He spent time in Istanbul before going to Mexico.............................i guess that is why the Scottish rites temple here in DC is patterned after an ancient mausoleum from Turkey..................bloody b DC...................

Defeat and exile (1927–1928)

Trotsky's house on the island ofBüyükada, Istanbul, as it appears today

In October 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Central Committee. When the United Opposition tried to organize independent demonstrations commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1927, the demonstrators were dispersed by force and Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party on 12 November. Their leading supporters, from Kamenev down, were expelled in December 1927 by the XVth Party Congress, which paved the way for mass expulsions of rank and file oppositionists as well as internal exile of opposition leaders in early 1928.

When the XVth Party Congress made Opposition views incompatible with membership in the Communist Party, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their supporters capitulated and renounced their alliance with the Left Opposition. Trotsky and most of his followers, on the other hand, refused to surrender and stayed the course. Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan on 31 January 1928. He was expelled from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov.

After Trotsky's expulsion from the country, exiled Trotskyists began to waver. Between 1929 and 1934, most of the leading members of the Opposition surrendered to Stalin, "admitted their mistakes" and were reinstated in the Communist Party. Christian Rakovsky, who had inspired Trotsky between 1929 and 1934 from his Siberian exile, was the last prominent Trotskyist to capitulate. Almost all of them were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938.

Exile (1929–1940)

Trotsky reading The Militant.

Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929. His first station in exile was at Büyükada off the coast of Constantinople, Turkey, where he stayed for the next four years. He was at risk from the many former White Army officers in the city, who had opposed the Bolshevik Revolution, but Trotsky's European supporters volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assured his safety.

In 1933 Trotsky was offered asylum in France by Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. He stayed first at Royan, then at Barbizon. He was not allowed in Paris, though he did visit the city in secret during December 1933, to meet with various political allies. The philosopher and activist Simone Weil arranged for Trotsky and his bodyguards to stay for a few days at her parents' house.^[100] In 1935 he was told he was no longer welcome in France. After weighing alternatives, he moved to Norway. Having obtained permission from then Justice Minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky became a guest of Konrad Knudsen near Oslo. On 2 September 1936 he was transferred^[101] to a farm inHurum where he was under house arrest, allegedly because of Soviet influence on the government. Before Christmas 1936 he and his wife were deported to Mexico, on a freighter under guard by Jonas Lie.^[101] The Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed Trotsky and arranged for a special train to bring him to Mexico City from the port ofTampico.^{[citation needed]}

Trotsky's house in Mexico City.

Trotsky lived in the Coyoacán area of Mexico City at the home (The Blue House) of the painter Diego Rivera and Rivera's wife and fellow painter, Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had an affair.^[102][103] His final move was a few blocks away to a residence on Avenida Viena in May 1939, following a break with Rivera.^[103]

He wrote prolifically in exile, penning several key works, including his History of the Russian Revolution (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism. Trotsky argued that the Soviet state had become a “degenerated workers' state” controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing a workers' democracy, or degenerate into a capitalist class.

While in Mexico, Trotsky also worked closely with James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and other supporters.

James Cannon and Felix Morrow, with a bust of Trotsky.

Cannon, a long-time leading member of the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism since he first read Trotsky's criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928. Trotsky's critique of the Stalinist regime, though banned, was distributed to leaders of the Comintern. Among his other supporters was Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party.^{[citation needed]}