Georgia and the Orthodox Civilization

Samuel P. Huntington in his The Clash of Civilizations, theorized that the nine “civilizations” (Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese) would never obtain absolute amity but would always “clash” for one reason or another and the clashes would occur along the “fault” lines. Was what occurred recently in Georgia consistent with Huntington’s thesis? Perhaps.

Huntington’s thesis includes the idea of “core states.” Each Civilization has or needs one core state to represent the weaker states, to protect them or keep them under control as necessary. The U.S. is identified as the West’s “Core State,” and Russia the Core State of the Orthodox Civilization.

Even though the USSR fragmented, the Orthodox Civilization did not. Also, according to Huntington’s thesis, Russia would maintain a “core-state interest” in other “Orthodox” nations. It has done so visibly in regard to Serbia, but consider Georgia. According to the CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gg.html ) Georgia is 83.9% Orthodox Christian. Surely this would place Georgia in the “Orthodox Civilization,” but they are not happy with Russia at the present time and Russia seems willing to bully them a bit. But it isn’t surprising, after the break up of the Soviet Union in 1989 that the relationship of non-Soviet Russia with its Civilizational members is in an uncertain condition.

But let us look at the West for a moment. The U.S., the West’s Core State, chose to overthrow the government of Iraq, which is in the Islamic Civilization. Many members of the Western Civilization balked for one reason or another. Germany and France became downright hostile. We didn’t come to blows as Russia and Georgia did, but we were not on good terms with each other for several years. Is the relationship of Russia and Georgia of a similar nature? Will the Civilizational commonality between these two Orthodox nations eventually overcome their disagreements? Huntington would say yes. We see that France and Germany are much happier with the U.S. once we elected Barack Obama. The “hatred” of France and Germany couldn’t be very deep if all it took was an election to remove it, but the events in Georgia recently seem more serious.

What happened in Georgia wasn’t a Huntington “Clash” because it occurred between two members of the same “civilization.” And it didn’t seem much like the core-state’s keeping other members of the civilization in order. It seems to have created a lot of bad feeling in Georgia, but perhaps it was already there.

Then too there is the matter of former SSRs wanting to follow Eastern European nations into some sort of association with the West. Turkey of the Islamic Civilization is a member of NATO and is trying to enter the EU. It isn’t surprising that some nations of the “Orthodox Civilization” are trying as well. After all, Huntington’s thesis hasn’t been proved. There are some (Bat Ye’or chief among them) who argue that Western Europe will eventually be taken over, more or less peacefully, by the Islamic Civilization; so why couldn’t Georgia or the Ukraine join the West in some manner?

Well, it seems to me, they could if they chose to, and if Russia would let them. I commented in previous notes about the pacifistic EU goading the Russian bear by offering membership in the EU to former SSRs. Didn’t the EU realize that they were infringing on the Orthodox Core State’s territory, trying to steal away one of its cubs? If the EU was serious in these attempts, then perhaps they abandoned war a little too soon. Of course, the U.S. was equally guilty in encouraging Georgia’s entrance into NATO. And Georgia was one of the nations that supported the American efforts in Iraq – all very interesting and complicated.

Michael Kuznetsov made comments in a recent note suggesting he wasn’t terribly fond of Georgia. He could if he wished and was ambitious enough find that I made comments in blog notes suggesting that I wasn’t terribly fond of France. In my own defense I would say that I objected to actions of the Gaullist party. I was not a fan of De Gaulle or of Chirac, but I have a lot of admiration for . . . difficult to define, but I am fond of or at least interested in a lot of French philosophy. I would hate it if the West “lost” France to Islamism. France and the U.S. have a long and usually amicable relationship. I would hope that no falling out would be permanent. Perhaps the same thing can be said about Russia and Georgia, I don’t know.

