Mexican and Soviet dignitaries honored the memory of Leon Trotsky Monday at a ceremony 50 years to the day after the revolutionary was murdered here in exile.
Trotsky's home in the south of the capital - once a ramshackle reminder of the former hero's fall from grace - was reopened to the public Monday with a face lift and a new adjoining institute devoted to the study of political exile.Trotsky was murdered on Aug. 20, 1940, by an agent of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin masquerading as a friend who struck him down with an ice pick at his desk within his heavily guarded home.
Oleg Darusenkov, Soviet ambassador to Mexico, said after the ceremony a group of Trotsky supporters gave a petition to the Soviet embassy seeking the rehabilitation of Trotsky's memory among the ranks of other revolutionaries revered in the Soviet Union.
But Trotsky's only surviving grandchild, 64 year-old Esteban Volkov, said the ashes of the former revolutionary would stay in Mexico.