Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

Leon Trotsky (Len Davidovitch Bornstein), 1879-1940, Russian revolutionary and co-architect of the Russian Revolution, has an interesting what if connection with the University of Edinburgh. He was invited to stand for election as Rector in 1935 by Reginald Nathaniel Levitt but, though honoured, declined the invitation. This was the same year that Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was invited but also declined to stand.

It was Viscount Allenby of Megiddo who went on to become the Edinburgh University Rector in 1935, though he died very suddenly in London the following year from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm - on 14 May 1936. Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson then stepped up us Rector.

Just a year after the invitation from Edinburgh students, in 1936, Trotsky settled in Mexico. But, on 20 August 1940, acting on the orders of Stalin, Ramon Mercader attacked Trotsky with an ice pick and he died the next day.

Sources

Letter from Leon Trotsky to the students of Edinburgh University, 7 June 1935