U.S. foreign policy, 1947, Stalin, The Marshall Plan

Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 453: “Once the challenge had been defined as the very future of democracy, America could not wait until a civil war actually occurred, as it had in Greece; it was in the national character to attempt the cure. On June 5, less than three months after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, Secretary Marshall, in a commencement address at Harvard, did just that when he committed America to the task of eradicating the social and economic conditions that tempted aggression. America would aid European recovery, announced Marshall, to avoid ‘political disturbances’ and ‘desperation,’ to restore the world economy, and to nurture free institutions. Therefore, ‘any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government.’ In other words, participation in the Marshall Plan was open even to governments in the Soviet orbit – a hint taken up in Warsaw and Prague and just as quickly squelched by Stalin.

“Anchored to a platform of social and economic reform, the United States announced that it would oppose not only any government but any organization that impeded the process of European recovery. Marshall defined these as the Communist Party and its front organizations: ‘. . . governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.’

“Only a country as idealistic, as pioneering, and as relatively inexperienced as the United States could have advanced a plan for global economic recovery based solely on its own resources. And yet the very sweep of that vision elicited a national commitment which would sustain the generation of the Cold War through its final victory. The program of economic recovery, said Secretary Marshall, would be ‘directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.’ Just as when the Atlantic Charter had been proclaimed, a global crusade against hunger and despair was found to be more persuasive to Americans than appeals to immediate self-interest or the balance of power.”

COMMENT:

It is rare, if not impossible, that we would only have one reason for doing anything at all important. It was a mistake of the Bush Administration to emphasis only one reason, and a wrong one at that, for removing Saddam Hussein, but back in 1947 we had more eloquent arguments for a similar “crusade.” One foreign-policy “reason” was containment of Soviet aggression, but that reason was going to be very difficult to explain to a populace that was barely interested enough in politics, let alone foreign policy, to come out to vote. Any case of individual containment, as in what occurred in the Korean War, was going to have to be “sold” on its own merits and not on the grandiose strategy of containment, but economic assistance was easier for Americans to understand.

We went through the “Great Depression” period understanding economic assistance: “brother, can you spare a dime.” Who didn’t benefit from or benefit a relative or friend during that period? Roosevelt’s programs of economic assistance were very popular; so when the attention of the American people was directed, in 1947, toward a devastated Europe, they didn’t need to be “sold.” Their hearts were already in the right place. Notice that Marshall attached a few strings to this economic assistance. They were consistent with Kennan’s, and Clark Clifford’s, opposition to Soviet Policy. They were consistent with the policy of containment.

And Stalin understood the Marshall Plan as such. He was right and there was truly an aspect of “containment” in the Marshall Plan, but there was also a very real desire on the part of most Americans to assist the needy, to spare their brother a dime. I don’t know if Stalin ever acknowledged that other reason, but now that the Cold War is over we can ask his ghost if it was worth it. Was it worth subjecting the Russian and Eastern European people to decades of impoverishment in order to further the goals of a “Communism” that had failed, that was never going to work and that would have to be abandoned in 1989?

We can perhaps defend Stalin by arguing that he didn’t know that Communist policies and programs were going to fail, but hadn’t the “altruism” of Marxist-Leninist goals already failed? Wasn’t the oppression, ruthlessness, and brutality he was imposing too diametrically opposed to that “altruism”? We have seen that the steps toward Communistic altruistic goals falter rather quickly and degenerate into a totalitarian dictatorship bent upon preserving its power – with no evidence of further pursuit of altruistic goals. Isn’t that what happened to Stalin? Isn’t that what happened to all those who came into power on the wave of communistic altruism?

Now the Cold War is over, not because anyone defeated Soviet Russia militarily, but because its altruism faltered and fell. “Communism” was not the superior system it long pretended to be. It was an inferior system that couldn’t compete with Western Liberal Democracy. We observe the same thing about Islamism. It too contains an economic system and it too, Western economists predict in advance, cannot compete. Shall Islamism take over nations in the way that Communism did in the 20^th century? Shall it be given its decades of experiment? Shall it be allowed to fail on its own with no more than “containment” to oppose it? There is a strong argument that Islamism will never achieve the power or status that Communism did in the 20^th century, that it will never rise above being a nuisance. Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel have argued to that effect, and their arguments influence Francis Fukuyama and may have influenced President Obama as well.

