1: MONTSERRAT
1 Trotsky, My Life, 269.
2 New York American, January 13, 1917.
3 New York Call, January 17, 1917.
4 Marcosson, 413.
5 Montserrat manifest from Ancestry.com.
6 Serge and Trotsky, 12.
7 Shachtman, 2.
8 Serge and Trotsky, 15.
9 Olgin, “Our Revolution,” 3.
10 Kirchwey, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 3.
11 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 33.
12 Trotsky, My Life, 268, and Novy Mir, January 16, 1917.
13 On Palermo sinking, see statements of Frank M. Carney and Daniel O’Connor, Barcelona consulate files, NARA, RG 59, December 22, 1916.
14 Shachtman’s files, 6.
15 Trotsky, My Life, 269.
16 July 13, 1915. British Archives, KV2/502.
17 Telegram July 11, 1915, British Archives, KV2/502.
18 Serge and Trotsky, 28.
19 Deutscher, 70.
20 Deutscher, 57–58.
21 Eastman, Young Trotsky, 85.
22 Trotsky, Our Political Tasks, part 2. He went on, describing Lenin’s Bolshevism as a system of “the Party organization ‘substituting’ itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organization, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee.”
23 Morton, 96.
24 Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 57–75; Thatcher, Trotsky, 75.
25 Why create splits, he argued, when their group was so small to start with? He recalled joking upon seeing the thirty-eight delegates arrive at the 1915 Zimmerwald conference that after fifty years of organizing, “It was still possible to seat all the internationalists in four coaches.” Trotsky, My Life, 249.
26 Trotsky, My Life, 251.
27 Letter to M. Uritzky, November 24, 1916. British Archives, KV 2/502.
28 Thatcher, 191
29 Trotsky, My Life, 260; Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 191.
30 Trotsky, My Life, 265.
31 Notably, Trotsky had not given a single speech or written a single article in the country. According to Trotsky, Spanish authorities said simply, “Your ideas are too advanced for Spain.” Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 193.
32 See letter to M. Uritzky, November 24, 1916. British Archives, KV 2/502. “At Cadiz, [Spain] they wanted to put me straight onto a steamer starting for Havana. . . . I protested . . . & then there came from Madrid permission for me to be left at Cadiz until the first steamer sailed for New York.”
33 Letter to M. Uritzky, November 24, 1916. British Archives, KV 2/502.
34 See Spence, “Hidden Agendas”; Thatcher Leon Trotsky and World War One, 191–94; documents in British Archives, KV2/502, and Trotsky, Vingt Lettres.
35 Trotsky, Vingt Lettres, November 22, 1916.
36 Shachtman’s files, 6.
37 Ibid.
38 Trotsky, Vingt Letters, December 31, 1916.
39 Ibid.
40 Trotsky, My Life, 268.
41 Letter to Tchitcherine, November 16, 1916. British Archives, KV 2/502.
42 Deutscher, 241.
43 Trotsky, My Life, 268.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Cravan, 37
47 Ibid.
48 Gankin and Fisher, 218.
49 Lenin to Kollontai, February 17, 1917, from Gankin and Fisher, 576.
2: TIMES SQUARE
50 New Yorker Volkszeitung, January 14, 1917.
51 New York Times, January 14, 1917.
52 New York Tribune, January 15, 1916.
53 New York Call, December 2, 1016
54 New Yorker Volkszeitung, January 14, 1917.
55 Novy Mir, January 15, 1917.
56 Trotsky, My Life, 185.
57 Trotsky, Our Revolution, 8.
58 Trotsky, My Life, 273.
59 Serge and Trotsky, 30.
60 Krupskaya, in Cohen, Bukharin, 18.
61 Cohen, Bukharin, 18.
62 Cohen, Bukharin, 37.
63 Gankin and Fisher, 249.
64 Cohen, Bukharin, 39.
65 Cohen, Bukharin, 38.
66 Cohen, Bukharin, 40.
67 Ibid.
68 Gankin and Fisher, 217.
69 Cohen, Bukharin, 41.
70 Gankin and Fisher, 568.
71 Serge and Trotsky, 30.
72 Ibid.
3: SAINT MARKS PLACE
73 Shub, 124.
74 Kirchwey, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 1–2.
75 On Weinstein, see file OG177382, National Archives, RG 65, M1085.
76 Recht papers, 31.
77 Serge and Trotsky, 31.
78 Trotsky, Russian Revolution, 358.
79 Novy Mir, January 16, 1917.
80 On the Triangle fire, see Von Drehle.
81 Nedava, 36, and Forward, January 16, 1917.
82 Quoted in Ziv, chapter 10.
83 Nedava, 36, and Forward, January 16, 1917.
84 New York Call, January 16, 1917.
85 Ibid.
86 Porter, 92.
87 Porter, 101.
88 Deutscher, 168.
89 Clements, 91.
90 Clements, 94.
91 New York World, October 12, 1915, in Porter, 228.
92 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 3.
93 Lenin to Kollontai, September 1915, in Gankin and Fisher, 207.
94 In Porter, 216.
95 This was Lenin’s favorite insult around this time. Lenin on Kautsky: “At present I hate and scorn Kautsky more than anyone else. What vile, cheap, self-conceited hypocrisy.” Gankin and Fisher, 195.
