assassination – Tragedy and Farce

Sarajevo, June 28, 1914

June 28, 2021 lars4968Leave a comment

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to the Hapsburg throne, was assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo by a young Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip in what would prove to be a key turning point in the history of the 20th century. The Archduke’s murder put in motion a series of events that would unleash the greatest calamity the world had known up to that point, World War I. The war would destroy an entire generation of European young men, 20 million dead soldiers and another 21 million wounded. It would not be what U.S. President Woodrow Wilson declared, “the war to end all wars.” It only laid the ground work for an even greater catastrophe twenty five years later, World War II.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Hapsburg empire had become an increasingly unruly multi-ethnic empire with various ethnic groups at odds with each other or agitating for independence. One such problematic group was the ethnic Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a multi-ethnic territory the Hapsburgs seized from the Ottoman Empire in 1874. Ethnic Serbs comprised about 40 percent of Bosnia’s population, many of who were intent on integrating Bosnia with Serbia to form a “Greater Serbia” state, a goal that Serbia encouraged and actively worked to realize. Serbian military intelligence, with or without the consent of the Serbian government, was actively engaged in covert actions to undermine Vienna’s control over the province. One such operative was Colonlel Dragutin Dimitrijević, the leader of a secret Serbian military society, called “the Black Hand” whose aim was to unite all of the South Slavs of the Balkans under Serbian rule. Dimitrijevic, or Apis, as he was better known, was cultivating ties with a group of radical Serbian separatists called the “Young Bosnia” movement that would play a pivotal role in the events leading up to World War I.

The Archduke was not only Emperor Franz Joseph’s presumptive heir; he was also inspector general of the Austrian-Hungarian army. And in that capacity, he agreed to attend a series of June 1914 military exercises in Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand was dismissive of the Serbs, often referring to them as “pigs,” “thieves,” “murderers” and “scoundrels.” Nevertheless he was also quite sensitive, perhaps more than any other high level official, to the ethnic powder keg that the multi-ethnic Hapsburg Empire had become as it expanded. The Archduke supported reforming the empire from the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy to a a triple monarchy of Slavs, Germans and Hungarians each having an equal voice in government. This idea was unpopular with the Hapsburg ruling elite but Franz Ferdinand saw it as a more effective way of neutralizing the problem of the Serbs than military force that risked a larger war with Russia, Serbia’s ally.

The date selected for Franz Ferdinand’s visit, June 28, unfortunately coincided with another important event in Serbian history. It was the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje in which the Serbs were defeated by the Ottoman Turks and subjugated under Turkish rule for the next 500 years. The battle, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the Ottoman Sultan Murad were killed, plays a crucial role in Serbian national identity and the decision to hold the Archduke’s visit on that day only fanned the flames of dissent among Serbian nationalists even further.

News of Franz Ferdinand’s upcoming visit to Sarajevo prompted Serbian radicals associated with the Young Bosnia movement to begin plotting to assassinate him. On the morning of the Archduke’s visit, seven Bosnian Serbs, armed with pistols, bombs, and cyanide capsules likely provided by Serbian military intelligence, fanned out along the expected motorcade route as he and his entourage drove through the city to City Hall. As the motorcade approached the first two assassins, they lost their nerve and failed to act. A third assassin, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, was not so reticent. Shortly after 10:00am, Cabrinovic tossed a bomb at the open roof sedan carrying the Archduke and his wife. The bomb bounced off their car exploding underneath the one directly behind it injuring the occupants. The Royal couple arrived safely at City Hall for their scheduled reception with no further attempts on their lives.

After finishing up their reception at City Hall, Franz Ferdinand made the fateful decision that he wanted to go to the hospital and visit those who had been injured in the failed assassination attempt. This change in plans would end in tragedy. The driver, unfamiliar with the local streets accidentally turned down a wrong side street, just where another assassin, Gavrilo Princip, happened to be standing by chance. As the Archduke’s driver attempted to reverse back onto the main road, Princip pulled out his pistol and fired two shots at the archduke from point-blank range, piercing him in the neck and also striking his wife in the abdomen. Both would die within minutes of their wounds.

