Socialism’s Future May Be Its Past

Another one of those Communism has truly never been attempted pieces.

If they are going to whitewash socialism for 2020, they have to start early.

New York Times: One hundred years after Lenin’s sealed train arrived at Finland Station and set into motion the events that led to Stalin’s gulags...

That, from the NY Slimes???

It was their Russia correspondent who helped cover up Stalin's crimes!

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Prize Specimen:

The campaign to revoke Walter Duranty's Pulitzer.

Andrew Stuttaford
May 7, 2003

We will never know how many Ukrainians died in Stalin's famines of the early 1930s. As Nikita Khrushchev later recalled, "No one was keeping count." Writing back in the mid- 1980s, historian Robert Conquest came up with a death toll of around six million, a calculation not so inconsistent with later research (the writers of The Black Book of Communism (1999) estimated a total of four million for 1933 alone).

Four million, six million, seven million, when the numbers are this grotesque does the exact figure matter? Just remember this instead:

The first family to die was the Rafalyks -- father, mother and a child. Later on the Fediy family of five also perished of starvation. Then followed the families of Prokhar Lytvyn (four persons), Fedir Hontowy (three persons), Samson Fediy (three persons). The second child of the latter family was beaten to death on somebody's onion patch. Mykola and Larion Fediy died, followed by Andrew Fediy and his wife; Stefan Fediy; Anton Fediy, his wife and four children (his two other little girls survived); Boris Fediy, his wife and three children: Olanviy Fediy and his wife; Taras Fediy and his wife; Theodore Fesenko; Constantine Fesenko; Melania Fediy; Lawrenty Fediy; Peter Fediy; Eulysis Fediy and his brother Fred; Isidore Fediy, his wife and two children; Ivan Hontowy, his wife and two children; Vasyl Perch, his wife and child; Makar Fediy; Prokip Fesenko: Abraham Fediy; Ivan Skaska, his wife and eight children.

Some of these people were buried in a cemetery plot; others were left lying wherever they died. For instance, Elizabeth Lukashenko died on the meadow; her remains were eaten by ravens. Others were simply dumped into any handy excavation. The remains of Lawrenty Fediy lay on the hearth of his dwelling until devoured by rats.*

And that's just one village -- Fediivka, in the Poltava Province.

We will never know whether Walter Duranty, the principal New York Times correspondent in the U.S.S.R., ever visited Fediivka. Almost certainly not. What we do know is that, in March 1933, while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine, he was quick to reassure them that "there [was] no actual starvation." There had been no "deaths from starvation," he soothed, merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." So that was all right then.

But, unlike Khrushchev, Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner, no less, was keeping count -- in the autumn of 1933 he is recorded as having told the British Embassy that ten million had died. ** "The Ukraine," he said, "had been bled white," remarkable words from the journalist who had, only days earlier, described talk of a famine as "a sheer absurdity," remarkable words from the journalist who, in a 1935 memoir had dismayingly little to say about one of history's greatest crimes. Writing about his two visits to the Ukraine in 1933, Duranty was content to describe how "the people looked healthier and more cheerful than [he] had expected, although they told grim tales of their sufferings in the past two years." As Duranty had explained (writing about his trip to the Ukraine in April that year), he "had no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found".

Well, at least he didn't refer to it as a "final" solution.

As the years passed, and the extent of the famine and the other, innumerable, brutalities of Stalin's long tyranny became increasingly difficult to deny, Duranty's reputation collapsed (I wrote about this on NRO a couple of years ago), but his Pulitzer Prize has endured.

Ah, that Pulitzer Prize. In his will old Joseph Pulitzer described what the prize was designed to achieve: "The encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."

In 1932 the Pulitzer Board awarded Walter Duranty its prize. It's an achievement that the New York Times still celebrates. The gray lady is pleased to publish its storied Pulitzer roster in a full-page advertisement each year, and, clearly, it finds the name of Duranty as one that is still fit to print. His name is near the top of the list, an accident of chronology, but there it is, Duranty, Times man, denier of the Ukrainian genocide -- proudly paraded for all to see. Interestingly, the list of prizewinners posted on the New York Times Company's website is more forthcoming: Against Duranty's name, it is noted that "other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage."

