And where were Jacob Sverdlov's sons?

Submitted by AWL on 18 November, 2009 - 10:26 Author: Sean Matgamna

AND WHERE WERE JACOB SVERDLOV'S SONS?

Sverdlov killed the bloody Tsar,
He signed the warrant for it;
So when they struck his statue down
The Tsarists cheered who saw it:
They hauled the hollow statue down,
And the Tsarists sang when they saw it.

And where were Jacob Sverdlov's sons?
And Lenin's proud granddaughters?
And where were Trotsky's Bolsheviks?
All of them lost, slaughtered;
All of the leaders, fighters, Reds,
All of them, all, slaughtered!

They made no statues out of bronze,
The heroes Stalin killed;
In Lubianka and Vorkuta
They died, their voices stilled:
The Tsar's song fills the air this dawn
Because their voice was stilled

They died defending working folk,
And who now cares to tell
Their tale, recall the fight of those
Old Communists who fell?
With lies they've sealed the graves of those
Old Communists, too well.

When tsarists sing the Tsar's old song
And Socialism's worth a sneer,
Who cares for the Reds that Stalin killed?
Dim pictures from afar
Of the tribe wiped out to clear the way
For those who hail the Tsar.

And where were Jacob Sverdlov's sons,
And Trotsky's armed granddaughters?
And where were Lenin's Bolsheviks?
All of them, all, slaughtered;
All of the leaders, fighters, Reds,
All of them, all, slaughtered!

Socialist Organiser: 5 September 1991

Comments

Submitted by guenter on Sun, 22/08/2010 - 03:57

nice poem above. sometimes i wonder, if most irishmen are musicians, and the rest are poets?

anyway, after reading all 12 chapters in agreement, i wondered why chapter 5 about the support 4 yeltsins ban of the CPSU had no possibility 2 post comments. here iam not sure about.
although comrade seans arguments have its logic, i still wonder if socialists shall have actively supported drunkard yeltsin or simply shud have stayed away from both, CP and yeltsin. i agree its wrong, how some trot groups presented stalinism as more progressive than capitalism. but that shall, on the other hand, not lead to see the introduction of private-capitalism as something better: capitalism is a modern form of slavery. capitalism is in its terrorist stage these days. people can not only be murdered by an dictatorship, but although if u leave them without jobs or without sufficient welfare-money; if u put them in bad houses or send them to war (etc.pp.)

P.S.: i think it wud b great, if the authors of articles with some postings on it, after a while wud talk 2 their critics and argue with what they said.

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