Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 22, 31 May 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Eight years ago – on May 24th, 1940 – Stalin's GPU made an attack in force on Trotsky’s household in Covoacan, Mexico. A band of about 30 Stalinist agents disguised as Mexican policemen and armed with machine guns, bombs and electric saws broke into the Trotsky household in the early hours of the morning.
Their instructions from the Kremlin were to murder the great revolutionist. Rapidly making their way to the bedroom of Leon and Natalia Trotsky the assassins stood in the doorway and riddled the bed with machine gun bursts.
Fortunately Trotsky and his wife had been awakened by the firing in the courtyard and had hidden in a corner of the room. In the dim light the GPU murderers mistook the rumpled bedclothes for the figures of their intended victims.
Thinking they had accomplished their mission the GPU gang left taking with them one of Trotsky’s guards, Robert Sheldon Harte, a young American. The body of the kidnapped guard was later found in a shallow lime-filled grave.
Robert Sheldon Harte came of a wealthy family. As a student he became interested in the socialist movement and soon joined the Socialist Workers Party. He plunged into the work of building the Trotskyist party in the United States and was elected to the executive committee of the Downtown Branch of the New York SWP. He volunteered for the dangerous work of guarding Trotsky. Selection of guards was based on trustworthiness and reliability. Harte was delighted when he was told of his assignment to go to Mexico. He had been in the Trotsky household scarcely eight weeks when he met his tragic death.
The 24-year old guard was one of the finest types of young revolutionists. His ideals had led him to embrace the only cause which could emancipate humanity. Having once joined the struggle he sacrificed to build the party of the working class and, putting himself in the very forefront of the fight, sacrificed his very life.
The GPU attack made a great sensation throughout the world and the Stalinist press did everything in its power to shield the GPU and at the same time smear Trotsky. The Stalinists declared the attack was a fake – that Trotsky had arranged a “self-assault.”
Trotsky placed the guilt for the attack squarely on the GPU and the top leaders of the Mexican Stalinist Party. The correctness of this, charge was soon proved when Mexican authorities arrested 27 of the band, all Stalinists, who confessed. The GPU, however, with unlimited resources at its disposal, struck again within a few months. This time it was successful and with a pickaxe a Stalinist agent murdered the man who with Lenin had led the Russian revolution.
Robert Sheldon Harte was one of many victims of Stalin’s war on the Trotskyist movement. Most of Trotsky’s family had been murdered or driven to death by the Kremlin butcher.
This is the tenth anniversary of the death of Trotsky’s oldest son, Leon Sedov, an earlier victim of the GPU.
As a child he had accompanied his parents in their exile from Czarist Russia. As the Stalinist counter-revolution began to undermine the young workers state, he took an active part in the ranks of the Left Opposition, headed by his famous father. He voluntarily accompanied Trotsky to forcible exile in Central Asia and later to Turkey.
In Turkey his parents prevailed upon him to go to Berlin to carry on his studies and aid in the Work of the Trotskyist movement there. He left with reluctance and did great service for the cause in Germany. Almost unaided he published The Bulletin of the Opposition, the main theoretical organ of the world Trotskyist movement.
Leon Sedov was a great political personality in his own right. He did much of the research that went into his father’s books. Trotsky later wrote, “My son’s name should rightfully be placed next to mine on almost all my books written since 1928.”
When the Moscow Trials were staged, the Norwegian government prevented Trotsky from speaking or writing on the subject. It was Leon Sedov who first exposed in his Red Book on the Moscow Trial the colossal frame-up.
After the advent of Hitler, Sedov moved to Paris. Throughout this period his steps were dogged by GPU agents. In boarding houses the rooms next to his were hired by Stalinist agents. His phone was tapped. At least one known attempt to assassinate him was foiled by accident. He died in a hospital at the age of 32 after a successful operation for appendicitis. All indications point to the use of poison by the GPU.
Like Trotsky, Leon Sedov and Sheldon Harte gave their lives for the socialist emancipation of mankind. Workers throughout the world will honor their memory as the heroic pioneers who, with incredible sacrifice, blazed the trail for the future society.
Main Militant Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 3 February 2022