A writer’s life

from one day to the next

by Ally Hauptmann-Gurski © 2007-2009

Just under 22.000 words of assorted wisdom, trivia,

information, and thoughts – a diary of sorts.
26th August 2007 to 4th March 2009
Reformated and addendum August 2009
From the author of the historical novel LA PLEVITSKAYA
A Gypsy singer’s Life in Tsarist Russia and in Exile
available from lulu.com and amazon.com
ISBN 978-0-9757372-4-8
This samizdat publication is also available from
artifex2@bigpond.com
This diary contains things about myself, about my novel, and
about issues of the day, as they happened in my life at home and
as reported in the news. It was meant to be the start of a blog,
but I am mostly leaving it as it is, only reformat for the upload
on scribd.
No hired post writer was involved, hurt, or paid
in the composition of this diary.
If you find a snippet of wisdom that you would like to use in
your publication, film or broadcast, you are most welcome. Please
keep me motivated by telling me: artifex2@bigpond.com.
There should be no charge, unless you don’t tell me or your
project is of a commercial nature where sharing the spoils would
be the fair thing to do. END OF PRELIMINARIES
Sunday, 26th August 2007 (LAWNMOWER AND RUGS)
It’s a glorious day outside, we would have killed for a day like this in
Berlin, but here in Australia we look at the deep blue skies with grave concern,
because water is what we need. Make that WATER; even the Queensland floods
look attractive, not menacing.
This day is just as good as any to start a writer’s diary. I have never written
a diary in my life, I have never been one to do what everybody else does, but
now, they tell you to write a diary – and I write a diary!(??) Am I going apeshit or
are there subliminal messages in some websites? I should be translating my
historical novel, but here I sit and write what enters my mind, thinking, maybe
someone could be interested to read this?
I wish the neighbour would read it, how his stinking noisy lawnmower
stresses me out as he has just forced me to race around the house to close all
windows. Some of these horrible lawnmover fumes had already entered the
bedroom, very annoying. Well, maybe the lack of rain has a good side, i.e. he
won’t be needing to mow the lawn quite so often, poisoning himself, his chil-
dren, and neighbours less frequently.
Our people in Canberra are cowards; they could simply outlaw these
mowers in metropolitain areas – but maybe too many people are making a
fortune on asthma medication.
On the positive front today, we solved the floor covering problem in the
lounge room. Several times we have debated if we should have new carpet laid
(very time consuming to empty the room), or several matching rugs (practically
impossible to get the same design in the sizes needed), or one big rug. We
checked out a closing down sale, but they were still quite expensive, and not a
clear cut, ideal solution, either. As we had to buy some globes we thought, we’d
check out if the shop was one of their stores which also carried rugs. They had
one set of identical twins, and for half the price of those in the closing down
sale, in an acceptable medium quality range and a nice traditional design, we
solved our problem, ticking off another item on that list. Although we got that
lounge room problem sorted today, the day’s not done yet, not by a long shot.
Before I go on any further, I should probably say a little about myself,
although I have serious doubts that anyone is interested, so I’ll regard it as an
étude. I’ll also regard it as a legacy, because everything we transmit is moni-
tored, recorded, and stored somewhere. Will anybody ever dip into these treas-
ures of 99.9 % trivialities and 0.1% gems? Probably not, only if I become a
famous and/or notorious celebrity, then they will want to examine my every
brainwave.
I enjoy writing this diary already. It looks like an inspiring activity. Won’t be
long, I guess, until I will spend more time writing this diary than reading the
newspaper. We have only one newspaper in this town. 20 years ago, we had it
every day, now reading it once a week feels like a waste of time. It’s not even
annoying, this newspaper; it’s just so full of things which do not matter. Our
pile of Advertisers was good for a non-dig garden, though, and maybe we
should now stop buying it. Ít’s as American as apple pie’ they would say, voting
with your wallet.
Must go, my coffeecup is empty, emails to write .....
29th August 2007 (A BIT ABOUT ME – BOOKS ARE THE ARISTOCRATS
IN THE FAMILY OF CREATIVE PRODUCTS)
Forgot something yesterday: When the day started with the morning news, my
husband said, ‘What a lucky country this Australia is! Horses have the flu and
the Prime Minister is now a Granddad – and THIS is news. How lucky they
are, to have no bigger issues.’

I got distracted and forgot I was going to tell you a little about myself.
Normally, I focus on issues, not on myself. It is something completely new,
nearly alien to me, that I should try to conform with mainstream patterns of
thinking and then draw attention to myself. It means to put myself in the centre
of it all, which has been drummed out of me in my youth.
They say, people buy books because of the author person, not because of
its contents, cover, price or size, I have been told. They also buy books when
the media tell them ‘this is the exciting, new...’
Influencing the media is not within my scope as a samizdat author. It ’s all
got to focus on silly old me – oh, dear.
I was born in Germany to parents who would not have passed a marriage
or parenting test had these existed. My father was a physicist with a PH.D. but
had not experienced what a cohesive family is, so he could not found one. His
own father had died before he was two; his mother had all her three children
raised in families she paid to do so. Why? She wanted to focus on making
money, not wiping snotty noses, and then live in poverty which she had experi-
enced as a child in the German border region which was only a stone throw
from the Polish province of Tsarist Russia. Having children was not a choice in
her days, in Berlin before the First World War. Children happened as an una-
voidable part of life. Given the choice, which people had more than 60 years
later, I don’t think she would have had any children at all. I used to hear that my
Grandfather had committed suicide by shooting himself, but there is doubt in
my mind now whether that wasn’t a tale. A wall of silence surrounded that
Grandfather, so we used to joke, he could have been a Jew, a crook, or a com-
munist – or some of these, or all of these!
My other Grandfather was a church minister, but I have never met him,
either. He was 60 years when my mother was born, so he was long gone when
I appeared. You cannot imagine a starker contrast between the mentalities of
my two grandparent families. One devout believers, too old to raise my mother
for the times she had to live in, the other focussed on the here and now, the
material things in life.
How they ever got together used to make we wonder until I discovered it
was through a lonely hearts ad in a paper of 1942. My father liked the reply my
mother wrote, so I owe my life to writing!. Neither of my parents were edu-
cated for what awaited them, unable to form a union with strong bonds. As
soon as the war was over, they did not get on with each other. But two children
had emerged in those years, what a misfortune. Us children were a cost factor
to my father and a source of never ending chores for my mother. I had so little
pocket money that I could not participate in the social activities of my school
mates, including dating. I was not in a sports club, or an orchestra, everything
that cost money was not possible, so I was not a part of any group.
I never experienced peer group pressure, because I did not have a peer
group. Political and religious groupings did not cost, but I was uneasy about
these because they seemed to tell people what to think, which I perceived as
brainwashing. Essentially, these organisations were looking to rake in young-
sters who they could use for their own ends, and I was certainly not inclined to
allow them the use of me. Still today, I find it difficult to be part of a group or
organisation. I feel uncomfortable about ‘fitting in’. I can and have done so,
switch to ‘fitting-in-mode’ for an employment situation, but when we talk about
my own time, why would I bend to fit in? But enough of my youth. Since I was
ten, I wanted to get away from the fighting, bickering, negativity, and dishon-
esty of my parents.
My father left when I was 13, the bickering continued. Those subsequent
nine years until I finally did leave, were very long. My teenage years fell into
these. I wonder, if I was ever young.
It does not come as a surprise, that I returned to writing, a very solitary
activity. I would not have it any other way. Decades ago, I had three years of
journalism and sometimes I wish I had stayed there; but the bright lights of
music and show business were irresistable. I would not be the person I am
today without it. My Plevitskaya novel would not exist without my years in
journalism AND in Russian music.
A BOOK IS THE ARISTORCRAT IN THE FAMILY OF CREATIVE
PRODUCTS
Contrary to popular belief, writing is as much about the reader’s enjoy-
ment. as it it about the writer’s enjoyment. What purpose of words, if there is
nobody to read them? What purpose of music if it is only heard by one?
Music has played a very large part in my life and it is a great joy when the
audience likes it and pays for it, so you can live, keep on making music, and get
some of your investment in time and resources back. When you have mis-
judged your product, and the audience rejects it like a stillborn baby, something
dies inside you.
In writing, the experiences can be similar but your product has a longer
lifespan. A book can be read in a 100 years time and awards the writer some
kind of life span after death. Music, in recordings, can do that, too, but ad-
vances in technology and changing tastes move music products into the nostal-
gia category within 20 years. In music, audiences are more influenced by the
marketing people, too, although the book marketers with their many tools of
focus promotion are catching up fast.
Music gets on the radio and TV when it is new. During this splash of high
rotation, everyone notices it and rushes out to buy the CD, but within two
weeks, another artist gets on high rotation and pushes his/her predecessor first
to the side, and then out. Very rarely do we remember a musical wonder 10
years later. In most instances, we have even forgotten about them a mere 10
months later. Only experts would be able to name one hitparading artist per
year from the last ten years. All this enthusiasm and hype vanishes before you
can say beep. I have written advertorials myself which tried to push last week’s
wonderproduct to the side.
Books are the aristocrats in the family of creative products. They do not
scream for your attention. They sit patiently on the shelf until you are ready
and then they take you into their world, at your own pace, wherever you may be.
A book does not splash by. When you read a sentence that strikes a chord
in your heart and mind, you can read it again. You can copy a snippet of wis-
dom and put it in a frame. You can carry it with you in a locket. You can send it
to a friend. You do not need electricity to read it; you do not need to play a
whole song to retrieve one phrase. Words are there for you when you need
them, when you’re ready, no gadgets, gimmicks, no crutches. You can sing along
to music, if you really like it – but only if the key suits you, you know the words,
and your singing will not disturb other people. Words in a book are all yours –
you can share them, but you can keep them away from other people if that’s
what you feel like.
That’s why I write.
A HAPPY READER’s FEEDBACK
Today, 30th August 2007, is a very stormy day outside. The winds howl
and the weather girls have said, winds would reach 120 km/hour (or 80 miles
per hour for those who cling to Imperial measurements). It has not gotten to
that, yet, it looks to me, but as I write this, I look out of my window, see the
palm and gum trees ruffled by hot northerly gusts from the Great Australian
Desert.
I had an email today from Germany. How wonderful it is to read that my
book has impressed its reader. So much time and thought went into writing my
book about Russian Gypsy singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya that it would be a total
embarrassment, if it did not appeal.
‘I had very little knowledge of Russian history and found it so interesting
to read about the times of the revolution. Wonderfully researched and, as I said
in my previous email, the English was clear and easy to understand. I’ll now
pass it on to a critical colleague of mine.’ Not that I know why the friend passes
it on to a critical colleague, but I’ll probably get to know that one day. It is so
good to get that feedback, given the situation that my book is samizdat, self-
published.
Sales figures are not large when you cannot be part of the industry so
every customer pleased counts for a lot. Some segments of the book industry
have become like the music industry – people need to be told what is good to
buy. But from my vantage point, the manipulated segment of the book buying
public is smaller than that of the music buying public.
I’ll stop and upload, the winds become frightening. If the sh*t hits the
fan, it’ll be out there.
WISDOM
Today, the 31st August 2007 is not a day that I would want to bottle up for
posterity. Woke up this morning with headache, throatache, and toothache. Would
you believe it, tonight we have to play music, and not just one bracket. It is one
thing to write wisdom in your a book like ‘you cannot afford to be sick, when it’s all
happening’ but quite another to apply it to yourself. There’s nothing to do except
to sit back, relax, do your best and hope it comes out alright.

