The former Istanbul house of Marxist revolutionary, theorist, Soviet politician, Red Army founder and hero of the 1917 October Revolution, Leon Trotsky, is now listed for sale by a real estate web portal.
The Hanifi family, who owns the property, is asking $4.4 million including the land, but with a condition that the buyer agrees to preserve the Trotsky name. The family wanted Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry to buy the house and turn it into a museum.
The three-story building and its garden occupy an area of 3,600 square meters on Istanbul’s Büyükada Island in the Sea of Marmara. It has 18 rooms, five bathrooms and a spectacular view overlooking the sea. Although poorly maintained, the property’s natural lobster pool still exists.
Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in February of 1929 by then Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and was first stationed in Büyükada, where he lived for the next four years with his second wife, one grandchild and three male guards.
He died in 1940 from injuries sustained when he was attacked in his home in Mexico City.
