माझ्या आईचा जन्म ऑक्टोबर १९३७चा.
पुढील काही भाग माझ्या सप्टेंबर १९ २०१६ च्या पोस्ट मधील :
कै. अनंत काणेकर Anant Kanekar (१९०५-१९८०) हे तत्कालीन मराठी साहित्यातील अत्यंत वजनदार नाव. खांडेकर, फडके, काणेकर वगैरे... १९५७ सालच्या अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्यसंमेलनाचे अध्यक्ष... १९६३च्या मराठी नाट्यसंमेलनाचे अध्यक्ष...पद्मश्री... मराठी विश्वकोश मंडळ सदस्य...त्यांचे काही लघुनिबंध (साधारण दर्जाचे) माझ्या शाळेतील क्रमिक पुस्तकात सुद्धा वाचलेले...
... तसेच दुसरे मोठे नाव कै. शं वा किर्लोस्कर (१८९७-१९७५), साक्षेपी द्रष्टे संपादक, पुरोगामी, लेखक, व्यंगचित्रकार...
२०१६ सालच्या एका 'ललित'च्या अंकात काणेकरांच्या 'धुक्यांतून लाल ताऱ्याकडे', फेब्रुवारी १९४० चे संक्षिप्त परिक्षण वाचले. ते पुस्तक विकत घेऊन बरेच वाचले.
पुस्तकाचे शीर्षक सरळ सरळ एडगर स्नो यांच्या अत्यंत गाजलेल्या 'रेड स्टार ओव्हर चायना', १९३७ ची आठवण करून देते.
पुस्तकाला प्रस्तावना आहे शं वा किर्लोस्करांची, ज्यांच्या संपादीत 'किर्लोस्कर' मासिकात, पुस्तक १९३७ साली लेखमालिकारूपात पूर्वप्रसिद्ध झाले होते.
शंवाकि प्रस्तावनेत काय म्हणतात ते पहा:
काणेकर जोसेफ स्टालिन ला देव म्हणतायत!
Karl Schlögel, ‘Moscow, 1937’, 2008:
“…It is not possible to talk about Russia in the twentieth century, and even present-day post-Soviet Russia, without coming up against the caesura invoked by the term ‘1937’. All lines of inquiry in my previous writings – whether they focused on St Petersburg as a laboratory of modernity, the Russian experience of exile in Berlin between the wars, or the rebirth of Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union – somehow or other and at some point or other inevitably led back to the time and place of the radical and irreversible rupture in the third decade of the twentieth century…
…However, Moscow in 1937 is one of the key settings of European history. It is not situated somewhere or other but on a fault line of European civilization. The dead of 1937 are the contemporaries of a ‘century of extremes’ that knows no frontiers. This is why Moscow in 1937 must form part of our mental processes when we inquire into the meaning of the twentieth century for European civilization….
…. In the minds of millions of Soviet citizens the ‘accursed year 1937’ was a synonym for countless human tragedies. 1937 and 1938 are significant death dates. Human lives were abruptly cut short in 1937.1 It sent shock waves through the entire nation that could be felt far beyond its frontiers. In a single year some 2 million people were arrested, approaching 700,000 were murdered and almost 1.3 million were deported to camps and labour colonies. That was a hitherto inconceivable increase in suffering even in a country that had already experienced huge losses of life. In the First World War and the subsequent Civil War, Russia had lost around 15 million people and up to another 8 million from starvation arising from the collectivization process. But the numbers of those arrested, sentenced and shot in 1937–8 represented a quantum leap, an excess piled on excess.
What makes the year 1937 so terrible, however, is not merely the number of victims. Few of those who were persecuted and killed knew why they had been singled out for this fate. The allegations and accusations were incredible and fantastic, and even more fantastic was the fact that the accused repeated and reproduced them in their confessions. This was the case with prominent revolutionary leaders, statesmen and diplomats known the world over, as well as technical experts and managers sorely needed by the country to help with reconstruction. They were all supposed to have conspired to organize uprisings and assassinations, built up spy networks and been involved in wrecking activities in factories, mines or research institutes. But, within a short time, those who had carried out the sentences found themselves in the dock and were transformed from active participants into victims. The central question that scholars have focused on to this day, and will probably continue to focus on, is why all these events took place, what was their underlying rationale. But in the past attention has concentrated on the trials of the prominent leaders belonging to the ‘old guard’, whereas now, ever since the publication of the documents relating to the so-called mass operations during 1937 and 1938, it has become evident that the Great Terror was directed primarily against ordinary people who did not belong to the Party, but who were singled out on the basis of social and ethnic criteria and systematically butchered…”
Artist: Helen E. Hokinson, The New Yorker, 15 Aug 1942
