[3] “I do not know whether New York or Paris possesses at the present time more cinemas or taverns,” Trotsky would write after the 1917 revolution. “But it is manifest that, above everything, the cinema competes with the tavern on the matter of how the eight leisure hours are to be filled. Can we secure this incomparable weapon?” Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life, 41.
[4] On the Triangle Dairy Restaurant, see Halpern.
[6] Draper, 82–83. In fairness, Bukharin had made the effort in response to a request from Lenin, who had asked him in a letter from Europe to “form a small group of Russian and Lettish Bolsheviks capable of following interesting literature, writing about it,” and so on. Lenin to Bukharin, October 14, 1916, published in Bolshevik, no. 22, 1932, from Marxists.org.
[21] Jonas, 143–44. Vladeck also gave a second account. In a late 1917 interview, he downplayed the incident, saying that Trotsky had called him personally, not Cahan, asked simply, “Did you write that article?” and “Does the paper stand for it?” When Vladeck said yes, Trotsky said, “Then send me back my last article. I am sorry but I can no longer write for you.” Kirchwey, 4.
[22] Shub told this story to Nedava in 1969. See Nedava, 26, and 235, note 20.
[23] Emma Goldman once complained, through a business manager, “To me it seems very strange that you should devote so little space to Emma Goldman’s Jewish lectures when she is by far the most popular lecturer in Jewish who ever carried on propaganda in American”; her every meeting is crowded and “intensely interesting.” Mother Earth to Vladeck, February 8, 1917, in Vladeck papers.
[24]Novy Mir articles of March 6, 7, 9, 14, and 20, from Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 204–5.
[25] Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One, 252, note 50.