STILL STRUGGLING WITH STALIN: Uncle Joe's old fans play dumb

Reason.com ^ | Aug. 27 2002 | Cathy Young

[tet68]

Kolyma, Kolyma
Chudnaya planeta
Dvenadsat mesyatsov zima
Ostalnoye leto.

Kolyma, Kolyma
Wonderful planet.
12 months of winter,
the rest is summer.

[Perseverando]

Thanks for the post! Communism, the monster that just won't die.

Bump!

[VRW Conspirator]

I would like to see Spielberg do a movie about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago .

[dfwgator]

Or a movie on how the Russians treated the Poles, like the Germans treated the Jews.

[dead]

I was having an argument with a liberal I know, and he actually said the following...

"Maybe if America had not engaged them in a cold war, the Soviet Union might have been able to succeed in their quest to create a viable communist state."

He was appalled when I said the same thing about Hitler's Nazi dream, and couldn't see the parallels.

[FreedomCalls]

Actually, just Chapter 7 of Gulag 3 would make an EXCELLENT movie. It's the part called "The White Kitten, or Georgi Tenno's Tale". It's about an escape from Ekibastuz prison. Two men escape but just outside the fence and unknown to them the prison suffers a power failure and the guards set off a bunch of flares. They think the have been discovered, so they abandon their well thought out plans and quickly improvise a different one. To give the end away, the men flee for over 7 days and nights down to the banks of the Irtysh River where they capture a family and their boat. Just at the point where they were going to kill the Peasant and his wife, steal the boat and make their way to probable freedom, the family's little white kitten rubs up against the leader's leg which causes him to immediately stop comtemplating harming them at all. The thought of the kitten drains all resistance from him. The next morning the Peasant turns them in and they are sent back to prison, severely beaten, kept in solitary confinement, and sentenced to 25 years.

[cricket]

Thanks so much for the heads up on this book. . .

[The Left's reluctance to acknowledge that Communism wasn't just a failure but an evil is due to more than stubbornness.]

. . . in their little communist hearts, the Left still hold to the same values; so called.

[citizenK]

Today, the issues raised in Koba the Dread could be seen as purely academic; but they are not. The left's reluctance to acknowledge that Communism wasn't just a failure but an evil is due to more than stubbornness. Such an acknowledgment would amount to (1) validating a view of the West, Communism's Cold War adversary, as good (albeit imperfect), and (2) admitting that the left spent much of the 20th century cozying up to mass murderers and therefore has precious little moral authority to criticize the West today. And that's very relevant to present-day global conflicts.

This bears repeating. One of the most irritating things about the left is that those brainwashed people think because they state their good intentions they hold the higher moral ground - particularly in contrast to the greedy and selfish underpinnings of capitalism. The left will never admit that they have supported mass murderers for going on a century now.

BTW, Hillary! is a quintessential leftist. Remember? Hillary! cannot "be responsible for every under-capitalized business..." This is exactly the same attitude and manner in which Stalin implemented the so-called 5-year plans -- Damn the peasants, we must forge ahead with socialist progress.

[07055]

If the "witch hunt" during the 40's and the 50's had been against Hollywood people who were members of the Nazi party, the hunters would have as many movies celebrating them as the Communist Hollywood actors and screenwriters have today.

The difference has nothing to do with "free speech" or any other BS---it has to do with the fact that liberals (while they will never admit this in mixed company) look to the establishment of communism in the United States as their ultimate goal.

[cricket]

". . .it has to do with the fact that liberals (while they will never admit this in mixed company) look to the establishment of communism in the United States as their ultimate goal."

That is surely the goal of the 'Left'; daresay, some of the hollywoodites and a few others, do not even know it.

[07055]

Of course, they will give it a more polically correct name like "progressive" or "populist," but that is only to fool the naive--the goals are exactly the same: Total control of the people by the elites who know so much better.

[BushMeister]

Don't hold your breath waiting for Soviet atrocities to "enter the public imagination" as Nazi ones have. The uncomfortable fact that much of the horrific machinery of the Soviet state was devised by Jews makes such events something to hide, not celebrate.

[Senator Pardek]

...the Soviet Union might have been able to succeed in their quest to create a viable communist state.

And if the U.S. did not engage Germany, it might have been able to succeed in its quest to create a viable fascist state.

I gotta laugh at folks who are too idiotic to realize that communism is anathema to all that benefits The Individual - even in theory and/or on paper.

Desiring a "viable communist state" is akin to desiring a bus running over you that just got an oil change, new seats to fit everyone, the spark plugs changed, has a driver who tips his cap to the riders, and is always on time.

[cricket]

"Of course, they will give it a more polically correct name like "progressive" or "populist," but that is only to fool the naive--the goals are exactly the same: Total control of the people by the elites who know so much better."

. . .sad thing is, they are fooling a lot of people while dumbing down the next generation while preparing for the next. . .so that eventually, there will be no one left to fool.

[woofer]

. . .sad thing is, they are fooling a lot of people while dumbing down the next generation while preparing for the next. . .so that eventually, there will be no one left to fool.

Like Lenin and Trotsky said ... 'he that controls the education and upbringing of the children will control the future...'

[Skooz]

Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.

Stalin murdered forty million Soviet citizens, not just twenty million. Robert Conquest established this number as the best estimate (and was excoriated by the Left for it), and the Russian government confirmed it to be correct after communism fell in Russia.

This includes the millions of Ukrainians who died in the "Harvest of Despair."

[17th Miss Regt]

Better have your flame-suit on after that one!

[17th Miss Regt]

Don' forget the other twenty million that occurred when Stalin was not in power.

[MadIvan]

"Maybe if America had not engaged them in a cold war, the Soviet Union might have been able to succeed in their quest to create a viable communist state."

I've studied Russian history. Your "friend" is a total arse. Communism never worked. Ever. It was based on the assumption that the state could somehow make every decision for every person about what the economy should produce for them, what career they should follow, what political opinions they should hold, what books they should read. It never occured to these bastards what to do if they didn't understand the people they were dictating to. Naturally, some resisted. The Communists killed or imprisoned those. And those that remained were too intimidated to speak up - at least until they got the chance.

Ask your liberal friend if he would like to live in a world where every element in his life was dictated by powers beyond his control. That is Communism. If he wants to live like that, then he is a slave, unworthy to discourse with free men.

Regards, Ivan