"Ori-Gun-I" The ZEV Technologies FDP Carbine"

 

I was reading my "American Rifleman magazine, and saw this and was thinking *wow*, If you wanted something that you could stick into a regular backpack or a briefcase and not really draw attention to yourself, this would do it.  Most of the Normies would have no idea what it is and it would allow you to take it to places that wouldn't draw attention to yourself and give you options on defending yourself incase the people with bad intentions show up in places where they are not supposed to be.   The possibilities are intriguing. 

   I with absolutely no shame clipped it from "American Rifleman"

Photos by Forrest MacCormack

How do I even begin this article? On the one hand, a straight-up history of various folding firearms would be a place to start, given that “FDP” stands for Folding Defensive Platform. We could start with some of the flintlock and percussion-cap pistols of the 18th and 19th centuries that had folding triggers. There’s the Burgess folding shotgun of the late 1800s (a design we’re seeing coming back around in the Pak 12 introduced at SHOT Show 2026). There’s also the Russian PP-90 or the Ares FMG, and even more recently, the KelTec SUB2000, folding Glock G19 and Smith & Wesson FPC. Guns that fold are really not all that novel or new.

What about discreet firearms? There’s the Heckler & Koch MP5K Operational Briefcase or the Military Armament Corporation MAC 10 and 11 briefcase designs. The Lifecard looks like an oversize credit card until it is folded out to a single-shot pistol. We could even toss the belt-buckle-riding North American Arms mini-revolver in the mix if we use the “hiding in plain sight” method of (non)concealment. These options are fewer and farther between than straight-up folding guns simply because of Any Other Weapon (AOW) considerations; basically, if a firearm doesn’t look like a firearm when it is capable of firing, it is considered an AOW and therefore falls under NFA regulations. Even some wallet-style pocket holsters can run afoul of this burdensome regulation if they allow the holstered gun to fire when in the holster itself (in addition to not being exactly safe for carry).

In its folded configuration, the FDP certainly doesn’t look like a traditional firearm • Even in the open position, the FDP has an unconventional profile • The trigger also folds as part of the mechanism, and it includes an automatic firing-pin safety • The position of the extractor serves as a loaded-chamber indicator • Its unconventional appearance extends to the muzzle due to the polymer enclosure • Standard 17-round Glock magazines will fit flush in the grip, while the included 21-round magazines are slightly extended.

It’s the rare confluence of folding design and discreet nature that make the FDP so interesting. Looking at the folded firearm, it looks like—well, it looks like a tool kit you’d see on “Star Trek” or something. It doesn’t look like a firearm, which was the original intention behind the predecessor to the FDP, the FMG-9.

Drake Clark, Magpul’s sales and business development manager, walked the floor of SHOT Show with a folded FMG-9 stuck in his back pocket (with the carry handle removed), taking time to show it to folks he knew who would be interested (which should be everyone, because it’s just that darn cool). Per Clark, as a matter of fact, “Really what we wanted was the Russian folding gun, the PP-90, but that wasn’t happening. You can’t easily get your hands on an Ares folding gun like in Robocop [2] either. If we can’t get the cool thing we want, we build it. We like cool s**t and we like tinkering, key ingredients of the Magpul recipe.”

The funny part, though, is that the FMG-9 wasn’t even Magpul’s first foray into firearm prototyping. Two years before the FMG-9 caused a stir at SHOT Show, Magpul had unveiled the PDR, a futuristic bullpup that looked like the love child of a PS90 and an M4. Around the same time as the FMG-9, the Masada—the rifle that would turn into the Bushmaster/Remington ACR— was also revealed, aiming at the piston-driven market dominated by FN’s SCAR and LWRCI’s M6. Magpul reiterated with the FMG-9 that, while not a firearm company, it could certainly produce cool prototypes.

As mentioned, the FDP started life as the FMG-9, introduced at SHOT Show 2008—yes, that’s right, if it were a human, it would be old enough to vote now. In 2021, the project transmogrified into the FDP, which is finally hitting store shelves some 18 years after the first prototype wowed us. It’s been a long road, but the Magpul (and Zev) folding pistol-caliber carbine has finally moved past the cryptid-like status of other firearms like the revitalized Bren Ten or the resurrected AutoMag.

But, it hasn’t really been in production purgatory for 18 years, mind you. When the FMG-9 was displayed at SHOT, it was fully intended to be a “look what we can do” sort of thing, not a “we are going to have this for sale.” After returning from a vacation abroad in late 2007, Mike Mayberry (the designer behind the PMag) took inspiration from the Ares FMG, sat down at his design table and whipped up what would become the FMG-9. Some late-night hustling with an early 3-D printer, and prototypes were ready for SHOT Show in January 2008.

Controls are centrally located—as expected—on the left side of the FDP, with the magazine release, thumb safety and slide release all accessible from a firing grip • Two 21-round Magpul PMags are included with the FDP.

Having the FMG-9’s likeness displayed in an extremely popular video game series in 2011 only intensified the mystique of Magpul’s folding carbine—but remember, it was never intended to go into production. Think of it like the fantastic concept cars that GM and Ford roll out to drum up interest, but are never going to make, like the Cadillac Sixteen revealed in the early 2000s with four-wheel steering and a 13.6 liter, V16 engine. The Sixteen was never produced, but the four-wheel steering made it into production vehicles.

What jump-started the project and turned the corner into reality was a partnership with Zev Technologies in the late 20-teens. Zev’s OZ9 pistol and its chassis concept became the basis for the FDP, the successor to the FMG. Magpul would make the polymer bits, the stock, mags and carry handle/sight array; Zev would make the barrel, slide and fire-control assembly. In 2021, the FMG-9 morphed into the semi-automatic FDP, and the folding firearm project was officially underway.

Yes, it took a little bit of time for the concept to become a reality. Zev Technologies president Taylor Goode explained, “Inno-vation doesn’t happen overnight. The FDP is literally a gun that folds. Not a chassis—a true folding gun. Getting it from concept to production took a lot of engineering, both on the “go-bang” internals and the folding shell from our friends at Magpul. We know folks waited a long time to see this one come to life, but we set out to create an entirely new platform that exceeds expectations, not a novelty. That requires a lot of due diligence. The result has been worth the wait.”

