In The 74^th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940

 

BOOK REVIEW

 

If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20^th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s internal political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

To set the framework for these reviews I will give a little personal, political and organizational sketch of the period under discussion. After that I will highlight some of the writings from each volume that are of continuing interest. Reviewing such compilations is a little hard to get a handle on as compared to single subject volumes of Trotsky’s writing but, hopefully, they will give the reader a sense of the range of this important revolutionary’s writings.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can count easily, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to naught. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.
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In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74^th Anniversary Of His Death- For Those Born After-Ivan Smirnov’s Journey

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Ivan Smirnov came out of old Odessa town, came out of the Ukraine (not just plain Ukraine like now but “the” then), the good black earth breadbasket of the Russian Empire, well before the turn of the 20^th century (having started life on some Mister’s farm begotten by illiterate but worthy and hard-working peasant parents who were not sure whether it was 1880 or 1881 and Mister did not keep very good records up in the manor house) although he was strictly a 20^th century man by habits and inclinations. Fashioned himself a man of the times, as he knew it, by developing habits favored by those who liked to consider themselves modern. Those habits included a love of reading, a love of and for the hard-pressed peoples facing the jack-boot (like his struggling never- get-ahead parents) under the Czar’s vicious rule, an abiding hatred for that same Czar, a hunger to see the world or to see something more than wheat fields, and a love of politics, what little expression that love could take even for a modern man stuck in a backward semi-feudal country driven by the ruthless cops and General Staff bayonets. 

Of course Ivan Smirnov, a giant of a man, well over six feet, more like six, two, well-build, solid, fairly muscular, with the Russian dark eyes and hair to match, when he came of age also loved good food when he had the money for such luxuries, loved to drink shots of straight vodka in competition with his pals, and loved women, and women loved him. It is those appetites in need of whetting that consumed his young manhood, his time in Odessa before he signed on to the Czar’s navy to see the world, or at least  brush the dust of farmland Ukraine and provincial Odessa off his shoes as the old saying went. Those loves trumped for a time his people love (except helping out his parents with his wages), his love of liberty but as we follow Ivan on his travels we will come to see that those personal loves collided more and more with those larger loves. 

So as we pick up the heart, the coming of age, coming of political age, Ivan Smirnov story, he was no kid, had been around the block a few times. Had taken his knocks on the land of his parents (really Mister’s land once the taxes, rents, and dues were taken out) when he tried to organize, well, not really organize but just put a petition of grievances, including the elimination of rack-rents to Mister which was rejected out of hand and which subsequently when Mister took his revenge forced him off the land. Forced him off under threat to his life. The rack none too good for him heard in some quarters by Mister’s lackeys and henchmen. He never forgot that slight, never. Never forgot that it was Mister and his kind, his class and its hangers-on that took him away from home, split his family up, pushed the rack-rent higher and finally killed off his benighted father at an very early age in an age when early age was the norm. So off he went to the city, and from there to the Black Sea Fleet and adventure, or rather tedium mixed with adventure and plenty of time to read, read novels, big Tolstoy-sided novels, novels for long sea-ward trips, when he could and clandestinely radical political tracts.

Ivan also learned up close, made it his business to learn up close, the why and wherefores of modern warfare, modern naval warfare. Knew too that between the stifling old-fashioned naval bureaucracy and the shoddily built ships (many with badly welded seams) some minor confrontation the Czar’s navy was cooked.  As things worked out Ivan had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese in 1904. He never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game. And so Ivan came of war age and political age all at once. And the Russian navy was in shambles.

More importantly after that debacle he applied for, and was eventually granted a transfer into in the Baltic fleet, the Czar’s jewel and defender of citadel Saint Petersburg, headquartered at later famous Kronstadt, and so he was in the swirl when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. Most seaman had gone over the rebels or stood on the sidelines, the officers mainly played possum with the Czar. He had gone wholehearted with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over. That was where his love of reading from an early age came in, came and made him aware of the boiling kettle of political groupings trying to save Russia or to save what some class or part of a class had an interest in saving Russia for their own purposes. He knew, knew from his dismal experience on the land, that Mister fully intended to keep what was his come hell or high water. He also knew that Mister’s people, the peasantry like his family would have a very hard time, a very hard time indeed bucking Mister’s interests and proclaiming their own right to the land all by themselves. Hadn’t he also been burned, been hunted down like a cur over a simple petition.

So Ivan from the first dismissed the Social Revolutionary factions and gave some thought to joining the Social Democrats. Of course being Russians who would argue over anything from how many angels could fit on the head of a needle to theories of capitalist surplus value that party organization had split into two factions (maybe more when the dust settled). When word came back from Europe he had sided with the Mensheviks and their more realistic approach to what was possible for Russia in the early 20^th century. That basic idea of a bourgeois democratic republic was the central notion that Ivan Smirnov held for a while, a long while, and which he took in with him once things got hot in Saint Petersburg in January of 1905.       

