August 7, 2012
"Vladimir Ilyich and I went for a long walk around London. From a bridge, Lenin pointed out Westminster and some other famous buildings. I don’t remember the exact words he used, but what he conveyed was: “This is their famous Westminster,” and “their” referred of course not to the English but to the ruling classes. This implication, which was not in the least emphasized, but coming as it did from the very innermost depths of the man, and expressed more by the tone of his voice than by anything else, was always present, whether Lenin was speaking of the treasures of culture, of new achievements, of the wealth of books in the British Museum, of the information of the larger European newspapers, or, years later, of German artillery or French aviation. They know this or they have that, they have made this or achieved that – but what enemies they are! To his eyes, the invisible shadow of the ruling classes always overlay the whole of human culture – a shadow that was as real to him as daylight."

— Leon Trotsky, My Life (via fifty-grades-of-che)

(via e-schatology)

April 16, 2012

A dedicated young German boy pulls off an elaborate scheme to keep his mother in good health in this comedy drama from director Wolfgang Becker. Suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma after seeing her son arrested during a protest, Alex’s (Daniel Brühl) socialist mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), remains comatose through the fall of the Berlin wall and the German Democratic Republic. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother’s awakening, Alex strives to keep  the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible. Keeping their apartment firmly rooted in the past, Alex’s scheme works for a while, but it’s not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again. 

Proving that the Germans do have a sense of humour after all; Good Bye Lenin is fantastic, hilarious and bittersweet. 

A dedicated young German boy pulls off an elaborate scheme to keep his mother in good health in this comedy drama from director Wolfgang Becker. Suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma after seeing her son arrested during a protest, Alex’s (Daniel Brühl) socialist mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), remains comatose through the fall of the Berlin wall and the German Democratic Republic. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother’s awakening, Alex strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible. Keeping their apartment firmly rooted in the past, Alex’s scheme works for a while, but it’s not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again. 

Proving that the Germans do have a sense of humour after all; Good Bye Lenin is fantastic, hilarious and bittersweet. 

(Source: sunrec)

January 24, 2012
"There once was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in
That’s a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in!"

— Robert Conquest