Quick questions on Trotsky's exile and writings: HSC Modern History Personality

Trotsky landed at Constantinople on 12 February 1929 with Natalia Sedova and their son Lev Sedov, with no other country willing to admit him. The Turkish government granted asylum on condition of residence on Prinkipo (now Buyukada), an island in the Sea of Marmara some 20 km from Constantinople. Trotsky settled in the rented Villa Yanaros, then the Villa Izzet Pasha. He had no diplomatic protection; his security depended on Turkish gendarmerie and his own household guards (Sedov, Jan Frankel, and two or three rotating European Trotskyists).

My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography was completed at Prinkipo in the spring of 1929 and published in German, French, English, and Russian editions in 1930. The book covered the period from Yanovka to the 1929 expulsion. It is the principal participant account of Trotsky's life and the basis of Deutscher's three-volume biography.

The three-volume History of the Russian Revolution was the major literary work of the exile. Volume one (The Overthrow of Tsarism) appeared in 1931; volumes two and three (The Attempted Counter-Revolution; The Triumph of the Soviets) appeared in 1932. The English translation by Max Eastman appeared with Gollancz in 1932-1933.

The Nazi seizure of power in Germany (30 January 1933) and the worsening security situation on Prinkipo led the French government of Edouard Daladier to grant Trotsky a residence permit in July 1933. He lived at Royan on the Atlantic coast, then at Barbizon outside Paris, then at Domesne under permanent surveillance. The French Communist Party, the right press, and the post-February 1934 Doumergue government all worked to revoke the residence. Trotsky moved between increasingly clandestine addresses.

In June 1935 Trotsky and Natalia Sedova moved to Norway on a permit granted by the Norwegian Labour Party government of Johan Nygaardsvold. They settled at the home of Konrad Knudsen at Wexhall near Oslo. The conditions of the Norwegian permit prohibited political activity.

The Cardenas government of Mexico, sympathetic to Trotsky as a victim of Stalin, granted asylum on 7 December 1936. Trotsky and Natalia Sedova boarded the Norwegian tanker Ruth at Oslo on 19 December 1936 and arrived at Tampico on 9 January 1937. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo housed them at the Blue House (Casa Azul) in Coyoacan, Mexico City. From April 1939 they moved to a separate house on Avenida Viena, also in Coyoacan.

Prinkipo is the Turkish island, 1929 to 1933. Coyoacan is the Mexico City suburb, 1937 to 1940.

By 1940 every member of Trotsky's immediate family except Natalia Sedova was dead.

Written 1936 in Norway, published 1937.