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Lecture

Yanky Fachler
When Jabotinsky Didn’t Meet Trotsky

Thursday 14.08.2025

How to watch

This lecture starts on 14 August at 5:00pm (UK).

Summary

Lev Davidovich Bronstein (1879-1940)—better known as Leon Trotsky, a name he borrowed from a prison warder—and Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) are giants of 20th-century Jewish and world history. Five years ago, Trudy Gold gave an excellent LU talk on the parallels between these two Jews. History tells us that they never met. In this talk, Yanky Fachler uses Israeli historian Zeev Tzahor’s work of fiction, When Jabotinsky Met Trotsky, to imagine what might have happened if these two had been in regular contact with each other during their lifetimes.

Yanky Fachler

an image of Yanky Fachler

Yanky Fachler is chair of the Jewish Historical Society of Ireland. He has a regular slot, Word in Edgeways, on early-morning Irish radio. He delivered 250 Zoom lectures during COVID and is the author of several books, including Kaleidoscope: 100 Characters Who Helped Shape the Irish Jewish Community; Jewish Letchworth: A Microcosm of the Jewish Communal Experience; The Vow: Rebuilding the Fachler Tribe After the Holocaust; and 6 Officers, 2 Lions and 750 Mules.