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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Poetic Justice There once was a Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
His follower Stalin did ten in.
I’ve already quoted Robert Conquest’s limerick in a comment on Perry Metzger’s post below, but, on this anniversary day, it seemed to deserve top billing. I suggest prose commenters continue adding to Perry Metzer’s thread below. Anyone inspired to verse may comment here (or anyone rescuing an old poem on the subject from unmerited neglect).
I regret to have to inform you that, as befits its socialist theme, this imitation of the Erdogan poetry competition does not come with any capitalistic prize money. However if anyone comes up with something witty enough to go viral, they just might thereby help avert the future in which they are sent to the PC Gulag by the comrades.
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Yes – if a person (Marxist or “Fellow Traveller”) tries to defend “Lenin” that defender is a scumbag. It is as brutally simple as that.
“Lenin” was not an armchair Marxist – he put it into practice, i.e. he was a mass murderer.
I’ll start the ball rolling with a neglected poem by an all-too-appropriately unknown author. In English translation it does not rhyme, and for all I know maybe it doesn’t in Russian either, but I cannot find it in my heart to reprove its young writer for that.
This is the song of the bezprizorni, the orphans who fled when their parents and siblings were arrested, living on the streets and ‘dying like kittens’ in the winter months. Mass graves were found all over the soviet union after the fall of communism – and were later flushed as far as possible down the memory hole with the eager help of western intellectuals – but by definition the bezprizorni were not put in mass graves; they were the little’uns that got away and died one by one here, there and nowhere.
I would have liked to provide more links but – as you can easily see by a quick web search – it’s not just their grave locations that are largely unknown in the English language world. If you overlook one concession to wider academic bigotry, where she writes of ‘hundreds of thousands of parents’ being arrested where it should be ‘millions’, this academic’s account is clear enough.
The Wikipedia article has been (re?)written to start “At certain periods, there were large numbers of orphans in the Soviet Union to handle by the state, due to a number of turmoils in the country …” (my emphasis – of their opening de-emphasis of communism’s central role) and goes downhill from there, burying the great terror’s role inside a ton of communism-friendly “info” and (from my quick-because-disgusted reading) saying nothing about the Ukraine famine at all. No doubt social justice warriors (aided by Russian web-troll sock-puppets?) camp out on the page, as they do on the Gamergate, Sad Puppies and many another page, ensuring that corrections are quickly given the Beria treatment. Another link, titled “bensprizorni [sic] | Arts & Crust” informs me that
As the link itself is now dead, I can only guess at the motives for the ‘drastic rethink’. You have to wade through pages of search to get even a handcount of English language links on the bezprizorni, and they share space with “info” from marxists.org and suchlike.
Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror is a source of real information.
Joseph Stalin disagreed with Trotsky
Over where their Socialism should stopski
One country with a wall
Or keep going and oppress ’em all
So Leon’s brain (from an axe) went popski
It does rime in Russian.
Alisa, thanks for the link. Would I be right in guessing it comes from an old soviet film implying that evil capitalists created bezprizorni whom the noble communist hero is about to save?
As I’m here, this old poem by e.e.cummings is probably not rescued from unmerited neglect but it mildy amuses me.
You must pronounce the punctuation to make it rhyme. (English readers, remember our benighted transatlantic cousins call a full stop a ‘period’.)
Doubtless it amused e.e.cummings to utter such an impeccably old-fashioned idea in such an impeccably modernist form.
JadedLibertarian, November 8, 2017 at 1:01 pm, for your middle lines (as they already co-scan by beat, not by syllable), I wondered about
Since the poem (unavoidably, I appreciate) will suggest to the ignorant that Stalin was the less aggressive, I fear it will not be the one to go viral and save the souls of the young. 🙂
Your guess is correct, Niall :-/ To paraphrase whomever, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and communist propaganda.
This is related.
Good suggestions Niall. I would contend that Stalin was less aggressive than Trotsky, at least in terms of territorial ambition. If Trotsky had won that little skirmish I think the 20th century would have looked quite different. An expansionist Soviet Union in the 20s and 30s could well have resulted in an atomic wasteland Soviet Union in the 40s.
The fact that Stalin was content to just make his own people’s lives a misery is probably one of the reasons that nascent Russian communism was able to survive at all. If, following Trotsky’s lead, Bolsheviks in Western Europe and North America had been running around trying to destabilise and overthrow their governments in the name of “Continuous Revolution”, I suspect the Allies would have had to simply keep going east after WW1.
Maybe that would have been better?
In the true spirit of his event, I’ll contribute a 500 pound prize, but only if I can steal it from someone else first.
One October, a bald, bearded Rooshian
Fomented a Red Revolution
Which went on, in its day,
To kick off, in a way,
A sort of a Final Solution.
There once was a Marxist called Koba,
Who made sure his colleagues weren’t sober,
He’d get them all pissed,
Put their names on a list,
Then finally he too got done over.
The Russians of 1917
Were all quite remarkably keen
To bump each other off,
But the novelty wore off;
Their great-grandkids don’t seem quite so mean.
in Ukraine a famine had arisen
under the system of Communism
the Soviets took all the bread
leaving 10 million men dead
and the rest left to cannabilsm
Lenin was red
Stalin was too
Putin the same
There’s nothing much new.
I like Zack’s contribution. But why limit ourselves to limericks? Personally, I’m rather fond of the haiku form:
Lenin and Stalin
Murdered millions of their own
Communism sucks!
I was typing when Surellin’s post popped in. Very nice!
Thanks! Nice haiku.
Laird (November 9, 2017 at 1:26 pm), I liked your haiku. Tweaking it to make a slightly different point gives
Lenin and Stalin
Starved millions in the Ukraine
Socialism sucks!
That’s the beauty of haiku. Very flexible!
Reflection on the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, on Democrats and Russia in 2016, and many other examples.
(With a nod to a James DeCamp who in a powerlineblog comment tried a verse with a similar first line that inspired this one.)