Happy Belated May Day

Alexander,

Your response was disappointing.

Unfortunately, it was not surprising.

Thanks!!!

I know they were excellent sites.

I accept your apology.

Oh, wait, you weren’t adult enough to acknowledge my efforts.

I know full well that you would have found a way to ridicule my definition of Communism.

Yes, I know it was clever to use that website.

My “error” was not anticipating that you and your dad must be the acknowledged authorities on Communism. You obviously trump the actual practicioners of Marxism.

Silly me!!!

In summary, Communism is a severely flawed theory. The twentieth century has proven without a doubt what a bloody mess it is in practice.

Saying Communism is a workable form of government is like insisting that the world is flat.

Well my Dad says it is!!!

JeffR

I think you hit the nail on the head. The crux of the argument that Alex is trying to make is pure theory.

It doesn’t matter that Communism never worked and can not work in the real world.

The theory, to them, is perfect. We mere humans, are not ready to accept it.

We poor Americans will just have to muddle along in Freedom and Democracy. And of course be able to provide a refuge to those who have given up on Communism and left for a better life.

The students just need to keep refining it until we can accept their breathtaking wisdom.

Did you even read the site you posted on war stats? It seems like you did not, or if you did, you certainly didn’t understand it. But does it really matter how many people died under Stalin? A better question is “why did they die?” This reduces our argument to speculation, and that’s pointless. All I can tell you is many people I know who lived under Stalin thought very highly of him, and when he died, the country was in mourning.

[quote]JeffR wrote:

My “error” was not anticipating that you and your dad must be the acknowledged authorities on Communism. You obviously trump the actual practicioners of Marxism.

Silly me!!!
[/quote]

See, there you go making assumptions. When my father speaks about communism, people listen. This is because he spent most of his life in eastern block countries. Many of the people you’ll read about in text books, he has met. Many of the things you’ve seen in documentaries, he saw first hand. Many of the things you’ll hear about, he witnessed. Yes, he knows more about it than north americans who either think Cuba is a worker’s paradise, or a terrible slum with an evil overlord.

I have spent, many years conversing with him, and he has shared a lot of his experiences with me. Paired with my own experiences, yes, I know much more about communism than most leaders of “communist parties”.

You can’t say it’s a flawed theory, because you don’t know what the theory is. The twentieth century proved that Gorbachev is a weak leader, and that unifying the three powers (executive, legislative, and judicial) is certainly a bad idea.

Saying that communism is a form of government is like admitting you have no idea what it is. If you don’t understand the difference between a political system and an economic system, why are you posting? Your time would be better spent reading.

Before replying, consider what the odds of you bullshitting your way into a win really are. It is painfully obvious you don’t know what you are talking about, so why are you doing this?

[quote]hedo wrote:

I think you hit the nail on the head. The crux of the argument that Alex is trying to make is pure theory.

It doesn’t matter that Communism never worked and can not work in the real world.

The theory, to them, is perfect. We mere humans, are not ready to accept it.

We poor Americans will just have to muddle along in Freedom and Democracy. And of course be able to provide a refuge to those who have given up on Communism and left for a better life.

The students just need to keep refining it until we can accept their breathtaking wisdom.
[/quote]

Of course it’s theory, and it’s theory that can’t be actively implemented. But if you had any understanding of dialectical materialism (if that’s what it’s called in english), that would be obvious enough. That not to say that it will never exist.

American freedom? The US has enough blood on it’s hands to make that statement laughable. But that’s not the topic of this thread. So substantiate your claim; tell me why you think it can never exist. But whatever you do, don’t give me an example of a country with a market economy, administered by the state. Because if you can’t see the obvious difference between state-capitalism and communism, you are in no position to talk about them.

Often? By whom? I suppose I could grant you a conditional “often,” as in "It’s used often by the small minority of people who throw the term around at all. I’m pretty well educated – I even have an undergrad degree in U.S. history, from a university with a fairly liberal history department – and I have never heard that term before.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Aside from that, yes you’re right, and hence the name. However, it was also carried out by a government and a dictator who came to power espousing communism. I could care less whether he achieved it – in fact, I’d say it’s a pipe dream to think you could achieve it on a large scale. Or any scale much larger than a little village.