96 Lenin to Kollontai, November 9, 1915, in Gankin and Fisher, 572.
97 Clements, 96.
98 Ibid.
4: BROOKLYN
99 Trotsky, “A Revolutionist’s Career,” St. Louis Labor, February 16, 1918.
100 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 1.
101 Buhle, “Ludwig Lore and the New Yorker Volkszeitung,” 172–73.
102 Draper, 72.
103 Chambers, 391.
104 Reinhardt, 18.
105 Lore, Leon Trotsky, 1.
106 Braudy, 4.
107 Gankin and Fisher, 567.
108 Gitlow, 33; Ackerman, 76.
109 Sen Katayama, “Morris Hillquit and the Left Wing,” Revolutionary Age, July 26, 1919.
110 Pratt, 107.
111 Porter, 216.
112 Gankin and Fisher, 566.
113 Lore, Trotsky, November 1918.
114 Ibid.
115 Draper, 81.
116 Cohen, 44.
117 Wolfe, Life in Two Centuries, 183.
118 Kublin, 241.
119 Sen Katayama, “Morris Hillquit and the Left Wing,” Revolutionary Age, July 26, 1919.
5: RIVERSIDE DRIVE
120 Recht papers, 191–92.
121 Pratt, 29.
122 New York Call, January 14, 1917.
123 Hillquit, 118.
124 See Hillquit, 114–16, and Gorenstein, 207 et seq.
125 Hillquit, 161–62. One more thing: Earlier that January, Hillquit had traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, to participate in the founding of the American Jewish Congress.
126 The strike, in fact, threatened starvation for half a million workers and their families. At its height, city prosecutors, apparently pressured by manufacturers, indicted five union members for the 1910 murder of a former strikebreaker. Hillquit defended the men in court and won outright acquittals for all five.
127 New York Times, October 17, 1916.
128 Pratt, 29.
129 New York Times, June 4 and October 17, 1916.
6: PATTERSON
130 Alexandra Kollontai, “The Statue of Liberty,” Marxist Internet Archive, 2006, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1916/statue-liberty.htm.
131 In Porter, 226. See also Clements, 99.
132 In Gankin and Fisher, 576, footnote 125. This letter is usually cited as from January 11, 1917, an impossibility since that predates Trotsky’s arrival in the United States. The confusion most likely stems from a simple handwriting flourish, with the actual date being January 17.
7: THE BRONX
133 Ultan, 7.
134 Apparently a “new law” tenement. See Ultan on the Bronx.
135 Moskowitz, 183.
136 Trotsky, My Life, 271.
137 Ibid.
138 Shachtman file, 7.
139 See Ultan, cited approvingly in Spence, “Hidden Agendas.”
8: COOPER UNION
140 January 20 article included in Trotsky, Our Revolution, 35.
141 New York Call, January 26, 1917.
142 Forward, January 26, 1917.
143 Ziv, chapter 10, 2.
144 New York Call, January 26, 1917.
145 New York Times, January 30, 1917.
146 Ziv, chapter 10, 2.
147 New York Call, January 26, 1917.
148 Ziv, chapter 10, 2.
149 Speech from version in New York Call, January 26, 1917.
150 Forward, January 26, 1917.
151 Lore, “When Trotsky Was in New York,” 2.
152 New York American, January 22, 1917.
153 Lore, “When Trotsky Was in New York,” 1–2.
154 Trotsky, My Life, 277.
155 Trotsky, My Life, 272.
156 Ibid.
157 See Trotsky, On Black Nationalism.
158 Ziv, chapter 10, 6.
9: RIVERSIDE DRIVE II
159 March 14, 1913, from Trotsky, Balkan Wars, 439–41.
160 Gorenstein, 208–13.
161 Algernon Lee’s diary, January 29, 1917, Lee papers, Tamiment Library.
10: WILSON
162 New York American and other newspapers, February 4, 1917.
163 New York American, February 1, 1917.
164 Wilson message to Congress, February 3, 1917.
165 New York American, February 4, 1917.
166 Novy Mir, February 7, 1917, in Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 199–200.
167 Trotsky, My Life, 233–34.
168 Trotsky, My Life, 233.
169 Trotsky, My Life, 236.
11: SPY VERSUS SPY
170 Memorandum titled “Russia,” May 18, 1917, Wiseman papers, Folder 255.
171 Zelman and Scharlau, 136.
172 On Wiseman, see W. B. Fowler, Spence, and Wiseman papers at Yale University.
173 See memorandum on Dougherty’s detectives, August 8, 1916, and letter to Gaunt dated September 27, 1916, in William Wiseman papers, File 161.
174 Thwaites, 144.
175 Witte, from Cohen, Schiff, 138.
176 Cohen, Schiff, 134.
177 From Oudaille to British base, July 13, 1915. British Archives, KV2/502.
178 On Parvus generally, see Zeman and Scharlau, and Spence, “Hidden Agendas.”
179 Trotsky, My Life, 167.
180 Schurer, 314.
181 Even here, Parvus showed flair. Parvus, a theater lover, purchased fifty tickets for a satirical play debuting in Saint Petersburg the week of the police crackdown, planning for a group night out. When police seized him, they found the tickets and spent weeks trying to figure out how they played into his schemes.
