidation of a Trotskyist was carried out in February 1953 - two weeks before Stalin's death.

Wolfgang Zalus in the post-war years was one of the leaders of the Trotskyists. A Czech by nationality, he lived in Germany, was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the German Trotskyists - Our Word. It is difficult to say how he threatened the security of the USSR, why he so annoyed the leadership of the CPSU. An order was given to liquidate it. The Minister of State Security of the USSR Ignatiev reported to the Presidium of the Central Committee in early March 1953 that the order had been executed. In his report, he stated:

"The liquidation of Zalus was carried out through an agent of the MGB, a German by nationality, who poured into him on February 13 this year a special drug that causes death in 10-12 days. Soon after, Zalus fell ill and died in one of the hospitals in Munich on March 4. The poisoning of Zalus did not cause the enemy had no suspicions. Doctors stated that death was the result of pneumonia."

Many historians, writers and journalists have written about Ramon Mercader and the assassination of Trotsky. Feature films have been created. Among them, we note the Franco-Italian film (1972) "The Assassination of Trotsky", which aroused the interest of many viewers, Mercader is played by Alain Delon; American film (2002) "Frida", Mercader is played by Antonio Zavala. "Trotsky" was the title of a film released in Russia in 1993. The role of the killer is played by the famous actor Vyacheslav Rozbegaev.

No matter what they write or talk about Ramon Mercader, but "you can't wash a black dog white". Although there were attempts to create a hero out of him for all time. But the fact that he is a hired killer, "Stalin's killer", is hard to deny. This is also recognized by those who sincerely hated Trotsky, although they knew little about him.

No matter how the organizers of the murder cover themselves with revolutionary phraseology, Mercader is a vile criminal. An even greater criminal is the customer of this and other murders, Stalin, who is still revered and extolled by many in Russia and not only in Russia.

Alexey Durnovo about how Ramon Mercader lived after he killed Leon Trotsky.

Murder.

Soviet intelligence had been preparing an assassination attempt for several years. Moreover, Trotsky himself was well aware of these plans. That is why the leader of the Fourth International surrounded himself with guards and observed the highest caution. In 1938, Trotsky's 32-year-old son Lev Sedov died. Supporters of the famous exile were convinced that Sedov had been poisoned by Stalin's agents. After that, Trotsky's caution reached the scale of real paranoia. And yet, Ramon Mercader managed to infiltrate the environment of the “main enemy of the Soviet Union” and inflict a mortal blow on him with an ice ax.

Mercader.

Two fake passports helped (one in the name of the Canadian Frank Johnson, the other in the name of the Frenchman Jacques Mornard) and Sylvia Ageloff. This woman worked as Trotsky's secretary, and it was she who introduced him to his future assassin. Everything went like clockwork until the very last moment. Mercader hoped to kill Trotsky and escape before panic broke out, but one blow with an ice ax was not enough. Wounded in the head, Trotsky grabbed the killer, and then his guards intervened. Later, Mercader admitted that he was not ready for such a turn of events. The man, with an ice ax in the back of his head, managed to resist and live with a severe wound for more than a day. At the time of Trotsky's death, Mercader, beaten to a pulp, was in a Mexican prison, where he spent the next 20 years.

Soviet intelligence was preparing Mercader's escape from prison. But he broke

Sylvia Ageloff, who introduced Mercader and Trotsky.

Prison.

20 years in prison is the maximum sentence a Mexican court could impose on a defendant. At the time of the announcement of the verdict, it was already known that it was not the Frenchman Jacques Mornard who was sitting in the dock, but the Spanish communist Ramon Mercader, recruited by Soviet intelligence through his own mother. Trotsky's assassin initially stuck to his legend and even spoke French. However, Trotsky's guards and the Mexican police, using rather cruel interrogation methods, quickly split Mercader. In 1940, the Spaniard went to prison, where he spent his entire term entirely.

The same icebreaker.

In Moscow, Mercader received everything: orders, a car, an apartment, a dacha

It is known that during the years of imprisonment he worked in the prison radio workshop. During this time, the Mexican press reported on his death a couple of times. But that was only at the beginning. The 1940s and 1950s contained too many important events. They managed to forget about Mercader. When he was released in May 1960, he almost ended up on the street. This event went unnoticed. Newspapers rarely wrote about him or, at best, mentioned in passing. The Soviet Union also did not remember the murderer of Trotsky. Stalin died long ago, Khrushchev was in power. For the vast world, Ramon Mercader no longer existed.

Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.

The story of Ramon Mercader ends here, and the story of the heroic fighter against fascism Ramon Ivanvoich Lopez begins, who showed up in Moscow in the early summer of 1960. This man was one of the so-called "children of Spain". He allegedly fled to the USSR after Francisco Franco came to power in his homeland. After that, he managed to fight the Germans in the Great Patriotic War and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for military prowess. The award was presented personally to Lopez by the head of the KGB Alexander Shelepin. A little later, the Spaniard was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. Such honors were not given to anyone. Moreover, Lopez continued to be showered with all sorts of insignia. There was a dacha in Kratovo, and a huge apartment on Sokol, and even a private car. Very few could afford such a luxury in the 60s. Academics, test pilots, outstanding artists and, of course, war heroes.

Mercader in Cuba.

As for Lopez, he began to work at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, where he rarely appeared. He took part in the creation of manuals on the history of the Communist Party of Spain. None of his colleagues or neighbors knew his past. Lopez behaved modestly and did not appear in public. The star of the hero was awarded almost secretly. In the Soviet Union, only a few knew that under the name of Lopez, the same Ramon Mercader was hiding, who killed Leon Trotsky in 1940. At one time it was believed that even Khrushchev himself was not in the know. But this looks implausible. It is unlikely that the Soviet leader was not made aware of who he awarded the Hero's Star. Meanwhile, Lopez has settled into a four-room apartment just fine. He married a woman named Roquelia Mendoza, who carried parcels for him during his years of captivity. A little later, he adopted two children, whose parents were shot by the Francoists. Benefits from the KGB made the murderer of Trotsky a man, if not rich, then well-to-do. He regularly transferred money to help the Spanish communists, who waged an underground struggle against the Franco regime. At the same time, the name of Mercader became more and more famous in the world. The world cinema also remembered the murderer of Trotsky and the crime he committed. In 1972, the film "The Assassination of Trotsky" was released in France, where Mercader was played by Alain Delon. The film was a great success in the West, and its creators made attempts to find and meet with the killer himself. It is unknown if this meeting took place. Hardly. But we know for sure that soon after the premiere, Ramon Ivanovich Lopez left hospitable Moscow and moved to Cuba. It seems to be at the personal invitation of Fidel Castro. It is believed that the Cuban leader and Trotsky's assassin met in Moscow in 1963 during Castro's famous visit. But their first meeting took place at least three years earlier.

In prison, Mercader worked in a radio studio

How Mercader ended up in Moscow.

The operation to evacuate Mercader to the Soviet Union was carried out in secret. It was believed that American intelligence services could hunt for Trotsky's killer. Version, at least, naive. Firstly, if the CIA really needed Mercader, they could at any moment take him away from a Mexican prison. They had a good twenty years for this and quite legal grounds (Mercader entered the United States with a fake passport). Secondly, it is not clear how a man who has been behind bars for two decades could help the American special services. Discredit the union? By the 1960s, no one had any doubts that Trotsky was killed on the direct orders of Stalin. Another thing is that former Trotskyists could well take revenge on Mercader. And from the moment he got out of prison, his life was in danger. From Mexico, Mercader went straight to Cuba, where he spent at least a couple of weeks. He was accompanied by residents of the Czechoslovak embassy. In Havana, Mercader boarded a cargo steamer. In the Soviet Union, Ramon Ivanovich Lopez already got off his side. Most likely, the order to evacuate Mercader came from Shelepin himself. Naum Eitingon, the head of the operation to eliminate Trotsky, apparently asked the head of the KGB about this. Prior to this, Shelepin petitioned for the early release of Pavel Sudoplatov, another "father" of Operation Duck. But Sudoplatov sat as an accomplice of Beria, and it was unrealistic to achieve his release.

Pavel Sudoplatov.

But they managed to bring Mercader to Moscow. Under Stalin, he would most likely have been elevated to the rank of a national hero, and his arrival would have become a public event. But Khrushchev kept aloof from everything Stalinist in every possible way, so that the murderer of Trotsky lived in secret in the country. However, this does not mean at all that the Soviet special services forgot about him. It is known that Beria gave instructions not to spare money to protect Mercader. Tom was hired by two lawyers who defended him in court, arguing that Ramon acted for personal reasons. In addition, there is evidence that Soviet intelligence was preparing Mercader's escape from a Mexican prison, which failed at the last moment.

Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (Spanish: Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río), also known as Ramon Ivanovich Lopez. Born February 7, 1913 in Barcelona (Spain) - died October 18, 1978 in Havana (Cuba). Spanish revolutionary, agent of the Soviet state security organs, murderer of Leon Trotsky. The hero of the USSR.

Father - Pau Mercader (cat. Pau Mercader), a railway magnate and owner of a textile factory.

Mother - Caridad Mercader (Eustacia Maria Caridad del Rio; Spanish. Eustaquia María Caridad del Río Hernández), a Spanish communist-Stalinist, was born in Santiago de Cuba in a bourgeois family. Among her ancestors was the vice-governor of Cuba, and her great-grandfather was the Spanish ambassador to Russia. Caridad was brought up in a Franciscan monastery.

Ramon's parents divorced in 1925. After that, the mother with four children lived for some time in Paris. During the Spanish Civil War, she fought on the side of the Republicans. In her own words, she personally participated in the massacre of twenty Trotskyists and other "counter-revolutionary elements."

Ramon from a young age took an active part in the revolutionary movement. He was one of the leaders of the communist youth organization in Barcelona. In 1935 he was convicted of communist activities and spent several months in a prison in Valencia.

Participated in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans as a commissar of the 27th brigade on the Aragonese front. In the military rank of major, he participated in the battles near Guadalajara, was wounded.

Caridad Mercader - Ramon Mercader's mother

In 1937, Mercader was recruited by the NKVD of the USSR with the help of his mother, Caridad del Rio, who was an agent of Soviet intelligence.

Under the leadership of Naum Eitingon, he prepared an assassination attempt on, expelled from the USSR in 1929, deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1932, who in 1938 initiated the creation of the "Fourth International" and was considered by the leadership of the CPSU (b) the worst enemy of the USSR, Soviet power, as well as a traitor of ideas Marxism.

In September 1939, Ramon Mercader crossed to New York with a passport in the name of Canadian businessman Frank Jackson and became close to Sylvia Ageloff, who was part of Trotsky's entourage. In October of the same year, Mercader moved to Mexico City, where Trotsky lived with his family, ostensibly explaining this by the affairs of the company (in fact, a cover created for him by Eitingon), and convinced Ageloff to move in with him.

In March 1940, under the name of Jacques Mornard (Jacques Mornard) and not without the help of Ageloff, he first came to Trotsky's villa, who liked the young man, who skillfully pretended to be a convinced Trotskyist.

On August 20, 1940, Mercader arrived at the villa under the pretext that he wanted to show Trotsky his article, and when he began to read it, he hit him on the head with an ice pick. The blow was delivered from behind and from above.

Mercader hoped to silently kill Trotsky and escape unnoticed, but he screamed and attacked the killer, but ordered the guards not to kill him. The guards came running to the scream and twisted Mercader, having previously beaten him. Trotsky's wound reached 7 centimeters in depth, but after the wound he received, he lived for almost a day.

Assassination of Leon Trotsky

He told the Mexican policemen who arrested him that he wanted to marry Sylvia Egelof (Trotsky's secretary), but allegedly Trotsky forbade this marriage. A quarrel broke out, in which the girl herself was involved.

Mercader later explained his act as an act of retribution by a lone wrestler and refused to testify. “The assassin called himself Jean Morgan Vandendrein and belongs to the number of followers and closest people of Trotsky,” the newspaper Pravda reported on August 22, 1940.

In 1940, a group of NKVD workers successfully completed a special task. The NKVD of the USSR asks to award orders of the USSR to six comrades who participated in this assignment. I ask for your permission.

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L. Beria.

After the assassination of Trotsky, the fate of R. Mercader, who acted under the pseudonyms Jackson and Jacques Mornard, developed quite favorably. His first lawyer was the Cuban Ofelia Dominguez, a well-known lawyer who acted under the legend of a distant relative of the accused. Beria announced to Sudoplatov his decision not to spare any money to protect Mercader. Lawyers had to prove that the murder was committed on the basis of squabbles and intrigues in the Trotskyist movement. In this they were actively helped by Mercader himself, who stubbornly denied his involvement in the NKVD.

According to Luis Mercader, about $5 million was spent on Ramon during his time in prison. These funds were used not only to pay for the best lawyers, but also to alleviate the conditions of imprisonment, as well as to maintain agents in Mexico City, who carried out uninterrupted communication with Mercader. These agents were connected through intermediaries to the New York residency. Such a communication chain operated successfully until the end of 1943, when, after the restoration of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Mexico, residents of the Soviet foreign intelligence began to operate there, who were given communication channels with Mercader.

After a lengthy and complex legal process in various judicial instances of the country, the court of the Federal District of Mexico City in May 1944 issued a final sentence: 20 years in prison. That was the highest penalty in this country.

Taking advantage of the softness of the Mexican penitentiary system, Mercader received large sums of money for which he “rented” a luxurious separate “room” in prison with all the amenities, including even the then novelty - a TV.

Beginning in 1941, over a number of years, with the participation of Mercader himself, various options were developed for his escape from prison and secretly sending him from Mexico. At times, extremely favorable conditions developed for the implementation of such plans. So, in the spring of 1945, Mercader, accompanied by his lawyer, went to the city to see a dentist. Without finding a doctor, they spent the whole day in the city. The trip to the doctor was repeated two days later, and this time the “prisoner” walked freely around the city without a lawyer. New, 1946, he was allowed to meet in the house of his friend, a former prisoner, with whom Ramon became friends in prison. Due to the fact that the chances of escape even in such conditions were missed, “one agent involved in the case expressed bitter and sharp reproaches to our workers on this occasion, accusing them of indecision, excessive reinsurance, senseless spending of big money, etc. P.".

Trotsky's killer's escape from prison was closely monitored by British and American intelligence. Between 1941 and 1943, censorship in the United States and Great Britain intercepted about 20 letters circulating between New York-Mexico and back, and revealed the cryptography and ciphers contained in them. As a result of this, it was found out that the action aimed at organizing the escape was being prepared by Soviet residencies in Mexico City and New York, and its participants were at least two dozen people of different nationalities, led by experienced intelligence agents working under the guise of Soviet missions in New York. and Mexico. Even the names of these people were found out: Vasily Zubilin (V. M. Zarubin), Secretary of the USSR Embassy in the USA, M. A. Chaliapin, G. B. Ovakimyan, Lev Tarasov (L. P. Vasilevsky) and Pavel Klarin (P. P. . Pastelnyak). The last two were in 1941, on the proposal of Beria, awarded orders for their active participation in Operation Duck.

In 1946, American intelligence leaked the case to the press, where reports appeared that "a conspiracy that had been prepared for several years ... ended in failure thanks to the vigilance of American intelligence agencies." In early 1946, the American magazines New Leader and Time reported that a certain New York communist woman was involved in the plan to organize the assassin's escape, but the American and Mexican police took the necessary precautions that prevented the plan from being carried out.

The disclosure of escape plans did not change the comfortable conditions of Mercader's stay in prison. Since 1946, an Indian woman, Raquelia Mendoza, began to visit him regularly, supplying him with medicines and bringing home meals to his cell every day. Until the release of Mercader, she served as a liaison, and even during his stay in prison, she married him and regularly paid him conjugal visits, which were allowed by Mexican laws. Through Raquelia, Mercader sent letters to his relatives in Moscow.

For a number of years, the Mexican authorities have made persistent efforts to discover the real name of Mercader. Already in the first days of the investigation, the judge turned to the professor of criminology Alfonso Cuaron with a request to conduct a medical and psychological study of the identity of the killer. Using various psychological and medical tests, Cuarón provided much valuable data on Mornar's character traits, but failed to find any evidence of his identity.

The police determined that the killer was neither Belgian nor French nor Canadian. The fact that for a number of years the prisoner stubbornly declared that he did not know Spanish and never showed his acquaintance with it prevented him from getting on the “Spanish trail”.

In 1945, Mexican lawyer Eduarde Seniceros was hired to defend Mornar. Mercader told him his real name and outlined the true motives for the murder. As Seniceros told the commission of the ICFI (International Committee of the Fourth International) in 1975, Mercader explained the reason for the commission of a terrorist act by “he believed: in the communist movement “there should not be two leaders: Stalin and Trotsky, since this divides the Marxist forces.” Of course, Seniceros did not tell anyone who his client really was.

The first proof of Mercader's identity came from former POUM leader Julián Gorkin, then living in Mexico. Contacting other Spanish exiles, Gorkin established in 1947 that the mother of the killer was Caridad Mercader, but could not find anything more specific about the killer himself.

Several former members of the international brigades identified Mercader from photographs and reported that he received a wound in the forearm in Spain, traces of which were found on the killer's body. The final clarification was brought by Cuarón, who, during his trip to Spain in 1950, obtained a dossier of Mercader from the local police archives with a photograph and fingerprints taken after his arrest in 1935 in Barcelona. Following this, information was received about the members of the Mercader family and their place of residence.

