In one of those cruel strokes of fate, all of Leon Trotsky’s four children predeceased him, even if many would not feel any compassion for one of the fathers of totalitarian communism. When the Old Man (as he himself and those around him called him) was assassinated by Stalin’s agent in 1940, he was only certain of the survival of one of his grandchildren, Seva Volkov, who was living with him and his second wife, Natalia, at the time.