182 Trotsky, My Life, 204
183 Zelman and Scharlau, 158.
184 Nashe Slovo, February 14, 1915, in Zeman and Scharlau, 155.
185 Zelman and Scharlau, 178.
12: CARNEGIE HALL
186 A. J. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918.
187 Trotsky, My Life, 275.
188 New York American, February 28, 1917.
189 New York Times, February 4, 1917.
190 Advertisement in New York American, January 23, 1917, et seq.
191 Trotsky, My Life, 270.
192 On these Novy Mir articles, see generally Ian Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War I, 197–200.
193 Lore, Leon Trotsky, 2.
194 Waldman, 64–65.
195 See “The Question of War,” letter to the New York Call, March 25, 1917.
196 Resolution text in the New York Call, February 6, 1917.
197 New York Call, February 6, 1917.
198 “Big Responsibility: In Reference to the Carnegie Hall Meeting Resolution,” Novy Mir, February 8, 1917, reprinted in Leon Trotsky, War and Revolution, vol. 2, 379.
199 Ibid.
200 New York World, February 6, 1917.
201 New York Times, February 2, 1917.
202 Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 251, note 40.
13: ZIV
203 Ziv, 33, from Service, Trotsky, 344.
204 Eastman, 77.
205 Ziv, chapter 10, 6.
206 Service, 44.
207 Ziv, quoted in Service, Trotsky, 45.
208 Ibid.
209 Eastman, 26–27.
210 Trotsky, My Life, 100.
211 Trotsky, My Life, 191.
212 Ziv, from Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution, 202.
213 Trotsky, My Life, 126.
214 Trotsky, My Life, 132.
215 Including even Winston Churchill, writing in 1937: “He found a wife who shared the Communist faith. She worked and plotted at his side. She shared his first exile in Siberia in the days of the Czar. She bore him children. She aided his escape. He deserted her.” Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 200, from Nedava, 239, note 46.
216 Trotsky, My Life, 132–33.
217 Even Isaac Deutscher, perhaps Trotsky’s friendliest biographer, found it difficult to believe that his separation from Alexandra Lvovna in Siberia didn’t haunt him. To Deutscher, this explained why Trotsky, in his own autobiography, “devoted no more than a single sentence to the whole affair.” Deutscher, 71.
218 Eastman, 21.
219 Ziv, 14, from Service, Trotsky, 46.
220 Eastman, 21.
14: ZURICH
221 Gankin and Fisher, 557.
222 Gankin and Fisher, 554.
223 V. I. Lenin, to Alexandra Kollontai, March 5, 1917. Gankin and Fisher, 597.
224 Volkogonov, Lenin, 104.
225 Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin, vol. 2, 196, quoted in Gankin and Fisher, 218.
226 Alexandra Kollontai, “A Giant Mind, a Giant Will,” Marxist Internet Archive, 2006, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1914/giant.htm.
227 Clements, 100
228 Gankin and Fisher, 574.
229 A few months earlier, Lenin had complimented Trotsky in one letter: “The reconciler, Trotsky, is now compelled to recognize the inevitability of a break with the ‘patriots’—i.e. who are justifying the entrance of workers into the war Industries Committee.” But Lenin also found something to criticize: how Trotsky, out of “sheer false pride,” had defended Akakii Chkheidze, the prowar Menshevik in the Russian Duma. Lenin to Safarov, February 10, 1916, in Gankin and Fisher, 574.
230 Lenin to Kollontai, February 17, 1917, in Gankin and Fisher, 576.
15: EAST BROADWAY
231 Pravda, October 20, 1922, from Nedava, 237, note 26.
232 Trotsky, My Life, 277.
233 “I do not know whether New York or Paris possesses at the present time more cinemas or taverns,” Trotsky would write after the 1917 revolution. “But it is manifest that, above everything, the cinema competes with the tavern on the matter of how the eight leisure hours are to be filled. Can we secure this incomparable weapon?” Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life, 41.
234 On the Triangle Dairy Restaurant, see Halpern.
235 Waldman, 64–65.
236 Draper, 82–83. In fairness, Bukharin had made the effort in response to a request from Lenin, who had asked him in a letter from Europe to “form a small group of Russian and Lettish Bolsheviks capable of following interesting literature, writing about it,” and so on. Lenin to Bukharin, October 14, 1916, published in Bolshevik, no. 22, 1932, from Marxists.org.
237 Draper, 83.
238 See New York Times, February 12, 1917.
239 Ingerman letter in Novy Mir, February 16, 1917, from Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 201–202.
240 Trotsky responses in Novy Mir, February 16 and March 3, 1917, from Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 202, 251, note 43.
241 Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 251, note 43.
242 Norris quoted in Recht, 175.
243 New York American, March 6, 1917.
244 Senator Norris’s stand on the issue would earn him a chapter in President John F. Kennedy’s classic book Profiles in Courage.
245 New York World, February 20, 1917.
246 New York American, March 2 and 8, 1917.
247 Jonas, 117.
248 Jonas, 118, 133.
249 Forward, March 1, 1917, 1.
250 Nedava, 26.
251 Jonas, 143–44. Vladeck also gave a second account. In a late 1917 interview, he downplayed the incident, saying that Trotsky had called him personally, not Cahan, asked simply, “Did you write that article?” and “Does the paper stand for it?” When Vladeck said yes, Trotsky said, “Then send me back my last article. I am sorry but I can no longer write for you.” Kirchwey, 4.
252 Shub told this story to Nedava in 1969. See Nedava, 26, and 235, note 20.
253 Emma Goldman once complained, through a business manager, “To me it seems very strange that you should devote so little space to Emma Goldman’s Jewish lectures when she is by far the most popular lecturer in Jewish who ever carried on propaganda in American”; her every meeting is crowded and “intensely interesting.” Mother Earth to Vladeck, February 8, 1917, in Vladeck papers.
