Roots of Soviet Terror

Soviet Analyst | Sept Oct 2001 | Soviet Analyst

[Askel5]

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It should be noted that not only did the terror campaign demystify Russian rulers in the eyes of the people but it also caused the Government to overreact.

From 1879 onwards, the Imperial Government introduced a stream of extremely harsh counter measures meant to prevent terror, but which had the effect of alienating moderate groups in Russia.

In the long run this made it impossible for the regime to ever secure the support of moderately conservative and liberal elements in Russian society; so it was left to fall, isolated and alone, in 1917.

--- Richard Pipes

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THE ROOTS OF SOVIET TERROR

According to Professor Richard Pipes, former Director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, "the roots of Soviet terrorism, indeed of modern terrorism, date back to 1879"(6), when a Congress of an organization called Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) met in the small Russian town of Lipetsk. On 1st March 1881, this group succeeded, after a succession of failures, in murdering Tzar Alexander II, even though he was known as the Tzar Liberator, because he had freed the Russian serfs in 1861.

The philosophical underpinnings of the group, and of Soviet-spawned terrorism, may be found in the Catechism of the Revolutionary by Sergei Nechaiev (assisted by his mentor, the former artillery officer, Michael Bakunin). The son of a priest (Stalin studied to be a priest), and one of the most evil men who ever lived, Nechaiev "passionately embraced the cause of revolution.

In 1869, he organized a society in Moscow for the purpose of preparing mass insurrection. He shrank from nothing to attract followers, resorting to deceipt, terrorism and murder.(7) By studying Nechaiev's hideous writings, today's student of continuing World Revolution (and of its enhanced weapon, terrorism) can gain the necessary insight into the mentality we are confronted with. For in the Catechism, Nechaiev wrote:

The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own … heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and … the … civilized world.

He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose: to destroy it …

Everything which promotes the success of the Revolution is moral; everything which hinders it is immoral. The nature of the true revolutionist excludes all romanticism, all tenderness, all ecstasy, all love.

[…] … after falling out with Michael Bakunin and the breakup of his organization by the Tzarist police, which led to the arrest of some 300 operatives, Nechaiev had fled to Switzerland. Bakunin left this description of his erstwhile terrorism comrade:

Nechaiev … is as ruthless with himself as he is with others. He is a fanatic, but a very dangerous one, association with whom may be fatal to all concerned. His methods are abhorrent.

He has come to the conclusion that to create a workable organization one must use as a basis the philosophy of Machiavelli and adopt the motto of the Jesuits: "Violence for the Body; lies for the soul."

With the exception of … the chosen leaders, all the members should serve as blind tools in the hands of those leaders …. It is permissible to deceive these members, rob them, and even murder them if necessary. They are merely cannon fodder for conspiracies.

For the good of the cause, he must be allowed to gain full mastery over your person, even against your will."

Professor Pipes explained why "The People's Will" is the model for the modern terrorist organization, just as Nechaiev's Catechism of the Revolutionary established the mindset which infects the barbarous hordes of Muslim and Marxist terrorist who have 'graduated' from terrorism training camps modeled on those originally established under the supervision of KGB Colonel Kotchergine in 1966 [around Havana, Cuba some 10 months after the Jan. '66 Tricontinental Conference of 513 delegates representing 83 groups from the Third World]:

The People's Will was the first to consider the enemy to be the whole system … capitalism, religion, law and everything which kept the body politic intact. (12)

The successor, both in method and also partly in respect of ideology, to the Narodnaya Volya movement, was the party of the Social Revolutionaries (SRs), who launched attacks on the Russian Imperial Government in the early years of the 20th century with the deliberate purpose of destroying the awe in which the Russian population held the regime.

[...]

Professor Pipes observed:

They felt that as long as people feared the Government, and believed it to be omnipotent, there was no possibility of Revolution. So the murder of Government officials or supporters of the Government was an important step in causing the numinous glow surrounding the government to evanesce.

The SR campaign succeeded to a remarkable extent. Almost all contemporary observers note that after 1905, the traditional loyalty and belief of the Russian peasant in the Monarchy were broken. There was [by now] a great deal of contempt on the part of the peasant for the regime. This facilitated the events of 1917.

THE DEFENCE OF TERRORISM BY TROTSKY

It was of course Leon Trotsky (Braunstein) who followed in the footsteps of Nechaiev and Bakunin by adding to the literature of terrorism with his tome entitled The Defense of Terrorism, also called Terrorism and Communism, which appeared in the English language in 1921.(13) On page 23 of this polemical work, Trotsky proclaimed that:

The man who repudiates terrorism in principle – i.e., repudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined armed counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of the working-class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the Socialist Revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism.

This piece of subtle "backwards reasoning" was framed so as to imply that the Communists' 'sacred cows' would be violated by anyone who denied the necessity of terrorism to enhance the prospects for Revolution. In other words, those who did not support terrorism were not revolutionaries, and neither were they even socialists: they were scum, to be despised and destroyed.