ADVENTURE IN RUNDLE STEET, ICONIC CONNECTION

2nd September 2007 The day and the gig two days ago certainly fell
under adventure. We unloaded our balalaikas and small PA into the reception
area of the movie house. Then, my husband left to find a spot in a multistorey
carpark, because in this inner city location there ain’t space for poor artists to
park for free. I went to the reception and asked if the movie had started on
time so I could assess when exactly our audience would emerge.
‘The Russian Film Festival’s been shifted to our other movie house’, the girl behind
the counter replied, ‘because we’ve got the AFI tonight’. I gazed, then looked at our
gear, imagining that my husband and I would have to walk to and fro five times.
We’d never set up in time! My spontaneous answer was *.*, upon which the girl
offered her just arrived male colleague to give us a hand.
But that would not have done the trick, either, so I continued to gaze,
upon which he said, ‘I’ve got a trolley’. So we started putting things on one of
their little trolleys which they use to transport big film wheels. It did not fit on
one trolley, so I asked, ‘have you got another trolley?’, and to my surprise he had.
As my husband returned and looked at the chaotic removal site with baf-
flement, I said, ‘hey, if we want to give it a miss, this is our escape route’. But he shook
his head and off we went, packed like camels on a trans-Sahara excursion through
the Friday night revellers in Rundle Street. There was even an elevator for us
the other end! It turned out we had ample time thank goodness, and the Rus-
sians were so pleased to see us.
The evening, opening the Russian Film Festival in South Australia, had
very good vibes all over. Someone looked over my notestand, if I was playing
my bass balalaika from proper notation! Of course, gospodin! We had our pho-
tos taken, but have no idea where they’re going to end up. BHP Billiton and
Stolichnaya Vodka, the principal sponsors, are the most likely candidates.
 At some stage, I went out on the balcony and got talking with the only
gentleman who was there. He did not say his name, his accent was Australian. I
asked him if he was Russian, maybe first generation Australian, but no, he just
liked to watch Russian films. Quite unashamedly, I tried to pitch my historical
novel. Music is nice, and it has to be done, but selling a book or two does a lot
more for my soul than music. I did not tell him that of course, but he tells me,
quite out of the blue, that my book sounds like a good movie, and I should
send it to Mel Gibson. I was completely baffled, because sending things out to
famous people is normally a no-no-NO, unless they know you. Then he men-
tioned the name of Mel’s company, and sounded very much like an insider,
mentioning Mel has got property in South Australia. I looked up the company
name in the local phone book, and then the film company on the net. It seems
to be for real what the nameless gentleman told me.
I am in two minds here, do I go after this and disregard all I have learned
in the past 7 years, or do I say, my ‘studies’ of the industry are very valid, and as
an outsider I have no chance for a movie, not even a reply. I could just take it as
an interesting experience, advice from a possibly naive person, that should gen-
erate a disappointment at best, a hijacking of my book’s content at worst.
I must wait for inspiration from my dreams – that’s where the truths are
unmasked, if you are ‘open’ enough. I would need a big brave heart. Anyway, I
feel somewhat honoured that this person thought, I should do that.
THE PAST RISES AGAIN AND THE FUTURE IS A QUESTION MARK
3rd Septmeber 2007 This morning, we had another conversation about Mary
MacKillop, just the thing I needed. It looks like rain outside, hopefully, it will
happen. Adelaide’s population has doubled in the last 30 years, but the reser-
voirs have not and now with the reduced rainfall in the last five years or so, you
do wonder what you elect expensive politicians for. They can’t get anything into
gear, really, no truck bypass freeway, no reservoirs, no desalination plant - but
more population, a motor race track, a tram, pulp mills taking up precious
water and poisoning the ocean. Hello, where am I? Better not think about it and
clock out.
THE PLEVITSKAYA MOVIE DREAM
4th Sptember 2007 When I mucked around on the net today, I found an article
about the new movie making facilities in, yes, you guessed it, China. Wouldn’t
that be fascinating, if one could find a partner to turn my Plevitskaya book into
a movie in these Chinese film studios!
 Some 5 years or so ago, a ‘suit’ from the Australian Film Commission told
me, that a movie of my Plevitskaya book would cost 60 million Dollari, too
much for South Australia, even too much for Australia. My story looked like
Zhivago II to him. ‘Oh my goodness’, he said. Then he burried my synopsis under
his papers, seemingly wanting to keep it. But I did not let him.
The movie idea based on my Plevitskaya book has never left me, hoewever,
so when I read about the Chinese movie studios, it turned me on. Movers and
shakers, where do I get hold of them, where do I start? Maybe with an official
looking review of my book. I wonder how much that will cost. I control all the
rights, book, movie, merchandising, documentary on how the beginning with
the bear cubs will be filmed.
BOOK OF COMPLAINTS – ZHIVAGO MYTH
5th September 2007 Just when you think, you can focus on your writing,
or more importantly the marketing, they zap your afternoon with another ses-
sion by a loud, stinking lawnmower which sounds like a chainsaw. It’s been
about half an hour, because, admittedly, he has a large area to mow, but he does
not seem to mind walking in the blue clouds of fumes. It’s only metres from my
desk, extremely aggravating.
Haven’t they seen last night’s feature about people’s heart diseases caused
by high traffic roads? The WHO study focussed on the noise, but the fumes,
from trucks and mowers, are just as deadly. Well, maybe they did include it, but
the TV people dropped it on the cutting room floor, because audiences can
ususally only focus on one angle. People are crude, but I should not say that, let
alone write it. If you don’t like it, ask me for my Book of Complaints. Every
shop in the Soviet Union was obliged to have a Book of Complaints, so this
samizdat publisher has one, too.
I watched the ABC’s book show last night, but just like the Big Book Club
and the Writers’ Festivals, it’s about generating interest for products from big
industry. As a writer, you feel a bit like an outsider, when you see all these
product pitchers who try to wrap their spin into lace. But then again, does one
really have the right to complain, if people need to be told what to buy and
industry adapts by devising spin, telling the populace what is good to buy?
Had another telemarketer fax, offering me a FREE Bonus. People have
still not learned that a bonus is always free, as is a gift. Have you ever seen ads
offering a ‘FREE BONUS GIFT’? I have, and would never buy from such a
company, because, if they don’t know their own language, they might be just as
incompetent with what they sell. Avoid them like the plague, those people, who
offer a ‘free gift’, a ‘free bonus’, a ‘bonus gift’ or ‘free bonus gift’.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1970) has a sentence about Pasternak’s
Zhivago novel, which puzzled me when I read it, i.e. that the Nobel Prize for
Literature for Boris Pasternak would have been awarded more for the way that
the novel was published than the quality of the book.
Today I have found the reason for the Encyclopaedia’s remark: They seem
to have proof that it was the CIA and the British Secret Service who took
publication and the Nobel Prize under their wings to embarrass the Kremlin!
We could have never dreamed that up, but that’s how they put it on
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1292690.ece
Wouldn’t it be lovely, if I could find an angle that the CIA takes my book
under their multi-dimensional wings!!!!!!!!!!!!! Giving this a second thought,
though, I would only want a prize that my work deserves, for one.
Secondly, we need to consider the authors of the other books submitted
for the Nobel Prize for Literature – they missed out, although they might have
been more deserving than Boris Pasternak. They might have even needed a
prize to keep their career going. Along comes the CIA and muscles in Zhivago,
leaving the other contenders without a chance. Isn’t that corruption?
Did one of the authors maybe commit suicide, because he/she was at a
crosroads and made a monumental effort, but the Nobel Prize Committee buck-
led to secret service pressure? How shocking, that is a story in itself. They
produced books in Russian, made them look like they came from the Soviet
Union, and submitted them only days before closing time.
Now, where did the Nobel Prize Committee find enough judges in a hurry
to read and assess Dr. Zhivago in Russian? What are the Nobel Prizes worth, if
CIA and British spooks can just order them? Do they still operate that way?
If the secret services involvement is factual, and only IF, should they not
apologize now to the other contenders of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature
for pushing them out?
Adios.
AN INVITATION DECLINED
7 September 2007 I willl need to explore the Zhivago issue further at some
point, since it is a good example how not necessarily the best product wins, but
those who have ‘muscle’ behind them. Today is not a good day as I had to
answer the phone about attending a festival in an organisation which has not
been straight with us. What a pity to disappoint a teenager, but we cannot sit in
an audience for two hours and applaud those who have been dishonest with us.
They could have said we do not want your stuff, we do not want you. Instead,
they always gave us the impression that we should persevere, so we sent our
stuff around, spent money, time, and emotions on yet exploring another av-
enue.
They refused to understand and ackowledge that their organisation needed
to be seen as being part of our endeavours, not with money, of course, but in
spirit. Without that demonstration of recognition the project was worth noth-
ing, so why did they speak million of kind words to deceive? It was just as much
their cause, as it was ours – but there was no team spirit. They are spoilt by
subserviance of their flock, so they think, other people make it all happen for
them. In the seed planting stage we were happy to carry it, but when it came to
the next stage where it needed their cooperation, nobody was home. Why could
they not say that they would never enter a cooperation – we could have saved a
lot of time and money.
We have always aimed for a give-and take-situation of the two way kind,
but sadly, the hierarchical world they inhabit, does not nurture the spirit of
cooperation. Now I just don’t want to hear about it any more; can one never
turn a page and escape? When all these ticked off topics come up again, they
make me backward looking and it takes a while until I find my equilibrium
again. Why am I not allowed to live according to: Fool me once, shame on you
– fool me twice, shame on me,tick off topic?
CRUSHED BY GLOBAL CULTURE
THE INFAMOUS PROTOCOLS
12th September 2007 We had a really good gig in the Glenelg Stamford this
week. There we were, rocking up with our two balalaikas, and we had the big
ballroom in the palm of our hands. It is good to have work but also wonderful
to open people’s eyes to Russian music and their special sound from these
unusual looking triangular, three stringed instruments. Without us doing it, most
people here would never know that there are other instruments and cultures
beyond guitars, keyboards and drums.
A significant part of world cultural heritage would be squashed and this
cannot be a rich global culture. People would say, it’s a minority interest, but
that is only partly true. People are guided by mainstream media, and the main-
stream media hold people’s minds in the palms of their hands: They sink it,
where the promoter does not spend enough, or lift it, when he does. But I’m
not on a mission here; when the applause rolls over you after they have invited
you to a fabulous dinner, it’s been a successful evening.
On the way back, we drove through the tollgate intersection, where a day
or so before, a runaway semi-trailer had smashed a few things. As we approached
the intersection, we joked about hoping the trucks would all be under control.
But it being a Monday night, there weren’t all that many.
Adelaide is in the middle of the transcontinental Australian truck traffic,
meaning that the Sydney and Perth freight comes through in the middle of the
week. Less than 12 hours later, another runaway truck smashed 8 cars or so.
Miraculously, there were no serious injuries. Sending the transcontinental B-
Double traffic through Portrush Road deserves a medal for the most idiotic
road planning in the world. They make a song and dance about tobacco smoke,
but diesel fumes next to schools do not warrant a mention. I will never accept
that logic does not apply.
I watched Marc Levin’s docu about the ‘Protocols of Zion’, hoping there
might be something new about the origin of this ‘mokument’. In the course of
the research for my historical Plevitskaya novel, I had developed the suspicion
that one of the historic individuals who appear in my book might have been
involved in drawing up the Protocols.
I did not include any of that in my novel, because it played no part in
Plevitskaya’s life. I still have that hunch, but the docu was more focussed on the
today, especially after 9/11. Fair enough, that’s what the Americans have to deal
with, so an American documentary filmmaker takes that angle. But like so many
documentaries, they lose themselves in the descriptive and emotional, remain-
ing short on the analytical. I would have rather liked to see what were the rea-
sons, as much as we can establish them; or what happened at the time when
people felt the urge to draw up this mokument called Protocols. Only when we
understand the authors’ psychology and reasons, can we counteract that mindset.
I would have liked to send a message to Marc Levin, but knowing about the
industry’s fortress walls, I did not.
They fear, unsolicited contacts could result in lawsuits. If you were to
express a thought in your email that appears later in one of their products, you
could be tempted to sue for plagiarism, even though they might have taken the
thought from another source. It is therefore better, to set up a facility called
‘Postmaster Error’, so you could not prove the email was received. If you came
through an agent, they could be confident your contract with the agent prohib-
its lawsuits. If you were a Jew, they could be confident, any disagreement could
be settled through their internal arbitration system. Therefore, all unsolicited
contacts result in ‘Postmaster Error’ and this applies to other film companies as
well. They need to make sure, that there is no proof anyone has received a
script, synopsis, treatment, or proposal, unless you come in as an insider. If you
can’t get an agent – go fry burgers! So I did not bother to send an email to Marc
Levin’s company, which would have read like this:
You asked in your documentary, why so many people hate Jews? As long
as Jews call themselves ‘chosen’, branding everybody else unchosen, there will
be problems. As long as Muslims believe that ‘submission’ is the icing of all
thinking, there will be problems. As long as Christians talk about having the
one and only truth, there will be problems. The world would be a better place if
religions had never been invented. But they have, and the more we allow reli-
gions to rule individuals and societies, the more division, segregation, and hos-
tilities there will be.
It is a tragedy, that too many people take their own religion so seriously
that they feel the need to indulge in hostilities. The new world order is not to
my taste. But I must keep my perspective, stay in my box; I am only a writer,
and I do not matter.
ANOTHER BIT ABOUT MYSELF
14th September 2007
I got sidetracked, again, after I said, I wanted to tell you a little about
myself. Two months before I was born in 1944, British bombers tried to take
out a hotbed of espionage in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the Salon Kitty in
Giesebrechtstrasse 11, which masqueraded as a brothel. They destroyed number
9 instead, where my parents lived in an apartment, rendering them homeless.
They were sent to Plauen in Saxony, where I happened to be born. It was
back to Berlin in 1948 during the airlift. Now we were four. I remember how
kaputtski Berlin was and how I played in the ruins. I went to school, walking 15
minutes to and fro every day. I walked to school on my own from the second
day when I was six. Children could still walk the streets and play everywhere. It
was forbidden to play in the ruins, which we sometimes ignored. The mentally
unpredictable were under control in instituitions.
My early school years were quite successful. I was top of the girls in my
class for the first six years, except in sports. I used to hide under the equipment
in the storeroom, because I hated sports of all kinds. When the teachers no-
ticed it, they came to drag me out. I had to participate, which I resented. Many
of my classmates grew up without fathers who had not returned from the war.
Mothers had to work, and children went home after midday to cook their
meals and do their homework. We heard there was something like babysitters in
America and wondered what was wrong with their children that they could not
be left alone for an afternoon or evening. I enjoyed my music, recorder and
piano. My father’s sister was a Wagnerian Alto, and when she sang at my Grand-
mother’s place, accompanied on the grand, it frightened me. She was not suc-
cessful in her musical career which frustrated her immensely. These frustra-
tions led her to do the dirty on my father later, which destroyed the rest of the
family, small as it was anyway. The other sister of my father was married to
Uncle Franz. His real name was François and he was a French Belgian who had
been a foreign worker in Berlin during the war. He disappeared from view
reasonably soon. As it turned out he was a bigamist and got a free ticket home
to Belgium to face court.
This aunt, Wally Gurski, later became somewhat famous in card playing
circles, as she held the Berlin State championship in a cardgame called “Skat”
for ten years. Nearly fourty years after her passing, my aunt is still referred to as
the ‘legendary Wally Gurski’. She smoked filterless cigarettes, which she took
from a silver cigarette case and before she lit them, she dipped them in a white
powder. I saw nothing remarkable in that when I was a child, but today, I won-
der if that was innocent menthol or evil cocaine. Could there have been cocaine
in the Berlin of 1952? I will never know.
This aunt was my grandmother’s manager for her properties, so she would
have had the money. There were three other family members, my Grandmoth-
er’s sister, who had been married in Turkey during or before the twenties (Aunt
Milka), another sister called Mushyka, and my cousin, who was the daughter of
the Wagnerian singer.
On my mother’s side, I had one more relative, a theologian spinster aunt
in East Berlin. These were the only family I have ever known. We did not see
each other often, there was no cohesion. My parents did not get on, and gener-
ally speaking, people avoid the company of families like ours, who are full of
tensions and only keep up appearances. Visiting each other was also difficult,
because we did not have a telephone and nobody had a car. Going around by
tram, bus, and underground is obviously time consuming and if you don’t know
for sure the person is there, you could have wasted your time.
We were not as paranoid about time management then; the saying ‘time is
money’ had not yet permeated German society. My father’s birthdays and Christ-
mas were therefore the only times we got together.
I was sent to children’s church services in the protestant church on many
Sundays which were held in a parish hall, beacause the church building was still
a bomb crater. We had to kneel down for prayer. I felt degraded and humiliated.
I now believe, the order to kneel caused my resentment against religious activi-
ties. Why did I develop this resentment, but millions of other people do not?
When parents do not get on with each other, children become their own entity.
They cease to be a part in a unit, have to make their own decisions, even though
they may not talk about it or may not even be consciously aware of it when they
are kids. Children from broken families are therefore less accepting to taking
orders from anyone. Broken families are so popular these days, but children
who refuse to be ordered about have problems in later life – society needs to do
a reality check.
CORRUPTION – WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE SHOULD BE
GOOD FOR THE GANDER
20th September 2007
The Yanks go after the Wheatboard again. If they’d be fair dinkum about fight-
ing corruption, their master disciples Germany and Helmut Kohl deserved their
attention much more than Australian wheat exporters. It is very two-faced,
claiming to clean up corruption while their real agenda is to kill off a competi-
tor.
If they were about fighting corruption, they would not have tolerated the
collusion between Kohl and his French buddies to rob people of their proper-
ties.. No wonder, they seem to lose friends faster than they can make them. For
a Kohl corruption victim like me, it can be somewhat depressing to read that
corruption is fought in the Philipines, on the Solomon Islands, in China, even
in Africa, but African circumstances in Germany have not resulted in any court
case whatsoever.
As tried to upload this, the internet connection has gone gaga. So I’ll have
lunch, and hope that it’s only a little hiccup at bigpond that they will be zapped
by the time I come back.
TECHNOLOGY – HELP
22th September 2007
For two days I have now tried to get the internet connection working, but it did
not gel. I have come to the point to seriously question if I should not cancel it
altogether, since it provides more frustration than benefit. Every day costs a
dollar and why exactly do I spend that? This investment does not generate any
income and just to read the news sites and explore an idea that’s on my mind,
looks like it is not worth the trouble and the money.
This may never be uploaded, the way I am going now. But who cares,
about me, my writing, what I think, or anything else in the universe. Discarding
things that generate frustration is an art that few people have learnt. They keep
going, believing the general saying you’ll get there if you try hard enough! What brain-
washing that is, Hollywood Syndrome I call it. But interestingly enough, a psy-
chiatrist on TV recognised the other day, that this is the most dangerous mantra
of the last decades. In the end result it brands somebody a failure, or not having
tried hard enough, when in reality, there were bigger forces working against the
efforts of the little vegemite who tried to achieve something. It is not only a
dangerous but also a cruel mantra, as I have experienced more than once.
MUST HAVE A WHINGE – TWO POSITIVE STEPS
28th September 2007
If you ever wondered how writers spend their time, this is one way, which,
however, I would not recommend: My connection to the world ceased on the
20th. It kept singing to me ‘I do not want to do it, I do not want to do it’ and
after probably 20 times I rang the technical bigpond help. They told me the
modem was faulty. So, we put in a new modem. But it did not work either.
There were several error numbers, but in the end, after testing and reconfiguring,
the 777 persisted. On to bigpond again, what to do next? Unplug all other
devices and try the various possibilities of plugging in the computer, including
in the hallway where the telstra line comes in. 777 - frustration - FRUSTRA-
TION!!!
So, they sent a little man around who tested the line and found everything
hunkey dorey. He then told us to buy a filter/splitter thing, which we did. Again,
we tried the several possibilities, always crawling under tables where the cables
are. Result: 777. So, again we rang up bigpond help, doing the same things all
over again which again produced 777. This time their suggestion was to have
the modem tested or reconfigured. So, we unplugged the computer once again
and took it to the nearest computer shop.
We have been here only a year, and since nothing was faulty so far, we did
not know them. After my husband went in there to take a look, he found the
shop did not have good vibes. So what next? After some debate, we decided to
ring the shop of the Russian who had been recommended to us. It made us feel
good, except that the shop is 36 kms. away!!!! But off we went, and after ticking
and unticking a few boxes, BINGO, my machine connected twice!!! Horray, pay
the bill and go back home.
The day, however, ended with more frustration because 777 raised its ugly
head again, when we tried here. The next morning we debated if we should
now withdraw from the world, and give up on having an internet connection. It
