Trotsky’s Bronx Tale Revisited

You cannot fail to have notice that recent primary wins by Democratic Socialist candidates at Manhattan and the Bronx have kicked off furious national debates about communism, capitalism and everything in between. But a new book suggests these developments might not be so, well, radical. “Leon Trotsky’s fall from revolutionary hero to hunted exile ranks among the most dramatic reversals in modern political history,” Nigel West and H. Keith Melton write in their new book “The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: Espionage, Scandal and the Crime of the Century.”The authors describe Trotsky as “indispensable to the Bolshevik triumph of 1917.” But it’s often forgotten that the Russian rabble-rouser was actually in America, living in the Bronx, as a matter of fact, when Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne, amidst the riots and starvation that precipitated the Russian Revolution.Trotsky set sail for the U.S. in January 1917, and moved his wife and two children into a three-room flat on tree-lined Vyse Avenue, between the Bronx River and Crotona Park. He then plunged into New York’s thriving radical subculture, working out of a Russian newspaper office at Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Place.In his autobiography “My Life,” published in 1930, Trotsky recalled his first impressions of America: “Here I was in New York, city of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automatism, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city in the world, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.”All of this and more — from Trotsky’s Jewishness to his inner psychological conflicts — was explored in best-selling author Robert Littell’s novel Bronshstein in the Bronx, released last year. Yet another non-fiction book about Trotsky’s life, times, and New York City feuds was released earlier this year: Josh Ireland’s The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy.Why this sudden interest in this bespectacled revolutionary, who was more or less marked for death by Stalin just a few years after the Russian Revolution? And with socialism back in the national debate, and enmeshed with other thorny topics like Israel and immigration, crime and policing, what can we learn from Trotsky’s time in America?Is this just history repeating itself? Or is there something here that the American political system can learn from? A good place to start answering these questions is also found at the Bronx, a mile or so east of Trotsky’s old Vyse Avenue flat.On a steamy day this time last year, the skies opened above White Plains Road, in the borough’s Parkchester section, dousing a flag-draped coffin below. On July 28, 2025, New York City police officer Didarul Islam was killed while working an off-duty security job at 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan, allegedly by a suspect who’d traveled cross-country from Las Vegas, according to investigators.Thousands of mourners flocked to the rain-drenched funeral service at Jame Masjid mosque to honor the fallen officer’s sacrifice, and comfort his pregnant widow, who gave birth to the couple’s third son weeks later.White Plains Road was far more sedate during a recent visit. Men in robes and kufis strolled past posters advertising summer school at Jame Masjid, while neighbors tended to tomato plants sprouting from Home Depot buckets on their driveway.But this relative calm obscures fierce debates raging across the Bronx – and the entire country – in the wake of June primary wins by Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) congressional candidates. This has propelled New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani onto the national stage alongside fellow progressive, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who happens to represent the district in which the Jame Masjid mosque is located.This makes sense, right? Mamdani, AOC and their allies argue that a cabal of rich, racist right-wingers are oppressing immigrants, the poor, and people of color. The Bronx has been synonymous with these marginalized communities for decades, so, obviously it must be a hotbed of radicalism, just as it was in Trotsky’s day?Actually, no. There’s something to learn from the old days in the Bronx. Just not from Trotskyites. Back when my grandfather and his 10 Irish Catholic siblings lived in a South Bronx tenement, the borough had its share of far-left and far-right ideologues. But come Election Day it was usually the Tammany Hall political organization, and local power broker Edward Joseph Flynn, that emerged victorious. ou’d be hard-pressed to get anyone from DSA — or conservative Turning Point USA, for that matter — to praise Tammany Hall these days, or even explain exactly what it was.The Tammany “machine” was unquestionably corrupt, but you don’t maintain political power in an ever-changing metropolis for nearly a century (roughly the 1870s to the 1960s) without getting a few things right.And one thing old-school machines like Tammany did was blend economic progressivism with cultural conservatism, a formula that time and again eludes today’s left and right.Socialism “persists because its ideas can win adherents in moments of political and economic crisis,” the New York Times declared in a long analysis posted this month, adding that now may be a moment when “socialist ideas can be realized at a greater scale than ever before in the United States.”Yet no mention is made of the controversial non-economic ideas that animate 21st Century socialism. There is anti-Semitism in many shapes and forms, a broader disinterest in people of faith, and abstruse race and gender theories. Most importantly, there’s the anti-elite sloganeering from activists who’ve spent more time at Ivy League grad schools than inside union halls.Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — the godfather of 21st century socialists — recently touted DSA’s efforts “to fight for a government that represents all of us and not just the one percent.” But for all of their youth and energy, many DSA supporters have an anachronistic definition of “one percent” — it comprises the wealthy, sure, but they extend it to law enforcement which is then linked to structural “white supremacy.”My grandfather, and Trotsky, surely came across plenty of pale cops from Galway or Cork. But as we approach the one-year anniversary of Didarul Islam’s tragic murder, one thing that’s clear is he was, in many ways, a typical 21st Century cop.Many municipalities now have so-called “majority-minority” police forces. These officers are hardly rich, and more and more of them are female.It’s going to be very hard to build a “working class” movement without this class of workers, and their families. Perhaps that helps explain why Zohran Mamdani actually lost the Bronx (to a white male!) back in the June 2025 Democratic mayoral primary and also why in 2024 Donald Trump ran about 50-50 with Kamala Harris in precincts east of the Bronx Zoo, including so-called “Little Yemen.”Conservatives, meanwhile, have a different version of the same problem. Too many are content to pile on with trolling and bigotry when it comes to immigrants, even though institutions beloved by Republicans – law enforcement, military, religious organizations – are filled with family-oriented, decidedly un-woke, immigrants and their children. Often with roots in countries that know all too well the ruthless shortcomings of socialism and communism.Trotsky, after all, was not only assassinated by onetime allies, but “New York became the hub…where the plot to kill Trotsky” took shape, Nigel West and H. Keith Melton write in their book.It’s fitting that the boundary separating AOC’s congressional district from that of a more “moderate” Democrat — that is, gay, Hispanic, Israel-supporting Ritchie Torres — is Vyse Avenue where Trotsky once lived.Which way might the Bronx — and America — tilt in the future?

Trotsky’s Bronx Tale Revisited

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