iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Saving this snapshot from Parisian Police Archives for when my dad says something "political" in the family group chat "It seems that English public opinion, always slow to react, is beginning to make itself known..."

Screenshot of a typed French document that reads "il semble, d'autre part, que l'opinion publque anglaise, doujours longue à s'émouvoir, commence à se manifester"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Next Tuesday @ 7pm EST (midnight for Brits) @mordkhetzvi.bsky.social , Elissa Sampson and I discuss the interwar history of the IWO, an immigrant fraternal order associated with the CPUSA. Free, online, register at www.circle.org/events/iwo-p... Come for the communism, stay for the Yiddish.

A blue flyer showing an illustrated book cover with a picture of a boy selling newspapers on a new york street, and photographs of three presenters - two white women and one black man.

The event description reads: THE IWO: FROM POPULAR FRONT TO COLD WAR a discussion with Dr. Elissa Sampson, Anthony Russell and Annie Cohen

MAY 12, 7:00-8:00 PM ET on Zoom

How did the International Workers Order navigate Jewish and leftist political communities and organize for justice before, during, and in the wake of the Second World War?

Join us and learn why the IWO's history and legacy remain compelling for all of us who wish to build "a better and more beautiful world for everyone."

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Going through 1930s Communist Press archives and a lot of it is very depressing and also Stalinist but then there is also this great guide by SUSAN to making your own knickers using cut outs from the paper as a template #history #praxis

Screenshot of a newspaper showing the title "SUSAN, the Home Page dressmaker, gives some useful tips on MAKING your own KNICKERS". Image of a knickers template with dimensions

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

In his memoirs, translated into English by Samuel Portnoy, the famous Bundist leader Vladimir Medem described having his words misconstrued by a Zionist journalist 🧵

Excerpt from a book that reads:
In my address I concentrated on the pogroms. I could readily discern
in the audience the terribly depressing effect induced by those
sanguinary events. Words of consolation are hard to come by in such
circumstances; and that was n ot my task. I had merely wished to set
the matter in its proper light. And I said: Blood is being shed, the
situation is horrible, but one should keep in mind (I can literally
recall the words that follow): " Blood constitutes that lubricant
without which the carriage of history does not move ahead." Here
was a thought, one would imagine, that was perfectly legitimate and
plainly elementary, yet these words had the effect of stirring up a
hornet's nest. The audience included some sort of Zionist (I don't
know whether he was a fool o r a vicio us faker) who wrote a report in
a Jewish newspaper about the meeting, and he p ut altogether different
words into my mouth. According to his report, I allegedly
stated that Jewish blood is the lubricant of the R ussian revolution. A
brouhaha ensued. The Zionists seized upon those fictitious words
and tormented me with them for years. Several weeks after the
speech-as soon as I arrived in Russia-! published a denial in Der
Fraynd. I declared that what the correspondent had written about me
was a lie; and I cited my actual words. Alas, to no avail. Those nice ·
folks simply ignored my response; it suited them better to sustain the
furor. And year after year the words would be thrown up to mewords
which I had never uttered. It became simply habit. A real
tradition was established in the Zionist press: whenever my name was
mentioned, the following addendum would be tacked on: "This is the
same individual who said that Jewish blood is a lubricant for the
Russian revolution." To this very day, sixteen years later, the identical
statement continues meandering through Zionist byways. When faced with liars, one truly remains powerless.

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Reading decyphered Communist Party radio messages in 2026 and I keep reading "CC" as "Covid Cautious" (rather than Central Committee). But enjoying the image of the Community Care revolution in which we occupy the land of wealthy landowners in an organised way ...

Screenshot of typed text reading "After discussion with C.C. comrades it was decided that the occupation of the land should continue in an organised way, the only way of compelling the Institute of Agrarian Reform to hasten its steps but to occupy only the land of the ex-nobility, of important reactionary landowners, of the church, ex communal lands etc. The same thing is being done with appropriating stores of wheat ...."

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Love it when my two very different research interests (mediumship and Communist antifascism) randomly collide This is from Gerald Howson's 'Arms for Spain', describing the activities and arguments of the infamous non-intervention committee during the Spanish Civil War

Excerpt describing the activities of the Non-interevention committee. Highlighted section reads: "Baron Eric Palmstierna, the Swedish delegate, would sometimes fall into a species of trance, for he was busy composing a book, The Horizons of Immortality, in which he recorded his conversation with ‘the messengers from the other world’, and whenever these spirits spoke to him he had to concentrate on what they said in order to write it down later."