Trotsky's lust for blood evidently knew no bounds, even though he was by far the most literate and profound of the founding revolutionaries:

That the proletariat will have to pay with blood, that, in the struggle for the conquest of power and for its consolidation, the proletariat will not only have to be killed, but [will also have to] kill – of this, no serious revolutionary can ever have any doubt … One cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under Socialism we shall need no Red Terror.

But Trotsky himself attributed the revolutionary doctrine that Communism cannot be "constructed" without terrorism to Lenin. According to David Shub, an exiled Russian revolutionary, and author of a classic short life of Lenin(14), "Lenin at every opportunity kept hammering into our heads that terror was unavoidable." In order to give physical expression to his demonic desire to embark upon state terror […(15)…] Lenin identified and appointed the son of a rich Polish landowner named Felix Dzerzhinsky, from Poland's Vilno province.

"He was fair, slightly round-shouldered, with a short pointed beard and transparent eyes with dilated pupils," wrote Shrub. "There were moments when his friendly smile gave way to icy sternness. At such times, his eyes and ascetic bloodless lips revealed a demoniac fanaticism. Rigorous self-denial, incorrigible honesty, and a frigid indifference to the opinions of others, completed his make-up. His natural modesty, unassuming air and quiet manners set him apart."

"On 20th December 1917, Lenin instructed Dzherzhinsky to organize an Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Speculation. Under the name Cheka, the Soviet secret police soon became the symbol for a system of terror such as the world has never seen.(16)

The Cheka's initial headquarters was the Smolny Institute a former girls' school in Leningrad – the selfsame building in which Anatoliy Sobchak presided as Mayor of St. Petersburg, and to which Vladimir Putin was … posted after … functioning as 'assistant' to the 'dean' of Leningrad University [immediately following] his return from Russia from East Germany [where he had] successfully directed … removal of East European regimes and their replacement by … 'non'-communists in 1989-1990]. (17) […]

Thus the Soviet regime, nurtured in the hellish tradition of Nechaiev's "People's Will" aberration, bathed itself in blood from the outset. Indeed, as Trotsky proclaimed, the revolution makes no sense without terror …

Since we are now truly living in the era of the World Revolution, terror has been exported by the Soviets globally. The only factor preventing the West from understanding and accepting this obvious truth is … the … misguided belief that the Leninist Soviet revolutionaries abandoned, all of a sudden, their global revolutionary intentions and ideology and suddenly became 'like us.'

[ "I felt guilty." V. Putin ]

DEMYSTIFICATION AND OFFICIAL OVERREACTION

The indiscriminate use of terror adopted with relish (even though Lenin's secretary said that Dzerzhinksy's liquidation of over 1,500 inmates in the early stages of the Red Terror was 'a mistake') also had another, more subtle effect, which should (but won't) serve as a warning to President Bush and Tony Blair in the present circumstances.

As Pipes explained:

It should be noted that not only did the terror campaign demystify Russian rulers in the eyes of the people but it also caused the Government to overreact.

From 1879 onwards, the Imperial Government introduced a stream of extremely harsh counter measures meant to prevent terror, but which had the effect of alienating moderate groups in Russia.

In the long run this made it impossible for the regime to ever secure the support of moderately conservative and liberal elements in Russian society; so it was left to fall, isolated and alone, in 1917.

_____________________
(6) -- Pipes, Professor Richard, International Terrorism: the Soviet Connection, The Jonathan Institute, proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, 2-5 July 1979, page 11.
(7) -- Lenin, David Shub (who was personally acquainted with many of the Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin, Trotsky and Kukharin, as well as the socialist Kerensky), Mentor Books and Doubleday & Co., Inc. New York 1950-1962.
(8) -- Paris-Match 4th November 1977, cited by Sterling, The Terror Network, op cit [Claire Sterling "The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism" Holt-Rinehard and Winston, 1981.]
(9) -- Stefan Possony and Francis Bouchey, International Terrorism: The Communist Connection, page 47, Hoover Institute for the Study of War and Peace; and Jean-Pierre Vigier, Le Monde, Paris, 27th October 1967; both cited by Claire Sterling, op cit.
(10) -- Claire Sterling, op cit. p. 14.
(11) -- Lenin, David Shub, op cit., pp. 15-16
(12) -- Pipes, Richards, International Terrorism: The Soviet Connection, op cit., p. 12.
(13) -- Leon Trotsky, The Defense of Terrorism (Terrorism and Communism), 1921, The Labour Publishing Company & George Allen and Unwin
(14) -- Lenin, David Shub, op cit.
(15) -- "We set ourselves the ultimate aim of destroying the state," V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution, International Publishers, New York, 1961 Edition, p. 68.
(16) -- Lenin, David Shub, op cit., pp. 156
(17) -- See, Soviet Analyst, Vol. 27, NO. 4, pp. 6-7.
(18) -- David Shub, op cit., pp. 156

[Askel5]

Nechaiev … is as ruthless with himself as he is with others. He is a fanatic, but a very dangerous one, association with whom may be fatal to all concerned. His methods are abhorrent.