*Left: Gavrilo Princip, Right: Nedeljko Cabrinovic,*

Austria-Hungary was convinced that neighboring Serbia was the true mastermind behind the attack and opted to use the crisis to settle its long-standing score with the Serbs. The Austrians hoped to strike a blow against Belgrade and stymie its efforts to unite the South Slavs of the Balkans under Serbian leadership. Their plan, developed in coordination with Germany, was to force a military conflict that would, they hoped, end quickly and decisively with a crushing Austrian victory before the rest of Europe—namely, Serbia’s powerful ally, Russia—had time to react.

*Left: The Archduke’s automobile, Right: Princip’s pistol*

On July 23, the Austro-Hungarian government issued Serbia an ultimatum in which it blamed Serbia for the assassination and presented Belgrade with a list of demands that it expected to be fulfilled by Belgrade or it would declare war. The Serbs were given two days to respond. The list consisted of ten demands, many of which the Austrian leadership believed Serbia would never agree to accept. Winston Churchill, at the time in charge of Britain’s Royal Navy, called the Austrian ultimatum “the most insolent document of its kind ever devised”. In short, the ultimatum was intended as a pretext to justify war. Much to the surprise of the Austrians, Serbia agreed to almost all of the demands, only refusing to accept a direct investigation by Austro-Hungarian police officers on its territory. Serbia continued to insist that it gave no moral or material support to Princip and the other assassins.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, exactly a month after the assassination of the Archduke. The declaration set off a chain of events that would plunge the entire continent into crisis. Russia, Serbia’s long-time protector, condemned Austria’s aggression and on July 30 began mobilizing its military forces in support of its ally. Germany followed suit as expected and on August 1, declared war on Russia. At the same time Berlin demanded a declaration of neutrality from France to avoid a two-front war. When Paris refused, Germany felt it had no alternative and declared war on France on August 3. The next day Germany invaded Belgium to attack France. Great Britain, which had pledged to defend Belgium demanded an explanation for German aggression against Belgium. When one was not forthcoming Britain declared war on Germany. The war that all the European powers had long expected finally erupted.

Ghosts of Mississippi: The Assassination of Medgar Evers, June 12, 1963

June 12, 2021June 7, 2025 lars4968Leave a comment

On June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was gunned down in his driveway outside his home in Jackson Mississippi by white supremacist and segregationist Byron De La Beckwith. Emerging from his automobile after a late night NAACP meeting, Evers was shot in the back by Beckwith who had been positioned across the street waiting to ambush him. The bullet pierced through his heart but he managed to stagger to his door. Evers’ wife, Myrlie, and his three children—who were still awake after watching an important civil rights speech by President John F. Kennedy—heard the gun shot and hurried outside. They were soon joined by neighbors and police. Evers was rushed to the hospital where he was initially denied admission because of his race. He died less than 50 minutes later at the age of 37. Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

*Medgar Evers, the NAACP Field Director for Mississippi*

Evers was a decorated World War II veteran who had fought at Normandy in 1944. However, like many other African-American veterans, he returned to a nation that denied him his citizenship rights at the polls. In 1946, Evers attempted to cast a ballot but twenty armed white men, some of whom had been his childhood friends, had learned of his plans to vote and turned up to threaten him. Evers feared for his life. “I made up my mind that it would not be like that again,” he vowed.

Shortly after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Evers volunteered to challenge segregation in higher education and applied to the University of Mississippi School of Law. He was rejected on a technicality, but his willingness to risk harassment and threats for racial justice caught the eye of national NAACP leadership; he was soon hired as the organization’s first field secretary in Mississippi.

Evers was one of Mississippi’s leading civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms from segregation to how the state and local legal systems handled crimes against African Americans. Evers’ work put him squarely in the crosshairs of the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist group formed in the aftermath of the Brown ruling devoted to preserving segregation. He garnered national attention for organizing demonstrations and boycotts to help integrate Jackson’s privately owned buses, the public parks, Mississippi’s Gulf Coast beaches as well as the Mississippi State Fair. He led voter registration drives, and helped secure legal assistance for James Meredith, a black man whose 1962 attempt to enroll in the University of Mississippi was met with riots and state resistance.

