COMMUNISM
To triumph in war,
when fighting with either sword or pen,
one must know the nature of the enemy.Back - Main Menu - Marxism
Social Reform Movements - Communism
The Consequences of Socialist Rule
Some German History - The Origin of Socialism
UN's Plan for Global Government
Extreme Mass Murder by Government
This is a website update which was added on February 11, 2008. The information was taken largely from encyclopediae which were written prior to the time of political correctness (lies put forth by those who wish the downfall of the United States) and from a the text of The Sword and Shield which has been mentioned elsewhere on this website.
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Communism as taken from a 1960 encyclopedia
under Social Reform Movements.The following was taken verbatim from a 1960 encyclopedia. It is the most factual and well-written example I have found from a source pre-dating this era of ignorance and political correctness in so-called educational material. Of course, because of its date of publication, it does not show how accurately it describes what the Democratic Party in doing in the United States today. The Communist Party often changes its name when such is expedient, but this time it is ironic that it has almost gone back to one of its first names, Social Democrats, by infiltrating and taking over an existing political party. Those who can look critically at the fruits of the party can still see what it has become regardless of what it calls itself.
SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS - COMMUNISM
The first major attack in this century [the 20th century] against the established social order occurred in Russia toward the end of World War I. The czarist regime was overthrown in a bloodless revolution in March 1917, and it seemed as if Russia would have the opportunity to develop democratic institutions for the first time in her history. The majority of the Russians wanted political liberty as well as fundamental social change. Inexperienced in the conduct of public affairs, and failing to understand the true nature and goals of the Communist Party, the new democratic government allowed the Communists, led by Nikolai Lenin and Leon Trotsky, to subvert, and quickly destroy, the new democratic state.
The Communists used in 1917 the techniques which they have since repeated over and over again throughout the world. Lenin had stated as early as 1902 (in What Is to be Done?) that the Communists could never hope to persuade successfully the majority of the people, or even of the working class, to embrace the program and leadership of the Communist Party. What the Communists therefore needed, Lenin pointed out, was to combine legal with illegal work, infiltrate the police and armed forces, the government, schools, churches, trade unions, and other organizations which possessed strategic importance in the conquest and consolidation of power. Above all, Lenin urged the Communists in What Is to be Done? to train a "cadre of professional revolutionaries", who would give full time attention to political activities, and who would develop the techniques and procedures required for the revolutionary conquest of power. Although the Communists had thus clearly stated, from the Communist Manifesto on, that they intended to seize power by revolution and violence, the democratic government of Russia in 1917 treated the Communist Party and just another political party.
Between March and November of 1917, the Communists used three classical methods of gaining power which they were to repeat later in almost identical fashion in other countries. First, they presented themselves in their propaganda as a people's party dedicated to liberty, democracy, and social justice, opposed to all forms of reaction and social injustice. In an agrarian country like Russia, the Communists played up, in particular, the need for agrarian land reform, and encouraged the seizure of land by the peasants even before they were in control of the government. A generation later, the Chinese Communists were portrayed as just "agrarian reformers," thus following the pattern of propaganda established by the Russian Communists in 1917. The second technique which the Russian Communists employed was to infiltrate other political parties as well as trade unions, soldiers' councils, and local government authorities. In particular, the Communists managed to infiltrate, and gradually disrupt, the Social Revolutionaries, the largest party in Russia, dedicated to political democracy and social reform, and especially concerned with the questions of the peasants [they had been serfs for generations - very much like slaves]. This technique of infiltration was again employed by the Communists during and after World War II, when they tried to take over Socialist parties in a number of countries. Their most notable successes in that endeavor were in Italy and, to a lesser extent, in Czechoslovakia after World War II. The third method used by the Russian Communists in their revolution was force. In free elections, the Communists polled about one-quarter of the popular vote. Though this represented a far from negligible proportion, considering their fanaticism and activism, the Communists accepted the fact that in a free election they could not hope to win. In November 1917, therefore, the Communists seized the key positions of power in Moscow, and from there the revolution quickly spread all over Russia. Opposition to the Communist revolution sprang up spontaneously in various parts of the country, and a civil war ensued which lasted until 1921.