He has come to the conclusion that to create a workable organization one must use as a basis the philosophy of Machiavelli and adopt the motto of the Jesuits: "Violence for the Body; lies for the soul."

Recognized this "beat", of course, thanks to the current survey of the Protocol agit-prop:

Moreover, the art of directing masses and individuals by means of cleverly manipulated theory and verbiage, by regulations of life in common and all sorts of other quirks ... belongs likewise to the specialists of our administratived brain. Reared on analysis, observation, on delicacies of fine calculation, in this species of skill we have no rival, any more than we have either in the drawing up of plans of political actions and solidarity.

In this respect the Jesuits alone might have compared to us,
but we have contrived to discredit them in the eyes of the unthinking as an over organization, while we ourselves all the while have kept our secret organization in the shade.

However, it is probably all the same to the world who is its sovereign lord, whether the head of Catholicism or our despot of the blood of Zion! But to us, the Chosen People, it is very far from being a matter of indifference.

Just had a few days' discussion on Judaism, Zion, messianic times and being "Chosen" on another thread that truly looks as if it's going to stand regardless the sensitive subject matter throughout. (hooray!)

I include that last bit, rather, as part of my theory that these "Will of the People" terrorists, as refined by the leninists, are a Chosen People so truly diabolical that only they can tap what believers conceive of as the Anti-Christ and what yet moral "strictly reason" sorts suspect is a Cult of Personality crescendo sufficient to cause trusting, bewildered sheeple to clamor for the branding ... and the shearing of their civil liberties, privacy and personal property that is prerequisite to taking one's chances in the decidedly Secured and dutifully Prosperous charnel house of the World State.

...the Revolution makes no sense without terror, since it primary methods are those of Satan: pressure, coercion, intimidation and harassment

This is one reason I argue so vehemently against the Alchemy of Pragmatism, by the way. Any choice for evil is a win for that evil when triumphs even (and especially) when men do nothing, much less employ it.

And it's why I'm so horrified of our talk of "taking a page from Israel" re: overt political assassination and rationalizing in advance the option always to choose a useful evil ... unlawful detention, torturous extraction of information, intimidation by ID card, harassment of any and all who fail to get with the program by casting suspicion and hurling of personal smears.

Those waves have beat against the shores of FR for two months now and the toll is decidedly irreversible on many counts.

Looking at the bottom of the page still open before me, attacked most viciously and used as tools of discord are primarily those whose roots run so deep they cannot be plucked out and reconditioned. I believe that's why Religion's made such a big comeback (the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ our Savior re-upped well in advance) for this final push to make the still pools of the East find a level with the heretofore undammed rapids of the West as our economic roundtables and anti-terrorist alliances bring us, finally, through the front door to the World State.

[Askel5]

#2 was for you, actually. Further to why I'm such a deeply-rooted sort of anti-communist and counter-revolutionary.

I know it's fashionable to deride anyone who believes in "conspiracy" of any sort but I do maintain all battles come down to the one battle. If every selfless human act perpetrated in love is a win for "our" side ... surely that means any evil act perpetrated for self-gain or utilitarian and pragmatic furtherance of some purely material objective (including the bending and breaking of souls) is a win for "their" side. We are, all of us, co-conspirators at the essential Either/Or level.

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I'm gonna tell you something, Flaca, and I want you to listen tight.
May sound like I'm talking about me. But I'm not, I'm talking bout you.
As a matter of fact, I'm talking about all people everywhere.

When I come down here to Texas I was looking for something. I didn't know what. Seems like you add up my life and I spent it all stompin' other men or, in some cases, getting' stomped. Had me some money and had me some medals. But none of it seemed a lifetime worth the pain of the mother that bore me. It's like I was empty.

Well, I'm not empty anymore. That's what's important. To feel useful in this old world. To hit a lick in against what's wrong or to say a word for what's right even though you get walloped for saying that word.

Now I may sound like a Bible-beater yelling up a revival at a river-crossing camp meeting. But that don't change the truth none. There's right and there's wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around but you're dead as a beaver hat.

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The cool thing about this little bit is the way it resounds with the voice of an Individual who -- without coalition or waiting for some 'Mother May I?' consensus -- obeys like a Man his conscience (that inner copy of the law which distinguishes us as Humans) and fights the good fight with all his heart.

THAT is my ideal "co-conspirator" and one reason I love to hang around folks like you, Independentmind. Trust you got your counters cleaned and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving!

[Romulus]

I thought you might enjoy the following extract from the NYT's review of Citizens, Simon Schama's monumental history of the French Revolution:

"Then, in 1792, patriotism culminated in foreign wars; and the pressures of conflict, internal and external, pushed terrorism to new lengths. Because they were reminiscent of aristocratic ways, elegance, manners, wit were denounced as treason. The King was deposed, and a new calendar opened with ''Year One of French Liberty.'' In revolutionary newspeak, liberty, of course, meant its opposite: a police state, in which spying, denunciation, indictment, humiliation and death threatened all. The sententious religion of universal brotherhood gave way to the polemics of paranoia: Rousseau with a hoarse voice, as Mr. Schama puts it. Personal scores became political causes. Nuts came out of the woodwork. Marat was one, but a nuttier enthusiast, the Marquis de Bry, gauging the mood of the hour, offered to found an organization of tyrannicides - 1,200 freedom fighters dedicated to the murder of kings, generals and assorted foes of freedom.

