Ode to the Living

 

I must say, I do not write this particular post other than out of a certain morbid curiosity to revisit it when these times have, as Proust may have thought, fallen into the decay of time passed, partly out of a certain - and very much premature - sadness and regret I may not live to shake the hand of the very living Esteban Volkov and ask about his peculiar and uncelebrated lifespan, if I should be so lucky to replicate either. However, in a time where such possibilities are of the present, we may meditate on them and on how the past, as seen in this extraordinary destiny, continues to guard the present. 

He was born in 1926 as, the same year as my late grandfather, I should say, as Vsevolod Volkov, son and namesake of Mrs. Volkova, née Bronstein, younger daughter of the great revolutionary now known universally by his gaoler's name, Trotsky. Now, thus, and alone among the great Trotsky's grandchildren, he is ninety-five, and seemingly with a century of life within still-vibrant clutches, working as fervently as ever from his base in Coyoacán, where he remained (and became Esteban) after leaving his mother's arms to join his famed, and hunted, grandfather in a Mexican exile, invited there by president Cardenas (father of the frequent candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a name as contradictory as the PRI brand, who challenged the single-party rule instated by his sire from a left-libertarian position). The now thirty-five year senior guardian of his grandfather's, and grandmother's tomb has - in a sense - stayed in this moment in history, his journey ended in one way, albeit following everything which has surpassed since those momentous days of the very eventful summer of 1940. 

Shortly after the arrival of the Trotskys in Istanbul at the acceptance of Atatürk, his mother perished, seemingly in a gas accident or, the most cited theory, suicide due to the isolation and . Whatever the reason, she was the second of his children to die, followed by her half-brothers in the following five years, until only the elder statesman - the statesman who never was - and his young progeny remained, safeguarded by a collective of true believers, in a spiriting which never quite ended, even after boarding a ship in Norway bound for the distant Mexican state. It was, in this time of groundbreaking and menacing change, the only country which had supported the nascent and now very endangered Spanish republic, whose defence Trotsky correctly predicted was a question of the European security order, of the broader forces of progress against fascism, repression, darkness and, now undeniable, war. 

The Trotskys, arrived safely in Mexico. It would be the final home for all three members of the renegade family. 

What could have changed if he - the grandfather - had lived longer? Would they have enjoyed another stay, from Lev's perspective, another stay in Washington, invited (as Ernst Hanfstaengl was) to ? It is unlikely, though the unraveling of Stalinism as the prime ally of Western democracy (as its precedent was in 1914) and subsequent unraveling as its premier and deadly foe, might have provided this , into a Hanfstaengl-esque position of counsel to the very many-minded Truman's administration. If so, the seed of Trotskyite . Instead, he never sought, but came to remain behind, a shadow looming over his elder's tomb. 

Very tragically, he rejoined his sister in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, as the final vestiges of stalinism were definitively crumbling, but just as the structure itself and the Russia it gave birth to could hardly have amused him, he remained unable to talk sense to her, with his Russian so separated by time and culture and weariness that he could not understand her. Nevertheless, the rejoining of the two Trotsky siblings is sure to have felled tears in even so hard a man. 

The cultural legacy, or supposed such, of the great Trotsky did not alleviate or amuse him, and he joined the crowd of furious Trotskyites with a scathing, if very calm and informed review of the 2017 series (which from my lips garnered endless praise) Trotsky, a supposed attempt by Russian television to denigrate Lev Trotsky and the great revolution in its centenary by associating one with the other. In this, he remained very much the stern, humourless man of the 1920s revolutionaries, a scion of Lenin if there was one, but very consciously, selflessly and with exuberant energy devoted his time and work to the raising of new generations, very much in the plural, aimed at the cause of global revolution, from his Mexican home, a country now ever so changed, while that tombstone and the ashes below remained. 

For in the first, very serious - if not serene - attempt at Trotsky the Elder's life in the summer of 1940, Esteban was himself hit by the lead of Stalinist repression, penetrated by a bullet to the thigh - which, while in Pythonesque terms a flesh wound, could have proved deadly - and a reach which had no qualms about reaching across the globe. His grandfather, lying abed appropriately, would remark that this attempt, no doubt, would hardly be the last; to not much smaller doubt a statement to the afterworld that this man, who now faced death with a vigour very much known, and otherwise internal and just as certain, knew what he was walking into, but steadfast as ever. This steadfastness and sturdiness, the reliance on standing on principle - if yet principles bent so far they must be considered broken, throughout a life of revolutionary activity, and a decade in the halls of temporary power and the crucible which sealed so many fates of the twentieth century - would be the hallmark of Esteban, or Vsevolod as he might have been recalled by his sister, and a lifelong credo for this man who began, too early, from a boyhood on the run, disestablished and ripped from the comfortable position of meaning and provision which has the great revolution's ultimate promise to its votaries. Living, in an albeit revolutionary yet decidedly (state) capitalist economy, far flung from home, with no other relatives, his life had been anything but, and a footnote to the revolutionary life which now seemed so wasted, so laborious to the point of obsequious. It was as if time itself had stopped. 

What can we learn then, from this man? Well, first of all the Trotsky "brand" is not dead; while Leon, or Lev or Lova, lived to survive all his four (known) children, a fate few would consider illustrious or recommendable - and almost David-ian, in the notorious marital problems preceding and sealing such relations well before the bullet and baton of Stalinist repression - he bore a daughter who eventually fulfilled the Trotskyite dream of Trotsky returning to America, going north to gain position within the American bureaucracy and help improve the lives of the living, under the call of a doctor (or psychiatrist) and her grandmother's adopted name, Volkow. He began a life in the shadow of Lenin and Stalin and ended it ruminating on the ilk of Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin and - yes - Lopez Obrador and the afterbirth of the 2008 and 2020 economic crises, with every breath sharing a comment on the current state of affairs as obedient to the cause of "we, the people" as contrary to political authority, never losing the integrity which his revolutionary grandfather had, to maneuver the ship of state, had compromised, whether to the German, the Georgian, the goatee-and-crown figure enduring a ghastly position for all these ninety-six years, or Hades himself. In a sense, he was the twentieth century after its two momentous events and the definite closing of the old world in 1945, and the somber, distraught but never quite pessimist. And yet, his walk is far from ended.