Hello all,
Just a quick post from me today, written on my phone, as I am currently on an archival trip to Germany digging up loads of great material for future translations – from newspapers on microfilm through to previously unpublished and untranslated letters by Clara Zetkin and others.
While scanning some documents just now, I came across this footnote in Jörn Schütrumpf’s article “Clara Zetkin oder: der Widerruf’. It is most revealing about Stalin’s contemptuous attitude towards Zetkin and underlines just how disingenuous Eastern Bloch historiography has been when glancing over the tensions between Zetkin and Stalin to portray the former as an uncritical “grandmother of Soviet communism’. What is more, by deploying the hoary old sexist metaphor of the “witch”, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union unwittingly found himself in the company of none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II, who once referred to Clara as ‘the most dangerous witch in Germany’. Here is my translation of the footnote (no. 63, p. 120):
‘In 1925, Nikolai Bukharin [a close ally of Zetkin – BL] described Clara’s last meeting with Lenin, at which Stalin was also present. Bukharin wrote that she kissed Lenin’s hands. Stalin later described this scene as follows: “The old witch kissed his hands!”‘
Two more things:
1. Next Monday 15 August I will be presenting some of my archival findings in a talk at Communist University (London and on Zoom) at 5pm BST. The paper is entitled ‘Clara Zetkin and the First World War’ and will discuss a range of previously unseen material.
2. A reminder about the two podcasts I have recently been involved in producing: the Marxism Translated podcast with Mike Taber and my interview with The Measures Taken Podcast.
Last but not least, many thanks to the four new Patrons who recently pledged their support – Evan, Matt, Matthew and Darryl – I am really grateful and we are closing in on our target of 100 Patrons by the end of 2022.
Since I am travelling and not on social media, I would appreciate it if readers could tweet, facebook and insta this out. Normal service will resume soon.
Best wishes
BL