(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #235 - Read: Leonardo Padura Fuentes, "The man who loved dogs" (fr, pt)

What is this mysterious man who walks these two borzois on the beach of Santa Maria del 
Mar? ---- This question arises tirelessly Ivan is not the pretext of a tirade about the 
passion for canines but the starting point for a story about the history masterfully 
staged in The Man Who Loved Dogs, paved 750 pages. In a style that is both simple and 
powerful, Leonardo Padura traces the career of Ramon Mercader, Moscow agent who murdered 
Trotsky, his involvement in the Spanish Civil War to the fatal outcome in Mexico in 1940 
and even later. The story takes us behind the scenes, abyssal, frightening and exciting, 
history of the twentieth century is here fictionalized but richly inspired by facts and 
real people. Divided into three areas and temporal narrative, this book invites us to 
follow along three characters: Ivan Cuban Veterinary disillusioned 70s to early 2000s, 
Trotsky, his expulsion from the USSR until his assassination, and Ramon Mercader . Until 
the fate of the first two crosses, tragically, the man with ax.

More than a historical novel, The Man Who Loved Dogs reads like an exciting thriller - 
although we know the end from the beginning - where one follows step by step the 
development of the deadly mechanical and implacable destiny to remove the former head of 
the Red Army. But this book is first and foremost an intense political debate on the 
totalitarian degeneration of the USSR. Between crimes committed by the Soviet secret 
services in the world, political purges during the Moscow trials and countless 
contemporary Cuban situation echoes the Stalinist drift are multiple, grueling, almost 
stifling. Using a deep, rich writing, the author recounts the destructive force of the 
ideological lie and ability to distort the greatest human utopia of modern history What 
brought the Glorious Revolution of the Soviets. This entry into the abyss of history makes 
us feel with horror what was the terrible consequences of the takeover of Stalin, whether 
at the material time or today. Passages on obscure maneuvers of Communist during the War 
of the Spanish Revolution and as such are extremely enlightening.

But the author does not mean tender with Trotsky and his cronies. Because throughout the 
story arises watermark that nagging question: Stalinist drift was it not written in the 
genes of the Bolshevik authoritarian power? It is this question rhetoric that attempts to 
answer the libertarian communism.

JR (AL Alsace)

Leonardo Padura Fuentes, the man who loved dogs , Metailie, 2011, 670 p., ? 13.30