The ravages of World War I, followed by the devastations of the civil war, made immediate social reform impracticable. Lenin was realistic enough to see that the Russian people would literally starve to death if communist principles were imposed at that time. As a result, he inaugurated in 1921 the New Economic Policy [NEP]. Its main objective was to maintain and increase production on the farms and in the workshops and factories, by retaining the old capitalist incentives of efficiency and profit. The application of this policy for about seven years gave Russia a breathing spell, allowing the Communist rulers to consolidate more effectively their power, and giving the Russian people the temporary illusion that the bark of communism was worse than its bite. But in 1928 Stalin decided that the time had come to put Communist principles into practice, and he withdrew the temporary concessions earlier made by Lenin (who had died in 1924).
The First Five Year Plan, starting in 1928, aimed at rapid industrialization of Russia, to be supplemented by the collectivization of farming. In 1917 many peasants had sympathized with Bolshevism [the earlier name for Communism], not for reasons of theory or ideology, but because the Bolsheviks promised them the land they had tilled and coveted for centuries. The reasons which motivated Stalin to force collectivization on the peasants were manifold. First, the Communist rulers felt that agricultural production would be raised by mechanizing it, and such mechanization could be more easily effected on large-scale collectivized farms than on small, individually owned ones. Second, individual ownership and operation of farms was a basic denial of a key principle of communism namely, that all means of production be transferred to public ownership. Collectivization would bring agriculture in line with industry, which was developed on the basis of state ownership and operation from the start. Third, the Communist rulers saw in continued individual farm ownership a direct political and psychological threat to the acceptance of totalitarian political direction from from the center. The independent peasant had to be transformed into a dependent agricultural proletarian [back to serfdom]; as a member of a collective farm, the peasant was constantly working with others, talking to others, eating with others, and he could thus be more easily supervised and regimented. Another reason which lay behind collectivization was the need for newly developing industries in the cities, and the required labor force could be obtained only by mechanizing agriculture and thus saving human labor [on the farms]. Finally, collectivization has also an important military objective; in case of war, they [the collective farmers] were to provide the nucleus for organized resistance behind the lines. As events proved later in World War II, such military expectations were largely justified, and the Germans were never completely able to suppress Russian guerilla activities behind the lines.
The cost of fundamental social and economic change in Russia was heavy. In the process of collectivizing the farms in the years 1929-1933 between four and five million peasants lost their lives, or were uprooted from their homes and deported to slave labor camps in in Siberia or the Arctic. Resisting collectivization, the peasants slaughtered as much livestock as they could, and at the end of collectivization livestock had greatly decreased in numbers, although the population had risen from 150 million to 200 million in the meantime. Thus, the number of cows fell from 33.2 million in 1928 to 27.5 million in 1954, and the total number of cattle dropped from 66.8 million to 64.9 million in that period. Imposed low prices for farm products induced many peasants to grow as little grain as possible in the early years of collectivization, and as a result there was widespread famine in Russia, and particularly in the Ukraine, where the element of peasant resistance was strengthened by that of nationalism. After World War II, The Communist regime wanted to go a big step further and collectivize the collective farms, thus creating new "agro-towns" in which the original scheme of destroying the individuality of the peasant was to be carried to its extreme conclusion. However, the peasants resisted again, and this time their resistance was more effective than in 1929-1933. While thousands of collective farms were amalgamated into huge combines, the scheme as a whole was abandoned.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the leaders of the Soviet Union, from Malenkov downward, publicly admitted that the agrarian policy of Soviet communism had been a failure, and that Soviet agriculture was unable to feed the population in an adequate manner. The failure of collectivization was also more or less tacitly admitted in the communized states of eastern and southeastern Europe, and from 1953 on a policy of emphasizing food production was pushed in the Iron Curtain countries. In Yugoslavia, the Tito government allowed the peasants to decide, in 1952, whether they wanted to stay in collectives or return to individual farming, and an overwhelming majority of the peasants quickly opted for the latter.
