Travelogue 787 – January 18
Questions We Ask
Part Two
The water in the canal is choppy as the sea. The clouds are moving with drama. Ahead is the central station. The wind is high today. At the moment, I find it lifts my mood. I lean into it and look at the sky. I imagine Rotterdammers in past centuries leaning into the wind. I wonder how they managed. I contemplated their closer relationship with the cold, in days before central heating and insulation, before public transit and sick leave.
I’m taking a different route to work. That’s because my place of work has changed, and I mean place. Our old building was declared a fire hazard, and so now we’re working downtown. I have to cross over the canal and head east. The wind gusts sharply while I cross the pedestrian bridge. I have to lean. I have to plant my feet. I make it across, and then across the tram tracks on the other side of the canal, tracks set among healthy grass that separates the canal from a parallel street. I’m crossing the street, when the gusts roar with even more strength. Now I’m being pushed down the street. I brace against a car, and then work my way, hand over hand, to the sidewalk. I reach for a lamppost.
There was a woman following behind me on the bridge, pushing her bicycle. Now, she’s been pushed to the ground with her bike, on the tram tracks. Two men have stopped to help her. None of them can move, all three crouching beside the bike on the tram tracks. A tram has stopped twenty metres away. Further down the street, I see a woman thrown face down into the grass of the canal’s park.
Maybe it was the long tutelage as revolutionary, but Trotsky refused to acknowledge that the revolution ever ended. His and Lenin’s would be the first, and it was their responsibility to ensure it didn’t stand alone. He took his seat at the negotiation table opposite the German delegates convinced that the joke was on them. The socialist revolution would overtake them, and soon Trotsky would be making a deal with new, friendly government in Berlin.
There’s every chance that Lenin believed that the Russian revolution was a holding action. Marxist orthodoxy would have suggested it. The real revolution had to start in the most developed nation. That nation was Germany. These were the strange metaphysics of a Russian revolutionary finding himself at war with Germany.
We grow up with questions. We think through questions. The question occupying me now, during this time so fond of its many historical anniversaries, celebrating simultaneously seventy-year remembrances of World War Two and hundred-year remembrances of the First World War, my question has been, why have we been so quiet about the Russian Revolution, one hundred years on? The anniversary was only a few months ago, and I found the sudden silence disorienting.
Is the silence a new measure of perceived impact? At the fifty-year anniversary, in 1967, there was little doubt in the minds of world citizens that the Russian Revolution was pre-eminent among events of the century. Can we really revise significance? Are we setting mid-century European fascism higher in the history game than the Bolshevik Russian state? Is it simply a matter of simplicity? The war against fascism is simply easier to understand. One can assign values relatively quickly. The Russian Revolution is challenging in its bizarre contradictions. As such, I find it to be a sample of real history, something you can chew on.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Sunday, January 07, 2018
Travelogue 786 – January 7
Questions We Ask
Part One
Vacation time is coming to an end. One of the joys of vacation time is waking late and then lying in bed, relishing the quiet mornings before anyone else is up. This is my last quiet morning.
In the mornings, the babies are slow to get going. And when they do wake, they are at their sweetest. It’s at night time that they like to terrorize their parents. The busier we are or the more engaged in a movie, the crazier the babies become. They have an infallible feel for where our attention has settled, and with how much intensity. When they want us back, they cry, they climb, they argue, they teeter dangerously on the edge of the sofa cushions.
They claim their turf. I’ve remarked on Baby’s early sense of possession. I still marvel at how quickly babies become territorial. I don’t remember speaking much in the language of possession, or encouraging Baby to label things as hers. But the impulse arises, like instinct. Now I find myself saying lame things, like, ‘You have to share, Baby.’ Because she has developed a habit of taking toys from the hands of her little sister, Ren. Ren looks up at us, her beautiful, round, one-year-old’s face screwing up into despair, and she howls. Baby also looks to us, with an expectant expression, awaiting our judgement. I find Ren’s disappointment heart-breaking because she follows her big sister around all the time with big eyes of wonder and admiration.
We new parents have questions. We ask the questions when we’re tired, and we struggle to concentrate. Babies change so fast that the answers don’t hold for very long. The stages of child development succeed one another at an unforgiving pace.
