{"id":226322,"date":"2020-08-20T08:38:33","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T12:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=226322"},"modified":"2021-04-26T20:56:55","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T00:56:55","slug":"padura-trotskys-assassination-and-the-voracity-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/culture\/literature\/padura-trotskys-assassination-and-the-voracity-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Padura: Trotsky\u2019s assassination and the voracity of power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help us keep OnCuba alive<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The assassination in Mexico of Leon Trotsky at the hands of Spaniard Ram\u00f3n Mercader by orders of Joseph Stalin illustrates \u201chow tremendous this need for power to take up all possible spaces can be,\u201d a scenario that is repeated throughout history, in the opinion of Cuban writer Leonardo Padura<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Padura: \u201cI always say that what led me to have the idea of \u200b\u200bwriting this novel was my ignorance, a logical and programmed ignorance.\u201d Photo: Radio France International.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The novel The Man Who Loved Dogs<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n

TURN THAT LIGHT OFF<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat matters above all is the symbolic character of that murder. The Trotsky whose assassination was ordered by Stalin at that time by Ram\u00f3n 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,\u201d says Padura.<\/p>\n

A persecution that \u201chistorically demonstrates that in power struggles, piety generally doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, beyond the political motivation, Padura has always defended that the moment in which \u201cMercader plunges the Stalinist ice pick into Trotsky\u2019s head\u201d was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution, the \u201chighest point\u201d in which \u201cthe actions, the decisions, the policies enter a course that ends in the dissolution of that process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he considers Mercader \u201ca very difficult character to define\u201d due to the many gaps and uncertainties that still exist around his figure. \u201cStill 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe 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,\u201d reflects Padura. Photo: revistaarcadia.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VICTIM AND EXECUTIONER<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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,\u201d he reflects.<\/p>\n

In the assassin\u2019s actions, Padura finds a parallel with those who perpetrate terrorist acts and, therefore, believes that \u201cit is something that can be repeated in the world and that in fact is repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the saddest thing about all this is that history repeats itself and men don\u2019t 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,\u201d added the author winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2015.<\/p>\n

NECESSARY CRITICISM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another bridge between the death of the Marxist intellectual and today lies in power\u2019s eternal and often poorly concealed intolerance of critical thinking, a thought that Padura believes \u201cmust exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He recalls that one of the reasons for the assassination was Trotsky\u2019s sustained criticism of Stalin\u2019s loss of sense of direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrotsky 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,\u201d he emphasizes.<\/p>\n

Among them, his denunciation of the decision of the Russian communists not to ally with the German Social Democrats, \u201cat the price of the ascent\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The digitization of the last three decades has changed the rules of the game and multiplied the spaces for dissemination, \u201cthe flow of ideas abysmally changed\u201d and controlling information is \u201cmuch more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, 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,\u201d says the writer, despite recognizing that this critical thinking doesn\u2019t always concretely materialize.<\/p>\n

Even so, \u201cthere has to be a reflective look at realities from within realities,\u201d a criticism \u201cvia journalism, the arts, philosophy\u201d and even social networks, which Padura hates but knows \u201cthey work and they come to create a state of thought, of opinion, that is different from the most hegemonic states of thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

A GHOST IN CUBA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back to the past, and his research for The Man Who Loved Dogs<\/em>, Padura recalls \u201cthe enormous amount of discoveries\u201d 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, \u201ca counterrevolutionary, a ghost that was not talked about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say that what led me to have the idea of \u200b\u200bwriting this novel was my ignorance, a logical and programmed ignorance,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Leonardo Padura: con Cuba y con mi lengua a cuestas…<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n