Koba The Dread- Laughter and the Twenty Million

09/14/02 | Self

[fourdeuce82d]

Just finished Martin Amis' Koba the Dread- Laughter and the Twenty Million.

This book is a stunning account of Soviet terror, and a rebuke to Western soi-disant "progressives" who excused, or refused to acknowledge, the mind-boggling savagery of the Soviet regime.

Amis contrasts the horror and hostility we hold for Hitler, facism, and the holocaust, with the equivocation and fear of being labled a "red-baiter" that attends any hostility toward the Soviet Union or Communism.

Below, please find the first words of the book:

"Here is the second sentence of Robert Conquest's The harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivazation and the Terror-Famine:

We may perhaps put this in perspective in the presnt case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.

That sentence represents 30,40 lives. The book is 411 pages long.

"Horse manure was eaten partly because it often contained whole grains of wheat": (1340 lives).

Amis demonstrates quite clearly that Stalin was not an aberration, that Lenin himself used terror and famine to break the peasantry to heel, and that Trotsky, Kruschev, and the rest were butchers on a par with any SS member.

Amis goes into detail about the conditions of the gulag; while these were not "death camps" in the style of Treblinka or Dachau, prisoners lasted about as long as they did in work camps like Auschwitz- three months.

Amis is a literary guy, and it shows. And I don't mean that as a compliment. While I can appreciate Amis' facility with the language, I'm an ex-grunt- I don't really read for the marinade, I read for the meat.

In addition, he spends time nattering on about his family, and his relationship with Christopher Hitchens (best friend) whom he accuses of waiting too long to break with the Godless Communist Scum (GCS for short) and for never really accepting the horror of the regime, and of the ideology itself.

But Amis does give us a *hell* of a lot to chew on. This is all stuff we may have known (at least here in Freeperville) but it's appalling to see it in black and white, to read page after page after page of savagery, and then to realize there were those who refused to see.

Buy this book, read it, and suggest it to others.

I never fired a shot in anger, but I am damn proud I served in an organization dedicated to opposing these monsters. And that's exactly what they were.

ms

[hedgetrimmer]

A communist in my area working for the USDA said the ONLY reason that collectivism failed in the Soviet Union, was because the implementers had "imperfect knowledge". He now claims the communists have "perfect knowledge" and he is working-- salary paid for by our taxes--to collectivize Santa Cruz county, and then the country.

[Praxeologue]

He now claims the communists have "perfect knowledge" and he is working-- salary paid for by our taxes--to collectivize Santa Cruz county, and then the country.

name, please

[hedgetrimmer]

His name?

[fourdeuce82d]

A communist in my area working for the USDA said the ONLY reason that collectivism failed in the Soviet Union, was because the implementers had "imperfect knowledge".

Give him this book.

[sauropod]

There is also "the little black book of communism" and another book, Hitler's willing executionsers, by goldhaven. 'Pod

[sauropod]

This is a local issue for you two. You have to oppose him.

Publically. 'Pod

[hedgetrimmer]

It would not make a bit of difference. He is the "perfect idealogue". He has a lot of power behind the scenes and works with the well-known puppet congressman of the International Socialists, Sam Farr. That is what makes him so scary, and that is why people like him make me afraid for the Republic.

[hedgetrimmer]

I try every day. He along with one other fellow traveler have developed a community plan for Corralitos. The original plan would have forced all residents to remove any vegetation not native, and post european settlement. It was also to have forced all apple growers in the area to grow only "heritage apples". Meaning, anybody who had the foresight to plant Fuji apples would have to rip them out and plant older,less productive and less profitable varieties.

[wretchard]

"Give him this book."

You should. Communism and its close cousins are a spirit; a "specter haunting Europe" in Karl Marx's own words. It can only be cast out by a stronger and cleaner, which we conservatives are too often unwilling to provide.

In the war to save Western civilization, our greatest weapon may ironically prove not to be a directed energy beam, or a GPS-guided bomb, but a form of exorcism. Of what would it consist? A patient reacquaintance with ordinary life and common sense. Work. A wider reading. But it is an implacable and ancient enemy.

"And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them."

[sauropod]

What position of power is he in (precisely)?

[ArcLight]

Anyone who'd really care to know about the crimes of communism would already know. If your friend doesn't, it's doubtful he'd be impressed by a whole library of books.

[backhoe]

FYI--

That Bloody Century Pass'd- "We have nothing to fear but Governments Themselves..."

[Hoosier-Daddy]

I read a book, years ago when I was in college, called Black Night, Whte Snow by Harrison Salisbury. If I remember correctly, Salisbury was an American who lived in the Soviet Union for some 60 years. The book gave a background of the Revolutions, documented Lenin's use of terrorism as a political tool, and the collectivization of the kulaks and the massive numbers of death as a result. The book was written 30 years ago. If you want a complete synopsis of what occurred, this is it. It is dispassionate, but after reading it you cannot help but see how cold-blooded these individuals were, and, believe it or not, in it you'll see a lot of the same methodologies, used then by the Bolsheviks, in use today by the Democratic Party. VERY eye-opening.

[Carry_Okie]

He now claims the communists have "perfect knowledge" and he is working-- salary paid for by our taxes--to collectivize Santa Cruz county, and then the country.

Most interesting. Try this on your prospective victim:

Since chaos theory proves that such "perfect knowledge" as would be necessary for successful central planning is inherently impossible in an open system, one is much better off continuously optimizing a pencil of hedged outcomes objectively pre-established as viable, of which only a competitive market is capable. Try it on the idiot and get back to me.

[NativeNewYorker]

I know people like that. They can't be converted. What is scary, is that folks like that staffed the machinery of Soviet Agriculture, and would do so again.

[NativeNewYorker]

Anyone who'd really care to know about the crimes of communism would already know.

Not true.

The Left here controls the schools and the press. You have to WORK to learn the truth.

As a converted NewYorkJewishUnionHouseholdLifelongDemocratLiberal, believe me, I had to work very hard to find *enough* of the truth to convert me.

Ignorance isn't *necessarily* stupidity.

OTOH, I know many libs who "know" but don't care, believing that Hillary will "get it right" when she assumes Stalin's mantle.

[NativeNewYorker]

BTTT

Great book...kind of vaudeville executive summary to The Gulag Archipelago.

[Carry_Okie]

I thought of the Gulag Archipelago as a design for critical mass, or an intelligence test of sorts.

One keeps reading the book trying to find a plot or a central thesis. Once one realizes that the point is the sheer enormity of injustice and human depravity inherent to the system, one need read no further.

So Solzhenitsyn simply put enough there to be sufficient for the average American liberal.

[ArcLight]

No offense, but that's like the Germans who said they had no idea what had happened to all their Jewish neighbors...puhleeze.