That January after the Czar’s troops, his elite bloody Cossack troops in the lead, fired on (and sabre-slashed) an unarmed procession led by a priest, damn a Russian Orthodox priest, a people’s priest who led the icon-filled procession to petition the Czar to resolve grievances, great and small, Ivan Smirnov, stationed out in the Baltic Fleet then after the reorganization of the navy in the wake of the defeat by the Japanese the year before had an intellectual crisis. He knew that great things were going to unfold in Russia as it moved into the modern age. He could see the modern age tied to the ancient agrarian age every time he had leave and headed for Saint Petersburg with its sailors’ delights, the taverns, music halls, and whorehouses of which Ivan usually took his full measure. (Being sea-bound he was a proverbially “girl in every port guy” although he had had one short serious affair with a girl student from the university, a left-Social Revolutionary who had never been outside the city in her life) He could see in the city within a city, the Vyborg district, the growing working-class district made up of fresh recruits from the farms looking for higher wages, some excitement and a future.

That was why he had discarded the Social Revolutionaries so quickly when in an earlier generation he might very well have been a member of People’s Will or some such organization. He had that kind of heart, the heart of a warrior –avenger with the cool calculation of the average ward-healer. No, his intellectual crisis did not come from that quarter but rather that split in the workers’ party which had happened in 1903 far from Russia among the émigré intellectuals around the question of what kind and how much activity qualified an activists as a party member. He had sided with the “softs,” the Mensheviks, mainly because he liked their leader, Julius Martov, better than Lenin. Lenin and his faction seemed more intent on gaining organizational control, had more hair-splitters which he hated, and were more [CL1] wary of the peasants even though both factions swore faith in the democratic republic for Russia and to the international social democracy. He had sided with the “softs” although he saw a certain toughness in the Bolshevik cadre that he admired. But that year, that 1905 year, had started him on a very long search for revolutionary direction.           

The year 1905 moreover had started filled with promise after that first blast from the Czarist reaction. The masses were able to gather in a Duma that was at least half responsible to the people, or to the people’s representatives. At least that is what those people’s representatives claimed. More importantly in the working class districts, and among his fellow sailors who more likely than not, unlike himself, were from some strata of the working class had decided to set up their own representative organs, the workers’ councils, or in the Russian parlance which has come down in the  history books, the soviets. These in 1905, unlike in 1917, were seen as supplementary to other political organizations. A pressure group not a central contender for power.  As the arc of the year curved though there were signs that the Czarist reaction was gathering steam. Ivan had then had trouble organizing his fellow sailors to action. The officers of his ship, The Falcon, were challenging more decisions by the sailors’ committee. The Potemkin affair brought things to a head in the fleets. Finally, after the successes of the Saint Petersburg Soviet under the flaming revolutionary Leon Trotsky that organ was suppressed and the reaction set in that would last until many years later, many tough years for political oppositionists of all stripes. Needless to say that while Ivan was spared the bulk of the reprisals once the Czarist forces regained control his career in the navy was effectively finished and when his enlistment was up he left the service.       

Just as well Ivan that things worked out as they did he had thought many times since then because he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. Think and go about the business of everyday life like marriage to a woman, non-political but a comfort, whom he met through one of his fellow workers on the Neva quay and who would share his home and life although not always understanding that part of his life or him and his determination to break Russia from the past. In those days after 1905, the dogs days as everybody agreed, when the Czar’s Okhrana was everywhere and ready to snatch anyone with any oppositional signs Ivan mostly thought and read, kept a low profile, did as was found out later after the revolution in 1917, a lot of low-level underground organizing among the dockworkers and factory workers of the Vyborg district. In other words developing himself and those around him as cadre for what these few expected would be the great awakening. But until the break-out Lena River gold-workers strike in 1912 those were indeed dog days.     

 

 

And almost as quickly as the dog days of the struggle were breaking up the war clouds over Europe were increasing. Every civilized nation was impatiently arming to the teeth to defend its civilization against the advancing hordes pitched at the door. Ivan could sense in his still sturdy peasant-bred bones that that unfinished task from 1905, that fight for the land and the republic, hell maybe the eight-hour day too, was going to come to a head. He knew enough too about the state of the navy, and more importantly, now the army through his organizing contacts to know that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land –grabbing adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.  Glad he had learned enough to earn a hearing, to spread the word. To get people moving when the time for action came.     

As the war clouds came to a head after the killing of the archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West, Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had definitely separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war fever just because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that the party wished to emulate in Russia.

He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible. Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committeemen in Russia and among their Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yes this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s tunnel vision, with great events working in the world. 

Jesus, thought Ivan once the Czar declared his allegiance to the Entente, once he had gotten the Duma to rubber-stamp his war budget (except for a remnant of the Bolsheviks who were subsequently relieved of immunity and readied for Siberian exile), he could not believe that Plekhanov, the great Plekhanov, the father of the Marxist movement in Russia and mentor to the likes of Lenin, Martov, Dan, hell even flea-bitten free-lancer Trotsky, had declared for the Czar for the duration and half of Ivan’s own bloody Menshevik party had capitulated (the other half, the leadership half had been in exile anyway, or out of the country for some reason) this was going to be hell.

There would be no short war here, no quick victory over the land hungry Huns, nothing but the stench of death filling the air overcoming all those mobilization parades and the thrown flowers, the kissed girls, the shots of vodka to fortify the boys for the run to the front. The Czar’s house, double eagles and all, was a house of cards or rather of sawdust like those villages old rascal Potemkin put up to fool Catherine in her time. Most of the peasant boys marching to the front these days would never see Mother Russia again, never get to smell the good Russian earth. But if he had anything to say about it those who survived, those who would have to listen if not now then sometime, would have their own piece of good Russian earth unlike their fathers who toiled on the land for Mister’s benefit for nothing. And went to early graves like his father.

