1905

Leon Trotsky was not only the tactician of the events of 1905, but perhaps more than anyone else, the embodiment of the spirit of this near-revolution. From January 5, 1905, when workers marched to the palace gates with a list of grievances and were fired upon in the St. Petersburg massacre, through the long summer when the Russian proletariat tempered themselves through strikes and protests, so that by October their actions would sent the first tremors through the Russian empire, Leon Trotsky was with them, organizing, defying, inspiring with brilliant rhetoric.