father or grandfather (I'm not sure which) was hired by Stalin to develop the oil industry in the USSR and I do believe that was one of the big reasons that the family wound up so very wealthy. I'm just going on the memory of some articles I've read over the last few years, so I haven't researched it thoroughly, but I'm pretty sure that's accurate.
However your characterization of Trotsky as a Democratic Socialist is pretty far off the mark. 
Trotsky was a revolutionary to his core and to his dying day. He didn't believe that you could "elect" socialism and keep capitalism in place. Just like Lenin he believed that you had to seize state power in a revolution and expropriate the wealth and power that had been taken from workers by the bourgeoisie pretty much by any means necessary.
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