And so in the summer of 1914 as if led by blinders Europe, along with solid phalanxes of its farm boys and factory workers, went to bloody stalemated war.

Went without Ivan just that minute declared too old to fight and relegated to the home guard. There would come a day, a day not too long in the future when the “recruiting sergeants” would be gobbling up the “too old to fights,” like Ivan, the lame and the halt, any man breathing to fill the depleted trenches on the Eastern front. By then though Ivan would have already clamored to get into the ranks, get in to spread the new wave message about the meaningless of the fight for the workingman and the peasant and that the fight was at home not out in the trenches. But that was for the future, the music of the future. Ironically Ivan’s unit wound up guarding the Peter and Paul Fortress for the Czar.  The same place that would see plenty of action when the time for action came.

The home guard was a loose operation, especially in Saint Petersburg, which entailed not much more than showing up for guard duty when the rotation called your turn and an occasion drill or assembly. The rest of the time, or most of it, Ivan spent reading, reading clandestinely the sporadic anti-war materials that were being smuggled in from various point in Europe by whatever still free exiles groups had enough gall and funds to put together those first crude sheets proclaiming the new dispensation. Ivan had time to think too during those first eighteen months or so of war. Thought about how right he had been that this “glorious little war” would not be over soon, would devour the flower of the European youth and if enough lived long enough change the face of half-monarchial Europe. Thought about how, when, and where street organizers like him (he admitted long ago that he was not a “theory man) would get a chance to change the awful slaughter and the daily casualty lists.

Ivan through all of early 1916 thought too that things within his own Menshevik organization needed serious upgrading, needed to be readied if the nation was to turn from semi-feudal monarchy to the modern republic which would provide the jumping off point to agitate for the social republic of the organization’s theory, and of his youthful dreams. Although he was no theory man he was beginning to see that the way the bourgeoisie, native and foreign, lined up it was as likely as not that they would not follow through, would act even worse than in 1905 when they went hat in hand with the Czar for the puny no account Duma and a few reforms that in the end only benefitted them to the exclusion of the masses. He began to see Lenin’s point, if it was Lenin’s and not some Okhrana forgery, that the new parties, the parties that had not counted before, the peasant and worker parties, would have to lead the way. There was no other way. And no, no thank you he was not a Trotsky man, a wild man who believed that things had changed some much in the 20^th century that the social republic for Russia was on the agenda right away. No, he could not wrap his head around that idea, not in poor, not in now wounded and fiercely bleeding and benighted Mother Russia. Beside Trotsky was living off his reputation in the 1905 revolution, was known to be mightier with the pen than the sword and a guy whom the main leadership of the Mensheviks thought was a literary dilettante (strange characterization though in an organization with plenty of odd-ball characters who could not find a home with the Bolsheviks and were frightened to death of working with the mass peasant parties being mostly city folk).

He thought too about the noises, and they were only noises just then, exile noises mostly that the Bolsheviks had had a point in opposing the war budget in the Duma, those who had not deserted the party for the Czar in the patriotic build-up, and who had been sent to Siberia for their opposition. He admired such men and knew slightly one of the deportees who had represented one of the Vyborg worker districts in the capital in the Duma. Now word had come back from Europe that a small congress held in some no-name village in the Alps (Zimmerwald in Switzerland as he later found out) had declared for international peace among the workers and oppressed of all nations and that it was time to stop the fighting and bleeding. More ominously Lenin and his henchmen had come out for waging a civil war against one’s own government to stop the damn thing, and to start working on that task now. Worse Lenin was calling for a new international socialist organization to replace the battered Socialist International.  To Ivan’s practical mind this was sheer madness and he told whatever Bolshevik committeemen he could buttonhole (in deepest privacy since the Czarist censorship and his snitches were plentiful).  In Ivan’s mind they were still the wild boys, seemingly on principle, and he vigorously argued with their committeemen to keep their outlandish anti-war positions quiet for now while the pro-war hysteria was still in play. But deep down he was getting to see where maybe the Bolsheviks, maybe Lenin, hell maybe even goof Trotsky were right-this war would be the mother of invention for the next revolutionary phase.

The Czar has abdicated, the Czar has abdicated, the new republic is proclaimed! The whirl of early 1917 dashed through Ivan Smirnov’s head. A simple demonstration and strike by women in the capital after the bloodletting of over two years of war, after the defeats of 1905 and later showed the monarchy, the now laughable double-eagle monarchy that held the masses in thrall for centuries was shown to be a house of cards, no, less, a house of sawdust blown away with the wind. While Ivan had not caught the early drift of the agitation and aggravation out in the worker neighborhoods he had played an honorable part in the early going. And the reason that Ivan had missed some of the early action was for the simple reason that Ivan’s home guard unit, the 27^th Regiment, had been mobilized for the Silesian front in early 1917 and had been awaiting orders to move out when all hell broke loose.

