Fruits from the Tree of Malice

City Journal ^ | Vol. 1 No. 21 Winter 2011 | Claire Berlinski

[Army Air Corps]

In the Spring 2010 issue of City Journal, I described an archive of documents from Soviet government agencies smuggled to the West by the Russian researcher Pavel Stroilov and the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. These documents, I noted, were available to anyone who wanted to consult them. But nobody did. Publishers were indifferent. Only a fraction of the documents had been translated into English. This was, I argued, a symptom of the world’s dangerous indifference to the enormity of Communist crimes.

Within weeks of the article’s appearance, I received hundreds of e-mails. Many came from victims of Soviet Communism—there is no shortage of them—appalled that the documents were not better known. They volunteered to translate them. Thanks to their efforts, more have become available in English, and many of them are very much worth reading.

[Army Air Corps]

Offered for discussion

[Army Air Corps]

From the article:

“W. Haddad,” Andropov notes archly, “is fully aware of our opposition to terrorism in principle.” Unstated but implied: “He is fully aware of our enthusiasm for terrorism in practice.”

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[Army Air Corps]

From the author's article on the archives of smuggled Soviet papers:

We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.

[Spunky]

Bump!

[Jacquerie]

We won’t read of commie crimes because it would embarrass old, dead, and once respected western journolists on the Soviet payroll.

[Nateman]

No wonder they are not touching it. It would shatter allot of well crafted illusions if they did. Like “McCarthyism”. McCarthy was a true patriot ! If anything “McCarthyism” should come to mean a successful smear by the left.

[Army Air Corps]

That, and it would expose the connections between the CPSU and organisations such as the Black Panthers.

[Army Air Corps]

Some more information here that may be of interest.

[Army Air Corps]

Here is an excerpt from the writer's previous article on the subject:

For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:

Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.

Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?

And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.

[Jacquerie]

From your link,

"Stroilov has a long list of complaints about journalists who have initially shown interest in the documents, only to tell him later that their editors have declared the story insignificant."

If the tremendous crimes of the Soviets mean nothing to our journolists, why would comparatively tiny crimes by our President Hussein warrant any coverage? Silly me.

[Army Air Corps]

Very insightful and pithy analysis, that.

[Army Air Corps]

From the author's other article on this matter:

There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.

According to Zagladin’s reports, for example, Kenneth Coates, who from 1989 to 1998 was a British member of the European Parliament, approached Zagladin on January 9, 1990, to discuss what amounted to a gradual merger of the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Coates, says Zagladin, explained that “creating an infrastructure of cooperation between the two parliament[s] would help . . . to isolate the rightists in the European Parliament (and in Europe), those who are interested in the USSR’s collapse.” Coates served as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights from 1992 to 1994. How did it come to pass that Europe was taking advice about human rights from a man who had apparently wished to “isolate” those interested in the USSR’s collapse and sought to extend Soviet influence in Europe?

[rogue yam]

ping

[Revolting cat!]

I don’t know what’s “secret” about Communism’s crimes. Enough has been known for decades and willfully ignored by the government and by the media. Guilt ridden public would rather read about King Leopold’s 100 year old crimes in Congo, than about current crimes of the Maos, the Jaruzelskis and Honeckers.

[Army Air Corps]

Very good. Give up, GI. Joe Biden is ravishing your sweetheart. You have lost; there is no need to fight.

[Cincinna]

Thanks AAC
Interesting stuff. Mitterrant was tied to the Vichy government & the Nazis & that was covered up. That he was tied to Gorby is no surprise. They are all totalitarian Socialists. The remarks about Tienanmin Sq are shocking.

[Army Air Corps]

I was not aware of Mitterrand’s shady past.

[Nateman]

Thanks for the link. One reason for the interest can be summed up by moveon.com That organization started for the purpose of ignoring Clinton’s crimes. These communist documents show that the left was treasonous. Why would they want to confirm what most of us already know?

[Apogee]

marking for later read and thought.
Thanks.