Leon Trotsky's Revolutionary Toilet
Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, he changed his name during Czarist days to Leon Trotsky, derived from a German term for "defiance". Lenin probably would have named him as his successor, but Lenin's stroke prevented that. Trotsky was a party theorist, and seems to have been closer to the original intent of Marx than any other prominent Soviet figure.
When Stalin seized power, Trotsky left for exile in Mexico. He was sentenced to death in absentia and was assassinated with an ice ax in Mexico City in 1940 by an agent of Stalin.
You can tour his home in Mexico City, it's very swanky. Click here to see my pictures.
The communist leaders were all for collectivism and "from each according to his abilities, to each according to their needs", so long as it didn't apply to them. Their needs-to-abilities ratios were always rather high.
Pictured here is not only Leon Trotsky's toilet, but his tub and his hot-water heater!
Hey, these are my pages and sometimes I include other plumbing of interest like Jim Morrison's bidet or Robert F Kennedy's home water fluoridation system.
If you're really into Leon Trotsky trivia, and you would like to also see pictures of his typewriter, his kitchen, his rabbit hutches, his sombrero (!!), and lots more at his palatial Mexico City home, then see my page with more pictures from there.
If you are keenly interested in Communist Toilets, then be sure to see the Totalitarian Toiletarianism page with the toilets of the People's Republic of China.
"When we are victorious on a world scale, I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities in the world."
— Vladimir Ilych Lenin
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
