Russian Immigration To Mexico - Russians in The Art and Cultural Life of Mexico

Russians in The Art and Cultural Life of Mexico

The Mexican Visual Artist Diego Rivera married first time the Russian exiled Artist Angelina Beloff in Paris France 1911, and she gave birth to a son, Diego (1916–1918). Maria Vorobieff-Stebelska, another Russian Cubist Artist mistress of Rivera in Paris, gave also birth to a daughter named Marika Rivera, that later became a professional dancer in France, 1918 or 1919 when Rivera was married to Angelina (according to House on the Bridge: Ten Turbulent Years with Diego Rivera and Angelina's memoirs called Memorias

Angelina Veloff entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1905, when was encouraged by her professors to move to France to continue studying, which she did after her parents died in 1909. She lived in Paris with support of the Russian government as well as a trust fund from her family, working in the studio of Henri Matisse . During this time, her talent developed, learning engraving work in wood and metal and she earned recognition for her painting and drawing. She represented an important influence on Rivera's early career.

Veloff was a member of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios starting in 1934, the Sociedad Mexicana de Grabadores in 1947, the Galería Espira in the 1930s, the Sociedad para el Impulso de las Arts Plásticas in 1948 and the Salón de las Plástica Mexicana in 1949.

Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, after leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, was successively removed from power in 1927, expelled from the Communist Party, and finally deported from the Soviet Union in 1929. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile in Mexico to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.

An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism, in the late 1930s, Trotsky opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico, by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent in August 1940.

Trotsky's house in Coyoacán was preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day of the assassination and is now a museum run by a board which includes his grandson Esteban Volkov. The current director of the museum is Carlos Ramirez Sandoval. Trotsky's grave is located on its grounds. A new foundation (International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum) has been organized to raise funds to further improve the Museum.

Trotsky was never formally rehabilitated by the Soviet government, despite the Glasnost-era rehabilitation of most other Old Bolsheviks killed during the Great Purges. His son, Sergei Sedov, killed in 1937, was rehabilitated in 1988, as was Nikolai Bukharin. Above all, beginning in 1989, Trotsky's books, forbidden until 1987, were finally published in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky was rehabilitated in 16 June 2001 on the basis of the decision of the General Prosecutor's Office (Certificates of Rehabilitation № 13/2182-90, № 13-2200-99 in Archives Research Center "Memorial").

Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov, who lives in Mexico, is an active promoter of his grandfather. Trotsky's great-granddaughter, Mexican-born Nora Volkow (Volkov's daughter), is currently head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse

In the 1940s Elias Breeskin, Ukranian born Violinist, Composer and Conductor moved from Holywood, California to Mexico and became an exclusive artist of the XEB Radio station in Mexico City, the oldest in the country composed scores for the Cinema of Mexico including the Cantinflas film Neither blood nor sand. He had a daughter there who became a famous entertainer and violinist herself, Olga Breeskin.

In 1941, Anna, Gene, and John Breeskin joined Elias in Mexico City, where he had become musical director for XEW, the most important radio station in the country. John Breeskin describes one Christmas sitting in box seat in the principal orchestra hall in Mexico City near the President of Mexico, and watching his father Elias take the stage, lift his baton, and give the downbeat for Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. John Breeskin also describes living in a mansion with several servants, including a chauffeur, a gardener, a bodyguard, a cook and two young maids. Elias would come home from work, take off his suit jacket, and reveal a tiny Capuchin monkey tucked into his armpit. He would come home from the mercado with a parrot with violently colored feathers perched on his shoulder; this was typical.

In the early 1950s VicePresident Mikoyan of the USSR in tour across North America, met the Mexican Cellist Carlos Prieto in New York and offered him the possibility visit Russia and interact with some of the greatest Soviet Musicians. Prieto, writer and also Engineer graduate from MIT, has been along his career one of the principal promoters of the cultural exchange in between Mexico and Russia, he is the author of various books about his time in the former Soviet Union.