In the field of industrialization, progress under communism has been immense, as was proved by Russia's ability to withstand the onslaught of German militarism in World War II. Though Russia received some strategic supplies from the United States as lend-lease during the war, the bulk of industrial production needed to defeat Germany came from Russian workshops and factories. Yet Russian industrialization from the First Five Year Plan on, was conceived primarily, not as a means of increasing the material welfare of the people, but the power of the state. For this reason, the government consistently emphasized heavy industry, especially vital production of armaments, while being less concerned with the development of consumer goods industries. The net result of economic change in Russia over a generation is not so much economic communism as a totalitarian state economy. In terms of sheer industrial power, Russia now ranks second in the world, preceded only by the United States. But this ranking is significant only in appraising the power of the state to wage war - not in appraising the opportunity of the people to live the good life. Viewed from the latter angle, living standards in Russia are still way behind North America, most countries of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and numerous other nations throughout the world.
Moreover, the price for this rapid industrialization has been steep. Millions of Soviet subjects have been employed for years in slave labor camps to provide cheap (but inefficient) labor. The number of slave labor camp inmates is estimated to run from a conservatively low figure of five million to the more likely figure of seven to eight million. Another step in bringing back midieval serfdom to the Russian worker is the abolition of free mobility of Soviet workers since 1940. Just as in the Middle Ages, the peasant was glebae adscriptus (attached to the soil), from which he could remove himself and his family only with the consent of the landlord, the Soviet worker, too, is attached to his job, and may not change it without special permission of his employer, the state.
Economic change in the Soviet Union has failed to solve the problem of social justice, for the sake of which change was to be undertaken in the first place. During the first 15 years of the Soviet regime, the attempt was made to limit inequalities of income to a moderate range of differential. From the middle of the 1930's on, with the inauguration of the era of purges, the last vestiges of equalitarianism were wiped out, and an entirely new policy brought into being. Wages based on performance rather than fixed hourly rates became the norm - a wage policy which labor unions in free nations had fought for for two generations as a system of inhuman exploitation. The old-fashioned capitalist appeal for higher production to be compensated by higher incomes was covered up with slogans like "socialist emulation" and workers were driven on to ever higher and higher production efforts by the policy of Stakhanovism, inspired by the alleged feats of a coal miner named Stakhanov. Whereas the original Communist concern had been with problems of distribution, Soviet policy has in practice concentrated on production. The incentive of higher profit rather than service to the community has become the main appeal of Soviet social and economic policy, and the philosophy of equality has been derided as a "petty bourgeois prejudice." In line with this antiequalitarian policy, personal income taxes are among the lowest in the world, and most of the revenue of the state derives from sales taxes and other indirect levies which propotionately hit the lower income groups hardest. Inheritance taxes, too, are lower than the representative capitalist countries, and are designed to stimulate personal effort and savings.
According to official Soviet propaganda the problem of social classes has been solved in Soviet society, because from the Marxist viewpoint their can be no class inequality except on the basis of the private ownership of the means of production. Yet the Soviet reality tells a different story. There are at least four distinguishable classes. In the first group - numbering a few hundred thousand families, perhaps as many as a million - there are the top government officials, party leaders, military officers, industrial executives, scientists, artists, and writers. The second group is made up of the intermediary ranks of civilian and military officials, collective farm managers, and some of the more affluent high skilled workers and technicians in industry. They form about two to three million families. The third class is made up of the bulk of the population, the mass of workers and peasants, numbering over 40 million families. The fourth class includes the millions of slave laborers and other disadvantaged persons who, for political or other reasons, are placed outside the confines of ordinary society. What is remarkable about social stratification in Communist countries is that the income spread between the different classes has been steadily widening, while it has been continuously narrowed in the democratic nations of the West through taxation and other measures. Moreover within the bulk of the population - the working class - the difference between wages of skilled and unskilled workers has been constantly on the increase in the Soviet Union, whereas in democratic nations this differential has been systematically reduced, largely due to the pressure of free labor unions.