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Happy International Working Women's Day

Screenshot showing a section of the front page of the Daily Herald, December 18 1933, with an article describing a protest at the German Embassy in London. Headline reads "Police baton charges at Embassy" and the subheading "women fight with sticks: many hurt"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Learn Yiddish with me this semester part 2: for beginners who already know a bisl Yiddish. Great reviews from previous students (pictured). secure.qgiv.com/for/yiddishc...

A white and brown cat in front of a laptop. On the screen is a white person talking next to a document they are sharing. Text reads : Yiddish for beginners II, Wednesdays at 1.30pm EST / 6.30pm GMT

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

*Gender reveal post* 🥁 It's my first peer-reviewed publication! Got back from a long walk on Arthur's Seat yesterday to discover this had finally arrived. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

A woman with long brown hair in a ponytail wearing a blue jumper holds up a blue book with a picture showing a 1930s newspaper stand. The title reads "From Popular Front to Cold War"

Photo of my chapter "We'll Stay Here Til The Fascist Tomb is Made: The IWO and the International Brigades"

Another picture of a page in my chapter, showing a postcard in which a group of young people pose as a Spanish militia. The subtitle reads "Spain "Gets a Taste" of IWO antics"

Another photo of the chapter which shows a photo of a monument made to a young man who died in Spain, his comrades posing around it with raised fist. Subtitle reads "A Marvelous Experience for a Bolshevik"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Study Yiddish with me this semester part 1: by reading stories about a clever puppy who joins a family of Jewish Communists secure.qgiv.com/for/yiddishc...

Grey background with a black and white photo showing an anti fascist protest and a clip from a cartoon of a person with a dog running through their legs

text reads: Chaver Paver's Labzik stories of a militant puppy. A class of intermediate Yiddish speakers. Online with the Workers Circle starting 19 February, Thursdays at 1.30-3pm EST, 6.30-8PM GMT

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Some Tu b'shvat inspiration for anyone celebrating the trees' birthday this evening/tomorrow Quotes are from Rabbis Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg "For Times Such as These". Photos are from a recent trip to Loch Lomond.

A person in a yellow beanie carrying a backpack walking on a path through a forest of tall thin trees

A white man in a green coat, blue jeans and yellow beanie standing next to a huge uprooted tree trunk gesturing at the magnificent root system

A quote from "For Times Such As These" by Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg describing the complicated-ness of celebrating the Jewish festival of Tu B'shvat in a context of Zionist occupation and destruction of Palestinian land

A quote from "For Times Such As These" by Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg describing the month of shvat as a month of quiet awakening when the sap starts to move in the trees

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Let's say it louder for the folks in the back: comparison is not the same as drawing equivalency. Comparison is an essential tool used to make sense of past events, and we urgently need to understand and learn the lessons of the Holocaust.

Screenshot of a tweet from the US Holocaust museum stating "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Apparently it's Charlemagne's yortsayt (death annivesary) today so here's a couple of photos of Noyon Cathedral in Picardie where he was crowned King of the Franks in 768

the front facade of a magestic cathedral, two tall bell towers and arched entrances, lit up at dusk

image of the medieval cathedral of Noyon, Picardie

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Preparing a talk about the disabled victims of the Holocaust for an event on Thursday where we'll also be discussing the Zionist manipulation of Holocaust memory, and I coincidentally picked up Natan Meir's amazing "Stepchildren of the Shtetl." Now I def have too much to say and too much to read

a page of a book, highlighted phrase "But nationalists, and especially Zionists harbored profound ambivalence about the disabled Jewish body and psyche"

A page from a book, highlighted phrase "at the core of the book's argument is the proposition that in the modern period, the Jewish marginal people of eastern Europe became a symbol for East European Jewry as a whole, a development that modernizers both advanced unwittingly and lamented and that modernists later embraced'

A page from a book. Highlighted phrases "the undersirables of jewish society frequently served as surrogates for the entire Jewish people, or at least for its subset in the Russian Empire. The internal jewish discourse of modernization, progress, and integrationr equired the creation of a despised other to serve as a kind of doppelganger to be cast out or transformed utterly - until the realization dawned that "they" were "us"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Northern lights over Edinburgh (taken from Calton hill at around 9pm). Don't forget to look up, comrades

A cloudy night sky with a bright pink haze peeking through the clouds

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Very proud to be part of this online event. Sunday 18th Jan at 12 noon EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET. Registration is free but we are asking for donations to a family in Gaza www.tickettailor.com/events/onech...