So on the one hand, from the point of view of the U.S., we had to decide how best to oppose an avowed enemy, one who vowed to bury us. In regard to the USSR, we chose the dual strategies of “containment” of Communist expansion, and “economic assistance” to potential or actual “targets” of Communist expansion.

In regard to Islamism, a system which has also vowed to bury us, we don’t have a very clear strategy. We will certainly attempt to prevent any actual attacks, and as long as all we are opposing is terrorist-type activities, perhaps that is enough. Invading an entire nation to prevent potential aid to terrorists and disruption to an important region has been deemed by much of the world excessive; so it doesn’t seem likely that we shall try that again any time soon.

On Stalin's Motives

Somewhere in one of Michael Kuznetsov’s blogs is the idea that Roosevelt and Truman got along with Stalin well enough but subsequent presidents turned on him. The fault for the breach in relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. belong to the former and not the latter, but could this be true?

On page 447 of Kissinger’s Diplomacy, we read “American leaders knew [in 1946] that they had to resist further Soviet expansion. But their national tradition caused them to seek to justify this resistance on nearly any basis other than as an appeal to the traditional balance of power. In doing this, American leaders were not being hypocritical. When they finally came to recognize that Roosevelt’s vision of the Four Policemen could not be implemented, they preferred to interpret this development as a temporary setback on the way to an essentially harmonious world order. Here they faced a philosophical challenge. Was Soviet intransigence merely a passing phase which Washington could wait out? Were the Americans, as former Vice President Henry Wallace and his followers suggested, unwittingly causing the Soviets to feel paranoid by not adequately communicating their pacific intentions to Stalin? Did Stalin really reject postwar cooperation with the strongest nation in the world? Did he want to be America’s friend?

“As the highest policymaking circles in Washington considered these questions, a document arrived from an expert on Russia, on George Kennan, a relatively junior diplomat at the American embassy in Moscow, that was to provide the philosophical and conceptual framework for interpreting Stalin’s foreign policy . . . Kennan maintained that the United States should stop blaming itself for Soviet intransigence; the sources of Soviet foreign policy lay deep within the Soviet system itself. In essence, he argued, Soviet foreign policy was an amalgam of communist ideological zeal and old-fashioned tsarist expansionism.

“According to Kennan, communist ideology was at the heart of Stalin’s approach to the world. Stalin regarded the Western capitalist powers as irrevocably hostile. The friction between the Soviet Union and America was therefore not the product of some misunderstanding or faulty communications between Washington and Moscow, but inherent in the Soviet Union’s perception of the outside world [the following is from Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ from Moscow, 2-22,1946]:

‘In this [communist] dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for their dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand. In the name of Marxism they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability. Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced [their] country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regimes. . . .’

COMMENT:

As we know, Kennan went on to recommend a foreign policy of ‘containment.’ That is, to resist ‘communist’ expansion wherever it occurred in the world insofar as possible. Truman and Acheson, while accepting Kennan’s assessment of Stalin’s motives were conscious of economic considerations. They didn’t feel the U.S. was rich enough to resist every communist advance and that it should choose its battles carefully. Truman and Acheson, if memory serves me, were at odds about whether to resist the communist advance in Korea.

But after all, neither Kennan nor anyone else can know beyond doubt what was in Stalin’s mind; so let’s consider an alternative. Could Stalin have been just as Roosevelt and Truman at first imagined him to be, a comrade in arms interested in the same sorts of things Americans were interested in? This hypothesis would demand that Stalin’s philosophy was skin-deep and could be easily dispensed with in the interest of camaraderie and fraternity, but it defies my understanding of Communism.