Opening the FDP involves holding it with the hinge pointed downward, depressing the charging handle slightly and letting gravity unfold it into position. Ensure the stock cover and grip levers are locked.

So, with all this information about the work that went into the design and eventual production of the FDP, what does it boil down to? It might be tempting to dismiss the FDP as a gimmick; after all, the party trick of the unfolding is pretty showy and attention-getting. To be fair, that’s not a bad thing; as Tamara Keel has made the case—repeatedly—in her “From the Counter” column in this very publication, that shooting is and should be fun. Bring the FDP to the range, and I guarantee you will raise the interest of your fellow shooters. It is most decidedly different; no question about that.

More importantly, it is not a one-trick pony. It offers a lot more than just the novelty of “hey, this toolkit-looking thing turns into a pistol-caliber carbine”—it’s actually a quality, capable firearm as well. Granted, when you see the names “Zev Technologies” and “Magpul” as the two companies behind the FDP, it’s tipping your hand as to how the gun can be expected to work. Neither company is any slouch in the excellence department; combined, the result should be spectacular.

And the FDP really is great. While recording some video for social media, we ran a number of magazines through the FDP quickly (slow-fire, when recorded in slow-motion, is about as much fun to watch as paint drying). Not only were there no malfunctions, but the accuracy (even with the … ahem … rudimentary sights) was top-notch. At 25 yards, I think maybe a half-dozen rounds left the C-zone of a standard IPSC target—and I was not taking my time with a solid shooting stance and focusing on the basics.

The folding component is definitely more than just an attention-getting device, too. The careful, clever engineering that goes into the FDP allows it to look rather innocuous—if you were to transport it in a messenger bag, should someone peek inside, they’d see a nondescript black case. It’s not like a large-format pistol that will immediately alert others to the presence of a firearm. Also, it takes standard Glock magazines, so if you carry a Glock-based 9 mm handgun, you’ve got the added convenience of double-dipping in your feeding devices.

Taking down the FDP for cleaning follows the same procedure as most striker-fired handguns, with the added step of removing the top cover first • Integral to the carry handle are the black front and rear sights • The folding trigger guard and molded hand stop are visible underneath the FDP • The lever on the top of the stock and on the back of the grip need to be depressed to close the FDP.

There are some drawbacks, to be sure. If you, like me, prefer red-dot sights on your defensive carbine, while it’s certainly easy enough to add one to the FDP, you lose the element of surprise. It will still fold, of course; however, when it is in the folded configuration, the red-dot sight will be clearly visible, thereby diminishing the “hiding in plain sight” aspect of the folded FDP. It’s also an SBR, which in and of itself isn’t a huge issue with the tax reduced to zero thanks to the efforts of your NRA. However, there are certain rules currently in place with SBRs that make ownership less convenient than for suppressors—namely the requirement to alert ATF if you’re taking it to a different state. Efforts are underway to change this, but at present, it remains a consideration.

If you want to accessorize the FDP, it’s not as easy as a traditional carbine. There aren’t any M-Lok slots to add lights or lasers. There’s no section for accessories, nor any ARCA rail or sling swivel studs for a bipod mount. But again, that’s not why you’re buying the FDP. It’s the “foldy-boi” aspect, not the ability to trick it out, that gives the FDP its appeal.

Let’s talk about the folding part. It’s both ingenious and simple. To unfold the FDP, simply grasp the carry handle with the fold facing the ground. Depress the charging handle slightly, and the gun unfolds into its usable form. Make sure that both the pistol grip and the cover plate at the top of the buttstock are locked into position, then insert a loaded magazine and use the charging handle to load. To fold it up, make sure it’s unloaded (check twice, just to be safe) and close the slide. Push the lever on top of the stock cover plate as well as the lever on the grip to unlatch both, and then the FDP can be closed.

Operationally, it’s basically an overgrown handgun. The magazine inserts in the grip, the barrel tilts up during firing (which makes it look odd when shooting with a suppressor attached, but I digress) and the controls are where you would expect them to be on pretty much any polymer-frame, striker-fired handgun. The magazine catch is reversible, and the charging handle (which, of course, also folds) is mirrored on the right and left sides; the safety lever is right-hand only, as is the slide-release lever. There’s a vestigial loaded-chamber indicator built into the extractor that is flush with the slide when a round is inserted for additional peace of mind, too.

Since it uses a short-recoil-operated, locked-breech system rather than simple blowback, recoil is quite light, even for an already-gentle 9 mm SBR. The sights are functional and adjustable, and accuracy is about what you’d expect from such platforms. You’re not going to win bullseye competitions with the FDP, but it’s certainly accurate enough for home- and self-defense scenarios, even those at more extended distances. At close ranges, the type you’d see for typical self-defense engagements, it’s easy to put rounds right where you want them pretty much as quickly as you can pull the trigger.

More critical is reliability—I wanted to give the FDP a workout, so more than 500 rounds were fired (It’s also crazy fun on the range, so I might have run a few more magazines than usual). One single stovepipe was experienced, toward the end of testing when the FDP had gotten both rather hot and pretty dirty. I’m not terribly concerned, as it happened with a magazine of questionable vintage (a “pre-ban” Glock 33-round magazine I’ve owned for almost 30 years). One lone failure out of 500 rounds isn’t a dealbreaker in my opinion, especially if you clean and lubricate properly.

It’s hard not to love the FDP. Combining “cool factor” with a gun that actually functions well and can be used for defensive purposes is a fait accompli; there’s definitely cachet to having an eye-catching firearm that also serves a useful purpose. Even if the FDP wasn’t great for self-defense—and it is great for self-defense—it would still be an important addition to the firearm market; the engineering that goes into the folding characteristics will almost certainly be carried over into future projects.

Useful, cool and reliable? That’s a trifecta of awesome in my book. If you want it because it’s neat, it certainly is. But, if you want it because it’s neat and you can actually use it, that’s its true beauty, because it simply works and works well.

FCAS Collapse Reshapes Europe's Future Fighter Plans.