"Thus was the joy of living replaced by the joy of seeing others die. Mr. Schama is at his most powerful when denouncing the central truth of the Revolution: its dependence on organized (and disorganized) killing to attain political ends. However virtuous were the principles of the revolutionaries, he reminds us that their power depended on intimidation: the spectacle of death. Violence was no aberration, no unexpected skid off the highway of revolution: it was the Revolution - its motor and, for a while, its end.

"In the National Assembly Mirabeau had argued that a few must perish so that the mass of people might be saved. It turned out that more than a few would perish. Politicians who graduated from rhetoric to government found that rhetoric made government impossible. If patriotism was to triumph, politics had to end; liberty had to be suppressed in the name of Liberty; democracy had to be sacrificed so that Democracy should live. Speaking from the ruthless precinct of the Committee of Public Safety, [in 2001 we have an "Office of Homeland Security" -- R] Saint-Just, who is one of Mr. Schama's favorite antiheroes, insisted that the Republic stood for the extermination of everything that opposed it. And absence of enthusiastic support was opposition enough.

"With the likes of Saint-Just and Robespierre (a state scholarship boy, typical of old regime meritocracy), doublespeak was in the saddle. Murderously weepy, sadistically moralistic, fanatically denouncing as fanatics those who did not share their fanaticism, men like Robespierre stood for the will of the people as long as the people's will matched their own visions. Ever offering to die for their beliefs, they got the sour satisfaction of undergoing the martyrdom they professed to seek: murderers murdering murderers before being murdered in their turn, until the last days of July 1794 brought an end to the Terror, though not to continuing terrorism."

[Askel5]

Thanks Romulus.

Further to ours earlier, Annalex. Terror's just the calling card of all revolutionaries ... PARTICULARLY those who've positioned themselves as the Conditioners fit to carry out (and, by any means necessary, Impose) "The People's Will".

[Romulus]

the Conditioners fit to carry out (and, by any means necessary, Impose) "The People's Will".

In the early 80s, the Picayune printed a letter of mine, questioning the secularist values of the "Enlightenment." I don't remember much of what I wrote, apart from the pointed comment that "nothing really good ever happened after 1789."

[annalex]

Terror's just the calling card of all revolutionaries

Absolutely. But Al Qaeda and the Nechaev gang are related closer than that: they both put people's will before the sovereign individual.

[Askel5]

In the early 80s, the Picayune printed a letter of mine, questioning the secularist values of the "Enlightenment."

The same Picayune I read? 1880's, you mean?

[Askel5]

But Al Qaeda and the Nechaev gang are related closer than that

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I believe Al Qaeda and others ...

Abu Nidal Organisation
Arab Organisation of 15 May
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Fatah
Hezbollah
Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction
Organisation of the Armed Arab Struggle
Palestine Liberation Front
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(General Command Popular Struggle Front)
Sa'iqa

In Western Europe, the Soviets had, by the mid- 1980s, acted as midwives for …

Basque Fatherland and Liberty group
Combatant Communist Cells (Belgium)
Direct Action (France and Belgium)
First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group (Spain)
Iraultza or Basque Armed Revolutionary Workers'Organisation (Spain)
Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)
Popular Forces 25 April (FP-25)
Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA)
Red Army Faction (Germany)
Red Brigades (Italy)
Revolutionary Cells (RZ)
Revolutionary Organisation 17 November (Greece)
Revolutionary Popular Struggle (Greece)

are the strange fruit of the same tree.

(Don't bother with the "links" ... I'm lifting this from an unfinished post. =)

[Romulus]

Don't mock your elders.

[Askel5]

Hey, I know you're a kid ... I'm talking about the Picayune's printing anything possibly damaging to the esteem a'dem homoseculars in da Quarters, for example.

[Romulus]

Isn't that the whole point of camp -- to immunize one's self-esteem against the supposed dreariness of one's commonplace and bourgeois origins? If understood as the demimonde's Maoist assault on its members' memories of tradition, family, and community, may not this too be seen as another species of terrorism?

[Askel5]

I dunno about that ... could just be due to the fact my milieu is very New Orleanian and most are devoted to their Mamas and their families ... however downtown or from "da Parish" dey is.

[patent]

A bump for you my comrade.

[Askel5]

Are you sitting down? (I want you to fall out of your chair on this one ...)

"My [major] concern is that the Americans may stop halfway in their battle against the Taliban if the latter surrender bin Laden.

If the United States does not finish the Taliban whatever it costs, Taliban leaders and militants will become like a disturbed swarm of bees that will fly out of Afghanistan and create their nests all over the world.

