"The History of Possibility"

"Ever since the 1905 upheaval in Russia, Luxemburg had suspected Lenin’s faction of what she scornfully termed a 'barracks' mentality. A short while after the 1917 revolution, we find her writing a succession of letters, describing the situation in Russia as 'abysmal' and the Bolsheviks as deserving of 'a terrible tongue-lashing' for their repression of rival parties such as the Social Revolutionaries, and their unilateral decision to abolish the Constituent Assembly. She extends this condemnation to include the police mentality (concerning incessant foreign 'conspiracies') that underlay Soviet foreign policy. She singles out a certain 'Józef' as a particular exemplar of this attitude, and with yet another shock of premonition, one discovers that this was the 'party name' of her fellow Pole Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka and later considered the father of the KGB. It was during this time that Luxemburg made her imperishable defense of free speech, boldly stating that the concept was meaningless unless it meant the freedom of 'the one who thinks differently.'"

Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic reviews The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.

Four Legs Good

"In Zimbabwe, as the rule of Robert Mugabe's kleptocratic clique became ever more exorbitant, an opposition newspaper took the opportunity to reprint Animal Farm in serial form. It did so without comment, except that one of the accompanying illustrations showed Napoleon the dictator wearing the trademark black horn-rimmed spectacles of Zimbabwe's own leader. The offices of the newspaper were soon afterwards blown up by a weapons-grade bomb, but before too long Zimbabwean children, also, will be able to appreciate the book in its own right."

In The Guardian, Christopher Hitchens revisits George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Poison Summer

"In Mexico, settled near the capital in the small town of Coyoacán, in a house owned by the painter Diego Rivera (who was married to the radical artist Frida Kahlo), Trotsky and his wife Natalia maintained a bizarre imprisoned court. Unable to go out much because of fear that the NKVD would kill him, Trotsky welcomed a regular supply of visitors, was supported by loyal Trotskyist secretaries and guards, and played on a world stage by writing ferociously trenchant articles about Stalin and the character of the deformed workers' state that the Soviet Union had become. The avant-garde artists and writers who flirted with Trotsky form a sparkling backdrop to the political narrative, and Patenaude provides a series of fascinating pen portraits of a motley crew of believers and fellow travellers (a term invented by Trotsky for those who were happy to join the journey but reluctant about the destination). The most famous was Frida Kahlo, who came quickly under Trotsky's spell and indulged in a brief affair until she tired of it. Hovering a little further out on the ring of friends and colleagues were Soviet moles and agents, waiting for Trotsky to drop his guard."

In Literary Review, Richard Overy reviews Bertrand M Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky.