[lbo-talk] Trotsky's ashes made into cookies

Joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sat Apr 25 12:06:58 PDT 2009


I spent a good many years reading Trotsky (with the exception of History of Russian Revolution). If one can know anything based on such reading, I would conclude that Trotsky was a brilliant, imaginative, fierce, common-sensical fellow who was also a great writer. Barbara Tuchman set him alongside Thucydides as a historian.

The fact that he organized and led the Red army to the defeat of the counterrevolution seems to me to be one of the great feats of all times: suggesting that he was a great leader and tactician who could inspire loyalty and courage among a starving, war-weary, ill-equipped mass of illiterate peasants and factory workers.

Even Orwell, who made a point of exposing communist idiocy, generally praised Trotsky -- in Animal Farm (Snowball), in 1984, and in Homage to Catalonia.

As part of working on a longish essay on Tillie Olsen, I went back and read his book "Literature and Revolution" in order to organize my thoughts on proletarian art/culture/novel etc. Most of what he wrote was extremely sensible and free of BS. His chief recommendations had nothing to do with what kinds of literature artists should write, but that the chief cultural goal of the party in the soviet union was the eliminate illiteracy.

Would write more, but have to run.

Joanna



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