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How post-Communist is Russia really? There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Boris Berezovsky, the exiled anti-Putin Russian politician and businessman, called Why modern Russia is a state of denial.
First, Yeltsin lacked the will (or, maybe, the courage) to indict the communist regime as a criminal one – no less so than the Nazi regime, with all the resulting consequences for the communists themselves, and for their vanguard, the Soviet secret police. Second, Yeltsin also failed to lead Russia to repentance, to make every Russian acknowledge his own responsibility for the crimes of the communist regime. Without repentance, however, those who were oppressed and raped by Russia, such as Estonia and the other Baltic states, will never trust it again.
Great stuff and much the same point I have been making on the issue of former communist countries. Read the whole thing.
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Quite so.
Boris Yeltsin did do many things (such as getting rid of the Soviet anthem, restoring the Russian flag and so on).
But, whilst he denouced many crimes, he (as far as I know) never said “Lenin (to use the name that V.I.U.) called himself was an evil man, he delighted in his wickedness and followed a doctrine called Marxism, a doctrine that is both false and evil – the founding and existance of the Soviet Union was a crime against humanity”.
Only such a clear break with the past might have stopped men like Putin trying to bring some of it back.
Paul,
Despite any feelings to the contrary that you and I might have, many Russians and others don’t consider Marxism “false and evil.” Many even feel that the Soviet system was not truly Marxist and that MLism should be given another chance. (Talk about a second front in thw GWOT… not a pretty thought!)
Basically, I think if Yeltsin did what you proposed there could have been a civil war in the old USSR. I think keeping the blame on the political regime, as Perry suggests, would have been the better option.
“…to make every Russian acknowledge his own responsibility for the crimes of the communist regime”
Not every Russian was responsible for the crimes of the communist regime. Just like not every kulak was responsible for the crimes of the aristocracy. But I’m forgetting, this is from a man who supports another violent revolution in Russia….Meh.
I look forward to Samizdata’s support for the UK government when it forces English people into compulsory penitence for the evils of the slave trade and imperialism.
Except the people responsible are all long dead. However some of the people responsible for Soviet communism are still running Russia. One is history, one is still very much the here-and-now. Big difference.
The real cost of not doing a De-Nazification type project after communism is that a former KGB man ended up getting elected to sit in the Kremlin.
Ah thwe slave trade… Always good for a laugh that one. So, the UK should remunerate the decendants of slaves trafficked across the Atlantic?
Absolutely, we can start by bunging Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey and Condoleeza Rice a few quid because they’ve suffered terribly at the hands of our imperialism. We can of course completely overlook the inconvenient truths that not only was the UK instrumental in ending the slave-trade* but that at it’s height the British Empire was only buying 10% of the slaves on sale in West Africa. The remaining 90% were being sold within Africa or going to the Middle East. But that’s OK because muslims would never treat their slaves badly. They only make love to them. It’s only ignorant Westerners who haven’t read the Holy Koran who could construe that as rape.
I forget the URL (please remind me, if you can) but there’s a website and online petition out there, somewhere in the digital ether demanding compensation running into the umpty trillions from us Brits for all the nasty things what we done**. Slave trade is obviously there but then so is the industrial revolution. It’s almost as bonkers as Fred Phelp’s hate-fest and should be a definite candidate he Haven’s of Fluorescent Idiocy.
Well back OT. Yeltsin couldn’t prosecute the commies because that would’ve meant indicting himself. Do you think he got to become Mayor of Moscow or President of Russia riding on a Liberal Democrat ticket? He was a communist and quite a senior one. Note that “Mayor of Moscow” back then was shorthand for what Boris actually was: First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow. That was the official title. That’s about as commie as they come.
*Well, sort of. We stopped slaving as a respected profession but obviously it has taken on other forms since.
**They even have a worked out repayment scheme stretching over 70 years. Essentially we sell off all our national treasures and a few other things. Suffice to say, they will get the National Gallery over my stinking corpse. Quite how bankrupting the world’s fourth largest economy is supposed to help anybody is somewhat glossed over.
Nick,
http://britishreparations.org/index.php
His history and economics both stink.