Beckwith was arrested on June 21, 1963 for the murder of Evers but would escape conviction for most of his life, largely due to the racist system of justice that dominated the deep South in the 1960s. He was tried twice in February and April 1964 but in each trial the two all white juries failed to reach a verdict resulting in two mistrials. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi’s most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith’s first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. After his release Beckwith bragged about his skill with a rifle and hinting to segregationist friends that, indeed, he had killed Evers.

That Beckwith would not be held accountable, while reprehensible, was hardly surprising and consistent with what was increasingly the norm across the South. African-Americans and civil rights activists could expect little legal protection from the courts and law enforcement in the 1960s South which operated largely to preserve segregation and often ignored the facts when white defendants were accused of harming African-Americans. Moreover, most African-Americans were still disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws and therefore ineligible for jury duty. The two white men who murdered fourteen year old Emmet Till eight years earlier for allegedly whistling at a white woman were acquitted . The Ku Klux Klan members that perpetrated the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama later that year also escaped justice. The same for the murderers of three civil rights workers in Mississippi the following year.

*Mylie Evers and son Daniel Kenyatta Evers at Medgar Evers’ funeral*

*Evers’ assassin, the unrepentant Byron De La Beckwith*

*Evers’ home and the driveway where he was shot*

Evers’ assassination was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement, a bloody milestone in the fight for racial equality that began with the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till eight years earlier. It would also prove to be a harbinger of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by James Earl Ray five years later.

Redemption, May 15, 1972

May 15, 2021 lars4968Leave a comment

On May 15, 1972, the controversial Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was shot five times by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland while campaigning for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. One of those bullets would lodge itself in Wallace’ spinal chord cutting short his campaign and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down the rest of his life. Known for having coined the words “Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever,” was a central figure in the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. He also was a charismatic figure and a talented politician with a natural ability to commune with the common man using a mix of race and rage.

Wallace’s paralysis would prompt a great deal of soul searching within him and place him squarely on the road to racial redemption and reconciliation. In 1979, he went to a church in Montgomery, Ala., where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had once been pastor. There, he spoke of having learned the meaning of suffering, “I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure,” he said. “I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

In 1982, Wallace ran for Governor a fourth time and won. In that race, he carried all 10 of the state’s counties with a majority black population, nine of them by a better than two-to-one margin. Wallace would go on to hire a black press secretary, appoint more than 160 blacks to state governing boards and double the number of black voter registrars in Alabama’s 67 counties. In part, it was the politics of patronage but on a deeper level it was using his waning political power to make amends with those he once scorned. In 1998, civil rights icon John Lewis, who suffered at the hands of Wallace’s state troopers on the Edmund Pettis bridge in 1965 would write that George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change, not his racism. Lewis would write, “I can never forget what George Wallace said and did as Governor, as a national leader and as a political opportunist. But our ability to forgive serves a higher moral purpose in our society. Through genuine repentance and forgiveness, the soul of our nation is redeemed. George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his effort to redeem his soul and in so doing to mend the fabric of American society.”

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1865

April 14, 2021 lars4968Leave a comment

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington DC while attending the play, “Our American Cousin.” Booth, a popular actor at the theater and southern sympathizer, had free access to all areas of the theater. Around 10 pm, He quietly slipped into the box where Lincoln and his wife were sitting and fired his single shot Derringer pistol into the back of the head of the President at point blank range with deadly effect. Booth quickly leaped from the box onto the stage, where he shouted “Sic semper tyrannis,” (Thus always to Tyrants) before bowing and fleeing into the night. Lincoln’s body was brought to a house across the street from the theater, where he would succumb to his wound around 7:30 am the following day. Lincoln’s assassination would forever alter the course of history, thrusting the woefully inept Vice President Andrew Johnson into the presidency. Johnson would prove ill-tempered and ill-suited for the challenge of putting the country back together after four years of civil war.