254 Novy Mir articles of March 6, 7, 9, 14, and 20, from Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 204–5.
255 Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 252, note 50.
256 Trotsky, My Life, 275–76.
257 Lipsky, 144.
258 Ibid.
16: THE COMMITTEE
259 Reed, 94.
260 “The Spirit of the Dance,” Modern Dance, 1914, quoted in Buhle, 44.
261 Food price and shipment data from New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser, March 1, 1917, and US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
262 New York Evening Post, March 7, 1917.
263 Lenin to Kollontai, February 17, 1917, in Gankin and Fisher, 577.
264 Daily People, February 17, 1912, from Buhle, 12.
265 New York Times, February 11, 1917.
266 On three weeks and three meetings, see New York Call, March 5, 1917.
267 New York Evening Post, March 2, 1917.
268 Novy Mir, March 6, 1917.
269 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 4–5.
270 New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917, and other papers.
271 Novy Mir, March 7, 1917.
272 New York Call, March 18, 1917, New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917, and other papers.
273 Trotsky, My Life, 275.
274 New York Call, March 2, 1917.
17: LENOX CASINO
275 New York Times, May 5, 1917.
276 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 5.
277 New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917.
278 New York Call, March 5, 1917, and Novy Mir, March 7, 1917.
279 Waldman, 68.
280 Ibid.
281 Ibid.
282 New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917.
283 See New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917.
284 Waldman, 68.
285 New Yorker Volkszeitung, March 5, 1917.
286 Lore, Leon Trotsky, 8.
287 Trotsky, My Life, 274.
18: RUSSIA
288 New York Call, March 6, 1917.
289 Trotsky, My Life, 275.
290 Darrow, 58, in Ackerman, 219.
291 Debs speech from the New York Call, March 8, 1917.
292 New York Times, March 9, 1917.
293 Trotsky, My Life, 275.
294 Ibid.
295 New York Evening Post, March 16, 1917.
19: THE WHIRLWIND
296 Trotsky, Our Revolution, 41.
297 New York American, March 16, 1917.
298 Novy Mir, March 16, 1917.
299 Trotsky, My Life, 276.
300 Ibid.
301 Trotsky, My Life, 278.
302 Ibid.
303 New York Call, March 16, 1917.
304 New York American, March 21, 1917.
305 Schiff cable in New York Evening Post, March 19, 1917.
306 New York American, March 15, 1917.
307 New York American, March 14, 1917.
308 New York Times, March 16, 1917.
309 New York American, March 16, 1917.
310 New York American, March 17, 1917.
311 Trotsky, My Life, 223.
312 See, for instance, “An Extraparliamentary Question for Mr. Miliukov,” January 30, 1913, from Trotsky, Balkan Wars, 403 et seq.
313 Trotsky, Our Revolution, 41.
314 New York Times, March 16, 1917.
315 Announcement in the New York Call, March 16, 1917.
316 New York Call, March 17, 1917.
317 New York American, March 18, 1917.
20: SPIES AGAIN
318 Troy, 442, 443, 459.
319 For more on the sore feelings and controversy, see generally Troy.
320 See memorandum to Colonel Murray, September 6, 1918, Wiseman papers, Folder, 171.
321 See Fowler, 23–24.
322 On Reilly and Weinstein, see Spence, Trust No One, and memorandum from Captain Charles Billinghar to Major Nicholas Biddle, War Department, April 13, 1918, in MID RG 165, 9140-6073. Weinstein had even thrown a dinner party in his apartment after the revolution that, according to later American intelligence reports, included several unnamed “Russians” and “Socialists,” including no doubt his likely relative the Novy Mir editor. See Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 13, citing MID 9140-6073, August 23, 1918.
323 Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 5, citing records of the Paris Okhrana at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
324 See CX 015649, extract of memorandum from C. E. Dansey, January 19, 1918, in British Archives KV2/502.
325 See Spence, “Tsar’s Other Lieutenant,” 202.
326 Generally on Pilenas, see Bendersky, Jewish Threat, 54–55; National Archives file OG 105638, RG 65, M1085, and National Archives MID document in RG 165 10110-9210.
327 Document CX 015649, memorandum from C. E. Dansey, “Reference PILENAS,” January 19, 1918, and Document CX 625 (also numbered 169987 and 170514), “Memorandum from W. W. on Internal Conditions (Neutral Countries),” March 22, 1917, both in British Archives KV2/502.
328 See Jeffreys-Jones, 30.
329 See, for instance, (a) “Memorandum on Judaism and the Present Jewish World Movement—A Study,” prepared by the Division of Russian Affairs, MID, September 1919, no. 254-3; (b) “Memorandum for the Chief, Positive Branch,” from M. Churchill, director of military intelligence, October 2, 1919, no. 245-15; (c) “From Office of Military Observer in Riga, Latvia, to Director of Military Intelligence re: Jewish Immigration to U.S.A.,” LS no. 593, November 27, 1920, all in MID RG 165. See also generally Bendersky, Jewish Threat.
330 Churchill, “Zionism versus Bolshevism.”
331 Unsigned memo from War Department, Office of the Chief of Staff, Washington, Wiseman papers, Folder 173.
332 “Revolution Must Not Stop until Freedom Comes, Says Novy Mir Editor,” New York Call, March 17, 1917.
