This Blogger has an old adversary, from the Cold War, turned soul mate; this Blogger met him in the Soviet Union. This Blogger was on vacation in the Soviet Union, with Linda, checking out icons; he was a tour guide, who became infatuated with Linda.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, because of his linguistic ability, he did well, financially; ; upon retirement, he and his wife moved to Sardinia ( why Sardinia? People live there a long time Gerry).
This Blogger heard from him perhaps once every nine months; he last heard from him in May, 2022, and then again last Friday.
He emailed this Blogger, furious. He had discovered a novel had been published about Olga Kameneva; a novel based on alternative history. In the novel, Olga survived her execution by Stalin and moves to Australia.
The old Soviet fumed:” That is like saying Custer survived the Little Big Horn, and moved to Brooklyn to open a bagel shop.”
This Blogger was commanded to craft a Blog on Olga Kameneva.
As one ages, Memory becomes a strange ally; this Blogger cannot remember whether or not he locked his car door, but he can remember almost everything of his youth, including the smells and sounds of Brooklyn, the green grass of Ebbets Field, the smell of popcorn at the Paramount Theater, the sound of the pink Spalding rubber ball hitting the sawed off mop handle, in stickball games.
Once a week, this Blogger’s Father took him to downtown Brooklyn to watch a Western. Being a Trotskyite, he would time the trip, so that he had enough time to visit an ancient Trotskyite couple, who lived at the beginning of Grand Army Plaza.
They were ancient; they even had a samovar.
In their youth, before Trotsky had been purged, they had worked in the Kremlin. They knew Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin; those five men were running the Soviet Union. Trotsky, because of his record as founder of the Red Army, was the first among equals, and Lenin’s chosen heir.
They never knew Lenin; he had suffered strokes, which had incapacitated him, and kept him away from the Kremlin while they were there. Then he died, without them ever seeing him.
They said Kamenev was Lenin’s best friend
Trotsky was the chosen heir, Kamenev the best friend…..Olga Kameneva was Kamenev’s wife……and Trotsky’s only sister.
Both of the old Bolsheviks adulated Trotsky; the Ancient Male Bolshevik thought he was the greatest Russian military genius since Peter the Great. “ Gerry, he organized the Red Army from scratch.
The Ancient Female Bolshevik grew misty merely talking about Trotsky; she considered him the most humane of all the Bolshevik leaders.
Then why did Trotsky lose?
The Ancient Male thought this: “Trotsky never had a chance, he was Jewish. Stalin, who had studied to be a monk, played the Christian card…..all the anti-Semites in the party, and there were many, went with the ex-Christian Stalin over the ex-Jew Trotsky. The ironic part is that the Jews, Kamenev and Zinoviev, allied themselves with Stalin, the ex-monk, to force Trotsky into exile.”
This Blogger was mystified: “ I can understand Zinoviev, but why would Kamenev go against his own family?”
The Ancient One replied:” Jealousy, during the successful October Revolution which brought the Bolsheviks to power, Kamenev opposed armed action. Trotsky had become a war hero, and Kamenev had opposed the armed revolution…….Trotsky was too grand for his brother-in-law.”
The wife of the Ancient One interjected: “ Kamenev was a pig; he wanted to be a celebrity more than a Communist; Olga should have backed her brother rather than her playboy husband;, blood is thicker than marriage in an atheist state.”
The Ancient Male went back to his story: ”After Trotsky was kicked out, Stalin turned against the Jews, Kamenev and Zinoviev, and with the help of Bukharin smashed them. Then Stalin smashed Bukharin. Stalin shot all of them; Stalin shot everybody who knew him as an equal, who had been his comrade. He shot 11 of the 15 men who started the Bolshevik Revolution. The other four died mysteriously.”
Again, this Blogger was mystified: “ How did Stalin pull that off; all the Old Bolsheviks were professional conspirators; couldn’t they figure out what Stalin was doing?
