Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Russia and the Communist Dream

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110202900.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

The above article was posted on The Washington Post website this morning. It was written by Masha Lipman from Moscow and entitledRussias Search for Identity. An internet article describes her as follows: Masha Lipman or Maria Lipman is a Russian journalist. She received MA from the Moscow State University, Department of Philology in 1974. Masha Lipman is the editor of the "Pro et Contra" journal, published by the Carnegie Moscow Center. Lipman is also an expert in the Civil Society Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. She served as deputy editor of the Russian weekly "Ezhenedel’ny zhurnal" from 2001 to 2003.

Her take on the ongoing admiration for Stalin is consistent with other things Ive read. She takes a Western view toward globalism when she writes, “For the government, this acceptance of Stalin and the paternalistic state-society pattern may be handy as a way to consolidate power. But some in the decision-making circles do seem to realize that current social, political and economic models are unable to produce growth and development. From Putin and Medvedev down, modernization has become the mantra. . . Unless Russia reinvents itself and takes real steps to encourage people's entrepreneurship and creativity, talk of modernization will remain hollow.

But most interesting to me, as applying to the after-effects of the Communistic dream was the sentence: But modernization is incompatible with a statehood based on the specter of Stalin and faith in the magic empowerment of the apathetic people by forces of the state.

How is Russia to sail out of its economic doldrums? Lipman says it needs totake real steps to encourage peoples entrepreneurship and creativity. But how is Russia to do that when an underlying prerequisite for entrepreneurship, i.e., freedom to do and think whatever one likes, is missing from the Russian psyche? It was stamped out during the Stalinistic era. And while Russia might find an individual here and there, the prevalent attitude is, according to Lipman, apatheticfaith in the magic empowerment . . . by forces of the state.

Yes, we are still inclined to rate Communism above Fascism, but perhaps that is only because we remember the time when we imagined a utopia might eventually find a place in reality. Surely that dream is worth something. Or is it? We in the West only dreamed of the Communist utopia. In Russia they tried to build it; so any comparison of Communism and Fascism needs to take a look at modern-day Russia. The Russians were force-fed the Communist dream year after year. And now they cant wake up.

2 comments:

Michael Kuznetsov said...

Lawrence:

As you know Prof. Ludwik Kowalski wrote a book about my country Russia.
He entitled it Hell on Earth.

Some 20 years ago, when 90 percent of us Russians were ardently pro-American, that book might have been a great success in Russia. But not now.

At present it is evident for us that real Hell on Earth is the West.

Below are a few short stories (out of a great lot I've collected) that prove my assertion:

THE WEST IS HELL

USDA: Number of Americans going hungry increases
By HENRY C. JACKSON (AP)
WASHINGTON November 17 2009

More than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest rate since the Agriculture Department began tracking food security levels in 1995.

That's about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity" — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_hunger_report.html

THE WEST IS HELL

George Sodini, left behind a diary that makes everything as clear as can be – so clear, in fact, that the media is doing everything it can to avoid looking at what it really says. Because this massacre is really about the desperation and hate so common in America. You can’t understand yesterday’s health club massacre in Pennsylvania, leaving 3 women dead, 10 injured, and the male gunman with his brains blown out, without recognizing this misery and hate.

Most Americans’ lives have grown worse over the past three decades: today, average American male workers earn less than they did in 1979 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while the top 400 richest Americans own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, a wealth gap only found in tinpot Third World kleptocracies, and not seen here since 1928. That alone is reason enough to hate.

Even Warren Buffet admitted it in a interview with the New York Times: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” For some reason, only the rich have the courage to talk about it.

http://exiledonline.com/revenge-of-the-nerd-what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-rampage-killer-who-attacked-a-pittsburgh-aerobics-class/#more-10894

to be continued

Michael_Kuznetsov said...

Lawrence:

I continue.

THE WEST IS HELL

Just how funny was that story of the man in Fairfax County, Virginia, who got up early on Monday morning, October 19, and walked naked into his own kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee? The next significant thing that happened to 29-year-old Eric Williamson was the local cops arriving to charge him with indecent exposure.

It turns out that while he was brewing the coffee, a mother who was taking her seven-year-old son along a path beside Williamson's house espied the naked householder and called the local precinct, or more likely her husband, who turns out to be a cop.

"Yes, I wasn't wearing any clothes," Williamson said later, "but I was alone, in my own home and I just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me."
The story ended up on TV, and in the opening rounds the newscasters and network blogs had merciless sport with the Fairfax police for their absurd behaviour. Hasn’t a man the right to walk around his own home (or in this case rented accommodation) dressed according to his fancy? Answer, obvious to anyone familiar with relevant case law: absolutely not.

I'd say that if the cops keep it up, and some prosecutor scents opportunity, Williamson will be pretty lucky if they don't throw some cobbled-up indictment at him. Toss in a jailhouse snitch keen to make his own plea deal, a faked police line-up, maybe an artist's impression of the Fairfax Flasher, and Eric could end up losing his visitation rights and, if worst comes to worst, getting ten years in jail and being posted for life on some sex offender site.

You think we're living in the 21st century, in the clinical fantasy world of CSI? Wrong. So far as forensic evidence is concerned, we remain planted in the 17th century with trial by ordeal, such as when they killed women for being witches if they floated when thrown into a pond.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/55336,news-comment,news-politics,virginia-witch-hunt-the-naked-truth-about-american-sexual-prudery

These three shorts stories explain why I do repeat it over and over again: We Russians do not belong to the West.
Thank God!

Cheers!

Michael