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2010-05-13 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
A Hidden History of Evil: Unread Soviet Archives
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Posted by  Anonymoose 2010-05-13 00:12|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ]  Top

#1 A snippet from the article. You decide if the author is being paranoid or not because I don't know enough background to make any kind of informed decision.

There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
Posted by gorb 2010-05-13 03:25||   2010-05-13 03:25|| Front Page Top

#2 I may be paranoid, but I find this part easy to believe:

Bukovsky’s book about the story that these documents tell, Jugement à Moscou, has been published in French, Russian, and a few other Slavic languages, but not in English. Random House bought the manuscript and, in Bukovsky’s words, tried “to force me to rewrite the whole book from the liberal left political perspective.” Bukovsky replied that “due to certain peculiarities of my biography I am allergic to political censorship.” The contract was canceled, the book was never published in English, and no other publisher has shown interest in it.
Posted by Bobby 2010-05-13 06:03||   2010-05-13 06:03|| Front Page Top

#3 "In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history."

"No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)"

"We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about."

The author doesn't take it to the next step and ask "WHY?"

That is nearly as important as the fact of the whitewashing itself.

The left living in the West will never, ever teach about the atrocities of the Soviets or Red China and will contimue to teach that the only large atrocity of the 20th century was Naziism for two related reasons.

First, there is the need to present the narrative that people whose politics are left of center are perfect and incapable of doing anything wrong or evil. The notion that any person left of center could be wrong or evil leads to the conclusion that others with those politics or ideology could be, as well. And that thought simply cannot be permitted in the world of the left, in particular due to their inherent smugness and one of their base premises, which is that leftism is the ideology of perfection and utopia.

Secondly, the left fears the reductio ad absurdium game that they have played for decades with the center/right will be used on them in a turnabout-is-fair-play fashion. Since WWII, leftists, particularly in the field of education, have been indoctrinating millions of students to think that everyone whose politics are center/right is the same as Adolph Hitler. This is easy to do if you only teach about Nazi atrocities, and teach nothing about the Soviets or Chinese and their much larger campaigns of murder, rape, and oppression. This has been a hugely successful program, a quick look at almost any university or even highschool program in history shows that this is nearly universal. If the atrocities perpetrated by the far left were taught with equal vigor, then the same reductio arguments could be applied to people today whose politics were left of center. Since the overwhelming preponderance of educators are leftists, particularly at the college level, and since they are at least dimly aware that their guilt-by-association tactics could be used against themselves if students had knowledge of the facts regarding the atrocities of the left (which were ten or more times worse than those of the far right), they simply don't teach about the gulag or the Great Leap Forward etc.

As long as the education industry is populated by 90%+ far-left Democrats, the atrocities of the Soviets will never be taught in U.S. high schools and colleges. Today's educators are too afraid of the consequences of vast swathes of students knowing the truth about where leftist thought can lead.
Posted by no mo uro 2010-05-13 06:04||   2010-05-13 06:04|| Front Page Top

#4 I mean, why do you think the New York Times has never returned Duranty's Pulitzer?
Posted by no mo uro 2010-05-13 06:10||   2010-05-13 06:10|| Front Page Top

#5 there is one memorial to the victims of communism

however, there isn't yet a hall of fame for the many Stalin apologists
Posted by lord garth 2010-05-13 07:19||   2010-05-13 07:19|| Front Page Top

#6 Well said no mo uro.
Posted by Besoeker 2010-05-13 07:34||   2010-05-13 07:34|| Front Page Top

#7 For all the suppression of the true story of Communism in the 20th Century, its fascinating to what lengths and depths the usual suspects avoid using the word or tag of Socialism to their efforts, even though it is socialism, redistribution, and its attendant goals. You'd think they'd be proud to wear it on their sleeve with all its self righteousness and moral superiority they proclaim.
Posted by Procopius2k 2010-05-13 08:40||   2010-05-13 08:40|| Front Page Top

#8 Lord if that memorial ain't irony I don't know what is.
Posted by BrerRabbit 2010-05-13 08:53||   2010-05-13 08:53|| Front Page Top

#9 Don't forget the fact that the Nazi's are _always_ shown as a 'right wing' organization - even when they were, in fact, left wing.

National Socialist....

How long before Obumbles has that memorial removed? (Or someone steals it like that cross in the desert...) I'm sure it offends him.
Posted by CrazyFool 2010-05-13 09:00||   2010-05-13 09:00|| Front Page Top

#10 There is a rather harsh 2008 documentary movie out, called "The Soviet Story", which compares the Nazis to the Soviets.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305871/

Very graphic footage. IMDb reviewers give it either 10 stars or 1 star. It really savages communism. I can see why leftists want it banned.
Posted by  Anonymoose 2010-05-13 09:36||   2010-05-13 09:36|| Front Page Top

#11 I might add, not yet available on Netflix, but pirate versions are available on USENET newsgroups and in torrents.
Posted by  Anonymoose 2010-05-13 09:39||   2010-05-13 09:39|| Front Page Top

#12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

no mo euro, I'd never heard of Duranty. Thanks.
Posted by mom 2010-05-13 10:09||   2010-05-13 10:09|| Front Page Top

#13 Why is it that there are so many privileged useful idiots in the U.S. who embrace communism/socialism, e.g. Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Black Caucus, Jane Fonda, etc. Isn't this a bit hypocritical? Obviously, they have never read the bloodstained history of communism/socialism.
Posted by JohnQC 2010-05-13 10:28||   2010-05-13 10:28|| Front Page Top

#14 "...Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear." Jeremiah 5:21
Posted by Procopius2k 2010-05-13 10:32||   2010-05-13 10:32|| Front Page Top

#15 I came to the conclusion years ago that fascism/communism is nothing more than mutated monarchy.

unelected one, unelected many.

they can't comprehend another way after living a thousand years under it.

We truly are blessed..........
Posted by anonymous_2u2 2010-05-13 10:51||   2010-05-13 10:51|| Front Page Top

#16  Another excellent link is Doris Lessing's "Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind by Communism"
We did not have to identify with the Soviet Union, with its seventy-odd years of logic-chopping, of idiotic rhetoric, brutality, concentration camps, pogroms against the Jews. Again and again, failure. And, from our point of view, most important, the thousand mind-wriggling ways of defending failure.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-05-13 13:09||   2010-05-13 13:09|| Front Page Top

#17 Compared to the Soviets, the Nazi's were amateurs.

Also, as I'm sure many of you have experienced, reading even a little of Alinsky makes me want to take to the streets and makes it clear how dangerous a time we live in.

This falls election and the 2012 elections are perhaps the most important of my lifetime IMO.
Posted by Jefferson 2010-05-13 13:44||   2010-05-13 13:44|| Front Page Top

#18 Damn, Joe, somebody found my hidden files.
That reminds me...I gotta shine up the old Pulitzer.
Posted by The Ghost of Walter Duranty 2010-05-13 22:32||   2010-05-13 22:32|| Front Page Top

23:59 Redneck Jim
23:43 tu3031
23:35 Broadhead6
23:29 Asymmetrical
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23:17 Pappy
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23:11 DarthVader
23:08 Barbara Skolaut
23:02 Anguper Hupomosing9418
23:02 gorb
23:01 Anguper Hupomosing9418
22:57 Michael Bloomberg
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