This is where the honorable part came in. The 27^th Regiment had been fortified to a division with remnants of other front-line divisions whose casualty levels were so high that they were no longer effectively fighting units. As the units meshed and the action in the capital got intense two quick decisions needed to be made by the 27^th –would the unit go to the front as ordered by the General Staff and subsequently would the unit still stationed in Saint Petersburg defend the Czarist monarchy then in peril. Now this new unit, this of necessity haphazard and un-centered unit, was made up of the likes of Ivan (although none so political or known to be political) and of disillusioned and bedraggled peasant boys back from the front who just wanted to go home and farm the land of their fathers, for Mister or for themselves it did not matter. And that is where Ivan Smirnov, of peasant parents born, came center stage and made his mark. Ivan when it came time to speak about whether they would go to the front argued that going to the front meant in all probability that if they went that they would farm no land, Mister’s or their own since they would be dead. And some other peasant boy would come along to farm the ancient family lands.

Ivan did not need to evoke the outlandish theories of Lenin and Trotsky about civil war and the social republic but just say that simple statement and the unit voted almost unanimously to stay in the capital (those who did not go along as always in such times kept quiet and did not vote to move out). Of course as always at such times as well Ivan’s good and well-earned reputation among the home guard members for prudent but forceful actions when the time was right helped carry the day. That reputation, borne of many years of street organizing and other work, also came in handy when the 27^th was ordered to defend the Czar in the streets. Again Ivan hammered home the point that there would be no land, no end of the bloody war, no end of dying in some forsaken trenches if the Czar stayed. The 27^th would not defend the Czar to the death (again the doubters and Czarist agents kept mum).

And for Ivan’s honorable service, for his honorable past, when it came time to send delegates to the soviet, or the soldiers’ section of the soviet (the other two sections being the workers and the peasants with everybody else who adhered to the soviet concept filling in one of those three sections) Ivan was unanimously elected to represent the 27^th Regiment. Now this soviet idea (really just Russian for council, workers councils mainly) was nothing new, had been created in the heat of the 1905 revolution and had been in the end the key governmental form of the opposition then. Now with the Czar gone (and as our story moves on the government is in non-Czarist agents hands) there were two centers of power- the bourgeois ministry (including representatives of some worker and peasant parties) and the soviets acting as watchdogs and pressure groups over the ministry. As Russian spring turned to summer Ivan from his post in the Soviet saw some things that disturbed him, saw that “pretty boy” Trotsky (who had just gotten back from American exile as had Lenin a bit earlier) and now damn Lenin had begun to proclaim the need for the social republic right then. Not in some few years future but then. But he was also disturbed by the vacuous actions of his Mensheviks on the land question and on social legislation. As the summer heat came Ivan began to see that defending the people’s revolution was tough business and that some hard twists and turns were just waiting ahead for him.                                      

 Jesus, Ivan said to himself as summer turned to early Russian fall when is that damn Kerensky going to pull us out of the war after that foolish summer offensive ordered by who knows who collapsed and made Russia look ridiculous to the world, our ragged starving troops are melting away from the trenches, his own 27^th had repeatedly been called up to the front and then mysteriously at the last moment held back to defend something. Who knows what the General Staff had planned after Kornilov’s uprising was halted in it tracks (everybody in the private drinking rooms laughed at the fact that Kornilov could not move his troops step one once the Soviet told the trainmen to halt all troop transfers). See here was the deal, the new democratic deal. Now that Russia was a democracy, weak as it was, it was now patriotic no matter what that madman Trotsky said, no matter what the man with the organization Lenin said, the brutal Hun must be defeated by the now harmonious democracies.

Bullshit (or the Russian equivalent) said Ivan when a part of his own party swallowed that line, went along for the ride. Lenin was calling from the rooftops (in his Finnish hideout once old Kerensky put a price on his head, wanted to smoke the old bald-headed bastard out and bring him to trial for treason if he could) for a vote of “no confidence” in the ministry. Both were beginning to call for the soviets to do more than express worker, soldier, and peasant anger and to stop acting as a pressure valve for Kerensky and his band of fools and take the power to change things into its own hands. And that madman Trotsky was proclaiming the same thing from his prison cell at the Peter and Paul where a remnant of the 27^th was still doing guard duty (and standing in awe of a real revolutionary giving him unheard of privileges).  Meanwhile Ivan, Ivan Smirnov, the voice of the 27^th, the well-respected voice of the peasant soldier, was twisting in the wind. There was no way forward with Kerensky, the mere tool of the British and French imperialists who were holding him on a tight string. But Ivan could not see where poor, bloody, beleaguered and drawn Mother Russia, his earthen Russia could move forward with the radicals who were beginning to clamor for heads, and for peace and land too.

Jesus, cried Ivan the Bolsheviks have this frosty October day proclaimed the social republic, have declared that the war over in the East (or that they were prepared to sue for peace with whomever would meet them at the table and if not then they would go it alone). Ivan had heard that it might be peace at any price in order to get the new order some breathing room. But peace. Necessary peace if Russia was not to lose all its able-bodied men for the next two generations.  The longed for peace that Ivan had spent his underground existence propagandizing for. Ivan already knew as a soldier delegate to the Soviet that the trenches had been and were at that moment being emptied out by land-hungry peasant soldiers, his peasant soldiers who heard that there would be “land to the tiller” and they wanted to till land not be under it. Ivan’s old call was being taken up by the damn Bolsheviks who sent out a land decree as a first order of business once they dumped the Kerensky ministry, once they flushed out the Winter Palace of all the old deadwood. All kinds of things were being proposed (and sometimes accepted even when the human and material wherewithal were non-existent which worried Ivan to perdition).

