A Personal Quest for Political Truth : History: Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, wants to ensure that his grandfather is restored to his rightful place in Soviet history.

All over the world, bad things happened to people close to young Esteban Volkov. Usually they died.

His mother committed suicide in Berlin. His father reportedly was shot to death in a Soviet concentration camp. In Paris, an uncle succumbed mysteriously after a routine appendectomy. Later, it was determined that the uncle almost certainly was poisoned.

In Mexico City, Volkov himself was almost killed once as he huddled under his bed while bullets, meant for his grandfather, slammed around him, including one that grazed his foot.

In all, more than 30 relatives died in the intrigues that followed the founding of the world’s first Marxist nation.

But all of it was small potatoes compared with the day in August, 1940, when an assassin finally got close to his grandfather and drove an ax into his skull, the final move in a long-distance game of ruthlessness.

Volkov’s grandfather was Leon Trotsky, revolutionary, former commander of the Red Army, a founding father of the Soviet state and arch foe of Josef Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union who branded Trotsky an enemy of the revolution and forced him into exile in 1929.

Today, as the Soviet Union reassesses its past, Trotsky’s life and the manner of his death reverberate with both contemporary and historical significance. For instance, nearly 50 years later--in the age of glasnost-- the Trotsky connection still has the power to catapult Volkov, now 63, from his cloistered, almost apolitical life as a Mexico City chemist into a global debate about his fiery grandfather’s political legacy and his proper place in the new Soviet history.

“We don’t ask for political rehabilitation because he doesn’t need political rehabilitation. We want historical truth. . . . Truth is a basic element of progress. We cannot go anywhere without the truth,” Volkov said in a Los Angeles interview.

Until very recently Trotsky was officially a “devil” in the Soviet pantheon, a spy and murderer who schemed against the establishment of Stalin’s utopia.

For the last two weeks, Volkov has been traveling the United States with French historian Pierre Broue, author of a recent, huge biography of Trotsky, seeking to draw attention to his grandfather and possibly accelerate the fresh look at the Stalin era within the Soviet Union. At issue is whether Trotsky will be fully recognized for his role, probably second only to Lenin, in the founding of the Soviet Union.

The murder of Trotsky, apparently on orders of Stalin, silenced one of the dictator’s most articulate enemies and a key architect of the Bolshevik Revolution that established the Soviet government. It’s generally agreed that the killing gave Stalin even more latitude to rewrite history--to minimize, distort and often erase the role played by the man who might have succeeded Lenin as leader of the first communist state. Other early revolutionaries such as Nikolai Bukharin and Grigory Zinoviev recently have been cleared of crimes alleged by Stalin and restored to official history.

And after decades of suppression, a few of Trotsky’s works have been published in the Soviet Union, but the body of his vast output remains unavailable.

Trotsky himself recently has been recognized as an important figure by Soviet historians, although he continues to be criticized as an ambitious schemer who sought to become a dictator himself, a point hotly disputed by some Trotsky backers. His true character as a political leader probably will continue to be a source of debate because his ideas on implementing Marxism were never really put to the test.

While Volkov and historian Broue said they are not satisfied with Trotsky’s somewhat improved status, they conceded surprise at the speed with which the Soviets are rewriting their history.

Broue noted that an excerpt from his book was recently published in the Soviet Union and that the biography may be issued in all its heftiness--three pounds, 1,100 pages--in Russian before it appears in English. Broue, a professor of history at the University of Grenoble, is director of the French Leon Trotsky Institute, publisher of Trotsky’s complete works in the French language. (Broue will be among the speakers at a panel on Trotsky and Stalinism Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Patriotic Hall, 1816 S. Figueroa St.)

Most notably, Volkov and Broue have traveled to the Soviet Union, making contact with small groups of Trotsky’s supporters there and speaking at small rallies. Volkov has been interviewed by the Soviet press. However, neither apparently will be truly satisfied until Trotsky achieves historical equality with other makers of the Bolshevik Revolution who have retained or regained their proper eminence.

Ironically, Volkov’s quest for his grandfather’s heritage began with a lie. Two years ago, a French magazine reported that Volkov had been invited to Moscow for the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the communist revolution. While the story was untrue, Volkov’s quiet life was destroyed by a barrage of phone calls from reporters around the world. “It started a huge interest that hasn’t stopped,” Volkov said.

Volkov seems to enjoy the attention won by his link to momentous events and important people. It is a “privilege,” he said, to be part of the “fascinating historical moment” when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost has opened a window to his own past.

It is a moment for which Volkov paid dearly.

Volkov remembers his grandfather as a kindly man surrounded by a fascinating collection of hangers-on and visitors at his house in Mexico City. For a boy in his early teens, it was a welcome change from the orphan’s life he had led in Europe, Volkov said.

But there was danger in living with an exiled enemy of one of the world’s most powerful men. In the early hours of May 24, 1939, men armed with Thompson submachine guns attacked the Trotsky house, firing more than 100 bullets into Trotsky’s bedroom and that of his grandson next door.

Volkov recalled that he was awakened by the sound of a door to the outside opening and that he then saw the silhouette of a man. He threw himself under his bed when the firing began and somehow escaped serious injury, although several bullets were fired through the mattress, Volkov said.

During that attempt, Volkov said his grandfather was befuddled by sleeping pills and initially thought that the gunshots were firecrackers. Trotsky’s wife saved him by dragging him from bed to the shelter of a corner.

The next year Trotsky did not escape the attack by an ax-wielding assailant. Volkov remembered that he was coming home from school and noticed an unusual number of cars and people in the street near his grandfather’s house. He went into the house and peeked through a crack in a door to see his grandfather lying wounded on the floor. Trotsky, who was still conscious and did not die until the next day, ordered, “ ‘Keep the boy away. He shouldn’t see this,’ ” Volkov said.

Nearly half a century later, Volkov has not converted this dramatic scene into a justification of Soviet sainthood for his grandfather. Particularly as commander of the Red Army, his grandfather practiced violence, he said.

“It was the violence of history,” he added. “That’s how history is accomplished.” He simply wants the past put into the proper perspective, he explained, not only for his grandfather but for all the victims of the Stalin era.

“Personally, I would not like Trotsky to become an icon,” he said.