The French have this habit during joint ventures of kinda crapping on their partners.  I do know that when the French and British were doing the Concorde, the British really believed in the plane, the French were paying lip service to the same. basically both oxen were not pulling the same weight. And when it came time to either kill or save the concorde after the "Paris Fire", the French voted to zap the airplane and the British wanted to keep it.  According to British sources, it was the belief that the French wanted to get away from the concorde and this was the perfect excuse.

      Apparently the Gaullic thing is to zap another partnership, you notice the french went alone and everyone else stayed together, makes me believe that the French were the problem children in this.

    I pulled this from Aviation week.

France wants its ACF to lean on technologies delevoped from the Rafale and the failed FCAS initiative

The three countries behind Europe’s fractured Future Combat Air System are beginning to chart different paths toward their next-generation combat aircraft, reshaping the continent’s fighter development landscape

• France is drafting plans to develop solo combat aircraft
• The UK is open to Germany joining GCAP, but Italy and Japan would need to approve the move, too

France is laying the groundwork for a national fighter program, echoing its decision four decades ago to leave the Eurofighter project and develop the Dassault Rafale independently. Germany is mulling joining Italy, Japan and the UK in the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP). Spain, having aligned itself closely with Berlin, could face a different set of choices following elections scheduled for late November.

The Spanish Air and Space Force has launched its Astra initiative to explore a future combat aircraft with national industry (AW&ST Aug. 10-30, p. 33). But a change of government in Madrid could prompt a rethink. Current plans foresee reliance solely on the Eurofighter until a replacement emerges, but the air force does not want to be dependent on a single platform.

One option could be to reexamine a potential Lockheed Martin F-35 buy—dismissed by the current administration—to replace Spain’s McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornets. That would buy the country time to weigh its longer-term options.

Development of the next-generation fighter pillar of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) ceased in June after France and Germany failed to resolve longstanding industrial disagreements between Dassault and Airbus over leadership and control of the aircraft’s development.

Paris has not ruled out international partnerships for its new effort, but after eight years of cooperation failed to produce a path forward for the fighter, the country is unwilling to make the success of its next aircraft dependent on foreign partners.

France’s proposed Future Combat Aircraft—referred to in French as the ACF—would build on technologies being developed for the Rafale F5 upgrade, French Air and Space Force Chief of Staff Gen. Jérôme Bellanger said on Oct. 14. Speaking before the National Assembly’s Defense and Armed Forces Committee, he stated that the aircraft would need to perform conventional missions in the 2040s before taking over the airborne component of France’s nuclear deterrent in 2050.

France is reusing the ACF acronym previously associated with the development of a Super Mirage, including the G8 version with variable-geometry wings pictured. Credit: AW&ST archive

The Rafale F5 would provide the “initial building blocks of this future aircraft,” Bellanger said, with advances in propulsion, sensors and onboard systems potentially carrying forward into the new design.

Bellanger did not say whether the ACF would need to operate from aircraft carriers, although that had been envisaged for the FCAS Next-Generation Fighter.

He emphasized that eight years of cooperation with Germany and Spain had not been wasted. Industry had made “real progress” across the FCAS’ other development pillars, including on uncrewed aircraft and low-observable technologies, he said.

Bellanger also advocated for continued cooperation with Germany on combat-cloud networks to connect crewed combat aircraft with supporting platforms, uncrewed systems and effectors. Such cooperation would be essential for interoperability, he said, allowing allied air forces to fight “together” rather than “merely side by side.”

The ACF has yet to receive formal development funding. However, French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin told lawmakers on Oct. 8 that work had been commissioned to establish the “critical path” toward developing a national combat aircraft.

Dassault Aviation CEO Éric Trappier said in July that his company had begun discussions with the French government on a post-FCAS fighter program and was planning a demonstrator for the early 2030s.

The national approach would leave France reliant on the Rafale well into the 2040s. By then, many European air forces will be operating fifth-generation fighters, and some might be preparing to introduce sixth-generation aircraft.

France hopes to bridge that gap through the Rafale F5 upgrade and uncrewed adjuncts, including a combat air vehicle for deep-strike missions and autonomous collaborative combat aircraft (CCA). Paris has announced plans to test a CCA alongside a Rafale or Mirage fighter in 2028 under its HypAIRion initiative.

While France is still defining its path forward, GCAP is moving through the early stages of aircraft development, which could complicate entry of new partners such as Germany. Although UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has expressed openness to Berlin joining the program, that would also require agreement from Italy and Japan.

Marco Zoff, CEO of GCAP industrial prime contractor Edgewing, has warned that the existing partners might need to make “trade-offs” if additional nations join the program. Officials from the GCAP Agency, which represents the three founding governments, have also suggested that new partners should not expect the same influence on the program’s direction as the original members.

GCAP is developing a next-generation fighter to replace the Eurofighter Typhoons operated by Italy and the UK as well as the Mitsubishi F-2s flown by Japan.

Edgewing, the industrial joint venture of BAE Systems, Leonardo and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co., opened the first of three planned international engineering sites in Turin, Italy, on Oct. 9. Engineers from Italy, Japan and the UK will work there on systems and subsystems for the new aircraft.

The company’s UK headquarters has been operating in Reading, England, since last year. A second engineering site is expected to open in Nagoya, Japan, in early 2027, followed by a third in Warton, England, later that year.

All three locations have long-standing associations with national combat aircraft development and production. They could eventually play roles in manufacturing, although decisions on aircraft final assembly and flight testing have yet to be made.

Edgewing is working to finalize the aircraft’s conceptual design, including its external configuration. The upcoming system requirements review will assess whether the proposed design and system requirements meet the three nations’ needs before moving toward detailed design. Current plans call for the GCAP aircraft to make its first flight in the early 2030s, Zoff said.

Despite the potential complications of expanding the partnership, Edgewing and the GCAP Agency remain confident that the program’s demanding timetable can be maintained.

The GCAP Agency said it has begun a “dialog” with Canada, which became an observer to the program this summer. Observer status allows Canadian officials to gain a closer understanding of GCAP as Ottawa considers potential participation or procurement.

The implications of admitting another partner depend on the extent of that partner’s desired involvement and the willingness of existing members to revisit industrial arrangements and possibly the trilateral treaty underpinning GCAP.

Airbus has said it is open to cooperation, but not at any cost, stressing that any partnership would have to come with meaningful workshare.