As Kennan wrote, communist ideology was altruistic in purpose. If we look only at the ideals of communism we would probably all agree that they are indeed benign and quite wonderful. I mentioned this in regard to Bernardine Dohrn’s talk at a radical Leftists’ SDS reunion. She mourned the failure of “the revolution” which included the fall of the U.S.S.R. And she hoped for a better Socialism in the future, but she admitted that she didn’t know what steps would need to be taken to reach her “altruistic” goals. She was confident that her fellow revolutionaries could figure out those steps as their revolution progressed. But we have seen a number of Socialistic, or Communistic, revolutions and they all seem to progress in the same way: A small “vanguard” leads a violent revolution and the old, usually corrupt government is overthrown. A leader arises to lead the revolution and then there are purges. People who oppose or threaten or potentially threaten the leader and his government are locked up or executed. And then a police force is created to keep track of the people to make sure no new threats arise. This happened in Russia, in China, in Cuba, in North Korea, in Vietnam, and in Cambodia. Why have all of the Socialistic revolutions followed in this path? Because the “altruistic goal” is deemed more important than any individual’s rights. Theoretically, once those goals were achieved, the individual would gain rights he doesn’t enjoy during the process toward that goal, but in actual fact all the communist revolutions we witnessed in the 20^th century settled down into a staid totalitarianism. Plans to give up dictatorial control and move on toward an egalitarian communism were abandoned. Leaders merely sought to remain in power. Perhaps the initial leaders, Lenin and Stalin believed in the altruistic goal, but subsequent leaders give little evidence of such adherence, and even Stalin may have abandoned it as the years went on. Wasn’t this his basic disagreement with Trotsky that first the USSR should be well established and then Communism should be advanced throughout the world whereas Trotsky thought that international Communism should take precedence over Russian development?

In retrospect, Trotsky’s goals seem much more idealistic and “impractical.” Stalin’s goals were less idealistic in appearance and far more ruthless in practice.

Re: The Russians still love Stalin

Michael Kuznetsov left the following message: Mr Helm:

Thank you very much for your comments, which I believe to be rather favourable toward my web site.

It's a pleasure to encounter so wise and experienced person like you.

One question, though: Do your words "I read your web site" mean that you have not seen the pictures thereupon?

I am asking because I heard that some people would disable their internet browser function which shows pictures, and thus they can read the text only.

In case if you may be interested in another web site of mine, here it is:
http://www.great-victory1945.ru

Michael

Then Michael left a second message:

Mr Helm:

Thank you very much for your comments, which I believe to be rather favourable toward my web site.

It's a pleasure to encounter so wise and experienced person like you.

One question, though: Do your words "I read your web site" mean that you have not seen the pictures thereupon?

I am asking because I heard that some people would disable their internet browser function which shows pictures, and thus they can read the text only.

I must admit also that I feel rather intrigued with this phrase of yours:
"I mention him here because he commented on one of my notes, and when I read his web site I saw that he represented the point of view I referred to."
What exactly did you mean, please?

In case if you may be interested in another web site of mine, here its URL:
http://www.great-victory1945.ru

Warmest regards from Russia!

Michael

COMMENT:

Yes, I looked at the photos as well, and was very impressed by them. I looked at and read everything from the first site you sent me. I also read the material on www.great-victory1945.ru but not yet all of the sub-sites. I believed your point of view existed, as I wrote elsewhere, and consider it valuable to see it so eloquently delineated on your web sites.

What I meant in regard to “the point of view I referred to” had to do with an earlier discussion, or rather an earlier prejudice I was challenging, namely that all the common people in China and Russia longed to be “free” in the Sharansky sense. That is, they longed to embrace Liberal Democracy. You would need to read some of my earlier discussions of Francis Fukuyama and others to fully understand why this is a matter of interest to me. It represents a subject that is outside your own interests as portrayed on your web sites, namely, it begins by challenging Marx’s disagreement with Hegel. The Russian/French philosopher Kojeve is largely responsible for this disagreement. Kojeve argued that Hegel was right after all and that “Capitalism” was the true “end of history.” Fukuyama developed this argument further, recognizing that Capitalism has metamorphosed into what is today called “Liberal Democracy.”