The growing inequality between and within classes in Communist states is one of the most explosive sources of unrest and revolt. In the spring of 1953, workers rebelled in Czechoslovakia and Poland against excessively high work norms, and on June 17, 1953, the popular rebellion in East Germany against the Communist government and its Russian protector started with workers' strikes and was mainly fought by factory workers. They rebelled less against the ideology of communism than against the brutal economic exploitation to which they were exposed, an exploitation which meant austerity for the masses of the people and affluence for a small privileged clique of party bosses and government officials. The workers pulled down red flags from offices and factories, and publicly trampled upon, and burned, them. The spectacle of rebelling proletarians trampling upon red flags destroyed the myth, once and for all, that Soviet communism represented the cause of the workers, and it confirmed the fact that the mere transfer of property from private to public ownership did not bring about, in itself, a new society based on justice and equality. As Aristotle put it over two thousand years ago, the main question is not who owns property, but how property is used. In our own day, the experience of communist economic reform demonstrates that the principle issue is not whether the government owns the means of >production, but who owns the government.
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In the November 1992 issue of Atlantic is an article with the title Russia - The Meaning of 1917. Pertinent parts of this article along with some comments of my own follow.
Excerpts from
RUSSIA - THE MEANING OF 1917
by Abbott Gleason
The Russian Revolution [of 1917] not only gave rise to the divided world of the Cold War, but also was the impetus behind much of the radical energy and many of the political and economic reforms and utopian points of view that animated revolt against the colonial world order. In a way, all of the progressive transformations of the twentieth century were closely connected to what happened in 1917. This, of course, was also the heart of the Russians' more grandiose and ideological message...
...as we all know, the Russian world has changed utterly. And although... we are beginning to come to terms with the loss of the Soviet Union, historians have barely begun to comtemplate what the loss will mean for them. And if the Soviet Union - the fruit of the Russian Revolution - has gone, what does the revolution itself now mean? Or was their ever such a thing? Let me argue... although there was a violent overthrow of the Imperialist Russian government in 1917, there never was a Russian Revolution.
Academics [may say] that there was a Russian Revolution... because [various people said so]... But we know that Bolshevik rule lasted some seventy-four years and then gave way to chaos or warlordism or primitive capitalist accumulation of whatever is happening in Russia now, and so we may legitimately ask, "Do the events of 1917, or of 1917 to 1921,... still constitute a revolution?"
What is a revolution anyway?... Can we tell revolution from counterrevolution? Even among non-Marxists the notion that revolutions are connected with progress... is still influential... This belief in inevitable historical progress... has been almost entirely destroyed... by the events of the twentieth century, but has hung on the longest on the political left. The drama of the so-called Russian Revolution and its failures has dealt the belief another blow... If we are not sure that there was a [Russian] revolution, what can we say did happen in Russia from 1917 to 1932?
...[The Russian Revolution] actually consisted of a combination of class warfare and nationalist revolts against the centralized Russian empire. It was ultimately quelled by a new elite, which was animated by a radical socialist ideology. The process was touched off by the old regime's loss of legitimacy in the midst of famine and war. In the system that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the Russian political world changed drastically, but oligarchic-autocratic politics remained, in a somewhat more efficient form...
The Russian social system changed drastically too. Virtually all of the upper and much of the middle stratum of the Russian population, especially the upper-middle, disappeared abroad or into prisons and camps. The world created by them - sometimes call the "civil society" - largely ceased to exist after 1917. The people who remained from that world were submerged in a mass of workers and peasants, who themselves began to move upward in the complex process of social mobility which started at about the same time. In that process most of the more successful peasants (the kulaks) were destroyed and the less successful ones were collectivized.
