Victory at the Reichstag!

The Internationale is available at this political science department site. One can now do a sound/music search on the commercial AltaVista^tm site for these things. Kenny the Wob showed me this on New Years day, 2001.

This photo has graced my home page (on and off)and various multimedia projects since 1988.

Someone recently suggested to me that a little background on this photo may be required for Americans appreciate it. To overcome programmed gut reactions, as it were. We were taught to hate and fear the Workers/Farmers symbol, the Hammer and Sickle.

This photo was taken from the top of Hitlers Reichstag in 1945, days before that genius of hatred took his life in despair at his failure to bring the world down around his head. The Red Army was fighting its way from doorway to step through Berlin in the final conquest of the evil empire.

Coviet soldiers raising their symbol of freedom over the destroyed headquarters of the hatred project after 20 million dead was certainly cause for delirious celebration.

I originally scanned it from a book I obtained in the Covietsky Coyuz in 1987. It is possible that I had seen it before, I don't really recall now. I first used it as a frontispiece of a stack in a Foundation multimedia project on the Amiga.

It became a graphical header on my Web page in 1995 and has kept that role since I learned the name of the photographer.

The January 31, 1997 issue of the New York Times Living Arts section had the full photograph in a half page spread, with a story about the photographer, Yevgeny Khaldai.

Jenya was a war photographer for Tass during the Great Patriotic War. His name was known only by those with inside knowlege for many years. I'm sure that this newspaper article was the introduction to Jenya for many people who have loved this photo.

Our comrade Jenya died in early October 1997.

Since the Yeltsin auto-golpe in 1991 (and the fall of the Workers State) personalizations are now allowed. Two museum exhibitions in the US are being held in 1997. The Jewish Museum in Manhattan is hosting a Khaldai show.

An Alta Vista search for yevgeny khaldai returned only this reference on the net to Yevgeny Khaldai's work. It is an art market site.

FLASH!CLASH! changing the search to khaldai OR khaldei produces better results.

Of the ideology for which Jenya was fighting, some relics exist.

Yup, the CPUSA still exists, strangely enough. Their weekly paper is for sale in kioski here in Santa Cruz. The Manifesto of the Communist Party is an interesting read.

The KPCC has become the KPRF (kommunist party of Russian Federation). They have finally gotten on the web, here is the KPRF HOME PAGE, and here is the Leningrad region KPRF page.

The newest edition of the Communist Manifesto is a beautiful book, and a fascinating read. Clicking the image will take you to Amazon.com to read about it. I might make something from this, if you buy it.

Workers World is a Trotskyist site. The Trotskyists have kept up a very entertaining propaganda barrage since uncle Joe despatched the founder of the Red Army.

The New Union Party is another splinter group, shorn from the Socialist Workers Party.

Go to the Commie web ring for some entertaining sites.