An online flyer that reads: Jewish and Yiddish Reactions to the Destruction of Gaza: a Panel

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

First sunset of 2026 over Arthur's Seat

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

A few photos from my last walk of 2025 - a scouting mission to find the best place to see the fireworks. Not pictured: us getting stuck up Calton hill at midnight with a partial view, getting lost and spending the first half hour of 2026 trying to get off the hill and find each other. Classic NYE

White woman with long brown hair wearing an orange coat, blue scarf, black respirator mask and big blue headphones, entrance to Edinburgh castle in the background

Sunset over Edinburgh, seen from calton hill

sunset from Edinburgh seen from Calton Hill

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Beautiful talk with Basma Ghalayini and Mazan Manrouf on their new book Palestine -1, stories from the Eve of the Nakba at the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair organised by @lighthousebks.bsky.social

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Since I last posted on Bluesky (which i still pronounce as if it were a Russian-Jewish surname) I've moved to Edinburgh to (re)start my PhD. Here's some photographic evidence

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Tell me you're a Communist Party archive without telling me you're a Communist Party archive

Screenshot reading "Type of document: Accusation, Information Material, Leafing, Appeal, Circular"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I spent the rest of my walk looking out for buildings that might have been here when Felicia passed through, and thinking about how much the world and this particular part of it has changed and not changed since then.

a small white house with blue shutters and a slanted roof

a street with a row of small shuttered houses

another larger white house with blue shutters and two blue doors

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I'm staying in Montreuil for three weeks while I teach in Paris, and while I was exploring this weekend I realised that it was exactly OTD (11th-15th July specifically) in 1936 that my hero and dead celebrity crush Felicia Browne passed through on her way to Spain ...

snapshot of a letter reading "the finest place we have struck yet is Montreuil, very pale with plain houses jammed toegher round an enormous empty square. On top of a steep hill."

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Pretty darn exciting to be submitting the final proofs of this chapter, which represents about a year of some of the most interesting and rewarding research I've ever done. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Screenshot of a title page "We'll stay here 'til the fascist tomb is made" - the IWO and the International Brigades, Annabel Gottfried Cohen

A group of young people pose, fists raised, around a makeshift monument to their fallen comrade Ernest Arion who died fighting in the International Brigades

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Remembering the time that @sacrederviche.bsky.social and I had our first fight (sort of?) and he made me a dinner of everything I had in my fridge on a tortilla as a peace offering

What appears to be a small natural habitat made of giant mushrooms on top of fried potatoes and other green stuff on a tortilla

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Shofar in a boat for a Tuesday afternoon

a black cat in a small polystyrene white boat next to a few plant pots

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Friend who spent the past week traveling with me and my husband sent us this and I feel like I've won an award. I am giving "healthy" 😇 Generations of bat-shit dysfunctional ancestors + my teenage self are smiling down on me proudly (or cursing me 🪬 who knows with them honestly)

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Filling out emergency contact information in France be like

screenshot of a webpage reading 'J'ajoute les personnes de mon entourage' [I add the persons of my entourage]

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Evening brain balm from the canal du nord

Trees and fields reflected in the canal in low evening light

A footpath alongside a canal. A red bridge crosses the canal, on the other side are trees and fields

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Fundraiser post, cat for attention. (He is purring in this picture, no cats were harmed etc...) chuffed.org/project/1227...

A white woman with brown hair in a patterned sweater holding a black cat who looks very squished and uncomfortable

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Fave group chat memes so far, credits unknown

A picture of pippin from lord of the rings holding a glowing firey ring and screaming, caption reads "Pippin accidentally getting added to the Sauron-Saruman-Denethor group chat"

Pic of a statue of lenin looking at a small rectangular thing in his hand. Caption: "Lenin discovering Alexander Kerensky has accidentally added him to the Provisional Government group chat"

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Without downloading new pictures where are you at mentally?