A new elite emerged, highly militant, politicized, and anti-Western, although devoted to creating a variant of Western-style industrial civilization. These leaders regarded political democracy as a sham...
One of the most striking revelations in the collapse of Soviet Russia is how much of its alleged progress was flawed, limited, or even illusory. Education, from humanistic to technical and vocational, had its most important effects - and they are undeniable - on the upper strata of the intelligentsia, but large numbers of workers and peasants participated only marginally in its benefits. Meanwhile, they developed a distinctively communistic culture. They are lacking in initiative, socially and politically passive, and only negatively egalitarian - that is, they are disposed to prevent their neighbors' success rather than emulate it. The huge socialist-communist bureaucracy was parasitic, corrupt, and unable to generate any serious institutional innovation or change after Stalin's death. Industry never developed beyond the smokestack phase, and environmental degradation is worse in the former Soviet Union than anywhere else in the world, except possibly those parts of Eastern Europe where the same government system prevailed. Finally, the problems of inter-communal and interracial hostility, which were supposed to have been solved by communism, were merely held in check, suppressed, or papered over. The hatred between Azerbajianis and Armenians may be worse than it has ever been; the hatreds between nationalities in the Caucasus and Yugoslovia are at least as bad as they were after the second world war, and relations may well deteriorate elsewhere in the former Soviet Union...
Some historians are taking the view that the events of 1917 are merely the most recent of periodic upheavals that have characterized Russian history since the sixteenth century. It seems to me that a good deal of what took place during the so-called Russian Revolution and afterward is akin, for example, to the developments in Russia between the death of Boris Godunov in 1605 and the promulgation of the new law code of 1649. Then, too, a crisis of legitimacy, intensified by war and famine. led to the dissolution of Russia into class war and national war, followed by foreign invasion. A new dynasty was founded. Its leaders, in their search for solutions to the social and economic chaos in the country, found it necessary to increase social control drastically, and political autocracy as well. Serfdom was consolidated, and almost all Russians were bound to the place in which they lived or worked. The earliest forms of industrialization were developed by workers who were moved to wherever the new elite wanted or needed them. The new leaders tried to keep their subjects at work, but flight from the government and it oppression was frequent.
The crisis is usually known as the "Time of Troubles," and its normally assigned dates are 1605-1613. But the new configuration of Russia really took until the middle of the seventeenth century to establish itself. Like its later cousin, the so-called revolution, it could be assigned a much longer duration. Soviet historians always thought that historical developments in seventeenth century Russia - even the consolidation of serfdom - were "progressive," but in their system everything important affecting Russia's evolution had to be progressive. Most Western historians thought that the Russia we could see in the Law Code of 1649 had become even meaner and less free than the Russia of Boris Godunov, and was characterized by even greater rigidity. Peter the Great had to shake it up again a short time later...
An interesting book... is Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution... Brinton compared revolution to a fever in the body politic, or to a thunderstorm, metaphors that would have annoyed Marx very much. On a less analogical note, he was much interested in Pareto's theories about social equilibrium, and tried to develop the idea that revolutions resulted when societies lost their social equilibrium, ultimately restoring it in some new form. Pareto believed that the great revolutions of human history were no more than the struggles of new elites to displace old ones, and that ordinary people were only the foot soldiers of the elite, rather than new classes in the making. Brinton adopted that fundamental view in his analysis...
...Perhaps we should continue to allow the term "revolution" [in Russian Revolution] but view the Russian Revolution as actually beginning in the period prior to the emancipation of the serfs, in 1861, and continuing all the way to the present. Then the communist period becomes only one phase of in very long and disruptive revolutionary process. But if one thinks of the matter that way, then one must think of revolution as being for the Russians the bedrock of all modern life.
