The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet – Guest Contributions

Trotsky in images 

[Originally published with title: Trotsky en imágines, in: Sudestada, a cultural, political and current affairs magazine, published in Buenos Aires. 7.2007 (65) : pp. 40-43].

The child in the photograph

Odessa, 1888. The nine year old child poses for the camera. In the studio, a chair and a backdrop embellishes the plain stage. The child, who has bright blue eyes and very short chestnut coloured hair, is dressed up with a buttoned dark coloured frock coat that reaches his knees and is holding a military type cap with his left hand. His look conveys intelligence and confidence. His upright stand and the proud attitude seem to anticipate the future personality of the leader of the most influential revolution in the twentieth century. This refers to the first picture that caught the image of Lev Davidovich Bronstein.

That was the first image of a profuse iconography that shows the stages of the throbbing vital journey of Leon Trotsky. Photographs that go from 1888, time in which he started his studies at Saint Paul´s Institute in Odessa, until the snapshots at the Cruz Verde hospital in Mexico in 1940, hours later of the criminal attack that took away his life.

Iconographic extent

Of the biographies of men in the Revolution, it is Trotsky´s the best and most widely documented by photographic registry. And the iconography is so vast that his trajectory could be shown based on the photographic material. This is illustrated by the notable selection of imagery prepared by the British photographer and art editor David King – the most important collector of pictures related to the Bolshevik revolutionary– in various books, among which we can highlight Trotsky: a photographic biography, a volume in quarto format and luxury edition published in New York in 1986.

Among the pictures reproduced in it, we could not choose a specific image of Trotsky that could be considered iconic or emblematic. Many photos would have to be selected to illustrate certain phases or stages in his life. It is true that there are portraits of Trotsky that have been –and still are today– more reproduced in books and electronic means, as that photography of plain bust from 1920, time in which Trotsky leaded the Commissariat of War, which has become his most displayed image. It was widely spread in the times of the Soviet power and it turned into a sort of “official portrait” of the revolutionary. However, there are other less known photographs that best captured the essence of his personality. For example, it is not too well known that the eminent photographer of Hungarian origin, Robert Capa (1913-1954), took a series of snapshots of Trotsky at Denmark in 1932. Capa, who in present days is considered as “the best war photographer in the world” in the twentieth century, was in that time a young employee of Dephot, an important German photograph agency that assigned him his first relevant task: graphically cover the conference Trotsky would hold in Copenhagen on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The conference was organized by an association of Danish social democrat students and it was held on November 25, 1932. Capa, who greatly admired Trotsky, was able to register on his Leica camera the strength of the gestures and marvellous oratory of that who had been a tribune and organizer of the triumphant workers insurrection in Russia. These were Robert Capa´s first photos seen by the general public, and they were published in the Weltspiegel magazine, an illustrated supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper.

It is worth recalling, on the other hand, that during Stalin´s and his bureaucratic political clique control over the Communist Party and the Soviet state, all the photographs and posters in which Trotsky appeared were censored or altered, fulfilling orders of banishing him from the collective memory. Since 1987, the glasnost, was the beginning of the publishing of his portraits in Soviet news media, which included unknown photographs and unpublished film documents.

On the other hand, plenty of enlarged photographic impressions can be seen nowadays in the Leon Trotsky Museum in Coyoacan, Mexico City. In the main hall that is part of the museum –in a site adjacent to the old house where the political leader lived– a gallery of photographs that abundantly illustrate his residence in Mexico since his arrival to the country, in January 1937, until his murder, carried out in August 1940, is displayed. In some of them, Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova have been portrayed along with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the famous couple of painters, who sheltered him in Mexico. In another space of the museum, the photographs are testimonies of Trotsky´s biography in Russia, in times previous to the Revolution, and during his zenithal years, when he was entrusted the military defense of the Soviet Republic; likewise, images of the last stage of his political act in Russia and of his pilgrimage to various countries after being banished from the Soviet Union are shown.

