It was the only way Alex could capture Chinese street life naturally. An extension trigger ran around his neck and into his pocket. He struck up a friendship with a neighbor on his street, Rick Morton, a photographer known for his pictures of LA street gangs.Īlex gave Rick the negatives that had been stashed in his basement for sixty years – scenes of Shanghai in the 1930s that Alex surreptitiously photographed with a camera hidden in a special pocket in his jacket, the lens peering out through a buttonhole. Alex and his films are featured, along with a roundtable discussion with Alex Buchman, Tamara Deutscher, historian Stuart Hood, Sieva and Veronica Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson and great-granddaughter.Īlex was “discovered” in the United States a decade later, when he was approaching 90. On the fiftieth anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination in 1990 British television aired the documentary Tariq Ali produced, Trotsky’s Home Movies. I mentioned to Tariq Ali, on one of his visits to Los Angeles, that Alex Buchman had very interesting films of Trotsky we went right over to Alex’s house in Echo Park to meet Alex and see the films.
Trotsky’s Home MoviesĪlex’s motion pictures and still photos are among the last taken prior to the assassination of Trotsky, and are the most extensive record of the Old Man’s final years. Alex never doubted that Harte had let Siqueiros in, but carefully kept his feeling out of print until there was confirmation from the Soviet archives. When Soviet archives were opened after 1992, it was revealed that Sheldon Harte had been a Stalinist agent, killed before he could divulge what had happened. Trotsky survived unharmed, but Sheldon Harte was kidnapped and murdered, his body thrown into a shallow pit filled with lime on a property rented by Siqueiros’ brother-in-law. One month later, the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, a staunch Stalinist, led an assassination attempt on Trotsky which failed. He also rebuilt the alarm system in the compound, adding several switches.Īlex was replaced on guard duty by Robert Sheldon Harte in mid-April 1940. He stayed five months in 1939–40 and took hundreds of still photos of Trotsky (including color pictures) and a film of Trotsky. While he was in Coyoacan, Alex was enlisted to improve the security system and served as a guard.
It was Glass who convinced Alex that Trotsky should see his photographic record of those years, and Harold Isaacs who wrote the letter of introduction to Trotsky. He went to Mexico in 1939 to show ‘the Old Man’ his photos and films from his six years in China, where he was active in the Trotskyist Left Opposition along with Frank Glass and Harold Isaacs. He leaves behind his wife of sixty-two years, Debbie (Bloomfield) Buchman, son David Buchman, and many grieving relatives, friends and comrades around the world.Īlex was a retired aeronautical engineer and amateur photographer. He made it through the surgery, but his heart gave out a week later.Īlex was one of my dearest friends. Alex was not in ill health, but slipped and fell during a rainstorm and fractured his hip. Although he was 91, he died before his time.
Alexander Buchman’s Revolutionary Life | Solidarity Alexander Buchman’s Revolutionary Life - Susan WeissmanĪLEX BUCHMAN, THE last survivor of Trotsky’s American guards at Coyoacan, died on January 7, 2003.
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