--- Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com>
wrote:
by Gilbert Achcar
>...Trotsky tirelessly defended the same principles.
In The Third
International After Lenin (1928), in his polemic about
alliances with
the Chinese Kuomintang, he wrote the following lines
particularly apt
for the subject under discussion here:
--
Incidentally, I am becoming convinced that Trotsky's most enduring legacy is getting English-speaking leftist cults to speak in bad literal translations of Russian phrases. E.g. "Soviet power," as in "Soviet power having been established, proletarian freedom reigned throughout the land" or whatever. This is a literal translation of "Sovetskaya vlast'." "Vlast'" means either "power" or "government," depending upon the context, but almost always means the latter. "Sovet" means "council" or "advice." Translating "Sovetskaya vlast'" as "Soviet power" is lame. What it really means is "government of councils."
Ditto this "Hands Off So-and-So!" stuff. It's a literal translation of "Ruki Proch' ot So-and-So!", which is a common Russian expression, as in the recent protests against educational reform in Latvia, when thousands of schoolkids were holding signs saying "Ruki Proch' ot Russkikh Shkol!", "Hand Off Russian Schools!" Maybe it's only me, but I think it sounds really silly in English. Trotskyists have no originality whatsoever.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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