LEON TROTSKY AND CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY

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LEON TROTSKY AND CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY
LEON TROTSKY (1879 - 1940) Russian Communist leader who with Lenin organized the Bolshevik October Revolution, defeated by Stalin in their struggle for control of the government, banished and later assassinated in Mexico. Rare and important typed D.S. 'L. Trotsky' in blue indelible pencil as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, 1p. 8vo., Moscow, Dec. 20, 1919. In part: '...ORDER OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE REPUBLIC No. 353 Comrade Isakov, appointed under the command of the Political Administration of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic by order of staff No. 343 of December 17, 1919, is hereby hired as Assistant to the District Military Commissariat of the Petrograd Army...' The order is countersigned by CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKI (1873-1941), a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat. He was nephew of revolutionary Georgi Rakovsky. A devoted Trotskyist, he later 'repented' but was nevertheless tried following the Great Terror and executed by the NKVD in a forest after the German invasion in 1941. Multiple dockets, notes, and emendations. Folds, a mounting strip affixed to the verso of the left margin, else very good. This appointment was made immediately following the Battle of Petrograd, Sep. 28 - Nov. 14, 1919 as after a series of victories, White Russians sought to take the crucial city, site of the start of the October Revolution. Trotsky himself had intervened in the battle, rallying the defenders and finding another junction to get supplies from Moscow to help fend off the attack.