But here is the funny part. Although Ivan had lined himself up with Martov’s Left Mensheviks (those who wanted peace and some kind of vibrant bourgeois democracy to pressure forward into the social republic) in the Soviet for most of the summer and fall he kept getting incessant news from the 27^th that they were ready to mutiny against the Kerensky ministry, they had had enough and wanted to go home. Ivan was twisting in the wind. He saw that the idea of the social republic was being presented too soon, that the resources were not there to give the experiment a chance (who knows what outside force would come to the aid of the Soviets and when). But he also knew that right that moment the old ways could not relieve the impasse. And so he broke ranks with Martov and his group, did not walk out when the voting did not go the way Martov wanted. In fact when the division of the house was called Ivan Smirnov, longtime political foe of the madman Trotsky and scarred opponent of the damn Leninists (he had not heard that Trotsky had quietly joined the Bolsheviks earlier), voted for peace, voted for the land distribution. The new day had come and there would be hell to pay and he would not join the Bolsheviks, no way, but in for a dime in for a dollar and he would defend the Soviet power as best he could.       

                

***Another Way To Seek A Newer World-For Brother Ronald Callahan Who Has Done Good In This World  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A few years ago I had an occasion to write a short piece honoring the work of a fellow classmate from the North Adamsville High School (Massachusetts ) Class of 1964, Brother Ronald Callahan, who had as my old Irish grandmother would say, say looking at me directly, “the calling.” This classmate had devoted himself in his chosen way to “do good” in the world as a Catholic Xaverian brother. Doing good by ministering to the sick, the needy, those who have no other recourse, those who found themselves for whatever reason behind jail bars, and the “olvidados,” the lost and forgotten of the earth.

This year as we celebrate our 50^th anniversary of graduation from old North the class reunion committee has created a website to facilitate communications and round us up for probably one last time collectively. I, after a little editing, placed that piece on the Message Forum page for all his fellow classmates who have joined the site to see. I also hoped for a response in his own words and he graced those pages with a very interesting reply about the work he had done over the years. He also sent me a private e-mail (which he said was okay to make public, although I am only making my responses public) discussing a very different subject-our growing up poor in the old working class. Those remarks follows the sketch:   

 

For Oratorian Brother Ronald Callahan- North Adamsville High School Class of 1964- Another Way To Seek A Newer World

 

Frank Jackman , Class of 1964, comment:

Usually when I have had an occasion to use the word “brother” it is to ask for something like –“Say brother, can you spare a dime?” And have cursed, under my breathe of course, when I have not received recognition of and, more importantly, dough for my down and out status which required the use of that statement. Or I have used it as a solidarity word when I have addressed one of the male members of the eight million political causes that I have worked on in my life-“Brother Jones has made very good point. We should, of course, storm heaven to get this government to stop this damn war (fill in whatever war is going on at the time and you will not be far off).” Here, in speaking of one of my fellow North Adamsville High School classmates, Brother Ronald Callahan, I am using the term as a sincere honorific. For those of you who do not know Brother Ronald is a member of the Oratorian Brothers, a Catholic order somewhere down on the hierarchical ladder of the Roman Catholic Church. Wherever that rung is, he, as my devout Irish Catholic grandmother, the one who lived over on Young Street and was regarded by one and all as a “saint” (if only for having put up with a cranky, I am being kind here, grandfather), would say (secretly hoping, hoping against hope, that it would apply to me), had the “calling” to serve the Church.

Now Brother Ronald and I, except for a few sporadic e-mails over the last couple of years, have neither seen nor heard from each other since our school days. So this is something of an unsolicited testimonial on my part (although my intention is to draw him out into the public spotlight to write about his life and work of which I have a glimmer of long time ago recognition). Moreover, except for a shared youthful adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which I long ago placed on the back burner of my life there are no religious connections that bind us together now. At one time, I swear, that I did delight in arguing, through the dark North Adamsville beach night, about the actual number of angels that could dance on the head of a needle, and the like, but that is long past. I do not want to comment on such matters, in any case, but rather on the fact of Brother Ronald’s doing good in this world.

We, from an early age, are told, no, ordered by parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers that while we are about the business of ‘making and doing’ in the world to do good, or at least to do no evil. Most of us got that ‘making and doing’ part, and have paid stumbling, fumbling, mumbling lip service to the last part. Brother Ronald, as his profession, and as a profession of his faith, and that is important here, choose a different path. Maybe not my path, and maybe not yours, but certainly in Brother Ronald’s case, as old Abe Lincoln said, the “better angels of our nature” prevailed over the grimy struggle for this world’s good. Most times I have to fidget around to find the right endings to my commentaries, but not on this one. You did good, real good, Brother. And from the ragtag remnant of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys in the old North Adamsville hang-out good night- All honor to Brother Ronald Callahan.

 *******

“Brother Ronald –thanks for note- I loved that the movie (and book), The Friends of Eddie Coyle, with Robert Mitchum and based on George V. Higgins novel (and probably based on the now captured Whitey Bulger’s life or one of his crowd, or close to it) although I did not know the movie had scenes filmed in North Adamsville. I do remember Dorchester, Boston Garden, and downtown Boston scenes.