Although Germany’s potential entry has raised concerns about delays, Zoff insisted that protecting GCAP’s schedule remains a “priority for everyone.”

“No one of the three countries—and believe me, I say no one—is allowing for scheduling to shift to the right,” he said.

Leonardo CEO Lorenzo Mariani tells Aviation Week that German participation would be welcome and “industrially beneficial” in the long term but could be “disruptive” in the short term.

Monday Music "Just Got Lucky" by Jo-Jo- Boxer

 I had a busy Sunday, will post about it tomorrow, but here is a taste..

                                      And Yes I had a good time :)

  Jo-Jo Boxer was part of the what I call the 2nd British Invasion/New Wave that hit in the early to mid 1980's that gave the 80's that unique musical sound that to me made it my favorite decade, besides having Ronald Reagan as President and I had joined the Army and we had real pride in our country and I went to Germany and my adventures were starting if y'all know what I mean.  Good Times, I don't begrudge my time now, I have a good job, blessed with a good family, good wife, fairly good health for my age I am truly blessed.  

   

JoBoxers was a predominantly British new wave group formed in 1982, when former Subway Sect members Rob Marche (guitarist), Dave Collard (keyboardist), Chris Bostock (bassist), and Sean McLusky (drummer) teamed up with American singer Dig Wayne (born Timothy Wayne Ball, 20 July 1958, Cambridge, Ohio). Wayne had previously fronted the New York based punkabilly band, Buzz and the Flyers as Buzz Wayne.

Like Gangbusters is the first studio album by British new wave band JoBoxers, first released in 1983^[and featuring five chart singles.

The first single "Boxerbeat", the group's anthem, worked its way up the UK charts while the group were the opening act on the Madness 'Rise and Fall' tour,reaching number three. It was kept off the top slot by David Bowie's "Let's Dance" and Duran Duran.

Their next single, "Just Got Lucky", became an international hit. This single sold over 250,000 copies, made the UK top 10, and cracked the U.S. top 40, reaching #36 during November 1983, and has been featured in a number of films including Just My Luck and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

The third single "Johnny Friendly" is a homage to the Marlon Brando film On The Waterfront. British boxer Frank Bruno appeared in the promotional video for the song.

"Jealous Love"/"She's Got Sex" was released as a double A-side. "Jealous Love" was performed on the UK TV show Loose Talk introduced by the actress Diana Dors in one of her last TV appearances,while "She's Got Sex" was covered on Samantha Fox's double platinum selling album Touch Me (as "He's Got Sex"

The band's debut single, "Boxerbeat" found success in Britain, peaking at number three in the UK Singles Chart. However, it was their next hit, "Just Got Lucky," that truly broke the band internationally. This single also sold 250,000 copies, made the UK Top 10, and cracked the U.S. Top 40. It remains the band's only American top-40 hit to date, and the group are often branded as one-hit wonders in the U.S.

Subsequent singles "Johnny Friendly" and "Jealous Love" did less well. JoBoxers' debut album, Like Gangbusters, featuring all of the abovementioned hits, reached the Top 20 of the UK Albums Chart. The band released another single "Is This Really The First Time" and a second album Skin and Bone in 1985, but then split up, with McLusky joining Marche and Paul Wells in the indie-dance band called If? and Bostock joining Dave Stewart's post-Eurythmics group, The Spiritual Cowboys.
Meanwhile, Wayne remained in London and briefly attempted a solo career, releasing the album Square Business in 1987, featuring fellow former JoBoxer Dave Collard on keyboards. One single, "Mastermind" was released from this album. After his solo efforts proved unsuccessful, Wayne began pursuing an acting career. He would go on to appear in several stage productions (including a starring role in the successful West End musical Five Guys Named Moe) in the UK. In 1995, he returned to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles, California, to continue pursuing his acting/television career.

"Why Did Stalin Go Through All The Trouble To Assassinate Trotsky in His Mexican Fortress in Mexico?"

 

There is a quote that I like to keep in mind when the apparatus of the state start getting "too big for their britches" as they say here in the south.

   In the late 1930's Stalin in his paranoia sent millions to the gulags for "crimes against the State", he eviscerated the officer corp of the Red Army and they paid the price during the "Winter War" and the early parts of the "Great Patriotic War"  I don't know how different the Soviet Union would have been if Trotsky had replaced Lenin instead of Stalin.   Would be an interesting Alternative history story.   Personally I still considered Trotsky a Godless Communist and the world is better off without him and those like him, but he is a figure of history.

This is a Quora thing again

In 1917, a world war allowed an exiled Leon Trotsky to return and seize Russia. As WWII erupted, Stalin was terrified a 60-year-old man 6,700 miles away would do it again.

Even isolated in a heavily guarded compound in Coyoacán, Mexico, Trotsky remained the single greatest existential threat to the Soviet regime.

Trotsky was not just a dissident. He was the co-architect of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the charismatic founder of the Red Army. To the Old Bolsheviks—the original revolutionaries—Trotsky, not Stalin, was Vladimir Lenin’s logical heir. Stalin’s ascent to power was built on bureaucratic maneuvering, and he spent the 1930s executing almost all of the original revolutionary leaders during the Great Purge to cement his control.

Stalin’s narrative required a chief villain to justify the endless show trials and executions. He framed Trotsky as the mastermind of a global fascist conspiracy seeking to destroy the USSR. As long as Trotsky lived and wrote, he actively dismantled this narrative. From his Mexican exile, Trotsky published works like The Revolution Betrayed, exposing Stalin as a totalitarian usurper who had corrupted Marxist ideals. Even more dangerously, Trotsky founded the Fourth International, a rival communist organization designed to foment global revolution and bypass Moscow entirely.

With the outbreak of World War II validating Stalin's fears of global destabilization, he finally ordered the assassination.

Brute force failed to penetrate Trotsky's defenses. In May 1940, a Soviet-backed hit squad of twenty men, led by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, stormed the compound and riddled Trotsky’s bedroom with machine-gun fire, but Trotsky and his wife survived by hiding under their bed.

