All language subtitles for Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito, 2020)

It is Helen
Keller who salutes you.

It is Helen
Keller who salutes you.

You are
not familiar with my voice.

You are not
familiar with my voice.

I have written from my soul.

I have written from my soul.

Yeah, well, if
you offer me dinner

like you did so
nicely, I'll take it.

But if you had said,
well, time to go.

Mm, well.

There's no way I can have
two side by sides here.

I guess I can, if
I take this off.

Right, but you're
gonna have to take this off.

Yeah.

Tuscumbia...

"Socialism," she replies,

"I am a socialist because
I believe in fair play.

"What active socialistic.

"What active socialistic
work are you doing now?"

follows the reporter.

"Talking."

No, "Talking." Helen quickly
responds with a laugh,

"But wait till I get a
chance, then I'll be doing.

"Then, I'll be doing.
The highest ambition

"of my life is to
help my fellow men.

"To make them see
and hear as I do."

On February 6, 1913,
Helen Keller delivered her

first talk before
a general audience.

She was 32-years-old.

Though she'd already
given occasional addresses

at private gatherings in
conjunction with her work

on behalf of the blind and deaf,

her spoken voice was deemed
largely unintelligible,

necessitating someone,
more often than not,

her life-long teacher,
Anne Sullivan,

to repeat, sentence by
sentence, what Helen said.

The fact that she
could speak at all

was regarded to be a marvel,

as much a miracle as were the
first reports years earlier,

transmitted around the world,

that a seven-year-old
deaf blind child

from Tuscumbia, Alabama, had
learned to read and write.

Speaking to a group of reporters

in her hotel the night
before her lecture,

Helen is asked what her
latest field of interest is?

"Socialism," she replies.

"I am a socialist because
I believe in fair play."

"What active socialistic
work are you doing now?"

follows the reporter.

"Talking!" Helen quickly
responds with a laugh,

"But wait till I get a
chance, then I'll be doing.

"The highest ambition of my
life is to help my fellow men,

"to make them see
and hear as I do."

Despite nearly two years
of private vocal training,

Helen privately approaches
the event with trepidation,

regarding her voice, as she
would for the rest of her life,

to be "defective and halting".

Once the lecture gets underway,
stage fright sinks in.

"I felt my voice soaring and
I knew that meant falsetto,

"frantically I dragged it down

"till my words fell about
me like loose bricks,"

Helen later described
the experience.

At the end of her talk, Helen
leaves the stage in tears,

convinced she has failed,

feeling the lecture to
have been an ordeal,

"A pillory where I stood cold,

"riveted, trembling, voiceless."

For Hattie Schlossberg, a
reporter who heard Helen Keller

speak in 1913, the experience
is altogether different.

"I was not prepared
for what did come.

"The effect of her first
words was startling.

"It sounds weird and
uncanny at first,

"but this feeling passes away

"as soon as one gets
accustomed to the tone.

"Her voice is indescribable.

"It seems to come from
somewhere in the depths of her."

Thus would begin a
nearly 50-year run

on the lecture circuit.

As is the case with virtually
all of her political speeches,

no film, photographs,
or recordings survive

of the first talk that Helen
Keller delivered that night

inside the Hillside
elementary school auditorium.

She entitled her talk,
"The Heart and the Hand,

"or the Right Uses
of Our Senses."

A speech she would deliver a
month later under the title,

"The Heart and the Hand,
or True Socialism".

These were her words that night.

Writing in the "Ladies'
Home Journal" in 1907,

Keller takes the bold
step for the time

of addressing how mothers,
unknowingly infected

with syphilis by their
philandering husbands,

were inducing ophthalmia,
the most common cause

of blindness, upon
their newborn infants.

While medical science could
provide a remedy if promptly

and properly administered,
Keller writes how poverty,

lack of education, unequal
access to medicine,

and overall lack of
institutional support

hindered such initiatives.

In an address before the
Massachusetts Association

for Promoting the Interests
of the Blind, Keller says.

Concurrent with Helen
Keller's research

into the social
causes of blindness,

in 1908 her teacher, Anne
Sullivan, passes along to Helen

a newly published book of essays
by British author HG Wells

entitled "New Worlds For Old".

Depicting in detail
the stories of children

and workers living lives
of grinding poverty,

and incorporating numerous
sociological studies,

the book argues for
what Wells called

a "constructive
socialism" as the way

to confront these problems.

