Continuing my respite, I’ve been reading about the Soviet Union — its prison system in particular. I picked up Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago a couple days ago, and have been enjoying the read. The book is a weighty one, but Solzhenitsyn manages to insert a good bit of humor into an otherwise depressing tome. Most of this humor is a result of the absurdity of Soviet policy and the many shortcomings of the people who implemented it.
Archipelago is a real-life example of an Orwellian dystopia, but it differs in some key respects from Orwell’s 1984. First, the party is characterized more by blundering fools and petty villains than any sort of ruthless efficiency. Rather than intelligent, dedicated inner party technocrats like 1984′s O’Brien, Soviet NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) interrogators were greedy, lazy brutes who were simply trying to keep their place in the organization and line their pockets with the least effort possible. Unfortunately for Soviet prisoners, the easy way for the NKVD to accomplish its objective was to obtain confessions by any expedient means. For stubborn prisoners – especially those who insisted they were innocent – torture was the norm.
Secondly, although confessions were happily used by Stalin and his cronies for political purposes, the real prize was slave labor. Yes, many, many people were shot outright, but the overwhelming majority did time in slave labor camps across the vast expanse of Eurasia. Sadly, few young Americans are even aware that slavery was one of the defining characteristics of the mid-20th century. The Nazis and Japanese made extensive use of slaves during WWII, but Stalin outdid them all. Stalin was, for all intents and purposes, the successor to the Asiatic despots who have ruled Russia from time to time all the way back to the Huns. He ruled over a slave empire that stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific; even from the Arctic Ocean to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Genghis Khan himself would have been impressed.
What is most depressing about the book is that it dawns on the reader that an awful, nightmare of a totalitarian state need not be created by some cabal of evil geniuses, but rather can develop simply as a result of base human instincts, such as greed, resentment and a lust for power. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was in a shambles. During the chaos of the 1920s, a sort of gangsterism prevailed, which resulted in Stalin’s accession to power (not that Lenin was much better). The gangster lord then went about expanding his style throughout the entire Empire, enthusiastically supported by armies of thugs who were handsomely rewarded for brutalizing their own people.
Solzhenitsyn goes into quite a bit of detail about the early development of Soviet courts and law. Following the Revolution, over the course of little more than a decade, justice was entirely subordinated to the party and its organs, and for all practical purposes ceased to exist. It took some time to work out the details, but by the 1930s the Soviet penal system became an industry in its own right, and was kept functioning at the expense of other sectors. Even as people starved to death by the million in the worst famines in Russian (and Ukrainian) history, the prisons were well-funded and well-staffed.
The constant churning of the population as people were uprooted, displaced, arrested and exiled to Siberia was an important factor in Nazi Germany’s early success in Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the USSR. Without massive American material support in the form of trucks, locomotives, food, tanks, airplanes and huge shipments of steel, explosives and ammunition – over 16 million tons in all – Stalin probably couldn’t have withstood the assault. Ironically, some of the hundreds of thousands of trucks (mainly Studebakers and Fords) we sent to the USSR were used by the NKVD as their infamous “black marias” for collecting prisoners. The Studebakers were also famous as the platforms for the mobile rocket artillery (“Katyushas“) the Red Army used to awesome effect in battles.
Of course, when you abuse people to the extent Stalin did, there tends to be some blowback. A little known story of WWII concerns the hundreds of thousands of Russians – ethnic Russians, no less – who actually volunteered to fight for the Nazis, despite being treated like subhuman dogs in German POW camps, which suggests that Stalin treated them even worse than that (ultimately, he did — after the war, returning Russian POWs were routinely sent to be worked to death in Siberia for the crime of having been taken prisoner). If it weren’t for the ideological constraints and small-mindedness of Nazism, Germany could have potentially overthrown Stalin with his own subjects.
Stalin’s USSR serves as an example of the depravity to which governments can sink, and because it was very real, the USSR is a far more disturbing example than 1984 could possibly be. It should remind us that we must be vigilant in preventing anything similar – no matter how “limited” – from developing in our own society, but unfortunately that lesson has been lost on many.
And how do we know it has been lost? Because people are at work using the same methods the early Communists employed right here at home. Communism is set up on the principle of “equality,” which is antithetical to the principle of “liberty.” If we are all to be equal, we cannot be free, because individual choices have different results. This is in direct conflict with English common law, which was developed on the basis of protecting liberty (e.g. property rights) rather than equality (redistribution).
