Trotsky’s Banished Grandson Outlives Stalin’s Curse

--Esteban Volkow Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky’s grandson, waited 57 years to meet his half-sister, Alexandra Zaharnovna, although he never knew if she were alive or dead. Volkow, 62, who lives in Mexico City, was unaware of Alexandra’s whereabouts until he received a telephone call from French historian Pierre Broue, who told Volkow that Alexandra, 65, was living in Moscow. “When Stalin expelled my mother (in 1931),” Volkow said, “he allowed her to take only her youngest child.” Volkow was brought to Mexico City and lived there with his exiled grandfather until his assassination in 1940--believed to be the work of Josef Stalin, who had accused Trotsky of subversion in the 1920s. Alexandra spent six months in jail and five years in internal exile. Volkow described his Moscow meeting with Alexandra, who is ill with cancer, as well as his thoughts about the Soviet Union in an interview with Associated Press. “The truth is that the country is really alien to me,” he said. “I left so young I have practically no memories, no memories. Maybe just the beginning of winter, the cold.”

--Maybe Euripides could write a better drama, but for now, modern-day Greeks will have to settle for l’affaire Papandreou--as in Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, 69, and his affaire de coeur with Dimitra Liani, 34, an airline flight attendant. Papandreou moved in with Liani in September after having heart surgery, but one of the conflicting lines of the story, which is being played out like a TV soap opera, comes from his wife, Margaret, who says Papandreou has refused to meet with her to discuss divorce by mutual consent. She said: “I set no conditions for a divorce. The only thing that remains is a meeting with Andreas. For me, the divorce matter is closed.” Papandreou also is eager to put personal problems behind him before national elections June 18.

--John Le Carre’s next spy thriller, “The Russia House,” is described--a bit mysteriously--by his publisher as a book that is “a spy story and an anti-spy story, a story of Cold Warriors who continue to dance in their gray cellars after the music has ended.” Le Carre’s “Smiley’s People” and “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold” were, of course, set in an era before anyone had heard of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, let alone glasnost or perestroika. So, the Sunday Telegraph in London posed this intriguing question: “If the creator of (British spy catcher George) Smiley and of Karla, the Soviet spymaster, has had to come in from the Cold War, what front will he fight on?” In June, Le Carre fans will find out.