This won't eliminate terrorism but just spread it around the globe."

--Retired Russian Col. Gen. Viktor Kot,
former commander of the Soviet air force, who served two tours in Afghanistan.

LOL!

On a more sobering note ... George S. Patton is spinning in his grave.

[patent]

I agree with the general. Whatever we fail to finish over there will rise up and attack us again. I know those who fail to recall history's lessons are doomed to repeat them, but seldom does the son get the chance to make the exact same foreign policy blunder the father did only a decade before. While I regret the loss of life over there, and while I would prefer to see the terrorists jailed than see them killed, sometimes, like here, there is little choice. We remove them or they will serve as a thorn in our side for the forseable future.

Once that is done we must give the Afghans something to live for, but it must be done first. There is no peace after a partial victory, only a brief calm while everyone reloads.

patent

[Askel5]

It's just I find it so ludricrous a former-Soviet actually believes some rinky-dink Taliban's gonna rise up and rival the Soviet-sponsored global network of terror cells already established of which OBL is just one major cog.

Of course his advice re: "finishing them off" seems sound. The only time such advice wouldn't seem sound is when Long-Range planners have something more devious in mind ... as with the continued use of Saddam.

But again ... the former Soviets have enjoyed thoroughly their ability to speak the truth of late. I rate this right up there with Chernomyrdin's "Bombs Rule Out Talks of Peace" NYT article upon the bombing of Serbia.

Fantastic stuff, really, which only underscores how magnificently they've trained us to chase our tail at will.

Not that we don't still place all our trust in the Dynasty's advisors, natch.

[Askel5]

The Soviet Catechism

[Askel5]

Thanks for sending me back to the stacks. More to come!

[TapTheSource]

Here's one for you, Askel5. Thought I'd give you a taste of what will be going up after the election.

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Inside Story: World Report
September, 1995

Soviet Communism--Alive and Deadly
Inside Story Communications, 1995

Has Soviet Communism actually died?

The answer seems obvious to most Americans, who receive their information through the major news media. The television screen has conveyed dramatic and colorful images of protests in the streets of Moscow, tanks outside the Soviet Parliament, and the substitution of the traditional Russian flag for the Soviet hammer-and-sickle red flag.

Those who pay closer attention to Soviet events, or who travel to Moscow or certain other major Russian cities, find evidence of democratic elections with vigorous opposition movements, a relaxation of moral standards on Russian television, and busy capitalists in the streets of Moscow. Even the borders have been declared open, allowing citizens to leave, and a couple of old concentration camps have been shut down. The KGB is releasing some of its files. Former political prisoners now speak out openly. And Boris Yeltsin declares he is no longer a Communist. Could events be any more dramatic?

Americans, however, tend to forget how much absolute control a Communist regime exercises over its captive nation. For decades, our television cameras and gullible travelers were led on carefully prepared tours of the Soviet Union, bringing back stories of "happy" Soviet citizens working enthusiastically on building socialism. A few Americans truly believed such colorful nonsense, while most others gradually came to accept the idea that the Soviet dictatorship was mellowing.

The "collapse" of Soviet Communism, orchestrated as an alleged "coup" against dictator Gorbachev in 1991, gave our television cameras and tourists the most spectacular show yet. The changes seemed more genuine than ever before, and thus more convincing. But is it possible that we are merely witnessing a larger-scale deception than before, a quiet prelude to a new hot war? Startling new evidence says we are.


The police state and genocide

The greatly hyped-up news coverage of the "changes" in the Soviet Union has exaggerated their importance. Whether in Spain during the 1930s, Hungary during the 1950s, or Indonesia during the 1960s, Communist regimes have never been overthrown without significant violence and bloodshed. Cosmetic reforms cannot bring down such a dictatorship, especially a long-established one.

The Soviet regime has had 77 years to destroy all opposition and crush the morale of the population. In the most thorough study of its kind, political scientist R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii estimated that the Kremlin mass-murdered some 62 million Soviet citizens between 1917 and 1987; the number could be as high as 127 million.1 This genocide has been carried out in thousands of Soviet concentration camps, as well as through mass trials and shootings and even by enforced famine in whole regions of the Soviet Union.

The purpose has been to create mass terror. To frighten the entire population, the killing had to be random and widespread. As dictator Vladimir Lenin commanded, "The courts must not ban terror... but must formulate the motives underlying it, legalize it as a principle, plainly, without any make-believe or embellishment. It must be formulated in the broadest possible manner...".2

Acting on his orders, the government set quotas for the number of civilians to be rounded up and imprisoned-or executed-in each area of the Soviet Union. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, for example, described "the assignment of quotas, the norms set, the planned allocations. Every city, every district, every military unit was assigned a specific quota of arrests to be carried out by a stipulated time. From then on everything else depended on the ingenuity of the Security operations personnel."3 Soviet defector Vladimir Petrov, who had worked in the secret police until 1954, also described the process:

I handled hundreds of signals to all parts of the Soviet Union which were couched in the following form:

"To N.K.V.D., Frunze. You are charged with the task of exterminating 10,000 enemies of the people. Report results by signal.-Yezhov."

