Few historical figures of the twentieth century are as intriguing from a transatlantic perspective as Leon Trotsky. Trotsky (Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, 1879–1940) can be thought of as “transatlantic” in at least three ways. First, and perhaps most obviously, we can consider Trotsky’s transnationalism in terms of the internationalist basis and verve of his political theories. Second, we might explore how Trotsky's exilic fate placed him in contact with intellectuals, followers, and enemies in multiple linguistic and cultural communities in Europe, Turkey, and the Americas— places in which he could further observe the “unevenness” of capitalism in space and time. Third, we might consider the cultural representations of the Old Man's exile and assassination at the hands of a Catalan Stalinist agent, Ramón Mercader, in Coyoacán, Mexico in 1940, whereupon the revolutionary leader becomes a vessel of Hispanic Atlantic contemplation and circulation.

Trotsky, together with Vladimir Lenin, led the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in the early stages of Soviet communist rule. Long before he became the target of Stalin's cross-continental manhunt that would end in his spectacular assassination, Trotsky faced a perpetual political banishment with a dénouement catastrophic for his family, his followers, and the future of his political philosophy.