Robert Conquest’s landmark book, The Great Terror, is described by the publisher as being a “portrayal of the death of millions in Stalin’s peacetime consolidation of power”. But anyone who reads it will know that it is more than that. The Great Terror is one of the finest portraits of the soul of the Soviet Communist Party ever written. In a sense, it is the nonfiction counterpart of George Orwell’s 1984. Neither work is concerned with simply ennumerating the unfathomable number of murders, tortures, deportations and “falsifications” of a phenomenon which Conquest characterized as consisting of brute physical violence on the one hand paired to a matchless Western cover-up on the other. What both the Terror and 1984 really aspire to do is get behind the numbers and at the idea of the Terror; why it occurred and more importantly, how it could possibly have been psychologically accepted.
To understand the problem, one must first realize that Stalin didn’t simply kill naive civilians. He annihilated an entire generation of trained revolutionaries. Men who had long underground experience; who had thrown bombs, assassinated rivals; who were masters of conspiracy. They should have been nearly impossible to suppress. And yet Stalin did it with surprising ease, Conquest convincingly shows, simply by getting them to order their own deaths through the paperwork of the Party, knowing as few who have never been real Communists can know, that for the true believer, life — and death — can never occur outside the Party. It may be beyond the power of words to capture the exhilarating experience that possesses participants in a revolution, imprinted at a time of life when loyalties affix their seal. But if anyone can, then Conquest does. He shows how the Old Bolsheviks were trapped by their own dreams and herded into canyons of their own making by an evil genius who understood the revolutionary spell without once being affected by it. To experience revolution, according to the Bolshevik Pyatkov, was to know “a miracle”; the manifestation of the effect of willpower upon history; the proof that man was God or more to the point, that the Party was God. Conquest quotes him:
The real Lenin was the man who had the courage to make a proletarian revolution first, and then to set about creating the objective conditions theoretically necessary as a preliminary … what was the October Revolution, what indeed is the Communist Party, but a miracle? No Menshevik could ever understand what it meant to be a member of such a Party …
Such a Party is capable of achieving miracles and doing things which no other collective of men could achieve … A real Communist … that is, a man who was raised in the Party and had absorbed its spirit deeply enough becomes in a way a miracle man.
The Party had created its own universe, one from which there was no escape. Time and again Stalin would hunt down men who could physically elude his clutches, yet who would not because they were bound by shackles stronger than iron. They would accept exile and plead for readmission into the Party. Even Trotsky never stopped believing. His quarrel with Stalin was that he thought the Georgian was unfit to lead an organization that he himself wished to govern. Like lambs in a corral, the Old Bolsheviks stayed within the Party because they had no life outside of it. Pyatkov said: “they were indeed ‘dead men on furlough’ as Lenin had called them. Nothing could frighten them any more, nothing surprise them. They had given all they had. History had squeezed them out to the last drop, had burnt them out to the last spiritual calorie; yet they were still glowing in cold devotion, like phosphorescent corpses.”
Stalin’s genius was to recognize that he simply had to transform the metaphorical into the literal. But to kill such fine creatures, Stalin needed an animal; more a butcher on two legs than a man. It is one histories ironies that the means of destruction of such sensitive thinkers, such god-men, such remakers of the world, should be a man not much more clever than a worker at an abbatoir. History as it is taught in schools today would be incomplete without mention of Vasili Blokhin, the chief executioner of the NKVD, the man who by his own hand, killed most of the Old Bolsheviks. He received his orders directly from Stalin. Such a man could have worked for only one other head of state in the long and bloody annals of the 20th century, and even that would have been a step down. Here is his Wikipedia entry:
Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin (1895 – February 1955) was a Soviet Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria. Hand-picked for the position by Joseph Stalin in 1926 … Blokhin is recorded as having personally executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his own hand over a 26-year period—including 7,000 condemned Polish POWs in one protracted mass execution making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history. He was awarded both the Order of the Mark of Honor (1937) and the Order of the Red Banner (1941).
Although most common executions were delegated to local Chekists or subordinate executioners from his unit, Blokhin personally performed all of the high-profile executions conducted in the Soviet Union during his tenure, including those of the Old Bolsheviks condemned at the Moscow Show Trials … Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night, and engineered an efficient system in which the prisoners were individually led to a small antechamber—which had been painted red and was known as the “Leninist room”—for a brief and cursory positive identification, before being handcuffed and led into the execution room next door. The room was specially designed with padded walls for soundproofing, a sloping concrete floor with a drain and hose, and a log wall for the prisoners to stand against. Blokhin—outfitted in a leather butcher’s apron, cap, and shoulder-length gloves to protect his uniform —then pushed the prisoner against the log wall and shot him once in the base of the skull with a German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol. He had brought a briefcase full of his own Walther pistols, since he did not trust the reliability of the standard-issue Soviet TT-30 for the frequent, heavy use he intended. The use of a German pocket pistol, which was commonly carried by Nazi intelligence agents, also provided plausible deniability of the executions if the bodies were discovered later.
