Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lenin's handpicked head of the ever-expanding secret police, screamed for two hours, mostly at or about Trotsky, denoucing the main opposition faction. The exertion was apparently too much for him, he died the day after his harangue. Trotsky was shortly after removed from all posts, expelled from The Party, interntally exiled, and ultimately expelled with his wife from the USSR, thus escaping execution. Prior to this, during the struggles between Stalin and his former allies, Trotsky said, in a speech:None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right... We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. The English have a saying, "My country, right or wrong", whether it is in the right or in the wrong, it is my country. We have much better historical justification in saying whether it is right or wrong in certain individual concrete cases, it is my party... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.Trotsky spent the rest of his life publishing his own line of agitprop against Stalin, who arranged for Trotsky's assassination. In recent years the ice axe (weird choice for Mexico, where the killing took place) reemerged, still caked with Trotsky's blood.
Interesting.