Lev Davidovich Trotsky was, alongside Lenin, one of the two greatest Marxists of the twentieth century. His whole life was entirely devoted to the cause of the working class and international socialism. From his earliest youth, when he worked through the night producing illegal strike leaflets which earned him his first spell in prison and Siberian exile, until he was finally struck down by one of Stalin’s agents in August 1940, he toiled ceaselessly for the revolutionary movement. In the first Russian Revolution of 1905, he was the chairman of the Petersburg Soviet. Sentenced once again to Siberian exile, he again escaped and continued his revolutionary activity from exile. During the First World War, Trotsky adopted a consistent internationalist position. He was the author of the Zimmerwald Manifesto which attempted to unite the revolutionary opponents of the War. He was the creator of the Red Army and the first Commissar of Foreign Affairs. After Lenin's death he was exiled by power hungry Josef Stalin to Mexico because Stalin recognized him as a threat to the party leadership. In 1940 Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin's agents.