Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution

Here are some interesting passages from Leon Trotsky's The Russian Revolution. (Originally published in 1939 by Simon & Schuster.)

The history of a revolution, like every other history, ought first of all to tell what happened and how.

But at those crucial moments when the old order, because it’s no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime.

The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny

These words are found in the introduction to Trotsky's book.

The first sentence is what this 450 page account is about. The second explains the motivation for revolution. The "situation" is no longer endurable. Hence, the powerless masses erupt, and take control by force.

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Most Americans have little understanding of the situation in Russia at the time of the revolution. Nor do they know what really happened. I'd be curious how many people know there were actually two revolutions in 1917. The first took place in February/March. The Tsar was brought down and the whole structure of government around the Monarch system of rulership. Then in the late fall Lenin and the Bolsheviks pushed out the first wave of revolutionaries and crafted a Totalitarian-ruled Soviet Union.

These things didn't happen overnight. Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 was written to show the history that preceded these revolutions and set them up.

Leon Trotsky

Trotsky adds:

The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which are already formed themselves before the revolution. (Emphasis mine)

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.

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Under Lenin's administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party Marxist-Leninist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism.

Regarding Trotsky's role in all these things Vladimir Cherniaev, a leading Russian historian, summarized it in this manner:

Trotsky bears a great deal of responsibility both for the victory of the Red Army in the civil war, and for the establishment of a one-party authoritarian state with its apparatus for ruthlessly suppressing dissent... He was an ideologist and practitioner of the Red Terror. He despised 'bourgeois democracy'; he believed that spinelessness and soft-heartedness would destroy the revolution, and that the suppression of the propertied classes and political opponents would clear the historical arena for socialism. He was the initiator of concentration camps, compulsory 'labour camps,' and the militarization of labour, and the state takeover of trade unions. Trotsky was implicated in many practices which would become standard in the Stalin era, including summary executions.

Despite all this, Trotsky overstepped and made enemies. As a result, by 1929 he found himself exiled from the State he helped create. He first went to Turkey, then Italy, then France. When France signed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, Trotsky was no longer welcome there either, in part because of his rabble-rousing writings and the encouragement of mass strikes.

From there he went to a farm in Norway, then left for Mexico where he worked for a while with painter and muralist Diego Rivera. Together with Andre Breton he helped write the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art.

Trotsky continued to write and agitate, and became such a burr in Stalin's butt that Stalin sent an NKVD hit squad to eliminate him. The first attempt in May 24, 1940 failed. The second attempt was more successful, by means of a mountaineer's ice axe in August. Even so, he survived the initial blow for a day before succumbing under surgery.

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TRIVIA
I probably first noticed and took interest in Leon Trotsky in sixth grade because his name was Leon. (My birth name is Leon Edward. I later took interest in Leon Russell for the same reason.) I believe it was while reading about Rasputin's assassination, which Trotsky covers somewhat in The Russian Revolution.

When my wife and I prepared to go to Mexico in 1980 to work at an orphanage we studied some of the history of that nation South of the Border. I learned that after the Communists failed in the Spanish Civil War more than 40,000 found refuge in Mexico. Hence, we occasionally saw graffiti featuring the hammer and sickle, international symbol of the Party.

Ten Minutes with Fatih Benzer: The Artist Discusses His Influences and the Ideas behind His Work

Portions of this article appeared in this week's Reader. 

In 1993, Fatih Benzer left Turkey to study art in the United States. After completing his master’s degree in painting at California State University and his doctoral degree in art education at Arizona State University he decided to stay in U.S. since being here gave him an enormous amount of freedom to express himself and the resources to produce his work. He is currently assistant professor of art, design and art educations at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

EN: What brought you to the U.S. originally and when?
Fatih Benzer: I came to United States in 1993 to study art. I completed my master’s degree in painting at California State University and my doctoral degree in art education at Arizona State University. And I have decided to stay in US since being here gave me enormous amount of freedom to express myself and plenty of resources to produce my work.

"Signs of the Times"

EN: How did you come to take an interest in art as a career? Who were your early influences?
FB: I had always been interested in the arts since I was a little child. Art, especially drawing and painting, was a way to communicate to people since I was a very introvert kid. Although I am no longer introvert, art still remains as a powerful tool to communicate to people, even more so than before.

