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View Full Version : Trotsky's Icepick Going Cheap!


livius drusus
07-12-2005, 07:02 PM
The one removed from his skull post mortem, that is. It seems the daughter of the Mexican secret police commander who, um, kept the icepick for safekeeping :shifty: is looking to sell (http://www.breakingnews.ie/2005/07/11/story211136.html).

Trotsky’s grandson doesn't truck with such capitalist pigdog shenanigans, however, so he won't give up his DNA to confirm that the crusty red stains on the pick came from inside Trotsky's head unless Ms. Salas donates the artifact to a museum.

“If it is for commercial purposes, I refuse to participate in this kind of thing,” Volkov said with a disdain echoed in the volumes of Trotsky’s revolutionary writings on display in the museum’s library.

Salas, 50, refuses to consider such a donation, saying people only value the things they pay for.

“Sometimes people don’t value things that are given away,” Salas said.

In a country where police misconduct is legendary, Salas is quick to paint her father, Alfred Salas, as a model secret service agent.

She said that Alfred Salas, who retired in 1965 and died in 1985, had been granted permission by superiors to keep the icepick in order to put together a “museum of criminology”.

He withdrew the pick from the museum and kept it among his personal possessions after someone tried to steal the artefact from a criminology display.

While she has said in the past that she is seeking “some financial benefit” in exchange for the pick, she hedges when asked if she is selling the piece.

“I think this instrument is valuable. It is a piece of world history,” Salas said as she displayed the pick, wrapped in flannel and kept in an old cardboard box labelled Kenmore Electric Heating Pad.

So it looks like her father didn't seem to think people don't value what they don't pay for because he was all about the giving and the criminology museum and whatnot. I guess it's better it stay in the heating pad box until people learn to value it as it deserves.

Morroskye
07-12-2005, 10:57 PM
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Leon Trotsky and the Bolsheviks killed by Stalinists that destroyed the great Russian Revolution. The thought of the instrument that killed him being e-bayed for cash would be a travesty. I admire the integrity of his relatives still living in Mexico and hope this tragic relic can be displayed in a proper setting.

JoeP
07-12-2005, 11:13 PM
displayed in a proper setting
Bush's head? Mugabe's head? Osama bin Laden's head?

Morroskye
07-12-2005, 11:16 PM
displayed in a proper setting
Bush's head? Mugabe's head? Osama bin Laden's head?
Any of the Above.

livius drusus
07-12-2005, 11:16 PM
Trotsky was entirely too top-down authoritarian for my tastes. Party over people is not really my bag, baby, particular when it results in things like the demise of elected representatives and the execution/suppression of former allies and co-revolutionaries. Stalin didn't come out of a vacuum, after all.

I agree with you on the icepick belonging in a museum, however. For one thing, it doubtless could use better care than it's receiving in a cardboard box.

Morroskye
07-12-2005, 11:19 PM
Trotsky was entirely too top-down authoritarian for my tastes. Party over people is not really my bag, baby, particular when it results in things like the demise of elected representatives and the execution/suppression of former allies and co-revolutionaries. Stalin didn't come out of a vacuum, after all.

I agree with you on the icepick belonging in a museum, however. For one thing, it doubtless could use better care than it's receiving in a cardboard box.
Even if the instrument were rightfully lodged in Stalin's head I agree it does hold significant historical value and deserves better care.

ChuckF
07-12-2005, 11:40 PM
Holy crap! I want it! :pant:

Zephyrus
07-13-2005, 06:38 AM
Three points:

1) Damn, I want this. What a conversation piece. Bring one to your bar, and tell people that the ice in their drinks was cut using the icepick that killed Trotsky (idea stolen from Fark). Impress the ladies.

2) In all seriousness, it should go to the museum. Regardless of one's opinion of Trotsky, it's surely a very important historical artefact. I'd be seriously pissed off if it did become someone's private ice cutter.

3) Trotsky was a complete authoritarian. Kronstadt (though it's more complex than usually portrayed) does more than anything else to show that. At the same time, history would have developed completely differently had he won the power struggle within the CPSU. And, contrary to most alternate histories, that one could just as well have happened, had Lenin's Testament gotten out. Alas, it did not. The random vagaries of history.

Skep
07-13-2005, 07:13 AM
The one removed from his skull post mortem, that is. It seems the daughter of the Mexican secret police commander who, um, kept the icepick for safekeeping :shifty: is looking to sell (http://www.breakingnews.ie/2005/07/11/story211136.html).
I can't help but think of Eric Idle's 'jokes and novelties salesman' character saying, "Guaranteed to break the ice at parties." :D

MooseIBe
07-13-2005, 02:29 PM
It would be worth more if it was still in situ, I think.

Is she desperate for cash or something? Aren't there some Trotskyites still living who could help her out if so, and the axe could go to a museum?

Morroskye
07-13-2005, 03:07 PM
It would be worth more if it was still in situ, I think.

Is she desperate for cash or something? Aren't there some Trotskyites still living who could help her out if so, and the axe could go to a museum?
There are plenty of Trotskyists still alive. Seven political parties in the US alone. Check out the largest, the Socialist Workers Party at www.themilitant.com. Dozens of Western countries also have an assortment of Trotskyist movements. Contrary to pop culture beliefs, communism isn't dead at all but finally freed from the clutches of Stalinism.

ChuckF
07-21-2005, 08:16 AM
It would be worth more if it was still in situ, I think.
According to KGB historian and defector Oleg Gordievsky, Ramon Mercader actually used the base - not the pointy business end - to kill Trotsky. Of course, Trotskyism was pretty dead long before Trotsky was finally finished off in Mexico. It lived primarily in Stalin's conspiracy-laden insanity.