ES / EN
- May 24, 2022 -
No Result
View All Result
OnCubaNews Needs You
OnCubaNews
  • World
  • Cuba
  • Cuba-USA
  • Opinion
    • Columns
    • Infographic
  • Culture
    • Billboard
  • Sports
  • Styles / Trends
  • Media
  • Special
  • Cuban Flavors
  • World
  • Cuba
  • Cuba-USA
  • Opinion
    • Columns
    • Infographic
  • Culture
    • Billboard
  • Sports
  • Styles / Trends
  • Media
  • Special
  • Cuban Flavors
OnCubaNews
ES / EN
ADVERTISEMENT
Home Culture Literature

Padura: Trotsky’s assassination and the voracity of power

August 21 marks the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Leonardo Padura, author of “The Man Who Loved Dogs,” again delves into the subject.

by Lorena Cantó / EFE
April 26, 2021
in Literature
0
Padura this August 17, in Havana. When the 80th anniversary of the crime that, for Padura, initiated the path of no return to the end of the Russian communist utopia, the writer reflects in an interview on the still valid lessons of that historical episode. Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE.

Padura this August 17, in Havana. When the 80th anniversary of the crime that, for Padura, initiated the path of no return to the end of the Russian communist utopia, the writer reflects in an interview on the still valid lessons of that historical episode. Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE.

Help us keep OnCuba alive

The assassination in Mexico of Leon Trotsky at the hands of Spaniard Ramón Mercader by orders of Joseph Stalin illustrates “how tremendous this need for power to take up all possible spaces can be,” a scenario that is repeated throughout history, in the opinion of Cuban writer Leonardo Padura.

When the 80th anniversary of the crime that, for Padura, initiated the path of no return to the end of the Russian communist utopia, the writer reflects in an interview on the still valid lessons of that historical episode.

Padura: “I always say that what led me to have the idea of ​​writing this novel was my ignorance, a logical and programmed ignorance.” Photo: Radio France International.

The novel The Man Who Loved Dogs (2009) has made him an essential reference when talking about the murder of Trotsky, because the Havanan author dedicated five years of exhaustive investigation to the pilgrimage in exile of the Russian intellectual and reconstructing the life history of his murderer, to later be able to narrate it.

TURN THAT LIGHT OFF

“What matters above all is the symbolic character of that murder. The Trotsky whose assassination was ordered by Stalin at that time by Ramón Mercader occurs at a time when Trotsky is more marginalized than ever, has less power than ever…, even economically he was in an absolutely precarious situation, and yet he was a light and Stalin needed to turn off that light,” says Padura.

Related Posts

Niurki and Ledisán (2019). Photo courtesy of the authors

Niurki’s vokingos

November 13, 2021
Hemingway and Mary with the cats in the doorway of their Havana house. | PBS archive

Ernest Hemingway from Key West to Havana

June 28, 2021
Photo: Leonardo Padura, at his home in Mantilla. Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE.

Padura: “I don’t like radical postures at all”

September 8, 2020
Photo: EFE

Leonardo Padura: with Cuba and with my language in tow…

May 22, 2020

A persecution that “historically demonstrates that in power struggles, piety generally doesn’t exist.”

But, beyond the political motivation, Padura has always defended that the moment in which “Mercader plunges the Stalinist ice pick into Trotsky’s head” was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution, the “highest point” in which “the actions, the decisions, the policies enter a course that ends in the dissolution of that process.”

Meanwhile, he considers Mercader “a very difficult character to define” due to the many gaps and uncertainties that still exist around his figure. “Still many of the things we know about him are things that we are not sure whether or not they correspond to this man who has a history is full of lies, gaps, potholes, impostures.”

“He was an executioner, without a doubt, but somehow he was also the victim of a time, of a thought, of a way of acting. A way of acting that we see is still being repeated today, because Mercader responds to one of them,” reflects Padura. Photo: revistaarcadia.com.

VICTIM AND EXECUTIONER

“He was an executioner, without a doubt, but somehow he was also the victim of a time, of a thought, of a way of acting. A way of acting that we see is still being repeated today, because Mercader responds to an idea and we see that today there are men who kill others and even sacrifice themselves for an idea, ideas that are sometimes highly manipulated,” he reflects.

In the assassin’s actions, Padura finds a parallel with those who perpetrate terrorist acts and, therefore, believes that “it is something that can be repeated in the world and that in fact is repeated.”

“Because the saddest thing about all this is that history repeats itself and men don’t learn from history, we always tend to make the same mistakes and to me that seems to be one of the most absurd things that the human condition has,” added the author winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2015.

NECESSARY CRITICISM

Another bridge between the death of the Marxist intellectual and today lies in power’s eternal and often poorly concealed intolerance of critical thinking, a thought that Padura believes “must exist.”

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Tehran in 1943 to plan the common strategy to win World War II. Photo: The New York Times/National Geographic.