Aleksandr wrote:
But interestingly, china and russia were enemies. How could that be? You can espouse whatever you want, it doesn’t make it true. I can sit here and spend all day telling you I am actually a pirate, but if I don’t meet any of the criteria that define what a pirate is, am I still one, because I claimed to be? That is, if I claim to be a pirate, and I am lying, does that modify the definition of “pirate”? The reason russia and china were enemies likely stems from their opposite views on which class should run the country, and how to run the economy. Yet they both claimed to use the same economic system. Fortunately, both were lying.[/quote]

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe China and the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics could be Communist enemies (when they weren’t being Communist allies) the same way France and England could be mercantilist/monarchist enemies and allies as the purpose suited them.

Also, the reason the USSR and China were enemies had a lot to do with their proximity and view of each other as rival regional powers – along with traditional claims to some of the same land and sphere of influence – a little realpoliticks, irrespective of espoused comrades-in-arms for the working class…

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

I don’t care about the semantics. Did the USSR and its satellites, China, Cambodia, Viet Nam and Cuba claim to be Communist governments or not?

Aleksandr wrote:
Some did, others did not. Cuba, for instance, did not. After having being antagonized by the US and UK for a while, Castro had to turn to the USSR for help. Similarly, north Vietnam had to turn to the USSR to balance out the American assistance the south was receiving. To the vietnamese, it was a civil war, and economics had very little to do with it.

In fact, not even the USSR claimed to be communist. The system they employed was called “war-time communism” by Lenin, and was supposed to be temporary, to keep the country together during the crisis. Unfortunately, the war never ended.[/quote]

So they didn’t, and then they did. Or they did, but they didn’t really mean it.

[quote] BostonBarrister wrote:
If you want to play semantics, I could come back and say you couldn’t possibly say that because there aren’t any truly capitalist countries.

Aleksandr wrote:
You can say whatever you want, but you’d be lying. You don’t want to discuss semantics? You are telliong me you aren’t interested in what communism IS, but it is bad because people say so.[/quote]

Really? Which countries are pure laissez-faire capitalist countries, that don’t devote huge chunks of GDP to socialist-style programs that redistribute wealth in the form of government services?

Anyway, I’m telling you I am not at all interested in what communism is theoretically. What I am interested in is the effects that have followed in the wake of governments taking over that proclaim themselves communist, and nationalize all (or most) ownership of land and resources by force in the name of declared communist principles. I’m more interested in history than in poly sci.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
You have countries that endured armed insurrections, in the name of “the people,” that enforced some level socialist/communist economic policies and used brute force to keep them in place – and keep the citizens from fleeing en masse from such a wretched system.

Aleksandr wrote:
No, you have power-hungry people who figure the easiest way to win power is by enlisting the USSR or China as an ally. In order to do this, they say “yeah, we believe whatever they believe”. The reason their governments fail is because they don’t know what they are doing. This is because they are usually not politicians, or economists, or anyone else that would have any idea how to run a country.[/quote]

Except that the USSR and China were two of the biggest offenders – at least under Lenin, Stalin and Mao for the worst of it.

As for the politicans, economists or anyone else, they would have had better access to such folks’ help and insights if they could have restrained themselves from killing them, causing those who didn’t get killed to consider living in other locales to the extent they could do so. Kind of like those Jewish scientists and other intelligentsia fleeing the Third Reich.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Communism – or whatever you prefer to call it – cannot exist on a large scale without totalitarianist power.

Aleksandr wrote:
I disagree entirely. I agree with Marx’s assertion that it cannot exist on a small scale. Any country claiming to be communist has already violated one of the defining characteristics of communism.[/quote]

I guess that’s one way to explain the failures: “It just hasn’t been done correctly yet.” I hear that a lot.

W/r/t scales, it didn’t do so well on the large scale either, with the Soviet collapse and China’s slow march toward capitalism – as you said, they couldn’t even get along with each other. And going forward economically, machination and information technology are in the process of completely redefining the economic world according to Marx.

Too bad the world won’t just fall in and toe the line as everyone knows they should… Maybe if we gave those philosopher kings a go they could enforce it. At any rate, I don’t suppose we’ll ever get to test the limits of that theory.

[quote] BostonBarrister wrote:
Those are the ones I’m calling “communist” for short hand. Feel free to go write a paper on all the very important reasons why this does not conform to the technical definition of communism – and keep ignoring the main point, which is the willful evil that has been done by those regimes. Brutality, intimidation and murder were part of their official policies.

