Originally posted by
[email protected] 07, 2007 05:42 pm
The scene with Zinoviev is the best thing in it - its supposedly Reed the romantic coming face to face with the reality of revolutionary politics as he is translated (falsely) as calling for a Holy war when he speaks at the Baku Conference.
In fact Reed didnt get to give his speech at the conference for lack of time. He did make a short earlier intervention, which included the following
"American capitalism is trying to establish a monopoly of oil. On account of oil, blood is being spilt. On account of oil a struggle is being waged in which the American banker and the American capitalists attempt everywhere to conquer the places and enslave the people where oil is found......As soon as the Eastern Peoples rise in revolt, the last foundations of capitalism will collapse and then the peoples will endeavour to create a social order in which not only oil but everything produced by human hands will belong to the toilers (applause)"
How times ......change .....
Yeah, that's a bit of Hollywood rewrite of history there. Nobody needed to mistranslate Reed's speech to make it more militantly anti-imperialist, it was strongly anti-imperialist already.
There is a story Reed told about some British delegate (probably Quelch (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/ch04.htm)) having his timid speech at Baku possibly punched up by a translator. He tells it as a humorous anecdote.
And the movie makes this into a huge thing, with Reed supposedly enraged at the Bolsheviks for "changing my words!" just like some AFL sellout once did.
Big ol' Hollywood fabrication.