several of my recent posts have been negative, in the sense I'm primarily critiquing/complaining about other's choices of post. So I thought I should find one to contribute myself.
Here's one I found interesting and worthwhile. The author has a strong point of view. Superficially it's similar to several other recently linked articles where the 'mainstream media' or 'the powers that be' is berated for its bias. In this case, it's a failure to recognize the evils of communism - the kind of thing the tea-partiers seem to think liberals do all the time. The difference here is epitomized by this quote:
"Stroilov claims that his documents “tell a completely new story about the end of the Cold War. The ‘commonly accepted’ version of history of that period consists of myths almost entirely. These documents are capable of ruining each of those myths.” Is this so? I couldn’t say. I don’t read Russian. Of Stroilov’s documents, I have seen only the few that have been translated into English. Certainly, they shouldn’t be taken at face value; they were, after all, written by Communists. But the possibility that Stroilov is right should surely compel keen curiosity."
A Hidden History of Evil by Claire Berlinski, City Journal Spring 2010 (https://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_soviet-archives.html)
Debunker
05-17-2010, 04:13 PM
We Americans hardly care that our last president lied us to an invasion and occupation of Iraq in which we killed a million civilians and we're STILL there.
Now, we're in several other undeclared wars, killing willy nilly and still no one seems to care.
The evils of the former Soviet Union aren't even abstractions to us, they're irrelevant.
Thad
05-17-2010, 04:38 PM
I believe the only thing to make a difference is to upgrade the Citizenship Oath and track people to see if they live up to it in the probationary period and require this of all citizens. So I'm wondering which is the most used citizens oath or what one should be? So that one doing it would be easily recognized and so then invited into the more developed activities.
We Americans hardly care that our last president lied us to an invasion and occupation of Iraq in which we killed a million civilians and we're STILL there.
Now, we're in several other undeclared wars, killing willy nilly and still no one seems to care.
The evils of the former Soviet Union aren't even abstractions to us, they're irrelevant.
Debunker
05-17-2010, 04:52 PM
I can imagine plenty of soviets made fun of concerns about the evils being done by their leaders with their tax dollars too.
It's a sad commentary on humanity that most of us so blithely shrug off such horrendous suffering. Now that I think of it, it's probably essential for such evil to be done.
I believe the only thing to make a difference is to upgrade the Citizenship Oath and track people to see if they live up to it in the probationary period and require this of all citizens. So I'm wondering which is the most used citizens oath or what one should be? So that one doing it would be easily recognized and so then invited into the more developed activities.
Thad
05-17-2010, 05:04 PM
There is no excuse for evil to be done.
I can imagine plenty of soviets made fun of concerns about the evils being done by their leaders with their tax dollars too.
It's a sad commentary on humanity that most of us so blithely shrug off such horrendous suffering. Now that I think of it, it's probably essential for such evil to be done.
Debunker
05-17-2010, 05:51 PM
There is no excuse for evil to be done.
To paraphrase one of our great leaders, evil doesn't need an excuse, it just needs good people to do nothing.
LenInSebastopol
05-17-2010, 06:54 PM
It is the case that such archives would prove that the executed Rosenbergs were spys for the Soviets and stole the bomb secrets from US; that Joe McCarthy was correct but short on his estimated number of fellow travelers working in the State Department and other governmental agencies; that Fidel was a communist supported by Soviets prior to 1959, or that an agent of the KGB assassinated. JFK, the POTUS, and so forth....all to the chagrin of those in this forum as well as many elite power brokers across the country. So if one is not reminded, informed or ignored, it is almost as good as "never existed & if it did, it never happened".
Maybe, eh?
wbreitman
05-18-2010, 10:37 AM
More Grist for the Mill
USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.
Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 6:09PM BST 13 May 2010
The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.
Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.
He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.
But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table.
He quotes Soviet ministers and diplomats at the time to bolster his claim.
On 15 October 1969, he quotes Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as telling Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Washington has drawn up "detailed plans" for a nuclear war against the USSR if it attacked China.
"[The United States] has clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us," Kosygin is said to have told Brezhnev.
That same day he says Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev something similar after consultations with US diplomats. "If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."
The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme.
The claims are likely to stir debate about a period of modern history that remains mired in controversy.
Mr Liu, the author, admits his version of history is likely to be contested by rival scholars. It is unclear whether he had access to special state archives but the fact that his articles appeared in such an official publication in a country where the media is so tightly controlled is being interpreted by some as a sign that he did have special access.