Fukuyama didn’t argue as Sharansky did. Fukuyama believed that Liberal Democracy in the Hegelian sense was historically inevitable. What he thinks about Sharansky I don’t know, but I don’t think Sharansky is being realistic in arguing that all people long to be “free,” and that only “democracy” will provide that freedom. I argued that majorities in both China and Russia were happy with the progress and current circumstances in those nations. Not that everything was perfect, but the majorities had confidence that leadership was moving them in a positive, acceptable, direction.

So when I described your sites as representing “the point of view I referred to,” I meant the point of view of a Russian who did have confidence in Russian leadership and was happy with the direction Russia was moving both domestically and internationally.

But I didn’t mean to imply that I agreed with everything you wrote. Neither do I now intend to say that I disagree with everything you wrote. There could be months and months of discussion and debate that could arise out of what you wrote and I saw the task as daunting, but I will just put my foot in the water, so to speak, and generalize about a few things of interest to me at the moment:

I am a former U.S. Marine and very much agree with your attitude about the necessity of a strong military. No nation can continue to exist unless there are young men willing to risk their lives in defense of their nation. I have debated this issue at great length in several discussion groups with “Leftists” and “Anti-War Pacifists.” If a nation becomes so rich and so given to self-indulgence and luxury that its young men are no longer willing to risk their lives in defense of it, then its days are numbered, and it seems to me we have moved in that direction here in the U.S. Also, it seems to me that this may be a strong tendency in all Liberal Democracies. What can be said about this tendency in the U.S. can be said with greater emphasis about Western Europe. I think now of Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power in which, if memory serves me, he coined a phrase, something like, “America is from Mars and Europe is from Venus,” meaning America is now the warlike element in the West while Western Europe has embraced, or is strongly inclined toward pacifism.

Also, I read what you wrote about being an Orthodox Christian and I am reminded of Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. In it he assumes some common delineations of “Civilizations,” one of which is the “Orthodox.” Another of his “Civilizations” is the “West.” Huntington emphasizes religion as an important element in these two civilizations and believes that the differences are too great for them ever to exist utterly amicably. I have a problem with that idea, just as I have a problem with the distinction he draws between “Orthodox,” “West” and “Latin America.” All three of these “Civilizations” are Christian at heart. That is, they grew out of Christianity; so why can’t the common ground be made to over-ride the differences? “By this shall they know that you are my disciples, that ye have love one for another.”

While Marx termed religion the “opiate of the masses,” he accepted the Christian goals and thought his Communism could better achieve them than Christianity has. The same sort of argument is at the heart of Secularism in the West. I think here of Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World, A Political History of Religion. Gauchet, an atheist, argues that the west indeed grew out of Christianity, most prominently Protestant Christianity, and its Christian goals for human material well-being are admirable, but Secular Society can do the job better than Christianity; so the latter is no longer required. I don’t know to what extent Orthodox Christianity has made a resurgence in Russia after all the years of being disapproved of by Communist governments, but I do know that Christianity seems to have lost ground in Western Europe in direct relation to the ground Welfare-Statism has gained ground.

In another place I take you to be saying that yes there were injustices done during the Stalinist period, but the survival of Russia against the West and later against Nazi German took precedence. That reminds me of another subject that I’ve debated from time to time: was Truman justified in dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I have read a considerable amount on that matter. The Japanese fought hard against the Marines on island after island. Truman had that as his pattern and it truly seemed to him and his advisors that Japan would fight even harder to defend its main islands, and if dropping the bombs would save the lives of American Soldiers (varying estimates of how many American lives would be saved were bandied about, but the number was believed to be large), then it was the right thing to do. Since that time, it has been argued by many that if we had drawn the matter out diplomatically, without dropping the bombs, Japan would eventually have surrendered. You seem to be advancing a similar argument in regard to the treatment of “dissidents” during the Stalinist period: Many have written about injustices, about individuals who were clearly not dissidents but were punished none-the-less, almost as though the operative principle were “when in doubt, send them off to Siberia.” Your argument, arguing “necessity” would, it seems to me, have to account for all the injustices.

