A Leon Trotsky, a Chara
A short post(card) and festive greetings
My final piece of work before I turned on the ‘out of office’ for Christmas was to return to some sources I accessed in the Leon Trotsky papers, now stored in Harvard, and partly digitised.
Among the documents I looked through were postcards sent to Leon Trotsky from Paul Kirchoff, a German revolutionary and anthropologist who spent part of the early 1930s working with the Harvard-Irish study.
One of Kirchoff’s letters to Trotsky from Ireland stood out because it opened with the Irish-language greeting ‘A Chara’, meaning ‘Dear friend’ (more-or-less). It was sent in May 1933 and is otherwise written in German:
I don’t have any deep analysis of this document for you.
I just found it unusual and interesting to imagine Leon Trotsky, sitting in his study in exile in Istanbul, reading a letter with the cúpla focal. The card also had an image of the Dublin Botanic Gardens on the front. How lovely.
A Chara, let this post be my own Christmas card to you, wherever you are reading it.
Thank you to everyone who subscribed to Archive Rats in its first year and all who helped it grow by sharing the newsletter.
Enjoy the break and see you again in 2024 🎄
You friend,
Maurice
Archive Rats is a free newsletter. If you would like to express support, please do direct your help to those who need it most. One donation fund that has been recommended to me is Medical Aid for Palestinians
Amazing, thank you for sharing. The Leon Trotsky museum in Coyocan is fascinating if you've never seen it. To see the bullet holes in the wall and sit in the garden where he looked after his rabbits and cacti, very moving. Also Frida Kahlo's house is close by. Inspirational!