The series is structured as a series of flashbacks to earlier episodes in Trotsky's life, framed by events during his asylum in Mexico City (1939-1940). The first episode begins in May 1940, on the outskirts of Mexico City, when a group of Mexican Communists dressed as policemen attack Trotsky's house. After shooting into the house for nearly a quarter hour, Trotsky and his wife amazingly survive untouched. Afterwards, he reflects on his situation. Having lost almost all those close to him during his eleven years of exile from the USSR, Trotsky perceives USSR dictator, Stalin, will relentlessly pursue him until he is dead. Trotsky decides to leave a political testament of how a man from an oppressed minority managed to successfully overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish a new social order. He invites an ideological opponent – a Canadian journalist sympathetic to Stalin – to work with him and write that testament. Each episode of the series then explores a period in his life as an emerging leader of the Communist Revolution who then lost his new power to Stalin.
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