Additionally, as observed
by historian Philip Foner,

"New Worlds For Old"
also pointed out a role

Helen herself could
play in the movement

for a new and better society.

Over and above the promoting
of its main constructive ideas

and their more obvious and
practical applications,

Wells writes, "An immense
amount of intellectual work

"remains to be
done for socialism.

"The battle for socialism
is to be fought,

"not simply at the polls
and in the market place,

"but at the writing
desk and in the study."

In earnest, Helen begins to
educate herself on the issues,

remarking to a
friend years later,

"Something asleep in me awoke

"when I read the
radical literature."

Her reading list includes
German socialist periodicals

printed in Braille,
selected articles from the

National Socialist and
International Socialist Review,

Karl Marx's "Value,
Price, and Profit",

as well as "The
Communist Manifesto",

about which she declares, "if
it isn't imposed as tyranny,

"it is one of the finest pieces
of literature ever written".

She reads Karl Kautsky's
classic exposition

of the Erfurt Program,
"The Class Struggle".

Adopted at the Erfurt
Party Congress of 1891,

the German Workers'
Party program argued that

because capitalism, by its
very nature, must collapse,

the immediate task for
socialists was to work

for the improvement of
workers' lives rather than for

the revolution, which, it
is believed, was inevitable.

In an April 1911 editorial in
the Matilda Ziegler Magazine

for the Blind, Helen urges
the sightless to study

the economic problems
of the seeing

by reading two popular
socialist primers,

Robert Hunter's "Poverty"
and Edmond Kelly's

"Twentieth Century Socialism".

"Not for theory, as it is
scornfully called", she writes,

"but for facts about the
labor conditions in America."

As Helen's reading list grows,

so too does her
intellectual curiosity.

At one point, she requests
the National Institute

for the Blind in London
to translate into braille

a copy of Mikhail Bakunin's
"God and the State".

A book that preaches atheism,
destruction of the state,

and the embrace of anarchism.

While the Institute
has previously offered

to do transcripts of books
for Helen without charge,

its Secretary General
draws the line at Bakunin.

Despite her status as
one of the most revered

and renowned figures
in the nation,

Helen Keller's
forays into politics,

especially at a time when women

were still deprived
of the right to vote,

are frequently met with fierce
criticism, willfully ignored,

or pardoned as being the result
of bad influences upon her.

States one newspaper editorial:

"Helen Keller, struggling to
point the way for the deaf,

"dumb and blind is inspiring.

"Helen Keller
preaching socialism;

"Helen Keller passing on the
merits of the copper strike;

"Helen Keller sneering at the

"Constitution of
the United States;

"Helen Keller under
these aspects is pitiful.

"She is beyond her depth.

"She speaks with the
handicap of limitation

"which no amount of determination
or science can overcome.

"Her knowledge is, and must
be, almost purely theoretical,

"and unfortunately this world

"and its problems are
both very practical."

When in 1913, Helen
Keller publishes her book,

"Out Of The Dark:
Essays, Letters,

"and Addresses on Physical
and Social Vision",

including articles such as
"How I Became a Socialist",

"The Workers' Right",
"The Modern Woman",

and a "Letter to an
English Woman Suffragist",

it manages, in the words of her
biographer Dorothy Herrmann,

to "practically destroy
her angelic image."

♪ There's a winding trail

♪ Through the meadow grass

♪ And over the sunny hill

♪ To the wildwood wind

♪ Where a lad and lass

♪ Were thronged at
their own sweet will ♪

♪ A brown little lad

♪ With a freckled nose

♪ And a wee bony lass

♪ Like a sweet wild rose

♪ Over the hilltop

♪ And through the veil

♪ Treading the winding...

Founded in 1901,
the Socialist Party of America

was by 1912, an
exponentially expanding force

on the political landscape.

According to official records,

the Party had more than
1,000 of its members elected

to political office in
337 towns and cities.

This included 56
Socialist mayors,

305 aldermen and councilmen,

22 police officials,
155 school officials,

and four pound-keepers.

The Socialist cause was
promoted by 323 papers

and periodicals, including five
daily newspapers in English,

eight in other languages,

262 weeklies in English,

36 in other languages,

and 12 monthlies.

10 in English and two
in other languages.

Total circulation of
this press was estimated

to have been more
than two million.