Understandably enough, Duranty's Pulitzer is an insult that has lost none of its power to appall. In a new initiative, Ukrainian groups have launched a fresh campaign designed to persuade the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke the award to Duranty. The Pulitzer's nabobs do not appear to be impressed. A message dated April 29, 2003 from the board's administrator to one of the organizers of the Ukrainian campaign includes the following words:

The current Board is aware that complaints about the Duranty award have surfaced again. [The campaign's] submission…will be placed on file with others we have received. However, to date, the Board has not seen fit to reverse a previous Board's decision, made seventy years ago in a different era and under different circumstances.

A "different era," "different circumstances" -- would that have been said, I wonder, about someone who had covered up Nazi savagery? But then, more relevantly, the Pulitzer's representative notes that Duranty's prize was awarded "for a specific set of stories in 1931," in other words, before the famine struck with its full, horrific, force. And there he has a point. The prize is designed to reward a specific piece of journalism -- not a body of work. To strip Duranty of the prize on the grounds of his subsequent conduct, however disgusting it may have been, would be a retrospective change of the rules, behavior more typical of the old U.S.S.R. than today's U.S.A.

But what was that "specific set of stories?" Duranty won his prize "for [his] dispatches on Russia especially the working out of the Five Year Plan." They were, said the Pulitzer Board "marked by scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity. ..."

Really? As summarized by S. J. Taylor in her excellent -- and appropriately titled -- biography of Duranty, Stalin's Apologist, the statement with which Duranty accepted his prize gives some hint of the "sound judgment" contained in his dispatches.

""Despite present imperfections," he continued, he had come to realize there was something very good about the Soviets' "planned system of economy." And there was something more: Duranty had learned, he said, "to respect the Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, who [had grown] into a really great statesman.""

In truth, of course, this was simply nonsense, a distortion that, in some ways bore even less resemblance to reality than "Jimmy's World," the tale of an eight-year-old junkie that, briefly, won a Pulitzer for Janet Cooke of the Washington Post. Tragic "Jimmy" turned out not to exist. He was a concoction, a fiction, nothing more. The Post did the right thing -- Cooke's prize was rapidly returned.

After 70 years the New York Times has yet to do the right thing. There is, naturally, always room for disagreement over how events are interpreted, particularly in an era of revolutionary change, but Duranty's writings clearly tipped over into propaganda, and, often, outright deception, a cynical sugarcoating of the squalor of a system in which he almost certainly didn't believe. His motivation seems to have been purely opportunistic, access to the Moscow "story" for the Times and the well-paid lifestyle and the fame ("the Great Duranty" was, some said, the best-known journalist in the world) that this brought. Too much criticism of Stalin's rule and this privileged existence would end. Duranty's "Stalin" was a lie, not much more genuine than Janet Cooke's "Jimmy" and, as he well knew at the time, so too were the descriptions of the Soviet experiment that brought him that Pulitzer.

And if that is not enough to make the Pulitzer Board to reconsider withdrawing an award that disgraces both the name of Joseph Pulitzer and his prize, it is up to the New York Times to insist that it does so.

*From an account quoted in Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow.

** On another occasion (a dinner party, ironically) that autumn Duranty talked about seven million deaths.

http://www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford050703.asp

Ukraine Famine

The Ukrainian Famine was dreadful famine premeditated by the Soviet Union, headed by Joseph Stalin during 1932-1933, as a means to undermine the nationalistic pride of the Ukrainian people. It served to control and further oppress the Ukrainian people by denying them the basic vital essentials they needed to survive. The Ukrainian Famine is also known as Holodomor, meaning "death by hunger."