And in due course the reply would come back:

"In reply to yours of such-and-such date, the following enemies of the Soviet people have been shot."4

Millions of citizens have been sent each year to the concentration camps to die more slowly-while performing economically useful slave labor. Genuine criminals were treated better and put in charge of the other inmates:

The world of the camps was grotesque as well as lethal. The ancient criminal element, accounting for about 5% of the prisoners, terrorised the "politicals," with the connivance of the authorities. They looted their possessions and clothes, beat them, murdered them: even worse, they took the lion's share of the rations already calculated to give the barest minimum on which a prisoner might survive for a while.5

One major wing of the state terror was carried out as a war against the Jewish population of the Soviet Union. Beginning under Lenin, the Communist Party banned Jewish schools and charities, raided Jewish celebrations during Yom Kippur and other holy days, and tortured, killed, or exiled to concentration camps untold numbers of religious Jews.6 During World War II, nearly half a million Jewish refugees from Poland were seized during the Soviet invasion of Lithuania; these were immediately deported to Soviet concentration camps, religious leaders being sent first.7 Menachem Begin, the future prime minister of Israel, was one of these, but later escaped the Soviet Union.8 In 1945 the Soviets even seized most of the Jewish inmates of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, transferring these hapless prisoners to Soviet camps to help finish the Nazi Holocaust.9

Common myth today holds that this genocidal terror ended with the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. But professor Rummel estimates that some 7 million citizens were murdered by the Soviet government between Stalin's death and 1987, and possibly as many as 12 million. The terror pattern is as arbitrary as before: people are arrested for "economic crimes," meaning participation in the underground economy, an activity carried out by virtually all Soviet citizens. In the mid-1960s, for example, even "the illegal manufacture of such fripperies as hair ribbons and lipstick brought certain offenders before the firing squad...". Based on an analysis of names, Jews are apparently 20 times as likely as other Russians to be targeted for arrest.10

Concentration camp survivor Avraham Shifrin was able to leave the Soviet Union in 1970 and move to Israel, where he established the Research Center for Prisons, Psychprisons and Forced Labor Concentration Camps of the USSR. He published his comprehensive research on Soviet camps in 1980, indicating more than 2,000 concentration camps were active-including 119 camps for women and children and at least 41 death camps.11 By 1990, Shifrin reported that some 2,500 camps were now holding an expanded population of 7 million inmates under Mikhail Gorbachev's regime.12

But more chillingly, Shifrin has recently discovered that the "former" Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin is rapidly building many new camps throughout the country, in addition to the thousands of ongoing camps. These still-empty camps could serve to hold vast numbers of Western Europeans once the Red Army moves into Germany, Italy, France, and England.

Since the "collapse" of Soviet Communism in 1991, Moscow has opened to the public a tiny handful of old camps, mostly in Siberia. But the other 2,500 camps remain in full operation, exterminating large numbers of citizens under a continuing regime of terror. The Soviet propaganda works only because most Americans never understood the severity of Communist oppression in the first place.

The Communist Party machine

In the "collapse" of the Soviet Union, Communist Party members did not even lose their collective hold on power. A few Party members were shuffled around between powerful government positions, while most declared themselves "former" Communists. Boris Yeltsin has himself been a Communist since 1961, although he now claims to be a "former" Party member; his administration is thoroughly staffed with such longtime Communists as Yuri Petrov, Oleg Lobov, and Viktor Ilyushin.13 His leading opponent, the tough-talking Vladimir Zhirinovsky, openly boasts of his own KGB backing.14

As of mid-1993, 11 of the 15 Soviet republics were openly under the control of "former" Communists, including Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia, Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and Leonid Kravchuk of the Ukraine.15 Shevardnadze, in fact, previously worked for the KGB as the head of several detention centers. Eyewitnesses report Shevardnadze's legendary cruelty at his Tbilisi prison:
In room 45 Agdomelashvili (an agent) beat Mikhelashvili (a Jew) on assignment from Panfilov (chief of operations); in room 44, agents... beat and cut with a razor the object Datusani; in room 37 agent Usipyan on assignment from Panfilov and Svimonishvili beat the object Valeri Kukhianidze, whose internal organs got so beat up he spit blood, after which he died in the Central Prison Hospital and was "written off"... in a word, beating went on in all the rooms, and the groaning and howling of the objects was heard all over the building... It was a slaughterhouse.16

Those Soviet republics not under obvious Communist control have been ruled by figureheads on behalf of the Communists. For example, former Georgian "President" Zviad Gamsakhurdia-though often portrayed in the Western news media as a democratically elected anti-Communist-actually worked closely with the KGB and was allowed to run Georgia through a completely Communist-controlled bureaucracy, as he openly admitted. He also protected the socialist infrastructure by blocking free-enterprise reforms.17