Realizing a frontal assault was useless against the "fortress," Stalin’s intelligence agency, the NKVD, switched to infiltration. They dispatched Ramón Mercader, a Spanish communist who spent months seducing a woman in Trotsky’s inner circle. Mercader slowly earned the guards' trust, posing as a sympathetic businessman. On August 20, 1940, Mercader was finally allowed alone into Trotsky’s study under the guise of asking for feedback on an article. While the 60-year-old revolutionary read the paper, Mercader struck him in the back of the head with a cut-down ice axe.

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) photographed in the 1930s during his exile. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

I did some surfing and got more background on the Stalin/Trotsky feud and shamelessly cut and pasted it.   The following is from Jason Dawsey PHD, He is related to the WWII museum in New Orleans, I got the information from their website.

On the afternoon of August 20, 1940, Ramón Mercader, a young Spaniard in the hire of the GPU, Joseph Stalin’s secret police, seized the moment. Under the alias of Canadian businessman “Frank Jacson,” he had infiltrated Leon Trotsky’s household in Coyoácan, a borough of Mexico City, several months earlier. As Trotsky leaned over his desk, Mercader viciously struck him on the right side of the head with a pickax, its handle cut down to hide it more easily under a raincoat. The wound inflicted was three inches deep. Reeling, the old revolutionary found the strength to fight back against the assassin. Trotsky prevented Mercader from inflicting another, fatal blow and battled for his life until his bodyguards arrived. With Mercader beaten unconscious and the police called, he collapsed into the arms of his wife, Natalia Sedova. The next day, Trotsky succumbed to his wounds, dead at the age of 60.  

With his nemesis murdered and Mercader, the murderer, denying any Soviet involvement (he would eventually serve 20 years in a Mexican prison), Stalin could feel a deep satisfaction. The individual, who, more than any other, symbolized opposition to Stalinism, had been eliminated. Mercader’s vile act closed the long, bitter conflict between the two men. From the fictionalized version in Unforgiving Years, the excellent novel by Victor Serge, his one-time comrade, to the 1972 movie, The Assassination of Trotsky, where Richard Burton portrayed him, the lurid details of Trotsky’s death have often commanded more attention than his extraordinary life. Trotsky’s struggle against Stalin and Stalinism, the subject of this article, was a crucial part of his life’s final decade.

 Born Leon Davidovich Bronstein to a family of Jewish farmers in Ukraine in 1879, Trotsky came of age among the revolutionary movements operating in the ultra-repressive atmosphere of the Russian Empire. At the age of eighteen, he enthusiastically embraced Marxism. The remainder of his life, one can say, without exaggeration, was based around a single, ultimate goal: worldwide workers’ revolution. During his early involvement in Russian socialist politics, Trotsky clashed with Vladimir Lenin over how a revolutionary party should be organized (such clashes would later serve Stalin well when he depicted Trotsky as hostile to Lenin’s ideas).  During the 1905 Revolution, after the formation of the first soviets (radical councils representing the working masses), Trotsky, only twenty-six at the time, served briefly as Chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet. After his trial and life sentence to Siberia for his revolutionary activities, he escaped and resumed life as a radical intellectual in Vienna, capital of the multinational Habsburg Empire. Trotsky's Results and Prospects (1906) outlined his brilliant conception of "permanent revolution," a Marxist theory of how a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Imperial Russia would inevitably transform into a socialist revolution that would engender revolution far beyond Russian territory. A long period of exile following Tsar Nicholas II’s crackdown on left-wing radicals ended when he returned in May 1917 to a Russia aflame with revolution. Joining the Bolsheviks a few months later, Trotsky worked closely with Lenin. Together, they prepared the overthrow of the ruling Provisional Government which kept the country in the disastrous world war. Henceforth, throngs of people uttered their names together—“Lenin and Trotsky.” As a member of the Bolshevik-led Military Revolutionary Committee, Trotsky played a decisive role in the insurrection in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), events he would later chronicle in his famed History of the Russian Revolution. The following March, he negotiated the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk forced on the Bolsheviks by Imperial Germany.  In the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), he organized and led the Red Army to an impressive victory over counterrevolutionary forces.

Trotsky also witnessed the tremendous setbacks of the early 1920s to revolutionary hopes. Under the New Economic Policy (NEP) set in motion by Lenin in 1921, the Bolsheviks had to concentrate on economic recovery after the severe wartime measures. The working class had been ravaged by three years of civil war. Many workers who survived the conflict had moved into administrative positions in the Soviet government or relocated to the countryside. Internationally, the USSR stood alone. The proletarian revolution Trotsky had expected to spread and take hold elsewhere had been stymied.  The radical Left underwent terrible defeats in 1919 in Germany and Hungary. There was the “Red Scare” in the United States in the same period. Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, acquired power in Rome in 1922 and his Fascist dictatorship became a fierce enemy of the Bolsheviks. More defeats soon followed in Germany, Estonia, and Bulgaria in 1923-25.

After Lenin died in January 1924, the question arose immediately about who would be the next leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Trotsky was one of the most recognizable figures associated with the October Revolution—admired, hated, and emulated within and outside the USSR.  Although history rightly remembers Joseph Stalin as Trotsky’s chief rival and later mortal enemy, in the early 1920s Stalin passed unnoticed by many observers. He had been a “barely perceptible shadow,” as Trotsky put it. One of the classic histories of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World, written by the American radical, John Reed, hardly mentions Stalin. Gregori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, not Stalin, emerged as Trotsky’s principal opponents in the immediate aftermath of Lenin’s death. These two men, who had been with Lenin for years, felt threatened by Trotsky’s popularity and his military record. A mistake, fateful for all three, though, had already been made. In 1922, Lenin, appreciating his organizational talents, chose Stalin for the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party. This gave him authority over party membership and appointments. Stalin quickly accrued enormous power and influence in the party over the next few years. Once Lenin, who, in his last months, sorely regretted his choice of Stalin, was no longer in the picture, Stalin sided with Zinoviev and Kamenev in their opposition to Trotsky.

