We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I am back from Slovakia now, and had a lovely time thanks. On my final weekend, while football related mayhem reigned in Bratislava, I took a trip northwards to the Czech countryside. I was shown several fine churches, but the most intriguing item of my stay did not involve any sightseeing trips, at any rate not by me. It concerned, rather, one of my host’s first cousins, a man called Karel Krautgartner.
Krautgartner was Czecho-Slovakia’s answer to Benny Goodman, that is to say a hugely accomplished jazzman who could also more than hold his own in the classical repertoire, on clarinet, saxophone and all related instruments. My host played me a videotape of a Czech TV documentary recently shown to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Krautgartner’s death. He looked like a James Bond villain, and played sublimely. He didn’t seem to have been a huge creative musical force. But he was a great band leader and organiser, who inserted successive jazz innovations from America into Czech musical life, and who added middle-European technical polish and discipline to everything he touched.
Krautgartner was only about sixty when he died, of cancer of the colon, in West Germany. He had emigrated there on account of his unwillingness, following the suppression of the Prague Spring of the late nineteen sixties in which he had played a prominent part, to become a Soviet stooge. Concerning Krautgartner’s death my host told me a fascinating and terrible story, which was not mentioned in the documentary, but which my host had learned through being personally acquainted with many of the personalities involved.
Somewhere in the Urals, during the nineteen fifties, a nuclear bomb went off by mistake in a research laboratory, devastating the entire surrounding region, with, as you can imagine, appalling loss of life. → Continue reading: The USSR and all that jazz
The Blogger Bash is tonight, so I got myself in the party mood this morning by reading how David Farrer of Freedom and Whisky had responded to Adriana’s griefometer posting.
He tried it on Soviet Communism, but deliberately took it all a bit seriously and tastefully, ignoring for example how very uncute lots of the victims of Soviet Communism were.
Now, this griefometer is just a silly game, isn’t it? A bit sick perhaps? Well, consider this: 100 million killed over 80 years is about 3,422 per day.
Or one “World Trade Centre”.
Every day for 80 years.
What’s really sick is that the communists’ ideological soulmates infest almost every academic institution in the western world. And I am still waiting for them to apologise.
Have a nice weekend.
Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who opposed both the Nazis and the Red Army (whom they regarded as occupying Russians) from 1942 until they were largely crushed by the communists in 1953, are to be accorded the same rights as former Red Army veterans by the Ukrainian government. It is interesting that the Russian government regards this as an affront even after all these years, calling the UPA ‘bandits’ for having the audacity to defend the Ukraine against all comers.
However although the UPA opposed both the Soviets and Nazis, they were also implicated in the mass murder of Poles and Jews and do not really fit comfortably into the ‘clearly-the-good-guys’ category, a fact surprisingly absent from several reports on the recent hostile reaction by the Russian government to the Ukrainian decision to grant surviving UPA veterans full military pensions.
On my recent holiday in France I took with me a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the one by D. M. Thomas (subtitled “A Century in His Life”, first published Little, Brown and Company, 1998). Before that I had been reading Solzhenitsyn’s own The Oak and the Calf (which came out in 1975), and now I’m reading his Invisible Allies, which came out in 1995.
These latter two books are Solzhenitsyn’s answer to the question: “How on earth did you do it?” The first puts Solzhenitsyn’s own exploits centre stage. The second names some of the many names that could finally be named safely, without endangering lives. He did a lot himself. And he had a lot of help.
It was partly being a contributor to Libertarian “Samizdata” that prodded me into this reading burst. I quite understand why Perry gave the name “Libertarian Samizdata” to Libertarian Samizdata � messages that go under the radar and past the editorial defences of the official statist oriented big media, and so forth. Nevertheless I do feel a bit uneasy decking myself out in the word that originally meant people risking their very lives, all day, every day, for years on end, copying and distributing the real Russian literature of those times. The worst that can happen to us is a few hostile e-mails.
This reading has, of course, stimulated a million thoughts, but one thought in particular relates to Adriana Cronin’s point about how Stalin, his henchmen, his successors and his middle managerial puppets throughout the Soviet empire were prone to believe their own bullshit.
Simply: Why didn’t they just kill him? Solzhenitsyn was making a monumental nuisance of himself. So why, as soon as he started doing this seriously, didn’t they just take him out the back of somewhere private and have him shot? They had their chances, as Solzhenitsyn himself relates.