He recalls that one of the reasons for the assassination was Trotsky’s sustained criticism of Stalin’s loss of sense of direction.

“Trotsky came from within, he is a man who was much better prepared philosophically than Stalin. And this made him have the ability to make that criticism that was very relevant in many processes,” he emphasizes.

Among them, his denunciation of the decision of the Russian communists not to ally with the German Social Democrats, “at the price of the ascent” of Hitler, or of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that defined the invasion and later distribution of half of Europe.

The digitization of the last three decades has changed the rules of the game and multiplied the spaces for dissemination, “the flow of ideas abysmally changed” and controlling information is “much more difficult.”

“However, totalitarian states insist on doing it, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less success, it depends on certain situations that may be at stake, and I believe that the space of critical thinking continues to exist and continues to function,” says the writer, despite recognizing that this critical thinking doesn’t always concretely materialize.

Even so, “there has to be a reflective look at realities from within realities,” a criticism “via journalism, the arts, philosophy” and even social networks, which Padura hates but knows “they work and they come to create a state of thought, of opinion, that is different from the most hegemonic states of thought.”

A GHOST IN CUBA

Back to the past, and his research for The Man Who Loved Dogs, Padura recalls “the enormous amount of discoveries” he made, especially in a country, Cuba, which at that time and to this day still embraces communist postulates and where there was no information on Trotsky, “a counterrevolutionary, a ghost that was not talked about.”

“I always say that what led me to have the idea of ​​writing this novel was my ignorance, a logical and programmed ignorance,” he explains.

Leonardo Padura: con Cuba y con mi lengua a cuestas…

Trotsky “had disappeared as in that famous photo of the Red Square from which Stalin disappears characters as he kills them,” says the writer, who thanks to that novel enjoyed “one of the reactions, one of the most pleasant approaches I have had with the possible readers of my book.”

“I thank you for writing this novel because I have understood and learned a part of the history that I didn’t know and that is also part of my own history,” his compatriots told Padura.

Author

Lorena Cantó / EFE
Tags: Cuban literatureLeonardo Padura
Previous Post

Almost 5,000 tests in Cuba yield 74 new cases of COVID-19

Next Post

Disinfection of streets and public spaces returns in Havana

Lorena Cantó / EFE

Lorena Cantó / EFE

Next Post
Disinfection of streets in Havana for COVID-19. Photo: Radio Rebelde.

Disinfection of streets and public spaces returns in Havana

Daniella Levine Cava, a rookie in Miami politics, has a chance to be the first mayor of Miami-Dade County. It would be the return of the Anglos to that position. Photo: CBS.

In Miami, Cubans are beginning to stop voting for Cubans

Havana reported the highest number of cases, followed by Villa Clara, Artemisa, Pinar del Río, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Mayabeque, Las Tunas, Granma, and Guantánamo. Photo: Otmaro Rodríguez.

83 new COVID-19 contagions in Cuba

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

The conversation here is moderated according to OnCuba News discussion guidelines. Please read the Comment Policy before joining the discussion.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

ADVERTISEMENT

Most Read

  • A pedicab driver wears a t-shirt with the United States flag, in Havana, on Tuesday, May 17, 2022. Photo: Otmaro Rodríguez.

    Havana after announcement of Biden administration’s changes in Cuba policy

    11 shares
    Share 4 Tweet 3
  • U.S. authorizes investment in private business in Cuba for first time in six decades

    7 shares
    Share 3 Tweet 2
  • Cuban stars in Miami

    37 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 9
  • Mariela Castro: “We cannot be naive in the face of fundamentalisms”

    7 shares
    Share 3 Tweet 2
  • Biden Finally Realized He Can’t Ignore Cuba Any Longe

    4 shares
    Share 2 Tweet 1

Most Commented

  • The PCR test is applied at José Martí airport to travelers arriving in Cuba. The operation took between 30 and 35 seconds on average for each person seen to. Photo: Luis Carlos Gongora/Facebook/Archive.

    Cuba will charge people who travel abroad for PCR tests, at least if the country to which they are going “requires it.”

    10 shares
    Share 4 Tweet 3
  • The “dry rice” formula

    9 shares
    Share 4 Tweet 2
  • The documentary people, between Washington and Havana

    5 shares
    Share 2 Tweet 1
  • About us
  • Work with OnCuba
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Moderation policy for comments
  • Contact us
  • Advertisement offers

OnCuba and the OnCuba logo are registered® trademarks of Fuego Enterprises, Inc., its subsidiaries or divisions.
OnCuba © by Fuego Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • World
  • Cuba
  • Cuba-USA
  • Opinion
    • Columns
    • Infographic
  • Culture
    • Billboard
  • Sports
  • Styles / Trends
  • Media
  • Special
  • Cuban Flavors

OnCuba and the OnCuba logo are registered® trademarks of Fuego Enterprises, Inc., its subsidiaries or divisions.
OnCuba © by Fuego Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version