A black cat with very wide open round eyes lying in a white tote bag

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Mir vitslen zikh in yidish klas / wisecracking in yiddish class The exercise is to match the descriptions with particular professions. 4. They make something with their hands. Answers: cook, baker, tailor, cobbler 5. They work from 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon Answer: The French.

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

We are anxious cat parents and got our cat a GPS collar and I think the best thing about it is when on a sunny day we randomly get an 'out of office' email from the cat

Screenshot of email from "Weenect": "mise à jour en cours: Shofar est indisponible pour quelques minutes" [update in progress: Shofar is unavailable for several minutes]

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Unexpected ref to British Cuisine(™) in a postcard from an American in Paris to friend fighting in the International Brigades in Spain, summer 1937. 'We're eating in a Belgian restaurant at the minute. The waiter, thinking us English, tried to give us something called 'Lemon Squatch' to drink.'

Black and white postcard showing the Soviet building at the Paris International Exposition 1937. Huge Brutalist structure with a communist flag in front, on the roof is a
statue of a man and woman holding a hammer and sickle in joined hands

Otherside of handwritten postcard containing text quoted above

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Love a bit of casual antisemitism from Mi5 (this is from their 1930s files monitoring suspected communists, which was automatically extended to include many foreigners who had left Nazi Germany or other fascist countries)

Screenshot of a typescript text "It may be of interest to record that I have recently received information tot he effect that on Tuesday the 5th. Inst, at about 9pm, an alien (male) and a woman called at 32 Wharton Street, WC. The alien's description is -6', age about37, well built, sallow complexion, wearing green Homburg had and grey cloth overcoat, and was carrying a camera. The woman's description is age about 40, 5'4", round figure, fair bobbed hair, fresh complexion, aquiline nose (not Jewish), wearing brown coat, stickingless but wearing short socks rolled down.

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Sometimes I like reading Communist personnel files and pretend that they are dating ads

Screenshot of a typescript document that reads "16. SCUDDER. A Seamen who has travelled all over the world and got drunk every place -hardly ever sober - decided not to shave the time he landed and looks like a blonde hairy ape - participated in many seamen strikes and was active in union - he uses swear words for his adjectives - "I told that cocksucking cocksucker you know fucken well that you can't fuck me on this fucken ship ..."

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

An incredible photo from the New York Yiddish Forverts, 27 January 1924, showing a group of "cemetery women" (klogmuters (wailers) and zogerkes (reciters) who worked in the Vilna cemetery, where they were paid to lead prayers and laments to the dead. Links below for more info 🧵

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Prepping a class on Ashkenazi ancestral connection practices and I'm obsessed this lament, collected in 1928, in which a wife literally lies down on her husband's grave and, reminding him how great his "thing" was, asks him to bless her and her new husband with a good sex life.

Screenshot of text: A wife at keyver-oves – collected in Laskarev by Isroel Briv

She lay down on the grave of her deceased husband and began:
Dear husband Moyshe-Nokhem. My sweet Moyshe-Nokhem, oh it’s been so long, and I haven’t been able to forget you. Your “thing” filled my every limb with pleasure. Dear Moyshe-Nokhem, see that you advocate for me and for my new husband, that things won’t be bad for us. Even in such [physical] matters, things are not bad for us. He has the same nature as you had … but I shouldn’t say sinful things. He also likes the things you used to like, Moyshe-Nokhem (quietly) Sweet Moyshe-Nokhem, do you remember how you used to press me so tightly that you almost squeezed my insides out of my belly? Be well, Moyshe-Nokhem, good day, Moyshe-Nokhem. Make efforts for me, Moyshe Nokhem.

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

[re-posting with alt-text] Happy anniversary to me + this particular algorithm

Screenshot of phone showing an email notification from audible.co.uk, subject “Adolf Hitler is waiting for you”

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Nobody: Absolutely no one: Audible push notifications: "Adolf Hitler is waiting in your library" (I was listening to Spike Milligan's autobiography)

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Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Memories from our teeny New York Studio. The thing about studio apartment living is you have to be very efficient in your use of space

A black cat sitting inside a red fabric storage box

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