The Female interjected:” Stalin was sooooooooo handsome, so charming. He was a prize-winning poet you know? The men would have a feeling it was their turn to be shot; Stalin sensed their awareness; he has the instincts of a poet. He would invite the doomed man and his wife to a private dinner. There, he would flirt with the wives, and charm them out of their discretion. Back home, the wives would tell their worried husbands, not to worry, Stalin likes them. Two days later, Stalin would arrest them and shoot both of them.”
The Blogger was mystified: “ Couldn’t have Olga, Trotsky’s sister figured out what Stalin was doing? A slow-motion purge, and warned Kamenev?
The Ancient Female shook her head: ”Oh no, they were estranged by then, maybe even divorced, I can’t remember…..Kamenev had taken up with a celebrity English sculptress, Claire Sheridan. She was a tramp. She promised to immortalize Kamenev with a bust….Kamenev left Olga for a liaison with Sheridan. But that affair fizzled when Claire left Kamenev for an affair with Trotsky. Lenin was the only Puritan Bolshevik.”
This Blogger has researched Sheridan. He was curious about a tramp that slept with Bolsheviks.
“Clare Sheridan took a holiday with Kamenev on the Isle of Wight. While they were there Kamenev promised her that he would arrange for her to return to Moscow with him. She told her cousin, Shane Leslie, that doing busts of Lenin and Leon Trotsky might bring her world fame. …… Clare's brother, Oswald Frewen, wrote in his diary: "Puss (Clare) is trying to go to Moscow with Kamenev to sculpt Lenin and Leon Trotsky.... I rather she didn't go but she has got Bolshevism badly - she always reflects the views of the last man she's met - and I think it may cure her to go and see it. She is her own mistress and if I thwarted her by telling Winston (Churchill), she'd never confide in me again.... I went to the Bolshevik Legation in Bond Street with her and waited while she saw Kamenev. Several typical Bolshies there - degenerate lot.
Sheridan and Kamenev arrived….. Olga Kameneva was on the station to greet him: "We reached Moscow at 10.30 a.m. and I waited in the train so that Kamenev and his wife could get their tender greetings over without my presence. I watched them through the window: the greeting on one side, however, was not apparent in its tenderness. I waited and they walked up the platform talking with animation. Finally Mrs. Kameneva came into the compartment and shook hands with me. She has small brown eyes and thin lips."
Sheridan spent a lot of time with Kamenev in Moscow. This upset his wife and it is generally believed that this was the main reason for their divorce. Kamenev arranged for Sheridan to produce busts of Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev and Felix Dzerzhinsky. …SPARTACUS.”
Stalin stated executing his former comrades and friends in 1936. Kamenev and Zinoviev were executed in 1936. Olga was arrested and sent to prison.
Stalin did not kill her; he wanted her to suffer life.
In 1938, Stalin executed her youngest son, 17; in 1939, Stalin executed her remaining son; who was 33 and an Air Force Officer.
In 1940, Stalin’s agents assassinated her brother, Leon Trotsky, at his place of exile in Mexico City.
With all her family shot, Stalin kept her alive until the German Invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Then she was shot.
She suffered mightily for the Revolution she loved; her husband, brother and sons were shot because they could not outsmart the charming poet, former monk, and sociopath Josef Stalin.
It is a crime, a sin, to despoil her life of suffering with an alternative history fictionalization of her life, her very 20th Century life.
Liberals are constantly asking, why do people believe the BIG LIE? What other reason needs to be given than the Elite has encouraged a waft of alternative historical fiction. Why not believe the BIG LIE when it is not enough for Abraham Lincoln to be the president who freed the slave and won a Homeric Civil War? This society wants him to be a VAMPIRE SLAYER.
Why despoil the suffering Olga Kameneva's life? And the real suffering she endured, by introducing into the public consciousness a lie dressed as alternative history. The lie that she escaped Russia to live a life of teas in a Melbourne suburb.
Finally, as for Claire Sheridan, who was Winston Churchill’s first cousin; she did what many tramps do; she converted to Roman Catholicism and moved into a convent where she continued to sculpt, receiving visits from her friends, the Mountbattens and Vivien Leigh.
She died in 1970, at the age of 84.
OLGA KAMENEVA......By Agence de presse Meurisse. Agence photographique - Bibliothèque nationale de France,
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