The first exile of Trotsky was a two-year period in the life of revolutionary Leon Trotsky, that he spent in exile in the Irkutsk Governorate of the Russian empire. He was exiled by the verdict of the Odessa court for the organization of the South-Russian Workers Union. Being imprisoned and exiled from 1900 to 1902, Trotsky married and actively engaged in both self-education (which included reading the classics of Marxism) and journalistic work. Under the pseudonym "Antid Oto" Trotsky collaborated with the newspaper Vostochnoye obozreniye (Russian: Восточное обозрение, "The Eastern Review"), which published three dozen of his articles and essays, warmly accepted by the audience. During his first exile, the future Soviet People's Commissar was involved in literary studies, was writing about general issues of sociology and creativity, plus – about the themes of Siberian peasant life. Traveling between the villages of Ust-Kut, Nizhne-Ilimsk and the city of Verkholensk, Trotsky came into contact with many former and future revolutionary personalities, including Moisei Uritsky and Felix Dzerzhinsky.
The printed works of Trotsky, published even in Western Europe, as well as his public lectures in Irkutsk, attracted attention of the leaders of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) to the young revolutionary: he was escaped from the Siberian exile. As a result, Trotsky left his wife with two little daughters. After the escape, he first appeared in Vienna and then in London, where his first meeting with Vladimir Lenin – who had recently published his book "What Is To Be Done?" – took place. Historians of the 21st century believed that staying in Siberia and contacts with local revolutionaries were of great importance for shaping the political views of the future leader of the October Revolution – for "his political self-determination".