Funny that your area of town was called the “poverty pit” [part of the film was shot in his old neighborhood and his father, maybe rightly, had been upset that the film company had called the area that name] because I grew up in a shack of a house (with my two brothers, one who dropped out and should have been in our Class of 1964 and the other was Class of 1966) on Maple Street near Donegan Brothers Garage on Fillmore Street and people called that area “the wrong side of the tracks” too (including my grandparents who were born and raised on Sagamore Street-but that is another story).

All I know was that it was a tough dollar growing up poor, with hand-me-downs and big wanting habits that never got satisfied, when a lot of our classmates were a step above I think (although recent trips back make me thing that was just a relative thing). I carry that mark of po’ boy with me (as you do) but I have not forgotten, unlike others who moved up in the world, my roots and on the questions of war and peace, social and economic justice I know I have stood on the “right side of the angels.” As you have, my brother Brother.  Later- Frank-and don’t forgot those Ms. Sonos memories when you get a change [our senior year English teacher.”        

A Story Out In The 50^th Anniversary High School Class Of 1964 Sweethearts Night

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

A while back, maybe in early 2104, I wrote a little sketch for those in my North Adamsville (Massachusetts) High School Class of 1964 who had met in high school (or in a couple of cases earlier, in junior high if you could believe that in those hormonally-driven days when we could hardly think straight never mind think forever thoughts) and remained sweethearts, through thick and thin, for the past fifty years. Our class, or the reunion committee of our class, had recently put up a class website and so I placed that sketch on the Message Forum section there as a heartfelt tribute for all to see.

I tried to honor those fifteen couples with that tribute to their steadfastness, and love, for all that time noting that my own marital status, three marriages, a fistful of affairs, and more than a few flings had ebbed and flowed like the tides and that even a recent affair that I really tried, by my lights, to make work had faded out without a flicker after a short while making me finally realize that I am not a forever man. But my romantic troubles are not what I am concerned with today. As part of that class sweethearts sketch at the end I placed a “challenge” to any of those couples which read like this: 

 

“Well I have done my part. I have written a tribute to the Class of 1964 sweethearts that are celebrating 50 years together here. So the ball is in your court. Now you have tell us all about how you met (your version anyway), or anything else you would like including those bumps in the road during your time together if you like. We have all been there so just write away. Later Frank Jackman”           

 

As such things go, and given that we were of a generation that was on the edge of the technology revolution as well as the vagaries of, ah, old age, I did not necessarily expect any response to what is essentially a private matter. But a few weeks later Jeff Turner wrote a little something using the points raised in my sketch as talking points. He, and his lovely bride Kate (nee Kelly), had been one of the couples that I mentioned that met in junior high school (North Adamsville Junior High) and so he wanted to say that he appreciated some of my remarks, and differed on others. But the big point that he wanted to make was that he was a “forever guy,” a forever guy even back then although he sympathized with my “plight,” my marital ebbs and flows. So here is what he wrote:         

Frank-Thanks for the nice piece that you wrote about some of your old fellow classmates who have stayed together since high school. Kate appreciated it as well (and my comments here reflect a little her own thoughts but mostly this is my slant). It seems funny to be talking now about how long we have been together since really the time went by very easily. I never could figure out, no disrespect to you or other classmates, why more guys didn’t find their fate mates early for it may have saved them a lot of heartache. I agree with you that those teen times, especially in junior high (funny how they changed it and now call it middle school as I thought junior high sounded more grown up like you were almost an adult) when you said those years were something unbelievable with all the teen distractions and anxieties.

That is why when I grabbed onto Kate in eight grade and we got along, found we liked each other I was ready to plan a future with her (liked and grabbed each other by the way partially because both of our home lives were so bad, her father a drunk, and mine skirt- crazy and gone before I was ten). We did survive those awful trials (mainly our mothers trying to break us up because we were “too young” to be serious, thinking we should see other people before committing to one person, etc., etc.), tribulations (me never having dough and worrying that some guy with a few bucks or a line would sweep her away), traumas (both of high school romance, high school Saturday nights down at the beach or up at the quarries, high school anxieties over the prom, graduation, and just how to survive in the world) which in comparison made us staying together for fifty years easy.

Funny about how you said a lot of guys, seventy-six other guys I think it was, hitting on Kate because I know that was true, maybe not seventy-six but a lot of guys were always around her in the cafeteria so I would go cruising in and sit right down beside her, even in junior high, and that tended to stop some guys, for a while. If I recall your best friend in junior high, Frankie Riley, tried to hit on her with his beatnik line of patter and his arcane knowledge of a million odd-ball facts but she was wise to him from the beginning. First of all she was wise to his so-called knowledge, probably knew more that he did and corrected his factual mistakes for him. But more important and this is where Frankie made his fatal error, all big king of the hill corner boy over you guys at Doc’s Drugstore up the Downs or not, Kate was best friends with Frankie’s girlfriend then, Janice Murphy, and so she duly reported his transgression to her as quickly as she could get on the telephone and he caught hell from her. If it had been me who found out though Frankie and I would have mixed it up, no doubt about it. So you can see why I grabbed onto such a smart girl early and held on for dear life.

