Almost everyone knows that the “revolutionary balalaika”, “Judah” (according to the characteristics given by V.I. Lenin) Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotsky) was killed before World War II, several years after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, as an agent of Soviet intelligence Ramon Mercader But the reasons for this event, and also - who? Where? when? are known only to a few specially interested in this event. But Ramon Mercader is a Hero of the Soviet Union.
October 18 of this year marks forty years since the death of this remarkable man, a real communist, without a trace who devoted his life to the cause of the revolutionary struggle. In this article, based on the memories of the legendary Soviet intelligence officer General P.A. Sudoplatov, we will examine - why it was necessary to end with Trotsky, the course of his liquidation, we will highlight the main events in the life of Ramon Mercader.
After the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR, the struggle against Trotskyism acquired a new, international character. The left movement was in a state of serious disarray due to the attempts of the Trotskyists to subjugate it. Trotsky and his supporters gave a serious challenge to the Soviet Union, the dominant role of the Comintern, opposing its own IV International. Since Trotsky himself was essentially the only significant figure in Trotskyism, his destruction took on particular importance. This had to be done for a year before the inevitable war broke out.
The Trotskyists actively interacted with the intelligence services of the bourgeois states. From the Trotskyist circles in the intelligence services of France and Germany were materials about the actions of the Communist Parties in support of the Soviet Union. About relations with the Abwehr of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937, was reported by agent Schulze-Boyzen, who later became one of the leaders of the Soviet underground group "Red Chapel". After his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to Moscow, and this fact appeared in the death sentence of the Hitler court in his case. There is no doubt that Hitler considered Trotsky and Trotskyism as a backup pawn that could be used at the right time — during the war or after it — to settle scores with communism. Residents in Paris Vasilevsky, appointed in 1940 authorized by the Comintern Executive Committee, reported on examples of the use of the Abwehr of the Trotskyist connections to search for leaders of the French Communist Party hiding in the underground in the underground.
The present, already post-Soviet life has clearly shown that the hatred of Stalin and the leaders of the CPSU (b) towards political degenerates was justified. The decisive blow to the CPSU and the Soviet Union was dealt precisely with a group of Judah leaders of the CPSU. At the same time, the initial narrow-minded interests of the struggle for power, these figures masked the slogans of the struggle against "red tape" and "party apparatus" borrowed from Trotsky.
In order to carry out a reliable operation on Trotsky, Soviet intelligence organized two groups of those agents in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States who had never participated in any operations against Trotsky and his supporters. The first group was led by David Alfaro Siqueiros, a Mexican painter and veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He moved to Mexico and became one of the organizers of the Mexican Communist Party. The second is led by Caridad Mercader. Among her rich ancestors was the vice-governor of Cuba, and her great-grandfather was the Spanish ambassador to Russia. Caridad left her husband, a Spanish railway magnate, for anarchists and fled to Paris with four children in the early 1930s. For life she had to earn from knitting. When the civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, she returned to Barcelona, joined the ranks of the anarchists and was seriously wounded in the stomach during an air raid. Her eldest son died in the Spanish Civil War, the middle one - Ramon (born February 7, 1913 in Barcelona) fought in a partisan unit. The youngest son Louis arrived in Moscow in 1939, along with other children of Spanish Republicans who had fled from Franco, the daughter remained in Paris.
Since Ramon was completely unknown among the Trotskyists, Eitingon, the immediate Soviet leader of the operation on Trotsky, who was at that time in Spain, decided to send him in the summer of 1938 from Barcelona to Paris under the guise of a young businessman, an adventurer and a life seeker, who sometimes would support political extremists because of their hostility towards any government.
By 1938, Ramon and his mother Caridad, both located in Paris, had committed themselves to cooperating with Soviet intelligence. In September, Ramon on a tip from the brothers Rouen met Sylvia Ageloff (Trotsky’s secretary), who was then in Paris. Following the instructions of Eitingon, he abstained from any political activity. His role was sometimes to help friends and those whom he sympathized with with money, but not to interfere in politics
Ramon Mercader himself volunteered to perform the task of Trotsky, using the knowledge he gained during the guerrilla war in Spain. During this war, he learned not only to shoot, but also mastered hand-to-hand combat technique. Considering that our people at that time did not have at their disposal special equipment, Mercader was ready to shoot, stab or kill the enemy, striking a heavy object. Caridad gave her son a "blessing." When Eitingon and she met with Ramon to analyze the security system at Trotsky's villa and select the murder weapon, they came to the conclusion that it is best to use a knife or a small ice ax climber: first, they are easier to hide from the guards, and second, these murder weapons are noiseless, so that no one from the domestic environment has time to come running to the rescue.
The two groups mentioned above did not communicate and did not know about each other's existence. Eitingon arrived in New York in October 1939 and established an import-export firm in Brooklyn that was used as a communications center. And most importantly, this company provided a "roof" to Ramon Mercader, who settled in Mexico with a fake Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jackson.