When Mercader's police file was brought to Mexico from Spain, his further denial became pointless. In the face of irrefutable evidence, Mercader admitted his real name and his origins from a wealthy Spanish family. But until his release, he refused to admit that he killed Trotsky on orders from Moscow, still emphasizing the personal motives for the murder.

In certain Stalinist circles, Mercader was seen as a hero. The well-known Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen joined the campaign of his glorification, who in his "Elegy about Jacques Mornar" pathetically wrote:

(Translated by me from the English text, which in turn is a translation from Spanish.- V. R.).

No one was able to document the participation of the NKVD in the assassination of Trotsky. This became apparent only after the release of Mercader, who had served his entire prison term. Shortly before leaving prison, he was given a Czechoslovak passport. On May 6, 1960, Mercader was released and flew to Havana the same day. On May 7, he was already on board the ship heading from Havana to Moscow. Two weeks later he met Rakelia in Moscow. In Moscow, he received Soviet documents in the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.

KGB Chairman Shelepin sent a memorandum to Khrushchev with proposals to reward Mercader, grant him Soviet citizenship and address issues of his material and financial support. In this note, Mercader's "exploits" were described as follows: "Because of his boundless devotion to the cause of communism and the Soviet Union during the investigation and trial, as well as for almost 20 years in prison under the conditions of an unceasing campaign of threats and provocations against him , showed the courage, steadfastness and high ideological spirit inherent in a real communist, and kept secret his connection with the state security organs of the Soviet Union.

On the basis of this note, on May 31, a decree was signed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which stated: “For the fulfillment of a special task and the heroism and courage shown at the same time, appropriate comrade. Lopez Ramon Ivanovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. This decree, of course, was not published in the press. On June 8, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Brezhnev presented the highest government award of the Soviet Union to Mercader in the Kremlin.

At the personal request of Dolores Ibarruri and by special decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Mercader was enrolled as a senior researcher at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, where he studied the history of the Spanish Civil War. In addition to his official salary, he received a pension from the KGB. He was given a four-room apartment in Moscow and a state dacha near Moscow. Even during the life of Mercader, his new name (Lopez) was engraved on an honorary marble slab in the lobby of the KGB building.

Nevertheless, favored by the Soviet authorities, Mercader at times showed obstinacy. When he arrived in the Soviet Union, the first thing he asked was where Leonid Kotov (Eitingon) was now, and was amazed to learn that his mentor and immediate supervisor was in prison. During the 60s, Mercader repeatedly appealed to the Central Committee and the KGB with requests for the release of Eitingon and Sudoplatov. He even managed to reach Suslov, who told him: “We decided for ourselves the fate of these people once and for all. Don't poke your nose into other people's business."

In the early 1970s, Mercader said that he and his wife were hard on the local climate. Having learned about this, "Cuban friends" invited him to their country, offering him to work as a consultant on labor education in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At the end of 1973, Raquelia left for Cuba with her children. Mercader joined them a year later. He died in this country on November 18, 1978. According to his will, the urn with his ashes was buried in the Moscow cemetery. In 1987, a granite slab appeared on the grave with the inscription "Lopez Ramon Ivanovich, Hero of the Soviet Union" engraved on it in gold letters.

The Mercader family was given pensions in foreign currency: Raquelia for life, and for children until they reach adulthood. Only his younger brother Luis remained in Moscow from Mercader's relatives, who managed to return to Spain only in the 80s. There he became a lecturer at the University of Madrid and published a book about his brother.

In a conversation with an Izvestia correspondent, L. Mercader said that in Moscow he mentally sat down to read this book many times, but every time he stopped himself. "Why?" “I answer sincerely: I was afraid, I was afraid of the KGB, its long arms, I was afraid that they would never let me go home - after all, I knew a lot.”

V
Ideological preparation of the assassination attempt

Tireless preparations for the operation "Duck" were going on simultaneously in several countries. Two terrorist centers were created - in Paris and in New York. Beria ordered that Sudoplatov and Eitingon immediately go to Paris to assess the group of terrorists sent to Mexico. In Paris, they were actively assisted by an “important agent” codenamed Harry, the Englishman Morrison, a member of the so-called Serebryansky special terrorist-sabotage group, who played a key role in the theft of Trotsky’s archives in November 1936. Morrison had connections with the Paris police and obtained genuine policemen forms and seals for forging passports and residence permits, which allowed Soviet agents to settle in France.

At the beginning of the war in Europe, the communication scheme with agents located in Mexico was rebuilt. France was excluded from the previous plan, and an intermediary point was organized in the USA.

In 1938, Ruby Weill, who had known Sylvia Ageloff since the early 1930s, when they both worked in the American Labor Party, offered to accompany Sylvia on a trip to Europe, where the latter was going to attend the Founding Congress of the Fourth International. In June of this year, Weil introduced Sylvia to Mercader. In January 1939, Sylvia Ageloff left Paris and returned to the United States.

In October 1939, Eitingon arrived in New York and established an import-export firm in Brooklyn, which was used as a communications center and as a "roof" for Mercader. Now Mercader, who arrived in New York in September 1939 and went to Mexico three weeks later, could travel to New York to meet with Eitingon.

Mercader arrived in the US with a Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jackson. This passport belonged to a Canadian citizen, naturalized Yugoslav Toni Babić, who died in the Spanish war. This method of introducing agents into various countries of the NKVD was widely used from the beginning of the civil war in Spain. Passports were confiscated from all members of the International Brigades, which were then handed over to spies who were thrown into the respective countries.

In January 1940, Sylvia Ageloff arrived in Mexico City, working for two months as Trotsky's secretary. Every day, "Jackson" drove her to Trotsky's house, and in the evenings he waited for her at the gates of the villa, talking with external and internal guards. In March 1940, Ageloff returned to New York.

During Sylvia's stay in Mexico City, she asked "Jackson" where the office where he works was located. "Jackson" named room 820 in one of the large office buildings. Sylvia sent Marguerite Rosmer there, who did not find this room. Then "Jackson" called another number of the room in which the courier boy was, who confirmed that "Jackson" really happens there. Subsequently, it turned out that this room was also used by Siqueiros.

Since nothing worked with the introduction of "Raymond" (the code name of Mercader in the NKVD) into Trotsky's entourage, then, according to Eitingon, it was decided to organize an armed raid on Trotsky's house. The necessary people were selected through Siqueiros to carry out the raid. Eitingon himself did not meet with the participants in the operation and carried out all the work through Siqueiros.

The assassination attempt was preceded by intense ideological preparation, the course of which Trotsky carefully followed according to reports from the communist newspaper La Voe de Mexico, the organ of the Mexican Confederation of Labor El Popular, and the Lombard magazine Futuro. On July 2, 1940, he stated in court that he had been expecting an assassination attempt with particular confidence since the beginning of 1940. Explaining the reasons for this, he pointed, in particular, to the congress of the Communist Party of Mexico held in March of this year, which proclaimed a course towards the extermination of "Trotskyism." This congress was preceded by a crisis in the leadership of the party, which began in November-December 1939. “It is not known by whom a special document was developed, the so-called “Materials for Discussions”, published in La Voye on January 28 and representing an anonymous indictment against the old leadership (Laborde, Campo, etc.), allegedly guilty of a “conciliatory” attitude towards Trotskyism."

In July 1978, Valentino Campo reported in the pages of the French newspaper L'Humanité that an official emissary of the Comintern, who had specially arrived in Mexico from Europe, suggested that he organize a terrorist act against Trotsky. After Campo refused to comply with this directive, he was expelled from the party.

Unaware of the specific reason for Campo's expulsion, Trotsky nevertheless wrote: “It is now quite obvious that the coup within the Communist Party was closely connected with the assassination order issued from Moscow. Most likely, the GPU stumbled upon a certain resistance among the leaders of the Communist Party, who were accustomed to a quiet life and could be afraid of the very unpleasant political and police consequences of the assassination attempt. This, obviously, is the source of the accusation against them of "Trotskyism". Whoever objects to the attempt on Trotsky's life is obviously ... a "Trotskyist."

Trotsky also saw a harbinger of the impending assassination attempt in the fact that a certain anonymous commission operating within the Mexican Communist Party suspended the entire Central Committee of the party, elected at the previous congress, from work, and the debate on the issue of “Struggle against Trotskyism and other enemies of the people”, as was clear from the report about the congress in La Voe de Mexico, took place not at open meetings of the congress, as on other issues on the agenda, but at a closed meeting of a special commission. As for the open report to the March Congress, made by a member of the Central Committee, Salgado, he, according to Trotsky, “surpassed all the records of lies set by international Stalinism. Conquering disgust, I will cite a few examples: “The government of Cárdenas allowed Trotsky to enter, contrary to the opinion of the workers' organizations; this gave Trotsky the opportunity to create in our country the leading center of his international organization of espionage in the service of all counter-revolutionary forces ... let this serve as an example for us to intensify our struggle against Trotskyism and to expel the chief of this gang of spies from our country.