The Communist Regime sought to eliminate any threat from Ukrainian nationalists, whom they feared had the potential to form a rebellion and to seek independence from the Soviet Union. More than 5,000 Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested and later were either murdered or deported to prison camps in Siberia. These individuals were falsely accused of plotting an armed rebellion; however it was very clear that Stalin's intentions were to eliminate the leaders of Ukrainian society, to leave the masses without any guidance or direction.

-snip-

It was estimated that about 25,000 Ukrainians were dying every day during the Famine. Desperation and extreme hunger even lead to cases of cannibalism and consequentially thousands were arrested for this act.

Despite many Ukrainian Communist leaders' objections to Stalin and his decrees, Stalin continued to raise grain quotas, which led to worsening of the famine. Many Communists blame the orchestrated famine on an unsuccessful harvest and crop yield, failing to acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the Soviet government and authorities. It is estimated that more than 10 million people died as a result of violent executions, deportation, and starvation.

-snip-

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/ukraine_famine.htm

I’ve always subscribed to the “better dead than red” approach to Marxism/ Socialism.

How many people under the age of 50 have even heard the word “gulag”?

I prefer “Better a Dead Red” then “Better Red then Dead”!

“Another one of those Communism has truly never been attempted pieces. “

The self-delusion and pseudo-intellectualism runs deep in the author of this piece of drivel.

"The goal of socialism is communism."

Well, not quite 50 yet, but have read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “Cancer Ward”, “The First Circle”, and “August 1914”.

There was nothing “democratic” about the manner of the Bolsheviks operations, other than in small degrees within their own ranks, but not as to the population as a whole.

In other words they practiced (like the Left in the U.S. does) an intellectual lie - “democracy” (choice, real diversity, Liberty) for those who agree with them and not for those who disagree with them.

I see “socialism” as a synonym for “mass murder”.

Someone says the country needs Socialism to fix things, I say, “Really? You think mass murder will solve our problems? Interesting.”

Thanks for reposting this reality of the Slimes and its co mass murderer, Walter Duranty!

That’s how I got started! Now go for the “Gulag Archipelago”. (You’ll thank me later).

You’re welcome. Lying bastards have no sense of shame.

You are well-informed. I read all of those books as well and would never want any kind of dictatorship in the USA. I wish that young people would read “One Day ... “ It is very short but gets the point across.

In other words they practiced (like the Left in the U.S. does) an intellectual lie - “democracy” (choice, real diversity, Liberty) for those who agree with them and not for those who disagree with them.

And make no mistake, there were Hillary supporters who dreamed of this for our future in the US. To be fair, I do not know how many Hillary supporters, but did see some on various boards who were not afraid to express that they were looking forward to seeing non-supporters rounded up and taken to "camps." I seriously doubt they have given up on their "dream." On the contrary, they have created their own "Antifa" militia to try to bring it about by force.

Another funny part is that they never seem to bring up that few of those places were "capitalist".

Most were some degree of socialist/fascist.

When you can only open your business with a royal charter, that is not capitalist. When you can be forced off your property by the government so they can give it to someone else that is not capitalism.

The goal of the Bolsheviks in Russia was never to over throw "capitalism". How do you over throw something that does not exist? It was to put themselves at the top of the feudal/socialism system that was already there and take it even further back to the days of direct serfdom and slavery.

make no mistake, there were Hillary supporters who dreamed of this for our future in the US.

Certainly Obama supporters...

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Undercover FBI agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground's post-revolution governing plans for the United States:

Larry Grathwohl:

I brought up the subject of what is going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible then for administrating 250 million people.

And there was no answer. And no one had given any thought to economics, how are you going to clothe and feed these people. The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

"I asked, 'well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?' and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say 'eliminate,' I mean 'kill.' Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people. And they were dead serious."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ
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"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:

Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
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"Dig It. First they killed those pigs [ie, rich people/capitalists], then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders

Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
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"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World - where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' - both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."

Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama's circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
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"In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district's influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. ..."

"I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers' house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html
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"They're certainly friendly" -quote from 'Obama's chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago's political tribes), David Axelrod,' on the Bill Ayers, Obama relationship.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Ax_on_Ayers.html