Zinaida Volkova

Soon after her divorce, she married her second husband, Platon Ivanovich Volkov (1898–1936), a member of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition.

Zinaida Lvovna Volkova (née Bronstein; Зинаи́да Льво́вна Во́лкова; 27 March 1901 – 5 January 1933) was a Russian Marxist.

She was Leon Trotsky's first daughter by his first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a Marxist from Nikolaev (Ukraine).

She was raised by her aunt Yelizaveta, sister of Trotsky, after their parents divorced.

Her younger sister, Nina, stayed with her mother.

She married twice, and had a daughter by her first husband and a son by her second.

Both husbands died during the Great Purges.

The girls' parents parted ways in 1902 and as revolutionaries, were often traveling or living in hiding.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Bronstein married Zakhar Borisovich Moglin (1897–1937).

They divorced in the mid-1920s.

They had a daughter, Alexandra Moglina (1923–1989).

Volkova's daughter Alexandra (born 1923) remained in the USSR and lived for a year with her father, Zakhar Moglin.

The couple had a son, Vsevolod (diminutive Seva, later Esteban), in 1926.

Volkov was exiled to Siberia in 1928, but returned in January 1931.

Volkova was about to leave Russia for Turkey with their son by that time, to visit her father in his Turkey exile.

For three months in 1928, Volkova had taken care of her younger sister Nina, while the latter was dying of tuberculosis (TB), then incurable.

Nina had married a man with the surname of Nevelson.

In January 1931, Volkova was allowed to leave Russia to visit her father in his exile in Turkey, taking only her younger child, her son.

She left her daughter in the care of the girl's father, her first husband.

In January 1931, Joseph Stalin allowed Volkova to leave the Soviet Union to join her father, Leon Trotsky, in exile.

She was allowed to take one family member with her, and she took her son Vsevolod with her, leaving her daughter Alexandra in Russia with the girl's father.

From January to November 1931, Volkova and her son, Vsevolod Volkov (1926-2023) lived with Leon Trotsky and Trotsky's second wife, Natalia Sedova, in Turkey.

On 20 February 1932, the Soviet citizenship of Volkova and Vsevolod was revoked by Stalin, preventing their return to the Soviet Union.

The Soviet citizenship of Trotsky, Natalia Sedova and Lev Sedov, were also revoked on the same day.

After Moglin was exiled in 1932, she was cared for by her maternal grandmother, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

Suffering from tuberculosis and depression, and prevented from returning to the Soviet Union, Volkova committed suicide in Berlin in January 1933.

Bronstein was born in Siberia, where her parents were living in exile at the time.

Her sister Nina was born the next year.

As a child, she and her younger sister Nina were raised mostly by her paternal grandparents, David and Anna Bronstein.

Suffering from TB and depression, Volkova committed suicide in Berlin on 5 January 1933.

She had been under the care of Arthur Kronfeld, a noted Berlin psychotherapist.

She also saw Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert.

She was married to Franz Pfemfert, the founder of Die Aktion, a journal of expressionism, and translator of books by Trotsky.

Volkov was re-arrested in 1935 during the Great Purges and disappeared in the Gulag in 1936.

The latter was exiled in 1935 during the Great Purges and died in the labor camps.

Finally, as an adult, Alexandra was also exiled, to Kazakhstan.

She survived, returning to Moscow after Stalin's death.

Moglin died during the Great Purges, and Alexandra was exiled to Kazakhstan from 1949–56.

She died of cancer in 1989.

Not long before she died, her brother Esteban (Vsevolod) finally met his sister again after travelling to the Soviet Union from Mexico, but in tragic circumstances where Alexandra was dying of cancer and also couldn't communicate with her brother, as Esteban had forgotten his Russian and Alexandra spoke no Spanish, English or French.