Among the photographs of his stay in Mexico being exhibited, there is a group arranged on the wall of the hall that immediately catches the visitor’s attention. These are the images the North American Alex Buchman took. They reveal the environment of the revolutionary’s chores, unknown for most people. Besides, its value lies in that they uncover an aspect of Trotsky’s character that is not usually exposed in historical publications. Buchman´s lens captures the character in the intimacy of his home, in his most daily aspects, completely devoted to his daily tasks and his interests and hobbies.

The amateur photographer

In spring 1939, Alexander H. Buchman, a 28 year-old young American and aeronautic engineer arrived in Mexico City and turned up in Trotsky’s fortified house, located in Avenida Viena 19, in the rural and calm Coyoacan. Provided with a recommendation from the Trotskyist Harold Isaacs, he visited the “prophet outcast” to show him the photographs he had taken of the war between China and Japan.

It had been a few months since Trotsky had moved after leaving Frida Kahlo´s house, located a short distance away from his new address. Additionally, his 13-year-old grandson Sieva Volkov and the French Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer, with whom there was a long time friendship and a common past in the revolutionary militancy were living in Coyoacan since August.

In that time, Trotsky was working on Stalin´s biography, he was writing political articles and kept an abundant correspondence with his followers in Europe and America related to his intellectual and political work, as well as to his safety. He could count on his young secretaries and guards from various nationalities, among which the French Jean van Heijenoort, the German Otto Schüssler, the Americans Charles Cornell, Harold Robbins, Chris Moustakis and Walter Ketley lived in Mexico.

Somewhat later, Alex Buchman became part of this lively community, and he would take care of installing the alarm system, besides performing as a guard, too.

One of Buchman´s most favourite interests was photography. Examples of his talent in this art were his films and the snapshots taken during his six-year stay in China, where he participated in the Left Opposition. The movies were seen by Trotsky and other people in his surrounding when the projections at his house in Coyoacan.

Buchman felt profound admiration for Trotsky, to whose political ideas he had adhered to, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had been given, he did not hesitate in taking pictures of him. This way, during the five months he lived in Mexico, Buchman captured a myriad of portraits of Trotsky, of his family and friends circle as well as of the atmosphere that surrounded him, producing the most extensive photographic record existing of his third and last exile.

The images

Trotsky´s daily life in Mexico went by in an ordinary way according to the methodically established guidelines. His day started almost at dawn and ended round nine at night.

With his Leica camera, Buchman exhaustively witnessed, between late 1939 and March 1940, Trotsky´s activities; the registry adds up to 750 photographs, some of them in colour. At the same time, he filmed 55 minutes –in black and white and in colours– with his small Bell & Howell handy camera.

What was Trotsky´s physical appearance in these photographs? The snapshots show him at the age 60: physically good looking, rosy-cheeked, height above standard (Trotsky was about five feet nine and a half inches tall), of regular build and greyish head and chin (his hair looked somewhat messy).

Among the first photographs, a series of pictures show him at his study room in different attitudes. In the films he is shown writing; in another moment, he cheerfully argued with a group of people present around him, among whom one could find Alfred Rosmer, Farrel Dobbs and the chief of guards Harold Robbins. The Old Man attentively and strongly concentrated listens to the speakers. When he speaks he gestures very expressively, frequently moves his hands naturally, and laughs enthusiastically at some of his comrades’ comments. One of the activities to which Trotsky dedicated various minutes every day (in the mornings and in the evening) was taking care of the small farm he had at home. Buchman captured him visually dressed in blue and wearing gloves, feeding his rabbits and poultry and revising the cages. In another moment, one observes Sieva collaborating with his grandfather in the task of grinding corn for chickens.

Trotsky occasionally toured Mexico. In one of his journeys, he boarded a boat in Veracruz to go out fishing (he practiced it on a daily basis while living in Turkey, in the island of Prinkipo, between 1929 and 1933). Under the blinding sunshine and wearing a white cap to protect him from the tropical sun, Trotsky, making use of a modern device, fishes on the open sea. His face sweats happiness and pleasance. Those were moments in which he seemed to rejuvenate.