Portrait of an Assassin

Booth was born into a well known family of Maryland thespians in 1838. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a widely regarded British Shakespearean actor who immigrated to the United States with his mistress, Booth’s mother, in 1821 and is considered by many, the greatest tragic actor in the first half of the 19th century. His older brother Edwin followed in his father’s footsteps and was judged by many to be the greatest American Shakespearean actor of the 19th century. Thus it was not surprising that John Wilkes Booth would be drawn to the theater. He made his stage debut at the age of 17 in a production of Richard III by Baltimore’s Charles Street Theater. Although his initial performance was underwhelming he soon joined a Shakespeare production company in Richmond, Virginia where he earned rave reviews for his acting talents. Some critics called Booth “the handsomest man in America” and a “natural genius.”

Nevertheless, like many Maryland families, the Booths were politically divided. Junius and Edwin were staunch Unionist while the younger Booth harbored strong southern sympathies. He supported the institution of slavery and despised abolitionists. After the 1860 election and the beginning of the Civil War he would develop an intense hatred for Lincoln. There has been much speculation that John Wilkes Booth’s embrace of the southern cause was part of a larger sibling rivalry with his older brother Edwin and to step outside the shadow of his famous father. In 1860, Booth joined a national touring company performing in all the major cities north and south, where he soon began to equal if not surpass his more famous brother in terms of popularity and acclaim. One Philadelphia drama critic remarked, “Without having [his brother] Edwin’s culture and grace, Mr. Booth has far more action, more life, and, we are inclined to think, more natural genius.” He was also becoming quite a wealthy actor, earning $20,000 a year (equivalent to about $569,000).

With the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Booth found it increasingly more difficult to conceal his Southern sympathies or his hatred for Lincoln. Booth, like most southerners abhorred Lincoln. He saw him as a “sectional candidate” of the North and a tool of the abolitionists to crush slavery. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of martial law in Maryland in May 1861, outraged Booth. He saw these actions as evidence of Lincoln’s treacherous and duplicitous nature and his intent to overturn the republic and make himself king. Booth increasingly quarreled with his brother Edwin, who declined to make stage appearances in the South and refused to listen to his brother’s fiercely partisan denunciations of the North and Lincoln. In early 1863, Booth was arrested in St. Louis while on a theatre tour, when he was heard saying that he “wished the President and the whole damned government would go to hell.” He was charged with making “treasonous” remarks against the government, but was released when he took an oath of allegiance to the Union and paid a substantial fine.

In November of 1863, A family friend John T. Ford opened 1,500-seat Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Booth was one of the first leading men to appear there while Lincoln became one of the theater’s more prominent patrons. In his first role, Booth played a Greek sculptor making marble statues came to life. One evening when Lincoln was watching the play from his box, Booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln’s direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln’s sister-in-law, who was sitting with him turned to him and said, “Mr. Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for you.”The President replied, “He does look pretty sharp at me, doesn’t he?” An admirer of Booth’s acting talents, Lincoln would invite Booth to visit the White House several times but Booth demurred.

A Turn for the Worse

By 1864 the Confederacy’s hopes for victory were diminishing rapidly which only served to intensify Booth’s hatred of Lincoln whom he blamed for he war. After the battle of Gettysburg the previous summer, the Confederacy was hemorrhaging manpower with fewer and fewer options to replace its diminishing ranks. The situation became particularly acute after General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union armies, suspended the exchange of prisoners of war with the Confederate Army to increase pressure on the manpower-starved South. It became absolutely dire following the terrible Confederate loses at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor in the Spring of 1864. As the hopes of the Confederacy ebbed, Booth became increasingly distraught. Booth had promised his mother at the outbreak of war that he would not enlist as a soldier, but he increasingly chafed at not fighting for the South, writing in a letter to her, “I have begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence.”

To assuage his own guilt and to reverse the declining fortunes of the Southern Confederacy, Booth began to conceive of a plan to kidnap Lincoln and take him to Richmond, believing he could ransom the President back to the Federal Government to free Southern troops. Lincoln’s re-election in November 1864 only further infuriated Booth and created an additional sense of urgency. Booth began to assemble a team of co-conspirators, a mix of Southern sympathizers and likely Confederate agents, who would assist him with the deed.