The initial quota of 300 was lowered by Blokhin to 250 after the first night, when it was decided that all further executions should take place in total darkness. The bodies were continuously loaded onto covered flat-bed trucks through a back door in the execution chamber and trucked, twice a night, to Mednoye, where Blokhin had arranged for a bulldozer and two NKVD drivers to dispose of bodies at an unfenced site. Each night, 24 to 25 trenches, measuring eight to ten meters total, were dug to hold the night’s corpses, and each trench was covered up before dawn. Blokhin and his team worked without pause for ten hours each night, with Blokhin executing an average of one prisoner every three minutes.
Quite a guy was Blokhin. He died in 1955 as a “suicide”, as did so many of those who knew too much. But in reality there was no point. As Conquest convincingly shows, the men who died in the Lubyanka in some sense knew it all — foresaw it all — and forgave it all even before it happened. No one understood the feeling more than Orwell. In later life, people from the Eastern Block would ask Western intellectuals about Orwell. “How did he know? How did he know?”
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavored with cloves, the speciality of the cafe. …
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan’s quota for bootlaces had been over-fulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. ‘White to play and mate in two moves.’ Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates … He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:
2+2=5
‘They can’t get inside you,’ she had said. But they could get inside you. ‘What happens to you here is for ever,’ O’Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist. …
‘I betrayed you,’ she said baldly.
‘I betrayed you,’ he said. …
‘We must meet again,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we must meet again.’
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. …Something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came into it. And then — perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound — a voice was singing:
‘Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me –’
The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle. … A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears. … The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
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61 Comments
1. mezzrow:Man will find his opiate. It comes in many more flavors than Baskin Robbins, and some love only the bitterest of tastes. The more bitter the opiate, the more complete the surrender.
Submission is bliss, and the work of the executioner is the final ecstatic delivery from this vale of tears.
Jun 20, 2009 - 3:48 am 2. Mark:Mezzow: please read Rene Girard. ‘Things Hidden From the Foundation of the World’ will do. Violence is our tendency but not our destiny.
Jun 20, 2009 - 4:45 am 3. hdgreene:In high school in the mid 60’s I came across Russia After Khrushchev. He actually wrote it before Khrushchev was removed, and then updated it just before publication. The book itself is interesting for that reason: watching a smart guy try to figure out what is happening as — and even before — it happens. I ran across it at a book sale 20 years later, remembered it, and put my quarter down. Considering the handicaps he labored under, it was a remarkable achievement.
At the time it was very hard to figure out what was going on in “the ruling circles.” The “Kremlinologists” use to look at the leadership line-up atop Lenin’s tomb when viewing a parade and that sort of thing. Or read a Pravda article about some boring ribbon cutting ceremony to get a sense of who is on their way up, and who down (which is what the Soviets themselves would do).
But the picture of the regime at that point was like a bureaucracy set in concrete. Of course the guys at the top were the people Stalin “picked up” and never had a chance to “put back down.” But Conquest spoke of how most of the regime had very rigid, ideological ways of thinking — so rigid that it took the prospect of nuclear annihilation to get their attention. Still, the people at the very top constantly had reality press against them, but bringing the Apparatchiks along was a delicate affair. Khrushchev, trying to respond to reality, had tried “reform,” (hair brained schemes, for the most part — see D.C. now?) and most of those guys had enough reform to last a career. Hope and change, anyone?
Jun 20, 2009 - 5:06 am 4. lorenzo (from downunder):Francois Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion (which I review here) is particularly good on the general mindset of revolutionary hopes.
Jun 20, 2009 - 5:07 am 5. Gordon:In the early ’80s I was in a sort of Soviet studies program and read Conquest. It has stayed with me until this day. I had always been puzzled how, surrounded by ruthless men, Stalin managed to die peacefully in bed.
Conquest was vilified by right-thinking educated people on both sides of the Atlantic but, of course, had the ironic last laugh. What’s really striking is that he had to work largely with interviews of escapees and immigrants, a relative few who made it out.
He is clearly the kind of man who deserves thanks from all of us for his clear-headedness and courage.
Jun 20, 2009 - 5:51 am 6. Gordon:Stalin killed off all the true believers and useful idiots early, as did Castro and probably Sadam, leaving only apolitical and amoral thugs and brutes and a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. What mattered was power and control; safety lay in pleasing the captor, Stalin. Living in the privileged inner world was the only thing that mattered. The general population was totally cowed and only needed an occasional murder to stay in line.
Many people in the camps, even knowing they’d been railroaded, still believed they’d been wrong somehow–how could it be otherwise? Thus can a few gain control over many–thought control.