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Excerpts from
A HALF CENTURY'S SLANDER
by Jonah Goldberg
In the January 28 issue of the National Review, is an article by Jonah Goldberg with the title A Half Century's Slander. It brings to light and explains that for half a century or so, the far left in American politics has been saying that conservatives are fascists or Nazis - President George W. Bush being the last of many who have been slandered. It goes on to explain some facts that have been ignored by those who have moved to the far left.It was the Nazis who placed Lenin in Russia after he had been exiled. As Goldberg shows, the Nazis were socialists, outrightly proclaiming that they were deadly enemies of... the capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money. The Nazi party-platform demanded guaranteed jobs, the abolition of incomes unearned by work, the naturalization of all large corporations and trusts, profit-sharing in all major industries, expanded old-age insurance, a government takeover of big department stores, the prohibition of child labor, and countless other "progressive" reforms. [Do you recognize these campaign promises?]
The Nazis did a lot things when they were in power. They sought to eliminate the authority of any church and replace such authority with that of the state and the dictates of political correctness. They attempted to eliminate smoking. It is said they led the world in researching organic foods and alternative medicines and that the concentration camp at Dachau was one of their research facilities for such - they used "non-Aryan" humans as lab animals - like we do mice and rats. In fact, such humans were not just non-Aryans, but those of religions and persuasions which Hitler chose to eliminate.
It was not so much, in many cases, what the Nazis proposed and did - so much as the way they did such things. A political system which allows a dictator to arise always eventually finds a dictator that is very objectionable. Socialism is a good example wherever it is found in the world because it relies upon laws and government bureaucracy to force people to do its bidding - rather than using known incentives that have been time-tested to achieve what poor and often unenforceable laws cannot achieve. Fascism was Mussolini's revolutionary socialism - not far from what the socialists in Germany (the Nazis) were promoting.
The change in a country from capitalism and freedom to socialism and slavery can happen in two fundamental ways. It can be put in place by force, by propaganda and slow movement (boiling the frog), or both. This "soft" way of boiling the frog is what is happening in the United States today and has been happening since the KGB's department A began operations in the U.S. in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The article in the Atlantic compares Hillary Clinton and the other leaders of the radical left to Hitler and Mussolini and their political parties. What we have in the present-day Democratic Party leadership is liberal fascism or Nazism, whose first ploy is to accuse the other side of what they (the liberal fascists) are doing (this supposedly distracts the public from the truth). So we have the most appropriate title for the article A Half Century's Slander.
The National Review is a news magazine that, in my mind, has timely and unbiased news, and articles that are well-documented and well-written. The above-mentioned article has so much more than the few points presented here. One should read it all for an in depth look at what is happening.
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THE CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIALIST RULE
Bolshevism, Social Democracy, and Communism are all essentially synonyms for the same thing. In Russia it was an experiment based upon Marxism that was forced upon the people by militant, brutal, and ruthless men who wanted power. In most ways it was just another shifting of power from one dictator (the czar) to another with one difference - there was an interim, truly-democratic government which was short-lived and easily brushed aside through force by the Bolsheviks.
To obtain converts for the Bolsheviks, the peasants and workers were given promises which, for the most part, were not kept. This pattern continued as communism spread to other countries. First, disenfranchised and/or discontented people within a target country were fed propaganda which caused them to dislike their government (whether the government was or was not at fault). Then these people were enlisted in the communist cause by promising them what they wanted. Once the communists had taken over, they established a single majority political party which ruled virtually unopposed. This party might have any one of many possible names, but its actions defined what it was regardless of the verbal trappings that accompanied its presence.
Socialism defined: Public collective ownership or control of the basic means of production, distribution, and exchange with the avowed aim of operating for use rather than for profit, and assuring to each member of society an equitable share of goods, services, and welfare benefits; as a system of social and economic organizations planned, attempted, or achieved through various methods.