As a child, I was intrigued and amazed by the accomplishments of Renaissance and Baroque artists such as Raphael, Greco, and Rembrandt. As I grew up to be a young adult, the number of artists who had impact on me increased; from Mark Rothko to Frank Stella, from Louise Bourgeois to James Turrel who experimented with light in his installations known as "sky-spaces." Those were enclosed spaces open to the sky through an aperture in the roof. They really made me feel like I was looking at the sky and observing how light behaves as if for the first time. In my recent paintings, the sense and role of light plays a similar role, as well. I also was very influenced by the experimental movies and installations by Matthew Barney. I found his way of capturing a world of fantasy within every day life was visually very intriguing.

"The Bee Kingdom"

EN: What is your process for doing a new painting?
FB: The work I produce seems to naturally organize itself into series. Between these series are transitional works that chart the changes from one series to the next. I would like my work and its development to be logical and coherent, but it gets much more complicated throughout the process of making. Working in series gives me chance to create a large body of work that becomes the context in which specific concepts such as co-existence and stigma can reveal themselves as the content. I enjoy working in various styles, developing various methods to deal with various subjects or concepts. The fact that I work in different styles helped me develop multitudes of vantage points to examine, understand, and present a specific concept or subject. When you have the ability to change your vantage point, your approach to your work in contextual sense change, as well.

At times, this appeared to be an obstacle for some curators I worked with in the past. I guess the reason for that was because, traditionally, we expect artists to walk on the same path showing gradual progress towards mastery. During my undergraduate years, reading postmodern authors such as Umberto Eco, Milan Kundera, and Orhan Pamuk really got me interested in creating new possibilities and getting off that single path and moving in a non-linear fashion. About ten years ago, I started developing various techniques, methods, and strategies to deal with different issues that I was interested in exploring in my work. As an artist, you just cannot invent one solution and expect to resolve every single problem you face with it.

"Watcher"

I try to keep myself aware of the major issues we face on the globe. As an artist, I select and focus on some of those issues and create my own reaction and communicate it to the audience. That is to say concepts always come first in my paintings.

Once I decide on a specific concept or subject, I develop sketches using various software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Once the preliminary studies seem appropriate enough to start a new painting, I implement it on large panels of wood using paint and brush. I use various washes to create abstract spaces where the realistically rendered images become actors and actresses as if in a play. I have never been interested in pure non-objective abstraction though in my work, the forms, perspectives, atmosphere of our natural world are represented in many ways and varying degrees of abstraction.

"Watcher" (detail)

EN: The artist statement for your current show notes that your recent iconographic works are, among other things, “inspired by Ottoman and Persian miniatures, whirling dervishes echoing Rumi’s ecstatic poetry of freedom and devotion.” Can you elaborate on this?
FB: My recent iconographic works are inspired by ancient Greek mythologies, Ottoman and Persian miniatures, whirling dervishes in Sufi belief represented by Rumi’s ecstatic poetry of freedom and devotion, abstracted geometry inspired by antique Ottoman and Byzantine architecture. The main purpose of these works is to build a bridge between East and West. Coming from Turkey-a country influenced by Near Eastern and European cultures, I try to build a world of irony in which all those various influences can co-exist regardless of their diverse backgrounds. Such combination of various images and symbols from different cultures play a very important role to offer the audience a multiplicity of meanings.

The Ottoman and Persian miniatures were almost never signed due to several reasons--one being the rejection of individualism and another having more than one artist working on a piece of painting collectively. My paintings follow the similar tradition of not signing the artwork as a way of expressing one’s selflessness. Similar to miniatures, brilliant and contrasting colors were used side by side to achieve a flat surface that acts as a backdrop for the iconographic symbols to freely travel across the picture plane. The purpose of those eastern miniatures was merely to depict the nature as the artist saw nature. Instead, the purpose was to represent a nature that emerged from the artist’s understanding of nature and his/her imagination. However, unlike in the miniatures, one can notice the realistically rendered symbols/images in my work create a contrast with the flatness of the world that surrounds them.

"Journeys of a Dervish"

Dervish literally means "doorway" and is thought to be an entrance from this material world to the spiritual world. During the ceremony, the dervishes remove black cloaks to reveal the white robes with voluminous skirts. They turn independently, shoulder to shoulder, both around their own axis and around other dervishes, representing the earth revolving on its own axis while orbiting the sun. Symbols and architectural forms in my iconographic paintings refer to the same idea of turning, unifying, creating alternative spaces for their existence.