Second wave feminism was directly influenced by Communist theory, and it was second wave feminists who wrote and implemented family law starting in the 1980s. The Violence Against Women Act was also strongly influenced by these Marxist feminists (despite Joe Biden’s fraudulent claims of authorship), who have little regard for concepts such as due process, rights of the accused, and so on. In fact, if you take a close look at the way family law has come to operate, it resembles Soviet law very closely. It is neither criminal law nor civil law, but some strange hybrid that purportedly “levels the playing field.” In so doing, men are substitutes for the “class enemies” of the Communists — capitalists, bourgeoisie, aristocrats, etc.
Guilt need not be established for a man to be dispossessed, children may be used as hostages, detention without trial is frequently employed and a mere accusation is enough to remove a man from his home. In many cases, child support and alimony orders amount to debt bondage (a form of slavery). All is justified because women are seen as an exploited class by feminists, and efforts to rectify this cannot be hampered by “reactionary” (Futrelle frequently uses that term — shows his true colors) notions of due process, trial by jury, and presumption of innocence.
The most disturbing parallel, however is currently developing in our universities in response to rape hysteria. For a couple years now, universities have been setting up sexual assault tribunals at the urging of the US Department of Education, which is using Title IX as leverage to force compliance. These tribunals find a remarkably similar predecessor in the Cheka (later NKVD) troikas used to mete out extrajudicial punishment, such as summary execution or imprisonment. They were created expressly to avoid trials, which were impractical due to the need for solid evidence and other such reactionary impediments to punishment. Likewise, our own college tribunals were created for essentially the same purpose. On reading about them, one gets the impression that Russlyn Ali, who is responsible for ordering the “new standards,” must have picked up the idea while reading about Genrikh Yagoda or another one of the sadistic villains responsible for implementing Stalin’s madness.
Ali’s new standard, known as “preponderance of evidence,” is a farce and a travesty of justice. Any fool or liar can claim that there’s a “preponderance of evidence” in whatever case he or she pleases. What preponderance of evidence really comes down to is opinion, politics, or just plain preference, and what man in his right mind would trust a university-appointed troika on sexual assault to be unbiased?
Christina Hoff Summers reports:
“We will use all of the tools at our disposal including … withholding federal funds … to ensure that women are free from sexual violence,” Ali told NPR last year. One such tool is the standard of proof that college disciplinary committees use when determining guilt. Many colleges employ a “beyond a reasonable doubt” or a “clear and convincing” standard. (Roughly speaking, “beyond a reasonable doubt” requires a 98-percent certainty of guilt; clear and convincing, an 80-percent certainty.) Ali, however, orders all colleges to adopt the far-less-demanding standard of “preponderance of the evidence.” Using that standard, a defendant can be found guilty if members of a disciplinary committee believe there is slightly more than a 50/50 chance that he committed the crime. That standard will make it far easier for disciplinary committees to try, convict, and punish an accused student (almost always a male).
[...]
How did Ali and her fellow lawyers in the Department of Education manage to find in the Title IX gender-equity statute grounds for demanding colleges to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard? That is a mystery. Hans Bader, a former Education Department lawyer, says that nothing in Title IX justifies taking away an accused person’s right to a firm presumption of innocence, requiring clear and convincing evidence. Ali and her colleagues, he suggests, are “legislating through administrative fiat, in a way that is arbitrary and capricious.” And dangerous, one might add.
We might be tempted to write this off as more campus silliness, but even taken in context this is a chilling development. While they may not be executing people, detention isn’t all that far-fetched, especially when we have people in the President’s administration demanding that schools implement extrajudicial punishment measures with troikas that approximate the Cheka model pioneered by the Bolsheviks. That the current administration is trying to preempt investigations and trials in state courts is another issue here, and may well be a violation of the Constitution.
The US may not be the hellish totalitarian dystopia of the early USSR, but there’s no sense in allowing any one part of our society to resemble it at all. Whether they are found in the family or the university, Bolshevik standards of “justice” should be firmly rejected before they metastasize and spread to other institutions. Finally, feminists should be called out for what they really are rather than given cover by politicians and the press. They are, quite literally, tyrants who will use whatever method they deem expedient to accomplish their goal. As I read The Gulag Archipelago, I find quite a bit of material that is familiar in the contemporary world. It seems that even we Americans carry the germ of totalitarianism within, and we would do well to keep an eye on it and aggressively root it out where we can.