"The Appeal to Reason",
published in Kansas

and always the most widely read

of the Socialist publications,

whose motto was "Socialism
is not just a theory,

"it is a destiny",
reaches a circulation

of nearly 700,000 in that year.

And, in 1912, as
candidate for the

Socialist Party of America
in the Presidential election,

Eugene Debs receives
nearly one million votes.

This was before women's suffrage

and represents 6%
of the popular vote.

A source of tremendous
media attention at the time,

Helen Keller's graduation in
1904 from Radcliffe College,

Harvard's segregated
sister institution,

establishes her as the
first blind-deaf individual

to ever graduate from college.

Even before receiving her
degree, Helen's awareness of her

class privilege and unique
opportunities is growing.

She would come to
describe Harvard as

"perhaps the most imposing
monument to dead ideas

"in this country where such
monuments are numerous."

Pressed as to why she
came to this opinion,

she replied that, "They did
not teach me about things

"as they are today, or
about the vital problems

"of the people.

"They taught me Greek
drama and Roman history,

"the celebrated
achievements of war,

"rather than those of
the heroes of peace.

"For instance, there were
a dozen chapters on war

"where there were a few
paragraphs about the inventors,

"and it is the over-emphasis
on the cruelties of life

"that breeds the wrong ideal.

"Education has taught me
that it was a finer thing

"to be a Napoleon than
to create a new potato."

Accepting an invitation years
later to speak at Radcliffe,

Helen tells the attendees:

"I have never attached great
value to academic fame,

"and I am not much
interested in whether

"or not people praise
Radcliffe's scholarship.

"What I care about is that
every thought, every work,

"every act should be vital with
the will to serve mankind."

One month after delivering
her first public lecture,

Helen Keller is invited to speak

at the 1913 Woman's
Suffrage Procession,

the first suffrage parade to
be held in Washington, DC,

and strategically
scheduled for the day prior

to the inauguration
of Woodrow Wilson.

Firmly opposed to
the idea of women

having the right to
vote, Wilson, a Democrat,

takes office characterizing
those women who campaigned

for suffrage as
"totally abhorrent".

Organized by Alice Paul for the

National American Woman
Suffrage Association,

the procession draws
some 8,000 marchers,

featuring nine bands,
four mounted brigades,

and over 20 floats,
who lead their parade

before thousands of spectators,
many of them, mostly men,

in town for the inauguration.

After proceeding
for a few blocks,

crowds of spectators
move into the street

impeding the ability for
many marchers to pass.

Women are shoved,
tripped, insulted,

spat upon, while police
officers either stand idly by

or are seen reveling
in the commotion.

For the next six hours,
ambulances fight their way in

and out of the crowd attempting
to retrieve the injured.

By day's end, over
200 people are

treated at local hospitals.

So exhausted and unnerved
by the experience

and her attempts to
reach the grandstand,

Helen Keller finds
herself unable to later

speak at Constitution Hall.

The following day she
recounts her impressions

for the syndicated press,

although few transmit the
full extent of her report.

While Helen Keller's
recounting of the events

of the Woman Suffrage Pageant
receives little circulation,

her concurrent critique
of the swearing in of

President Woodrow Wilson does,

even leading one newspaper
editor to describe it as

"The most remarkable
printed anywhere

"on the inauguration in
Washington yesterday."

When interviewed by the press,

Helen underscores that she
is not just a suffragist

but a "militant suffragist".

As she explains to a reporter
for "The New York Times",

"I believe that suffrage
will lead to socialism

"and to me, socialism
is the ideal cause."

Mindful of the fact that the
right to vote was itself no

guarantee of the fostering of
fundamental structural change,

in her 1911 "Letter to an
English Woman Suffragist",

she expounds further on
the nature of the problem.

Following the outbreak
of war in Europe in 1914,

a small, vocal, and highly
influential group of bankers,

lawyers, and businessmen
launches a campaign to persuade

the Wilson administration
and the country at large

that the United States needs
to prepare itself for war.

Led by General Leonard Wood

and former President
Theodore Roosevelt,

the so-called
"Preparedness Movement"

argues for an immediate build-up
of naval and land forces

and the instituting
of compulsory

universal military training.

With the Socialist Party at
the forefront of opposition

to any such build-up,
it is announced that on

December 19th, 1915, Helen
Keller will publicly present

the Socialist interpretation
of the causes of the

European war and the dangers
confronting the United States.