EN: Though the imagery is beautifully rendered, there is a somewhat horrific quality to some of your subject matter. What’s this about?
FB: On the outside, I want my paintings to be very attractive with their highly saturated colors, large dimensions, contrasting imagery, and intense labor. I want my paintings to “appeal” firs, “reveal” after. In the formalistic sense, this has been the core of my approach to how I executed my recent works for “Signs and Wonders” exhibition. “Appeal” is important to get the attention of the viewer and start a dialogue between the work and the viewer. However, that dialogue should go beyond the mere appearance of the work and should get deeper as one starts digging into multi-layered meanings driven from the familiar symbolism and the context in which this symbolism is presented with a twisted manner. References to religious iconography, political satire, irony of using violence to resolve violence become part of this twisted world I create in my work. Occasionally, the viewer’s encounter with some of my work can be quiet disturbing once they question the existence of this twisted world: Will we ever be able to co-exist despite our differences? Will we ever live in a world that is free of stereotypes and biases? How far can we or should we go to reconcile? When you play the devil’s advocate, life becomes more about contradictions and less about finding or creating a common ground.

"Begotten"

EN: In what ways does teaching art students enrich your approach to your own work?
FB: Teaching is a big part of what I do as an artist. I do not see teaching as a separate component of my artistic career. I also conduct research and write due to my background in the field of art education. All this research and my practice as an artist become my resources to assist my students, be a facilitator, or to help them find their own voice.

EN: What are you currently working on and why?
FB: Now that the “Signs and Wonders” exhibition is up and running, I am doing my research in adapting a very different medium to communicate to my audience. And that medium will evolve digital technologies and processes such as installations as opposed to painting in traditional sense. I am very excited about the possibilities of this new direction to interact with the audience even further. Because in the end, no matter what medium you use, what techniques you invent, or what strategies you develop, it all comes down to expressing the human condition.

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NOTEWORTHY
This week marks the 5-year anniversary of the Zeitgeist Building in Downtown Duluth. If you're like me, it feels like it has been here for ages. Tonight begins five evenings of celebration as well as awareness-raising and fund-raising for the renamed Zeitgeist Center for Arts & Community. Tonight Mayor Ness and Executive Director Tony Cuneo will be present to talk about the history of the Zeitgeist, among other things. Join us for halfprice appetizers and a silent auction, among other things. Read yesterday's article in the Trib for details.  

Turkey Talk

I try to minimize the number of subscriptions I receive from various daily email newsletters, but I do sign up for things now and then. Even if I don't read them every day there are sometimes interesting subject lines and if not in a hurry I open and read it. Most also link to a website or blog for increased engagement. And if you find yourself never opening them, eventually you can choose to unsubscribe and reduce the inbox clutter that can oft be so time consuming to deal with.

One email that I still get every day is called wiseGEEK. It's essentially a daily bit of "Oh, that's interesting" or "Gee, I didn't know that" types of information. Today it was about turkeys. The subject line in the email stated, Only male turkeys gobble.

Although turkeys of all types share many characteristics, gobbling is not something every turkey does. Only male turkeys make the sound that is referred to as a gobble. Along with being known as tom turkeys, male turkeys are often referred to as gobblers. Female turkeys, generally known as hens, make a sound that is somewhat like a clicking noise.

If you clicked on a link for more info, you would go to their website and learn still more about turkeys, the first item below being one that I had written about in the past when writing about turkeys.

~ During the early years of the United States, Benjamin Franklin supported the wild turkey as the national bird. Instead of the wild turkey, however, the bald eagle was selected.

~ Wild turkeys tend to follow a similar pattern when it comes to eating times. Feeding in the mid-morning, followed by a second feeding in the mid-afternoon is most common. Many turkeys feed by using their beaks to cut through or rip vegetation. Their feet are used to scratch through snow or leaves to find other food sources.

~ The Turkey Trot was a popular dance move in the early 1960s, but the term also is used to describe the mating efforts of male turkeys. In the spring, male turkeys often spread their tail feathers while puffing out their chests and strutting around in the presence of hens. It is during this season that the male turkey is particularly prolific with gobbling, using the sounds to attract as many females as possible.*

What I find especially interesting about all this turkey talk is that our images of Thanksgiving as a holiday are so frequently filled with pilgrims and pumpkin pie and a horn 'o plenty that we forget that its origin was none other than Abe Lincoln, who in the midst of a great civil war set aside the last Thursday of November as a national day for giving thanks to God for His bounty.

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

You can read the proclamation in its entirety here.

Speaking of Lincoln, the new Spielberg film is exceptional and worth seeing. I'll be writing a review soon.

