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 on behalf of a group of students 'of all shades of political opinion'. Though honoured, he felt compelled to decline the invitation.
His own translation of the letter is as follows:
I am very grateful to you for your unexpected and flattering proposal to enter my candidacy for the office of Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh. The freedom from nationalistic considerations which is revealed in this offer does great honour to the spirit of the Edinburgh students. I appreciate your confidence all the more since, in your own words, you are not daunted by the refusal of the British Government to grant me a visa. However, I do not consider myself entitled to accept your offer. The election of the Lord Rector takes place, as you say, on an apolitical basis, and your letter is signed by representatives of all shades of political opinion. But I myself occupy too definite a political position: all my active life since my youth has been devoted to the revolutionary liberation of the proletariat from the yoke of capital. I have no other claim to occupy any responsible position, I would thus consider it treasonable to the working class and disloyal to you to appear in any public sphere under any but the Bolshevik banner. I do not doubt that you will find a candidate much better suited to the traditions of your university. I wish you success in your enterprises with all my heart and remain gratefully.
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 Grierson was elected in the ensuing Rectorial Election.
Trotsky had been exiled from Russia in 1929 and his reply to Levitt was written less than a fortnight before he left France, after two years there, to begin a year and a half in Norway. Just a year after the invitation from Edinburgh students, Trotsky settled in Mexico. 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
Trotsky’s Diary in Exile, 1935 (Faber & Faber, 1958)