By the way Kate says that you tried to hit on her in high school, well not hit on her maybe but you used to give some meaningful glances in her direction in class and in the corridors from what she said. Or from what Kathy Craven told her a couple of times when Kathy noticed that after you passed Kate you would turn around to see if she turned around. All is forgiven now though although you know I would have been swooping down on you if you did more that some foolish glances. Frank, what I can’t figure out is how you thought some sideways glances were going to get you anywhere with any girl then. You know you had to actually talk to them. That’s what I did with Kate after I stopped getting moony-eyed over her and realized that she was taking her peeks at me in class too. I don’t know if this information would help you now but I thought I would mention it just in case.     

I don’t know exactly what attracted me to Kate at first, those times when she disturbed my sleep before I talked to her. Or what attracted other guys to her, guys like you if Kate is right about that glance stuff. It wasn’t because she was beautiful although she was (and is) but she had (and has) such a pleasing personality, winsome smile and was (and is) smart as a whip that I think guys figured if they rode her star then she would do their homework for them or something. And in the course of that some spark would jump out, I really don’t know.

Funny, going the other way, Kate told me once in high school when I asked her if she thought a girl in our class was looking at me, you know, with the look, never thought that other girls would be bothering me.  Although one time later Kate said if they had they might have seen a very different personality that what they were used to in the class “Miss Personality” but mainly she would say when I mentioned some girl and I said a kind word about her and that maybe she was “hitting” on me (although we didn’t use that word then but something else that I can’t remember but the grandkids use it all the time and it sounds right) she would say “yeah, you wish.”

The worst thing though Kate said when we talked one night last week, after reading your piece on the website about class sweethearts,  about how we met and the stuff we went through was, you know, Sally Smith telling a tale to her about how she saw me looking twice at a certain girl in Math class. Sally was always doing that although she was going steady with Tim Conroy, the football player and expressed no interest, none as far as I know, in me. That night I am talking about I made her laugh when I remembered Ben one time telling me who Kate was seen in the school cafeteria, Jesus, the cafeteria, talking to over lunch. That is when I would do my thing and get there and sit right beside her doing my protective bit. We both got a kick out of that personal stuff you mentioned, you know the stuff like what to do about those grabby hands of my part, Kate had my number on that although more than once we almost split when I didn’t want to take “no” for an answer. Especially when she was teasing me too far just too far in the days when her hormones were jumping out of her skin.

Jesus what we didn’t know about sex then, how to do stuff without getting into trouble, how and when not to do stuff, you know. We were both brought up to be Catholics and nobody, nobody even came close to giving us any information about what was going on. Kids today know by about ten what we didn’t know until we were married. I don’t know about you, although I remember seeing you and Frankie sneaking into the side chapel for Sunday Mass since that was where I was sitting too so I didn’t have to sit with my mother and two sisters in the main section, but I learned everything I knew about sex out in the streets from guys who said they knew stuff. I am glad I didn’t listen to half of their spiel because it was flat-out wrong although one thing that Kate and I used to do down at Adamsville Beach proved to be exactly right. Like you said we survived the tough parts of high school. 

To answer your question even though you really did not put it as a question who knows when or where it started for others. I know for me it was that first fresh-eyed glance in Mr. Forrester’s dreary English classroom looking at Kate until my eyes got sore. Kate said for her it was spying me while waiting, endlessly waiting, for the always late bus when I would be walking down the street after track practice (you remember Mr. Lewis the gym teacher who used to be the junior high track coach I think) and she went weak-kneed. (I swear that is what Kate said back then after we were “going steady” and she said that was what she said when we talked it over last week. For us it happened with big bang hearts, we were all over each other from the beginning.

Did you used to hang around in the boys “lav” on the second floor back at North Adamsville Junior High? Probably not if you were one of Frankie Riley’s corner boys because you guys, Frankie anyway, hung around the “lav” next to the cafeteria. The reason I ask is that before Kate I used to be, well, all over all the girls whether they liked me or not. And I would brag about it in boys’ lav. Lying like a crazy man, lying worse than Frankie Riley, that this girl or that did everything known to mankind with me. But with Kate I was like you said in your piece “formerly full of boasts and bravados in that mandatory Monday morning before school boys’ “lav” talkfest about who did or did not do what with whom over the weekend fell silent, would not speak her name in such bluster.” Kate said you hit her right on the nose too except I know you had never been in the girls’ “ lav” when you said “She, she in that mandatory Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest about who did or did not do what with whom just smiled, a private smile, she had her man.” We  laughed, laughed about that one night down at the beach once we settled (kind of settled) that issue of what was, and was not, appropriate when we were watching the “submarine races.”  That was the first time we said we would stay together forever. Forever being, I think as such things went, maybe the next year, or until the next best thing came along            

As it turned out the next best thing was sitting right next to each of us and so we, maybe a little fearful, maybe a little worried about whether we would last or not tied the knot right after high school. I went off to the Vietnam War not long after and then to school on the GI Bill and then got that job in the research department of Gillette. All along Kate though would wait and worry, worry about how we would provide for the coming children. They came, the three of them, Janice, Kenny, and Claudia. They made our time a little easier (mostly).