would be a big step, deciding to cut off our presence, just because telstra de-
cided you can no longer have a connection in this location.
The whole thing must have cost us 50 hours or more, the price of a new
modem, filter, and cable, and mileage of more than 80 km, with absolutely no
result.
Both the bigpond technicians and the telstra technicians gave us wrong
advice, because if my machine works perfectly from a different location. It is
not broken.
We worked it from the line entry point which was tested only 24 hours
before - no show.
We were furious, but the telecommunications industry can hold me to
ransom, because as a novelist, I must have internet connection. We always
thought of it as an investment, but the yield is not overwhelming. The fact is,
though we still inhabit the world of music and writing – so there must be an
internet connection. So I must learn to live with and live around unpredictabilities
and that they can do with you what they want, which is hard to take.
Our day ended with two unexpected very positive events. 1. The Russian
School invited my husband to teach the kids balalaika. 2. I pulled on order for a
number of Plevitskaya books from the letterbox. They look like going to some
libraries, because the customer is a library service. How nice they sent it by
snailmail, because I would not have received it had they chosen to use email!
It’s always good to see your favourite baby, the Plevitskaya novel, taking a
few more steps. I’ll take a look now, if the window tinting man wants a cuppa
and clock off.
NOW THAT IS A COINCIDENCE!
29th September 2007
Just to please my husband, I tried to dial up again, and what a coincidence, as
soon as our more expensive broadband connection was in their data base, the
dial up worked again.!!! They even sent me an email to confirm my future
broadband connection! So they must have felt certain that I would get this mail,
because so far, all I told them was that my email was not working!!! As soon as
I subscribed to broadband - the fault was gone!!!! From Friday onwards I have
the priviledge to pay for all the bloom’n email bytes that are clutter in our
lives.‘Sucking money from my pocket’ my father would have called it. Isn’t it
annoying that every new bit of new technology is used to take up people’s time
through looking at advertising that is not requested. The time lost to ‘fend off ’
advertising that comes in through email, telemarketing, SMS, faxes, letters, com-
petitions, and pamphlets in the letterboxes is horrendous. This household now
gets between 700 and 800 gramms of paper every week which ends up in the
recycle bin very quickly. I would rather have those 5 minutes to myself AND
no new pulpmill in Tasmania which will poison the ocean with dioxins! What
are they thinking!
SOLAR POWER
3rd October 2007
Most of the day, the solar power people have been crawling over our roof and
around the roof cavity. This looks like the last big project to make our house
old age friendly. It can be quite an exhausting process, from decision making,
through quotes, to the actual activity in the house.
Within the space of one week we had quite a share, internet issues, prepa-
ration for tinting, and now the solar power thing. To my surprise, we did not
have to wait for the new meter to be installed - the old one is already going
backwards! That really made my day, from the minute they connected it, the
sun throws the dollars that I spent back into my lap!
You could say, this is a successful day. I have also signed an online petition
against the pulp mill and hope, I will not get too much advertising from them.
But it had to be done, putting tons and tons of dioxins into the environment
for more paper when we waste so much through excessive advertising (includ-
ing election and government propaganda, of course) is not rational manage-
ment, and they need to be castrated.
The time has come, when we need to ask, do we really need that, when
the price is more destruction of the natural envorinment. It is mindless expan-
sion for the sake of expansion and falls into the category of lunacy. One day,
they have to learn that their competition religion destroys the world.
SCHINDLER & KENEALLY MYTH
6th October 2007
Reading the paper today, I find a full page promotion for Tom Keneally’s new
book, and naturally, it is about the work that he became famous for, the Oskar
Schindler one. The article is about how Keneally discovered the Schindler story
for the world. How that tallies with history, I am not so sure.
When Schindler was still alive, I read an article in the German SPIEGEL
magazine about Oskar Schindler, who lived impoverished in the Frankfurt main
station area.
‘Fancy this,’ I said to my husband, ‘I might have walked past him on my
way to work in the Associated Press newsroom, more than once.’ ‘Yes, I heard
about such a man from Andrey,’ replied my husband, ‘but we took that to be
one of those many war tales which people told in the fifties and sixties.’
That Spiegel article mentioned that someone in Hollywood had heard
about Schindler from a shop assistant which led to a film company buying the
full rights from Oskar – book, film, the whole package as is custom. The thrust
of the SPIEGEL article was that Schindler had only received an advance which
had been spent, so he was kind of broke. The package of his rights had been
sold on by the original purchaser and sold again. MGM was mentioned as hav-
ing held the rights at some stage – but the film had not yet been made and the
royalties which Schindler could expect were not forthcoming. There is no record
that Keneally was in Hollywood movie circles at the time (well 1971). Whether
he could have been able to buy that package of rights is really doubtful. The
SPIEGEL article mentioned the film rights only; with book rights obviously
not mentioned as an unimportant sideline. But they always come in a package!
How could Keneally have bought the whole package, obviously years before
1971???
The events and Schindler’s poor existence was the thrust of the SPIEGEL
article when Schindler lived in Frankfurt, until 1971. Support for Schindler from
Holocaust survivors was mentioned, but the Schindler room and the Schindler
book in the Jerusalem Hebrew University, which Schindler himself opened in
1972 was not mentioned.
Keneally’s Booker prize for Schindler’s Ark was in 1982. The book could
not have come out without the agreement of the package’s rights holders.
Spielberg was not in the loop when I read the SPIEGEL article how the pack-
age had changed hands before 1971. He must have aquired it later. The Schindler
story would not have done good business in Australia, unless someone created
an Australian link, which the choice of Keneally as book author obviously was.
From the marketing and distribution point of view, creating the Australian link
with Keneally was a stroke of genius by Spielberg. (I have not seen the movie or
read the book. This writing is not an evaluation of these works.)
After the advent of the internet, and when I explored writers’ sites for my
own book project, I found entries that ‘Spielberg always held the rights’, not
Keneally. This could not be true either. When I read about the movie rights of
the Schindler story in the Spiegel before 1971, Spielberg would not have had
the means to buy the Schindler package either (his breakthrough with Jaws was
1975). And where would MGM fit into the Keneally discovery story? It is doubt-
ful if not fanciful, that Keneally and/or Spielberg were financial enough to buy
the rights package from Oskar Schindler when he sold these well before 1971.
In which language did Keneally communicate with Schindler, and would he
have had the time and money to travel to Frankfurt with an interpretor? Was
Keneally financial enough to pay a German attorney to draw up the contract?
Why am I telling you all this? The newspapers we read and all the other
media are full of promotion for one product or the other, and we would do
well, to be a bit more alert. Believing neat stories, spin, and promotion, is bound
to lead to wrong decisions, and while it does not matter to Oskar Schindler
after his passing who makes money from his story, lifting masks matters, al-
ways.
To me, the Spielberg/Schindler/Keneally story looks like a classical ex-
ample of promotional disinformation. Based on some kind of truth (Schindler’s
actions), a yarn (Keneally’s discovery) is woven to drive media coverage for the
book and the movie distributors in Australia. By leaving out one part of the
history (here: book and movie rights had been bought and sold on several times
many years before) the Schindler story appeared fresh, new, and exciting to the
book buying public as well as movie audiences, when the Spielberg and Keneally
products became available.
Next time you read a neat story, take a step back.
SAD VISIT & DEMOCRACY QUESTIONED
8th October 2007
Had a visit from a friend, which was disturbing, but not unexpected. A divorce
is in the wings and when someone’s plans, dreams, and hopes turn into dust, it
causes a lot of sadness, especially when you have plenty of dust to sweep up
yourself. But most people have that, everybody has to live with dust, some or
some more. Divorce also runs in families – sad but an inescapable part of life.
Shed some tears when you’re alone, if you can still cry. They will stop; they
always do.
At night, the TV gave us some democracy propaganda from
whydemocracy.net The best briber won in that primary school class (in China),
just like in real life!
One day, I’ll write to them what purpose democracy, if it washes up rulers
like Helmut Kohl. But not today. Democracy (in my experience in Germany)
which does not result in good governance, is a farce. I would trade my right to
vote for justice, any time.
WATCH OUT FOR TOTAL SA
9th October 2007
After a Russian practice last night we saw a docu about the evil deeds of the
military rulers in Burma/Myanmar. They are truly vile, but how fascinating that
wherever something untoward is going on, you find the evil tentacles of the
French ‘TOTAL”, or their predecessors: Germany (reunification criminality
under Helmut Kohl), Burma, Sudan, USA (Enron under their old name Elf
Aquitaine), Iraq (oil for food programme irregularities).
Isn’t it peculiar how ‘good governance’ is promoted, but the biggies like
TOTAL do not have to give back their ill gotten gains. But what can you expect
from companies or countries who cooperate with that eternal cyclist Helmut
Kohl, bending to those above and kicking those who are below.
Coming back to Burma, what exactly does ‘democracy leader’ mean? What
they never say, is what the democracy leader actually lives on. Is there an organi-
sation who funds people like Aung San Suu Khi for promoting democracy?
And is democracy, as they promote it like ticking a ballot paper really so impor-
tant? Justice is important, but ticking ballot papers does not deliver justice, so
what are they really on about?
Aung San Suu Khi’s Nobel Peace Prize money would have been used up
by now in those 15 or more years. What did she get that prize for anyway; was
there a war that she prevented or shortened? Burma/Myanmar went on like
before, so she had no impact - and for that she got the Nobel Peace Prize? Who
pays her water bill, her rubbish collection? Who pays her servants to go out and
buy food, since she is not allowed out? I don’t get it, somebody is leading me by
the nose here. I don’t mean to judge that person tagged ‘democracy leader’– it’s
just the propaganda set-up that leads me to these questions.
SEARCHING FOR PLEVITSKAYA
16th October 2007
This morning I came to realise what a long journey it has been which I travelled
with my Plevitskaya book. It was around Christmas 1993, 14 years ago, when I
first read about Nadezhda Plevitskaya in my (German language) Rakhmaninoff
biography. I was intrigued by the interface of music and espionage. One day, I
thought, maybe I’ll explore her story further. But I still had translation work at
the time and we were also busy trying to find a producer for our Mary MacKillop
musical. – so there was no time. The internet was in its infancy then and in a
computer workshop I asked the tutor to search for Plevitskaya in AltaVista. No
result showed up then, in maybe 1995.
In 2000 I finally got to explore the topic and only a handful of search
engine results appeared. One of them was Plevitskaya’s recording of Pozhalei,
the famous waltz ‘Please take pity on me’. To this day, I have not found this
recording anywhere else and meanwhile most music has been pulled from the
net, for copyright and commercial reasons.
My first exploration led me to writing a screenplay, duly registered with
the Australian Writers Guild in February 2001. One producer/director and one
producer read it, but they did not like it enough to kick something off. Looking
at the movies coming from South Australia, the Plevitskaya story would not
have fitted into their parameters, I have come to realise. Today, we hear that
even Oscar winning directors prepare about 100 projects and only ONE will
lead to a product on the silver screen. I find no shame in finding myself in the
99% bracket. More critical observations of the movie business also revealed
that scripts mostly originate from the inner circles of actors, directors, produc-
ers, agents or their relatives.
Sending a script around from the ‘outside’ is a waste of postage. You can,
of course, be optimistic and model yourself on the very few exceptions that are
duly widely publicised. That road is an uncertain one, very long and expensive
since you must pay editors and readers as you go along. Unless you have other
sources to support yourself while you invest time and emotions in rolling a
rock up the hill, you are better served by abandoning these plans. With movie
scripts, you have no readership, so they will inhabit your cupboard during the
many years when you search for a slot before they, most likely, end up in the
recycle bin.
Two years after Plevitskaya’s death, and 60 years before my script, Vladimir
Nabokov (of Lolita fame), must have tried to turn the Plevitskaya story into a
product for the big screen. In an essay, he wrote ‘indeterminism is not allowed
in the studio’ which was exactly the criticism which I had received from my
Anglo producer/director readers.
The movie business wants stories where the heroes/heroines control the
action and their destiny. But in the time and places where Plevitskaya lived in
Tsarist Russia and in exile, controlling your destiny had limitations and my story
was, amongst other things, about how you adapt and reshape yourself in life’s
changes which are beyond your control. That is very Russian and European,
but here in Australia we are are heavily influenced by US popular culture, which
likes to suggest that you do control your destiny. Restrictions are said to come
from yourself. Plevitskaya was, like me, in charge of her destiny on occasions,
but we both had big events which descended upon us, shaped our life and
mind.
I read about Nabokov’s ‘indeterminism is not allowed in the studio’ after
I had given up on the movie script idea and while I was writing the novel. It
made me smile that Nabokov, with all his connections and resources, hit ex-
actly the same wall that I banged my head on sixty years later. He confirmed
how right my decision was to change medium – turning the Plevitskaya story
into a historical novel.
Although I might have liked to be a screenwriter for hire, I was more
committed to my topic than to screenwriting. Plevitskaya’s rich life was fasci-
nating and many themes in her life were also mine. Even before I became in-
volved in Russian music, the events of the Revolution had greatly interested
me. Where once I walked in West-Berlin was plastered with memory stones
from the Revolution. I went to school in Charlottenburg, which the exiled Rus-
sians had nicknamed Charlottengrad in the twenties. So many emigrés lived
there, that some Berlin shops put signs in the windows ‘German spoken’.
Eighty years later, in my own house in Australia, I only needed to look
and listen to find inspiration and mementos of Plevitskaya. ABC Classic FM
plays classical compositions with tunes from the Plevitskaya repertoire that
lead to ‘Plevitskomania’ in her time. One of my favourite songs in the late
sixties (The Happy Merchant), and which our group had recorded on a CBS
album, had been Plevitskaya’s signature tune and an inspiration to Stravinsky!
The tambourine which we had bought in Portobello Road (London) and which
was said to have belonged to ‘a singer who went to prison in France’ was the
Plevitskaya tambourine, I came to realise. The balalaikas, the samovar, so many
things in my life had that connection.
From the very first day of writing the script in 2000 until the day I pub-
lished my book in 2005, I did not use Plevitskaya’s real name when talking to
people, because I wanted it to be my discovery, in the English speaking world at
least. It also meant to change Rakhmaninoff ’s name, because people with more
resources could have taken a shine to the topic and come out before me.
Rodionoff was one of the aliases I used, after a friend in Munich who had
committed suicide. We have since heard that the KGB dusted drawers at Radio
Free Europe in Munich where Rodionoff worked, with dioxin to trigger sui-
cides, which explains our friend’s totally unexpected passing.
It was a long road of researching, writing, and editing, but I succeeded in
coming first. In the nearly three years since then, many, many Plevitskaya en-
tries show up on the internet. She even has her own wikipedia biography, as has
her last husband General Nikolay Skoblin. Not all what I read in there tallies
with my research, though. I have been very critical which sources I considered
credible, and believe some got a few things wrong. I did not correct wikipedia,
however, shall they read my book and then make up their own mind. They can
find it in libraries now -– not a bad result for a samizdat publication.
Between my discovery of the Plevitskaya story and the novel writing phase,
I had a mind altering experience. Without it, my book would have been differ-
ent. Before March 1995 my empathy for the downtrodden Russian underclass
before the Revolution did not go under my skin. My empathy for the emigrés
(or escapées in the parlance of Russians) was there, but it was shallow.
I had not yet experienced how people are crushed by the men in posi-
tions, whether usurped, inherited, or democratically elected, who abuse their
power to line their own and their cronies’ pockets. I had not yet experienced
how you clench your fist against ‘those above’ to no avail. The clique around
Helmut Kohl wangled billions of assetts, mine included, towards cronies in
France and Germany while pocketing kickbacks in Switzerland. Disappoint-
ments are one thing, but having your constituitional rights violated by defraud-
ing and colluding politicians in parliament, in government, and in the judiciary
is quite another. It happened in 1994/95, but only about 7 years later did I start
to understand (through internet research) how their Bundestag sponsored fraud
to benefit elf Aquitaine had occurred.
So my feeling of powerlessness against an overwhelming and evil govern-
ment must have been similar to what the Jews in Tsarist Russia experienced,
when the Tsar’s Secret Service was enticed to trigger yet another pogrom to
distract from domestic problems.
Over 90 % of Russia was illiterate. They were the powerless shoeless
class. I was equally powerless against legalised theft called ‘Chancellor Matter’.
During my childhood, I saw Stalin’s propaganda banners in East-Berlin. I took
his propaganda speak of ‘empowerment’ of the masses or ‘The Ruling Class’
as just that, propaganda phrases. Even as a ten year old, I had already learned to
build up resistance against what was designed to influence and manipulate me.
Stalin’s Ruling Class stuff was in the same category as Hitler’s propaganda posters
in history books which had tried to manipulate people against the Jews or praised
very large blue eyed families.
Through Helmut Kohl’s fraud it hit me like a rocket that Stalin’s commu-
nist propaganda was not empty words. The malicious, ruthless, fleecing Ruling
Class was alive and well as the Kohl clique. Like under the Tsar and Lenin in
Russia so many decades before, thievocracy ruled during the Kohl regime. Even
now, German prosecutors are too afraid to investigate, so it is unlikely that
Kohl’s sons will have to justify their funds like Pinochet’s children are made to
do. When it became clear to me that it was the despiccable German govern-
ment that deprived us of our property rights, I trid to have the theft dealt with
by my Australian government, because I thought when a person is wronged by
a government, then it needs to be dealt with by the government level. Their
reply was, that they considered it a private matter! But the German party ma-
chine (all political parties) profiteered from Kohl’s evil actions and as they were
awash with money from kickbacks logic dictates that the Australian Liberals
would have benefitted from the loot. After all, if the Australian Liberals sent
money to Margaret Thatcher’s Tories some years earlier, they would have re-
ceived money from the stash in Switzerland when they were a bit short for
funding their 1996 election win.
Being wronged made me see Plevitskaya’s times, pre-Revolutionary Russia,
in a completely different light. Injustice from ‘the regime’ was no longer an
abstract concept to me. People have said, my Plevitskaya novel reads as if I had
been there. Yes, I have been there, amongst the singers, the musicians, the gyp-
sies, and amongst those kicked in the guts. I have tasted the sweetness of suc-
cess and the Kohl regime had taught me, how people come to despise a tyran-
nical regime. Kohl might have been democratically elected, but a thieving tyrant
he was, helped by the tentacles of his Ruling Class in all nooks and crannies of
the German state. You cannot block it out when you are so profoundly wronged.
But who cares about the constitution or the victims when pockets can be lined
with other people’s properties? Justice and Germany is a contradiction in terms.
The world has learned from the Nazi and the bolshevik experience – it is my
hope that I contribute to learning from the Kohleone experience. That is why I
sometimes allowed my emotions to shine through between the lines, when I
wrote some segments of the book, but I did not write the book to be a school-
mistress to the world.
The German thievocracy is one aspect of my life, albeit an extremely
traumatic one. The Plevitskaya novel was in an embryonic state when I started
to understand the link between Kohleone’s legalised thievocracy and the Rus-
sian Revolution in Plevitskaya’s lifetime. My research and my experience have
taught me that corruption does leave victims behind whose personalities and
lives are affexted. Compassion for victims of all kinds becomes a lot stronger
than it was before, because they are now your fellow travellers. My mind alter-
ing experience of being a defenceless victim of the Kohl & Co. corruption is
like a computer program which is always running in the background. Some-
times it throws a box at you to tick, and then it goes away again for a while.
My book was written to be entertaining and enjoyable, which people tell
me it is. There were many, many building blocks that made my Plevitskaya
book.
The musical connection, of course, was always there. The songs I got to
know through our groups and some of the soloists that we worked with, were
really the Plevitskaya repertoire, I came to learn decades later in my research.
Her songs are world heritage, but until my book, this protagonist had slipped
away from the public eye. As long as Stalin was alive, the Plevitskaya story could
not be told and by the time he was gone in 1953, people had forgotten about
her in a world which was still sweeping up the aftermath of Word War II. One
should not forget, however, that her 1938 court case in Paris did not encourage
people to say ‘I knew Plevitskaya, Soloist to His Imperial Majesty’.
Plevitskaya’s friend Eitingon has been whitewashed by CIA specialist Walter
Laqueur, but I found his article lacked credibility in some aspects. It is not well
known, that the US were also buying information from Russians in interbellum
Paris. The idea that Eitingon and Plevitskaya’s husband General Skoblin were
not in the loop of that revenue source does not tally with what their contempo-
raries wrote, but it would not look good to admit to that, of course. The fact
that Laqueur took an interest in Skoblin and Eitingon at all, is the telling part. It
will be a great pleasure to prove the guru wrong, should I ever be able to ex-
plore one document which is currently beyond my reach. I know one bit which
proves Laqueur wrong. It would be some pleasure to prove the guru wrong
further, when I can pick up some of the thoughts which currently hibernate on
my cutting room floor.
It was a long road from my first discovery in 1993 to the book in 2005
and there is no doubt in my mind, that the stories in my Plevitskaya book will
one day come to life on the silver screen. My hope is, that I will still be here to
see it and that I may also reap a harvest from my labours.

