Yesterday, Helix went to Slutsk and Uzda, the former a shtetl known for its weavers, the latter, the hometown of the Hebrew writer, Dvora Baron. It was a powerful day of engaging locals, who helped us animate the ghosts of the past.  I generally try to learn the names of people I encounter on my journeys, but there were many of them, ranging from the women selling us bright orange silk flowers to Uzda’s local town historian, who helped us find the Jewish cemetery where we read Yiddish poetry by writers from the area.

On a lighter note, there is a love bridge in Slutsk with locks on a bridge echoing the one in Paris that the mayor just ordered removed.  I ended up seeing these love bridges in most Belarussian cities. Also in Slutsk, which was the sash capital of eastern Europe in its pre-capitalist heyday, we played a traditional Belarussian game of…

Lars Lih

In a Jacobin article titled “The Lies We Tell About Lenin”, Lars Lih characterizes Trotskyism in a way that I find unsatisfactory:

So far I have looked at errors that purport to explain the failures of the revolution, but latter-day partisans of the October Revolution are also engaged in heresy-hunting. For them, the success of the revolution is explained by the rejection of ideological errors. The mainstream Trotskyist interpretation is built around a story of this type.

Back in the 1905–6 (the story goes), Leon Trotsky came up with his theory of permanent revolution and pronounced socialist revolution to be possible in backward Russia. Since his theory attacked the unimaginative dogmas of “Second International Marxism,” Trotsky was greeted with universal incomprehension.

Fortunately, just in time, Lenin saw the light and caught up with Trotsky in April 1917. Together the two great leaders rearmed the Bolshevik Party…