Lenin said, “Give me the children for two years and I will plant a seed that can never be uprooted.” The fact that he didn’t totally succeed is the really amazing thing.
Jun 20, 2009 - 6:30 am 7. Wadeusaf:I don’t know if it is ending or beginning, police are beating marchers in Tehran, shots fired (in the air?) teargas everywhere. Arrests and beatings. Mousavi joined the march this morning. Down with Khamenei.
God speed to the opposition, no matter how this ends this morning, Khamenei and Ahmadineajad are through, their governance is over and they have failed to up hold even the rule of their law. All they have left is the ability to cause harm, cause pain. They have no other purpose, can pursue no other design. They are done.
Jun 20, 2009 - 6:40 am 8. wretchard:Michael Ledeen is describing a potential showdown in Iran and news that Obama is finally encouraging the opposition, albeit in sotto voce. The thing to remember is that whatever happens tomorrow, it is not over.
The Iranian Regime I think, is running out of strategic time. I think that the field will belong to the side which is willing to play the game of inches and which refuses to give up. Until events took a hand and showed us differently, there were those who mistakenly believed that the Islamic Revolution had all the time in the world and all America could do was save what it could. The contrary is true. And unless that lesson is absorbed then a setback today or tomorrow may be seen as the end instead of the beginning.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:02 am 9. Leo Linbeck III:I remember the impact that Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon had upon me in college. The image of the revolutionary who was trapped in the logic of his own life: a man who sees the rituals of his vocation turned against him. The priest becoming the sacrificial lamb. It is a wonderful demonstration of the importance of the Golden Rule, and how easily it is forgotten in the presence of the Golden Calf.
And while Stalin died peacefully in his own bed, it is likely he is turning slowly on the rotisserie at Satan’s BBQ joint down by the River Styx.
Payback is Hell.
L3
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:04 am 10. Doug:Wadeusaf,
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:07 am 11. Doug:Check this out:
Whatever happens in Tehran, there’s no going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Senator Evil
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:10 am 12. Talnik:I just finished “Stalin, Court of the Red Tsar”. Although sorely needing a competent editor, it spells out how Stalin’s inner circle were terrorized by the guy. It’s amazing how some would know their fate and just wait for it, instead of fleeing.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:31 am 13. Beth:And they all loved the guy, even when he killed their wives. Oh, wait, I get it…
Thanks for the great book recommendations. My “wake-up” source was Nomenklatura by Michael Voslensky. My lifetime of fuzzy liberal ideas evaporated after that book and I’ve not been the same since. Thank God.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:42 am 14. john joseph jay:richard:
along this line is arthur koestler’s great book, “darkness at noon.” koestler was a com-intern agent, stationed in france among the labor unions if i remember correctly, and he knew full well of the purges in the soviet union.
yet, he obeyed the call home to russia, having pretty much in mind what would happen to him. he survived. most did not.
the book is a fantastic read. and, much as conquest’s book, looks at the faith and zeal of the true believer, and why he will submit his fate to the grist of the mill.
john jay
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:46 am 15. JFSanders:6.Gordon: “Lenin said, “Give me the children for two years and I will plant a seed that can never be uprooted.” The fact that he didn’t totally succeed is the really amazing thing.
It is only amazing in the sense that he really thought he was GOD. Such a delusion exists in our government today. Unfortunately it will be a terrible price that is paid for the elucidation of Washington’s elite.
11.Doug: Boxer is unhinged. A farce of mythical proportions in a land of legendary farcical behavior.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:48 am 16. Wadeusaf:The premise of the piece is that getting out of a religious revolution is messy along with the notion that the leaders of the opposition are/were part of the religious revolution the result of the velveteers play in Iran will see little difference.
Problem with the premise is that the folks fighting the regime are not fighting for an islamic revolution, they are fighting for their vote to count, they are fighting for respect due to the governed by the government. But the author is correct, this is a watershed event in the annals of history. I am thinking along the lines of Lexington and Concord.
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:02 am 17. Doug:“Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions. They’ve had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. The election has given a wide variety of Iranians–many of whom would not voluntarily associate with each other because of religious, political, and social differences–a simple and transcendent rallying cry: One man, one vote! Even the supreme leader’s favorite, President Ahmadinejad, must obey the rules. It is in some ways a bizarre situation when hundreds of thousands of Iranians rally to protest the outcome of an election that was rigged from the beginning: “
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:20 am 18. wws:in a horrific way, Stalin gave the revolutionary Bolsheviks exactly what they deserved for supporting the revolution so unquestioningly.