I have argued that Truman was right and the bombs should have been dropped. Documents from Japan have emerged in recent years and it wasn’t until the second bomb was dropped that Hirohito made the decision to capitulate. There was a strong militant element in Japan that was willing to defend the Japanese Islands just as Truman’s advisors predicted they would. It is doubtful that Hirohito would have been able to force through a capitulation unless the bombs had been dropped. Could that same sort of argument be made to justify the ruthless treatment of “dissidents” during the Stalinist period? A sometime reader of this blog, Professor Ludwik Kowalski, wrote Hell On Earth, Brutality and Violence During the Stalinist Regime. Professor Kowalski’s father was an engineer who died in a Siberian Gulag. I am quite sure he would argue that such ruthless treatment during the Stalinist period was not justified.

Re: The Russians still love Stalin

This morning I received the following in response to my note, “The Russians Still love Stalin – Sharansky believes in a myth” http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2008/12/russians-still-love-stalin-sharansky.html :

“Very well said, Mr Helm!

The Russians do not want to follow the American example. We have been going our own way.

I can only add that the present-day rabid russophobia, that has been so overtly promoted by the mainstream Western mass media, ironically, redounds greatly to the Stalin's cause advantage.

We understand FREEDOM differently than the Westerners.

Regards!

Michael Kuznetsov
http://www.russian-victories.ru/russians.htm

COMMENT:

I read the material on Michael Kuznetsov’s web site with great interest and think it a valuable representation of the Russians who do still love Stalin. I found it refreshing that Mr. Kuznetsov does not represent a Leftist Anti-War position. Russia is proudly warlike and can, according to him, whip any nation that invades it, and I believe that is true. I don’t agree with his assessment that American foreign policy is bent upon surrounding Russia. I believe our attentions are elsewhere and we are leaving it up to Western Europe to deal with their Russian neighbor. Yes, we have provided support to some of the former SSRs but that is more from an egalitarian desire to draw “non-functioning” nations into the “functional core” of economic stability – although this is a bad time to be talking about economic stability. I certainly don’t believe that American foreign policy is headed toward a nuclear war with Russia.

Mr. Kuznetsov says that America doesn’t really know what war is. I take him to mean that since we haven’t been invaded by a foreign nation we can’t understand war from that perspective, and that is true. But I’m not convinced that it is a bad thing to have been so deprived.

Mr. Kuznetsov wrote,

Frequently, I have been asked:
"If the topic of your website is being the examination of Russian ethnic peculiarities, then why do you dedicate so much of space to the Great Patriotic War?"
My answer is:
This is because all of the main fundamental features of any nation's character, both strong and weak, would manifest themselves most evidently just during the hectic times of overcoming a deadly danger and inconceivable sufferings.
Simply put, the WAR is always the Moment of Truth for any nation – a real, yet horrible chance to prove its own worthiness in the world.”

I agree with that. Our own Civil War was a defining event for us. Hitler dismissed the U.S. as a fighting force because we were a “mongrel” people, but Churchill said that he had studied our Civil War and knew we would stand.”

I personally feel no “russophobia” as Mr. Kuznetsov puts it. I have long admired the classic Russian novelists. The Brothers Karamazov is probably my favorite novel. I’ve read it 4 or 5 times and Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s War and Peace probably 3 times each. In fact I’ve read quite a lot of Russian literature, in translation of course. The Sholokov series beginning with And Quietly Flows the Don comes to mind. I recall that back in the early 60s I got into an argument with a Russian expatriate who always had the white powder for an antacid on his lips. I told him I had read Russian literature and didn’t believe the Russian people were as aggressive as they were being portrayed. They would never risk having their nation damaged by nuclear weapons. Yes Khruschev pretended to be willing to cross over the brink, but that was only because he felt Kennedy could be pushed.

I don’t feel ambitious enough to take up all the points Mr. Kuznetsov has raised. I mention him here because he commented on one of my notes, and when I read his web site I saw that he represented the point of view I referred to. So I present him here as reference only.

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

The Feb 28, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books contains a review of The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia by Orlando Figes. It was written by Joseph Frank and entitled “In Stalin’s Trap.”