As Trotsky later recognized, Stalin took advantage of the situation not only to appoint his own people but also to advance his own ideas about the future of the USSR. In 1924, he introduced the notion of “socialism in one country.” A socialist society could be built, Stalin contended, in the Soviet Union alone, regardless of the international context. The concept appealed to many Bolsheviks confronting the isolation of the globe’s only Marxist state.  Stalin went on to directly counter this idea to Trotsky’s emphasis on "permanent (i.e. world) revolution." Thanks to Stalin, “Trotskyism” soon became a term of opprobrium for elitism, factionalism, and a lack of connectedness to the masses of workers and peasants.
   
During the mid-1920s, Trotsky responded to these developments by calling for a restoration of workers’ democracy within the Communist Party. While he had advocated centralization during the Civil War, he had done so out of necessity. As the de facto leader of what became known as the Left Opposition, Trotsky assailed the growing bureaucratization of political life, the retreat from the old ideal of revolutionary internationalism, and the transformation of Marxism into “Marxism-Leninism,” a dogma not to be questioned. He gathered many supporters such as Karl Radek, Christian Rakovsky, and Victor Serge. Further support came from unexpected quarters. After Stalin maneuvered them out of positions of authority, Kamenev and Zinoviev threw in their lot with Trotsky in 1926. This Joint Opposition, never the most robust alliance, did not hold. Young “activists” violently broke up Opposition meetings with methods reminiscent of Mussolini’s Fascist squads. Stalin, wielding his power like a club, expelled Trotsky and his followers from the party in late 1927. Prophetically, Trotsky denounced Stalin as the “gravedigger of the Revolution.” Sent into “internal exile” in Kazakhstan for a year, he was then deported to Turkey in February 1929.     

In Prinkipo, a suburb of Istanbul, Trotsky wrote his autobiography, My Life. In that book is this remarkable description of Stalin, by then the sole ruler of the Soviet Union:
 
"He is gifted with practicality, a strong will, and persistence in carrying out his aims. His political horizon is restricted, his theoretical equipment primitive. His work of compilation, The Foundations of Leninism, in which he made an attempt to pay tribute to the theoretical traditions of the party, is full of sophomoric errors. His ignorance of foreign languages compels him to follow the political life of other countries at second-hand. His mind is stubbornly empirical and devoid of creative imagination. To the leading group of the party (in the wide circles he was not known at all) he always seemed a man destined to play second and third fiddle. And the fact that today he is playing first is not so much a summing up of the man as it is of this transitional period of political backsliding in the country."

This period was not to be nearly as “transitional” as Trotsky believed. With his opponents removed, Stalin enacted the collectivization of agriculture and state-directed industrialization, programs once championed by the Left Opposition, but now brutally implemented with a staggering toll of lives. He was not yet ready, though, to implement, to quote Trotsky, the “physical liquidation of the old revolutionaries, known to the whole world.” Stalin would bide his time for a number of years. And he could do so while watching his enemy live a refugee’s existence.  

Trotsky did not hesitate to label the Stalin dictatorship “totalitarian,” a concept still relatively new in political thought.  Thus, Stalinism, the counterrevolutionary system and ideology Stalin represented, preoccupied him. In this form of totalitarianism, a bureaucracy, a privileged caste, at the top of which Stalin perched like an absolute monarch, lorded it over the working class. Trotsky likened Stalinist domination to “Thermidor,” the term used to denote the end of the radical phase of the French Revolution and the shift to reactionary politics. As late as 1933, he thought, however, the Soviet system could be reformed by working through the structures of the Communist Party. The Left Opposition might dislodge Stalin from within without directly challenging state power. Trotsky held to this position until Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Germany was a country with a modern urban, industrial society he had long regarded as vital to the prospects for socialism. Trotsky decried the impact of Stalin’s policies in this catastrophe. The Soviet leadership had tied the hands of the German Communist Party and hindered a united front against the Nazi Party by construing moderate socialists as the real threat. Subsequently, Hitler crushed the mighty German workers’ movement with hardly a fight.  This disaster forced a profound shift in Trotsky’s thinking.
 
After Hitler took power, Trotsky concluded that reform of the Stalin regime had to be abandoned. Ousting Stalin by working through the channels of the Communist Party was no longer possible.  This much more radical perspective culminated in his 1936 The Revolution Betrayed.  Proletarian revolt would have to topple Stalin and the bureaucracy. This revolution, Trotsky made clear, would resemble the European upheavals of 1830 and 1848 more than the October Revolution. It would be a political revolution, not a social one. Collective ownership and control of the means of production (e.g. land, factories, mines, shipyards, oilfields), railways, and banks, as well as the planned economy, would remain. Trotsky’s designation of the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state” highlighted his conviction that Stalin had betrayed and degraded the original, liberatory aspects of the Bolshevik Revolution. Still, much could be salvaged from the damage done by Stalinism.

The vision Trotsky held in The Revolution Betrayed of political institutions in a liberated, post-Stalin USSR may surprise some. He called for free elections, freedom of criticism, and freedom of the press. While the Communist Party would benefit most from this open atmosphere, it would no longer possess a monopoly on power. As long as political parties did not try to restore capitalism, they could operate, recruit, and compete for power.  Stalin’s downfall would also signal new life for the trade unions. Trotsky imagined a restored involvement of workers in economic policy. Science and the arts might flourish once more. The state, no longer bound to the calamitous Stalinist policies, could return to the satisfaction of workers’ needs, like housing.  Stratification would yield to the reinvigorated aim of “socialist equality.” Youth, in whom Trotsky placed so much hope, “will receive the opportunity to breathe freely, criticize, make mistakes, and grow up.”
   
These thoughts Trotsky put to paper only months before he would be compelled to move again. For eight years, Trotsky had traversed what he called a “planet without a visa,” a planet torn apart by the worst economic crisis in the history of capitalism. Since Stalin expelled him and Natalia from the USSR, the beleaguered revolutionaries had found temporary sanctuary in Turkey, France, and Norway. Granted refuge by the leftist Cardénas government of Mexico, their arrival in Coyoácan in January 1937 was greeted with derision and menace by the country’s pro-Stalin Communist Party.

Photograph of Trotsky and Sedova’s Tomb, in the Garden of Their House in Coyoácan, in Mexico City. Credit: Gunther Schenk.