SOMETHING LOCAL – HOON DRIVERS

20th OCT 2007
This morning, bright and early during the 8 o’clock news, a car came around
the corner, doing wheelies (spinning tyres in Yankee speak), creating a cloud of
20 cubicmeters of carcinogenic tyre particles. If one had a gun, it would be
SOOO satisfying to shoot them and dance around their bleeding bodies, which
were a waste of water while alive. Abuse of vehicles is, of course, fostered by
the government through car races and the media. It keeps the asthma and can-
cer industries going, but it is still an insult to all senses and rationale.
If these guys only knew what primitive puerile marking behaviour they
are displaying! Male dogs are driven to water the lamppost; human males are
driven to soil the air in te same kind of marking behaviour. By creating screech-
ing noises and air pollution they demonstrate that they are incapable of con-
trolling their urges. They should be treated like dogs who act upon vicious
instincts.
Staying with the theme of guns, this is not from the comedy channel, but
from last night’s news: In the dark of the night, the burgler enters the house.
‘Hello’, the parrot greets him, so the lawful resident picks up his gun and makes
boom. The burgler did not survive; the US taxpayer saves on court and prison
costs, the parrot did not take a hit – an all around satisfying outcome!
(Maybe this is why my first reaction to the hoon described above was ‘making
boom’.)
BALALAIKA FOR SALE
25thOCT07
Being the most well known balalaika people here in Adelaide, when people
want to sell a balalaika they seem to contact us. So here now comes the list of
balalaikas that people have asked us, if we did not know anybody who would
want to buy a balalaika.
1. Zuzin Prima-Balalaika, antique, pre-revolutionary. Sweet silvery tone, in case.
2. Secunda-Balalaika, 2004. Brand: Dieter Hauptmann. strung as Alto, near new
condition
3. Bass. Wonderful velvety deep tone. Unique size: smaller than Kontra bass,
but a fair bit bigger than tenor bass. Made from plywood which gives it the
body in tone. Fits in station waggon, but carries some weight. Sounds impres-
sive acoustically as well as with special piezo amplification, which is built in.
Lead for DI included. Mother of pearl inlays. Brand: Dieter Hauptmann (2003)
Please contact us through the email address artifex2@bigpond.com. We will
then send you an image and request from you to make an offer. Subsequently,
we will contact the owners to make direct contact with you. We accept no
liability from this service which we do for friendship.
A PREDICTION & SUPERSTITION
9th November 2007
As our brains get bombarded and saturated with election issues, I thought, I’d
like to do something that I have never done before and which may make me
look extremely foolish come Christmas 2007.
John Howard will lose his seat to Maxine MK.
The Liberal/National coalition will lose its majority.
Peter Costello will resign from Parliament.
Malcolm Turnbull will be opposition leader.
Kevin Rudd will, like Mike Rann, will be open to talent from outside his own
party.
Turnbull will join a Rudd Cabinet and resign from the Liberals.
If we are lucky, the focus will shift to issues, away from the individuals and their
personality cults, because individuals come and go, but tackling, then resolving
issues makes the cake.
Passing the shops yesterday, which are stuffed to the ceiling with Christ-
mas merchandise, I am reminded of an old superstition. I have to make up my
mind, once again, if I follow the superstition of the old country, the lack of
superstition in the new country, or maybe adopt the superstition of another
country. It refers to the time between Christmas and New Year, or the time
‘between the years’ as we used to call it. In the old country, one is prohibited
from doing laundry between the years as the bad spirits would get caught in the
laundry on the line, haunt you in the new year and cause death In the new
country, there does not appear to be any recommendation in this matter. In
Peru, I hear, you wash and clean absolutely everything between Christmas and
the new year so you go into the year with a clean slate. Which line of thought
will I follow, I wonder. The threat of death is, of course, a serious one and it is
hard to just shrug your shoulders and dismiss it all as old woman stuff. A year
ago, a friend from the old country said, that not closing the toilet lid ‘will make
all the money fly away’. Is this why I had so much misfortune with regard to
matters financial? Now we close the lid all the time.
When I turned 40, a friend insisted I have a birthday party the Sunday
before. There is a superstition in the old country that celebrating a birthday
before the actual day will bring bad luck. It is a fair while ago now, but I still
wonder, whether the misfortune that befell us in that town does not give that
superstition a lot of credibility. Nothing worked smoothly in that town; noth-
ing worked in my favour. My goal to make an average wage between us turned
out to be unachievable. So life was restricted and often uninspirational. Invest-
ments turned sour. A neighbour did the dirty on us. My property rights in
Germany were deleted by the government in favour of their mates in the ruling
political party and their cronies in France. Even our wonderful cat had a lifespan
of only 12 years! But the cat was black! And cats, especially black ones, are bad
karma when they cross your path, which of course happened every day. Noth-
ing we did in that town had the desired outcome, and I often thought of my
40th birthday, when I had allowed myself to be influenced.
Now that we leave the toilet lid closed, and mirrors in the hall are good
feng shui, we haven’t had a significant stroke of good or bad luck. The absence
of bad luck, however, is good luck, is it not? But boasting, like I do here, is said
to be unwise, so I won’t continue.
Christmas is around the corner, and I am still at a loss, which superstition,
if any, is going to determine my actions ‘between the years’. Any suggestions?
JUST THAT YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE THERE IS
12th NOVEMBER 07
We had a good show in the Folk Centre once again, but that’s not out of the
ordinary, so we will just list it: Been there - done that to the delight of a full
house audience.
AN ORDER IN THE LETTERBOX
22Nov07
Been a great day today, plucking a book order from Sydney from my letterbox.
There’s nothing better than having your work appreciated in this way!!!
END OF SCHOOLYEAR IN THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL& ELECTION DAY
25th NOVEMBER 07
What a day that was, yesterday! It was really charming to see all those kids in the
Russian School playing on their little costom-made balalaikas. I came with my
bass balalaika. Like always, when you have a balalaika in your hand, people talk
to you in Russian and are astonished when the answer comes in English, Ger-
man or French. Again, I asked, would you ask the Korean violinist who plays a
Mozart concerto, if he/she speaks Austrian?
Then we did what is compulsory here, voting and in the evening watched
the results on the box. As expected our Australian Tories lost power; they had
displayed lack of good judgement too often. Their defeat is humiliating but
how they could have expected to be rewarded remains a mystery. It shows how
far removed from real life they really are.
They should have known: When a party seizes power they iron out a few
extremes that their predecessors left them. For that they get rewarded in the
next election. They iron out a few things more and after a while they start to
implement ideology. The longer they stay, the more they get into the more
extreme sections of their ideology. People do not like these extremes and then
they are thrown out. It does not matter who they are; any party’s rule becomes
extreme and ready for kick-out after about 8 years. Some individuals also get
too big for their boots and their overbearing, know-it-all personalities can be
very off-putting.
How much longer they stay depends on the circumstances of the day. On
a personal level, after John Howard had called corrupt German ex-Chancellor
Helmut Kohl ‘my friend’ and even travelled to him on taxpayers money he had
become unelectable for this writer. Alexander Downer’s Department called my
loss through French/German government corruption a ‘private matter’, which
displayed no grasp of the issues, complicity, and benefitting from Kohl’s fraudu-
lent actions. Good riddance, Australian Tories, good riddance.
THE AGE OF THE DATA BASES & A FIRE
25NOV07
Like many people I have occasionally given in to the itch and wrote to a politi-
cian when they made a really silly suggestion or I think I have something to
contribute. For instance in the climate discussion it was recommended people
should avoid using their dryers and take every opportunity to dry laundry out-
doors. They forgot, i.e. the (male) minister forgot, that in many places the air
pollution is really bad and washing simply cannot be hung outdoors. Even in-
door drying (and a good front load washing machine) left my laundry with a
darkish grime because the diesel pollution (sooty oily microfine dust) in our
former location was so bad. There were also several woodfires in the vicinity.
After about 4 years living there my garments had reached a grime level that did
not wash out.
Some people complained in the paper that they laundered their stuff sev-
eral times – when South Australia is running out of water! My contribution
was, so I thought, that the minister think of tackling the air pollution in Ad-
elaide, so one can dry laundry outdoors again.
Ever since then I get his mail and now, of course, election propaganda
galore. Such is the age of the data bases that every time you open your mouth,
you trigger an avalanche of pamphlets and e-mails. For the priviledge of the
latter, we pay through the nose now that we have broadband.
Conclusion: Do not write to anyone because participation has quite a
price in the age of the data bases.
In addition to that, when a foul byte enters these data bases there is no
human, who is authorised to rectify an incorrect entry. My Plevitskaya novel
somehow entered the category ‘memoirs and biographies’ in some databases
and while people tell me it reads like I have been there, I was not alive during
Plevitskaya’s time, 1884-1940.
Luckily, we were not in bed last night, an hour before midnight. Suddenly,
a thick cloud of bushfire smoke came through the window. When I investi-
gated, there was indeed a fire in the nearby Amundsen Gully reserve. I saw
flames and heard the crackling, so I rushed back in to call the fire brigade. Wow,
your heart races fifty miles an hour even though it was still a couple of metres
away and there was no wind. ‘Excitement’ like this uses up your inner bytes, and
if you plan to do something productive next day, make it a small thing, because
you may not be quite with it.
GOTCHA! HOW THE LITTLE INTERNET USER SUBSIDISES THE
MOVIE BUSINESS
1 DECEMBER 2007
After struggling with internet issues for about 10 weeks it has now emerged
that bigpond, who had sabotaged my dial-up connection to suck more money
from my pocket through a broadband connection, has trapped me through fine
print.
Thinking that I had had 300 MB per month on dial-up and never used
that, I went for 200 MB per month on broadband and to my horror, I found
that I had a wonderful connection but could not use it! The email alone was
more than the average 6.6 MB which I had allowed myself per day. I then
found, that you can download a movie - and 600 MB would not count! People
who are not interested in watching movies but like to look at websites are charged
through the nose to make unmetered movie downloads possible.
For the genuine price, nobody would be interested in Hollywood’s glori-
ous products. They pump up download charges for the average user, so they
can waive them for the customers of the movie business, which means subsi-
dising Murdoch.
Their advertised internet connection for 200 MB only ‘works’ if you do
not go on the internet at all but restrict yourself to emailing. So it is not a
broadband internet connection, but a broadband email connection! They ad-
vertise a product which is not fit for the purpose!!!
I really try hard not to be trapped by fine print, but bigpond did get me
here.
There is fine print everywhere these days. Do you remember the days,
when there was no fine print to read for electricity, gas, telephone? Have you
ever read the fine print of the bank who you entrust with your money? Maybe
you would like to read the fine print of your superannuation account company,
because it has, once again, come under a new umbrella and they now offer you
more than x amounrt of choices how you want your retirement savings in-
vested. It ensures they can say ‘it was your choice’ if something happens to
your money.
Have you read the fine print of credit card companies? You need to read
only one, actually. They are all the same, no competition there, and reading
between the lines is what you need to do there. They can transfer your data
freely and will bother the ‘closest relative not living with you’. You also sign to
accept unlimited liability - one adverse event that they can call ‘your mistake’ –
and everything you own will go, except for that sleeping bag which you can
prove you will need under the bridge.
Do you remember the days when you did not have to shop around for
every FARThing you spent? Do you remember the days when you could have a
drink from a creek? Do you remember the days when you would open the
windows for fresh air, instead of buying an air purifier? Do you remember the
days when you could go shopping and leave the front door unlocked? Do you
remember the days when only prison windows had iron bars? Do you remem-
ber the days when children could walk to school because the mentally unpre-
dictable were kept away? Do you remember the days when young hooligans
could not afford a car? Is this progress? What have they done to my world? Is it
negativity to remember the good bits of the past? Life has more questions than
answers.