Jesus you should have been a marriage counsellor or something, what the heck with three marriages you would be a natural, since you hit the point about the “bumps in the road, he, getting a little thicker around the waist, looked off in the distance and she, well, she went on an exercise regime as they both wondered in the night what had happened.” Both of us, once the kids were older, almost, almost I said, had affairs with people who were our friends, in my case a close friend and colleague at work, and let me leave it at that, okay. We did not, believe me we did not talk about that last week, but I know I then I was feverishly tossing in the night with thoughts about leaving, thinking about after twenty-five years what would do I without her (and maybe her me), about where would I go and how when we were young we had loved each other so. Those fevers passed, although we lost good friends and it was hard sometimes at work when I would see the gal looking kind of forlorn when I came near her office. Funny later after the kids left the house and had kids of their own and we became “empty nesters” I took up golf and Kate shopping, shopping until she dropped which she used to hate, for the newest grandchild and we both would have those night sweat dreams we had when we were thinking about having our respective affairs. But those moments too passed, remembering back to our old time pledges.        

I, we, Catholic forever married or not, could never figure out why in the modern world where everyone is supposed to change spouses, partners, lovers with the changing seasons, we had to almost defend ourselves because we decided to spend our time on earth together. Now we know we marked our love with the flow of time.   

I couldn’t understand in your piece who that woman was up in Maine that you mentioned, other than that she was a classmate of ours, do you know her, was she one of your affairs or flings it seems like you knew a lot about her, Couldn’t understand why on a cold December night she stood against a frosted window in a lonely dark room looking out with a vacant expression at the swirl of the ocean before her. Couldn’t figure out her being there alone while she stood thinking about that first marriage gone wrong when that first husband went chasing after a younger woman. Also about that second foolish marriage to some charming chameleon who had used her as a meal ticket. And couldn’t understand why she thought about that short recent affair that had held so much promise in the first days, felt like maybe he would be her forever man but you see he was married, married all along to some other idea. I (and Kate too) did understand why she sighed though.

Couldn’t understand either that classmate, was that you disguising yourself as somebody out West when I know you live near Boston, down in some Southern California town changing companions with the seasons? From the sound of it and what you said in your piece it sure sounded like your situation. There he was thinking about how he had raised holy hell in his first marriage, had married out of fear, fear of being alone when the hammer of his life went down. How he blushed at that horror of a second marriage where he let his every addiction, affliction and predilection destroy whatever good instincts he had left.   Or when he wondered if that short splendid recent affair that he had tried to make work, make work out of a different fear, a fear of being left alone in his old age when the hammer went down might not have worked out because he could not commit, could not risk the return of those addictions. And about how he smirked as he thought about that, thought about how his whole life revolved around two women, the one that he was with at the moment and that one in his head, and in his dreams just beyond his grasp who he wanted to be with. Sounds like he was not built for forever stuff kind of like you.   

We, Kate and me, think people should stand in awe, definitely stand in awe of our steadfastness like you said. And our love.  So thanks for agreeing with what we made of our lives and sorry, very sorry, Frank to hear that you didn’t fare so well.  Your old classmates, Jeff and Kate Turner       

***Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm-The Life And Times Of Folksinger/Songwriter Tom Rush-No Regrets  

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Od Frank Jackman

No Regrets, a documentary starring Tom Rush, 2014

Several years ago I did a series entitled Not Bob Dylan: Other Male Voices Of The 1960s Folk Minute where I tried to highlight those male folksingers (and songwriters) who for whatever reason did not wind up doing Brother Dylan’s never-ending tour (and now never-ending bootleg series of CDs as well). Many like Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, David Bromberg just kind of faded out as the folk minute lost much of its allure, and its ability to sustain livelihoods (although the example above have resurfaced lately in the coffeehouse/folk festival circuit sounding very good by the way). Some were relatively one-hit wonders and we know what that means, they are now working some other career. Others, like the folksinger/songwriter under review. Tom Rush, in his latest documentary kept their fingers in but moved into a less heated, hectic environment that endlessly touring and trying to produce the next great folk song. This DVD, put out by the same producers who put out the anniversary documentary a few years back on the Club 47 in Cambridge when Bob, Joan Baez and Tom made musical history, hits the highlights of the career (really careers) of an important figure in that 1960s folk minute.   

As in any biographical documentary, the Tom Rush story starts out with a little material about his childhood, about his adopted childhood up in New Hampshire (with an interesting aside about his later discovered relationship with his birth father) with teacher parents who pushed Tom to educational excellence but also provided an environment where he could develop his musical skills. Skills that when the folk minute in Cambridge intersected his time as an undergraduate student at Harvard (and as a Harvard radio DJ) gave him an opportunity to become one of the then iconic folksingers of the time.     

Interestingly the road to musical success was as usual with lots of careers two steps forward, one step back as Tom tried to get a record contract (absolutely necessary then to get airplay, airplay on the local radio station, WBZ, that a lot of us listened to every Sunday night to see what the latest folk minute minute was about). Success at the Club 47 led to other engagements in the Boston area and Greenwich Village and steady work for a long period of time as he made, unlike some  others, the transition to the post- Bob Dylan electrified folk rock scene. Then some burn-out, some personal difficulties and a desire to not travel as much. That is the period when he began his very successful Boston Symphony Hall winter shows, his ventures into record production highlighting newer folk talent needing a start, writing, and, strangely, although not for a New Hampshire boy perhaps, a period as a gentleman-farmer. In all a useful life, a life that now includes periodic forays out into the now shrinking coffeehouse folk circuit that sustains the music (and where I saw him last year). A good one and one half hour documentary about what happened to one of the important, if lesser, lights of that folk minute when we thought we would turn the world upside down with our music, our counter-cultural experiment and our alternative politics, and make a gentler, more peaceful world to live in.