Except for revisionists who want to convince us that the USSR wasn’t as bad as it has been portrayed, most of us believe that it was a disaster, Hell on Earth, as Professor Kowalski tells us. Figes’s book seems to be a collection of individual accounts of what it was like to live through, or in some cases partially through, Stalin’s Russia. But I want to look at just one section of the review:

Frank writes, “. . . the years 1928-1932 brought ‘The Great Break,’ as Stalin himself called it in an important article announcing the first Five-Year Plan. This was the period when, determined to destroy the grip of the peasants on the Russian economy by controlling the supply of grain, Stalin decided to collectivize the farms so as to bring them under state control. ‘During the first two months of 1930, half the Soviet peasantry (about sixty million people in over 100,000 villages) was herded into the collective farms.’

“Figes describes incident after incident of how this was done by force; the peasants who resisted were labeled ‘kulaks’ (fists) as if they were an objective social-economic category of exploiters themselves. In fact, as Figes writes, ‘the kulaks’ were peasant individualists, the strongest leaders and supports of the old rural way of life. They had to disappear.’ Lev Kowpelev, who ultimately became a dissident and supporter of Solzhenitsyn, took part in forced collectivization in the Ukraine; and he later wrote that while ‘it was excruciating to see and hear [the anguished protests of the peasants],’ he nonetheless felt that ‘we were realizing historical necessity. . . . We were obtaining grain for the socialist fatherland.’

“The result was a widespread famine beginning in the spring of 1932 and continuing through the next year. . . In Figes’s view, ‘the regime [itself] was taken by surprise by the scale of the famine’ and was unable to control its results. One result was a huge wave of emigration from the famine-stricken areas to the cities, and the introduction of a system of internal passports in an attempt to control the movement of the population. Figes also notes the large-scale abandonment of children at this time by famine victims, and the growth of children’s gangs that led to the passing of a new law lowering the age of criminal responsibility to twelve. The famine created thousands of homeless children, who were rounded up and sent to ‘special settlements’ in Siberia or other outlying areas of the country. There they lived under the most primitive conditions and served as a supplementary workforce controlled by the political police.”

COMMENT:

It is ironic that many intellectuals in the West were during this period describing Soviet Russia as “the worker’s paradise.” And in a recent look at the Bernardine Dohrn speech at the 2007 SDS reunion ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PdO3yEXdU&feature=related ), one can hear her “dare to hope” for a better future. She wants a better Socialism. Capitalism has no answers for her, etc. The Radical Leftists who believed in the Communist Dream are still alive and dreaming, but do they have solutions to what they believe is wrong with Capitalism? Dohrn says no, that they will forge the solutions during future struggles. Keeping in mind this dream of getting it right next time, let’s look at how their philosophical father got it. Figes tells us, in effect, that Stalinist Russia was a disaster. Stalin had no solutions either. He too tried to get it right “during the struggle,” but look at what he did. I’ve provided just an example above. It was much worse than that; so why do Leftists like Dohrn hope to get it right next time by doing the same thing Stalin did? They say they won’t do the exact same thing, but they don’t know what they will do. They have no solutions so they will be entering their revolution blindly. They will “dare to hope” that things will turn out all right.

I am amazed at the audacity and overweening self-confidence of such Leftists as Dohrn. She is willing to tear down our Liberal Democracy and “wing it” into the future. She feels that she can figure things out as they move ahead with their revolution and make a better system, create a better society, than our founding fathers did after considerable thought and planning and as we in America have tinkered with for over 250 years.

I’ll grant that Figes was probably right and Constant wrong. I’ll even grant that Dohrn does indeed hope for a “better future.” But these well-meaning revolutionaries did not have and still do not have better ways of doing things. They have no solutions. They have ideals, but when they strive toward them, disaster ensues. And please note that they don’t mind sacrificing human rights for the sake of their ideals. The State become preeminent in their scheme of things – well not “the state” exactly, at least not in their thinking. Perhaps “Socialist process” or “Communist process” would be better approximations. But as they move along, a “Great Man” will mount that process like a bucking steed and ride it as though the “dictatorship of the proletariat” were his personal dictatorship; which in reality it will be.

