In 1935 Leon Trotsky was invited by Edinburgh University students to become a candidate in the Rectorial election that year. Trotsky had been a key figure in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, and was second only to Lenin in the early stage of Soviet communist rule. However, he lost out to Stalin in the power struggle that followed Lenin's death.

It was Viscount Allenby of Megiddo who went on to become the Edinburgh University Rector in 1935, though he died very suddenly in London the following year from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm - on 14 May 1936. Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson then stepped up us Rector.

Just a year after the invitation from Edinburgh students, in 1936, Trotsky settled in Mexico. But, on 20 August 1940, acting on the orders of Stalin, Ramon Mercader attacked Trotsky with an ice pick and he died the next day.