But that isn’t meant as a justification for any of those actions, of course. Looking back at it the sweep of the century from our vantage point, it is overwhelmingly sad, not just for the innocents killed of course, but for Russia itself. Russia, as a nation, as a people, as a culture committed suicide in the 20th century. It was a long, drawn out, messy affair, but the culture, the music, the glorious fusion of western and eastern influences, the heritage stretching back to the Byzantines, all that was Russia is now dead. Only a slowly rotting zombie is left in its place.
Some form of it may return in an islamic or sino-russian iteration (that is probably one of the most interesting conflicts coming in the next few decades) but the Great Mother Russia is dead for all time. And her own most dedicated children killed her.
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:21 am 19. Derek:As we learn how the brain works when there is a malfunction, we learn how the Soviet system worked by reading of those who refused to fit.
Solzhenitsyn The Oak and the Calf tells of his fight against the regime. In the Mitrokhin Archives, the chapter on religion and the communist state, describes an insignificant religious group that was pursued relentlessly.
“And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
The Soviet state, and for that matter any regime that wishes to impose, depend on fear. A fear so deep, so systemic that it paralyzes. Those who had no fear, probably with deep religious conviction as a basis, did not go gently into the red room. In fact, they stood as condemnation of the regime, and for that reason had to be eliminated.
There are stories of firing squads where the young soldiers detailed for the execution would shoot themselves instead of the obviously better man who received the sentence.
Of course these victories are local, small and ultimately meaningless. When a system controls vast areas of the earth and has vast populations at their disposal, the only way to defeat them is to play on their internal contradictions until they collapse.
I’ve often thought that free market systems work as well as any because they are closely aligned with how humans think and interact. Reading Wretchard’s comments here, and the enduring appeal of communism, maybe the totalitarian soviet state aligns with another part of human nature.
Derek
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:27 am 20. pst314:“I remember the impact that Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon had upon me in college.”
I, too.
In fact, there was a double impact: The second was as I discovered how many college “progressives” managed to ignore, discount, or explain away what happened (and was happening) in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. This second had a greater impact because it forced me to realize that many of my classmates were, to put it bluntly, monsters.
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:39 am 21. Morton Doodslag:I am a complete skeptic viz. Islam. I think you make a terrible mistake drawing parallels between the totalitarianism of utopianist communist totalitarians, and the current manifestations of the religious/political monster of Islam. Those Iranian “protesters” are chanting “Allahuakbar” — and the stylish Western narrative asserts this is “mockery” of the Mullahs.
But since nobody in Iran seems to be willing or able to speak out directly against Islam — indeed, since NO Muslim in the West (with the exveption of a mere handful of three or four odd individuals) can even bring himself to target Islam, I posit that these chants are just as likely counterrevolutionary re-assertions of the doctrine which has supposedly been corrupted by the Mullahs. I believe that because of their brutal mental conditioning, Muslims love Islam, and Islam will remain victorious over them until it is exterminated from the earth. This will ONLY be done by non-Muslims — and only a mere handful of us are telling the rest of you. you would prefer to believe that a 1400 year old perpetual totalitarianism is akin to one which both was born and which died well within the confines of a mere single century. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. Muslims cannot ever be our allies in the fight we must wage.
The Muslim’s “love” for Islam keeps him from understanding the truth about Islam. Your “love” of threadbare narratives keeps you from understanding the truth about Islam.
In telling the tale of Cassandra, it is often said that Apollo cursed her for not requiring his love. Bit it was the Trojans who Apollo really punished, for it was they who could not understand her dire warnings about their looming destruction. Cassandra knew she spoke the truth.
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:42 am 22. DW:20:”I discovered how many college “progressives” managed to ignore, discount, or explain away what happened (and was happening) in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. This second had a greater impact because it forced me to realize that many of my classmates were, to put it bluntly, monsters.”
And they are still around us. I am reminded of the man who provided us insight into the working of Bill Ayres and the 60’s era Weathermen, and how they expressed the need for “reeducation” camps to be located in the west, with the possible need for “removal” of the more obstinate of us who refused to accept the New World Order. Bill Ayres is still around and his ilk is unrepentant. I don’t trust this administration and its leftist allies any more than I would trust Stalin and his cronies.
Jun 20, 2009 - 9:28 am 23. Richard:Off topic Looks like Iran is coming apart! Check twitter link
http://twitter.com/persiankiwi
Jun 20, 2009 - 9:33 am 24. sirius_sir:“Stalin killed off all the true believers and useful idiots early…” (Gordon @ 6)
He also killed off most of the most competent members of his society, those like the engineers who were compelled to follow orders from on high and build railroads of one gauge for trains built to another, resulting in screw-ups for which someone–or some ones–had to pay the ultimate price. The source of these screw-ups would be Stalin and his inner circle, but of course it was not they who would be blamed or accept blame for what they did.
