Enver Pasha in Moscow

I recently dug up an article where socialist-leaning American journalist Louise Bryant recalls her meetings with former Ottoman Minister of War (and de facto leader) Enver Pasha while the latter was in exile in Moscow. It's a pretty interesting window into his personality. It's also kind of surreal, like if Hitler was just crashing on your couch for a couple years. Highlights:

marxists.org/archive//bryant/works/1923-mom/pasha.htm

>No man I ever met lives so completely in the immediate moment as Enver Pasha; the past he puts behind him, the future he leaves to Allah. His only hero is Napoleon.

>He likes any discussion which reveals another person's deepest emotions. If he cannot rouse one any other way he does so by some antagonistic remark which often he does not mean at all. For example, he is extremely liberal in his opinions about women and does not think they should be excluded from political life. Nevertheless, he said to a young actress at tea one afternoon in my apartment, when they were talking about woman suffrage, that she would be better off in a harem. "Enver Pasha, you may be a great man in the East, but just listen to me I I am one of the first actresses of my profession. In my world it is every bit as great and important for me to remain an actress as it is for you in your world to remain a warrior or a diplomat." Enver took his scolding in very good humor. Afterwards he told me that he had never liked this actress before. "Independence is a great thing in women. Our women lack it and many of them are just puppets on this account."

>Every morning he rose early to go for a long walk, he read a great deal, took at least three lessons in some foreign language every week and was constantly writing articles for Turkish papers which he printed on a hand press in his own room, and he held almost daily conferences either with the Russians or the Mohammedans. He does not drink or smoke and is devoutly religious.

>he is extremely liberal in his opinions about women and does not think they should be excluded from political life. Nevertheless, he said to a young actress at tea one afternoon in my apartment, when they were talking about woman suffrage, that she would be better off in a harem
Based

Wow, what a strange article. Thanks for sharing

Did he bring winter clothes?

Is this the Armenian national hero enver pasha?

>He was always extremely interested in American ideas and American opinions. He said he could never understand why Americans were so sentimental about Armenians. "Do they imagine that Armenians never kill Turks? That is indeed irony."

>Enver is no open sesame to those who do not know him well. He really has the traditional Oriental inscrutability. The first two or three times I talked with him, we stumbled along rather lamely in French. Someone suggested to me that he probably spoke several languages which, for some unknown reason, he would not admit. So one day I said abruptly, "Oh, let's speak English." He looked at me with one of his sudden, rare smiles and answered in my own language, "Very well, if you prefer it."
>When I asked him how he learned English he told me he had learned it from an English spy. "He came to me as a valet and professed deep love for Turkey. For several months we studied diligently. One day I thought I would test his love for Turkey so I ordered him to the front. He was killed. Later, we found his papers."
>"Were you surprised?" I asked him.
>"Why, not at all," said Enver. "He really showed a great deal of pluck."

Was it autism?

How can one man be so based?

He seems too extroverted and charismatic for that. On the other hand you have things like this:

>When he had finished the sketch he signed his name with a flourish and presented it to me. I took it but said nothing. Enver has the curiosity of a child, and, after a long silence, he asked me if it was possible that I did not really like it. I said that I thought he had no talent for drawing. He became suddenly quite angry and said in a low voice, "But do you realize I have signed my name to it?"
>"Your name doesn't mean anything on a picture," I explained. "If it was an order for an execution or an advance it would be another matter. You can't make a good drawing just by signing your name to it."
>He frowned and then grew cordial as suddenly as he had grown angry. He rose and bowed to me in a most courtly way. "You can't imagine," he said, "how pleasing arrogance is to me."

I see the eternal Turk and the eternal Anglo are getting along well

>He tried to get Mr. Vanderlip's reaction on women by the same tactics he employed with the actress. One day he said, "I have three wives and I'm looking for another." This was not true, but Mr. Vanderlip proved entirely gullible. "Good heavens," he said, regarding Enver in shocked surprise, "we Anglo-Saxons consider one wife enough tyranny. . . . "

>"Naturally," Enver conceded, suavely, "with one there must be tyranny but with three or four or a hundred. . . . Ah, you must agree that is quite a different matter."