Aleksandr wrote:
The “evil” is not always willful. Stalin’s USSR would never have existed if Lenin realized the country would be in war perpetually. He made a mistake, hardly “willful evil”. And Stalin can be debated. On the one hand, I hear russians (eg Kruschev) and americans saying he was a monster. On the other hand, non-russian soviets say he was a great man and a great leader. [/quote]

The Georgians and Ukranians give Stalin a special place in their hearts…

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

I could care less about your trite dismissals. I could care even less about whether the countries above, which claimed to be Communist countries, conform to your definition. Neither will whitewash the history of governments that were worse than the Nazis – in total, definitely, and in some cases even individually.

Aleksandr wrote:
Stop being so dramatic, no one is trying to whitewash anything. My dismissals weren’t intended to be offensive, my intention was to show you that it would be more productive for you to read a little history, and maybe economic theory, rather than discuss things which you obviously are not familiar with. Put away your ego for a second, and consider this point closely: what contribution are you making by responding with dramatic rhetoric? It’s obvious that your understanding of communism comes from US propaganda (which is typical, I’ve met very few people for whom this wasn’t true). Maybe you should consider other points of view before talking so much.[/quote]

Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like Solyetzhin’s (sp?) point of view in Gulag Archipelago. Good book. You should read it sometime.

Or perhaps the article I linked above, giving first-hand accounts of some of the reforms Mao instituted via the Cultural Revolution.

These aren’t matters to be papered over lightly. Just because those people were dehumanized and tortured shouldn’t affect the value we place on their point of view…

BTW, are you a fan of Jacques Chirac? I just note the similarity of your phraseology toward me, “Maybe you should consider other points of view before talking so much.” to M. Chirac’s comment toward the Eastern European leaders who questioned his grand wisdom, when he said they had missed “an excellend opportunity to shut up.” My paraphrase – sorry for not using the original French, but I learned mine in high school and am quite rusty. The government doesn’t require me to practice it where I live.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

It is really fascinating from a social psychology point of view. It’s referred to as the mirror image effect; the “willful evil” you accuse the USSR of displaying is very similar to how the USSR preceived the US. Soviet propaganda was surprisingly similar to US propaganda. Both sides saw each other as being evil, and themselves as moral, even though they did terribly immoral things.

You should watch “The Fog of War”, it is terribly interesting, and is a rare insight into what JFK and LBJ were thinking when they did the things they did, and what McNamara found out years later from talking to his “enemies”.[/quote]

Yes, the study of propaganda is an interesting topic.

And I do want to check out that movie – sounds quite interesting. JFK and LBJ, whatever political disagreements I might have with either of them, were both fairly staunch anti-Communists, and it would be interesting to see their private thoughts during such episodes as the Cuban Missle Crisis, or in weighing action v. inaction in Viet Nam.

Frankly, I think that a lot of espoused political theory is just a cover for realpoliticks, by all governments. The question seems to be what sorts of restraints the governments have in exercising their power – both at home and abroad.

Moral relativism is also an interesting study. Some of us believe that certain acts are absolutely more wrong than are others, even if both are bad. Some of us don’t. I think we’re running into one of those situations here.

[quote]Aleksandr and Janoski wrote:

Some ignorant horseshit…

[/quote]

Are you idiots really still defending communism? We had a whole thread where we hashed out that the communists were the leading cause of death in a 100 year period EVER. That includes the black death, smallpox, and the brain death that is still occurring somewhere to lead someone to believe that communism was a great idea.

ESTIMATES OF DEMOCIDE (political murder) IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES FROM 1917 to 1989 RANGE FROM 85,000,000 TO 130,000,000 MURDERED! HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THIS?

BB, your last post was too long for me to do a point-by-point, so I will try to cover everything quickly.

What Stalin did, or did not do, is now impossible to know. There has been too much historical tampering by both sides to ever find the truth. On the one hand, his enemies say he was crazy and paranoid, and had innocent people sent to gulags, in response to his paranoid deusions.

On the other hand, his supporters say huge numbers of people were trying to kill/overthrow him, and he had to get rid of them to protect the country. Those arguing this point will mention how generous he was in incarcerating, rather than executing, many people involved in high treason.

It’s impossible to for either side to make any progress in that debate, and we should al be reasonable to say “we don’t know”.