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Brilliant post, as usual.
“The US may not be the hellish totalitarian dystopia of the early USSR”
I would have to respectfully disagree.
Feminazis hate liberty, especially male liberty. Even Freedom House (the US human rights organization) has signed on to feminazism. Read any of their reports on either the United States or any foreign country from any calendar year and remember, it will be a cold day in hell before Freedom House signs on to the MRM.
Great Post!
“…but it differs in some key respects from Orwell’s 1984.”
“…need not be created by some cabal of evil geniuses, but rather can develop simply as a result of base human instincts, such as greed, resentment and a lust for power.”
I’d add another facet to this consideration: It happened more or less by accident and bad luck. Not only were the men not evil geniuses – they weren’t even doing all that much planning.
The old order collapsed and nobody had a clear idea of what to do next. Riots, confusion, starvation, shortages, loss of communication. 1984 was planned, but the Soviet Union just sort of happened – one thing led to another, and power fell into the hands of the base men you mention, and they took measures to keep it. They shot dissenters, they shot perceived enemies, and they shot one another. Stalin’s USSR was full of plots and conspiracies, but wasn’t itself built out of a conspiracy. It was a runaway vicious circle, a positive feedback loop. One thing led to another, such as attaining power, which meant that 1) one attracted followers, which gave one more power, and 2) one needed to secure one’s position, which meant getting more power. It was like a giant sticky ball rolling around and grabbing up every loose remnant in the house until it solidified into the Soviet Union.
The crisis was like a toss of the dice to see what regime would appear next, and it was a totalitarian one. There was no contingency for what would happen in the event of the previous regime collapsing.
Is there any sort of contingency for the US government collapsing? Suppose that one day, people look at Congress’s 90% re-election rate and 10% approval rate posing as “consent of the governed”, and refuse to take it any more?
In other news, Rosie O’Donnel has fathered a newborn baby and named it “Dakota”.
Where will this madness end? What the hell is wrong with traditional names like Elmer, Hermann, or Shemp? Must they always name their offspring after quasi-mystical confections or everyday objects?
And please, I don’t want anyone to inform me that Rosie is in fact, “Cherokee Indian” or some other nonsense.
“If it weren’t for the ideological constraints and small-mindedness of Nazism, Germany could have potentially overthrown Stalin with his own subjects.”
I found this comment very interesting and provocative in light of current trends regarding the treatment of men in the USA and the possibility of an entity with fewer or more appealing ideological constraints exploiting such conditions.
You already have forced slave labour in the United States. A third of your home appliances are manufactured in US prisons, much of your paint, and plenty of your general issue military equipment.
Look up Unicor.
It’s been said that if Hitler had extended a helpful and welcoming hand to the disenfranchised common man of Stalin’s Russian,Russia’s effective resistance would have been crushed,as it would have to deal with fighters from within as well as without.
However Hitler did not extend any offers to internal Soviet resistance,to his loss.
Given that due process has been removed,and that courts are insane star chambers for the feminist agenda,extra special measures are called for to increase resistance.
It is clear the govt will never undue it’s transgressions of the Bill of rights,one could only hope more and more enforcers of the unjust system get caught in the gears and work from within to correct/hamper the meat grinder system.
In the meantime,respect for the law is way down,and men are learning to avoid marriage and cohabitation to avoid the negative effects.
All the whining about “where have all the good men gone” will be in vain lacking the re-institution of Constitutional protections,due process,and equity and justice before the law.
Lacking those returns to sanity,expect more anarchism and random acts of non-conformance and eventually outright sabotage against the draconian police State.
Let them choke upon the spectacle of gay and lesbian rights whilst their sons languish woefully from the misandrist courts.
Le the blacks from gangs and run amok,let every demographic from street gangs as mob justice is now more ethical and hence desirable over “Legal” persecution.”
Given enough solidarity and will resistance to the extremes,the police will rightfully fear to enter entire areas,as they do now in the worst parts of some inner cites.
NOTE- the lack of will of the politicians to do something about inner city Chicago whilst demanding whites disarm.
Refuse to disarm,learn from the blacks and Chicano’s and form street gangs for justice.
Playing nice only invites persecution,time to go HARD CORE.
Only force begets respect from tyranny.
The Soviet Story is a excellent documentary made by a Latvian director. Disturbing would be a big understatement. Some parts are really hard to watch. Almost entirely in English, except for a few brief parts:
http://www.livingscoop.com/watch.php?v=MjQwMQ==
Amazon has it in DVD form entirely subtitled I think.