There are many reasons. Western “pressure” was indeed crucial. And Solzhenitsyn was a literary and political tactician of genius. This was no dreamy, socially dyslexic wimp we’re talking about. This was a man who, until they arrested him for being incompletely reverent about Stalin, was a highly effective and courageous Red Army artillery officer, and the military metaphor he uses to describe his “battles” with Soviet officialdom is relentless and entirely appropriate. He writes particularly memorably in The Oak and the Calf of “encounter battles”, involving not only him and his Soviet enemies, but also, operating independently, the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov.
But here’s another reason they didn’t kill him. They didn’t kill him because killing him would have contradicted their idea of what they thought they were doing.
It wasn’t just “idiot savants” (D. M. Thomas’ killer phrase) like Jean Paul Sartre and his ilk who swallowed Soviet lies about happy smiling people marching joyfully into the cornfields and the steel factories; they believed this drivel themselves, if not as a complete fact exactly, then certainly as an aspiration. To have killed Solzhenitsyn would have been to admit to themselves that all this socialism-with-a-human-face nonsense was indeed nonsense, and that they were just old-fashioned, self-serving tyrants whose rule was based on brute force and nothing else.
Looking at the larger picture, the tendency to believe their own lies was a major part, not only of their failure to handle the likes of Solzhenitsyn, but of their failure period. The Soviet Empire fell apart because it was founded not only on the deception of others, but on self-deception self-inflicted by and on its own rulers. They didn’t, in the end, con us. Not enough of us, anyway. But they did con themselves.
This morning on the tube (a mode of shifting vast crowds of people from one place to another, aspiring to the name of London’s underground transport system) the person sitting next to me was drowsing over an article in an issue of today’s newspaper called The Soviet threat was a myth. That really caught my attention so I spent the rest of the journey trying to work out which newspaper was gently resting on my neighbour’s lap. Many furtive glances later I discovered it was The Guardian, a left-wing (to put it mildly) daily. Shock horror but no surprises there with regard to the title then… Nevertheless, I was intrigued and decided to read the online version as soon as I could get to my computer.
The conclusion of the argument was predictable and I am now torn between a point to point response to Andrew Alexander, the author of the article, who apparently is writing a whole book on the subject and just a few well placed words of wisdom, backed up by my personal experience, that would put him in his place. Something tells me that the latter approach would not satisfy the discerning Samizdata audience, so I will briefly highlight the most contentious of Mr Alexander’s statements and assumptions.
The conclusion that Stalin had no intention of attacking the West and that therefore the West is to blame for the Cold War just doesn’t hold. Just because the orthodox view of the Cold war as a ‘struggle to the death between Good (Britain and America) and Evil (the Soviet Union)’ may seem today as a simplistic ‘Manichean doctrine’, it does not follow that the Soviet Union’s actions such as installing communist governments throughout central and eastern Europe can be interpreted merely as a frightened response of the war-weary Russia to the speeches made by Churchill (the Iron Curtain speech of March 1946) and Truman (the phrase ‘stand up to Stalin with an iron fist’).
There are two lines of reasoning employed by those who challenge the Cold War orthodoxy, often combined to achieve greater emphasis. One is examination of the internal ideological struggles of Stalin with Trotsky and other opponents within the communist camp such as Tito and Mao to point out that Stalin was not driven by ideology. The logic blind spot is obvious here – Stalin’s version may have been different from the others but not necessarily less virulent and aggressive. And so, this flimsy and unsupported conclusion is then applied to his foreign policy and in combination with the realpolitik school of thought used to argue that Soviet Russia was acting in its national interest. The forceful communisation of central and eastern Europe is transformed to a natural reaction of a state defending its territory and security. By extension, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were necessary as part of the ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Russia and the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, however brutal, were ‘aimed at protecting Moscow’s buffer zone’.