With the USSR and China being large scale examples, I disagree. marx made it very clear that he did not believe communism could exist in a single country (or a group of countries for that matter) but had to be a world-wide system. In it’s simplest definition, communsim is just changing the goal of production from generating wealth to satisfying human needs, and this can’t occur in a market economy.

Please note I am not saying that previous systems made some mistakes that I have resolved, I am saying they claimed to be something they weren’t for political reasons. In truth, they did not meet any of the criteria which defines communism.

And can I find a pure laissez faire capitalist country? Of course not, but you have t o understand the continuum you are using is wrong. It is not:

capitalism----------------------------socialism

more accurately, it is:
no gov involvment--------------------total gov control

the key difference being that the former shows all governments as hybrids of socialism and capitalism, while the latter recognizes that all are capitalist, and where “socialization” occurs, it is top-down socialization, which is qualitatively different from bottom-up socialization (communism).

In the case of complete government control, what you have is state-capitalism, and this most closely resembles the economies of the USSR, Cuba, and China (to a lesser degree).

It is logical that you could fall somewhere between no control and total control, whereas capitalism and communism are mutually exclusive, and a hybrid is impossible (at least I’ve never heard it even being proposed as a possibility).

BB, you dispense with the cold logical penetration. It is quite amusing but often wasted. You could try with the more incendiary stuff. It’s less enlightening but a whole lot more fun.

You post this, and have the balls to call ME ignorant in the same post? You are right, in a time of war, your government gave you fair, unbiased infrmation pertaining to the other side. There is no need for you to learn anything else.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
You post this, and have the balls to call ME ignorant in the same post? You are right, in a time of war, your government gave you fair, unbiased infrmation pertaining to the other side. There is no need for you to learn anything else.[/quote]

You can go find the other thread. There’s plenty of citations and reference materials there and I don’t feel like posting them again.

I didn’t get that information from a government source except for what university researchers been able to glean from the records of the former USSR, Cambodia, China, and other luminaries. None of it was from the USA government. It covered all communist countries, including dozens that we were not “at war” with.

Look it up.

[quote]Cream wrote:
Aleksandr wrote:
You post this, and have the balls to call ME ignorant in the same post? You are right, in a time of war, your government gave you fair, unbiased infrmation pertaining to the other side. There is no need for you to learn anything else.

You can go find the other thread. There’s plenty of citations and reference materials there and I don’t feel like posting them again.

I didn’t get that information from a government source except for what university researchers been able to glean from the records of the former USSR, Cambodia, China, and other luminaries. None of it was from the USA government. It covered all communist countries, including dozens that we were not “at war” with.

Look it up.[/quote]

Seriously, stop talking about “communism” if you don’t know what it is. Why would I take the time to find another thread of you spouting BS? How could there be a “communist country we were not at war with” if even governments that were thought to be “soft on communism” were overthrown? And what the hell do past examples of state-capitalism have to do with communism? So many questions, so few answers…

Are you going to cry? All of the swearwords really help your arguments.

Take a deep breath, Lenin. Communism lost, freedom is on the march!

THE PARTY’S OVER!!!

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
hedo wrote:

I think you hit the nail on the head. The crux of the argument that Alex is trying to make is pure theory.

It doesn’t matter that Communism never worked and can not work in the real world.

The theory, to them, is perfect. We mere humans, are not ready to accept it.

We poor Americans will just have to muddle along in Freedom and Democracy. And of course be able to provide a refuge to those who have given up on Communism and left for a better life.

The students just need to keep refining it until we can accept their breathtaking wisdom.

Of course it’s theory, and it’s theory that can’t be actively implemented. But if you had any understanding of dialectical materialism (if that’s what it’s called in english), that would be obvious enough. That not to say that it will never exist.

American freedom? The US has enough blood on it’s hands to make that statement laughable. But that’s not the topic of this thread. So substantiate your claim; tell me why you think it can never exist. But whatever you do, don’t give me an example of a country with a market economy, administered by the state. Because if you can’t see the obvious difference between state-capitalism and communism, you are in no position to talk about them.[/quote]

Alex

You are a little uptight dude.

I argue the merits of communism, in this century, only as an excercise in comic relief. Not because I take you seriosuly. Sorry you didn’t realize that I was screwing with you. You commies have no sense of humor.

