Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Excited to announce that Leon's son just found me a photo of Elly and
Leon together, with Leon in military uniform, which dates the photo to
roughly the same time as the letters! I will be putting a scan online
soonish.
  

    
That's great. I haven't chimed in here, but I'm following along.
  

    
Chime, chime! And spread the word about the blog, if you please.
  

    
Can't wait to see the photos.
  

    
Leon was a proto-chow person!
  

    
Nice.  Catching up...  the photo was great, and the latest letter has
such bizarre and entertaining descriptions.     

I'd missed this one, which touches on 1940s CP Stalinists versus
"tRATzkyites" :

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/78017699618/i-love-you-so-much-i
-dont-want-you-to-be-tainted>
   Writing on October 25, 1940, our Leon would have had heard a lot
about Leon Trotsky's assassination in exile in Mexico City, which was
huge news only a few months prior. Not taking the time to look up the
examples of despicable parties who'd said nice things about Trotsky,
but I have to wonder if that was an "enemy of my enemy" phenomenon, or
even a speaking well of the dead phenomenon.  
   The Communist factions drama is so intense and murky.  Found an
article from that period which condemns both Stalin and Trotsky as
impure power-seekers who just used theories and revolutionary ideals to
attack one another.  It's just an example of that complex division,
written from a stance that appears to idolize the early beliefs of Marx
and Lenin and condemn what followed. How difficult to sort through the
competing flavors of propaganda and find the organization to support. 

 
<https://archive.org/details/AfterSixteenYearsOfSilenceonTrotskysArticledidStal
inPoison>
  

  I loved "you stinker with a capital stink" in his opening. SO nice. 
  

    
Yeah, I'm still looking for a better explanation of why Trotskyites
and Stalinists were at each other's throats. 
  

    
Aren't they always?
  

    

ask Jack Radey
  

    
'for my feet, dope'

!!!!

love that bit in today's post.  So enjoying getting to know them this
way.  
  

    
A Certain Party I Love now has its own Facebook page, if you care to
join me there:

https://www.facebook.com/ACertainPartyILove
  

    
A variation on the theme, from today's NYT front page:  letters home
from a soldier on the front lines, that might have come close to
ending up at the flea market....

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/nyregion/world-war-ii-history-captured-in-a-
privates-letters-to-his-wife.html>

But they do not link to samples of the letters or suggest where they
might eventually be published.  Back to Leon and Elly....
  

    
i thought the NYT piece could actually help fawn sell the book. 
  

    
Especially if it gets a lot of comments and is e-mailed, showing
interest in the topic in general.