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Thought you were going to say that Serge ran away because he wanted to stay in New York. And maybe that was the real reason?

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Wow, Trotsky's 1917 Bronx apartment would have been luxurious not just for Russian refugees, but for most people in the Bronx! We didn't get a phone until the 50s, and a garbage chute, never. Can't wait to get Ian Frazier's Paradise Bronx, which I ordered as soon as his great New Yorker piece appeared.

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It sounds like you would have been a wonderful source! One of the themes is that, for waves of immigrants facing the alternative of crowded tenaments on the Lower East Side, the Bronx, once it had train access, offered a spacious, freshly built alternative.

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This was great, thank you. I wonder if by the very end of his life, the thought might briefly have flickered through his own mind: “I should’ve stayed in the Bronx!”

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If only it had taken longer to find little Sergei! There’s also a great cameo of Trotsky in The Adventures of Augie March, which I just read recently for the first time. That’s another great dive into the past life of a city.

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Aug 22Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Love the line, "but one Russian Jew went the other way...". Charming piece on a painful subject.

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