I wonder if all tyrannical regimes don’t in a similar way sow the seeds of their own destruction. Look at the present situation in Iran. The supreme leader thought he could guarantee the continuation of the status quo by offering a hand-picked, and very limited, number of candidates for election. Mousavi may be the same as Ahmadinejad or no better, but the pretense of fair elections has been punctured and opposition to the regime is coalescing around him. In retrospect, it may have been better for the regime to allow a fair election, even one allowing a wide variety of candidates that would have diluted the focus of the opposition. But as it is, it seems the supreme leader and his minions may have done the one exact thing necessary to ultimately destroy the regime, or at least give a good many Iranians a heady whiff of the potential for true hope and change.
Jun 20, 2009 - 9:40 am 25. Derek:Morton: A few thoughts. A secular idea, no matter how great, has difficulty in getting people, common people by the thousands, to stand before a well armed militia. People will die for something greater than themselves. There is no mystery why the bulk of the US military come not from the secular humanist left leaning states and cities.
Second, there is no way a revolution against islam would ever get popular support, even if most would on the surface support the ideals. I’ve mentioned here on previous occasion the ‘quiet revolution’ that occurred in Quebec from the 50’s to the 70’s. Quebec was deeply Catholic, was essentially a politico-religious enterprise. The depth of devotion to the church was I would suggest similar to what we see in Iran today. Those who wanted to remove the church from the political sphere and change/modernize Quebec society could not directly attack the church; it was too deeply entwined in the closest and most cherished parts of people’s lives.
So a pretext was needed. 1955. The god of Quebecers, Maurice Richard was give a suspension in a hockey game. Riots ensued. The suspension was handed down by Clarence Campbell. People stopped buying Campbell soup in protest. Revolutions are never logical affairs. The seeds of nationalism were available. English Quebecers were generally well off, sequestrated in rich neighborhoods, and usually the boss.
Around the same time the politico-religious alliance had been discredited by their lawlessness in hounding more vocal opponents.
So a revolution got under way, one that lasted decades with little bloodshed. When I moved to Quebec as a lad, everyone went to church. A decade later, few did, but they thought they should. Another decade and those who did were thought to be a bit simple.
Back to Iran. From the looks of it, and the depth of feeling, change has already begun in earnest. The intellectual underpinnings of the revolution seem to be established; not from western intellectuals, who are always wrong. Remember the fools who cheered Ahmadinejad at Columbia. No, by that fool George Bush who established a democracy next door.
All that is needed is a pretext to get people on the streets. The discontent is there.
So when people are yelling ‘God is Great’ from their rooftops as challenge to an Islamic state, they are holding to something that they know and are born into, and cherish. But then they are going into the streets to face death for something else.
The stupidity and parochialism of the american intellectual class is stunning. The president comes from those circles. He has no frame of reference to view these events. He, and his fellow travelers, don’t believe that freedom and democratic process have any value, and in his core, can’t understand why someone would stand in front of thugs for those things. I think he actually believes that the strength of a state is shown by the might of it’s secret police and military. The exact opposite of reality.
Derek
Jun 20, 2009 - 9:51 am 26. JMH:I think you make a terrible mistake drawing parallels between the totalitarianism of utopianist communist totalitarians, and the current manifestations of the religious/political monster of Islam. Those Iranian “protesters” are chanting “Allahuakbar” — and the stylish Western narrative asserts this is “mockery” of the Mullahs.
Are you saying that Communism is not an ersatz religion? That the Communist Party is not a its own church? I think you missed much of Wretchard’s point. The only real difference is that the Mullahs have declared themselves high priests rather than Gods. But both systems, and both sets of despots, relied on that same “love” of something that promised greatness.
Jun 20, 2009 - 9:56 am 27. buddy larsen:Derek/25; Earlier in his career,before he was POTUS, O has actually critiqued the Constitution as being of ‘negative powers’ (what gov’t can’t do) rather than about the positive, progressive powers of what it ‘ought’ to do (and presumably as a governing document ‘ought’ will then, ASAP, be what it must do).
Also, as late as the last few weeks of the campaign, in off-the-cuff remarks, he has used the word ‘resist’ in describing his opposition. As in, “some who are are not ready for change and still resist”. Little does he know –or did he know then, i’m sure Axelrod has clued him by now –that’s not a word a democratic mind will use in that way. That word used in that way is from communist doctrine.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:17 am 28. aaron:“This second had a greater impact because it forced me to realize that many of my classmates were, to put it bluntly, monsters.”
This quote describes exactly what I’ve been feeling as I watch the stylish, beautiful, in-crowd people plot the death and destruction of us all.
It makes me uncomfortable to say the least.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:20 am 29. RWE:In the 1930’s the Soviets sent agents into the USA, but without any money, telling them they had to make their own living. Some of them not only got jobs but became the worst form of capitalist, the entrepreneur.