As for the original topic, if you'd like to hear a couple turkey gobbles up close, my YouTube clip might fit the bill to make your Thanksgiving day that more complete. Enjoy.


* Source:  wiseGEEK

Turkeys and Eagles

Yesterday I was at the annual Labor Day Weekend gathering at my wife's cousin Dean's rural home. In addition to an extensive vegetable garden, Dean and Sarah have turkeys. What I found interesting was that there were two bald eagles flying in circles over the trees on the other side of the garden and I couldn't help but think of Ben Franklin who thought the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be our national symbol.

One of my most memorable childhood memories is the train ride I took across the country when I was eight years old with my grandparents. I didn't know then how much of a kick grandparents get from being with their grandchildren. We were visiting my cousins (their daughter's family) near Reno, Nevada. A highlight of the trip was a visit to some property my Uncle Dale and Aunt Ellen were considering to purchase in eastern California. On that visit we went to a turkey farm.

As I watched the turkeys yesterday, they seemed like the silliest creatures, not only in their colorfully odd features but also strange in their behavior, including the distinctive warble/gobble they emit from time to time, especially when startled. Dean's turkeys brought back memories.

Ben Franklin, on the other hand, must have seen a measure of nobility in these funny birds. In a letter to his daughter, Franklin shows where he was coming from when he disparaged the eagle. In my opinion, however, the wise old man was just little off in this one.

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country....

"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

For more visit
http://www.greatseal.com/symbols/turkey.html

Did you poop today?

This picture was taken in a stairwell at a college student’s home off campus in Morris, MN. I took the photo because it is undeniably funny.

I didn’t know what I’d say about it until yesterday when I learned that the recession is having a negative impact on toilet paper sales. In point of fact, Tom Falk the Chairman-CEO of Kimberly-Clark stated that their toilet paper sales were down 5.5% since last quarter. Nationally, the hard times have reduced toilet paper sales by more than 8%.

So, it begs the question… what are people doing in there? I don’t mean to be nosy, but…

In truth, toilet paper is something Americans pretty much take for granted. We like it soft and we like plenty of it, an estimated 1.5 miles of it a year. But have you ever considered that toilet paper is really a fairly modern luxury? Or wondered what they do in the rest of the world? Most of us probably give it very little thought.

I remember a story about a new hospital that was built by the Red Cross in the Middle East, perhaps Jordan or somewhere near Yemen. A week after the hospital was built, all the toilets were inoperable. They were all filled with smooth stones. Dirty ones, if you know what I mean. This is how people clean themselves in many places.

If you are a missionary to or traveler in Islamic countries you might be instructed, as part of your training, to not hand something to Muslim with your left hand because that is the hand you use for this very personal business. Just a little travel tip here in case you’re eating veal in Turkey and someone asks you to pass the pilaf.

When I lived in Mexico, we visited Mexico City and stayed with a couple poor families in that overpopulated village of 20-some million. No one had toilet paper in many of these places. In point of fact, no one has running water in most of Mexico City. The water is in short supply, so they turn it on for 90 minutes every other day. During that ninety minutes you are to fill your 55 gallon drums for the next two days’ supply. Using this water, you can flush toilets, wash dishes, make orange juice, bathe, or whatever your heart desires. I took a bath with about one pint of boiled water in an outdoor stall while it was approximately 40 degrees.

Well, needless to say, no one had toilet paper. Rather, they stacked newspapers in the corner of the outdoor bath room which after reading they used for that more intimate purpose. Mexico City news is printed on surprisingly thin paper and not entirely uncomfortable, if you catch my drift.

While thinking about these things, and looking for an additional anecdote to go with it I discovered that there are a number of books written on the topic for those who might be discreetly interested. Frankly, I find it amusing how little we talk about this delicate topic, or others pertaining to normal body functions such as passing gas or sweating.

Of the books I found, the most interesting dealing with “Number 2” seems to be Dave Praeger’s Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Praeger “meticulously excavates the politics of poop, societal attitudes toward it and how both affect our culture and everyday lives. Propelled by a keen nose for trivia, Praeger chronicles everything from the rise in epidemics that led to better sanitation practices, culminating in the widespread adoption of the toilet, to the use of feces in art.” In short, it appears to be a serious, well-researched work of history and not simply cheap potty humor.

But if you really want to dive into this subject and you’re hungry for more, Praeger also has a website called PoopReport.com, though in many circles this kind of thing is in bad taste.

This is a topic about which much more could be written, but I think we've had enough for one sitting.