HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 346

of the Coming War,” that called for preparedness
against a surprise attack. He was arrested in late
1937 as part of STALIN 's purge of the Red Army
and executed in 1938.
Trifonov graduated from the Gorky Literary
Institute in Moscow in 1949. His first novel, Stu-
dents ( Studenty ), appeared in 1950 and was
awarded a Stalin Prize in 1951. After Stalin's
death in 1953, Trifonov spent most of the next
decade trying to rehabilitate his father's name,
an account of which he published as The Camp-
fire's Reflection in 1965. He is best known for the
realistic, contemporary cycle of novellas that
appeared in the journal Novyi mir, where he
chronicled the growing demoralization of the
intelligentsia. Because Trifonov treated this topic
from psychological rather than a political stand-
point, his work was published without excessive
interference from the censorship apparatus. His
House on the Embankment ( Dom na Naberezhnoi )
(1976) was an instant success. Its title refers to
the large gray apartment building across the
Moscow River from the Kremlin, whose spa-
cious apartments were reserved for members of
the Soviet elite. Through fictionalized stories of
some of its residents, Trifonov describes a world
of cynical careerism, moral compromises, and
heavy drinking that resonated with Soviet read-
ers for its honesty and sensitivity. The Old Man
( Starik ) (1979) contrasts the pettiness and drab-
ness of late Soviet life with the turbulence of the
revolutionary years. His last novel, Time and Place
( Vremia i mesto ) (1981), deals in an openly critical
manner with the then taboo topic of Stalin and
his legacy. He died suddenly at the height of his
creative powers on March 28, 1981, after com-
plications from surgery.

Leon Trotsky (Library of Congress)

power during the Russian civil war. Trotsky was
born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to a relatively
prosperous Jewish family in the Ukrainian vil-
lage of Yanovka. At the top of his class in school
in Nikolaev, the Ukraine, he joined the Social
Democratic Party in 1896, a year before com-
pleting his secondary studies, then helped estab-
lish an illegal workers' organization, the South
Russian Workers' Union. Arrested at the age of
19, he spent two and a half years in prison, and
was then exiled to Siberia. In 1902, he escaped
from Siberia and, adopting the name Trotsky,
joined Lenin in London. Although Trotsky and
Lenin worked closely together on the newspaper
Iskra ( The Spark ), when the divisions within the
Social Democratic movement hardened into two

Trotsky, Leon (1879-1940)
(Lev Davidovich)
revolutionary and Soviet official
A revolutionary, theorist, and prolific writer on a
wide range of topics, next to Vladimir LENIN Trot-
sky played a central role in organizing the OCTO -
BER REVOLUTION of 1917 and consolidating Soviet