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Posted on 06/13/2002 1:59:27 AM PDT by lavaroise
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:35 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
PETROPAVLOVSK, Russia--The red flag of the old Soviet Union still flies over the soccer stadium here, and statues of Lenin still dominate the public squares of Siberian cities. Only Stalin has vanished from Russia's past and with him any idea of reconciliation with the walking shadows of the country's history.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
"it was an essential tenet of communism that individualism is forbidden--be it economic individualism or political thought in opposition to the state."And this is a fundamental tenet of contemporary American "Liberalism".
"By 1929 Stalin had decided to liquidate kulaks as a class, and a kulak was defined as any independently successful person--a farmer who had three cows instead of two, for example--or any person who opposed collectivization or the government. ""Liberals" decided to eliminate kulaks also. They have never wavered in their determination to do so.
"Liberal" elites, of course--just like Stalinist elites or Nazi elites--live by a standard entirely different from that to which they hold the peasants. Elites obviously are not expected to "hang out their own clothes to dry on clotheslines", for example; to be stopped by some silly little security guard ("Run over the bastard. Who the hell does he think he is?"); or to obey any of the other laws that they establish for everyone else.
And make no mistake: "Liberals" would not hesitate for one second to establish a "slave-labor economy", with--that's right! you guessed it!--you and me providing the labor!
"The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Walter Duranty ("I put my money on Stalin") intentionally falsified his reporting about Soviet-induced famines and abuses, writing in 1933 that yes, there might be a few deaths, but 'you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.' "The New York Times has certainly not changed any. Neither has the rest of the American Mainstream Media. Sound like the Sunday morning yack-shows? Sound like The Three Stooges on the nightly news?
"In France, philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote that "accounts of the Soviet labor system should be suppressed even if true, since otherwise the French working class might become anti-Soviet.""And neither has the "intelligentsia". Sound like contemporary American academia? Hollywood?
Make no mistake about his either: "Liberals" would cheerfully march us all down "The Road of Death" into internment camps, as ruthlessly as any Soviet dictator.
In theory, that is what was said. In reality, the early 20s in Russia had a blossoming of art and literature and a measure of criticizm and debate was allowed (though mostly within the Politburo), i.e. 'Socialism in One Country' vs Spreading of the Revolution', Rapid Industrialization etc.
Lenin was more flexible than Stalin. When traditional 'confiscation' of policies had failed in providing enough grain to support Trotsky's Red Army during the civil war, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy that did allow small 'enterprises' which lead to a much greater production of grain and a rapid expansion of the 'kulak classes'. Would Lenin have done the same as Stalin once the White Russians had been vanquished?
A comparison could be made to the time of Tito's Yugoslavia which after WWII followed a very strict Stalinist 'economic' method for two years or so before it clear that it didn't work and undermined Tito's popular WWII support. So, the policy was 'modified', i.e. limited private enterprise was allowed (companies with a maximum of 20 persons) etc.. I personally know of someone in Zagreb who from the 1960s ran his own Volkswagen showroom and retired with a large sum of DMs.
VRN
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