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A crusading socialist and an absolute pacifist, Mildred Osterhout Fahrni walked with J.S. Woodsworth, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The extraordinary story of one of Canada's pioneer peacemakers.
Excerpt from A Prisoner of Trotsky's I have been asked by the author and by the publishers also to write a foreword for Colonel Kalpaschnikoff's book - "A Prisoner of Trotsky's - and as I am familiar with the occurrences resulting in his arrest and five months' imprisonment, have consented to do so. Colonel Kalpaschnikoff was in America when I arrived in Petrograd in April, 1916; he was delivering lectures in this country and soliciting funds for the purchase of motor ambulances for the "Siberian Regiments American Ambulance Society," of which he was Commissioner-General. He returned to Russia immediately after the first revolution and on the same vessel from which Leon Trotsky (Bronstein) was taken at Halifax, and did some interpreting in connection with the detention of Trotsky. Upon arriving in Petrograd, Kalpaschnikoff visited the American Embassy several times. I remember receiving him on one or two occasions, also meeting him at several social functions. He told me that he had made an arrangement with the American Red Cross Mission to Rumania, of which Colonel Anderson of Virginia was the head, to transport to Jassy, the temporary capital of Rumania, seventy-two motor ambulances and eight light trucks enroute from America. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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This illuminating portrait of Leon Trotsky sets the record straight on the common misconceptions about the man and his legacy. Completing his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union, Service delivers an authoritative biography.
A crusading socialist and an absolute pacifist, Mildred Osterhout Fahrni walked with J.S. Woodsworth, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The extraordinary story of one of Canada's pioneer peacemakers.
In this counter-historical novel, Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, survived the assassination attempt of August 1940. To prevent another such attempt, his protector, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, had him moved to the small, isolated border town of Tijuana. There Trotsky, continues to write political analyses and books and attempts to lead his worldwide revolutionary organization, the Fourth International, though he is frustrated by his isolation from the center of developments in Europe. Watching over Trotsky, among others, are his bodyguard Ralph Bucek, a young leftist and baseball fan from Chicago, and the French-educated Mexican Army officer Colonel de la Fuente. Through them Trotsky learns about his new home, Tijuana, a surprisingly cosmopolitan town. Living with his wife Natalia and his grandson Sieva, served by secretaries and protected by bodyguards, Trotsky’s domestic circle is small and his life narrow. He is growing old and losing his sight. Then along come the Broadway theatrical agent Morrie Gold and his friend the stand-up comedienne Rachel Silberstein. Trotsky’s wife, Natalia, worried about his psychological well-being insists that he see the famous Freudian (and one-time Reichian) psychoanalyst Dr. David Bergman. While we observe Trotsky in exile, we also see Stalin in power, in his “Little Corner” in the Kremlin, in his dachas, with members of the Central Committee and with his daughter Svetlana. We see him planning the failed assassination of Trotsky in August 1940. In his reveries, we learn of his difficult life as a young man, his great love, his first child, his experiences in prison. We see Stalin carrying out the purges, executing the industrialization of Russia, dealing with Adolf Hitler, heading the Soviet Union in war. We watch as Stalin’s anti-Semitism drives the prosecution of Rudolf Slánsky for the supposed Tito-Trotsky plot in Czechoslovakia of as he goes after the Jewish doctors in the Soviet Union. As time goes on Trotsky is surprised that that his predictions for the post-war period don't seem to be working out. One day, Étienne, the Eastern European who worked for Trotsky’s International in Paris and who some believe may have murdered Trotsky’s son, appears in Tijuana, offering to serve as his Russian secretary. And Trotsky’s erstwhile ally Victor Serge visits and asks Trotsky to join him in an attempt to build a new socialist movement in post-war Europe. Meanwhile, Trotsky’s brilliant former secretary, the mathematician Jan van Heijenoort, has sworn to murder Stalin, but the odds are not good. With the coming of the Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy calls on Trotsky to testify before his committee. Was it a coincidence that Stalin and Trotsky died on the same day on the same day, March 5, 1953? Through all of this we see just what sort of a man Trotsky was.
The major political questions of the 20th century, discussed by an outstanding communist leader. Includes a defense of the right to revolution, made in 1906 in the prisoner's dock of the tsarist courts; speeches as a leader of the revolutionary government following the Bolshevik-led revolution; and "I Stake My Life", Trotsky's 1937 defense of his 20-year Bolshevik course and challenge to the organizers of Joseph Stalin's frame-up trials.
