Stalin's Cannibals
My hope is that the book reads better than this Slate article, but you be the judge of each.
Ask a Ukrainian about what governments can and will do to those they dislike.
Or a Pole.
Or a Hungarian.
Or a Byelorussian.
Or an Estonian.
Or a Latvian.
Or a citizen of the Confederate States of America.
Or any of the scores of millions of "enemies of the state" who were scourged and starved by their betters for the greater glory of collectivism.
Do you understand yet?
We - in this time and in this place - are not immune from that which has been done to countless others since the rise of homo sapiens.
Many Americans just
Good luck with that.
You are going to need it.
posted by Concerned American | 1:58 AM
7 Comments:
"Bloodlands" was a pretty decent book, worth the slog.
PF
But I suppose that, without looking deeply into it, I had considered Stalin's state-created famine a kind of "soft genocide" compared with the industrialized mass murder of Hitler's death camps or even with the millions of victims of Stalin's own purges of the late '30s and the gulags they gave birth to.
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"My hope is that the book reads better than this Slate article...."
I see what you mean.
"Soft genocide"? OK, as it's so sanitary compared to the other.....
Yeah, but to his credit (and that of Slate), he actually gets it (sorta) by the end.
But it's quaint on how it took the abomination of familial cannibalism to get through his programming, even for a bit.
Chilling....
Or a Kurd.
Or an Armenian.
Or a Bosnian.
Or a Jew.
Or a Sudanese Christian.
Or a Native American.
Or a....
How much time do you guys have for the complete list covering the last 150 years?
I was born in 1976. Most of my teachers of "the humanities" in the public schools were Marxists or Marxist sympathizers. In college, in the same fields, most were outright Communists.
THUS - the crimes of Communists were committed in service to their ideology, which these people agreed with, even though they were squeamish about the details. They were fighting Capitalism. When, in truth, they were fighting Humanity.
Growing up with this bullshit taught me to mistrust authority and do my own research. Note that they were teaching this in classes populated with victims and children of victims of Communism, from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Ukraine, Poland... the mind reels.
One intelligent reformed leftist history teacher of mine told us one day that the problem with the educational system was that most of his colleagues were mush-headed Marxists in total denial of the horrors that the ideology requires. To paraphrase him, "they will talk about how the American way of life suppresses individualism, free expression, and the like, but one only need look at history to see that Communism REQUIRES the complete suppression of the individual and minority ethnic groups. The Communist mentality requires that its adherents blind themselves to hypocrisy and double-speak." He liked to point out how Communists referred to themselves as "Marxist-Leninists" or "Trotskyists" to avoid the stain of the reality of Communism's record, all the while failing to see Lenin's horrific record, or accepting it as the way Communism is implemented.
This kind of academic blather and blindness surprises me not in the least, it's par for the course.
When I lived in Germany, I met a former Polish Air Force officer (a general) who was surviving as a farm hand. He told me two jokes that really reveal the Polish attitude towards the Russians:
1. Who is the greatest Pole of all time? Felix Dzerzhinsky - because no other Pole has ever killed so many Russians.
2. A Polish farmer is out plowing his field one day when the plow strikes something. He digs it up - it's a lamp. As he rubs the lamp to clean it, a genie pops out and tells the farmer that he will grant him three wishes.
The farmer thinks for a while, then says: Ok, I want the Mongol horde to storm out of the east, rampage all the way to the Polish border, then stop and go home. The genie says it will be so.
The farmer keeps a close eye on the news for the next few months, and sure enough, the Mongol hordes are storming towards Poland. Eventually, the arrive at the border, camp out for a while, then ride home.
The genie reappears and asks the farmer for his second wish. The farmer thinks for a while, then says that he wants the Mongol horde to reform, storm up to the Polish border, stop, and go home.
The genie says "It shall be so." Once again, the farmer watches the news, and over the next few months, the Mongols storm towards Poland. Then they reach the border, camp out, and ride home.
The genie reappears and says "It is time for your final wish." The farmer says: "You're right. I need to think about this and make it a good one. Come back tomorrow." The next day, the genie returns, and the farmer tells him "I want the Mongol horde to storm to the Polish border, stop, and go home." The genie sighs and says "It shall be so."
This time, it takes the Mongols about 3 weeks to make it to the Polish border, since they are very familiar with the way. The storm in, stop, and go home.
The genie then appears before the farmer and says: "I have to know - why did you waste your three wishes?" The farmer refuses to tell him, simply saying that they were his wishes to use as he pleased. They argue for several hours, and finally, the genie offers the farmer one more wish in exchange for an explanation. The farmer agrees, but says he has to be able to make his wish before giving his explanation.
The genie agrees, and the farmer sits and thinks for hours. Then he tells the genie that he wants the Mongol horde to rampage to the Polish border, stop, and go home. The genie says: "Fine, it shall be so."
This time, it takes the Mongols about 72 hours to storm to the Polish border. The genie looks at the farmer and says: "You are the greatest fool in human history. You could have had money, power, women, an empire of your own. ANYTHING you wanted. And you threw it all away for nothing."
The Polish farmer simply smiled and said: "True, but I got the Mongols to ravage across Russia 8 times."
Or a slave in the old south....
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