Perhpas you are wasting your time here with lowly intellecually deficient capitalists. Your true calling may lie back in those former Eastern Block countries where they are capable of appreciating the glory of communism.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

What Stalin did, or did not do, is now impossible to know. There has been too much historical tampering by both sides to ever find the truth. On the one hand, his enemies say he was crazy and paranoid, and had innocent people sent to gulags, in response to his paranoid deusions.

[/quote]

Its not impossible to know. Exact numbers of people killed may never be known, but we can get damn close to the truth.

As far as judging the type of person Stalin was, I can come to no other conclusion that he was indeed a total SOB. With the wealth of information on him and his activities that have emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I believe I’m pretty accurate.

Dustin

Aleks,

Before I respond to your points, I wanted to make a general response.

I’m sorry, but your and my approaches to the topic I was trying to address are very different. In fact, it reminds me of an academic discussion of the Crusades – arguing about what was and what was not truly a Crusade, whether the aims of the Crusade were reflected by the Crusaders, whether the tertiary casualties, such as the Jews and the Eastern Romans, should be considered in an analysis. The Popes defined the goals of the Crusades through the Bulls – the actual Crusaders often ignored them, or at least disregarded them, and did what served their own interests.

History may be more than a summary of its crimes, but its important not to get so caught up in the details that one misses the larger lessons to be drawn from the tragedies.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

With the USSR and China being large scale examples, I disagree. marx made it very clear that he did not believe communism could exist in a single country (or a group of countries for that matter) but had to be a world-wide system. In it’s simplest definition, communsim is just changing the goal of production from generating wealth to satisfying human needs, and this can’t occur in a market economy.

Please note I am not saying that previous systems made some mistakes that I have resolved, I am saying they claimed to be something they weren’t for political reasons. In truth, they did not meet any of the criteria which defines communism.[/quote]

In that case, we could never really evaluate communism per Marxism unless it was actually successful at “taking over the world” (imagine the Brain, from Pinky and the Brain, making that statement).

Which basically means we are never going to make a real-world analysis, unless you think that somehow one particular philosophy could ever achieve world-wide scope like that.

However imperfect the attempted applications, I think we need to analyze how it has been applied, and what has been the common denominator that has led to the problems.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

And can I find a pure laissez faire capitalist country? Of course not, but you have t o understand the continuum you are using is wrong. It is not:

capitalism----------------------------socialism

more accurately, it is:
no gov involvment--------------------total gov control

the key difference being that the former shows all governments as hybrids of socialism and capitalism, while the latter recognizes that all are capitalist, and where “socialization” occurs, it is top-down socialization, which is qualitatively different from bottom-up socialization (communism).

In the case of complete government control, what you have is state-capitalism, and this most closely resembles the economies of the USSR, Cuba, and China (to a lesser degree).

It is logical that you could fall somewhere between no control and total control, whereas capitalism and communism are mutually exclusive, and a hybrid is impossible (at least I’ve never heard it even being proposed as a possibility).[/quote]

Actually, it’s amusing that you put forth that analysis – it’s the exact analytical paradigm I used to argue with my Professors in college – a lot of whom were very attracted to the departed USSR and to Chinese government – that “communist” (quotes for your benefit) governments were a lot closer to Nazi governments than to capitalist democracies. It was a totalitarian analogy, and I was dissuaded from writing a paper on that topic in my seminar on the origins of fascism and Nazism because I thought the prof would sandbag my grade.

BB, you are on to something now. What you have presented is a legitimate criticism of communist theory. Since communism cannot possibly exist in one country, it can only exist when the entire world uses this economic model. However, if started by a local revolution, rebellion, or whatever, it faces so much resistance from the outside that it has no choice other than to adapt (and you have war-time communism). So, if it succeeds, by the time it takes the whole world, it is corrupted beyond recognition and is no longer communism.

This does not make communism impossible, though, it only makes local communist revolutions pointless. Another of the principles of dialectical materialism is that you cannot accelerate history. If the world ever becomes ready for communism, it will happen somewhat uniformly across the globe, much like capitalism (ie, cities) sprung up in europe.

I’m sure you can think of other examples of systems, philosophies, or technology appearing nearly simultaneously in various places, entirely independently.

Now, the only question is, will this ever happen? Obviously, it’s impossible to tell, but considering the mismanagement of resources going on globally, there is a good chance a change will become necessary. Will it be to communism? It’s possible, or maybe some other, as of yet unthought of system.

