Mauzer's Blog

MAUZER C

mauzer — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:24:02 +0000

My name is comrade Mauzer. Born 1896. I was a prominent Soviet Revolutionary and Diplomat. During one of Stalinist show trials in 1931, I was found guilty of betraying the Revolution and sentenced to death. My punishment was altered into 25-year imprisonment and exile to Gulag on Solovetsky Islands. From then on I have perished without a trace.

MAUZER B

mauzer — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:22:26 +0000

My name is Jacob Mauzer. Born 1893. History recorded me as Mauzer, which is only one of my pseudonyms. I have always been a fanatic in my ideas and convictions, an “old school” revolutionary, so to say. Because of my intellectual background they used to call me “the Bolshevik Hamlet.” I appear in the history of revolution as character without face or voice.

MAUZER A

mauzer — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:21:08 +0000

My name is comrade Mauzer, only one of my revolutionary names. Born 1891. History has never really recorded me. My name is missing from the hundreds of biographies of great men and participants in the Revolution of October 1917. I appear in the revolutionary chronicles as a character without a face or a voice.

APPASSIONATA

mauzer — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 10:39:08 +0000

Gorky recorded Lenin’s very characteristic words spoken after he listened to Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata: “I know the Appassionata inside out and yet I am willing to listen to it every day. It is wonderful, ethereal music. On hearing it I proudly, maybe somewhat naively, think: See! people are able to produce such marvels!” He then winked, laughed and added sadly: “I’m often unable to listen to music, it gets on my nerves, I would like to stroke my fellow beings and whisper sweet nothings in their ears for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abominable hell they are living in. However, today one shouldn’t caress anybody – for people will only bite off your hand; strike, without pity, although theoretically we are against any kind of violence. Umph, it is, in fact, an infernally difficult task!”

STATE OF EXCEPTION

mauzer — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:40:20 +0000

The state of exception is essentially based on a suspension of the juridical order, which makes it possible for an individual to be deprived of his or her condition as a citizen, or political being, so that his or her life is reduced to mere biological existence. As a figure of necessity, the state of exception appears (alongside revolution and de facto establishment of a constitutional system) as an “illegal” but perfectly “juridical and constitutional” measure that is realized in production of new norms.

SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 21, 1937

mauzer — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:57:06 +0000

The Solovetsky Islands were the site of the first Soviet concentration camps, the SLON (Solovetsky special purpose camp), which held mostly political prisoners. The camp functioned from 1923 to 1939. The test was such a resounding success that Stalin eventually spread such slave-labor camps across the Soviet Union.

NOVEMBER 21, 1937
Mauzer disappeared from the camp in a mysterious and inexplicable way, most likely during one of those awful storms when the tower guards, the firearms, and the German shepherds were equally helpless. On the fourth day, a guard spotted Mauzer at the ironworks, unshaven and looking like an apparition, warming himself next to the furnace. They released the German shepherds. Following the howls of the dogs, the pursuers burst into the foundry building. The fugitive was on the ladder at the top of the furnace, illuminated by the flames. One eager guard began to climb up. As the guard approached him, Mauzer leaped into the boiling mass. The guards saw him disappear before their very eyes; he rose like a wisp of smoke, deaf to their commands, defiant, free from German shepherds, from cold, from heat, from punishment, and from remorse. This brave man died on November 21, 1937, at four o’clock in the afternoon. He left a few cigarettes and a tooth-brush.

SO THAT SOMETHING CAN ARRIVE SOMETHING HAS TO GO

mauzer — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:49:19 +0000

THE FIRST SHAPE OF HOPE IS FEAR.

THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE NEW IS TERROR.