In August 1940, a Soviet agent drove an ice axe into the skull of Leon Trotsky in his study in Coyoacán, Mexico. This episode traces the decade-long manhunt, the betrayal by an American girlfriend, and the final moments of the man who once stood second only to Lenin. We explore Trotsky's exile in Turkey, France, Norway, and Mexico, the failed 1939 attack led by David Alfaro Siqueiros, and the decisive infiltration by Ramón Mercader under the alias Jacques Mornard. We also look at the rationale behind the assassination: Trotsky's vocal opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, his advocacy for world revolution against Stalin's 'socialism in one country', and the personal vendetta of a dictator who never forgot his rival's earlier supremacy. The story of the ice pick is not just a murder mystery—it's a window into the paranoia, reach, and ruthlessness of Stalin's intelligence apparatus.
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