Posted on 11/25/2014 12:36:39 PM PST by Borges
The 19th Century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote about characters who justified murder in the name of their ideological beliefs. For this reason, John Gray argues, he's remained relevant ever since, through the rise of the totalitarian states of the 20th Century, to the "war against terror".
When Fyodor Dostoyevsky described in his novels how ideas have the power to change human lives, he knew something of what he was writing about.
Born in 1821, the Russian writer was in his 20s when he joined a circle of radical intellectuals in St Petersburg who were entranced by French utopian socialist theories. A police agent who had infiltrated the group reported its discussions to the authorities. On 22 April 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned along with the other members, and after some months of investigation they were found guilty of planning to distribute subversive propaganda and condemned to death by firing squad.
The punishment was commuted to a sentence of exile and hard labour, but the tsar's authority to decree life or death was confirmed by forcing the prisoners to undergo the ordeal of a mock execution.
In a carefully stage-managed charade Dostoyevsky and the rest of the group were taken on the morning of 22 December 1849 to a regimental parade ground, where scaffolding had been erected and decorated with black crepe. Their crimes and sentence were read out and an Orthodox priest asked them to repent.
Three of the group were tied to stakes in readiness for execution. At the last moment there was a roll of drums, and the firing squad lowered its rifles. Reprieved, the prisoners were put in shackles and sent into Siberian exile - in Dostoyevsky's case for four years of hard labour, followed by compulsory service in the Russian army.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
How could this possibly come from the BBC?
What do you mean?
Just which totalitarian state are they referring to? The one choosing lunches for hundreds of millions of schoolchildren regardless of geography, sex, age, body size, weight, etc? The one that wants to stick calorie counts on everything from gum on the sidewalk to NY strip steaks at Ruth’s Chris?
The state that allows itself to be defrauded for billions in Medicare and then claims hospital costs are too high and we must all buy insurance plans they approve of to ‘bend the cost curve?’
The state that taxes fuel and promises it will bill roads and bridges with the funds only to give them to people building the equivalent of science fair projects and choo-choo trains?
The state that watches a tech/internet boom that has transformed the national and world economy through free market competition and innovation and then declares that it must implement something called ‘net neutrality?’
The state that shrugs at home burglaries and car break-ins but wants to pursue verbal altercations as hate crimes worthy of draconian sentences?
The state that regards a 5 ft diameter puddle as a navigable waterway subject to overzealous EPA fines and threats?
The state that knows full well the sex, age, race, eye color, hair color, nationality and religion of 99.9% of terrorist suspects but still insists on strip-searching a Swedish-American Lutheran grandmother in a wheelchair from Bismarck, SD?
The state that will not rest until everyone is hurtling down the highway in balsa wood vehicles that can meet a ludicrous 54 mph fuel mileage standard?
Just stop with the totalitarian nonsense. The state is only looking out for us.
Great analysis until the author decides that opposing Saddam or Islam is the same as totalitarianism. Then, we’re just operating at the level of dumbed down Liberalism.
It’s far too conservative! (...though it swings leftward at the end).
Well Dostoevsky was conservative. Especially in his prime writing years.
He means that over the course of the past two decades or so, the BBC has shown a very illiberal streak:
Western culture is bad, cultural relativism is good, and lots and lots of other bad stuff.
They get the history correct but they have ‘selected comments’ below and it’s the usual Guardianistas complaining about the West oppressing the Middle East!
I’m thisclose to jumping off a building to escape these self-righteous idiots.
What do they mean “foresaw”? He lived in Tsarist Russia. That was about as totalitarian as any nation got before the
Bolsheviks made it even worse.
It was an autocracy.
But it was not as bad it was under Communism.
Reform was coming gradually to Russia but radicals did not have the time or patience for it.
And they made things far worse instead of better. That was Dostoevsky’s prescient insight.
Changing things too fast is as bad as not changing them at all.
“It was an autocracy.”
Yes, I said it was Tsarist Russia.
“But it was not as bad it was under Communism.”
I said that too: “...before the Bolsheviks made it even worse.”
“Changing things too fast is as bad as not changing them at all.”
Maybe sometimes. If something is evil it needs to be changed whether quickly or slowly.
That is particularly true in light of the “dream of a queer fellow” with its vision of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers K. We see a world controlled by a religion of a ruling class akin to the Ayatollohs, religious figures that are so all powerful they don’t “need” Christ when he appears because “thay” are the “state” that must be worshiped.
Hmmph..that was depressing.....
There is a difference between totalitarianism and autocracy.
Before the 20th century, there were few if any totalitarian states.
There were lots and lots of autocrats, and if you got on the wrong side of the autocrat you were utterly screwed. But the vast majority of the people who lived under the autocrats were not directly impacted by their rule for the simple reason that the mechanisms to enforce that rule down to the neighborhood, family and individual level had not yet been invented.
Caligula, Henry VIII, Suleiman the Magnificent or Ivan the Terrible might, possibly, have wanted to stomp all over their people in the way Stalin and Mao did. But they didn’t have a Gestapo, KGB or Stasi to do it for them. So for 99% of the people they ruled the crimes of the ruler were a spectator sport directly affecting only the court and nobility.
Totalitarianism is absolute power plus mechanisms adequate to impose that power effectively on all the people all the time.
“But they didn’t have a Gestapo, KGB or Stasi to do it for them.”
The Tsars had a large secret police force. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
Yes. But the Ohkrana had little or no interest in getting involved with the “totality” of the Tsar’s subject’s lives.
They focused on pretty much those they saw as real or potential enemies of the Tsar, as most absolutists down through history have.
IOW, if you didn’t directly oppose or threaten the Tsar’s rule (or appear to) they pretty much left you alone.
Oddly enough, the Nazi and Fascist dictatorships were similar. Large areas of life were just left alone, since like earlier absolutisms they were primarily concerned with threats to the Party.
Only Communism, AFAIK, had his obsession with making sure that its subjects not only behaved right but also thought right.
Mao’s China was totalitarian to a much greater extent than Nazi Germany.
The Grand Inquisitor section was a huge bash of Catholic Church.
As in effect a government controlling Christ with no need for or desire to have Christ.
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