Dave1-20-2009
It is not about “feelings”. Marxism is false (it is based on false theories of history, economics and philosphy) and it is evil – both in theory (Karl Marx, not just “Lenin”) and in practice.
As for “Civil War” – actually the Marxists in the Parliament did try and use force, President Yeltsin sent in the tanks and defeated them.
The Marxists were forced to accept the end of not only things like the Soviet flag, but the end of the ownership by the state of the means of production, distibution and exchange. They were on the floor – a formal statement that it was not a matter not just of a series of crimes (did Yeltsin and others did mention) but whole foundation of the Soviet Union that was evil would not have been a big stretch.
I repeat – they tried to resist and lost. So “civil war” does not come into it.
President Yeltsin and others most likely felt that by denoucing lots of crimes and by getting rid of the Soviet Union (the flag and everything else) they had killed the system (this was not unreasonable). However, with hidesight, it is clear that the Vampire should have been buried at the cross road with a stake through its heart.
Yeltisn (an ex high Communist party man) did formally state that he now did not believe in the principles of Marxism – but he did not kill the idea that there was something worthy of pride in the experiment.
The chance was there for someone like Putin (and it could have been someone else) to try and rebuild the police state, gain control of almost all of the media, renationalize key natural reource companies, get rid of real trial by jury, get rid of the election of regional governors, ally with the enemies of the West (such as the P.R.C. and various Islamic regimes – in spite of his policy of killing lots of Muslims) and so on.
The man has even made gestures like recreating the paramilitary youth movement (under a new name) and bringing back the music of the Soviet anthem.
One can not just wait for things to happen (thinking “well I have destroyed the Soviet Union, I can just let people forget about it now”) – one must make things happen. Evil (such as the Soviet Union) does not just vanish, it must be destroyed. The wickedness of the basic ideas of the system must be openly displayed (as they were an the end of National Socialist Germany) , so that it would become as socially unaccpetable to be a Marxist in Russia as it was to be Marxist (or to show any sympathy for the Soviet past) as it was to be Nazi in the Federal Republic of Germany.
For example, the murder of tens of millions of people by Lenin/Stalin (and even more so by Stalin’s ally Mao) should have been displayed to the people morning, noon and night (so the Marxists, who were already on the run, were kept on the run). In this way if someone said “I am a Marxist” or “there was some good in the Soviet past” people would walk away from them in disgust.
Of course the other great difference between Russia and the early Federal Republic is that there was no Ludwig Erhard (spelling).
No one to stop Western advisers (who has advice in Russia was often as bad as the polices of the occupiers of Germany after World War II) that no a highly “progressive” income tax was not a good idea, and (even more important) that there must not be a vast credit money bubble.
It was this credit money bubble expansion (and the inflation and banking collapse it led to) that gave forces that promised “order” their chance. Even Yeltsin himself turned to an intelligent young man who promised he would look after things…….
On SBS news last night, the best quality international news broadcast in Australia, when reporting on a Rice/Putin interaction over missile siting, the news reader, one Lee Lin Chin, referred to “The two superpowers”.
Admittedly, SBS, being state owned, suffers from the same problems as does both the ABC and BBC, but even by these standards this is an absurd demonstration of wishful thinking.
These people really, truly and honestly do miss the USSR.
You all talk of the Soviet Union as somekind of evil empire.
As if communism has caused more suffering then this capitalist regime. The entire world is about money, people forget about moral values and live from exploiture of each-other. Sure, socialism had it’s errors but, you really think it has killed more people then capitalism?
at least communism isn’t to blame Poverty, Rape of the 3rd World , Exploitation of labor, the Gulf Wars, Vietnam, and the death of 50million communist and trade unionists in the 20th century alone.
The media links capitalism with democracy while dictatorship and oligarchy are linked with communism.
This just doesn’t make sense to me.
Well then Igarj, you are a delusional fool. The Soviet Union was a vast open air prison camp. Moral values under a communist system? You are insane. Exploitation means what exactly? If you cannot sell your own labour, then you are a slave. Under communism, the state owns your labour, ergo, you are a slave.
if communism is explained to anyone and they think about work being on a need and voluntary basis, then they must be foolish. because they have left normal humans out of the equation…common sense really….
More logic for clueless socialists