Trotskyites Laud End of ‘Stalin’s System’ : Ideology: Devotees of the exiled and slain revolutionary welcome upheaval in the Soviet Union. At last, they say, true communism may have its day.

As Josef Stalin’s collective system crumbles across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, descendants and followers of the former dictator’s archrival, Leon Trotsky, say the road to true communism has just been opened.

His grandson, Esteven Volkov, is one of the few descendants to survive Soviet death camps or exile. He looks happily on the crash of the empire founded by Stalin, but refuses to applaud Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s market-based perestroika or to write off communism as a lost cause. Far from it, he says, Trotsky’s ideas for a worldwide communist system may yet change the world.

“Communism has hardly existed--only Stalinism--so how can they say it is dead?” the taciturn, 64-year-old Volkov said in an interview beside his grandfather’s grave near the house in Mexico City.

For the 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s death, the fortress-like house where the founder of the Red Army lived and died on a quiet, tree-lined street is being spruced up at government expense, with repairs and fresh paint and a display of family photos.

Bullet holes left in Trotsky’s bedroom wall from an attempt on his life will not be filled in. Trotsky and his wife, Natalie, hid under their bed and survived that attack, led by Mexico’s famous pro-Stalin muralist, David Alfredo Siqueiros. On Aug. 20, 1940, Trotsky was struck down by an ice pick-wielding assassin many believed was a Stalinist agent.

Turrets with rifle ports still stand at each corner of the walls that surround the house, which Volkov said he remembers were once manned by nervous young Trotskyites little used to toting weapons.

The fiery writer moved into the house after a two-year stay with Mexico’s left-wing muralist Diego Rivera, where it is widely remarked that he had a clandestine love affair with Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo, also an artist.

His last house--and his and Natalie’s tomb, proudly engraved with the hammer and sickle--have become something of a Mecca to the communist faithful.

Besides the long-running attraction for Western visitors, the signatures of Russians and East Europeans are newly scribbled in the registry inside the house. The former Soviet ambassador to Mexico recently paid a visit, Volkov said.

“The demise of Stalinism is a fact that, despite all the confusions, is very positive. Now we only have capitalist imperialists, not our fellow communists, to fight against,” said Manuel Aguilar, leader of Mexico’s Trotsky-influenced Revolutionary Workers Party.

Trotsky, whom Vladimir I. Lenin favored to succeed him as Soviet leader, spent most of his life fighting for a worker-peasant brand of communism that would span the world without the monolithic, one-party rule favored by Stalin.

After Lenin died in 1923, Stalin took over the leadership and waged a hate campaign against Trotsky before driving him into exile in 1929.

Trotsky was hounded across Europe and Turkey, until Mexico’s renowned leftist president, Lazaro Cardenas, offered him exile in 1937. The bearded revolutionary, little expecting a hero’s welcome, was met by a special train for the trip to Mexico City from Tampico, where he came ashore.

A picture on his bedroom wall shows crowds of Mexicans mourning Trotsky in the main square of the capital after he was killed. The 26-year-old assassin, Ramon Mercader, a Spaniard, spent 20 years in jail in Mexico and then lived in the Soviet Union and other communist countries.

“As time goes on, the tragic figure of the ‘unarmed and exiled prophet’ (Trotsky) is bound to grow, while that of his executioner, Josef Stalin, is . . . repudiated,” an article in the Mexican government’s El Nacional daily said in June.

Volkov said that the Mexican government is planning to open a center this year next to the Trotsky house, dedicated to the revolutionary and devoted to the study of political exile.