Welmer, for an enlightening read check out online Solzhenitsyn’s final work Two Hundred Years Together. Online is the only place you can read it in English. It hasn’t an American publisher because it’s too controversial. And you might find this interesting: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/SlezkineRev.pdf.
This piece is excellent. It’s the sort of writing that makes the Spearhead relevant and consequential. Thanks for you work, Price.
Here is an excellent video from the 80s of a former KBG agent who defected. It’s an hour long, and well worth every minute as he describes how to subvert a culture. Everything he described has come to pass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
Good article. I also believe the feminist manipulate the law like the Communist did. Title IX and Ali’s “preponderance of evidence,” is used to hinder men’s education and kick men out of school. Its tough to get a STEMS degree if the University kicks you out on trumped up charges. Feminist are using these laws to create a kinda of glass ceiling against men’ s education.
Awesome post; and far too true for my comfort.
We have a lot of greed, resentment (from feminists), and too many with a lust for power. Our economy still garners funds in the trillions (so they say); and like Christ said “where there is a corpse, there will always be buzzards.”
Unfortunately, I think socialism may be an offshoot of early imperialism; as most want to expand and dominate others who will not willingly yield to the communist’s line of thought.
If we enter in to a dark age of sorts, that is if the modern era is not already one; then we have to be prepared. For in the MRM fails, governments will continue their anti-mathematical developments in the economy; with all the greed they cannot be reasoned with. Nor can their followers see a reason to choose something else; they merely say “it will never happen to me!”
its interesting that in soviet russia, one could also be imprisoned for telling a joke about stalin.
reminds me of sexual harassment laws. saying the wrong thing may be evidence you are a “chauvinist”(or a counter-revolutionary) and thats more than enough excuse to jail you.
family, friends, anyone could accuse you of being a “counter-revolutionary” and you could be jailed. its downright eerie how similar it is to “family court”
Bolshevism was a democratization of the prior despotism and tyranny of the feudal monarchism of the Romanov’s.
Communism was a social-realist rationalization and institutional organization of the existing anarchic Bolshevism.
Democratization itself popularly legitimizes the rule of despotism and rule by capricious tyranny by way of Socialism.
There is absolutely nothing new in any of this, is there ?
As another poster has pointed out, our own penal system (which is full to bursting – Amerika imprisons a larger proportion of its population than any other nation) is now recognized as a vast slave labor pool.
“US trade union officials have repeatedly denounced China for its use of prison labor, as part of the AFL-CIO’s campaign against the normalization of trade relations with China. At the same time, however, the union officials have virtually been silent about the huge growth of prison labor in the United States…
“In addition, during the last 20 years more than 30 states have passed laws permitting the use of convict labor by commercial enterprises. These programs now exist in 36 states.
“Prisoners now manufacture everything from blue jeans, to auto parts, to electronics and furniture. Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do. Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys R Us used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft to pack and ship software. Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries.
“Inmates are also employed in a wide variety of service jobs as well. TWA has used prisoners to handle reservations, while AT&T has used prison labor for telemarketing. In Oregon, prisoners do all the data entry and record keeping in the Secretary of State’s corporation division. Other jobs include desktop publishing, digital mapping and computer-aided design work.”
(http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/05/pris-m08.html)
The idea has spread to other countries; see this Australian broadcast from 2012 regarding women prisoners:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gq4MmDPbIc?rel=0&w=450&h=253
Just finished reading “Convergence of Catastrophes” and one line stood out to depict one of the things happening today… “The phenomenon of acceleration is one of the signs of approaching catastrophe.” It seems like things are speeding up fast. Very fast. It seems like things are moving so fast and from so many sources and in so many directions that there is no way or means that the multitude of important issues coming at us can be adequately contemplated and discussed, or disseminated, even if they could be put on the table. Basically meaning that cogent decision making has become an impossibility. Proposed solutions becoming like shots in the dark.
The next frontier for Mizz Ali and Obama’s Dept of ED is applying Title IX rules for funding to STEM. I suppose this means STEM curriculum must be more “gender inclusive” or the public institution risks losing federal funds. This means STEM will need to be more appealing to young women and the material toned down to be less logical and more subjective. 2+2 doesn’t always have to equal 4, depending on your unique perspective. This already happens at the K-12 level…and they STILL can’t get near enough girls interested. That won’t stop an administration hell-bent on “equality” and curbing “disparate impact” for anyone that’s not a caucasian male.