Sponsored by the Labor Forum

and to be held at Washington
Irving High School in New York,

it is further announced that,
"Miss Keller will advocate

"the General Strike
as the speediest way

"to end the European conflict."

By the time the
event gets underway,

there are an estimated
2,000 in attendance,

and hundreds more who have
to be turned away.

Her speech is called "Menace
of the Militarist Program".

At the conclusion
of her remarks,

the crowd rises to its feet

and collectively breaks out

into the singing
of La Marseillaise.

Exiting the school building,

Helen is greeted
by a large crowd.

According to a report
the following day

in the "New York Times", when
"Miss Keller told the throng

"that she would speak, so
great was the rush towards

"the steps to hear her
that the police reserves

"of East 22nd Street
Station were called out

"to restore order."

Helen repeats her appeal
for workers not to serve

in the proposed army of defense,

again concluding with a call
for a "world-encircling revolt"

upon which there is a
concerted rush towards her,

provoking police officers
to lift Helen off her feet

and carry her to a
waiting automobile.

In the days immediately
following the talk,

pro-preparedness
groups demand that the

New York City Board of
Education revoke the

Labor Forum's permit
to ever again use the

Washington Irving High School
building for public meetings.

Going even further,
protesters declare

"that no organization that
lends itself to furthering

"the propaganda of disloyalty
and anarchy be permitted

"to occupy public school halls

"in order to disseminate
their doctrines."

Helen is quick to
issue a response.

Following her talk
at the Labor Forum,

Helen leaves for a lengthy
lecture tour throughout the West.

Spurred by the impassioned
response Helen's

speech received
from the audience,

and with its aftermath still
swirling about in the press,

the Women's Peace Party
and the Labor Forum

jointly reach out to Helen
requesting she return

to New York to deliver
a second speech,

this time to be held
at Carnegie Hall.

Enthusiastic about the prospect,

Helen makes one stipulation,

that admission to
the talk be free.

All of the trade
unions in New York City

and their members are invited.

On January 5, 1916, a
packed audience comprised

principally of women
assembles in Carnegie Hall

to hear Helen Keller again speak

on the subject of
militarism and resistance.

As Helen takes the
stage and advances

to the front of the platform,

she is cheered for 15 minutes

before she can deliver
her first words.

Women rise to their feet,
waving their handkerchiefs,

shouting and applauding
until exhaustion.

For the next hour
and 10 minutes,

Helen lays out the arguments
for resisting the move toward

increased military buildup

and the implementation
of conscription.

She denounces the
tactics of fear-mongering

being used to argue
for armaments,

and outlines the connections
between the banking industry,

foreign investments, and
the munitions industry.

"Behind the preparedness
propaganda" Helen says,

"is an attempt to
divert attention away

"from the hard realities of
economic strife at home."

She denounces the fundamental
flaws of the system.

She points out that, "the
ballot does not make a free man

"out of a wage slave.

"There has never
existed a truly free

"and democratic nation in
the world," she states.

"From time immemorial men have
followed with blind loyalty

"the strong men who had the
power of money and of armies.

"Even while battlefields were
piled high with their own dead

"they have tilled the
lands of the rulers

"and have been robbed of
the fruits of their labor.

"What workers want,"
Helen declares,

"is nothing short of
the reorganization

"and reconstruction
of their whole lives,

"until every individual has
a chance to be well-born,

"well nourished,
rightly educated."

She urges for a nationwide
strike against war

and weapons manufacture.

She concludes by
bidding the audience,

"Be not dumb, obedient slaves
in an army of destruction.

"Be heroes in an army
of construction."

In the audience that night is
poet Anna Strunsky Walling,

who writes of the impact
of the experience.

"You walked forward as
if you wanted to run;

"Eagerness was in your feet,
in the lift of your head,

"in your brilliant smile.

"You walked forward
and took your place

"at the edge of the platform,
facing the great audience.

"Impenetrable night
was around you,

"though the light of
enthusiasm flashed

"from thousands of
eyes more brilliant

"than the brilliant
illumination of the hall.

"Impenetrable
silence, though music

"and speaking had preceded
you, and now, at sight of you,

"the thousands
broke into applause.

"You stood in the
dark of the night,

"in the silence of the tomb,

"a spear of light,
a star, a voice.

"Oh, unforgettable
experience of my soul!

"When first the
effulgence of your courage

"and your youth laid
its spell upon me!"