333 New York Times, March 16, 1917.
334 New York Call, March 17, 1917.
335 “Memorandum to D.I.D. from Naval Attaché,” March 30, 1917, Wiseman papers, Folder 165.
336 Zeman and Scharlau, 209.
337 Goldstein, 8; see also Volkogonov, Lenin, 106.
338 Volkogonov, Lenin, 107.
339 Volkogonov, Lenin, 110.
340 Volkogonov, Lenin, 107.
341 Service, Lenin, 255.
342 Volkogonov, Lenin, 107.
343 Service, Lenin, 255.
344 Letters from Lenin to Kollontai, from Porter, 230, and Volkogonov, Lenin, 108.
345 Volkogonov, 107.
346 Zeman and Scharlau, 204.
347 Die Glocke, March 24, 1917, in Zeman and Scharlau, 207.
348 Zeman and Scharlau, 207.
349 Zeman and Scharlau, 210.
350 Zeman and Scharlau, 219.
351 Clements, 102.
352 Letters from Lenin to Kollontai, from Porter, 230.
21: CONSULATES
353 Routsky, 69, 73.
354 Routsky, 71.
355 On precaution against German spies, see New York Times, March 22, 1917.
356 Routsky, 71.
357 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 6.
358 In his account, Routsky says that Trotsky and Bukharin represented Bolsheviks, an obvious mistake since Trotsky did not join the Bolsheviks until July 1917, about four months late. Routsky wrote his account in 1948, after Trotsky’s association with Bolshevism was unavoidable.
359 Routsky, 74.
360 Becker report, 3.
361 Letter from Trotsky to Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, attached to Trotsky article “In British Captivity,” in Class Struggle, December 1918.
362 Trotsky, My Life, 279. See also Trotsky, “In British Captivity.”
363 Kirchwey, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 4.
364 Spence, Trust No One, 157.
365 Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 17.
366 Fowler, Wiseman, 111.
367 Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 11.
368 On the Weinstein relationship, see Spence, Trust No One, 163 et seq.
369 See Document CX 015649, memorandum from C. E. Dansey “Reference PILENAS,” January 19, 1918, British Archives KV2/502.
370 Document 625 (also nos. 169987 and 170514), “Memorandum from W. W. on Internal Conditions (Neutral Countries),” March 22, 1917. British Archives KV2/502.
371 Harris, 195.
372 Harris, 198.
373 Ibid.
22: MISSING
374 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 42.
375 Trotsky, My Life, 278.
376 Pratt, 124, and Draper, 92–93.
377 Trotsky, My Life, 276.
378 Moskowitz, “Trotsky on the East Side.”
379 Ibid.
23: HARLEM RIVER CASINO
380 See Morris and Stillwell.
381 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 5–6.
382 New York Times, March 21, 1917.
383 New York Call, March 27, 1917.
384 Emma Goldman, chapter 45.
385 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 6.
386 From 1919 congressional testimony of New York Police Bomb Squad inspector Thomas J. Tunney. This account was presented at the height of the postwar Red Scare and thus may have been highly embellished. New York Times, January 22, 1919.
387 Goldman, chapter 45.
388 Kirchwey, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 3–4.
389 Moskowitz, “Trotsky on the East Side.”
390 New York Evening Post, March 24, 1917.
391 New York Times, March 24, 1917.
392 New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser, March 23, 1917.
393 Lore, “When Trotsky Lived in New York,” 7.
394 Ibid.
395 Trotsky, My Life, 278.
24: KRISTIANIAFJORD
396 Steffens, 744. See also Sutton, 26.
397 Unsigned cable from British Intelligence in New York, March 28, 1917, British Archives KV2/502. See also Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 17, and “Interrupted Journey,” 11, both citing Admiral Hall’s April 29 arrest order crediting Guy Gaunt as the source.
398 See Document 174400, undated, in British Archives KV2/502.
399 Document CX 015649, memorandum from C. E. Dansey, “Reference PILENAS,” January 19, 1918, British Archives KV2/502. Pilenas had presented it in a letter to Wiseman that Wiseman produced for his superiors, though it doesn’t show up in the intelligence files themselves.
400 Cable from London to Halifax, March 29, 1917. Canadian Archives, Trotsky file.
401 Steffens, Autobiography, 774.
402 Steffens letter, from Sutton, 26.
403 Draper, 115–16. Draper notes that Steffens, quick with his passions, would also admire Mussolini as “historically due.”
404 Steffens, 744–45.
405 Trotsky, “In British Captivity,” 8.
406 Kalpaschnikoff, 223.
407 Ibid. The December 1917 arrest was based on changes that the American Red Cross, with Kalpaschnikoff’s involvement, was using its charitable operations as a cover to sneak automobiles and other equipment to General Alexei Kaledin, a Cossack commander opposing the Bolsheviks. Kalpaschnikoff would plead innocence, backed by American Red Cross and diplomatic officials. See also, New York Times, December 28, 1917.
408 “Col. Kalpatchnikoff Weds,” New York Times, June 5, 1919. Kalpaschnikoff, apparently unknown to Trotsky at the time, had connections to William Wiseman’s British Intelligence circle back in New York City as well as to Russian consulate officials, raising suspicions that Wiseman or the Russians had asked Kalpaschnikoff to keep an eye on Trotsky during the trip.