Where does one start?! Rather than getting into a detailed discussion about the validity and interpretations of this or that surviving historical evidence of Stalin’s world view (which I plan to do anyway at some stage), I think it is important to point out the power of one’s own propaganda, especially when carried out in the Soviet proportions. Most students of communism tend to forget that it may be impossible to resist such intense and pervasive ‘brainwashing’ (including your own) without a deeply rooted alternative world view. So, how can we assume that Stalin was not susceptible to the effects of his own megalomaniac personality cult? Here my personal experience comes in handy as I remember only too well how insulation and ignorance create a breeding ground for a warped perception of reality and how those who perpetuate it fall victims to their own lies. Therefore, to attribute a perspective of an international relations academic to a dictator of Stalin’s calibre who wielded an ‘unlimited power’ over human lives using an elaborate ideology and a totalitarian regime is at best naive, at worst… well, let’s not be beastly to the Guardianistas in this enlightened day and age…
The most we can acknowledge is that there is no hard evidence (as yet) to prove or disprove the claims that Stalin had a masterplan for invasion of Europe and that only the determination of the West had prevented the Red Russia from taking over the world. However, to say that ‘any post-war Russian government – communist, tsarist or social democratic – would have insisted on effective control at least of Poland, if not of larger areas of eastern Europe, as a buffer zone against future attacks’ as Mr Alexander does, is just plain wrong, bordering on a serious lapse of judgement. The balance of power argument cannot possibly apply in the case of democratic Russia, as Germany, the main threat to Russian security, had been defeated by democratic countries and subjected to forceful democratisation by the US. The only way such an argument can be made, is if it contains an implicit assumption that communism is a morally equivalent (or morally neutral) alternative to the Western democratic regimes. Welcome back to meta-context!
And meta-context is where I want to remain for the moment in the Cold War debate as I do believe that its origins are not as clear as the orthodox or revisionist interpretations would have us believe. The methodology of discovering the causes of the Cold War is crucial as I believe this period of history to be steeped in meta-contextual clashes and misperceptions. This is not to ignore the moral dimension, far from it, but merely separate it from the rubble of the usual academic discourse that hides so many skeletons in its own meta-contextual closet.
I always believed that I would have to live a very, very long time indeed to witness better laws in Russia than we have in Britain. Well, I am a mere sapling of 40 and, to my not inconsiderable amazement, that day has arrived.
“On Friday the State Duma passed amendments to the Criminal Code that are to increase the rights of the Russians for self-defense. For example, a new norm has appeared: “if an attack has posed a threat to the life, the harm to the assailant can not be treated as a crime”
Contrast this to the situation in Britain, where, despite a right to self-defence being enshrined in law, the police act with almost indecent haste against any citizen that manages to successfully take advantage of it. And, lest we forget, British citizens may have this wonderful theoretical right to self-defence but they are forbidden to wield so much as a toothpick to exercise it with.
I would like to believe that this change of heart by Russian politicians has come about as a result of some great degree of enlightenment but the truth seems far more prosaic.
“The crime rate has considerably increased in Russia, and law enforcement authorities fail to cope with it. The passing of the amendments means, the government, probably rather unwillingly, has to shift the defense of lives on the people themselves”
Facts on the ground have a knack of knocking high-minded ideals off of their lofty perches. If people feel themselves to be in danger they will defend themselves regardless of what the laws say and that puts politicians in a dilemma: do they preside over a state of mass disobedience and resultant loss of legitimacy or do they relent and give the people what they demand?
The answer from Russia seems to be that they relent and give the people what they demand. But, we all know what people are like; give them an inch they demand a mile. Now that Boris and Irina have a meaningful right to defend themselves they will beg the question, what with? How long, I wonder, until the State Duma is ‘reluctantly’ allowing Russians the right to bear arms?
A point of principle all Libertarians understand as a given is that self-defence is a right not a licence. It it is not within the gift of politicians either to bestow it or expropriate it. But I would be churlish to nitpick over this news. Given the way Russia was ruled just a few short years ago, I can only applaud enthusiastically.
And thus, when the pseudo-democratic authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin, notable for crushing the free press in Russia, come out in favour of gun-control (victim disarmament) advocates in America, it becomes clear that supporters of well armed liberty are well and truly on the right track. According to World Net Daily, our liberty loving Russian ‘friends’ have done exactly that
Russia supports restrictions on U.S. gun ownership, according to official sources, pointing out that after the events of Sept. 11 gun sales in the United States increased. The blame for increased gun sales, according to Moscow and anti-gun activists, lies with gun manufacturers. “American firearms manufacturers saw their chance at profiting from the tragedy of people scared of threats from international terrorists,” Moscow declared. Asserting that “a nationwide campaign has been launched to advertise pistols and guns,” Moscow referred to a recent press conference held to “draw attention to gun makers’ marketing efforts.” The event included participation by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice. The statements were reported by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.
I can only assume that this is actually a plot by unknown well meaning NRA sympathisers within the Russian establishment, because I can hardly imagine a better way of encouraging a surge in US civilian gun acquisition than ‘The Official Russian State Media does not want you to own weapons’. Superb. Well done, Vlad. I knew you were on our side really.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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