Though never averse to the
situational use of force

when necessary to advance
revolutionary aspirations,

Helen Keller maintained
a life-long commitment

to speaking out against
military adventurism.

Reflecting back many years later

on the period of the 1916
Preparedness debate, Helen wrote.

As Helen Keller's embrace
of socialist ideas grows

more fervent, so too does her
dissatisfaction with rising

factionalism within the
Socialist Party of America.

After the 1912 elections,
and following much argument,

the constitution of the
Socialist Party is amended

to ban membership by any who
would advocate the tactical

use of sabotage or violence.

In a debate with Party
President Eugene Debs,

syndicalist organizer Big
Bill Haywood proclaims that,

"No Socialist can be
a law-abiding citizen.

"When we come together
and are of a common mind,

"and the purpose of our
minds is to overthrow

"the capitalist system,
we become conspirators

"against the United
States Government."

While many attack the
anti-sabotage clause,

including Walter Lippman,
Max Eastman, Margaret Sanger,

and others, Helen
Keller doesn't sign.

Instead, writing in the socialist
daily The New York Call,

she chastises the infighting.

"It fills me with amazement
to see such a narrow spirit,

"and such ignoble strife
between two factions

"which should be one, and
that, too, at a most critical

"period in the struggle
of the proletariat.

"What?

"Are we to put differences
of party tactics

"before the desperate
needs of the workers?"

While never fully breaking her
ties with party affiliation,

within a few short years,
it becomes manifest

where Helen's affinities lie
when she aligns herself with

the foremost radical labor
organization in the country.

Known variously as the
Industrial Workers of the World,

the IWW, or the Wobblies,
it is founded in 1905

in Chicago as an international
labor organization

united as a social class
aiming to supplant capitalism

and wage labor with a program
of "industrial democracy".

Even with general public
awareness of Helen Keller's

socialist sympathies, her
joining forces with the IWW

is feared to be a tipping point.

One week following her
Carnegie Hall speech,

Helen is interviewed at
length by Barbara Bindley

for the "New York Tribune".

If Helen's recent call for
"one great world-wide union"

and for
"globe-encircling revolt"

hadn't made it clear enough,

the Tribune article
would leave no doubts.

Early in the conversation,
the interviewer asks Helen

how it was that she
first gravitated

toward being a social crusader.

Whether because
of, or in spite of,

having been born in
the South in the 1880s

to a father who'd owned
slaves before the Civil War

and who'd served as a captain
in the Confederate Army,

Helen Keller emerged
as a public advocate

against racial injustice.

Paying tribute to her in
1931, African-American writer,

scholar, and activist WEB
Dubois described having

encountered Helen as a child
when she first attended

the Perkins Institute for
the Blind in Massachusetts.

"When I was studying
Philosophy under William James,

"we made an excursion
one day out to Roxbury.

"We stopped at the Blind
Asylum and saw a young girl

"who was deaf and dumb and
who yet, by infinite pains

"and loving sympathy, had been
made to speak without words

"and to understand
without sound."

Oh dear me.

My hearing

aids began to fail,

and so they make a sound.

And I'm sorry.

Well, let's just start
again from the beginning.

Right-o.

"We stopped at the Blind
Asylum and saw a young girl

"who was deaf and dumb and
who yet, by infinite pains

"and loving sympathy, had been
made to speak without words

"and to understand
without sound.

"She was Helen Keller.

"Perhaps because she was blind

"to color difference
in this world,

"I became intensely
interested in her

"and all through my life I
have followed her career.

"Finally, there came the
thing that I had somehow

"sensed would come, Helen was
in her own state, Alabama,

"being feted and made much
of by her fellow citizens.

"And yet courageously,
and frankly,

"she spoke out on the inequity

"and foolishness
of the color line.

"It cost her something to speak.

"They wanted her to retract
but she stayed serene

"in the consciousness of the
truth that she had uttered.

"And so it was proven,
as I knew it would be,

"that this woman
who sits in darkness

"has a spiritual
insight much clearer

"than that of many
wide-eyed people who stare

"uncomprehendingly at
this prejudiced world."

On April 7, 1917, one day
following the U.S. Congress'

declaration of war on Germany

and formal entry
into World War I,

an emergency meeting of the
Socialist Party of America

convenes in St. Louis, Missouri.