This was followed by a new rise in the slanderous campaign, which differed from the previous ones only in that, before the conclusion of the bloc between Stalin and Hitler, Trotsky was depicted in the Stalinist press with nothing more than a swastika, and after the Red Army invaded Finland, he was suddenly turned by the same press into an agent of the United States.

On May 1, a Stalinist-inspired demonstration took place in the streets of Mexico City under the slogan “Get out of Trotsky!” On the same day, Le Voe published a Communist Party manifesto to the people, which read: "Foreign spies and provocateurs must be expelled from the country, and first of all their most malicious and dangerous leader: Leon Trotsky." However, the majority of the working people of the country did not follow the communists and the Lombardists, continuing to maintain sympathy for Trotsky. In this regard, Trotsky wrote: “The original broad plan: to achieve a mass movement for the expulsion of Trotsky from Mexico, has suffered a complete collapse. The GPU had to take the path of a terrorist act. But it was necessary to try to prepare public opinion for this act. Since the GPU was not going to admit its authorship in the murder, it was necessary to link the terrorist act with the internal political struggle in Mexico.

A favorable environment for this was created by the campaign for the election of the President of the Republic. The Stalinists and Lombardists began to portray Trotsky as a supporter of the reactionary General Almazan, which did not prevent them from later ascribed to the Almazanists the organization of the assassination attempt. “In strict accordance with the entire system of the GPU,” Trotsky wrote, “the concern to direct the investigation onto a false trail was already included in the very plan of the assassination. Tying up the police, the attackers shouted: "Long live Almazan!"... These people are guided in their activities by the rule that Stalin applied before Hitler formulated it: "the more rude the lie, the sooner they will believe it."

Depicting Trotsky as an "enemy of the Mexican people," La Voe on December 24, 1939, accused him of "interfering in the affairs of Latin America on the side of the imperialist states." This campaign reached a particular frenzy in the days immediately preceding the bandit raid on Trotsky's house. Citing appropriate excerpts from the May 19, 1940 issue of La Voe, Trotsky remarked: “This is what people write who are going to change their pen for a machine gun tomorrow. The editors of Le Voe knew about the impending assassination attempt and prepared the public opinion of the party and sympathetic circles for it.

Based on an analysis of articles in Stalinist newspapers, Trotsky wrote: "The GPU was simultaneously preparing - through various channels - and a conspiracy, and political defense, and disinformation of the investigation."

According to Robins, about 10 days before May 24, Trotsky gathered his comrades from the guard and told them that the hysterical campaign to discredit him had reached its climax - in order to justify his impending assassination in the eyes of public opinion.

At the disposal of the Siqueiros gang, the NKVD residency handed over a lot of materials that were supposed to provide a clear orientation of the raiders on the territory of the villa.

V. Petrov, an NKVD cipher clerk who defected to the West after the war, said that he had the opportunity to get acquainted with one of the dossiers on the assassination of Trotsky. It was a thick folder containing pictures taken inside the garden and villa, showing fences, guards, Trotsky with his wife, Trotsky drinking tea with friends, and more. These pictures were taken by NKVD agents, who at various times were infiltrated into Trotsky's entourage. The most important such agent, as Petrov noted on the basis of acquaintance with the dossier, was a female secretary recruited during Trotsky's stay in Norway.

This fact was later confirmed by Sudoplatov, who named the name of this woman - Maria de Las Heras. In addition to the plan of the villa, which she secretly sent to Moscow even before her recall from Mexico (because of her connections with Orlov, who, according to the leaders of the operation, could expose her), she gave a description of Trotsky's bodyguards and a thorough analysis of the activities of his secretariat. All this important information was sent by Sudoplatov to Eitingon, who in turn passed it on to Siqueiros.

Knowing well about the unsightly actions of Siqueiros during his stay in Spain, Trotsky, according to N. I. Sedova, expected that this adventurer would take an active part in the assassination attempt.

Around 4:00 am on May 24, about 20 people in the form of Mexican police and military personnel attacked Trotsky's villa. They silently disarmed and tied up the outer guards and called the inner guard Robert Sheldon Hart, who was on duty at the time. Hart opened the gate and let the raiders into the yard. They turned off the sound alarm, seized and isolated several guards in enclosed spaces, and cut off other members of the guard from the house with machine-gun fire. A group of attackers rushed to the house, took up positions opposite Trotsky's bedroom from two sides and opened crossfire from a light machine gun and small arms. The entire raid lasted 10-15 minutes, during which the attackers fired more than three hundred bullets from automatic weapons. After that, the bandits seized two cars belonging to Trotsky's guards, and, as they left, they threw incendiary shells into the house, which caused a fire, which Trotsky and his wife were able to put out. In addition, an incendiary bomb filled with one and a half kilograms of dynamite was left at the bedroom door. The explosive device of the bomb did not work due to some technical malfunction. The investigation found that the inherent force of the explosion was such that it could demolish the entire house to the ground.

Describing the actions of the attackers, Trotsky drew attention to the exceptionally high technique of the assassination. “The assassination failed,” he wrote, “due to one of those accidents that are an inevitable element in any war. But the preparation and execution of the assassination are striking in their breadth, deliberation and thoroughness. The terrorists are well aware of the location of the house and its inner life. They take out police uniforms, weapons, electric saws, sea ladders, etc. They tie up the outer police guard with complete success, paralyze the inner guard with the right fire strategy, enter the victim’s premises, shoot with impunity for three to five minutes, throw firebombs and leave attack arena without a trace. Such an enterprise is beyond the power of a private group. Tradition, school, large funds, a wide selection of performers are visible here. This is the work of the GPU."

Trotsky also saw the hand of the GPU (NKVD) in the fact that the attackers had several incendiary shells, two of which they threw into the grandson's room. “Participants in the attempt pursued, thus, not only murder, but also arson. Their only purpose could be the destruction of my archives. Only Stalin is interested in this, since the archives are of exceptional value to me in the struggle against the Moscow oligarchy ... Incendiary shells are, therefore, something like Stalin's calling card.

Trotsky and his wife managed to escape only because Natalya Ivanovna dragged her husband to the far corner of the bedroom and forced him to lie on the floor. Trotsky believed that they “helped the lucky chance by not losing their heads, not rushing around the room, not shouting, not calling for help when it would be hopeless, not shooting when it would be reckless, but silently lying on the floor, pretending to be dead."

Explaining the failure of the assassination attempt, Sudoplatov emphasized that "the capture group was not professionally trained for a specific action ... There was no one in the Siqueiros group who had experience in searches and inspections of premises or houses." The attackers were not direct agents of the NKVD, they were picked up by Siqueiros only to participate in this operation.

VII
The role of Robert Sheldon Hart

An hour after the attempt on Trotsky's villa, the head of the secret service of the Mexican national police, Colonel Sanchez Salazar, arrived and headed the investigation into the attempt.

One of the most mysterious aspects of the raid, which complicated the investigation, was the role of Robert Sheldon Hart, a twenty-three-year-old security guard from the United States, who arrived in Koyokan just a month and a half ago. At the time of the attack, Hart was guarding the gate, which he was not to open to anyone without the permission of Harold Robins. However, he opened the gate to the attackers, with whom he left the villa after the raid.

Natalya Ivanovna recalled that “shortly upon arrival to us, Sheldon received a lesson from Lev Davidovich. We were undergoing repairs, every 15-20 minutes it was necessary to unlock the gate in order to let a worker with a wheelbarrow out into the street and then let him back in. Bob (that's what they called Hart. - V.R.) was keen on building a cage (for birds), so as not to break away from work, he gave the key to the gate to the worker. This did not escape the attention of L. D. The latter explained to him that this was very imprudent on the part of Bob, and added: “You, the first, may be the victim of your own imprudence!” However, Sedova believed that this incident only testified to the frivolity of the young guard.

Fanny Yanovich, Trotsky's Russian secretary, who helped him work on the book "Stalin", said that Hart asked her every day how this work was progressing, that Trotsky had written something new about Stalin. According to her, the day before the attack, Hart behaved extremely nervously. After the raid, one of the police officers reported that he saw Hart walk through the gate, protesting but not resisting, supported under the arms by two hijackers. Subsequently, one of the participants in the raid stated at the investigation that he saw Hart speaking "in a nervous but friendly manner" with a "French Jew", traces of which were never found.

The fate of Hart became interested in the American consulate in Mexico. An hour after the raid, by order of US Consul Shaw, consular officer MacGregor visited Trotsky and talked with him. The next day, Shaw had a conversation with Trotsky, who expressed his readiness to assist the American authorities in ascertaining the fate of Hart.

