I'm John Dotsu, with Josh Ireland.

This is the story of the murder of a man named Lev Trotsky.

Lev Bronstein takes the name Trotsky and running from exile earlier in his life.

He's now arrived in January of 1937 in Mexico, Tampico where the boat docks and then on to Mexico City, a little place outside of Mexico

City, now inside the city, a suburb.

And it's given free housing by a very, by a couple, a married couple who are very famous, Diego Rivera,

which Josh has already mentioned, and his wife Frida Kolkoka, who's also enormously famous.

It's like when I read this part of the book, I thought, what is this? Walk Ons here.

I thought we're writing about Trotsky and Stalin, not famous Mexican painters, but okay.

So right now, the Fourth International is in the correspondence that Trotsky is writing to all of his followers in the United States and around the world.

And the Fourth International in Trotsky's mind is a combination of capitalism and socialism

because the socialist experiment in Russia is failing.

And with the death of the head of the Lenin of Petersburg, the death of a very prominent

member of the Communist Party, Stalin launches what will become the terror in order to explain

everything because Trotsky is behind a plot to undermine the revolution. That leads, as Josh

says, to the execution of Lubianca of all the original founders.

But it also tells Trotsky, when he arrives in Mexico, that he's a marked man.

Is the fatalism take place as soon as he arrives in Mexico, Josh, or was it always there?

I mean, I think probably some part of Trotsky knew from the very moment he left Russia that at some point Stalin's assassins would catch up with him.

And I think maybe Stalin, there's a sort of people will say that witnesses said that the second that Trotsky sort of crossed the borders of the Soviet Union

was the second that Stalin began to regret ever letting him escape.

And from that moment, you know, that Stalin began to demand the leaders of his secret police,

...