Ukrainians want pro-Stalin writer stripped of Pulitzer

The Observer ^ | May 4, 2003 | Askold Krushelnycky

[MEG33]

Now that's a reach too far!

[amused]

Now that's a reach too far!

Sometimes you read this stuff and you need a leftist to English dictionary. ;-)

[martianagent]

I'm sure you're aware of the story of Pavlik Morozov, the peasant kid who turned in his father and other villagers for trying to keep enough food so as not to starve and was himself killed by his grandfather with an axe. Pavlik became a hero of the CCCP with pioneer and comsomol lagers and what not named after him. A thoroughly perverted system.

[jodorowsky]

Gareth Jones website

Wow... that is going to be a fun read. I'd never heard of him either. Thanks!

[jodorowsky]

I like Burroughs' take on the incident...

Fifty years ago, deep in the Ural mountains of Lower Slobbovia, a thirteen-year old prick named Pavlik Morozov denounce his father to the local authorities as a counter-revolutionary kulak because he had a pig hidden in his basement. (A kulak is a subsistence farmer.) That was when Stalin was starving out the kulaks to make way for collective farms, which didn't work. Stalin levied an outrageous produce tax, knowing that the farmers would hide their crops, then sent out patrols to search and seize concealed produce and farm animals. At least three million people starved to death in the winters of 1932 and 1933, and that's a conservative estimate.

Little Pavliki was hacked to stroganoff by the outraged neighbors -- good job and all. Thus perish all talking a******s.

"His name must not die!" sobbed Maxim Gorky, his hearty voice contracted by painful emotion. So Pavliki became a folk hero. Got a street in Moscow named after him, and a statue to commemorate his heroic act. He should have been sculpted with the head of a rat. And the viilage of Gerasimovka is a f*****g shrine, drawing legions of youthful pilgrims to the home of Pavlik Morozov.

"Dirty little Stukach."

That's Ruski for "rat" -- a word designed to be spat out.

[DPB101]

Good Burroughs quote. Another from a letter he wrote to Jack Kerouac in 1950:

"I fear the U.S. is headed for socialism, which means, of course, ever increasing interference in the business of each citizen. Whatever happened to the glorious frontier, of minding one's own business? The word liberal has come to stand for the most damnable tyranny, a snivelling, mealymouthed tyranny of bureaucrats, social workers, psychologists and union officials. The world of 1984 is not even 30 years away."

Wonder if anyone has heard of Gareth Jones?. He died young but was a prolific writer. I've read most of the anticommunist books and can't recall ever hearing the name.

[Temple Owl]

The overwhelming number of Pulitzer Prizes went to left-wing liberals. That's because the board, which decides who gets them, is composed of left-wing liberals--many are communists.

[jodorowsky]

I saw your link to Gareth Jones via a later post -- thanks a lot!

I collect English-language pro-Soviet stuff from the 30s and prior. (That has a different sort of appeal from the likes of Jones.)

One day I am going to web my collection of English language apologetics for the 5 Year Plans.

I have this excellent children's primer on the plan, that was a Book of the Month in 1931! ("New Russia's Primer"). Professor George S. Counts of Columbia wrote the introduction to this translation. Upon reading this book, says Prof Counts, the American teacher will

be forced to put to himself the question: Can we not in some way harness the school to the task of building a better, a more just, a more beautiful society? Can we not broaden the sentimnt of patriotism to embrace the struggles which men must ever wage with ignorance, disease, poverty, ugliness, injustice? This means that we shall have to turn our attention increasingly from the mechanics of school procedure to the fundamental problems of American life and culture."

Columbia.

I am also a great fan of Pat Sloan, author of "Russia Without Illusions", a hilariously naive travel journal by a young and idealistic Englishman. With a preface by Beatrice Webb, of course ;) I mean,

If, in the USSR, a citizen is tried for any offence it is the duty of the trade union not only to pay any expenses which may arise out of the case, but in addition to assist the court in the reform of the person concerned, if found guity. In the case of a serious offence the person may be deprived of liberty and sent to a labour camp. In such circumstances he or she will lose trade union membership. But a common treatment of less serious offences lies in the imposition of what is called, strangely enough, "forced labour". When condemned to forced labour, a Soviet citizen retains his or her liberty, but a regular deduction is made from wages as a sort of instalment-system fine...

From 1917 to the present time much propaganda in this country has been carried on to the effect that in the USSR there are no longer moral standards. Nothing could be more misleading. (...)

This is from 1938.

[liberalnot]

thanks for the gareth jones tip. i, too, had never heard of him. but then it's obvious--the leftists are always the ones in the news.

i was amazed a couple of weeks ago to find in the print ed of the new york times that when they listed all of the pulitzers they've won, that they listed walter duranty for 1932! unbelievable.

the standard source on the number of deaths in stalinist russia has been robert conquest and his book on the same.

i've been in los angeles all day and am tired.

[T'wit]

The Muggeridge piece is stunning. It is the very moment of disillusion of a man reared on socialism, in his every thought and hope a True Believer, who at last sees the grim and hideous truth. His words are like swords slicing down on venomous snakes.

[DPB101]

The print version isn't as bad as the New York Times list of Pulitzers on the net. All they say is Duranty won it and then "his reporting has been discredited by New York Times reporters and others".

Ten million dying on the streets and his story had been merely "discredited?"

Gareth Jones and others laid out the facts in 1933. Duranty wrote what Stalin told him to write.