Shortly after the raid, Hart's father, a prosperous businessman who had been a friend of FBI Director Hoover, arrived in Mexico City. He reported that Hart never felt sympathy for Trotsky, but, on the contrary, was a supporter of Stalin. A large portrait of Stalin was found in Sheldon Hart's New York apartment. It was also known that Sheldon was a former member of the official Communist Party USA. In his room, Robins found a Spanish-English dictionary signed by Siqueiros.

Salazar was convinced that Hart was in cahoots with the bandits and left with them of his own free will. Trotsky stubbornly refused to believe in Hart's guilt. “If Sheldon were a GPU agent,” he said, “he would have been able to kill me at night without any noise and hide without setting in motion 20 people who were all at great risk ... Therefore, from the very beginning I declared to myself and to my friends that I'll be the last one to believe Sheldon's part in the assassination."

For a month, the police searched for Hart. On June 25, his body with a bullet in the back of his head was found in the courtyard of the house rented by the participants in the assassination attempt, relatives and friends of Siqueiros. Following this, two versions arose again. Salazar insisted that Hart was a GPU agent killed by his accomplices out of fear that he might tell too much if he fell into the hands of the police. Trotsky remained convinced that Hart "was not a participant in the assassination, but a victim of it."

During the investigation, the arrested participants in the assassination confirmed the version of Salazar and said that Hart was bribed by a certain "French Jew", who was known to them under the nickname Philippe.

Diego Rivera told the Soviet journalist Paporov that this "French Jew" was G. Rabinovich, who was among the raiders along with his subordinate Vittorio Vidali, a well-known Italian communist who operated in Spain and Mexico under a Spanish name.

Victor Serge, who was in Mexico at the time of the assassination and carefully studied the materials of the investigation, considered the second most important (after Siqueiros) leader of the assassination to be a Jewish foreigner who spoke excellent French, who appeared during the attack in a car to make sure that the operation was successful .

In the literature on the assassination attempt on Trotsky, the question of Hart's role was the subject of discussion for many years. Even Sudoplatov, in his dying memoirs, set out a version according to which Grigulevich, who became friends with Hart, at dawn on May 24, knocked on the gates of the villa. Recognizing his voice, "Hart made an unforgivable mistake - he opened the gates, and the Siqueiros group broke into Trotsky's residence ... Hart was eliminated because he knew Grigulevich and could give us away."

The recently declassified documents of the NKVD showed that the truth lay in the middle between the versions of Salazar and Trotsky. Hart was recruited in New York by the NKVD station and was listed in her dossier under the nickname Amur. When he was sent to Mexico by American Trotskyists, he received data from Stalin's agents to establish contacts with the NKVD station there. These facts coincide with a confidential report by Grigulevich, who, many years after the events in Koyokan, told Paporov that Hart had been recruited in New York by Grigory Rabinovich.

However, Hart, who agreed to perform NKVD espionage assignments, apparently did not assume that the NKVD was planning to assassinate Trotsky. Therefore, when he opened the gate and saw a gang of raiders, he did everything he could to prevent her sinister plans from being carried through to the end. This follows from Eitingon's statement during his interrogation on March 9, 1954. “During the operation, it was revealed that Sheldon was a traitor,” said Eitingon. - Although he opened the door of the gate, however, in the room where he brought the participants in the raid, there was neither an archive nor Trotsky himself. When the raiders opened fire, Sheldon told them that if he had known all this, he, as an American, would never have agreed to participate in this matter. This behavior served as the basis for the decision to liquidate it on the spot. He was killed by the Mexicans."

VIII
Version of suicide

Sedova recalled that Trotsky took an active part in the investigation into the assassination case. “His sluggish pace worried L. D. extremely. Patiently and indefatigably, he followed him, explained the state of affairs to the court and the press, did supernatural violence to himself in order to refute obvious and hopeless lies or malicious ambiguities, and did all this with his characteristic intense attention, from which not a single trifle escaped. .. And tired. I slept badly with the same thoughts, and woke up with them. I heard how sometimes alone with myself, from his inner depths, Lev Davidovich said: "I'm tired ... tired."

With equal attention, Trotsky followed both the investigative actions of the police and the speeches of the Stalinist press.

Until the end of May, the police failed to track down the criminals. This circumstance forced the Stalinist press at first to make cautious statements. In the days following the assassination attempt, Toledano's organ, the newspaper El Popular, placed on the front page a headline in large print: "The assassination attempt on Trotsky is an assassination attempt against Mexico." An editorial under the same title demanded the strictest investigation and punishment of the perpetrators, "regardless of their political direction and of the foreign power with which they are connected." The editors sought by this to create an impression of impartial and patriotic indignation and to separate themselves from the murderers, who could be in the hands of the police in the next few days. However, the call to search for the perpetrators, regardless of the power with which they were associated, received a restrictive interpretation in the article, since it indignantly asserted that the "enemies of Mexico" would attribute the assassination attempt to Stalin.

When three days had passed since the assassination attempt, the danger of arrest of the main participants in the raid could be considered eliminated, since during this period they managed to cross the border on pre-prepared false passports. Then the insinuations of the communist and Lombard press, initially cautious, began to take on an increasingly bold and defiant character. On May 27, El Popular ran an editorial that said: “The assassination every day raises more and more doubts and seems more suspicious and less logical ... Trotsky opened the war of the peoples against Mexico. Therefore, the attempt against him is an act of international blackmail.” The article attributed the assassination attempt to the American imperialists, who were striving for intervention in Mexico and relying in these attempts on their agent, Trotsky. The National newspaper, in which the Stalinists also played a leading role, stated that Trotsky had been subjected to a "theatrical" (!) assassination attempt in his house.

On June 1, La Voe de Mexico wrote: "The events that have recently taken place in Mexico were cleverly staged by the insignificant Trotsky and his gang." This is how the version of “self-assault” was born, in which Trotsky saw “an undoubted element of a lunatic asylum: arrogance and impunity easily reach the brink of insanity. But in this madness there is a system that is inextricably linked with the name of the GPU.

The version of "self-assassination" was outlined in an official letter from Lombarda Toledano to the Minister of the Interior of Mexico, which stated that the attempt on Trotsky's life was a deceptive game and that Trotsky was guilty of spying for foreign powers. This version was picked up by the reactionary American newspaper The Nation, which published an article under the heading "Fraud Conspiracy in Mexico."

The campaign of the pro-Stalinist press, combined with even more cynical verbal agitation and behind-the-scenes maneuvers carried out by Toledano and his allies, had an adverse effect on the course of the investigation: the police were diverted on a false path for several days, during which the leading participants in the assassination were able to leave the country.

On May 28, the investigating authorities were already led to the version of "self-assault", as evidenced by the sharp turn that took place in the orientation of the investigation and in relation to the police towards Trotsky's inner circle. On June 30, 4 people were arrested: secretaries and guards Otto Schüssler and Charles Coronel, responsible for communicating with the authorities and friends of Trotsky in Mexico City, as well as the Mexican Sendejas and the Czech Bazan, young friends of Trotsky who visited his house to express their sympathy. The purpose of these arrests was to achieve the complete isolation of Trotsky, to cut off his ties with the outside world. From the arrested members of the guard, the police demanded to admit that Trotsky ordered them to carry out an "auto-assassination attempt", while throwing mocking remarks at the address of Trotsky, his wife and his employees.

After these events, Trotsky wrote, “we were immediately surrounded by an atmosphere of hostility. What's the matter? We were perplexed. This turn could not have taken place spontaneously. He had to have specific imperative reasons. No semblance of facts or data that could justify such a turn was found by the investigation and could not be found. I can find no other explanation for the turnaround than the monstrous pressure of the GPU apparatus, which relies on all its "friends". Behind the scenes of the investigation, a genuine coup d "etat took place. Who led it?"

A week after the assassination attempt, an indignant Trotsky wrote to Cardenas, stating:

"G. The president!

At the end of 1936, at a moment of extreme danger not only for my life, but also for my political honor, I turned to you from distant Norway, and you showed me generosity and hospitality. Now, at a critical moment, when the Mexican police authorities are committing a clear mistake and a clear injustice towards my employees and towards me, I am compelled to appeal again directly to you. My house was attacked by the GPU gang. General Nunez (Chief of the Mexican Police. - V.R.) announced to me on your behalf that the police will do everything to solve the crime. Of course, I could not expect anything else from the authorities led by you. However, I must state with regret that the attitude of the police towards the case has changed dramatically over the past three days. The fact that the attackers, in spite of the huge killing machine set in motion by them, did not manage to kill me, is indirectly, as it were, blamed on me ...