I’ll admit that it isn’t as exciting to live in a world filled with Nietzsche’s “Last Man,” but we have tried his Superman and most of us don’t like him very much. We saw him not only in Hitler but in Stalin; they were indeed powerful, even supernatural beings, who were not afraid to create a future according to their personal dreams, the very process Dohrn advocates, if not the precise results. Since none of our Leftists have a “solution,” and since we have witnessed “Great Men,” “Supermen” winging it into the future, do we really want to trust our nations to such a process again? Isn’t it better to make do with our Liberal Democracies? What is in your Liberal Democracy, Bernardine, that makes it impossible for you to fulfill your dream? Oh, yes, I know. Your dream won’t be fulfilled unless you take over my Liberal Democracy and demolish my dream of being left alone.

Re: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism

The proverbial “Anonymous” has sent me the following in regard to : "Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism":

“the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics never purported to be a communist state (they had read Marx - why don't you try?) Communism is a long way off, many revolutions will be needed. Ultimately, if Marx is correct, the state will wither away and the world will have no governments. Paris Hilton is not my heroine, but I loves her. Your oportunism makes me sick.”

Lawrence responds:

I have read Marx as anyone would know who read my notes. I described, for example, the days when some Communist Longshoremen attempted to recruit me to Communism. Why Leftists concentrate on insults rather than arguments is a matter of ongoing interest. Also, Little quibbles. They seem to love quibbles. I don’t use the term “Communism” in a way they like? Well, that must mean I haven’t read Marx or Engel or Lenin, or any of the others that read. And of course, Anonymous, what you have managed is an insult, not an argument.

Am I permitted to use the term “Communism” in accordance with common usage? Yes, of course. And yes, the Soviets in Russia fell short of Marx’s ideal, but then all the believers in Marxist-Leninism did. They embraced the idea with fanatical enthusiasm as General Giap’s heroic Viets did. But once they succeed, they follow the pattern of Soviet Russia. After success comes the purges, the killing of those who challenge or might challenge the “great leader.” Later on there is disillusionment and after that is capitulation and a striving to hang onto as much Socialism as possible while joining the modern, Western oriented economic system – the only system that provides the success Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin thought the Communist system (i.e., the system advocated by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin etc.) would eventually provide. Yes, of course they believed in steps leading up to a withering away of the state. I discussed that in earlier notes.

And have you never heard of McCarthy and “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” To be a member meant you were a Communist, not that you were living in a classless society. Your quibble makes no sense, Anonymous.

Now that I’ve read your insult and quibble, do you have real arguments? You obviously haven’t read many of my earlier notes or you would have discovered the disdain I feel for Leftists who don’t know how to argue, who satisfy themselves with a few insults, a quibble or two and a hasty exist stage Left.

Try reading the many notes in which I refer to Kojeve’s argument that Hegel not Marx was right. Marx said Hegel was wrong to think that the “end of history” was Capitalism, and that it was Communism instead. Francis Fukuyama following Kojeve wrote The End of History and the Last Man. He argued that Liberal Democracy, the modern version of Capitalism, was “the end of history,” meaning that Hegel and not Marx was correct.

As to Paris Hilton, I intended to use Hilton and a few others as “examples” of the people we revere in our society. Most readers would see that as obvious. And please note that I didn’t say that “all” Americans revere sports heroes, actors and other celebrities. My words were “. . . much of America is choosing to be debauched.” Since you take that out of context, I suspect you didn’t understand my note. . . or maybe you are merely saying that you consider yourself debauched but don’t happen to like Paris Hilton. Interestingly I used for names as examples of popular debauchery in the U.S., but you single out but one to distance yourself from. Does that mean you like the rest? Or does it mean that you too know how to use examples?

I have no ideas what you mean by “opportunism.”

If you can produce an argument or invoke or quote or reason from something you’ve studied, feel free to write again.