As far as looming tyranny in the USA, there is a plan. That plan is to collapse the free market systemand re-establish a new Social Order. (sound familiar?)
We simply can’t sustain an economy with a Fiscal Budget, beyond comprehension in order of magnitude this far off kilter, without major increases in taxes on everyone and major cuts to entitlements – we simply can’t, it’s arithmatic. Just to pay back the debt within the next 10 years while balancing the budget (if we actually had a real budget) every individual and corporation would have to be subjected to at least a 50% federal tax rate and spending cut by a third (entitlements are two-thirds of spending). Our standard of living would drop dramatically.
But instead we’ll reach a point where our debt is so high we can’t afford to even pay the interest on it without FORCED reductions in government entitlement spending. Government will literally take over healthcare, like the NHS in the UK. If you’re a docter or nurse you will be working for the federal government at reduced pay and benefits. Inner city blacks that depend on welfare will be abruptly cut off – and they won’t react peacefully to it. There will be bread lines and tent cities. Brother can you spare a five spot.
The government needs the economy to improve to increase tax revenue, but the economy won’t improve until the government takes action on the defict/debt. If the government takes action on the defict/debt (raises taxes, cuts spending) the economy can’t improve – so it’ll just keep borrowing. It’s a death spriral, and no politician is ever going to get and/or stay elected promising to raise taxes AND cut spending to protect something as oblique and distant as “our children and grandchildren’s future.”
Taking our guns away is a key first step to tyranny, lest there be any “well armed militias” forming that might interfere with the plan. The insurrection will begin in urban centers, probably LA and quickly spread to Chicago, New York and D.C., and there will be blood spilt. I only pray I can still afford ammo for my guns and cable to watch it all unfold. “CNN presents: CRISIS IN LA!” que doom drums and foreboding synth riff. “Let’s go live to Soledad O’Brien, safely nestled in our Atlanta studios. Soledad?”
Erik wrote: “I’d add another facet to this consideration: It happened more or less by accident and bad luck. Not only were the men not evil geniuses – they weren’t even doing all that much planning.
The old order collapsed and nobody had a clear idea of what to do next. Riots, confusion, starvation, shortages, loss of communication. 1984 was planned, but the Soviet Union just sort of happened – one thing led to another, and power fell into the hands of the base men you mention, and they took measures to keep it. ”
Erik- While I agree that the Bolsheviks themselves were not geniuses, I’d argue that their revolution was not totally accidental & unplanned.
Follow the money. Their financiers most certainly had a plan. And if Price is looking for common threads between the Bolshevik revolution and the problems of today- the puppeteers should be a major link.
And hundreds of thousands of Russians who fought the Nazis with the Allies were sent back to the Soviet Union to almost certain imprisonment and death at Uncle Joe’s request. Eisenhower has alot to answer for on this as well as on his Death Camps where German prisioners suffered extreme abuse ( no shelters, inadequate diet and medical treatment, etc).
What makes this reduced standard of proof particularly odious is that, in the case of a sexual assault allegation, given the university politics, it amounts to a presumption of guilt. Any administrator or tribunal in charge of making that decision is going to be operating on the presumption that “women almost never lie” about such things. Any assertion to the contrary would be heresy. So, in a “he said”/ “she said” scenario, he’s effed.
Good review. I read a work of fiction about the Soviet Union recently and also noticed the similarities between the denunciations against Russians and Family Court.
I used to do almost all my reading on my laptop or on my tablet, but have started buying books again, as my budget allows after the court enforced theft from my wages goes to my former spouse. I decided that a collection of books is at least one thing that I will one day be able to share with my son, that the efforts to extract cash from me is unlikely to touch. My reasoning is: WTF would a greedy woman do with serious and interesting books?
Family courts go well beyond the ‘extra-judicial’; they are criminal accessories to kidnapping, theft, perjury, child abuse, false accusations of the most horrific kind, and of course extortion using children as weapons.
Hi jimbo.
What you are talking about is basically the definition of collapse. Things are too complexes and very few poeple can analyze today complexity.
We are moving toward a less complex society. The repel of VAWA act might be the first sign of simplification of western society. We don’t have enough money to manage such complexity : feminist law, police, rape law, family court and so on. Time will tell.
I used to blog on futrelle web site by putting comments there. You can learn a lot about someone by the way they react to what you say. Look at the comments. They are all about grammar, cat and my username.