D. President, this course of action is not new. When a gang of Norwegian fascists attacked my house in 1936 to steal my archives and, if possible, myself, the Norwegian authorities started by arresting the perpetrators, but then took the line of least resistance: they declared the fascist attack a "joke" and arrested me and my wife. A few months ago, the authors of the "joke" helped Hitler take over Norway.

The investigation has taken the wrong path. I am not afraid to make this statement, because every new day will refute the shameful hypothesis of self-assault and compromise its direct and indirect defenders.

Forced to refute the false and absurd version, Trotsky wrote: “even if we assume the impossible, namely that ... I decided to organize an“ auto-assassination ”in the name of an unknown goal, then the question remains: where and how did I get 20 performers? How did you dress them up in police uniforms? Armed them? Did you provide everything you need? And so on and so forth. In other words, how can a person who lives almost completely isolated from the outside world manage to carry out an enterprise that only a powerful apparatus can do?

Having received Trotsky's letter, Cardenas ordered the immediate release of his friends and employees and direct the investigation to develop more plausible versions of the assassination attempt. Soon Salazar was able to learn that a few weeks ago someone asked one of the police investigators to get some sets of police uniforms. The interrogated investigator gave the name of the person who was looking for the police uniform. It turned out to be a member of the ITUC, Luis Martinez. He, in turn, confessed that Serrano Andonegui, a member of the Central Committee of the ITUC, asked him to get sets of police uniforms. After that, a series of searches were carried out, which made it possible to identify almost all the participants in the raid. More than 20 people were arrested. They named the head of the operation - Siqueiros, who distributed police uniforms and weapons and personally led the raid, dressed in the uniform of a police major.

On June 25, minor participants in the raid were released. Nine people were sentenced to prison terms. But, as the New York Times reported on June 16, "the police are looking for four people who are believed to be the organizers of the assassination."

However, El Popular published an article claiming that the only real perpetrator was Sheldon Hart. “For the attempt,” the article said, “a gang of uncontrolled elements and agents provocateurs is responsible. The very presence of Trotsky in Mexico is an act of provocation against the Mexican Communist Party and against Mexico itself.”

On June 23, when the names of the main participants in the assassination attempt were clarified, the leadership of the Mexican Communist Party issued a statement that set the task of completely dissociating itself from the raiders. It stated that “many individuals are directly or indirectly involved, among them David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was pointed out as the leader of the attack ... The Communist Party of Mexico declares categorically that none of the participants in the provocation is a member of the party, that all these are elements irresponsible and agents provocateurs. At the same time, some party leaders during the investigation tried to revive the version of "self-assault". Thus, Serrano Andonegui, a member of the Politburo of the ITUC, stated that Trotsky gave Siqueiros money either to publish some kind of magazine, or ... to organize an "auto-assassination".

IX
"Comintern and GPU"

Immediately after reports of the failure of the assassination attempt appeared in the world press, Sudoplatov was summoned to Beria's dacha. “Beria was furious,” Sudoplatov recalled this meeting. - Looking at me point-blank, he began to ask about the composition of the group approved by me in Paris and about the plan for the destruction of Trotsky. I replied that ... I expect a detailed report from Mexico via radio channels in a day or two.

After that, Beria and Sudoplatov went to see Stalin at a nearby dacha. Stalin confirmed his earlier decision, declaring: “An action against Trotsky will mean the collapse of the entire Trotskyist movement. And we will not have to spend money to fight them and their attempts to undermine the Comintern and our connections with the left circles abroad. Proceed with the alternative plan, despite the failure of Siqueiros, and send a telegram to Eitingon expressing our full confidence."

Sudoplatov prepared the text of such a telegram, ending it with the words: "Pavel sends his best wishes." Pavel is Beria's codename.

Two days later, a brief report of Eitingon about the failure of the assassination was received. Eitingon reported that he was ready to start implementing an alternative plan involving Mercader.

On June 8, Beria sent Stalin and Molotov a copy of Eitingon’s more detailed report, which said: “You know in detail about our misfortune from the newspapers ... While all the people are safe, and some have left the country ... Taking full responsibility for this nightmarish failure, I am ready, at your first request, to leave to receive the punishment due for such a failure.

The conclusion of the "Center" regarding the raid by Siqueiros said: "The Mexican police managed to uncover all the circumstances of the preparation and commission of the assassination, as well as identify many of the perpetrators."

While the second version of the terrorist plan began to be carried out, the Mexican Stalinist press continued to publish insinuations about Trotsky. Even after the police were on the trail of the real killers, on May 29, El Popular printed a declaration of the Communist Party, which demanded not the punishment of the terrorists, but the expulsion of Trotsky from the country.

All this prompted Trotsky to take more active steps to expose the liars and provocateurs. On June 1, in front of a group of journalists, he accused Stalin and the NKVD of organizing the assassination attempt and stated that "the next attempt on my life is inevitable." On the same day, he published a letter to the President of the Republic in Mexican newspapers, in which he called Toledano a moral accomplice in the assassination attempt and accused the newspapers La Voe de Mexico, El Popular and the Futuro magazine of receiving money from the Soviet government. . Futuro and El Popular immediately filed a libel suit against Trotsky. At the hearing of this case, Trotsky confirmed his assertion that the publications he named were semi-official organs of the NKVD and enjoyed its material support. After that, "La Voe de Mexico" also appealed to the prosecutor's office demanding that Trotsky be held legally liable for "defamation".

Throughout June-July, Trotsky continued to meet with an employee of the American consulate, MacGregor, to whom he told about the evidence he had collected in the assassination case. He gave McGregor the names of Stalinist publications in Mexico, as well as the names of political and labor leaders and government officials associated with the Mexican Communist Party. In particular, he stated that one of the leading agents of the Comintern, Carlos Contero * (alias Vittorio Vidal) and Enrique Martinez Riggi, who had direct ties with Moscow and led the purge of the MCP in the spring of 1940, worked in the Central Committee of this party.

In preparation for a new judicial investigation, Trotsky wrote his last major article, "The Comintern and the GPU," which he completed on August 17, i.e., three days before Mercader's assassination attempt.

Publishing this article posthumously, the editors of the Bulletin of the Opposition called it "the most dramatic document in the political literature of our time: in it a man explains to us why he should be killed, exposes the threads of intrigue that are increasingly enveloping him, exposes the motives of the murderer."

In this article, Trotsky described the political degeneration of the Comintern, which naturally led to the corruption of its sections and especially their "leaders". “During the first period of the Soviet regime,” he wrote, “when the revolution went from danger to danger, when all forces went to the civil war with its retinue of famine and epidemics, the most courageous and disinterested revolutionaries in different countries joined the October Revolution and the Comintern. Of this first revolutionary stratum, which by deed proved its loyalty to the October Revolution in the difficult years, there is now literally not a single person left in the Comintern. Through continuous expulsions, material pressure, direct bribery, purges and executions, the Kremlin's totalitarian clique finally turned the Comintern into its obedient instrument. The current leading stratum of the Comintern, as well as its individual sections, consists of people who joined not the October Revolution, but the victorious oligarchy, the source of high political titles and material wealth ... They look with delight and envy at the invasion of the Red Army into Poland, Finland , the Baltic countries, to Bessarabia because such invasions immediately lead to the transfer of power to local Stalinist candidates for totalitarian rule.

Quoting the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of December 13, 1917 on the financial assistance that the Soviet Republic would provide to revolutionary movements in other countries, Trotsky wrote that such assistance "began from the hour when the Bolsheviks took power into their own hands." However, at that time it was about open assistance to the communist parties, which was by no means conditional on their obedient submission to the dictates of Moscow. “The parties that received aid enjoyed complete internal democracy, including complete freedom of criticism in relation to the Soviet government. There was always a passionate ideological struggle at the congresses of the Comintern, and it happened more than once that Lenin and I remained in the minority.

Trotsky dated the beginning of the degeneration of the cause of financial assistance to foreign communist organizations to the time when Stalin and Bukharin seized the leadership of the Comintern. “The system of bribing and corrupting the leaders of the labor movement in other countries began to be systematically applied from about 1926 ... From the same time, the opposition (“Trotskyists”) began an uncompromising struggle against financial arbitrariness and bribery in the Comintern and on its periphery.”

After the victory of the ruling faction over the left opposition and the establishment of the Stalinist regime in the USSR and in the international communist movement, “international solidarity” turned into a humiliating dependence on the Kremlin. “Financial assistance has become a form of bribery... Now even Moscow’s agents have begun to feel this “assistance” as a shameful and humiliating dependence that should not be openly admitted.”

Under the influence of opposition revelations, Stalin was forced to publish something like the financial reports of the Comintern. “It must be said right away,” Trotsky emphasized, “that these reports, processed in the GPU laboratory, are completely unrealistic. The entire budget is underestimated several times. Secret expenses are not mentioned at all. The source of income is disguised.” With all this, the reports invariably contain a special article: subventions to party periodicals. As for the secret expenditures, they are connected with the intervention of the GPU in the affairs of the Comintern and its sections, the implementation of covert operations of the GPU abroad with the help of foreign communist parties.