*Booth’s accomplices: Samuel Arnold, George Azterodt, David Herod*, *Lewis Powell, John Surrat, and Michael O’Laghlen.*

After Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1865, Booth learned that the President would be attending the play Still Waters Run Deep at the Campbell Hospital on March 17 and considered it a perfect opportunity to kidnap Lincoln. His plan was to intercept the president’s carriage on his way to the play. Booth’s plan this day was spoiled by Lincoln’s change of plan. Instead he decided to speak to the 140^th Indiana Regiment.

Murder Most Foul

With his initial plans thwarted, Booth and his conspirators went back to the drawing board. However, the fall of Richmond on April 2nd and Lee’s surrender a week later at Appomattox made Booth’s kidnapping plot impractical and irrelevant. The collapse of the Confederacy filled Booth with despair but a speech Lincoln would give would drive Booth in a more deadly direction. On April 11, two days after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln addressed a large assembly of people outside the White House. Among those in the group were Booth and his accomplices David Herold and Lewis Powell. Lincoln’s speech focused largely on healing and putting the fractured nation back together. During his speech, Lincoln called for limited Negro suffrage—giving the right to vote to those who had served in the military during the war, for example. Hearing those words, Booth muttered to companions, “That means nigger citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make.” He tried to convince one of those companions to shoot the president then and there.

By this time an angry Booth was completely fixated on assassinating Lincoln. He told a friend that he was done with the stage. and that the only play he wanted to present henceforth was Venice Presseved, a play about an assassination. On the morning of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Booth went to Ford’s Theater to get his mail. While there, he was told by The owner’s brother that the President and Mrs. Lincoln would be attending the play, Our American Cousin that evening, accompanied by Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. He immediately set about making plans for the assassination, which included making arrangements with the livery stable owner for a getaway horse and an escape route. Later that night, at 8:45 pm, Booth informed Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt of his intention to kill Lincoln. He assigned Powell to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward and Atzerodt to do the same to Vice President Andrew Johnson. Herold would assist in their escape into Virginia.

*A modern day photo of Lincoln’s box as it looked in 1865*

Booth entered Ford’s Theater one last time at 10:10 pm. In the theater, he slipped into Lincoln’s box at around 10:14 p.m. as the play progressed and shot the President in the back of the head with a .41 caliber Deringer pistol. Booth’s escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone who was in the presidential box with Mary Todd Lincoln and his fiancée Clara Harris. Rathbone and Harris were guests of Mrs. Lincoln and last minute replacements for General Grant and his wife who opted to visit family in New Jersey instead. Booth stabbed Rathbone when the startled officer lunged at him before jumping from the box onto the stage. Rathbone would suffer from serious mental issues the rest of his life because of his failure to stop Booth.

Booth was the only one of the assassins to succeed. Posing as a pharmacy delivery man, Powell entered Seward’s home where he forced his way upstairs, stabbing the Secretary of State,who was bedridden as a result of an earlier carriage accident, before being subdued. Although Seward was seriously wounded, he would survive. Atzerodt lost his nerve and spent the evening drinking alcohol, never making an attempt to kill Johnson.

Manhunt

After jumping onto the stage, Booth fled by a stage door into an alley, where his getaway horse was waiting for him. He and David Herold rode off into southern Maryland, planning to take advantage of the sparsely settled area’s lack of telegraphs and railroads, along with its predominantly Confederate sympathies. He thought that the area’s dense forests and the swampy terrain made it ideal for an escape route before crossing the Potomac River back into rural Virginia.

Federal troops combed the rural area’s woods and swamps for Booth in the days following the assassination. The hunt for the conspirators quickly became the largest in U.S. history, involving thousands of federal troops and countless civilians. Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, personally directed the operation.

On April 26, soldiers of the 16th New York Cavalry tracked Booth and Herold to a farm in Virginia, just south of the Rappahannock River, where they were sleeping in a barn. The soldiers surrounded the barn and threatened to light it on fire if they did not come out and surrender. Herold surrendered, but Booth cried out, “I will not be taken alive!” The soldiers set fire to the barn and Booth scrambled for the back door with a rifle and pistol.

Sergeant Boston Corbett shot Booth in the back of his head, severing his spinal chord. Paralyzed, the soldiers carried Booth to the steps of the barn. As he lay dying, he told his captors to tell his mother that he died for his country. Two hours later he was dead. By the end of the month, all of Booth’s co-conspirators were arrested except for John Surrat who fled to Canada and would be arrested a year later in Egypt.