3DECEMBER 2007
My election prediction was right bar one point. But that may still happen, life is
full of events that seem outrageous at first, but do happen. It’s been a very
interesting year, this 2007, with changes on many, many fronts.
Must clock out for the next three or four months; too much paperwork, Christ-
mas, housework, visitors. I reckon, I will be back on the 14th March which is
my birthday. I’ll be older and wiser then ...................... maybe.
I had accumulated a few notes of topics to write about but discarded
them now that I have decided to go on youtube with a reading (and preparing
the technology which is more time consuming!!!), I haven’t been able to do any
writing.
One day, I listed all the requirements for a published writer for my own
overview. I then turned it into a point system which developed further into a
questionnaire.
Have you got what it takes to be a published writer? Go figure for your-
self in the point system on http://www.scribd.com/doc/17452535/
aspiringwriter
TELEMARKETING ANTIDOTES
1stAPRIL08
Various ways to get rid of telemarketers:
1. Ask them ‘Did I request your call?’ When they reply with a baffled ‘no’, you
tell them how ill-mannered it is to disturb people with unsolicited phone calls,
taking up your time and resources just because they got it into their head they
want to suck money from someone’s pocket!
2. Say ‘This household boycotts telemarketers’. (most recommended)
3. When they say in a demanding tone ‘I want to speak to the home/business
owner’ say ‘yeah, I want a lot of things, my sweetie pie’.
4. Ask them what they will buy from you, if you buy something from them!
5. You can take a deep breath, pause, and then blast full power in the phone
‘F*.* off ’. Make sure it’s not your neighbour before you do it. Works like a treat.
The Chinese who git that treatment never rang again.
6. If you can do a high decibel laugh on command, project one into the phone.
He/she will be speechless, but will find it spooky enough never to ring again.
7. You can join the NO-CALL-REGISTER, but why do that when you can
have fun harrassing the ill-mannered vermin called telemarketers?

GOTCHA & SAMIZDAT FOREVER!

