Shortly prior to Lenin's death came stories which would indicate that War Lord Trotsky has been relegated to a lowly place among the leaders of the less radical order of Russians.
It was announced, but subsequently denied, that Trotsky had been arrested by M. Dzerjinsky, chief of the Cheka, the political police force of Sovietdom, on the order of M. Zinoviev, President of the Moscow Soviet. He was charged with "treasonable conspiracy against the Soviet, rebellion against the Central Committee of the Communist Party and disloyalty to the Internationale."
The report was, however, partly substantiated by evidence from Moscow, received by the British Foreign Office, which purported to prove the Cheka had attempted to "kidnap" the War Lord, presumably for "flirting with the monarchists and plotting to make himself a dictator a la mode under a puppet Tsar." It was not clear whether this report had any connection with his arrest, but the details of the attempted kidnapping are:
At midnight an armored car and two lorries full of men halted opposite the palatial country residence of M. Trotsky outside Moscow. The men descended, marched to the big iron gates and demanded to be admitted "in the name of the Cheka." Trotsky's guards refused to open the gates; the men from the Cheka blew them up. Inside the grounds, however, they were confronted with barbed wire entanglements and a chain of concrete "pill boxes." Fire was opened, two Cheka men dropped dead; the remainder took cover; communications were cut. Meanwhile, one of Trotsky's soldiers had climbed the wall and summoned a detachment of the Red Army, upon whose approach the Chekaists fled back to Moscow. M. Dzerjinsky disavowed responsibility for the attempt, stating that the men were impostors—an explanation accepted by War Lord Trotsky.