Regarding the crusades, I’m not sure if it’s analogous. With communism, it was made abundantly clear by all parties involved that that system was not communism. In fact, I remember Castro saying that Cuba was working TOWARDS communism. That is, communism was a long term goal of these countries, but it was certainly recognized that they weren’t there yet. Add to this Lenin’s modification of the system to “war-time communism”, which illustrates that he understood the system he was using was not communism, although he hoped it would be temporary.

[quote]Cream wrote:
Are you going to cry? All of the swearwords really help your arguments.

Take a deep breath, Lenin. Communism lost, freedom is on the march!

THE PARTY’S OVER!!![/quote]

Using nothing but cliches and rhetoric really helps YOUR argument. Truly the mark of an intellectual, no?

And what swearwords are you talking about? “BS” and “hell”? Oh man, I have a potty mouth! How about instead of trying to avoid the topic, you answer the questions I raise. And please, use arguments, NOT rhetoric. I know it’s a novel concept, but give it a try. I bet once you get used to it, you’ll actually LIKE it.

A good article lamenting Soviet nostalgia:

What Gulag?
Russia’s government shamefully refuses to face up to the horrors of communism.

BY DAVID SATTER
Sunday, May 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

When President Bush ascends the reviewing stand in Red Square tomorrow for ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, he may find that his presence is being used less to mark a historic anniversary than to rehabilitate the Soviet Union.

The anniversary has unleashed a wave of Soviet nostalgia. A report by the RIA press agency said that “all the veterans agree that the great love that the Soviet people had for their country and their belief in the righteousness of their cause helped the Soviet Union survive the worst war of the 20th century.” Vladimir Putin, in a speech last year at the Victory Day ceremonies, said: “We were victorious in the most just war of the 20th century. May 9 is the pinnacle of our glory.” More recently, in his state of the nation address on April 25, President Putin referred to the breakup of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

This nostalgia is not harmless. Not only does it ignore the fact that the Soviet Union was just as terroristic as Nazi Germany, it also reflects what Hannah Arendt called “pervasive, public stupidity.” This is the failure to understand that the truth about the past is not irrelevant–that it is, in fact, the best hope for a decent future. The re-Sovietization of Russia is possible because when the Soviet Union fell, the new Russian state did not break irrevocably with its communist heritage. To do this, it needed to define the communist regime as criminal and the Soviet period as illegitimate; open the archives, including the list of informers; and find all mass burial grounds and execution sites. None of this was done and the consequences are being felt today.

There is still no legal evaluation of the Soviet regime: It has never been declared criminal and no official has ever been tried for crimes committed under communism. The result is that former communist leaders in Russia are viewed as leaders first and criminals second (if at all), no matter how heinous their actions. Russians, thus, frequently lack the conviction, intrinsic to free men, that an individual answers for his actions no matter what the external conditions.
Since the Soviet regime was not repudiated, the Russian government became the Soviet regime’s legal successor. This has meant that millions of victims of repression were rehabilitated, usually posthumously, by being cleared of official charges–rather than have those charges voided as the product of a deranged system. The regime, therefore, continued to judge its victims, rather than the other way around.

In addition to not declaring the Soviet regime criminal, the new Russian government did nothing to reveal the identities of KGB informers. In March 1992, the Russian Supreme Soviet passed a law on investigative activities that declared the list of the millions of informers to be a state secret. One reason for the vote was believed to be that many of the deputies had themselves been KGB informers. The decision had serious consequences: It established a precedent for concealing truth about the past that was invoked as decisions were made on access to records in the KGB, Comintern and foreign ministry archives.

Most important, Russian authorities made no serious attempt to find and memorialize mass graves and execution sites. The victims of Stalin-era terror were executed in secret and Soviet leaders intended that the bodies never be found. Still, some sites have been discovered–usually the achievement of the Memorial social movement operating with little help from the outside.

In August 2002, after a five-year search, the execution grounds for the majority of the victims of the Great Terror in Leningrad were discovered by Memorial volunteers in a firing range near the village of Toksovo. It is estimated that the site holds 30,000 bodies, making it possibly the largest on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Neither the federal nor the local authorities have shown any interest in excavating the site and analyzing the remains, let alone memorializing the victims. Instead, they have cautioned the volunteers not to interfere with the operations of the firing range.