By an overwhelming majority,

the Party denounces
America's entry as

"a crime against the people",

declares it a war
"imperialistic on both sides",

and pledges "continuous,
active, and public opposition

"to the war, through
demonstrations, mass petitions,

"and all other means
within our power.

"We will not willingly
give a single life

"or a single dollar."

Within two months, President
Wilson signs into law

the Espionage Act, enabling
sentences up to 20 years

for anyone willfully interfering

with military operations
or recruitment.

Immediately socialists
throughout the country are indicted,

convicted and jailed, a third
of Socialist meeting halls

are destroyed, and
dissemination of the majority

of socialist publications
are banned from the mails.

On June 15th, 1917 in New York,

Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman are arrested

during a raid on their offices,

charged with conspiracy to
"induce persons not to register"

and sentenced to
two years in prison.

In July, 1917 in North Dakota,

Kate Richards O'Hare is
sentenced to five years in prison

for making an anti-war speech.

On September 5th, 1917,
a national dragnet

rounds up 166 senior
members of the IWW,

raiding the headquarters
of the Socialist Party

and of the IWW and
20 branch offices

of the IWW in different states.

Among them are many of Helen's
close friends and allies,

provoking her to send
an impassioned appeal

directly to President Wilson.

Helen puts the
President on notice.

She makes the argument squarely.

She lays her cards
fully on the table,

valiantly divulging
more to the President.

When Vladimir Lenin and the
Bolshevik revolutionary forces

seize power in Russia
in the Fall of 1917,

in a nearly bloodless
coup d'etat,

the enthusiasm it generates
among progressive circles

worldwide is electric.

For Helen Keller as for many,

the establishment of the
world's first constitutionally

socialist state
offers, from afar,

the promise that the dream
of a more egalitarian

and just restructuring
of the world

could in fact be made a reality.

By the late 1930s, with
the arrival of reports

on the wave of political
purges, mass executions

and incarcerations
in the Soviet Union,

Helen's support of
the Russian experiment

becomes tempered,
albeit somewhat.

Belatedly she would in
time turn against Stalin,

though her conviction
in the promise

of the Soviet dream endured,

gaining new traction when
the Russian Army combats

Nazi Germany during
World War II.

Following a forthright dinner
discussion with a staunch

critic of the Soviet
Union in 1943,

Helen decides to
follow up with a letter

hoping to clarify
any misunderstanding.

As Helen confided to a friend
about the exchange days later,

"Alas, I am incorrigible,

"but what can one do when
one believes that the truth

"is the highest compliment human
beings can pay each other?"

So the question is
about the Soviet Union,

and particularly about Lenin.

So what was Leninism?

Well, here we have
to look at the facts.

Now, you know, if you
look at the facts,

I think here's what you find.

Lenin was a right-wing deviation
of the Socialist Movement

and he was so regarded.

He was regarded as
that by the Marxists,

by the mainstream Marxists.

We've forgotten who the
mainstream Marxists were

because they lost.

And you only remember
the guys who won.

But if you go to that period,

the mainstream Marxists, were
people like, for example,

Anton Pannekoek, who
was head of education

for the Marxist movement.

He was one of the
people who Lenin later

denounced as an
infantile leftist.

But he was one of the
leading intellectuals

of the actual Marxist movement.

Rosa Luxemburg was another
mainstream Marxist,

and there were others.

And they were very...

in fact, Trotsky was
one up until 1917.

They were all very
critical of Leninism

because of this, what
they regarded as this

opportunistic vanguardism.

The idea that the
radical intelligentsia

were gonna exploit
popular movements

to seize state power.

And then to use that state power

to whip the population into
the society that they chose.

After all, the core of
Socialism was understood

to be workers control
over production.

That was the core.

That's where you begin with

and then you go on
with other things.

But the beginning is control

by the workers over production,

and that's where it begins.

Then Lenin took
power in October 1917

in what's called a revolution,

but in my view it ought
to be called a coup.

And things followed that coup,

or revolution if you
want to call it that.

One of the things
that followed it

was the immediate
moves to destroy

the Soviets and the
factory councils.

Those were some
of the first moves

of Lenin and Trotsky, Trotsky
joined at that point,

after they took state power.

In fact, if you look
at what Lenin wrote

after that period, or did,

you'll find it's a reversion
to the earlier position.

This sort of left deviation
is that, a deviation.

You could ask why, in my view
it was just opportunistic.

