Leading role in organisng and arming the Red Guards

Lead negotiator for peace with Germany (Brest-Litovsk)

Battled the wave of Stalinism and was unsuccessful

Red Army continued to grow - over 500,000 soldiers

Trotsky introduced a strict system of punishment for the soldiers who were judged to be disloyal

Trotsky transferred the majority of his combat troops against the Whites

He ordered the Red Army to attack the Kronstadt sailors

Stalin gains power and fires and removes Trotsky's supporters

Trotsky's supporters wanted him to organise a military coup instead he resigned his post

Stalin arranged for Trotsky to be removed from the government

Trotsky believed that there should be a world revolution

Stalin threatened to expell his opponents and eventually did including Trotsky

"the pride and glory of the revolution...the reddest of the red" (Trotsky)

"Nothing did more to shape the ruling attitudes of the Bolsheviks" (Figes) - Civil War

"instrument of struggle against their social or "internal" enemies" (Figes) - War Communism

"subjugate a society they could not control by any other means" (Figes) - Bolshevik use on terror

'One may state...that the party was indebted first and foremost to comrade Trotsky...for the able organisation of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee.' (Lynch)

'If Lenin was the architect of the revolution, Trotsky was the master builder.' (Lynch)