We The Living
Ayn Rand's first novel is set in post-revolutionary Russia, when "citizen" was the Party-preferred mode of obligatory interpersonal address, as opposed to the subsequent "comrade".
Those who believe the former USA has irretrievably turned a corner should consider reading WTL for insights into the coming months and years.
And don't feel intimidated by Rand's reputation for voluminous philosophizing. WTL is, as was recommended to me, both a useful entry into her worldview and a terrifying recitation of what life in a nascent Communist regime is like.
Best to be learning the origins of the new social compact, especially if you are planning to go Kolchak.
posted by Concerned American | 6:30 AM
3 Comments:
I've read "We The Living" and would recommend thinking about what Solzhenitsyn said about the reality.
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
I found Doctor Zhivago to be very insightful as a preview on what to expect once the Commies are at full strength.
Kolchak? Now there’s an interesting fellow…
Here’s a quote from when he assumed command in the Russian “Civil War”-
”The Provisional All-Russian Government has come to an end. The Council of Ministers, having all the power in its hands, has invested me, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, with this power. I have accepted this responsibility in the exceptionally difficult circumstances of civil war and complete disorganisation of the country, and I now make it known that I shall follow neither the reactionary path nor the deadly path of party strife. My chief aims are the organisation of a fighting force, the overthrow of Bolshevism, and the establishment of law and order, so that the Russian people may be able to choose a form of government in accordance with its desire and to realise the high ideas of liberty and freedom. I call upon you, citizens, to unite and to sacrifice your all, if necessary, in the struggle with Bolshevism.”
His actions?
“Kolchak acknowledged all of Russia's debts, returned factories and plants to their owners, granted concessions to foreign investors, dispersed trade unions, persecuted Marxists, and disbanded the soviets. Kolchak's agrarian policy was directed toward restoring private land ownership.”
And then, this…
“There was brutal repression committed by Kolchak's regime: in Ekaterinburg alone more than 25,000 people were shot or tortured to death.[7] In March 1919 Kolchak himself demanded one of his generals to "follow the example of the Japanese who, in the Amur region, had exterminated the local population."”
But...the Reds had their fair share of atrocities as well.
“It should be noted, however, that the Bolsheviks committed many atrocities themselves. At these times, there were numerous reports that Bolshevik interrogators utilized torture methods which, according to Orlando Figes, "was matched only by the Spanish Inquisition."[10] At Odessa the Cheka tied White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces or tanks of boiling water; In Kharkov, scalpings and hand-flayings were commonplace: the skin was peeled off victims' hands to produce "gloves"; The Voronezh Cheka rolled naked people around in barrels studded internally with nails; victims were crucified or stoned to death at Ekaterinoslav; the Cheka at Kremenchug impaled members of the clergy and buried alive rebelling peasants; in Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the winter streets until they became living ice statues…”
On and on it goes.
There was no “moral high ground” in the Russian White vs. Red struggle. If the Bolsheviks would have been put down, the “moral high ground” would have, of course, belonged to the whites. The whites lost, and we got the monster known as the Soviet Union, Lenin, and finally Stalin.
“Moral High Ground” is defined only after the killing has stopped, by the victor. More accurately, it is defined by the victor when the victor is the only one able to do the killing.
Kolchak lost, of course. He was executed in 1920.
How many lives would have been ultimately saved if the atrocity-committing Kolchak would have triumphed?
Resist.
AP
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