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When it was no longer sweet or noble to kill for the cause
The Guardian ^ | February 11, 2006 | Martin Kettle

Posted on 02/11/2006 9:35:16 PM PST by Daralundy

In 1956, the mirror in which the left saw itself was shattered. But its self-deception lives on

If the great history lesson of the 20th century is that socialism does not work then the watershed event in that tragic enlightenment was the one that took place in Moscow 50 years ago this month - the so-called "secret speech" delivered by Nikita Khrushchev to a closed session of the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist party on February 25 1956, in which he mounted a devastating attack on Joseph Stalin, then not quite three years dead. I write this with complete intellectual confidence but also with some journalistic trepidation. Part of me feels the need almost to apologise for writing today about an event from the now-distant past, which for many readers is likely to seem as unrelated to their own lives as the Council of Trent or the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. Moreover, as someone raised in the British communist world, whose first memory of any public event is of the death of Stalin himself and who was surprised at the age of five to find that my infant-school teacher had never heard of Harry Pollitt, I am anxious not to disappear into historical anorakland and lose the many readers fortunate enough not to be similarly steeped in the bliss, brutality and betrayal of the revolutionary movement.

Yet the secret speech has shaped all of our lives, whoever we are and whether we realise it or not, most obviously because it led eventually to the collapse of the Soviet system, the end of the cold war, and the triumph of the west of which we are all today living if still sometimes conflicted witnesses.

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Philosophy; Russia; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: coldwar; communism; khrushchev; russia
Hat Tip: Dr. Sanity
1 posted on 02/11/2006 9:35:19 PM PST by Daralundy
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To: Daralundy

A very good essay well thought out and historically accurate.

Kruschev was a man before his time but tragically tied to the Stalinist era.

Which is why he was deposed and replaced with the Stalinist cadaver Bresniev.


2 posted on 02/11/2006 9:58:27 PM PST by beaver fever
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To: Daralundy

I don't buy the premise that the Soviet Union began a slow death in 1956. It sure as hell still seemed energetic at the Bay of Pigs. It had plenty of money and resolve to support communist North Vietnam, communist Laos and dithering Cambodia for a lot of years, all the while trying to get Thailand to join the festivities. Concurrently, it continued to nourish its pet East Germany and its stage for the U.S., East Berlin. Along the way, the Soviet Union spent gobs of money and Soviet lives in Afghanistan, Central America and God knows where else.

There's no way in Stalin's and Marx's Hell that it all began to end in 1956!


3 posted on 02/11/2006 10:00:58 PM PST by Rembrandt (We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference.)
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To: Daralundy
But the cold-war syllogism lives on today in a new guise. Too many haters of capitalism and the United States still cram everything into the frame of untruth and self-deception that says my enemy's enemy is still my friend because, even if he blows up my family on the tube, murders my colleagues on the bus or threatens to behead me for publishing a drawing, he is still at war with Bush, Blair and Berlusconi. It is 50 years this month since that simplistic view of the world lost whatever moral purchase it may once have had. It is time such thinking was, to choose a sadly appropriate word, purged. Too long, my brothers and my sisters, too long.
The Guardian published this!?

The left has been discredited for 50 years? Would someone please forward that excitable Daily 'Kos guy the memo?
4 posted on 02/11/2006 10:05:48 PM PST by Asclepius (protectionists would outsource our dignity and prosperity in return for illusory job security)
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To: Rembrandt
I don't buy the premise that the Soviet Union began a slow death in 1956. It sure as hell still seemed energetic at the Bay of Pigs. It had plenty of money and resolve to support communist North Vietnam, communist Laos and dithering Cambodia for a lot of years, all the while trying to get Thailand to join the festivities. Concurrently, it continued to nourish its pet East Germany and its stage for the U.S., East Berlin. Along the way, the Soviet Union spent gobs of money and Soviet lives in Afghanistan, Central America and God knows where else.
Decline, effendi. Decline, is what the author argues the Soviet Union and the larger left entered into in 1956, and on historico-ideological, not material grounds. Decline in the same sense that Rome enters its decline in about the 1rst Century CE even though it persists for about a thousand more years, as argued by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Systems in decline are often far more dangerous than more robusts sorts of systems. Better to encounter a well fed lion than a starving, desperate one.
5 posted on 02/11/2006 10:12:48 PM PST by Asclepius (protectionists would outsource our dignity and prosperity in return for illusory job security)
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To: Rembrandt
Along the way, the Soviet Union spent gobs of money and Soviet lives in Afghanistan, Central America and God knows where else.

Massachusetts; Vermont; California; Oregon -- why, most blue states, in fact.

The lone exception is Minnesota which thinks Marx is too close to Rush Limbaugh ;-)

Cheers!

6 posted on 02/11/2006 10:26:12 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Daralundy
"Too many haters of capitalism and the United States still cram everything into the frame of untruth and self-deception that says my enemy's enemy is still my friend because, even if he blows up my family on the tube, murders my colleagues on the bus or threatens to behead me for publishing a drawing, he is still at war with Bush, Blair and Berlusconi. "

What other explanation would there be for Western "feminists" so blissfully unaware of the "Honor Killings" so routinely occuring in the Muslim world? Why, I thought they cared about women!

7 posted on 02/11/2006 10:33:08 PM PST by oprahstheantichrist (...or false prophet at the very least.)
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To: Asclepius

I'm impressed the Guardian published this too. It makes a very strong point that everyone should reflect on. Regardless of your political leanings, you need to ensure that your moral compass, and sense of intellectual honesty are maintained.