One of these spies came back to the USSR after a couple of decades in the USA and was feted as a hero. At one State factory he was proudly given a tour and then asked to say a few inspirational words to the workers. He started with “If this were my factory I would fire all of you…”
So corrupted were those excessively successful deep cover agents thought to be that they were brought back to the USSR and executed.
One of the more hilarious results of this was that an FBI informant became the most trusted Soviet agent in the USA in the late 40’s and early 50’s. A Russian immigrant who was approached in the 1930’s by the Soviets and who worked for a US movie studio had gone immediately to the FBI and reported the contact. He then not only reported on the Soviets to the FBI but impressed them so much that he was able to con them out of “investment” money by claiming to be in high position at the studio. The KGB had assessed him correctly and were about to break off contact when their Chief confused him with a deep cover agent and told his minions the guy was A-Okay, and that he had dispatched him to the USA personally. This all would make a great movie starring, say, Danny Divito.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:25 am 30. Morton Doodslag:Derek – thanks for the post — it’s food for thought.
JMH – I fully understand Wretchard’s post – but you misunderstand mine. Clearly there is a difference between an ideology such as Communism which has had such a turbulent and extremely imperminent legacy, and Islam which has a fierce and millennial hold on its slaves. Only a few nations and polities have ever thrown off the yoke of Islam: Spain and Sicily come to mind. Only a few polities, when faced with the Frankenstein of Islam have resisted it: Serbia and Lebanon come to mind. (Now see how we have criminalized Bosnian resistance to Jihad, and how we’ve passively allowed Lebanon to go from a majority non-Muslim redoubt 40 years ago to a majority Muslim cesspool today…)
If you can’t grasp the fundamental difference between the totalitarianism of Communism and Islam, then I question your powers of observation. But fear not! For you are hardly alone.
Those “students” in Iran aren’t fighting to throw off the yoke of Islam — they aren’t fighting for “freedom” as we know it — they are shouting “Allahuakbar” most probably to re-assert a purer Islam than that which the vile Mullahs have come to represent. As such, they may be more virulent enemies than the current crop of Nazis in Tehran.
If they are counterrevolutionary Jihadists, perhaps more akin to the Cultural Revolutionary Chinese, et al., we could cheer them on, relishing in any disruptions and mayhem which befall their dangerous genocidal nation, but clear in our understanding of exactly who we’re cheering for. I relish anything which pits Muslim against Muslim, but don’t fool myself that we will ever see them ultimately stop their impulse to destroy the planet until the ideology which animates them falters and is crushed. Pretending they will moderate their Islam flies in the face of 1400 years of bloody terror filled history.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:34 am 31. Insufficiently Sensitive:a phenomenon which Conquest characterized as consisting of brute physical violence on the one hand paired to a matchless Western cover-up on the other.
That is a fine summary, and certainly shouldn’t give any intelligent citizen of this democracy much confidence in the news which is daily poured into his living room in print and video.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:42 am 32. hdgreene:Stalin famously said the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million men is a statistic.
Well, here is tragedy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjQxq5N–Kc
From another angle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmi-LePl894
Jun 20, 2009 - 11:48 am 33. RWE:By the way, I have a Tokarev TT-30, vintage 1945, and while I would not hesitate to use it to defend myself, if I had to make a living killing people all day it would not be my first choice of a weapon, either. Among other things, it does not fit the hand too well and has no safety.
It is interesting to see how nations that place such emphasis on force of arms do so poorly at it.
Jun 20, 2009 - 12:19 pm 34. Mark:I don’t think that Morton’s analysis of current paroxysms in Islam is accurate. The current, Khomenist version seems to be failing. A new version will need to emerge, for sure, but I doubt it will be a more virulent version of Khomenism, although there will be lingering sympathies for that. Iraq, and Sistani’s Shiism, may be a future.
I wonder whether the next version of radical anti-US activity will feature China, as economic, state-industry model. It’s well suited for emergent fascisms. Whatever Iran could do for Morales and Chavez, China can do better.
In the meanwhile, the US needs to re-find its own cultural roots, which is why I give a nudge towards Girard every once in a while. He provides a corroborative anthopology for Christianity that is powerful and flexible.
Jun 20, 2009 - 12:39 pm 35. RWE:Speaking of Roosians, it is pretty damn funny when you get an e-mail supposedly from some bank in Australia and Outlook Express indicates that it contains some Cyrillic characters. Masters of cyber warfare, those chaps!
Communism is a criminal enterprise masquerading as an economic theory. Socialism is a criminal enterprise self-deluded into thinking it is an economic theory. Capitalism does not give a damn about economic theories unless they can sell them to the socialists.
Jun 20, 2009 - 12:43 pm 36. Doug:Times Reporter Escapes Taliban After 7 Months
David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity.