In support of this, Trotsky referred to specific facts set forth in the books of the former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain E. Matorras “Communism in Spain. His orientation, his organization, his methods” and one of the founders of the US Communist Party, who for 20 years was a member of the ECCI and its presidium B. Gitlov “I testify”. According to Trotsky, the most exhaustive evidence of the Comintern’s ties with the GPU and the financial dependence of the Communist Parties on the GPU belonged, according to Trotsky, to the former head of the Soviet intelligence network in Western Europe, V. Krivitsky, and this information “has the legal weight of a witness statement,” since Krivitsky gave it under oath to the commission US Chamber of Deputies.

Trotsky also cited the testimony of I. Zaks, who for 15 years played a leading role in the communist movement in Latin America, and letters from Krivitsky and Gitlov expressing their readiness to answer questions of the Mexican court under oath. Moreover, Gitlov and Krivitsky sent special testimony to Trotsky for the Mexican court, and in the statement of Krivitsky, which, according to him, "could be used for any court in Mexico in the case of Leon Trotsky," it was said: "GUGB (Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD - VR) organizes terrorist acts abroad... The organizers of these terrorist acts are responsible agents of the GUGB abroad. The killers are always foreigners who are in the service of the GUGB... Some of them, for reasons of a conspiratorial nature, do not officially belong to the party.”

Covering the events associated with the assassination attempt on May 24, Trotsky wrote that he never considered the Mexican Communist Party to be the direct organizer of this assassination attempt. "The GPU uses the Communist Party, but does not at all merge with it." “For the crimes of the GPU, the division of labor between secret murderers and legal “friends” is extremely characteristic: already during the preparation of the assassination attempt, along with the underground work of conspiracy, an open slanderous campaign is being carried out in order to compromise the intended victim. The same division of labor continues after the crime has been committed: the terrorists go into hiding; their lawyers remain on the open stage, trying to direct the attention of the police to a false trail.

X
The killer appears in Trotsky's house

While Trotsky waged a relentless struggle to establish the truth about the raid of the Siqueiros gang, his would-be assassin carefully but persistently prepared to infiltrate his house. Through Sylvia Ageloff, he met the Rosmers and willingly maintained this acquaintance, offering them the use of his car and providing other small services. The Rosmers often traveled with him, having joint picnics in the countryside. Since Margarita Rosmer was very friendly with Sedova, Mercader's closeness to the Rosmers could not but inspire confidence in him on the part of Sedova and, consequently, Trotsky.

Speaking about the relationship between the Rosmers and Mercader, Jean Van Heyzhenoort wrote: “There is one question that still baffles me. Why didn't the features of Mercader's language arouse suspicion among the Rosmers? Mercader said that he was Belgian, but ... his French was sprinkled with Spanishisms. The French of a Belgian is different from the French of a Spaniard. Rosmer, being a Frenchman, knew his language perfectly ... How could he not notice something wrong in Mercader's speech?

Upon arrival in Mexico with "Jackson" (R. Mercader) there was a striking change. Prior to this, he portrayed himself in front of Sylvia Ageloff and her entourage as a completely apolitical person. As Sylvia reported to the Commission on Un-American Activities in 1950, in Paris he "appeared to be completely uninterested in politics of any kind ... He seemed interested only in sports, theater, music, and other things of that kind."

Now, in conversations with the guards and the Rosmers, “Jackson” not only often spoke of his interest in politics and the Trotskyist movement, of his acquaintance with European Trotskyists, but even mentioned donations that he allegedly made to the French section of the Fourth International.

Explaining to Sylvia the reasons for his stay in Mexico, "Jackson" said that he was engaged in a profitable business here - exporting bananas and cigars to England. He does this business in the service of a big US trade boss who pays him generously.

On May 28, three days after the raid by the Siqueiros gang, the Rosmers were supposed to leave Mexico and go by boat to Europe. "Jackson" offered to take them to the port in his car and in the morning at the appointed time drove up to the villa. Upon learning of this, Trotsky said that it was inconvenient for "Sylvia's husband" to be waiting at the gate, and offered to invite him to a farewell breakfast with the Rosmers. So "Jackson" first appeared at Trotsky's villa and met with him. Since then, the guards freely let the "Jackson" into the villa. He was never searched, since Trotsky forbade applying such measures to people who constantly visited the villa, saying that distrust humiliates human dignity. For the same reasons, Trotsky forbade the guards in his office and even outside his door when he met with visitors.

According to the entries in the villa's visitor's book, "Jackson" visited it twelve times and stayed there for a total of about four and a half hours. During this time, Trotsky and Sedova talked with him for several minutes in the garden and twice in the house. The investigation found that before the day of the assassination, Trotsky remained alone with "Jackson" only once - for 10 minutes on August 17.

In June, Sylvia went to New York. Following her went to New York and "Jackson". Three weeks later they returned to Mexico. Following them, Caridad left for Mexico. At the end of July, Eitingon told the Center in a conditional letter that they were "everything in order."

After returning from New York, "Jackson" continued to visit Trotsky's villa from time to time. One day he noticed that the workers were strengthening the outer wall. "Jackson" asked Hansen, "Why are they doing this?" Hansen replied that the work was being done in order to secure the villa from a possible next raid. “Jackson” remarked to this: “This will not stop the GPU.” On another occasion, speaking to Sylvia about the May raid, he said: "Next time the GPU will use a different method."

In July, "Jackson" again went to New York, where he stayed for three weeks. After returning from this trip, as Sedova recalled, he looked extremely nervous and exhausted, his face became pale and gray. “His visit to the States completely changed him. The somewhat vulgar bon vivant, who had previously seemed quite satisfied with his easy life, suddenly fell into a terrible nervous state.

For several weeks, when "Jackson" visited the villa, he did not arouse Trotsky's suspicions. This is all the more surprising since shortly after the attack by the Siqueiros gang, Trotsky told the Mexican journalist Edouard Vargas: “I will be killed either by one of those who are here or by one of those who have access to this house. Because Stalin cannot let me live.”

The constant expectation of a new assassination attempt did not plunge Trotsky into depression. He repeatedly reassured his wife, who was preoccupied with the same thoughts about the inevitability of an imminent death. “Opening in the morning or closing in the evening the massive iron shutters arranged by our friends in our bedroom ... Lev Davidovich sometimes said: “Well, now no Siqueiros will get to us,” N. I. Sedova recalled. -And waking up, he greeted me and himself: “Here we were not killed this night, but you are still unhappy” ... Once after such a “greeting”, he added in thought: “Yes, Natasha, we received a reprieve” .

After the assassination attempt on May 24, the issue of protecting Trotsky was again discussed in the governing bodies of the Trotskyist Party of the USA. A delegation of party leaders visited Mexico City, where, at a meeting with Trotsky, it was decided to take new measures to strengthen security. The height of the wall surrounding the villa was raised from 10 to 15 feet. Several thousand dollars were raised in the United States for home defense. “At the hour when the death blow was dealt,” Cannon recalled, “I was returning by train from a special trip to Minneapolis. I went there in order to select new, especially qualified comrades for protection in Koyokan.

Lev Davidovich was very touched by a gift sent to him by friends from Los Angeles after the raid of the Siqueiros gang - a metal vest that resembled ancient chain mail. He insisted that this vest be worn by each of the guards who were currently in the most responsible position.

“After the failure that our enemies suffered in the attack on May 24,” N. I. Sedova recalled, “we knew for sure that Stalin would not stop there, and we were preparing ... We also knew that the GPU would resort to another form of attack . They did not rule out a blow and a “loner”, sent and bought by the GPU. But neither the chain mail nor the helmet could protect. It was impossible to apply these means of protection from day to day, it was impossible to turn your life into self-defense only - she lost all value in that case».

The constant danger hanging over his head prompted Trotsky to mobilize all his forces for work covering the widest range of theoretical and political problems. The last months of his life, perhaps, especially include the words of James Cannon: “He knew that he was doomed, and he worked feverishly to leave us, and through us to humanity, everything that was possible. During the last eleven years of his exile, he chained himself to his desk and worked with such energy, with such perseverance, with such restraint, as none of us knows how to work, as only geniuses know how to work. He worked to put on paper all the rich content of his mighty mind and save it in ... writing for us and for those who will come after us.

An intellectual, creative atmosphere still reigned in Trotsky's house, in which Trotsky involved all the people from his entourage. As one of Trotsky's secretaries recalled, “Often in a casual conversation at the dinner table, some question would come up, a discussion would start, and the Old Man would express some new and fresh views. Almost invariably, remarks made in passing in a dinner conversation later appeared either in a book or in an article or letter.

