Leon Trotsky, the exiled Bolshevik leader, died early this morning from injuries received when he was attacked in his home in a suburb of Mexico City some thirty hours earlier. His skull was fractured.
A trepanning operation was performed yesterday, and specialists had been summoned from the United States.
The attack was made upon Trotsky by Franck Johnson, who is described as a French Jew. Trotsky, it is stated, invited Johnson to take afternoon tea with him and Johnson was therefore not searched, as are most people entering Trotsky╒s carefully guarded home in the city suburbs. According to the police Johnson had a small pickaxe, of the type used by Boy Scouts, hidden in his trousers. He is alleged to have attacked Trotsky suddenly, battering his skull and injuring his right shoulder and right knee. According to one of his bodyguards Trotsky╒s last words before he became unconscious were ╥I think Stalin has finished the job he started.╙
Trotsky escaped without injury a couple of months ago when hundreds of machine-gun bullets were fired into his house by a gang of twenty men.
Trotsky was born in 1877, and was forty when the Russian revolution broke out. With Lenin he shared in organising the movement that led to the establishment of the Soviet regime. When Lenin died Trotsky╒s influence was undermined, and he became more and more open in his disagreement with Communist Party policy. He was expelled from the party in 1927, was sent to Alma Ata, in Siberia, and soon afterwards was deported from the Soviet Union.