Just about this time of year, one hundred years ago, Leon Trotsky was making his way west to the frontier of what only months ago was the Russian Empire. He might have felt like a new parent. He had spent almost twenty years as a revolutionary, and suddenly he was one of a very few people at the top of a dizzying ladder of accountability, responsible for holding together a collapsing nation.
As noted, all idealism aside, the most pressing business for the revolutionaries at the end of 1917 was the German army at the door. The Germans kindly agreed to an armistice, ahead in the game of conquest on the Eastern front and grateful for the respite themselves.
Apparently, the negotiators in Brest-Litovsk had a pleasant enough time of it in December. They ate together and socialized outside negotiations. The Russians were cheered by promises by the Germans that they would not annex any territory. Cheered until, some time after Christmas, the Germans added the footnote that all areas in question, some 150,000 square kilometers of formerly Russian territory, were expected to become independent. This was only fair, the Germans argued, as self-determination was ostensibly a Bolshevik principle.
Trotsky decided he had to oversee the proceedings himself. When he arrived, all fraternization stopped. The discussions became philosophical, and the talks extended through the winter of 1918.
Questions We Ask
Part One
Vacation time is coming to an end. One of the joys of vacation time is waking late and then lying in bed, relishing the quiet mornings before anyone else is up. This is my last quiet morning.
In the mornings, the babies are slow to get going. And when they do wake, they are at their sweetest. It’s at night time that they like to terrorize their parents. The busier we are or the more engaged in a movie, the crazier the babies become. They have an infallible feel for where our attention has settled, and with how much intensity. When they want us back, they cry, they climb, they argue, they teeter dangerously on the edge of the sofa cushions.
They claim their turf. I’ve remarked on Baby’s early sense of possession. I still marvel at how quickly babies become territorial. I don’t remember speaking much in the language of possession, or encouraging Baby to label things as hers. But the impulse arises, like instinct. Now I find myself saying lame things, like, ‘You have to share, Baby.’ Because she has developed a habit of taking toys from the hands of her little sister, Ren. Ren looks up at us, her beautiful, round, one-year-old’s face screwing up into despair, and she howls. Baby also looks to us, with an expectant expression, awaiting our judgement. I find Ren’s disappointment heart-breaking because she follows her big sister around all the time with big eyes of wonder and admiration.
We new parents have questions. We ask the questions when we’re tired, and we struggle to concentrate. Babies change so fast that the answers don’t hold for very long. The stages of child development succeed one another at an unforgiving pace.
Just about this time of year, one hundred years ago, Leon Trotsky was making his way west to the frontier of what only months ago was the Russian Empire. He might have felt like a new parent. He had spent almost twenty years as a revolutionary, and suddenly he was one of a very few people at the top of a dizzying ladder of accountability, responsible for holding together a collapsing nation.
As noted, all idealism aside, the most pressing business for the revolutionaries at the end of 1917 was the German army at the door. The Germans kindly agreed to an armistice, ahead in the game of conquest on the Eastern front and grateful for the respite themselves.
Apparently, the negotiators in Brest-Litovsk had a pleasant enough time of it in December. They ate together and socialized outside negotiations. The Russians were cheered by promises by the Germans that they would not annex any territory. Cheered until, some time after Christmas, the Germans added the footnote that all areas in question, some 150,000 square kilometers of formerly Russian territory, were expected to become independent. This was only fair, the Germans argued, as self-determination was ostensibly a Bolshevik principle.
Trotsky decided he had to oversee the proceedings himself. When he arrived, all fraternization stopped. The discussions became philosophical, and the talks extended through the winter of 1918.
Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Travelogue 785 – January 2
Sounds of War
There is still debris in the streets from the New Year’s celebrations, the cardboard shells of rockets toppled beside their scorch marks on the pavement, wet piles of pink paper that once housed small firecrackers. All the glass at downtown Metro stations is still boarded up in anticipation of vandalism.
The night was a wild one, reminding all the mild peaceniks in this quiet country of the noise of combat. Everyone in our neighbourhood, Spangen, is a fireworks artist. We put the babies to bed well before midnight, but our own sleep was fitful. Outside, the sound of combat carried on for hours, the stormy crackling of the human libido, party lust, perpetrated on Nature’s night. Sadly, our flat is ill-positioned for watching the show. We are set between rows of buildings, and our view is blocked of all but the highest bursts of colour. So it is that all we can enjoy is the sound. Baby shakes her head and knits her brow. She says, ‘Noise!’ and it sounds like ‘No ease!’