After a seven week long military tribunal, four of Booth’s co-conspirators, Herold, Powell, Azterodt and Mary Surrat (John Surrat’s mother) were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Surrat would become the first woman executed by the Federal Government. Dr. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen were sentenced to life in prison while Edmund Spangler was sentenced to six years. O’Laughlen died in prison in 1867 but Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler were pardoned in February 1869 by Johnson.

News of Linoln’s death was met with an outpouring of grief across the country. On April 18, Lincoln’s body was carried to the Capitol rotunda to lay in state on a catafalque. Three days later, his remains were boarded onto a train that conveyed him to Springfield, Illinois where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad route and paid their respects to their fallen leader during the train’s solemn progression through the North. Frederick Douglass called the assassination an “unspeakable calamity” while General Ulysses S. Grant, called Lincoln “incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.” In the South Lincoln’s assassination was met with both joy and trepidation. Some believed Lincoln got what he deserved and saw Booth as a hero. South Carolina diarist Emma Le Conte wrote,”Hurrah! Old Abe Lincoln has been assassinated! It may be abstractly wrong to be so jubilant, but I just can’t help it. After all the heaviness and gloom… This blow to our enemies comes like a gleam of light.” Still others worried that all Southerners would be implicated, complicating efforts to heal the nation and put the divided country back together.

The Death of Trotsky and the Long Arm of the Kremlin

August 21, 2020August 21, 2020 lars4968Leave a comment

August 21, 1940- On this day Leon Trotsky died from wounds he suffered in an assassination attempt, the previous day by a Spanish born NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB) agent Jaime Ramon Mercader in Mexico City. The attack was organized by Pavel Sudoplatov, deputy director of the foreign department of the NKVD. Sudoplatov claimed that, in March 1939, he was ordered by Stalin that “Trotsky should be eliminated within a year.” The previous year Sudoplatov ran an operation that assassinated Yehven Konovalets, head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, in Poland, under orders from Stalin.

Two previous attempts to kill Trotsky had failed, one in March 1939 and one in May 1940. A new plan was hatched to send a lone assassin against Trotsky. Mercader, who had been recruited by the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War, gained access to Trotsky through his lover Sylvia Ageloff, a confidante of the former Bolshevik leader, and posed as an admirer. On 20 August 1940, Mercader was alone with Trotsky in his study under the pretext of showing him a document. Mercader struck Trotsky from behind and fatally wounded him on the head with an ice axe while Trotsky was looking at the document.

The blow failed to kill Trotsky, and he got up and grappled with Mercader. Hearing the struggle Trotsky’s guards burst into the room and beat Mercader nearly to death. Mercader was handed over to the police and Trotsky was taken to a hospital and operated on but died the next day as a result of severe brain injuries. During his trial, Mercader recounted the assassination, “I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.” Mercader was later convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released from prison in 1960 and was presented with the USSR’s highest decoration, Hero of the Soviet Union, personally by Alexander Shelepin, the head of the KGB.

Trotsky’s assassination, while remembered for its brutality, was not the last time the Kremlin had political enemies or other problematic individuals abroad assassinated. In 1955 a KGB asset Bohdan Stashynsky poisoned prominent Ukrainian nationalist figure Stepan Bandera with cyanide gas in Munich, under orders from Soviet KGB head Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. In 1987 Bulgarian dissident and defector Georgi Markov was killed with a ricin-tipped umbrella most likely by a KGB assassin while walking on London’s Waterloo Bridge. The 1981 assassination attempt against Polish Pope John Paul II by Turkish-citizen Mehmet Ali Ağca is also believed to have been organized by the KGB and its Bulgarian counterparts, who viewed the Pope as a threat to communist rule in Eastern Europe.

In today’s Russia, directed assassination against Kremlin foes at home and abroad are on the rise once again punctuated most recently by the suspected poisoning of leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and the 2018 attack on a former Russian military intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in the United Kingdom with a high-tech nerve agent. These attacks are not only increasing in their frequency but their brazenness and sophistication, once again proving the power of Stalin’s famous quote, “Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem.”