Today in Labor History May 24, 1940: Iosef Grigulevich, under orders from Stalin, attempted to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico, with the aid of the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. He failed miserably, only wounding Trotsky’s young grandson in the foot. Pablo Neruda helped him escape the Mexican authorities. Later that year, Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader assassinated Trotsky with an ice axe. This, of course, led to the parody political slogan: A chicken in every pot and an ice pick in every Trot.

Grigulevich was a Soviet secret police (NKVD) agent who was active from 1937-1953. He was born in 1913 to Jewish parents in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the Pale—the region where Jews were restricted within the Russian Empire—(hence the saying: Beyond the Pale). In the 1930s, he had worked in Spain as a Soviet spy, reporting on the activities of suspected anti-fascists, like George Orwell and CNT labor organizer Andres Nin; the latter of whom he murdered in 1937. In the 1950s, he was directed to assassinate Tito, in Yugoslavia. However, he aborted that mission when Stalin died.

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