Whether is the left-wing authoritarians like Hugo Chavez, or old right wing ones like Augusto Pinocent, it is important to maintain a critical attitude. Even (or especially) towards those who are sympathetic to us.


8 posted on 02/11/2006 10:55:11 PM PST by Threepwood
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To: Asclepius

Decline in the same sense that Rome enters its decline in about the 1rst Century CE

Surely you mean 1st century AD, not CE. I am always very wary and suspicious of people who use the more "politically correct" CE rather than AD.

OK, I'm off my soapbox.

9 posted on 02/12/2006 12:44:47 AM PST by frankiep
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To: Daralundy

bttt


10 posted on 02/12/2006 12:48:23 AM PST by nopardons
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To: Asclepius

bttt


11 posted on 02/12/2006 12:49:14 AM PST by nopardons
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To: Daralundy

bump


12 posted on 02/12/2006 12:53:10 AM PST by lesser_satan
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To: Daralundy

amazing article.

This is the second leftist regret piece i read today. Maybe there's hope yet for these slow brains???


Why striking bus drivers in Tehran are the real defenders of Muslim rights
Observer - By Nick Cohen
Feb 12, 2006, 00:31


For three weeks, there have been demonstrations across the planet about a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops inflicted dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W Bush's State Department has warned of 'systematic oppression', while secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually incompatible values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global menace of Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless free press, but mass arrests in Iran.

The media have barely mentioned the story, even though it cuts through the nonsense about a clash of civilisations between the 'West' and the 'Muslims'. The Muslims of Tehran are proving themselves to be anything but a monolithic bloc happy to follow the orders of the ayatollahs and their demented President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are huge class divisions to begin with, and close to the bottom of the heap are the city's bus drivers. The authorities refused to allow them an independent trade union and ruled that an 'Islamic council' in the offices of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company would represent their interests.

_snip-

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and British Foreign Office have all protested. Trade unions, Iranian exiles and gay groups have demonstrated. Yet the media have barely noticed. The failure is due in part to my trade's perennial inability to walk and chew gum at the same time: we consider stories one by one and today's story is Muslim anger with cartoonists.

I'm not saying it isn't newsworthy, but you shouldn't forget that it was manufactured by hard-line Danish imams who hawked the cartoons round the Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added obscene drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists welcomed them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to legitimise arbitrary power.

Iran has seen all the stunts before because it has endured Islamism longer than any other country. Cheeringly, the old tricks no longer appear to be working. The Associated Press's reporter said that about 400 people demonstrated outside the Danish embassy in Tehran last week, most of them state employees obeying orders, according to the Iranian opposition.

Even if you take the lowest estimate, there are as many striking bus drivers in prison in Tehran as rioters prepared to play the worn-out game of throwing Molotov cocktails at Western embassies. No one ever made money by being optimistic about the Middle East, but after nearly 30 years of Islamist rule, Iranians seem sick of it.

It cannot be said often enough that this is not a clash of civilisations but a civil war within the Islamic world between theocratic reaction and the beleaguered forces of liberty and modernity. As I have tried to emphasise, the best service the rich world's liberal left can render is to get on the right side for once.

Read the whole article. It's worth it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1708142,00.html


13 posted on 02/12/2006 12:55:47 AM PST by parisa
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To: Asclepius
"Decline"

Agreed. The Soviet Union actually had been declining since its inception. It did creat an impressive military machine, but a Marxist/command economy system cannot do the guns and butter thing very well. All Marxist states start declining rapidly after creation. Marxism is a great blueprint for making everyone miserable. Except of course for the elites who keep what little wealth is created for themselves.

14 posted on 02/12/2006 2:24:49 AM PST by driftless ( For life-long happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: Asclepius

"Systems in decline are often far more dangerous than more robusts sorts of systems. Better to encounter a well fed lion than a starving, desperate one."


Islam


15 posted on 02/12/2006 2:33:23 AM PST by sangrila
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To: frankiep

If you bothered to look at his profile you would see that he (or she) is jewish.


16 posted on 02/12/2006 2:36:28 AM PST by sangrila
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To: Asclepius

Thanks for posting the money line from this article. I'm afraid it was all a little bit too "inside communism" for me, but that last paragraph needs to be read and understood by all commies and symps in the west.

HELLO! THESE ISLAMOFACISTS WANT TO CUT YOUR DAMNED HEADS OFF! ARE YOU GETTING IT YET?


17 posted on 02/12/2006 4:12:41 AM PST by jocon307 (The Silent Majority - silent no longer)
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To: frankiep

"I am always very wary and suspicious of people who use the more "politically correct" CE rather than AD."

That's a Jewish thing. I think we can understand. We might have to get back to being insistent about things, of course, but that won't be because of the Jews.


18 posted on 02/12/2006 4:17:02 AM PST by jocon307 (The Silent Majority - silent no longer)
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To: frankiep
"Surely you mean 1st century AD, not CE. I am always very wary and suspicious of people who use the more "politically correct" CE rather than AD."

Well, for Jews, CE makes sense.
19 posted on 02/12/2006 7:41:52 AM PST by GAB-1955 (being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Kingdom of Heaven....)
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To: Daralundy

Good read, thanks for the post.


20 posted on 02/12/2006 8:22:47 AM PST by norton
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