Stalin not only hunted Trotsky but anyone close to him from country to country. In Barcelona, in June 1937, his assassins abducted Trotsky’s former collaborator, Andrés Nin, a leader in the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), the organization of militants made famous by George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Nin disappeared at a critical moment in the Spanish revolutionaries’ struggle against Francisco Franco, never to been seen again.  Thirteen months later, in Paris, Rudolf Klement, who had once worked as Trotsky’s secretary, sat down for breakfast. Klement was kidnapped, presumably by GPU agents. They seized him and left his food on the table untouched.  A few weeks after he vanished, a body, missing its head and legs, washed up on the Seine.  It was not enough to just kill Klement; decapitation and dismemberment were required to incite extra terror.

Stalin’s agents also infiltrated the circle around Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov. Despite a difficult relationship with his father, Leon worked tirelessly for him in Paris. He communicated with Left Oppositionists still holding on inside Russia, edited the Bulletin of the Opposition, the most significant forum for Trotsky’s analyses of the contemporary world, and wrote an exposé of the Show Trials then taking place in the USSR. Mark Zborowski, Ukrainian-born and known to Trotsky’s supporters under the false name “Étienne,” soon worked his way into Sedov’s circle. Zborowski became Sedov’s personal assistant, helping with his correspondence and eventually taking care of the publication of the Bulletin. Thanks to “Étienne,” the GPU could count on seeing many of the articles from the latter before they even appeared in print. And Zborowski delivered to them vital information about Sedov’s health. When Sedov checked himself into a private clinic in Paris run by Russian emigres complaining of an appendicitis, the Soviets knew. He died there under mysterious circumstances in February 1938, five months before Klement disappeared.  To this day, the cause of death has not been conclusively determined. In a moving tribute to his son, Trotsky told of the terrible grief he and Natalia felt. “Together with our boy has died everything that still remained young within us.” Their other son, Sergei Sedov, had remained in Russia after his parents’ expulsion and always kept politics at arm’s length. That did not save him. He vanished and, it is believed, was shot in October 1937.   

This systematic killing overlapped with the monstrosity of Stalin’s Show Trials. These abhorrent mockeries of justice had their roots in the murder of Sergey Kirov, Stalin’s party boss in Leningrad. Kirov was gunned down in December 1934. Likely, Stalin himself was responsible for the assassination. The murder gave him the pretext for systematically and publicly purging the Communist Party. As the most visible aspect of the Purges, the Show Trials started with the Trial of the Sixteen in August 1936.  Old Bolsheviks, such as Zinoviev and Kamenev, stood accused of conspiring against the Soviet government. Shockingly, they confessed, confessed to submitting to Trotsky’s demands to assassinate Stalin and several of his subordinates. Following their death sentences, several successor trials ensued through 1938. The “physical liquidation of old revolutionaries, known to the whole world” was at hand. Trotsky knew that a combination of torture, threats to family members, and promises of freedom, if confessions were given, allowed the travesties to occur. When he read the infamous sentence uttered by Stalin’s Prosecutor-General, Andrey Vyshinsky—“I demand that these dogs gone mad should be shot—every one of them!”—Trotsky knew this was no idle threat.

Vyshinsky’s words became murderous reality in the USSR in the late 1930s and '40s. The violence swept away both supporters and opponents of Stalin and Stalinism. Radek and Rakovsky, former allies of Trotsky who later submitted to Stalin, were killed. So, too, was Nikolai Bukharin, one of Bolshevism’s leading theoreticians, a sharp critic of Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and a onetime backer of Stalin. Others were murdered in labor camps, the infamous Gulags, or in prisons. Among the thousands of victims were the Marxist economic thinker, Isaak Ilich Rubin, and the great historian of the Left and former director of The Marx-Engels Institute, David Ryazanov. Isaac Babel, whom Trotsky once termed the “most talented of our younger writers,” confessed to working as a spy and terrorist mastermind for Trotsky. The secret police put him to death in January 1940.  In this period, the Soviet Union was perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for independent-thinking Marxists, an astounding thing to say, given the records of the fascist regimes. For their contributions to the butchery, Stalin rewarded Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov, chiefs of the GPU during these years, by having them shot.

From the Show Trials, ever more outlandish tales about Trotsky were spun. The stories relayed by the accused placed him at the center of a massive, worldwide anti-Soviet conspiracy. Turning his calls for an anti-Stalin revolution against him, Vyshinsky pilloried Trotsky, the inveterate adversary of fascism, as the master fascist, as the string-puller and puppet-master. Besides links to the Gestapo, Soviet investigators claimed to have uncovered Trotsky’s connections to Mussolini, the government of Imperial Japan, and the capitalist democracies. Reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semitic theories, “Trotskyism” metamorphosed into a truly demonic apparition during the Show Trials. Yet Trotsky fought back vigorously.

Countering the way Stalin’s handpicked historians distorted the Soviet past, Trotsky had already authored The Stalin School of Falsification. His adherents, many of whom by this point referred to him, with affection, as the “Old Man,” founded the Fourth International outside of Paris in September 1938. Its aim was to provide a revolutionary alternative to the Moscow-led Third or Communist International (Comintern). This Fourth International would bolster radical, anti-Stalinist working-class parties and unions around the world. When it came to repudiating the preposterous charges raised in the Show Trials, he received considerable help. Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had an affair in 1937, and Diego Rivera were his tireless defenders in Mexico City. In the United States, a Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky formed. Similar organizations were founded elsewhere. The American Committee set up a Commission of Inquiry, chaired by John Dewey, the famous Pragmatist philosopher. Only one of the members, Alfred Rosmer, a syndicalist and early supporter of the October Revolution, could be described as a Trotsky supporter. Traveling to the Mexican capital, the Commission held thirteen sessions in April 1937. Trotsky, speaking in his quite imperfect English, responded to every accusation leveled by the Stalinists. He cast a powerful impression on those present, including the liberal Dewey, no admirer of his politics. In September 1937, the Commission issued its findings, clearing Trotsky of all the charges.   

The following years were dark, awful times for Trotsky, Natalia, and their inner circle. Losing two sons and innumerable comrades and friends to Stalin did not break his spirit, but the losses threw a shadow over everything he had done.  With the Japanese in China, Hitler moving into Austria, and threatening Czechoslovakia, and Mussolini dreaming of a  Roman Empire in the Mediterranean, the prospect of a new world war soon overtook him. Almost a year before it started, Trotsky spoke of an impending Second World War as a “new slaughter which is about to drown our whole planet in blood.”
 
