The notion that the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution should be an occasion for serious reflection is apt. Inasmuch as the past is never past (as Faulkner said), the catastrophic outcome of the revolution appears lost to most of our post-moderns.
But . . . there is fun to be had in commemorating the doings of Lenin and Trotsky. Consider the photo below. Occasionally, this silly depiction of the two old comrades pops up.
You’ll have to trust my translations: According to the printing beneath it, the picture purportedly comes from something called the archive of the “Soviet Peoples’ Committee.” It’s dated 22 December 1917, but I imagine that’s probably the date it was supposedly archived, because Leon Trotsky was busy selling out the new regime to the Germans at Brest-Litovsk that day. At any rate, the photo purports to come from the earliest Soviet period.
If it’s an Eisenstein-era (or 1920s) joke, which I hope it is, it’s quite amusing. What were the comrades singing? A Russian folksong called “Zhili u babusi dva vesiolykh gusia.” (In English: “Two Merry Geese Lived with Granny.”). You can hear it here.
Is this a world-historical gag? Surely not. By his own admission,Trotsky had no musical talent. But the real trouble is that neither Lenin nor Trotsky looked like this in December 1917. They’re much too old in the photo. And white slacks and shoes in 1917? I doubt it.
My guess is that some wag faked the photo and got it stuck in the archive. The joke then is probably the name of the song. I wonder if the joker was having fun by comparing Lenin and Trotsky to “Two Merry Geese.”
Ken Jensen is an occasional contributor to The Weekly Standard.