26thAPRIL08
Now, well, well, well! During the years when I was writing my Plevitskaya novel,
I often pottered around the net to establish where I could slot in my work other
than samizdat. I had subscribed to a newsletter for authors and one of their
constant mantras was: ‘You cannot just write a book! Write a book proposal.
You cannot sell a book without a book proposal’. I thought about that, even
though it appeared these people wanted to sell me their proposal writing skills,
and ultimately dismissed the idea.
My book was to be based on as much fact as I could find. What would
stop the boardrooms where my proposal would be assessed to think ‘Hey, what
a great idea! Let’s put our contract writer Mr. Soundsosky onto it!’ I would get
a rejection slip and two years later my topic would fill the bookshop shelves!
That would have been completely within the law. Whatever I might have done
afterwards, I would have looked like Jeannine come lately. Now THEY look
like Johnny or Jeanine come lately, even though they may have a big marketing
budget and then tap into the government sponsored big book and reading clubs.
They say, they want fresh thinking, but when someone thinks outside the
box. they do not comprehend. It’s like everywhere in the art world; offer some-
thing new and they’ll tell you that this has never been done before and is there-
fore too risky. Offer something that is not so new, they’ll tell you, it’s old hat.
The movers and shakers are not any different from the common folk. Some-
body must tell them ‘this is good, this is the way to go’, and bim bam bingo, it
becomes acceptable.
The trick is, of course, to get something going and create the impression
through a ‘first person’ that it has the approval by someone with authority so
they don’t look like making a decision that they have to defend at some point.
You still need a small portion of newness o the sales pitch can be ‘the exciting
new .....’. Then you need vitamin c (connections).
The above mentioned newsletter person, who wrote about the necessity
to write book proposals, NOT books, has now got a new book out. Where
should I discover that? In the self-publishing catalogue, of course! Is that
schadenfreude? No, just the pleasure from having my assessment confirmed,
which is that 99.9 percent of authors have only two options: recycle bin or self-
publish. I prefer the Russian word samizdat because it has the connotation of
outside the system, uncensored etc. Most people would want to be in the sys-
tem, get the applause and attention, plus the royalties for hundreds and thou-
sands of copies, but there is only room in the inn for one in a thousand. There-
fore, the creative tribe must find and build their own outlets. Change is coming
in gradually. People no longer look surprised when you offer a samizdat book.
Surely, we are not going to leave it all to the biggies?!
So, dear reader, do not look down on samizdat - market assessments for
books by boardrooms should not be taken as gospel. If they think one particu-
lar book does not fit into their catalogue, or the author is not famous enough or
above the cut-off age of 28, that does NOT mean the writing is worthless or
the author is a hollowhead!
The other thing that happened during the week was my discovery of the
Jakub Fiszman murder in Germany. I knew that man, and his parents, because
I had worked in their company in Frankfurt.
This case has so many unanswered questions, it beggars belief. Why did
Körppens target the Fiszman family twice - five years apart and in different
States? Did Körppens know a Fiszman secret? Why did the elder Fiszman son
break so completely with his parents that the office staff was once instructed to
do detective work and find him? I remember quite clearly how the office staff
spoke of their sadness that a son did not want anything to do with his parents
and younger brother.
What might they have done, one staff member asked in a quiet moment
and low voice, which was so disgusting, that he changed the spelling of his
name and did not leave his address with his parents? ‘He wants nothing to do
with that family’ made the rounds in the Fiszman office in 1983. Was there a
connection to Puschmann and Mikulsky?
A DAY TO FORGET
2ndJUNE08
Life is just as hectic as ever. Now I had to study methods of selling more music
through the net. There appear to be millions of sites and methods to approach
that issue. It is also going to be expensive and time consuming, and I could end
up spending lots with no or extremely small result. I enjoy promotion, but it
must have the prospect of achieving something. This spells doom, reminds me
of the Tom Black nightmare.
POINTLESS PONDERINGS
25th JUNE 08
A lady I met the other day was somewhat shocked to read on my webpage that
only one book in one thousand can find a home in one of the established
publishing houses. She was quite shocked actually to do a peek behind the
curtains and to discover that the product is less important than the person who
represents the product. As long as the book is presented well, by a person who
looks good, speaks well, is a socialite, young enough to be available to represent
at least half a dozen more books in the next ten years, contents is by the by. Am
I being paranoid here?
From time to time, a ‘product’ picks up the topic of books being written
by ghost writers, such as the movie THE CROUPIER and one episode of
MIDSUMMER MURDERS.
Business can always be better, so there are days when I wish I had had the
wisdom to contract a 25 year old to represent my Plevitskaya book. ‘They’
would have put in the advertising budget, maybe got it on a bestseller list, and
my end goal of a movie would have happened in a reasonable time span.
Were in town today, feeling dizzy again from the diesel fumes in Grenfell Street,
must stop on this Wednesday, the 25th of June.
THE WORLD IS CATCHING UP WITH US
5th August 08
Finally got the concert on youtube (posted 28thJUL08)? Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_-HNU5qag
- the writer spends more time on music than on writing, not so exciting ...........
 The international financial crisis continues to threaten the well being of
billions. People in the US abused their freedom and created sub-prime mort-
gages. Then the Iraq war sucked out money from their economy, causing house
prices to fall which kicked off the avalanche. Combined with billions lost in
credit card frauds, they have found the perfect recipe for disaster. When will
they learn to punish damaging behaviour and delete business structures which
provide more rights to the crooks than to the innocent?
A STRANGE ATTITUDE THAT WAS
8AUGUST 08
I came across the record company ARIOLA on the net which reminded me. I
talked to Ariola (Munich) in 1975 about taking on our production for German
distribution. We had distribution in England, Australia, and some Latin Ameri-
can countries. They declined, saying that they planned to take on the Volga
Cossacks who had been defunct for a while but planned to resurface with new
personnel. I was really baffled, because you would normally assess a product
that exists, not wait for one that is in the planning stages?! (I am not sure, if the
Volga Cossacks, after they did resurface with some of our former personnel
about ten years later, did get that recording contract with Ariola.)
So what was that about? It sounded very much like they knew us, al-
though we did not know them. It sounded as if someone had put a block on
our name when the person on the phone said, ‘oh no, wouldn’t do that’. They
did not even want to assess our product. I had the feeling we were blacklisted,
but why? We never did get German distribution for that record, bought them
by the boxful on our British tours and then sold them on our gigs in Germany.
We broke even on the costs, and demonstrated to the audiences that we were
recording artists.
LOOKING BACK 100 YEARS
8 August 08
With all the glitz and glamour of the icons in music we have forgotten that the
system was a concoction from the beginning. Some good scientists had in-
vented the recording of sound and a way needed to be found to turn that into
product and turnover. Lifting the performers on a pedestal, creating a star cult,
would make the general public admire them and buy recordings plus the ma-
chines which turned them back into sound.
Now, in 2008, production has moved into the hands of the little people.
Creating a star cult was and is very expensive, so now that many recording
companies have experienced it no longer pays dividends, and bitten the dust ,
the focus is back on the product, the music, and those who deliver it in front of
audiences.
For the first time, samizdat has triumphed over big business!!!
The book business is strikingly similar now to what the music business
was like in the 19seventies. Will samizdat conquer the book business, too? Then,
what’s IN the book would matter again, not how the author performs on TV!
I RARELY LISTEN TO MARGARET THROSBY THESE DAYS
10September 08
Listened to the ABC’s Margaret Throsby and her guest on the 28th August
2008 and was really speechless. Her guest had been part of the Lowy thinktank
and some such like, mentioning that nobody forsesaw the collapse of the com-
munist system. (The topic was part of their thinktank brief.)
Hello!? It makes you green with envy, that these well paid academics,
obviously thousands at a conference, were completely ignorant about what was
going on. Dear, oh dear, highly paid experts, and they did not have a clue?!
My late father, who had to leave East Germany in 1949 after a run in with
the Soviet Kommandantura in East Berlin, had said ever since I can remember,
that they would eventually have to go bankrupt because their system was un-
workable. Then, in 1982, I was an interpretor for an international deal between
Japan and East Germany, or rather an attempted deal between these two coun-
tries. As it turned out, nobody wanted to loan East Germany a lousy million
Deutschmarks, not even the Japanese bank who was interested in the deal to
assist one of their customers. The whole thing became a non-event because
East Germany did not have this money and nobody was prepared to give a
loan.
In other words, East Germany was already bankrupt in 1982. This tallies
with other reports a bit later on where travellers saw only rhubarb juice (sic) on
shop shelves when they wanted to buy a drink for the journey. It also tallies
with reports that the Soviet Union notified Washington that they planned to let
go of East Germany because it had become too expensive, plus the ‘mystery’
piece of paper in an East Berlin live TV press conference. This note was the
basis for the ‘misunderstanding’ on the night when The Wall opened.
With reunification being known before the event, Chancellor Kohl went
to Poland, so when The Wall went down he could rescind all German claims,
and could go to Berlin quickly for a historic appearance. So where did these
highly paid think tanks live in the eighties?
Thinktanks, they have no validity and value beyond being prestige play-
things for their mega-rich name givers, who like to see their name in an aca-
demic context. They, and some of these superfluous organisations like the
German Marshall Fund (GMF) do nothing for the people, but like so many of
these international organisations, they provide cushy jobs for the sons and daugh-
ters of high level office bearers of various descriptions.
These thinktanks did not foresee the collapse of the communist empire;
they did not foresee the water crisis in Australia, they did not foresee the US
sub-prime crisis and the subsequent meltdown, they did not foresee what was
involved in the Iraq war and they did not foresee the wave of Islamic terrorism,
either. They must have been really thick.
Since 1979, when the Shah left Teheran, it was clear that something was
fermenting. They should have pricked up their ears, and if they hadn’t all been
so thick, spoilt by priviledged backgrounda, ignorant and overoccupied with
keeping their cushy jobs, they could have even developed a strategy before 9/
11 happened. I think, they are so full of themselves, and spoilt through always
having enough money for what takes their fancy that they do not possess the
perceptiveness or sensitivity to pick up vibes from people and events. What is it
with this class that they lose their antennas?
TAXPAYER PROMOTIONAL DOLLARS NOT DECLARED
11SEP08
As I am working on another youtube video about my historical novel “La
Plevitskaya” I come to realize that I have forgotten one important aspect that I
should henceforth display with pride.
My book has not consumed any taxpayer Dollars! Of course, I would
have never been in the running anyway, since it is not the authors who receive
funding to promote reading, but the publishing companies.
But it needs to be noted, that my book was developed entirely from our
own scarce resources. If their rationale is, that arts funding must sponsor the
companies and not the artists, we have to accept that as fact, and work around
it happily, be proud of our independence and that we are free from towing the
line for corporate interests.
When I found out they sponsor the Book Club and the Reading Club, I
wondered about that rationale to spend Dollars on promoting products that
have already had considerable success ........ but the reply was that they just have
a policy to fund organisations. It’s listed as Arts Funding! I would have sold my
soul, I admit it, but I may be better off keeping it. The Anglos do not love
artists, I once read on the net, but they love their arts organisations. The truth
is probably, that they do not like individualists.
I OFTEN EXPLAIN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY TO PEOPLE –
SOMEONE TOOK ME FOR A MUG
18SEP08
Today, I was thinning out old files. I came across one that I had not closely
analysed before, but which is worth writing about.
When I published my first samizdat edition of LA PLEVITSKAYA peo-
ple said to me that it is too good to be self-published. There is a publisher who
received govenment grants for books and for exporting -–so they were obliged
to be seen as ‘open’. Nearly all other publishers list themselves as not open for
new writers (note writers, not books). Some say they accept only material from
accredited agents.
It appeared somewhat pointless to submit when you quantify the cata-
logue that favours people who are 28 years old maximum, have a university
degree, or are already household names as politicians, ceelevrities, caught up in
a famous criminal case or some such like.
All these parameters count for more than the book content, were the
results of my research. But I owed that person who urged me to do justice to
my work. I could not refuse to submit which I knew was pointless from every
angle.
So many people in the arts have not been in business and do not see that
only business rules apply. It is very costly to turn an author into a brand name
and it also takes years. The younger the author on the entry level, the better it is
for the book company. I did not think I had any realistic chance at all. Some
people, however, are so taken with my book, they simply refuse to accept that
my age is more important than my work.
So – I put that submission together, which I now found in my my old files
nearly three years later. At the time, I was startled how quickly it came back with
a ‘No Thank You’. Two and a half weeks, including ‘travel’ did not look like
enough to asses my submission and make a considered company decision.
What I rediscovered today, before I put it all into the archive box, was this
timeline: Submission written 19th October 2005, sent off 20th October 2005.
On the 4th November 2005, my stuff was back with a predated (9th October)
‘no thx’ note.! Hello?!?
They must have printed rejection slips in bulk on that day, because mine
does not have my name or address. The wrong date could, of course, have a
real purpose. Should my book ever find its way to success, nobody has to own
up to that rejection, because it can ‘obviously’ not have been for my book.
Another benefit of the wrong date could be this: If they did think the
basic idea of a book was worth taking on, they could put their researchers and
ghostwriters onto the topic and then allocate the work to one of their authors.
The person who made the submission would not be able to prove that
they had lifted the idea because the inconsistency in the timeline pulls the rug
from under the original author, because it would be impossible for any court to
untangle the confusion.
I would be interested to hear, if other authors had similar experiences. Is
it a pattern that a publisher sends a rejection slip with a date earlier than the
submission? Have I drawn the wrong conclusions, and if yes, which are the
right ones? Did the office girl who handled my submission make a genuine,
convenient mistake?
EARIE THOUGHTS
24th September 08
This is the month of September 2008, which has a special meaning for me.
Should I survive this month in total, I will have lived longer than my father did.
Since I take after my father physically (after his side of the family mentally), this
is significant for me. I should then update my will .............. one of those many
things that I should do. But so many people have died about six months after
they made their will, that I have become reluctant and superstitious. Maybe this
is one of those things that will not get done before I push up daisies, as they say
here, or as my father used to say, looking at the reddishes from underneath.
These somewhat morbid thoughts entered my head because it is Septem-
ber and because there is some kind of finality to what I have been doing today,
will have to continue tomorrow and a few days after. I had decided to revise the
quotation marks in my book according to instructions from the Writers Group,
i.e. double quotations. While doing this, and especially adjusting every page in
the new layout with that new software which tolerated the American quotation
marks so much better, I found some Ts to dot and Is to cross. So, it took a fair
while to get this all done to perfection until I can put this 2008 version on
LULU.com.
 Then I proceeded to doing the pdf file and here surfaced a problem which
aggrevated me no end. I either got a pdf file that was half a gigabyte, or one
that was 4 MB but wrong page size. Try as I might to configure Postscript
printers to the book size of 6 by 9 inches, it did not do it. So I had to look at
modifying page sizes, which has to be done for every single page! Done 80, 437
pages to go! Well, if the Americans could get themselves to getting metric,
there would have been a setting in the printer driver ............. I really am I writer,
although I have been a translator setting up computer files for printing, which
is the tedious part and takes up a lot more time than the writing itself. I guess,
it is my punishment for coming to writing so late. Should have done it when I
was 16, but my circumstances were not in favour to use my IQ of 149 in that
manner.
Anyway, mustn’t complain, some peo-
ple lose their homes, and LULU does
not cost, ..... you know, gift horse
..............
You may now ask yourself why is it that
I do this all, spending so much time on
a book that is (probably) not for a main-
stream readership. Once I load it up to
lulu, it’s there, and if I come under a
bus tomorrow, people can still buy my
book. Many times in the last decades I
made unsuccessful attempts to get
something going which then became
the flavour of the month a number of
years later. I have often been on the
forefront with my ideas, but lacked the
capital to see it through. In these at-
tempts to get things moving, one talks,
so the ideas are in the open, then picked
up by those who do have that capital. I
can prove this, but this is not the time
and place.
I am making all this effort with my Plevitskaya novel, because I
know this time it will not be much different. Many works have only become
celebrated works of art posthumously, and if I put it on LULU, it will have that
chance. So, here we come back to this September 2008............. see above.
READY FOR UPLOAD
10 OCTOBER 08