Not only do Communists and their "former" comrades thoroughly permeate the political leadership and bureaucracy of the entire Soviet Union, but they have kept its socialist power completely intact. Virtually the entire economy remains in government hands; only tiny zones in Moscow and certain other major cities allow a few private businesses, such as street vendors. New Soviet laws guarantee the restrictions on private property and business activity, and Communist apparatchiks still hold the reins of economic power. "Permission to take part in large-scale enterprise is only granted through these aqpparatchiks, and only if it is in their interests," writes one former Soviet citizen of the current situation. "All the property of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-its billions in funds and billions in real estate, all of its sanatoriums, publishing houses, and fleets of cars, and the cooperative enterprises created under its aegis, everything-has been handed over for allocation by the very same new Russian administration that is led by the old secretaries of oblast Party committees." The handful of entrepreneurs are further squeezed with heavy taxation.18

Why doesn't the newly "free" press of Russia report this? Because there is no free press. In Moscow, for example, all printing presses, all delivery trucks, and all newsstands are owned by the government, which also controls prices on all publications.19

Not that it matters, since no "opposition" movement would care to tell the truth anyway. KGB General Oleg Kalugin has openly boasted that KGB personnel include "even figures in our democratic movement. There are many people in the movement-in fact, famous people-who have been cooperating with the KGB for twenty to twenty-five years."20

Already by 1984, top KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn warned that the Communists had created artificial, controlled opposition for many years: "There can be no reasonable doubt that the dissident movement as a whole is a KGB-controlled false opposition movement... and that many of its leading members are active and willing collaborators with the Central Committee and the KGB."21 Naturally, such phony dissident movements are playing along with the Soviet deception.

The real picture outside Moscow

The moment one leaves the major Russian cities, the continuing rule of Communism becomes immediately obvious. World Report has received testimony, from Americans and others working inside the "former" Soviet Union, that now confirms this. The identities of most of these people will remain undisclosed for their protection, although any traveler to the Soviet Union will be able to verify these facts.

Absolute socialism still rules the entire Soviet Union, including Russia and the other Soviet states. No citizen believes life has improved; indeed, government controls are creating worse poverty than ever before. There is no middle class, and an annual inflation rate of over 1,000 percent is coupled with persistent shortages of most goods. Those products that are available are often useless. Salaries are typically as low as three dollars per month, and overwhelming red tape blocks any task from getting accomplished.

The citizen remains a slave. By the fifth grade, the government chooses each person's life career, from which there is no escape. People are forcibly crowded into massive apartment buildings containing some 20,000 residents each. Few cars are seen on the streets of any city because only Party members and taxi drivers can own them, and daily gasoline shortages limit all transportation. Health and life expectancy are low; suicide is common.

"Democracy" is ignored as a cruel joke. Voters may only choose between Communist-approved candidates (many of them "former" Communists), and thus elections occur quickly and quietly, generating little public interest.

Nor has the police state diminished. In all Soviet republics, citizens are constantly terrified by the ever-present KGB. Since 1990, both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin have expanded the KGB,22 and the agency's budget has even doubled in some Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan. Each foreigner visiting the Soviet Union is assigned a KGB officer, usually without the visitor's knowledge, and the movement of foreigners is controlled by forcing them to use taxis or public transportation. Citizens and foreigners alike may not travel between cities without permission and the proper papers-including internal passports and visas. These papers are rigorously checked upon entry into, and exit from, any city, and are even checked constantly during the first week a foreigner is in a new city. Computerized systems are beginning to replace the old methods, and citizens are being required to carry magnetized ID cards

Prisons and concentration camps are more ubiquitous than naive foreigners realize. Prisons often look like ordinary factories on the outside, though slave labor fuels the work on the inside. Unscheduled searches of people and cars at every street corner, conducted by police or militia units, are common. And people guilty of "economic crimes" tend to disappear or are subject to summary execution; bank tellers who come up short on transactions, for example, are speedily shot-unless the customer was shortchanged.

Yeltsin's declaration of open borders is a hollow one for Soviet citizens, who still cannot leave their country. Even travel outside the Soviet Union is heavily restricted, regardless of the Soviet republic. An invitation must be initiated by someone in a foreign country, who accepts full financial resonsibility for the trip, and the Soviet citizen's boss must approve. The citizen must then visit the appropriate consulate to be interrogated by the Soviet authorities (in addition to the foreign representatives), who run a complete background check on the person. The person must usually agree to leave family members behind, to prevent defection. Several weeks may pass before the KGB returns a verdict on the travel request; in the Ukraine, this decision is not rendered for two years, and the hapless citizen must physically check in with the Soviet authorities every day during the final six months of the waiting period-at which time the request may still be denied.

To prevent Soviet air force pilots from defecting, pilots are not allowed to know their flight patterns or destinations until after they are airborne. Further insurance is provided by laser-guided surface-to-air missile batteries, which track every plane during flight and are fired if the pilot deviates from his designated route.