One hundred years ago, the new year dawned on a devastated Europe and on peoples desperate for a cease to the roar of guns and cannons. Dawning over Russia, it discovered a brand new government there, a revolutionary government less than two months old, led by fierce exiles who, a year before, were scattered among a handful of tolerant nations to the west. Lenin made a daring journey from Switzerland, through Germany, Sweden and Finland. Trotsky, the revolution’s wild man, had travelled from New York early in 1917, after the first and milder St. Petersburg revolution in March. He spent his summer in jail, but was free in the fall to take a strong hand in the events of November. Where discussion about the Russian Revolution manages to survive, there is a lively debate to be had about whose revolution it was, Lenin’s or Trotsky’s. Lenin arrived for the final act.
Dealing with the war was pre-eminent. It had torn Russia apart. The country had made significant progress in catching up with the industrial powers, but by the time war broke out in 1914, it was still only five per cent of the labour force that was employed in industry and twenty percent of the economy that was industrial. By the second year of the war, the army was able to supply only one in three soldiers with a rifle. The army could supply one surgeon for every ten thousand troops. One in three Russian men was in the army, so agriculture slowed, causing food shortages and crippling inflation. Desertions were high: an estimated two million had left, a number matched by the number of dead.
Having taken control of St. Petersburg in November, the Communists had signed an armistice by mid-December. But discussions about a treaty had bogged down over territory. Lenin and Trotsky disagreed over strategy. Lenin thought any more combat would be too destructive; they could only lose more territory. Trotsky believed in revolution. He believed their own achievements would inspire the workers of Germany to rise in revolution. He fought to delay the signing of any treaty. In January, he took charge of the negotiations himself, travelling to Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus.
Sounds of War
There is still debris in the streets from the New Year’s celebrations, the cardboard shells of rockets toppled beside their scorch marks on the pavement, wet piles of pink paper that once housed small firecrackers. All the glass at downtown Metro stations is still boarded up in anticipation of vandalism.
The night was a wild one, reminding all the mild peaceniks in this quiet country of the noise of combat. Everyone in our neighbourhood, Spangen, is a fireworks artist. We put the babies to bed well before midnight, but our own sleep was fitful. Outside, the sound of combat carried on for hours, the stormy crackling of the human libido, party lust, perpetrated on Nature’s night. Sadly, our flat is ill-positioned for watching the show. We are set between rows of buildings, and our view is blocked of all but the highest bursts of colour. So it is that all we can enjoy is the sound. Baby shakes her head and knits her brow. She says, ‘Noise!’ and it sounds like ‘No ease!’
One hundred years ago, the new year dawned on a devastated Europe and on peoples desperate for a cease to the roar of guns and cannons. Dawning over Russia, it discovered a brand new government there, a revolutionary government less than two months old, led by fierce exiles who, a year before, were scattered among a handful of tolerant nations to the west. Lenin made a daring journey from Switzerland, through Germany, Sweden and Finland. Trotsky, the revolution’s wild man, had travelled from New York early in 1917, after the first and milder St. Petersburg revolution in March. He spent his summer in jail, but was free in the fall to take a strong hand in the events of November. Where discussion about the Russian Revolution manages to survive, there is a lively debate to be had about whose revolution it was, Lenin’s or Trotsky’s. Lenin arrived for the final act.
Dealing with the war was pre-eminent. It had torn Russia apart. The country had made significant progress in catching up with the industrial powers, but by the time war broke out in 1914, it was still only five per cent of the labour force that was employed in industry and twenty percent of the economy that was industrial. By the second year of the war, the army was able to supply only one in three soldiers with a rifle. The army could supply one surgeon for every ten thousand troops. One in three Russian men was in the army, so agriculture slowed, causing food shortages and crippling inflation. Desertions were high: an estimated two million had left, a number matched by the number of dead.
Having taken control of St. Petersburg in November, the Communists had signed an armistice by mid-December. But discussions about a treaty had bogged down over territory. Lenin and Trotsky disagreed over strategy. Lenin thought any more combat would be too destructive; they could only lose more territory. Trotsky believed in revolution. He believed their own achievements would inspire the workers of Germany to rise in revolution. He fought to delay the signing of any treaty. In January, he took charge of the negotiations himself, travelling to Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus.
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