The phrase "ash heap of history", literarily speaking, refers to ghost towns or artifacts that have lost their relevance. Visiting

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

in the 14th century, Italian writer

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

called the city "a rubbish heap of history". In 1887 the English essayist

Augustine Birrell Augustine Birrell KC (19 January 185020 November 1933) was a British Liberal Party politician, who was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916. In this post, he was praised for enabling tenant farmers to own their property, and for exte ...

(1850–1933) coined the term in his series of essays, "Obiter Dicta": ''that great dust heap called 'history.' '' A notable usage was that of the Russian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

referring to the Mensheviks: "Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!" as the Menshevik faction walked out of the

All-Russian Congress of Soviets The All-Russian Congress of Soviets evolved from 1917 to become the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 until 1936, effectively. The 1918 Constitution of the Russian SFSR mandated that Congress sha ...

on 25 October 1917 in Petrograd. In a speech to the British House of Commons, on 8 June 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan later responded that "freedom and democracy will leave

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

and Leninism on the ash heap of history".

Notes

References

{{Reflist Political catchphrases English phrases Historical negationism 14th-century neologisms Metaphors referring to objects