I will repeat : most women are shallow and stupid. Go look and draw your own conclusion. Enjoy
Good reading, thanks. I’m reading “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” right now.
I know I’m not “one of the boys” on here, but I experienced misandry online recently, and thought I’d share it with you.
The recent rape cases in the news brought out the slutwalker trolls on Breitbart. I made a comment to the effect that, yes, rape is terrible, the perpretrators are evil. But hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if women ALSO took responsibility for their own safety and stayed out of unsafe situations…like getting drunk and making out with a total stranger.
My, you should have seen the comments. Haters hating exponentially. I might have been hurt if I wasn’t so surprised. Vehemence like I’ve never seen.
Some of the comments:
“I’m ashamed that you’re a women, if indeed you really are.”
“You’re too ugly to be raped yourself, so you don’t care about other women.”
So, when the Revolution comes and someone comes seeking solace at my door, I will be asking “Who did you vote for?” rather than what their sex is. And eff them if the answer is wrong.
I was so struck by A.S.’s tale of how he saw the entire (overextended) technocratic “modern” apparatus of the state virtually cut off at the knees by some primitive highland clansmen that I remember it to this day (nearly 40 years later).
When he was stuck in Kazakhstan teaching math to the locals and the ethnically cleansed/deported Chechens, one of his (male, naturally) pupils got caught up in a traditional deadly feud with some other family. The place went into cringing, impotent lockdown as the knives came out, for weeks, until it was resolved. By the counsels of the tribal elders of the Chechens, while the local Soviets wrung their hands, generally twisted in the wind, and played for time. Impotent, and fearful of detonating a general slaughter, if the brutal prehistoric Law turned its Eye of Sauron on them.
I think he says the tribesmen’s hearts and minds were “girded by their ancient forefathers with iron bands, a Law older and stronger than the Soviet Union, older than civilization itself “, the lex talionis, and that the Communist power “simply melted away” in the face of it.
Or something along those lines. I could go and dig it out if anybody’s interested.
Not unlike the Kanun.
In his detailed account of the 1954 revolt at the Kengir labor camp in Kazakhstan, Solzhenitsyn observed that “there is more than one side to the Chechens. People among whom they live–I speak from my experience in Kazakhstan–find them hard to get along with; they are rough and arrogant, and they do not conceal their dislike of Russians. But the men of Kengir only had to display independence and courage–and they immediately won the good will of the Chechens! When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.“ (my emph.)
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/nca/single/?tx_ttnewstt_news=2378&tx_ttnewsbackPid=185&no_cache=1
I suggest you get a copy of “Two Hundred Years Together” in other languages besides English- in which AS interprets Russian-Jewish relations since the time of their incorporation into the Empire. The book has been out in French and German for several years- but has so far eluded translation into English- possibly because it goes into details about Jewish participation (Volume 2) in the Bolshevik takeover. AS was probably one of the greatest men of the 20th century- one that the Powers That Be don’t want to publicize – after all- he was a fervent Orthodox Christian and about as un-PC as they come- a voice of sanity which unmaskes the luvy-duby ObaMandela Disneyland we see metastasizing around us every day.
Here’s the review from that leftist paper The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books
And here is the link to the book offered by Amazon France, if interested:
http://www.amazon.fr/Deux-si%C3%A8cles-ensemble-1917-1972-sovi%C3%A9tique/dp/2213615187
Yevgeny Zamyatin
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76171.We
“In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier — and whatever alien species are to be found there — will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.
One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful 1-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery — or rediscovery — of inner space … and that disease the ancients called the soul.”
“A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.”
Our family law system was taken directly from the soviet union. It doesn’t resemble it, it is it.
The assertion about Russians willing to fight for Hitler (the “Vlasov army”) gets aired every now and then, and while it was certainly an option, the suggested military advantages to the Wehrmacht are much overstated. These men, while undoubtedly Russian patriots, could never have formed anything more than a cannon fodder auxiliary for German arms, and whatever else the armed forces of NS Germany were, they were not a collection of suicide brigades. In addition, the Vlasovs did not speak German, would have required serious training to use German equipment in order to function effectively in combat formations, and, most importantly, would have been riddled with saboteurs and spies from the NKVD.
The Vlasov option was considered by Wehrmacht high command and found wanting. It was, despite our hindsight knowledge of Germany’s disastrous campaign in the East, the right decision.