In another of his adventures, Trotsky is filmed in the instant he is speaking with an indigenous peasant, to whom he listens with much attention. During the weekends, Trotsky, along with his relatives, collaborators and visitors, would go to the countryside where they organized picnics. There, he is focused next to Natalia, in whom one can notice a premature ageing and with an expression of sadness (by the time these images were taken, she had lost two sons: Lev and Sergei). In these fieldtrips, Trotsky would physically exercise, walking and recollecting cactus that later he would transplant to his home yard. Most of the cacti he picked were big and considerably heavy. The pictures show Trotsky with a pickaxe and a hoe, ready for work; and in others carrying on his shoulders the precious procurements. In a coloured film he is seen dressed up with a reddish jacket, actively trying to pull out one of those plants, task where he is assisted by his secretaries and by the Mexican policeman Jesus Casas, in charge of his security. After finishing the days work, participants were exhausted. To their understanding, the energy Trotsky displayed at the excursions was admirable.

In other rural takes, Trotsky and Natalia stroll on the sunny meadow and stop to scan, from the top, the mountainous landscape. Trotsky´s gestures are lively and his pace is fast. We observe a vital and enthusiastic man. These images completely contrast with the version presented by certain authors that, spitefully, have stated that at the end Trotsky felt dejected and even lose hearted. The visual material we describe constitutes a categorical denial to these kinds of statements and is the best testimony of optimism Trotsky always radiated.

Buchman stayed in Coyoacan until mid April, 1940, month when he returned to his country, where he continued being a militant of socialism, although without officially joining any Trotskyist group. He never imagined that four months after his departure, Trotsky would be mortally hit.

Historical legacy

Alex Buchman was original enough to capture the most spontaneous and expressive existing images of Trotsky.

In the Eighties, Buchman donated a selection of copies of his photographs and films to academic institutions; among them, to Harvard University's Houghton Library, whose archives, as it is well known, keep Trotsky´s most voluminous dossiers. The material handed over by its author contains 102 black and white pictures, chosen from approximately 700 negatives.

Dozens of those pictures have been reproduced on books and posters also; some others are kept as unedited. Likewise, extracts of his films have been included in various documentaries, among which we can name: Trotsky (1988), by Patrick Le Gall and Alain Dugrand; Asaltar los Cielos (1996), by Javier Rioyo and José Luis López-Linares; Trotsky y México. Dos revoluciones del siglo XX (2005), by Adolfo García Videla; and the most recent documentary: El asesinato de Trotsky (2007), produced by The History Channel Latin America.

In 1990, the British television made a special on Buchman´s films titled Trotsky’s home movies. In this program, produced and hosted by the Pakistani writer Tariq Ali, Alex Buchman, Sieva Volkov – Trotsky´s grandson, and his daughter Veronica, TV producer Stuart Hood and Tamara Deutscher, researcher and widow of the eminent biographer of Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher.

Alex Buchman who was the last survivor of Trotsky´s American bodyguards in Coyoacan, died of heart failure in Los Angeles on January 7, 2003, at age 91. When death surprised him, he organized photographic exhibitions of his numerous portraits of Trotsky.

The revolutionary, gifted with a fine artistic sensibility, left as his main legacy to posterity that imagery heritage of unique historical value in which he accomplished to capture, under a different and colourful light, the last stretch in the life of one of the greatest revolutionaries of all times.

Bibliography:

DUGRAND, Alain, Trotsky in Mexico. Manchester, Carcanet, 1992.

GARCÍA HIGUERAS, Gabriel, “Trotsky Museum: past and present”

KING, David, Trotsky: a photographic biography. Oxford-New York, Basil Blackwell, 1986.

LUBITZ, Wolfgang, “Alex Buchman”

WEISSMAN, Susan, “Alex Buchman (1911-2003)”, in Herramienta: revista de debate y crítica marxista, 22, 2003.

WEISSMAN, Susan, “Alex Buchman, the last survivor of Trotsky”, in Critique: journal of socialist theory, 35, 2004, pp. 151-162.

Videography:

Trotsky’s home movies. Dir. Oliver Curtis. London, Channel Four, BBC, 1990.

This essay is part of the Lubitz TrotskyanaNet — © by Wolfgang & Petra Lubitz 2004 —  http://www.trotskyana.net