Monday 10 December 2007

To the Finland Station

A ticket to create the Revolution and in 10 days shake the world cost 15 million ReichsMarks.
The German Emperor remarked "If the Swedes won't let him through, we'll let him through the German lines ourselves."

The German archives held in Berlin have been opened, rather like the Heavens.

8 comments:

Sackerson said...

You've lost me there, HG - what have I missed?

hatfield girl said...

The German archives on the Russian Revolution have just been made available in Berlin. Lenin was funded by Wilhelm II Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (who was an honorary Admiral of the Fleet and a Field Marshal of the British Army earlier on). It has always been said that Germany sought the discomfort of the Tsar during the Great War, but now we can read all about it.
Sorry, S, a post entitled To the Finland Station was irresistible, as were the extraordinary film clips of the Revolution, from the Italian archives, shown on this evening's main news.

Anonymous said...

15 million Reichmarks? A small price to pay for a country, at a huge cost for mankind. Socialism already existed then but the November 1917 Coup, widely but inaccurately known as the October Revolution, corrupted it and perverted it.

hatfield girl said...

Du Socialisme Perverti au Capitalisme Sauvage - they've not been having much of a century have they C?

Sackerson said...

Truly, the more you know the worse it gets. Germany waking up the savage bear in WWI and then Hitler rising with anti-Communist support. Everything governments touch turns to...

Newmania said...

Tom Stopprad made use of the perambulations of Lenin in Travesties

"The play's setting is primarily Zurich during World War I. Three important 20th-century personalities were living in Zurich at that time: the modernist author James Joyce, the communist revolutionary Lenin, and the Dadaist founder Tristan Tzara"

hatfield girl said...

Sometimes yesterday can be thought of as a raked boiler - all the ash fallen through the bars and only the glowing coals left; it couldn't have been so much more charged and fascinating than is today, could it?
Apart from the current work on language, cognition and in neuroscience it's hard to think of any exciting research field - even politics and economics is the long echo of what they were slugging it out over in the last century. And when was there last a truly great painter/sculptor /composer? Poets are doing slightly better.
Time to rake the boiler and let the last 15 years fall into the ash pan , hoping some glowing coals might be left.

Anonymous said...

Caronte is wrong re dates - the Russians at the time still used the Julian calendar which is 14 days behind the current Gregorian calendar. The Russian Orthodox Church still use the old calendar - hence the Russian Xmas and Russian New Year have still to come if anyone wants further reason to celebrate