The last witness to Trotsky’s murder has died

Esteban Volkov, the grandson of the revolutionary Leon Trotsky, died in Mexico City at the age of 97. He was the last surviving witness to Trotsky’s murder. In Mexico, he turned his grandfather’s house into a museum.

Esteban Volkov was born in 1926. His mother was Trotsky’s eldest daughter, Zinaida Bronstein. At birth, the boy was named Vsevolod. The father, Platon Volkov, was exiled when the child was not even two years old. Mother moved to Turkey, where Leo Trotsky lived in exile. In 1937, Trotsky moved to Mexico and took his grandson there (Zinaida Bronstein committed suicide in 1933). In Mexico, Vsevolod Volkov changed his name to Esteban.

Volkov was a witness to several attempted murders of his grandfather and himself in 1940 by Mexican NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. In the house where Trotsky lived, he founded a house-museum, and also became the creator of the Trotsky Research and Publication Center.

In 2017, the Russian “Pervy Kanal” aired the TV series “Trotsky” directed by Alexander Kott and Konstantin Stavskyi. In 2019, when the series was bought by Netflix, Esteban Volkov wrote an open letter in which he analyzed the plot of the series in detail and pointed out numerous inaccuracies and falsifications. The letter was signed by several hundred leading historians, philosophers and publicists of the world.