Zinaida Volkova

Who was Zinaida Volkova?

Zinaida Volkova was a Russian Marxist. She was Leon Trotsky's first daughter by his first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. She and her younger sister Nina were raised by their paternal grandparents after their parents divorced.

She married twice, and had a daughter by her first husband and a son by her second. Both husbands died during the Great Purges. In 1931 Volkova was allowed to leave Russia, taking only her younger child, the son, with her into exile in Berlin. She left her daughter in the care of the girl's father, her first husband. Suffering from tuberculosis, then incurable, and depression, Volkova committed suicide in Berlin.