The result of official indifference is that the burial grounds and execution sites that stand in silent witness to the horrors of communism play almost no role in the moral life of the country. Without an effort to memorialize these horrors, the growing nostalgia for Soviet power is natural: Although communism was the moral nadir of modern Russian history, it was also the period when Russia was at the height of its power. Increasingly, however, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is taking frightening forms. Statues of Stalin have begun appearing in cities, and in Orel the town council has written to Mr. Putin demanding that Stalin’s “honor” be restored to the history books, his statue re-erected and his name given to streets and squares. In mid-April, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov said Russia “should once again render honor to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague.” And a group of leading political and cultural figures in St. Petersburg has called for the erection of a monument to Alexei Kuznetsov, who organized Leningrad’s defenses during World War II. He was later shot in the postwar “Leningrad Affair” and is buried in the Levashovo Cemetery, along with many of Stalin’s victims.

Before the war began, Kuznetsov was a key participant in Stalin’s atrocities as a member of the extrajudicial “troika” that signed death sentences for the Leningrad Oblast during the terror. The troika operated in Leningrad from August 1937 to November 1938, issuing 40,000 death sentences–and from January to June 1938, Kuznetsov, as second secretary of the Oblast party committee, was a member.

It is too late for President Bush to decline to go to Moscow as the presidents of Lithuania and Estonia have done, citing Russia’s refusal to admit and apologize for crimes committed in the Baltics. Mr. Bush, nonetheless, would be doing a real service to history if, in addition to participating in the celebrations, he would also visit the Butovo firing range south of the city where the bodies of at least 20,000 victims of Stalin’s Great Terror lie in mass graves. In contrast to the meticulous attention devoted to anything to do with World War II, Butovo is neglected. There is no museum or general memorial. The common graves are marked off with ropes. Until recently, the area was choked with weeds and used as a garbage dump. The number of visitors is minuscule–about 4,000 a year, mostly Orthodox believers and relatives of those buried there.

The Soviet Union did indeed achieve a great victory in defeating Nazi Germany. The cost was 27 million dead. The failure to put the victory in perspective and describe the true nature of the Stalinist regime, however, means that the May 9 events, in addition to a celebration of the victory, are also an exercise in propaganda that glorifies the Soviet system. As a result, the visiting heads of state risk endorsing with their presence a view of history that works against the interests of Russia’s democratic future.

Mr. Satter, a Russian affairs specialist, is affiliated with the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute and Johns Hopkins.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
Cream wrote:
Are you going to cry? All of the swearwords really help your arguments.

Take a deep breath, Lenin. Communism lost, freedom is on the march!

THE PARTY’S OVER!!!

Using nothing but cliches and rhetoric really helps YOUR argument. Truly the mark of an intellectual, no?

And what swearwords are you talking about? “BS” and “hell”? Oh man, I have a potty mouth! How about instead of trying to avoid the topic, you answer the questions I raise. And please, use arguments, NOT rhetoric. I know it’s a novel concept, but give it a try. I bet once you get used to it, you’ll actually LIKE it.[/quote]

I see.

University researched and produced death statistics from both France and the US are now rhetoric. Historical fact is now rhetoric. 85 - 110 million dead, that’s just a cliche. The economy of the USSR was a talking point. The millions dead in the camps is just the figment of some uber-capitalist professors’ (because they are so often uber-capitalist) imagination. The starving of millions of Ukranians is a myth. The accounts of the survivors of the gulags, like Solzhenitsyn, were just Russian-Republican rhetoric. Live TV repression with Soviet tanks and machine guns in the Eastern Bloc countries, like in Prague in 1968, was the work of special effects. The literal widespread decimation (killing of every tenth man) in certain areas of the Soviet Empire is a tired cliche. The Berlin Wall was a rhetorical instrument of the West.

Communism didn’t work because it can’t work. It makes assumptions about people – namely altruism, what motivates them, lack of religion – that are simply false. They thought they could educate these traits and thoughts out of the population, and despite a nearly a century of play time, it didn’t work. Those that didn’t buy it, and were dumb enough to say “Hey I worked my nuts off to make those potatoes, I want some!” were murdered by the bushel, in huge numbers, whether your dad believes that or not. You and he can go visit the forced labor camps. There are dozens open to the public.

Let him know that we actually did land men on the moon, that the Holocaust happened, and that being pals with Soviet party luminaries (i.e. the guys in charge of the system that killed roughly the population of the entire West Coast) is nothing to be proud of.

THE PARTY’S OVER! (Tell your dad!)