The Ice Pick for Trotsky. How We Eliminated the 'Demon of the Revolution'

In the history of world and Soviet special services, this operation holds a special place: on August 21, 1940, in Mexico, NKVD agent Ramón Mercader assassinated one of the most sinister leaders of the October Revolution, Leon Trotsky (Bronstein).

All the previous attempts by Moscow to eliminate the “demon of the revolution,” for various reasons, failed. The most scandalous among them was an armed night raid on May 24, 1940, by the “Horse” group of 20 people under the command of the Mexican artist David Siqueiros on Leon Trotsky’s villa. Within 10–15 minutes, the visitors shot Trotsky’s bedroom, and they also left a bomb at the door—though it didn’t go off due to a technical malfunction…

And then operation “Duck” was put into the plan—which, even though it eventually achieved its goal, left behind many questions that still have no clear answers.

Operation leader Pavel Sudoplatov and one of the executors, David Siqueiros, recall the details of the elimination of the leader of the world communist movement, Leon Trotsky. Their account is complemented by the historian of special services Alexander Kolpakidi and an expert in the history of intra-party struggle and the history of the Left Opposition in the AUCP(b), Vadim Rogovin.