He knew that in
order to gain power,

he was gonna have
to go along with

the popular currents
that were developing.

Which were in fact,
spontaneous, and libertarian,

and socialist, as most
popular movements are.

Have been in fact
since the 17th century.

And being an astute
politician, which he was,

he sort of went along with that

and talked the line that
the people wanted to hear.

It's just like when
an American politician

goes somewhere and his
pollsters tell him,

say so and so and he says it.

Doesn't mean he believes in it.

And I think Lenin was doing
the same thing without the polls

Well, after that,
comes the view that

all of this is Socialism.

And why should the communist
parties take that view?

I think the reason is
because they wanted to

sort of exploit the
moral force of Socialism,

which was quite real.

You know, it's kind of hard
to remember that today.

But at that time
it was very real.

This was regarded as a
progressive moral force

and by associating their
own destruction of Socialism

with the aura of Socialism,

they hope to gain credit
in the working classes

and other group
progressive sectors.

Now, the West also identified
that with Socialism.

And they did it for
the opposite reason.

They wanted to
associate Socialism

with the brutality
of the Russian state

that undermines Socialism.

So what you had is
is that two major

world propaganda agencies,

for their own and quite
different reasons,

were claiming that
this is Socialism.

That this destruction of
Socialism is Socialism.

It's very hard to break out of

the control of the
world's two major

propaganda agencies
when they agree.

They agreed for
different reasons.

But they basically
agreed and that

then became doctrine and dogma.

Among the 20,000 books
hurled into the infamous

Berlin bonfires of 1933,

an event organized by
the German Student Union

accompanying Hitler's
rise to power,

was Helen Keller's
"Out Of The Dark".

In an "Open Letter to
the Students of Germany",

Helen responded.

In 1946, while Helen travels
throughout war-torn Europe,

visiting with those blinded

or otherwise
disabled by the war,

a malfunctioning furnace
in her home in Connecticut

burns the entire
house to the ground.

All of Helen's
possessions are destroyed,

including all her papers,
letters, mementos,

as well as the manuscript
for her long-planned

biography of her
teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Within a year, through
the generosity of friends,

the house is rebuilt.

Regarding the loss, Helen
publicly conceals her sorrow,

simply remarking that
she is happy to be rid

of the dangerous old furnace.

When, eight years
later, at age 74,

Helen finishes the re-writing
of her book, "Teacher",

she expresses gratefulness
that the earlier manuscript

had burned, now
convinced that she'd

found the proper
perspective needed.

On September 11, 2001, beyond
the catastrophic loss of life

resulting from the attacks
on the World Trade Center,

fiery debris falling
from the South Tower

strikes a building
one block away,

housing, among other businesses,

the headquarters of the
Helen Keller International.

Founded in 1915 by George
Kessler and Helen Keller

and established initially
to treat veterans blinded

in World War I, the Helen
Keller International

has evolved into one of the
oldest nonprofit organizations

dedicated to
preventing blindness

and reducing
malnutrition worldwide.

The building is
severely damaged,

and two workers are
killed when they are

trapped inside the elevators.

Within the offices of the
Helen Keller International,

fire breaks out.

In addition to the loss of
the entire institutional

archives of the organization,

is an irreplaceable
collection of photos, letters,

and books of Helen Keller.

While virtually
all is destroyed,

those sifting through
the rubble discover,

singed but intact, a
terra cotta bust of Helen

bestowed as a gift on her
first trip to Japan in 1937.

Following the end
of World War II,

Helen returns to Japan in
1948, sent by Douglas MacArthur

as America's first
Goodwill Ambassador.

With an irony that
does not escape her,

she tours the country making
an appeal for new laws

on behalf of the welfare
of the physically disabled.

Accompanied by her
secretary Polly Thomson,

she revisits Hiroshima.

Toward the close of
"Midstream: My later life",

Helen Keller's second
autobiography, is a chapter,

part confession, part
testament, part invitation,

entitled "Thoughts that
will not let me sleep".

Miss Keller, I shall
ask you a few questions,

and Miss Thomson will
transmit them to you.

Tell me Miss Keller, I
know you will realize

the question isn't as
impertinent as it may sound.

Are you happy?

- Yes, I am happy.
- Happiness comes from within.

I have time and faith,
I am happy.

If you could
have one wish granted,

what would it be?

I would wish for light in
every eye and in every mind.