Trotsky. The guy who argued the Soviet Union was too authoritarian and bureaucratic. And was serving an unaccountable elite instead of the workers. Arguably much closer to the spirit of Marx than Stalin. Is the one everyone hates?

This meme is kinda tankie brained.

Also tag yourself: am a mix of Rosa “the gremlin” Luxembourg and Nadezhda “Um… what’s her name again?” Krupskaya in terms of vibes LOL

Trotsky’s personality might have been quite annoying but I do think he had a lot of correct observations and predictions, including but not limited to:

His crucial and monumental role in the civil war, accurately calling out the growing bureaucracy which later evolved into the corrupt nomenklatura with all their privileges and special status.
Him being able to see past his disdain for Stalinism and vocally supporting the USSR in WW2 etc.

There is a lot of slander about him, as with most old Bolsheviks (most of which were murdered in the 1930s…)

And yes, he was a Bolshevik through and through. He corrected his position way before 1917 and usually tried to stay away from dogmatic ones as well. Why else would he have helped so much in the civil war and played one of the key positions?

Koba was only relevant as for his bank robberies (which were based) and IIRC failing a military offensive in Poland/Ukraine.

(Only much later becoming more relevant by abusing his position as gensec.)

While Trotsky had so many feathers in his cap, from the early pravda board, to the Petersburg/Petrograd Soviet, obviously the Red Army, his later positions of the economy (meaning after his armies of labour blunder) which were adopted almost verbatim by Stalin after he opportunistically disposed of the right wing with e.g. Bukharin (whose position he implemented before).