Word: stalinize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...brilliant orator and military strategist, as well as an outstanding literary critic, Trotsky was out-foxed and out-maneuvered by Joseph Stalin in the leadership struggle which followed Lenin's death in 1924. By 1929, after five years of setbacks and humiliation, he was banished forever from Russia...
...Stalin did not permit Trotsky to take all of his personal papers with him to his place of exile in Turkey, but he did allow him to take typed copies of those he left behind. By the time Trotsky arrived in Mexico in January, 1937, his papers numbered in the thousands. Each time he was forced to leave a country and find sanctuary elsewhere the papers had been packed in crates and carefully protected from theft...
...careful protection. The papers were an invaluable source of documents and letters relating to the history of Soviet Russia and the men who made the revolution. Many of these documents clearly refuted the pro-Stalinist explanations of Russian history which were the product of what Trotsky called the "Stalin School of Falsification...
...Stalin's henchmen made many attempts to seize or destroy the papers. One of their most spectacular--and successful--sallies occurred in November, 1936. At that time Trotsky was under house arrest in Norway, but many of the papers were hidden in a Paris apartment, supposedly out of the reach of Stalin. Nevertheless, agents of the G.P.U. (Russia's secret police at that time) located the apartment, perhaps with the aid of an agent provacateur, and they occupied the adjacent room. Then, with a torch, they cut through the intervening wall and made off with the papers...
...preceding months Trotsky had been deserted and renounced by some of his closest associates, including his Mexican protector and benefactor, the painter Diego Rivera. And in May, 1940, Trotsky's home was subjected to an armed-raid, apparently at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. Around 4 a.m. a group of assailants broke into Trotsky's home and pumped about 200 machine gun bullets into Trotsky's bedroom. Although the attack left him miraculously unharmed Trotsky became increasingly concerned about his own safety and the safety of his papers...