Gradually in Mexico, there was a cover for the Siqueiros group. Eitingon developed options for penetrating Trotsky's villa in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City. The owner of the villa, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, surrendered it to Trotsky. Siqueiros's group planned to take the building by storm, while Ramon, who had no idea about the existence of Siqueiros's group, was intended to use her love affair with Sylvia Ageloff to make friends with Trotsky's entourage.
To strengthen the network of illegal immigrants in Mexico, Eitingon also created a third, backup group led by Grigulevich (later a prominent scientist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, literary pseudonym Lavretsky, in honor of Beria). Grigulevich collaborated with a group of Siqueiros. Grigulevich managed to make friends with one of Trotsky's bodyguards, Sheldon Hart. When Hart was on duty on May 23, 1940, Grigulevich knocked at the gate of the villa in the pre-dawn hours. Hart made an unforgivable mistake - he opened the gate, and Siqueiros's group broke into the residence of Trotsky. They riddled the room where Trotsky was. But, since they shot through a closed door and the results of the shelling were not checked, Trotsky, hidden under the bed, remained alive.
The "legend" for the work of Ramon Mercader looked like this: the murder had to be presented as an act of personal revenge against Trotsky, who allegedly dissuaded Sylvia Ageloff from marrying Mercader. If Mercader had been captured, he should have stated that the Trotskyists intended to use the funds donated to them for personal purposes, and not at all for the needs of the movement, and report that Trotsky was trying to persuade him to enter the international terrorist organization, which had the aim of killing Stalin and other Soviet leaders .
In 1969, already in the USSR, Ramon Mercader talked about August 20, 1940: "Trotsky sat at his desk and read an article that I brought him for review." When Mercader was preparing to strike, Trotsky, absorbed in reading the article, turned his head slightly, and this changed the direction of the blow, weakening his strength. That is why Trotsky was not killed immediately and screamed for help. ” Ramon was confused and could not stab Trotsky, although he had a knife with him. “Imagine, after all, I went through a guerrilla war and stabbed a guard at the bridge during the Spanish Civil War, but Trotsky’s cry literally paralyzed me,” Ramon recalled. When Trotsky's wife ran into the room with guards, Mercader was knocked down and he could not use a pistol. However, this, as it turned out, was not necessary. Trotsky died the next day in the hospital.
Eitingon and Caridad, who had been waiting for Ramon in a car near the villa, had to flee when there was a clear commotion in the house. First, they fled to Cuba, where Caridad, using her family connections, managed to go underground. Mercader was arrested as Frank Jackson, a Canadian businessman and his real name was not known to the authorities for six years. After his arrest, Mercader held a hunger strike for two or three months, claiming during the investigation that he was one of Trotsky’s angry supporters. He was beaten twice a day by members of the Mexican special services — and it lasted all six years until he managed to reveal his real name.
The security services managed to establish the identity of Mercader only after in 1946 one of the prominent figures of the Spanish Communist Party, who had been in Moscow before his escape, ran to the West. When the Mercader files were brought to Mexico from the Spanish police archives, his identity was established, it became pointless to unlock it. In the face of irrefutable evidence, Frank Jackson admitted that he is actually Ramon Mercader and comes from a wealthy Spanish family. But he did not admit that he killed Trotsky on the orders of the Soviet intelligence. In all his statements, Mercader invariably emphasized the personal motive of this murder. The woman who looked after Ramon in prison fell in love with him and visited her weekly. He later married her and brought her to Moscow with him when he was released from prison.
Ramon Mercader fully served his sentence (twenty years), was released on May 6, 1960 and brought to Cuba, and then secretly transported by ship to the USSR. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 31, 1960, Ramon Merkader - Lopez Ramon Ivanovich was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 11089). In Moscow, Mercader was received by the KGB Chairman Shelepin, who handed him the Hero Star of the Soviet Union.
By a special decision of the Central Committee of the party and at the personal request of Dolores Ibarruri (Pasionarii), Mercader was hired as a senior researcher at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow. Mercader's wife Raquel Mendoza worked as a speaker in the Spanish edition of Moscow Radio. In 1963, they adopted two children: Arthur, a boy of twelve years, and a girl, Laura, of six months. Their parents were friends of the Mercader. His father, a member of the Spanish Civil War, fled after the defeat of the Republicans to Moscow, and later, returning home as an illegal agent, was captured by the Francoists and executed. Mother died in Moscow during childbirth.
In the mid-70s, Mercader left Moscow for Cuba, where he was an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Fidel Castro. He died in 1978. His ashes were delivered to Moscow. They buried Mercadera at Kuntsevo Cemetery. There he rests under the name of Ramon Ivanovich Lopez, Hero of the Soviet Union.
Mercader was a professional revolutionary and was proud of his role in the struggle for communist ideals. He did not regret that he killed Trotsky: "If I had to live again the forties, I would have done everything I did."
Material prepared by S.V. Khristenko