409 Trotsky, “In British Captivity.”
410 Trotsky, “In British Captivity,” 8.
411 Letter from Makins to General Officer Commanding, April, 1, 1917, Canadian Archives, Trotsky file. In the rush, Captain Makins listed Chudnovsky as “Tshadnovski” and Melnichansky as “Melniczanskoi.” Later reports would list these names as “Tshoodnooski” and “Melintchansky.”
412 Kalpaschnikoff, 223.
413 Trotsky, “In British Captivity.”
414 “Extract from German Papers re Socialists Going to Stockholm,” June 18, 1917, British Archives, KV2/502. See also note to Kendall from Geo Bullock, June 6, 1917, Document 187268, British Archives KV2/502.
415 Kalpaschnikoff, 223. See also Spence, “Interrupted Journey,” 5. See also Spence, “Hidden Agendas,” 17; Spence, Trust No One, 165; and Service, Trotsky, 159.
416 MacLean, “Why Did We Let Trotzky Go?”
417 Steffens, Autobiography, 744–45.
25: NOVA SCOTIA
418 Prisoners’ telegram attached to telegram from Lakatscheff to Joseph Pope, Canadian undersecretary of state, April 5, 1917, Canadian Archives, Trotsky folder.
419 Trotsky, My Life, 281.
420 Trotsky, “In British Captivity,” and “T. Benson to Secretary, Militia Council, Ottawa, Canada,” April 2, 1917, Canadian Archives, Trotsky folder.
421 Trotsky, My Life, 280, and “In British Captivity.”
422 Telegram from Lakatscheff to Pope, April 5, 1917, Canadian Archives, Trotsky folder.
423 Letter from Pope to Lakatscheff, April 10, 1917, Canadian Archives, Trotsky folder.
424 Serge and Trotsky, 31.
425 Cameron.
426 Ibid.
427 Trotsky, My Life, 281.
428 Trotsky, My Life, 282. See also, Truro.
429 Truro; Pitzer.
430 Trotsky, “In British Captivity.”
431 “Memorandum from Chief Commissioner of Police, Ottawa,” May 10, 1917, in British Archives KV2/502. See also “Report on TROTZKI PARTY,” British Archives KV2/502.
432 Letter from New Yorker Volkszeitung, as translated by British Intelligence. See “Trotsky Detained in Canada,” in British Archives KV2/502.
433 New York American, April 12, 1917.
434 New York World, April 5, 1917.
435 Hillquit, 165.
436 Socialist Party resolution, April 1917, quoted in Hillquit, 166.
437 See New York Times, April 11, 1917; New York Call, April 10, 1917; and New Yorker Volkszeitung in British Archives KV2/502.
438 London papers, Tamiment Library.
439 Spence, “Interrupted Journey,” 13.
440 Aleinikoff telegram from Canadian Archives, quoted in Sutton, 29.
441 Spence, “Interrupted Journey,” 7.
442 Ibid.
443 Demand of the Menshevik executive of the Petrograd Soviet, quoted in Deustcher, 247.
444 Buchanan, 120.
445 Lenin’s “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution,” or “April Theses, was first published in Pravda on April 7, 1917.
446 Service, Lenin, 263.
447 Service, Lenin, 267.
448 Chkheidze quote in Service, Lenin, 267.
449 Buchanan, 116, 117.
450 Trotsky, My life, 283–84.
451 New York Times, April 16, 1917.
452 Ibid.
453 Ibid.
454 Trotsky, My Life, 282, and Truro.
455 Trotsky, My Life, 283.
456 Spence, “Interrupted Journey,” 19.
457 Ibid.
458 On Dansey, see generally Read and Fisher.
459 See, for example, documents 170512 and 170514: memoranda to Major Dansey from Captain R. H. R., March 29, 1917, and to MI1c from C.E.D., April 5, 1917, both on the Trotsky arrest, British Archives KV2/502.
460 Document CX 015649, memorandum from C. E. Dansey, “Reference PILENAS,” January 19, 1918, British Archives KV2/502.
461 Ibid.
462 Read and Fisher, 122.
463 Document CX 015649, memorandum from C. E. Dansey, “Reference PILENAS,” January 19, 1918, British Archives KV2/502.
464 Spence, “Interrupted Journey,” 19, and Cameron.
465 Letter from Gwatkin to Coulter, quoted in Sutton, 31.
466 Quoted in Cameron.
467 Trotsky, “In British Captivity.”
468 Trotsky, My Life, 285.
469 Ibid.
470 Trotsky, My Life, 320.
471 Serge and Trotsky, 31.
26: PETROGRAD
472 Buchanan, 114.
473 Lenin’s April Theses.
474 Trotsky, My Life, 287.
475 Serge and Trotsky, 36.
476 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 68.
477 Reed, 125.
478 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 70.
479 See Serge and Trotsky, 40.
480 See multiple references in British Archives KV2/502, including, no. 194003, “Extract Relating to Trotzky, Leo, Socialist Activities in USA,” June 16, 1917, and no. 202607, “Anti-War Activities in the United States,” July 28, 1917. Some quote Miliukov as the source.
481 Trotsky, Lenin, 69, quoted in Deutscher, 274.
482 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 72, and Deutscher, 276.
