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Rare World War I-dated ALS in Cyrillic, signed “Leo Trotski,” penned on the reverse of a 5.5 x 3.5 postcard, April 30th (postmarked on May 4, 1917, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Trotsky had recently been imprisoned for over a month). Brief handwritten letter to New York lawyer Louis B. Boudin, penned one day after the British government engineered his release from the Amherst Internment Camp. Trotsky writes (translated): “Dear Tovarish, Since yesterday, A. and I are finally on the steamship, heading to Christiania. Warm regards to you and your wife.” The front of the postcard features an image of the Danish passenger-cargo ship SS Hellig Olav, which brought Trotsky and his family back to Europe. In fine condition. Louis B. Boudin (1874-1952) was a Russian-born American Marxist theoretician, writer, politician, and lawyer.
In March 1917, following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Leon Trotsky left New York City with his family aboard the SS Kristianiafjord to return to Russia. When the ship docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on April 3, Trotsky was detained by the Royal Navy and confined first at the Citadel and then at the Amherst Internment Camp, while his wife Natalia Sedova and their children remained in Halifax under police supervision. He spent a month in Amherst, described by Trotsky as a ‘concentration camp,’ where he befriended workers and sailors among the inmates and described the experience as ‘one continual mass meeting.’ His speeches and agitation angered some German prisoners, leading the camp commander to forbid him from speaking publicly — a decision that provoked a protest and petition from over 500 fellow detainees. Meanwhile in Russia, after initial hesitation, Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov — pressured by workers’ and peasants’ Soviets — demanded Trotsky’s release as a Russian citizen. The British government complied, freeing him on April 29, 1917.
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