Trotsky had good reason to utter such things. And he knew that Stalin’s response to German expansion in Eastern Europe would be critical. Following the Munich Agreement of September 1938, Trotsky expected the Soviet government to seek an agreement with Hitler. Stalin’s 1937-38 purge of the Red Army, including some of its most capable commanders, like Mikhail Tukhachevsky, had so seriously weakened the USSR that a military confrontation with Nazi Germany had to be avoided at all costs. Whatever anti-Nazi sentiments issued from the Kremlin, Trotsky thought, were not worth the paper they were written on. In the aftermath of the Show Trials, he believed an even more important reason would drive Stalin to come to an agreement with Berlin: survival. The Stalin regime was too despotic and unpopular to weather the storm of total war. According to Trotsky, a settlement with Nazi Germany might secure some stability for the dictatorship.    

When Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, his German counterpart, signed a Non-Aggression Pact between the two nations on August 23, 1939, Trotsky was scarcely surprised. Earlier that year, he had declared that Stalin’s name will be a “byword for the uttermost limits of human baseness.”  This damning statement received confirmation with Stalin’s next move—dividing up Poland with Hitler.

Standing: Joseph Stalin with Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; Seated: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov-at the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Credit: Hulton Archive/Toronto Star.

Trotsky’s struggle against Stalin entered a new and final phase with the start of World War II just a week later. In a steady stream of articles and interviews, he condemned the role of the Soviet Union, a state that, at least in its rhetoric, had sided with the colonized against imperialism. The betrayal of the principles of Red October had reached a new level of treachery. Perhaps Stalin, Trotsky surmised, now seemed content with partitioning Eastern Europe with the German fascists. Whatever the motives, he dubbed Stalin Hitler’s “quartermaster,” a lackey who reacted to his senior partner’s moves.     

The Soviet attack on Finland in November 1939, the beginning of the Winter War, made him wonder how far Stalin was willing to go to create a sphere of interest for himself. While he again damned Soviet aggression, Trotsky, at the same time, despised Marshal Mannerheim, the right-wing Finnish leader rallying his people. Still, Trotsky, true to his Marxism, hoped that “sovietization” in Poland and Finland might free workers and peasants in both countries from the dominance of capitalists and landlords. Yet socialism, he realized, ultimately could not be built on the tips of the Red Army’s bayonets.

This was a huge dilemma for Trotsky. How could one support social revolution in areas under Soviet control without giving any ground on his anti-Stalinism? An even bigger problem posed itself. What if Hitler repudiated the pact and attacked the USSR? Trotsky had no doubt Hitler would do so at the earliest opportunity. His answer was absolutely unequivocal. Socialists and workers everywhere must rally to the defense of the Soviet Union. The achievements of the Bolshevik Revolution had to be defended.

This position, which alienated many of his adherents, coexisted with another claim—the new world war would mean the end of the Stalin regime. Trotsky predicted that the workers and peasants of the USSR, their revolutionary energies revitalized, would put an end to the Stalinist bureaucracy. The revolution he outlined in The Revolution Betrayed would itself form part of a gigantic wave of revolutionism engulfing the Axis powers and the capitalist democracies. Like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini would meet the severe justice of the proletariat. Trotsky argued that capitalism, stricken for a decade by mass unemployment, immigration quotas, tariff wars, and the constriction of trade, had entered its “death agony” as well. Defiantly, he announced, “from the capitalist prisons and the concentration camps will come most of the leaders of tomorrow’s Europe and the world!” One outcome Trotsky envisioned resulting from this world revolution would be a Socialist United States of Europe. The latter, in turn, would form part of a World Federation of Socialist Republics.  This would have amounted to the greatest geopolitical revolution in human history with socialism becoming a truly global societal form.

Trotsky held to this radical perspective even as Stalin signed a commercial agreement with Hitler in February 1940, then seized Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania, and annexed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. He clung to it as his own health deteriorated and, as he had long feared, Stalin’s assassins closed in on him.  At the end of February, Trotsky wrote a final testament, fearing death was near. “Life is beautiful,” he said. “Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.” Three months later, radical evil appeared very much alive and on the move.

On May 1, a day long associated with the Left and labor militancy, 20,000 Mexican Communists marched in the capital and shouted: “Out with Trotsky!” Trotsky and Natalia had already assumed their lives were in jeopardy. With its electrified wires, alarms, and enforced doors, their house in Coyoácan looked more like a fortress than a home. As Trotsky tried from afar to keep pace with Hitler’s invasion of France and the Low Countries, launched on May 10, a plot to kill him took shape. It was led by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, once a friend of Rivera, but now a convinced Stalinist. On the night of May 23, Siqueiros’s men broke into the home and fired over 200 shots. Miraculously, Trotsky and Natalia survived. So did their grandson, Esteban Volkov, who had been living with them.
    
Trotsky proclaimed in defiance, “in the annals of history Stalin’s name will forever be recorded with the infamous mark of Cain.” When the May attempt failed, the GPU decided to go with Mercader. In August, after delays and missteps, he fulfilled his deadly mission. Among the papers next to where Trotsky struggled against his assassin was a long, unfinished manuscript, a biography of Stalin he penned to expose his enemy. The blood spilled in the study confirmed what was etched in ink on the book’s pages. Indeed, with Trotsky’s murder, Stalin demonstrated his most terrifying talent. He was a hangman whose noose could reach across oceans.
   
In retrospect, it is astonishing just how confident were Trotsky and his supporters (not least those in the United States such as James P. Cannon) in a coming proletarian revolution that would sweep away the Stalin regime. Trotsky’s expectation that World War II would lead to the toppling of Stalin and the restoration of a true workers’ state in the U.S.S.R. never, of course, materialized. In fact, the victory of the Red Army during the “Great Patriotic War” against the Axis states only solidified Stalin’s rule. For many, Marxism became irrevocably defined by and identified with Stalinism. Victory did not mean in this case, though, validity for the system Stalin molded. Trotsky’s critiques of Stalin the person and Stalinism the phenomenon remind us of that.