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:24 pm 37. Jamie Irons:Mark,
Thanks for that pointer to Girard; I just put in an order at Amazon for the text you cited, and am looking forward to reading it.
Jamie Irons
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:27 pm 38. Doug:Some of the Panthers, SLA, and the like, lived the reality of the true believer.
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:29 pm 39. Doug:“Until now, the kidnapping has been kept quiet by The Times and other media organizations out of concern for the men’s safety.”
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:33 pm 40. Doug:—
Too bad they can’t do that for US Military, Republicans, or ordainary citizens!
“As other victims have told us, discussing your strategy just offers guidance for future kidnappers.
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:38 pm 41. whiskey:Mr. Keller said.”
—
Much can be learned about the delusion and depravity on the left by studying pieces of work like Keller!
Stalin was like Louis XIV. After him, the deluge. By killing all those old Bolsheviks, he left no true believers. The SECOND the Soviet Union lost it’s ability to pay it’s thugs, and it’s payroll was bankrupt, it all fell apart at the hand of ordinary people.
Which shows that Orwell’s 1984 vision cannot outlaw human nature. Thugs are not productive. They don’t build much if anything. They kill for money and power, but take away one and they’re far more limited than they think. True, they can coast a long time, but not for ever. After killing all the believers, no one believed at all. And went from Lenin to Lennon “Nothing to kill or die for.” In about two and a half generations, give or take.
At the end, what Communism was, really, was “Lives of Others,” stupid brutal big men using their power to nab the girlfriends and wives of other men. Which, absent the true believers, engendered HATE. Probably much of the regime’s downfall was done by men who had a good deal of HATE for those who nabbed their honeys. After all, when you get right down to it, ANY MAN can kill. It takes no special tools, character, strength, or anything else but believing you can get away with or simply not caring.
There is a reason why EVERY society has religion. Without EXCEPTION. To keep people from not caring (about killing). To restrain them. You can have a giant thug army patrolling every block, but then how do you pay for it? Much less keep one of them from getting ambition and setting himself up as your replacement?
Iran’s true believers got wiped out not by a Stalin and executioners, but by time (and seeing manifestly corrupt “Lives of Others” greed for women and money), or the Iran-Iraq War. What’s left is people who seem now, just not to care anymore.
Nutjob and his like probably CAN put the genie in the bottle for a while, with wholesale slaughter. But they will rule an angry, vengeful populace who will at the slightest provocation again revolt. And given the porous nature of the regime’s borders, ample opportunity for smuggling, probably well armed too. Certainly a Tienamen style “bargain” whereby the regime delivers go-go prosperity is out of the question. Given the unalloyed greed and stupidity rampant among the Iranian leadership.
Jun 20, 2009 - 1:58 pm 42. Doug:“The suspension was handed down by Clarence Campbell.
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:09 pm 43. sirius_sir:People stopped buying Campbell soup in protest.”
—
St. Algore declared The Earth had a fever.
People taxed cow flatulence in response.
I would like to amend my speculation about Mousavi possibly being the “same as Ahmadinejad or no better.” Before this all started, that may well have been the case, but it’s likely that events have caused him (and this protest movement) to evolve. He now stands for more than he did just a week ago. Certainly he stands for more than Ahmadinejad does, but in either case they each are now beholden to an entirely different set of expectations going forward.
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:11 pm 44. programmer:Whiskey@41,
Thought provoking, as usual.
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:25 pm 45. Doug:Sirius,
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:29 pm 46. sirius_sir:There is also his wife, and millions of women with goals that are not too difficult to fathom.
(Probably not too many with dreams of becoming Ahmadinejad’s lover.)
Doug, you are right. The wife (and the millions of women she represents) without question plays a very large part in this drama.
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:50 pm 47. sirius_sir:I can’t now recall where I heard it, but someone said that Iranian women are some of the feistiest (not to mention beautiful) on the planet.
Jun 20, 2009 - 2:53 pm 48. Doug:Loved that video of the well dressed Iranian woman kicking the Hag down the street after she had been assaulted for not wearing a veil.
Jun 20, 2009 - 3:01 pm 49. Lesley:Whiskey: minor quibble
The phrase, “apres moi, le deluge” has been attributed to Mme de Pompador, mistress of Louis XV.
Jun 20, 2009 - 3:19 pm 50. fred:It has occurred to me that Russia did indeed commit mass suicide in the 20th century. What was it about Russian culture and society that it was so susceptible to this happening? I’ve always thought that Satan had most infected Russia and the Muslim heartland. I’m worried about it happening here. There are too many true believers in socialism walking around, especially in the most influential circles of this society.
We are walking to close to the fire.
Jun 20, 2009 - 3:52 pm 51. herb:Morton @21 is of the opinion AIUI that the people are as or more fundamentalist than the regime and view the corruption as an affront to islam, the correction being more islam. Maybe so.