For the past week or so I have been working on that new file for my Plevitskaya
book on lulu.com. I had heard that my hardcover edition ‘did not work’. I could
not understand that but decided to upload a new paperback edition which did
not go without a hitch, but in the end it did accept it as
www.lulu.com/content/4417955. If they divert you to the video, which is a
dead end street, you better go to
www.lulu.com/artifex2 or simply search for ‘biographies and memoirs’ and
‘Plevitskaya’.
One can never fully understand what’s happening with other people’s com-
puter systems, of course, so this upload has turned out to be the the rock
bottom cheapest version! The slot, where I could put my 2 $ profit in did not
materialize, so it’s currently a non-profit book: It costs only Lulu’s printing,
which is 14.87 USD. I’ll leave that unrevised for a while, so you can take advan-
tage of that bargain basement price due to a flaw in the lulu system.
With the financial crisis in the USA and elsewhere set to remain for a
while yet, it is my contribution towards the betterment of mankind. Isn’t it
always the (relatively) poor who have to give, when a need arises? When (not if)
the US decides to adopt financial regulations that are less likely to cause world-
wide damage, and then the situation stabilises again, I will see if they allow me
to put my two Dollars on the price, so that I can live and pay for the expensive
internet subscription. I like two way give and take situations.
We used to get the daily newspaper, but the expensive broadband connec-
tion has taken over that slot in the budget. The newspaper has become obso-
lete, especially, when I can read newspapers and magazines from Sydney, Lon-
don, Hamburg, and Paris right here. If I could ever get in the local newspaper
with my book (or other ventures) my interest would be aroused again.
Everything in life must be a two-way-street of the give-and-take variety!
Don’t forget to get my book while it is available for printing costs only! If lulu’s
(www.lulu.com/content/4417955) server messes you about, give me a buzz,
please,. artifex2@bigpond.com.
SHADES OF SCHADENFREUDE
19OCT08
We live in interesting times, times which the Chinese wish on their enemies.
While many of us have an uneasy feeling about what has cost us over 40 years
to aquire, will that still be ours when the current financial crisis has been swept
into the dustbin of history? The extraordinary things that are happening now
sometimes look like they are not real at all.
How long ago was it, that the US criticized China for holding ‘too large’ cash
reserves? Between one and two years, I think. I was wondering at the time how
these US gurus concluded what was ‘too high’ for one, and secondly, who au-
thorised them to express such opinions which clearly interfered in the domestic
affairs of China. Now, after the mortgage and rating agencies crisis has rolled
over the world like a tsunami, we find that exactly these reserves fund the ‘re-
pair’ of the US whose demise was caused by lack of ethics and unsupervised
capitalism which swept the crooks to rule.
What an extraordinary fall – just over seven years ago, all was well enough
in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Then came 9/11 and it now
seems that with the towers the imperial throne destructed from within. When
they noticed there was rubble and debris, from the throne not the towers, they
bundled it up, gave it AAA quality seals, so the rest of the world would send
them money for sh*t.
It took only seven years, from September 2001 to September 2008 for the
Empire to fall in a heap. The degree of bad judgement by the Emperor and his
court is unfathomable. Only the last Tsar of Russia (triggering World War I)
and Hitler, Time Magazine Man of the Year 1938 before he started World War
II, left a bigger path of destruction.
This time, for the first time, the ‘big event’ does not appear to hit me
really hard, touch wood, because of an unusual structure of my possessions,
which was meant to be temporary but will now continue for a while. So I have
the luxury of being an observer at this point in time.
One writer on the net headlined his story about the European reactions
to the demise: ‘Shades of schadenfreude’ and yes, I do have considerable
schadenfreude about the demise.
It was during the Bush Senior Presidency that German reunification took
place and the clique around the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl wangled our land
towards the French Government owned oil company causing me (us) an im-
mense loss. It also turned my weltanschauung upside down. If democracy is
about stealing from people and justice is unaffordable, what point is there for
democracy, that outwardly picturebook democracy of Germany, a US copycat?
I was a staunch supporter of America, believing that with democracy they also
stood for justice - please notice the past tense.
Nothing much of significance happened in Germany without US knowl-
edge and approval. They sometimes interfered in the legislative process, when
US interests might be impacted. They would have known about Kohl’s shonky
dealings, the company he kept, and Bonn’s absent sense of justice, decency,
and ethics. It did not bother them, because they had no sense, that Kohl’s
reunification corruption creates victims.
Now that same mindset has wrecked America under the Presidency of
Bush Junior. Shedding a tear? Are you kidding me? I admit to shades of schaden-
freude. I truly wish they were on the way to spread justice – and the nasty little
witch of schadenfreude would not laugh in the back of my head. From where
I sit though, they get what they deserve. Pity only, they had to drag half the
world into the pit with them. They stuffed it all up, belief in democracy and
justice, maybe that’s why they pray so much.
Wanna reprimand me? Go right ahead! I’ll take everything back, should I
experience justice.
SKIP THIS IF FIGURES BOTHER YOU
9 DECEMBER 08
It is now maybe 4 years ago that I read in an Australian Writers almanach that
only 1 in 1,000 books written can be taken up by the book business. I took that
on face value but today I find something does not tally and there is a bit of
disinformation involved.
The Sydney Morning Herald receives 100 plus books per week to review.
These are the ones that got through, each one standing for that one in a thou-
sand. This equates to 100,000 manuscripts/submissions per week or 5,200,000
per year. (?!?!) If you deduct maybe half as takeovers from other English speak-
ing markets, there remain 2,6 million manuscripts/submissions per year. This
figure appears to be quite unrealistic, and does not tally with observations on
the ground. Surely, some books/book proposals are submitted several times
and are counted more than once. But with a turnaround time of four to six
months each book can only be counted twice maybe three times a year and
even then the figure is still too high to be believable.
Now, why would an almanach put out such a figure? In the absence of a
better explanation it must have been designed to frighten people off from making
submissions (like indeed I was). It looks very much like ‘we want to sell you the
books by the authors we want, otherwise - go away’ (without a please). It’s like
being on one of the writers’ festivals where the minder drags the author away
unless you have a book in your hand for him/her to autograph.
It reminds me very much of the nobleman of Russian origin who was
told by the publishers ‘you are not famous, and you are not an academic. We
can therefore not publish your book.’ It did not read as if the content of the
book mattered. Sure, they are entitled to do in their business what they think fit,
but one does feel duped when the author seems to matter more than what’s in
the book. Is this personality cult or has the industry been taken over by the
Farians cooking up Milli Vanilli?
NEW YEAR MIX 2009
7th JANUARY 2009
A new year has commenced. What will it bring? Tough times the politicians
forecast, but they do not offer any specifics. Do they not know them? Do they
know and hide them? Or do they make a wrong guesstimate? Maybe, they look
at the US economy, and in their outworn paths of thinking, they assume Aus-
tralia will naturally follow the lead from Wall Street, when in effect our unhinging
process has already begun.
Yesterday was the first day when the Australian Stock Exchange freed
itself from that mindset of acting like blind and brainless followers. Whether
this was an exceptional day or the beginning of a thinking update, we’ll see.
I used to be all the way with LBJ as it were, but since I knew that they
promoted the Helmut Kohl regime, I look at the American system with so-
bered up eyes. Democracy does not matter when it washes up people like Kohl
& Co. – so the promoters of democracy have disqualified themselves, as justice
does not matter to them. Quisling Helmut Kohl did what they wanted, and the
quislings under Kohl did what they wanted with the people under them. De-
mocracy without justice is what exactly?
After what I just read on the net, the economic crisis of 2008 was inevita-
ble. I read that company buyouts, of which there were many in the last 10 years
or so, are usually done with investor capital of only 20 %, so 80 % is from bank
loans. If ever there was a fair weather strategy, this is the one!
I used to say that, generally speaking, a business, any business, should be
capitalised at about 70 %. That way, the company can weather a bit of a down-
turn without falling over; the interest payments for 30 % are obviously a lot
lower than for 80 %. They are also not so large that people would feel they are
only working to repay a bank loan etc. Psychology is important. With interest
rates going up and down like yo-yos these days, 80 % is a tight rope act at best;
at worst it is a structure whose success or failure depends on pot luck.
The banks, worldwide, should feel ashamed of themselves lending peo-
ple 80 %. They should also feel ashamed of lending to hedge funds to facilitate
short selling, which is essentially manipulating the stock market and fiddling
with people’s livelihoods. Do they have no shame whatsoever? They should
also feel ashamed of themselves when lending money to conduct wars. How
many crises and further wars have been caused when a country could not repay
war loans and had to create another war as a distraction?
Lending money to create carbon pollution through firing rockets! The air
is polluted, the bang has occurred – and all that is achieved are medical bills for
the injured and debts to repay!
In the real economy, an 80 % debt is a speculator’s culture that was bound
to fall over at the slightest breeze, hurting millions and millions worldwide.
And George W. Bush said, no, no, we do not want to regulate. It’s their
money! Where did he live? Ah, I forgot he was born with a golden spoon in his
mouth. You can, today, derive a milligramm of satisfaction that the late Ger-
man mega speculator Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of a train, but that
does not change the fundamentals. When will honesty, ethics, and justice make
a comeback on the stages of ecomonics and politics? Will that ever be possible
at all in Germany? Will it be possible in the US? Will these two countries, still
matter in 5 years time?
If one believes a recently seen docu Gangland Graveyard, ‘they’ had a
section to manipulate Wall Street. It reminded me of a novel called ‘Mafia Wars’
where the new generations were shifting their activities from protection money
at groundfloor level to accountancy offices on the 66th floor.
Well, today I really wanted to write about something else, the movie rights
for my book, but time has flown away.
A LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Nearly ten days later.
I read the above again and became quite shocked how I have changed. I used to
be all for the Americans, our guarantors of freedom in West Berlin; even the
Vietnam war was justified in my view at the time. I broke off a longstanding
friendship when I found them in what appeared to be a Baader-Meinhof cell. I
was a ‘system conformist’ as the expression went in those days.
And then came German reunification, the corrupt Kohl regime took the
land without paying. The colluding class filled their pockets. Communist rule or
so called democratic rule in Germany, same difference in my case. I now under-
stand what Baader-Meinhof were on about, but I have not revived that old
friendship. Found them on the net once; they are still in progressive circles.
Life has many facets, and as I translate and format my historical novel I
wonder what exactly I can do to sell the movie rights. Write an offer on my belly
and take my clothes off in the shopping centre, while making sure I am filmed?
What does one do to attract the attention of those who could make it happen?
Do I have to pretend I am a brainless little old lady who agrees to everything
the biggies do? Are they not intelligent enough to imagine that one can be
critical in one segment of life but extremely cooperative in another? Writing
letters and emails is obviously out; people do not want to negotiate with some-
one they do not know and there will be no replies.
It should go through an agent, and where would I find one for instance,
who is not looking for a 28 year old who can lend his/her name to books for 4
decades? Is a good product not worth anything any more? Are people really so
stupid to buy authors, not contents? Or is that not rather a strategy by the big
guys, which assumes people want to buy authors over content? When I read a
book I never think of what the author might look like, how old he is, or what
colour socks he prefers.
Why is everything so personalised now that the author person appears to
matter more than the content? I would, at this stage, just like to sell the movie
rights to this one book. Such a movie would be a colourful spectacle, interest-
ing, a longseller, and full of stuff that’s fresh and exciting to the audiences. So
why does the industry build such a wall around itself ?
DEATH IN THE FAMILY
7th February 2009
A lot has happened in the last three weeks.
I had an email regarding my novel from an unexpected corner so we keep our
fingers crossed that it may appeal enough to go to the next level.
Only a day later, I had an email from a Berlin solicitor, my brother had
perished in an apartment fire. What an end to a life at 60 years of age. I had not
known for 7 months, and had I not decided to upload a preview for the Ger-
man version of my Plevitskaya book to www.authorsden.com I might have
never known.
My brother would have deserved better, although he was spared the really
negative aspects of old age. I always thought, one day I might send him a ticket
to visit Australia, too late now, but on the anniversary of his death, I’ll probably
put an ad in the newspaper.
With all the emotions and legal matters to attend to I did not not need
computer problems as well, but I’ve been getting them – how serious they’ll be,
only the future can tell. Finally, I am getting down to finishing off the German
version of Part I of my novel, delayed so many times, and now I live in fear that
the computer may carc it. The heat outside, possible elctricity cut offs, dust
clouds from the central Australian deserts, are no mean feat, either.
I S W I T C H E D O F F T H A T THROSBY I N T E R V I E W
15th February 2009
It wasn’t without drama, but I finally managed to upload Part I of my Plevitskaya
novel to www.lulu.com/artifex2 where it appears under the German title
“Nadeschda Plewitzkaja”. Sorry, you monolingual readers, but Russian names
have their own ‘ethnic’ versions in other languages. Now, will anybody in the
old country order it? We hope so, of course, but only when the second part is
completed and uploaded in the standard size one volume paperback version,
will we know if we are still on the right track.
While I was sorting out the email boxes, I caught a few sentences of a
Margaret Throsby interview on ABC Classic FM. Couldn’t quite verify after-
wards which author she was interviewing, Sonya or Sonia (indeed, two inter-
view partners, on following days and both authors).
I heard her say ‘the world does not need more books’. Now, who does she
think she is to make such a statement for the world? She must obviously take
herself to be the centre of this earthly universe! She should have said, the world
does not need more books from me. What hybris! When the world, her pub-
lisher really, discovers she no longer sells because she has obviously fired all her
shots, does not renew the contract, she makes such a sweeping statement, im-
plying that everyone else’s books are not needed as well!
She explained, she had been doing it for 26 years – and it surprised her,
that she had fired all her bullets!!! There is no shame to discover that after 26
years you get tired of an activity, any activity, so tired that creativity is signifi-
cantly diluted. She’d seen the world, she mentioned, but had she seen life –
having started at 14?
 She had obviously internalised all the publicists’ scribes and when they
discovered, she was written out – and that people did not need any more of
HER books, she thought the world does not need any more books! Welcome to
the real world, my dear. People over 45 did not get their contracts renewed
about 10 years ago; now the kick out age it has come down to 40! That is not a
revelation, because there are always new 14 year olds ready to be lifted to
stardom. Hey, make way for someone else, lady.
Why does the ABC accept such an interview partner? Most likely, because
her publicist sent her there to do the saleswoman bit. It was the most selfcentred
stuff that I have heard on radio for a very long time. And guess what - by saying
this, she discourages others from writing new books – so hers sell better!!!
Well, it takes all sorts, they used to say. I hope she finds her slot in life,
because she sounded like a rather miserable little sod.
THE OTHER IDEOLOGY CRUMBLES
4MAR 2009
My translation of the second part is progressing, albeit slowly, so I can’t really
write much here at the moment, but I have the feeling most people can live
with that. We have music to play, towels to wash, meals to cook, and that always
comes first.
The economic crisis also takes up thought bytes. It hasn’t treated us too
badly, since we never listened to a financial advisor, so we were not coerced into
a high risk activity. Our losses are substantially less than those of others. It still
occupies the news and our thoughts, though – how within just one Bush Presi-
dency, the world’s financial system can be stuffed up so profoundly.
Initially, the rating agencies left you gasping for air, how they had taken
numbers from a hat and then everybody took these for gospel?!?! Now, the
AIG issue is taking your breath away. Many of the shonky deals that US institu-
tions did with German local governments have at their heart the selling of AIG
insurance contracts to German government entities. Nice revenue when you
can get it. What double standards these people have. They always talk about
competition and eliminating monopolies, but AIG’s monopoly was alright.
Somebody may understand that, I don’t, but it does not come as a sur-
prise, of course. On the one hand they talk as if they were promoting decency,
honesty, good governance, and some such like, but they never did anything
against Helmut Kohl. There, shonkiness was quite alright, as long as he was a
good little lakey. The honey of power, they have indeed had it for too long.
Reading from my novel is now on:
http://ally-hauptmanngurski.magix.net (then go to new album)
and on our youtube channel hauptmannbalalaika
2008 paperback edition: www.lulu.com/artifex2
and find the book right on top
ADDENDUM 1
10AUGUST2009
In the last two weeks I have reformated this diary and took out a few typos.
I have also learnt that my brother Roland Walter Gurski (1948 - 2008) did not
just die in an apartment fire in Berlin. He committed suicide through setting
the apartment alight. In the last few years he had been unemployed and had
recently been served with an eviction notice. 35 years he had lived in that small,
cheap groundfloor apartment.