483 Deutscher, 277, and Serge and Trotsky, 41.
484 Trotsky, My Life, 299.
485 Trotsky, My Life, 291.
486 Serge and Trotsky, 342.
487 Clements, 120.
488 Sukarnov, The Russian Revolution of 1917, 276–79, quoted in Porter, 264.
489 New York Times, November 11, 1917.
490 New York World, November 11, 1917.
491 Ibid.
492 New York Times, November 9, 1917.
493 See New York Times, September 10, 1995.
494 New York American, November 9, 1917.
495 New York Call, November 13, 1917.
496 Others initial top commissars included Alexander Shliapnikoff (labor) and Anatoly V. Lunacharsky (education), with both making US speaking and fund-raising tours the prior year.
497 “Russian from U.S. Leading Lenine Radicals,” by Arno Dosch-Fleurot, correspondent for New York World and Saint Louis Post Dispatch, August 25, 1917.
498 See, for instance, Howe, World of Our Fathers, 326.
499 New York Times, November 10, 1917.
500 New York Times, November 30, 1917.
501 “Despotism Aim of Boksheviki,” Detroit Free Press, January, 1918.
502 New York Times, December 29, 1917.
503 Quoted in New York Times, December 17, 1917.
504 Pratt, 137.
LOOSE ENDS
505 Marcosson, 402.
506 BBC Radio, “Christopher Hitchens on Trotsky,” BBC Radio, August 8, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD54qnI_Mhc, accessed May 20, 2016.
507 This famous quote is derived from a letter in which Trotsky says: “Burnham doesn’t recognize dialectics but dialectics does not permit him to escape from its net.” Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism,” 273.
508 Goldman, chapter 52.
509 Hammer, 128–29.
510 Marcosson, 413.
511 See generally Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism.
512 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, 200.
513 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 216–17.
514 From Morton, 5.
515 He summarized his opinion of Stalin this way: “It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.” Trotsky, My Life, 501.
516 Greene, 6.
517 Letter from Bukharin to Stalin, October 12, 1937, from Radzinsky, 380.
518 Clements, 255.
519 On what has become of the family there, see “Falling Far from the Family Tree,” Forward, July 7, 2010.
520 Shachtman notes, 6.
521 Serge and Trotsky, 219.
522 See, for instance, Wittlin, 258.
523 Workers Vanguard, March 31, 1989.
524 Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, 204, 214–15.
525 Volkogonov, Lenin, 255.
526 In another example, in early 1918, needing a new Russian diplomat to represent the Bolshevik government as consul in New York, he chose John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the World, knowing that this would only irritate the Americans, since Reed had recently been indicted for violating the Espionage Act. New York Times, January 31, 1918.
527 On this debate, see Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism.
528 Interview with Esteban Volkov in the Guardian, February 13, 2003, and “The Fight of the Trotsky Family—Interview with Esteban Volkov, Marxism.com, August 21, 2006, http://www.marxist.com/trotsky-assassination-esteban-volkov210806.htm, accesed May 20, 2016
529 Waldman, 69.
530 Hillquit, 184.
531 Hillquit, 189.
532 New York Times, November 7, 1917.
533 Winners included lawyer Louis Waldman, Forward editor Baruch Vladeck, and Algernon Lee and Jacob Panken, who served with Trotsky on the Socialist Party Resolutions Committee.
534 New York Evening Post, November 7, 1917, quoted in New York Call, November 8, 1917.
535 New York Times, November 7, 1917.
536 On the Debs case, see generally Freeberg.
537 Hillquit, 291; Pratt, 141.
538 Revolutionary Age, March 29, 1919, 3, quoted in Draper, 154. Fraina laid out the approach more fully in a coauthored article, “The Left Wing Manifesto,” a practical blueprint for harnessing unrest—from labor strikes to general strikes to conquest of power—for political purposes. See Revolutionary Age, July 5, 1919. The latter article became the basis for prosecutions under New York’s criminal anarchy statute, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court decision in New York v. Gitlow, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), establishing principles of modern First Amendment law.
539 John Reed put it this way over dinner with Socialist assemblyman Louis Waldman: “Louis, stop wasting your time running for the Assembly and stupid things like that. By the time you finish your course there’ll be no more lawyers. . . . The masses are revolutionary and are about to rise!” Waldman, 72.
540 New York Call, May 21, 1919; Draper 157–58.
541 Benjamin Gitlow, a young Socialist assemblyman from the Bronx, remembered attending the meeting and watching as another left-winger sitting near Hillquit jumped out of his seat after one of the expulsions. “You are Right Wing enemies of the revolution!” the man shouted at Hillquit, pointing his finger. “Go ahead with your dirty work! Expel us from the party! We will soon meet you in bloody battle at the barricades!” Gitlow, 30. See also New York Communist, June 7, 1919.
542 The raids also targeted a similar, smaller group called the Union of Russian Workers.
543 The New York Call, the Socialist Party’s organ in New York City, briefly went out of business in 1923 and then reemerged as a biweekly called the New Leader. A voice of liberal anti-communism throughout the twentieth century, it featured writers as diverse as US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Democrat of New York), civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., journalist Irving Kristol, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, and novelists James Baldwin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
544 See Wohlforth’s article on Trotskyism in Buhle et al., 829.
545 Draper, 180.
546 On Lore’s role as a Justice Department agent, seen Reinhardt, 17.
547 Chambers, 392.
548 On the British connection, see Spence, “Catching Louis Fraina.”
549 Corey, 109.
550 Pratt, 223.
551 Goldman, chapter 46.
552 “When Trotsky Was an Extra at Five a Day,” New York Herald Tribune, February 14, 1932.
