The mystery is not why Trotsky was at the reception in Brownsville, Brooklyn but who had arranged it. The staff members of Forverts, including its editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, were based predominantly in Manhattan. Ludwig Lore, another of his regular contacts at Forverts, was holed-up at 55th Street, some six miles west in Borough Park. Furthermore,…
Category: 1917 Russian Revolution
Unravelling Trotsky’s New York Visit, Jan-March 1917 – Part I
An article written by rights activist, Henry Moskowitz, in February 1918, said that to understand Leon Trotsky’s infamous sudden visit to the Lower East Side of New York in January the previous year, you also had to understand the local landscape upon which his “powerful figure” was “silhouetted”. Its streets “were black with men, women…
George Shanks and the Protocols Matrix
On the 100th anniversary of the book being exposed as a forgery, a recent discovery I made in the archives in Dublin suggests that the 1920 British translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Jewish Peril) was not the work of ‘lone wolf’ anti-Semite George Shanks, but part of a sophisticated propaganda…
‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ – Winston Churchill, Illustrated Sunday Herald
Content warning: In the following story and podcast I am going to be shining the spotlight on some very unpleasant material. We’ll be dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, so use your discretion and prioritize your wellbeing. Churchill’s ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ for the Illustrated Sunday Herald must rank as one of the most controversial…
American Relief Administration Scandal – Captain James V. Martin, Herbert Hoover & Russia
The Original Russian Job: The forgotten story of how a ‘secret compact’ between Churchill and America very nearly saved Russia from Lenin and the Soviet Union. This is the story of James V. Martin, an aviation pioneer who blew the whistle on American plans to smash the Bolsheviks at the height of post-war trade negotiations…
A ‘Secret Mission’ to Russia. How F. Scott Fitzgerald very nearly became a spy.
In 1917, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, was nearly recruited for a covert mission to Russia, posing as a Red Cross secretary for Father Sigourney Fay. The mission, tied to US State Department interests during the Russian Revolution, aimed to gauge religious freedom and political shifts. Complicated by secret diplomacy and escalating…
J.G. ROBIN — The Incredible Rise and Fall of the Ukrainian Gatsby
The scholar Thomas P. Riggio was among the first to explore the similarities between Theodore Dreiser’s Mr X in Twelve Men and Fitzgerald’s titular hero, Jay Gatsby, but few if any have explored Robin’s life in any real detail. This mini-book takes a look at the life and times of the sky-rocket millionaire from his…
Modernism under Surveillance. A look at some ‘Literary Bolsheviks’.
During the war, the essayist and critic H. L. Mencken was quizzed on several occasions about his German heritage and the contact he had with ‘enemy’ oculist Dr Wilhelm Sohler and Victor Hugo Erpf, a Baltimore businessman who had been arrested and imprisoned as a spy in April 1917. By this point in time he…
A New Race of Man — How Trotsky’s Dream of a Soviet Superman Helped Perfect the American Dream
This essay explores the interplay between F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision in The Great Gatsby and the revolutionary ideals of Leon Trotsky, tracing influences from Shelley and Nietzsche through Soviet and American eugenics, cosmism, and utopianism. It examines the concept of a ‘New Race of Man’—a blend of idealism, social reform, and scientific aspiration—shaping both the…
Sir Bernard Pares Russophile, Adventurer … Secret Agent
The role played by scholar, academic and adventurer Bernard Pares in Britain’s relationship with Imperial Russia and the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention continues to be overlooked in popular history. This article explores the complex relationship between Pares’ groundwork for the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce in 1907, the British Russia Bureau during the First World…