Whether he was to be evicted because he could no longer afford the flat

on social security or whether the landlord had strata titled the building to sell
the approximately 30 flats, I do not know. What I do know is that he did every-
thing in his power to keep this refuge, but the money to purchase it he did not
have. His assett was wangled to elf Aquitaine – all rights nullified.
My brother would not have needed to commit suicide if it was not for the Kohl
regime wangling our land in East Berlin to his French mates. My brother would
have had the money to buy this or another small flat, but they nullified our
rights so he had to commit suicide.
My brother burnt himself because Kohleone’s colluding class deprived him of
his birthright. My brother became a victim of the Kohleone corruption.
Had my brother been an asylum seeker, they would have housed, fed, and
clothed him.
Had my brother been a Jew, the government would not have ‘stolen’ our
assett.
Had my brother been in prison, never to be released like Körppen, the
government would have funded his court costs.
But as it was, he was only a labourer who had worked and paid his taxes
for nearly 40 years – he had to burn himself because he counted for nothing.
Corruption is indeed not a victimless crime.
ADDENDUM 2
As I reformat this old diary for upload and publication (11/08/09), I read a
review by Katherine England for Tom Keneally‘s most recent book called The
People‘s Train which is also set in the time and place of my Plevitskaya novel.
Now compare the reviews for Keneally‘s and my book:
Plevitskaya book:
QUOTE Regarding the language and style of the novel, the writer avoids
overcomplicated sentences but her easily perceptive syntax possesses all the
necessary plasticity to transmit emotional nuances and to describe sounds,
fragrances and smells, colours and forms.
One of the most difficult things in prose is to translate complicated
content into simple words. This was achieved effortlessly in the novel.
Overall La Plevitskaya makes for pleasurable reading and will fascinate
both one who seeks an interesting plot and one with historic and cultural
awareness about the era.
In her preface Ally Hauptmann-Gursky promises to “delight, entertain,
and astound”. This promise is fulfilled. UNQUOTE Valeriy Filatov

Review of Keneally‘s book THE ADVERTISER on 8/8/09,

QUOTE Keneally‘s strength is always in the personalising of the political
but in the Russian Revolution he has almost met his match: there is so much to
be explained throughout that the novel tends to become tortuous. The prose is
often ponderous and the ploys that provide Samsurov‘s backstory are creaky
and obvious, gripping though. Perhaps the novel‘s best achievement is in
reminding us once again that great moments of history, seen close to, are
contested, confused and surprisingly ordinary. UNQUOTE Katherine England.