Where is this Trotsky quote from?

[CesareBorgia]

"The putrescent tissue of Islam will vanish at the first puff"

I see this quoted in the book Cecil Kaye "Communism in India" (Calcutta 1971, 272.)

But where does the actual quote come from?

Thank you.

[graymouser]

The only reference I can find goes back to Kaye's Communism in India. The problem is that it would have more than likely been a translation of something he said during the period before his exile from Russia, which is under-translated. It doesn't occur in any of the material from that era which is published in English, like Problems of Everyday Life, and definitely has not made it into the Trotsky Internet Archive.

Paul Johnson quotes the section you noted along with the following: It was Islam which had to fear change, from 'the Eastern Woman, who is to be the great centre of future revolutions.' He notes the section in single quotes along with the sentence about Islam's putrescent flesh. However, likewise this discussion about the Eastern Woman is not in the TIA and references there are substantially different.

Hope that helps somewhat in tracking it down.

[CesareBorgia]

The only reference I can find goes back to Kaye's Communism in India. The problem is that it would have more than likely been a translation of something he said during the period before his exile from Russia, which is under-translated. It doesn't occur in any of the material from that era which is published in English, like Problems of Everyday Life, and definitely has not made it into the Trotsky Internet Archive.

Paul Johnson quotes the section you noted along with the following: It was Islam which had to fear change, from 'the Eastern Woman, who is to be the great centre of future revolutions.' He notes the section in single quotes along with the sentence about Islam's putrescent flesh. However, likewise this discussion about the Eastern Woman is not in the TIA and references there are substantially different.

Hope that helps somewhat in tracking it down.

Thanks, I have perhaps all of Trotsky's works in the original Russian but this was something I had not encountered.

[Martin Blank]

"The putrescent tissue of Islam will vanish at the first puff"

I see this quoted in the book Cecil Kaye "Communism in India" (Calcutta 1971, 272.)

But where does the actual quote come from?

"Even today we can still observe in the East the rule of Islam, of the old prejudices, beliefs and customs but these will more and more turn to dust and ashes. Just as a rotting piece of cloth, when you look at it from a distance, it seems to be all of a piece, all the pattern is there and all the folds remain but a movement of the hand or a puff of wind is enough for the whole cloth to turn to dust." -- Perspectives and Tasks in the East, April 1924: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/04/perspectives.htm

[Olentzero]

Thanks, I have perhaps all of Trotsky's works in the original Russian but this was something I had not encountered.Where on earth did you find that?! I'm quite jealous.