Robert Sheldon Harte

Robert Sheldon Harte (1915 – May 24, 1940) was an American Communist who worked as one of Leon Trotsky’s assistants and bodyguards in Coyoacán, Mexico.

On May 24, 1940, a group of Soviet and Mexican, including muralist David Siqueiros and Iosef Grigulevich, were able to gain access to Trotsky's compound.

The Fourth International, the theoretical journal of the US Socialist Workers Party, published an article by Walter Rourke titled The Murder of Bob Harte,[3] calling him the first American Trotskyist to fall victim to Stalin.

[4] In the article Burke notes that Trotsky wrote in the Mexican press that “The corpse of Bob Sheldon Harte is a tragic refutation of all the slanders and false denunciations made against him.” In his account of the attack Trotsky wrote that if Sheldon Harte were an agent of the GPU he could have killed me at night and got away without setting in motion 20 people all of whom were subjected to a great risk.

[1] However, according to statements made by the man in charge of this GPU operation, General Leonid Eitingon on March 9, 1954, Harte was liquidated afterwards because he had expressed second thoughts.