Russian control over the Soviet republics remains painfully obvious. Russian troops are stationed in several of the republics, and the Russian military runs all missile sites and all military facilities. Even military training remains in Russian hands, as all soldiers from the republics are sent to Russia for boot camp. Phone calls between cities are routed through Moscow, and phone tapping by the KGB is routine-poorly hidden by sudden changes in phone transmission quality. "We have grown used to the fact of constantly being bugged, of always being watched," says Russian author Lev Timofeyev, who also points out that eavesdropping devices remain installed in Soviet apartments.23 Of course, only a tiny fraction of citizens can have phones at all. Foreign companies and investors, moreover, have discovered that even though the various Soviet cities and republics seem to initiate projects, all contracts are actually negotiated in Moscow under Russian authority. And key political positions in the republics are filled by Russian Communists, not locals.

To fool outsiders, the KGB has learned to disguise many of its activities through the "Russian mafia." Former KGB officer Golitsyn has revealed that the KGB's Economic Department and the Interior Ministry's OBKhS have penetrated-and even partly created-the black market underworld during the past 70 years.24 Taxation, for example, can now be portrayed as common crime. Timofeyev reports that "according to some reports, anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of produce is regularly stolen from district warehouses. Farmer's markets are under the control of criminal elements, who extract a commission from each seller and force sellers to keep their prices above a certain level."25

Even arms shipments to other Communist regimes are now disguised as business ventures under "mafia" control, giving Yeltsin his excuse for not being able to stop such activities. In 1990, for example, the Soviet business ANT was discovered to have been set up by dozens of KGB officers and Communist Party members, and was shipping tanks out of the country under the guise of selling tractors.26

In short, the Soviet Communist state remains intact, and is quietly accelerating its war against the West. As a part of these activities, the Soviet military is rapidly expanding and preparing for a hot war-a topic to be covered in future issues of World Report.

The real collapse of the Soviet Union will be marked by violent overthrow, by the execution of millions of Communist Party members and KGB personnel, by the shutting down of thousands of concentration camps and the opening of the borders, by the rapid conversion of the whole economy to free enterprise, and by the universal ownership of guns amongst the population. But if Americans do not wake up soon enough to the Soviet danger, we may first witness our own national surrender to the growing Communist empire.

How can we destabilize the Soviet Union while there is still time? Future issues of World Report will document how the Soviet military-industrial complex has been entirely built with Western aid and technology, and how the interruption of this flow will bring the Kremlin to its knees-for real.

REFERENCES

1 Rummel, RJ, Lethal Politics, New Brunswich, New Jersey, 1990.
2 Lenin, VI, Collected Works, as quoted in Methvin, EH, The Rise of Radicalism, Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, 1973, p. 321.
3 Solzhenitsyn, AI, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, Harper & Row, NY, 1973, pp. 69-70.
4 Petrov, V. & Petrov, E., Empre of Fear, Praeger, NY, 1956, pp. 73-74.
5 Conquest, R., Introduction, in Rossi, Jacques, The Gulag Handbook, Paragon House, NY, 1989.
6 Gottlieb, Rabbi NZ, In the Shadow of the Kremlin, Mesorah Publications, NY, 1985, pp. 11-18, passim.
7 Kranzler, David, Thy Brother's Blood, Mesorah Publications, NY, 1987, p. 131.
8 Begin, M., White Nights, Harper & Row, NY, 1977.
9 Rummel, Op cit., p. 163.
10 Ibid., chapter 9, esp. p. 219.
11 Shifrin, A., First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union, Bantam Books, NY, 1982, esp. pp. 10, 19-21, 31-35.
12 Shifrin, A., "A Performance: Glasnost and Perestroika," an open letter, Jan. 1990.
13 McAlvany, DS, McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, Jan. 1994, p. 12; Timofeyev, L., Russia's Secret Rulers, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1992, p. 85.
14 Orth, M., "Nightmare on Red Square," Vanity Fair, Sept. 1994, pp. 83-84.
15 Timofeyev, Op cit., p. 13.
16 Testimony of Yuri Tsirekidze in Story, C., Soviet Analyst, vol. 21, no. 6, June-Aug. 1992, p. 11.
17 Interview with Gamsakhurdia in Timofeyev, Op cit., pp. 46-51.
18 Timofeyev, Op cit., pp. 44, 86, 143, 144.
19 McAlvany, Op cit., p. 5.
20 Timofeyev, Op cit., p. 90.
21 Golitsyn, A., New Lies for Old, Dodd, Mead, & Co., NY, 1984, pp. 229-230.
22 McAlvany, DS, McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, Sep/Oct 1991, p. 21; Associated Press, "Yeltsin gives more mandate, more staff to retooled KGB," SF Chronicle, 11-24-94, p. C8.
23 Timofeyev, Op cit., p. 4.
24 Golitsyn, A., Memorandum to the CIA, 9-27-93, excerpted in Story, C., Soviet Analyst, Oct 1994, 23:1, p. 3.
25 Timofeyev, Op cit., p. 117.
26 Ibid., pp. 121-126.