Immediately after the assassination attempt on May 24, Trotsky began to deal with the issue of storing his archives. After November 7, 1936, when the GPU stole 65 kg of his archives in Paris, various US scientific institutions turned to him with a request to transfer the most historically valuable part of the archives to their libraries and depositories. Trotsky's lawyer Albert Goldman had lengthy negotiations on this issue with the library founded by former US President Herbert Hoover, with the Universities of Chicago and Harvard. As a result of these negotiations, an agreement for the transfer of archives was concluded with Harvard University.

After the assassination attempt on May 24, the director of the Harvard University Library sent Trotsky a letter in which he insisted on receiving the archives as soon as possible. Informing the Secretary of the Interior of Mexico about this, Trotsky clarified that “we are talking about the archives of the Soviet period of my activity and about my correspondence ending in December 1936, that is, before my entry into Mexico. As for the letters, manuscripts and documents during my stay in Mexico, they will completely remain with me as long as I enjoy the hospitality of this country. Trotsky asked that competent officials of the secretariat of internal affairs who knew foreign languages, including Russian, together with a representative of the US Embassy, ​​who promised to assist in sending manuscripts, look through the archives to be sent to Harvard University, after which all manuscripts would be sealed in hermetic boxes to prevent them from being opened at the border.

Meanwhile, the future assassin did everything possible to ingratiate himself with Trotsky. In August, he appeared at the villa without prior invitation, with a bouquet of flowers and a huge box of chocolates, sent, he said, by Sylvia. On that day, "Jackson" spoke to Trotsky's secretaries for the first time about the development of the world Trotskyist movement, mentioned some of the names of its leaders in various countries, and hinted that he could contribute materially to the movement.

On the ninth of August, Sylvia returned to Mexico City. After her arrival, several visits of "Jackson" to Koyokan took place. Apparently, during the first of these visits, he spoke to Trotsky about his desire to provide material support to the Trotskyist movement. According to Hansen, Trotsky said that "Jackson" had already told him about the financial assistance he had provided to the French Trotskyist Party.

On August 10, when Trotsky was in the garden, "Jackson", who very rarely talked about his "business" even with Sylvia, spoke to Trotsky about his "boss", a "wonderful businessman", whose financial affairs are developing very favorably. To this he added that his employer, knowing of the material difficulties of Trotsky and the Trotskyists, advised him to help them.

This short talk about financial speculation and readiness to help the Trotskyist movement materially irritated Trotsky and Sedova. “Who is this fabulously rich boss,” Trotsky said to Natalia Ivanovna, “we must find out. "Jackson" may turn out to be a speculator with fascist tendencies. It would have been better to stop visiting our house with Sylvia's husband."

Nevertheless, a few days later, "Jackson" and Sylvia appeared in the garden and were invited into the house for a cup of tea. During the conversation, Sylvia passionately defended the minority point of view of the American Trotskyist Party. "Jackson", although not quite clearly, objected to her and proved the correctness of Trotsky's position in the discussion.

In later memoirs, Sedova wrote that Trotsky in this day

To enter world history, these people only needed to kill another person - a more famous one. The Spaniard Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio did not reinvent the wheel and went the same way.

Childhood and youth

Ramon was born in the Spanish city of Barcelona, ​​in the family of the Catalan Pau Mercader, the owner of a textile factory and railway magnate, and his Cuban wife Caridad del Rio. This event took place on February 7, 1913. Five years later, another child appeared in the family - daughter Maria, who later became an actress and wife of director Vittorio Domiiko De Sica.

For a long time the family lived in the capital of France, but after the divorce of Ramon and Pau in 1925, Ramon, together with his mother and sister, moved back to Barcelona, ​​where he continued his studies. In his student years, the young Mercader was a member of the leadership of the Barcelona communist organization, consisting mainly of youth. Later, the guy was convicted for this - the punishment was a three-month sentence in a prison in Valencia.

Almost immediately after his release from prison, Ramon volunteered to join the ranks of the Republicans participating in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He was the commissar of the Twenty-Seventh Brigade, which fought on the Aragonese front. He was injured and was hospitalized.

Service in the NKVD

Immediately after Ramon recovered from his wound, employees of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR took care of him. They had been keeping an eye on the guy for a long time, considering him a potential acquisition. Mercader was helped to recruit by his mother Caridad, who, even before the birth of her son, became a Soviet agent abroad.

In 1937, Ramon Mercader (also known as Ramon Ivanovich Lopez) already appeared in the internal documentation of the state security agencies and the commissariat of internal affairs.

Having passed the “course of a young fighter”, Mercader began to be prepared for his first task - to eliminate the revolutionary, who, according to the leadership of the Communist Party, was a traitor to Marxism and the worst enemy of the Soviet people.

Trotsky's assassination

Leiba Bronstein, better known as Lev Davidovich Trotsky, from an early age was active in revolutionary activities, for which he was repeatedly exiled. In 1917, Trotsky even served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks while Vladimir Lenin was in hiding in Finland. In fact, Lev Davidovich was the leader of the October Revolution.

In 1918, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and then began to actively strive for power - the peak of this activity falls on the beginning of the Civil War. Due to the techniques used by Lev Davidovich, he makes enemies in the face, and.

After the death of Lenin, the end of the intra-collective struggle and the arrival of Stalin as head of state, Trotsky had to leave the USSR. If it were not for the publication of the book “The Revolution Betrayed” in 1936, then everything would have been limited to this, but the book was published, and the state security leadership received an order to eliminate Trotsky.

The first assassination attempt, committed by a group led by the artist Jose Siqueiros, turned out to be unsuccessful, so the leadership of the NKVD approached the issue of preparing the next Mercader more responsibly.

Ramon was curated by Major General Naum Eitigon himself. Having worked out the operation thoroughly, Mercader, under the name of Canadian businessman Frank Jackson, goes to the USA. In New York, already under a new name, Jacques Montrard Ramon goes to Sylvia Ageloff, Trotsky's close associate.

In October 1939, Jacques allegedly moved to Mexico on business, where Trotsky was living at that time. Soon Monrar invites Sylvia to his place, saying that he misses the girl. Thanks to Ageloff, in March 1940, Mercader-Montrard still comes into direct contact with Trotsky. Ramon manages to convince Lev Davidovich of his commitment to the views of Trotskyism, as well as his readiness to financially help implement the plans.

On August 20 of the same year, Mercader comes to Trotsky's villa to let him read his article and listen to Lev Davidovich's opinion. According to the plan developed by the NKVD, Ramon would have to stun Trotsky with an ice pick hidden under his coat (everything was planned to be done quietly - without the use of firearms), then stab him and go out to a car waiting near the villa to escape from Mexico with his mother and Eitigon.

But everything went wrong when Trotsky did not lose consciousness after being hit on the back of the head, but screamed heart-rendingly. Mercader was confused, hesitated, and in a moment was captured by the guards who ran into the room. Ramon was beaten and the police were called. Naum Eitigon realized that something had gone wrong and took Mercader's mother away. That night they left the country. Trotsky died the next day.

Mercader was tried. At the trial, they tried to bring Ramon to clean water, but he claimed that he was Jacques Monrard, a lone fighter who decided to commit a fact of retaliation by killing Trotsky. He did not betray the truth even after being subjected to prison torture. As a result, the Mexican court sentenced the guy to 20 years in prison, and Mercader was transferred to a prison facility with a milder regime. The Mexicans learned the real name of Ramon only 6 years later.

Mercader served his entire term in prison. On May 6, 1960, he was released. Soviet agents brought Ramon first to Cuba and then to the USSR.

On May 31 of the same year, he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal, which had been waiting for him since June 6, 1941 (then Stalin signed a petition to reward the participants in the successful operation to eliminate Trotsky). In addition, Ramon received a four-room apartment in Moscow on Leningradsky Prospekt (not far from Leningradskoye and Volokolamskoye Highways) and a dacha in the village. Kratovo.

Officially, Ramon was listed first as an employee of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, and then as an employee of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. There is an opinion that this is a cover, but in fact Mercader became a KGB officer.

Personal life

Ramon Mercader was married twice. The first wife - Elena Imbert - did not wait for him from prison - she died in Moscow in 1942.

Ramon Mercader and his wife Raquel Mendoza

Ramon's second wife was an Indian woman named Raquel (Rachel) Mendoza, who worked as a nurse in the prison in which Mercader was imprisoned. The girl nursed him after another torture, and a relationship began between them. When Ramon was released, he took her with him to the Soviet Union. In the USSR, Raquel became an announcer in the Spanish edition of Radio Moscow.

Death

In the mid-seventies of the last century, Mercader, by personal invitation, moved to Cuba to serve as an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On October 18, 1978, in Havana, Ramon died of a sarcoma. He was cremated, and the ashes were transported to Moscow and buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery under the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez. A monument with a photo of Mercader was erected on the grave.