553 Marcosson, 404.
554 Zelman and Scharlau, 136.
555 Volkogonov, Lenin, 110–11, citing Ludendorff’s wartime memoirs.
556 New York World, November 9, 1917. Notably, in November 1917 Trotsky himself ordered files of Russian prosecutors investigating the affair to be confiscated so that Lenin and the rest could not be accused of treason. See Volkogonov, Lenin, 121, and report to Trotsky from F. Zalkind and E. Polivanov, November 16, 1917, reproduced therein.
557 Zeman and Scharlau, 246.
558 Zeman and Scharlau, 251.
559 Becker report, 3. See also New York Times, January 20, 1918.
560 Ibid.
561 Hearing on “Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda,” Committee on Judiciary, United States Senate, 65th Congress, 1919, quoted in Sutton, 23.
562 On Parvus’s role, see generally Spence, “Hidden Agendas.”
563 Cohen, Schiff, 243.
564 Conspiracy theories connecting Schiff to Trotsky became so prevalent after 1920 that even friendly accounts of Trotsky’s New York visit included him. See, for instance, Kopp.
565 See for instance RG 165, MID, files 10110-126/920 et seq. and 9140-6073 et seq. See generally Bendersky, chapter 2.
566 “Memorandum for Colonel Masteller from M. Churchill,” November 30, 1918, in RG165, MID, 10110-920.
567 RG 165, MID, “Bolshevism and Judaism,” November 30, 1918, 10110-920, 1 and 4. This remarkable document even gives shout-outs to Morris Hillquit and Mayer London as “leaders of the Bolshevist movement in this country.”1
568 RG 165, MID, “Bolshevism and Judaism,” November 30, 1918, 10110-920, 1 and 4.
569 See, for instance, Former Russian commissar, 25.
570 Cohen, Schiff, 243–45.
571 New York Journal-American, February 3, 1949.
572 See, for instance, New York Times, March 18, 1917, and New York Evening Post, March 19, 1917, both containing a letter from Schiff specifying his presence in West Virginia.
573 As late as October 1915, he had offered to drop his objections and help raise $200 million for the Russian war effort on the condition that Russia grant Jewish subjects full civil rights, but Russia refused. Roberts, Jewish Bankers, 19.
574 See generally Roberts; Cohen, Schiff, chapter 7.
575 Fowler, 106.
576 Spence, “The Tsar’s Other Lieutenant,” 209–10.
577 See, for instance, Spence, “Hidden Agendas”: “In my original article [Spence, “Interrupted Journey,”], I speculated that Wiseman’s peculiar behavior towards Trotsky was driven by his desire to enlist the exile in a secret scheme to ‘guide the storm’ in revolutionary Russia and, above all, to keep Russia in the war. The more recent information, I believe, supports this theory.”
578 Around this time many British officials worried about the flood of Russian radicals returning home. “We have reliable information that the Germans are organizing from every neutral country parties of Russian refugees, largely Jewish socialists,” he would write in a confidential briefing for his superiors in London. “These parties are sent to Petrograd where they are organized by German agents posing as advanced Socialists.” “Russia,” May 15, 1917, Wiseman papers, Folder 255.
579 “Russia,” May 15, 1917. Wiseman papers, Folder 255. Wiseman had already engaged Columbia University professor Richard Gottheil to solicit statements of support from prominent American Jews to circulate in Russia. These Jews included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and even Jacob Schiff. See Fowler, 109.
580 “Intelligence & Propaganda Work in Russia, July to December 1917,” January 19, 1918, in Wiseman papers, File 10/261.
581 Kalpaschnikoff would be cleared of the charges and released in 1919.
582 Even after Brest-Litovsk, British officials suggested seeking Trotsky’s support for British military intervention in Siberia to reopen an anti-German eastern front. Woodrow Wilson blocked the idea, convinced that Trotsky was a paid agent of Germany. The Allies, including about thirteen thousand Americans, intervened regardless. See Fowler, 176–77.
583 Trotsky, My Life, 283.
584 Also along these lines, in a 1919 article titled “Why Did We Let Trotsky Go?” Canadian lieutenant colonel J. B. MacLean accused his own government of losing a chance to shorten the war and blamed it for weakness and incompetence.
585 Marcosson, 404.
586 Willert, 29. An anonymous witness before the 1919 Overman Committee seemed to back up this story with a joke: “I remember it struck me as comical” that Kerensky asked the American government to provide Trotsky a passport “because he thought he could be able to help him out. And he did help him out.” See “Bolshevik Propaganda: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary,” 1919.
587 See Wise, 647.
588 Also, by early 1918 President Wilson was convinced that Trotsky was a German agent, based at least partly on the Sisson papers, a set of Russian-language documents hand-carried from Petrograd by US official Edgar Sisson, connecting German influence to top Bolshevik figures. Several of these documents were later shown to be forgeries. Fowler, 178.
589 New York World, November 11, 1917.
590 Trotsky speech “Revolutionary Marxist Critique of Americanism,” undated, quoted in Cannon, 99–105.
591 Letter to American Bolshevik-Leninists from Constantinople, March 1929, quoted in Cannon, 99–105.
592 Trotsky, My Life, 270.
593 Volkogonov, Trotsky, 475.
594 New York Times, November 23, 1988.