Could it be that they love islam (no accounting for taste), but have figured out that it wont work as a governing structure? All I know about the scheme is what I read on the internets but part of it is a call for devotion to the Almighty, against which most would have no objection. Other parts, not so much. Now if they were to figure out the parts that work for the ages and develop some tolerance for other disciplines, they might learn to play well with others, including their own brethren.
Jun 20, 2009 - 4:06 pm 52. herb:I want again to complement the Boss on a truly enlightening perspective on our struggles thru the 20th and 21st Century.
Jun 20, 2009 - 4:10 pm 53. Marie Claude:attention
An Egyptian guy found out that the baby picture was taken out of this Pal video
http://bit.ly/SHZof
that the Iran-Resist site owner (pro Reza Pahlavi) set in his site
and that I used to trust
Jun 20, 2009 - 4:18 pm 54. JMH:If you can’t grasp the fundamental difference between the totalitarianism of Communism and Islam, then I question your powers of observation. But fear not! For you are hardly alone.
Plenty of places have thrown off the yoke of fundamentalist Islam. For a time. Until a new batch of Mullahs showed up with enough force to reclaim the place. Seems there is an idea within the religion that any place that was once a part of the religion must be again.
I wonder if the Georgians and Ukranians would have any comment on the phenomenon?
Jun 20, 2009 - 6:56 pm 55. fred:Both Islam and Marxism believe in building a new society on the ashes of the former one. One appeals to heaven, and the other appeals to “science” or “historical forces.” But I believe that Islam is more durable than Marxism is, and if the world ever got to the place where all that was left was those two, put your bets on the Muslims.
Seriously, I am very worried about our own society right now. I realize that Obama’s poll numbers are now showing a bit of weakness, and that underneath his personal popularity the polls are showing strong disapproval of his policies – still, he has a strong base of support among the elites of the West. His fundraising proved that fact. And there are a fair number of people out there who believe the government should confiscate and redistribute.
So, we are on a collision course with the collectivists. Question is, who is going to arise among them to stiffen their spines to actually do terrible things in order to make the socialist utopia happen?
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:37 pm 56. E. Nigma:The action of Shia Muslim pilgrims going to Najaf the last few years may have had more effect than we could guess.
There are, of course, the “Students” who are constantly in an uproar about something.
But it also appears that the rank and file of the country are outraged, too. The have seen with their own eyes the difference between Sistani’s “Najaf” school of Shia thought compared to the Qom school of more militant Government -religious connection (fostered by Ayatollah Khomeini). The echoes of the diplacement of Baathist Iraq as one bogeyman, and the replacement by the Great Satan on both the Easter and Western borders of the Islamic Republic for almost 7 years, has given pause for thought.
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:33 pm 57. Marie Claude:After endless provocations, the US has not invaded or made war on Iran. The fear that holds Iran together may be fraying at the edges.
following my mail to the site, the baby pic has been removed
Jun 20, 2009 - 8:54 pm 58. nom de plume:well I know what’s top on my reading list now.
it’s the quislings, the 5th columnists, the back stabbing neighbors that screw it all up in exchange for favours from the elite. this article has really piqued my interest in how that process was dragged out for 70 years under soviet communism.
I am passionate about politics, Ive watched a parade of leadership come and go in this country Canada and across the globe.
I look forward to learning how purges happen and why.
the present Iranian leadership is DOOMED. they have drawn blood on the OWN people this time, not just thousands in human waves against Iraq. how will the Americans screw up their involvement this time in pursuit of short term goals? it may take another ayatollah and another president but Iran is in for another revolution.
remember, the bolsheviks first tried in 1905 but didn’t ’succeed’ until 1917.
Jun 20, 2009 - 11:37 pm 59. buddy larsen:Doug/40; you’re right –i wish that principle had an easy name –some sort of descriptive term for triangulating past the only thing that matters when things really, really DO matter.
O’s first few comments were of the same as Keller’s –a refusal to be gamed that amounts to being so utterly –and willingly –gamed that it’s like water to a fish. Fish: “Waddaya mean, ‘I’m all wet’?”
Jun 21, 2009 - 8:32 am 60. DougRek:#24, Sirius: The Soviet rail gauge was different so as to make it impossible for trains from the West to cross the Soviet borders in time of war. Trains had to stop at the border. They did a similar thing with ammunition: their various rifle, pistol, cannon gauges are very slightly larger than those in the West: they can fire our ammunition (with some attendant reduction in accuracy), but we cannot fire theirs. It all makes sense from a military perspective.
Jun 21, 2009 - 11:49 am 61. Steynian 366 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] REMEMBERING A SOCIALIST PARADISE– “Robert Conquest’s landmark book, The Great Terror, is described by the publisher as [...]
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