Perhaps the biggest difference between capitalism and communism (socialism) is that capitalism uses incentives based upon innate qualities found within a human being to achieve the necessary cooperation for a nation to function efficiently and freely - while communism uses force and intimidation leading to less efficiency and very little freedom. This is most apparent here in the United States where the Republicans allow capitalism to flourish so that people can keep their own property, rights, and profits - while the Democrats make ill-conceived laws to gain their ends which are almost impossible to enforce, reduce efficiency and freedom, are generally unconstitutional, and designed to steal money from those who earned it.
Perhaps the greatest danger to a capitalistic (more free) society is taking away the competition between those who provide goods and services to the consumers. A monopoly of any kind takes choice from the consumer and allows consumer abuses to be common. With socialism (by definition) the government owns or controls all production, distribution, and exchange. Thus, we have a government monopoly of all production, distribution, and exchange. Furthermore, unlike most dictatorships, this type is administered by committee, making it even less efficient than a society ruled by a single dictator.
Tampering with a capitalistic system by introducing elements that are socialistic or unfair (such as graduated Income Tax, using legal means to destroy free trade or businesses, slander disguised as free speech, or unconstitutional agreements such as those between health insurers and health providers in America) is usually the underlying cause for problems within the capitalistic system. However, the socialist element that is attempting to destroy the capitalistic system uses propaganda and subterfuge to make it seem that the fault is in the capitalistic system itself. In a free nation, it is vital that the people be educated in capitalistic economics, socialistic methods, international communism, and other related subjects. Today (August 2008) for instance, we have a third generation of youth, many of which have been denied a proper education because of socialistic (communistic) infiltration into schools. Consequently, many of this generation look at Obama versus McCain with the only means they have available to choose - age - and decide to vote for Obama because he is younger. This is the way true democratic republics are lost.
Dangers to a capitalistic society:
1. Monopolies or near-monopolies in any business, industry, trade, or profession. Only multiple providers can assure competition which keeps prices down, prevents consumer exploitation and abuse, and assures progress and diversity. Examples in the United States are hospitals (geographic monopolies) and health insurance providers (near-monopolies because they are in collusion with one another to skim the cream and prevent free-market competition of services).
2. Government ownership of any industry or means of distribution or exchange. This is just another monopoly with examples in the United States such as public schools (geographic monopolies).
3. Preventing compensation for outstanding efforts. The graduated income tax, tax on capital gains, tax on savings, tax on social security, and like incursions by socialists, reduce incentive to invest in superior procedures and products, and to work in an outstanding manner.
4. Restrictive bureaucratic regulation and unjust taxation. In many states, the government has excessive fees on vehicle licenses and driver's licenses, permits for building homes and businesses, and like endeavors.
5. Laws written for the benefit of government bureaucracy and interest groups who lobby the legislators rather than the individuals for whom the bureaucracy supposedly works. One example of this is the probate laws in California which are designed for the convenience of the lawyers and the state. Another example is the Uniform Building Code which was written for the benefit of certain unions and for relatively uneducated government bureaucrats who check architectural blueprints for conformity.
6. Government intervention, control, or ownership in endeavors better handled by the private sector. The federal government was originally intended to provide for the common defense and to establish a national medium of exchange. Today (Sept. 26, 2008), the President, the Presidential hopefuls, and the party heads in the Senate and the House are considering a 700 billion dollar bail out for the greedy, self-serving, and incompetent people responsible for the current housing debacle. They are thinking of having another government bureaucracy established to buy the bad debts and save the two government subsidized near-monopolies that make housing loans. This is an example of a socialistic endeavor that might possibly help in the short run and be bad in the long run - and there are better alternatives.
7. Government intervention, control, or ownership in endeavors better handled by state, county, city governments, churches, or other such bodies. One example of this is the push for a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage. Marriage is a religious matter and certainly not something that should be dictated at a national level. Furthermore, religion and state are supposed to be separate in the United States. As a pertinent aside, in dominantly socialist nations such as the old USSR, religion was monitored and controlled by the government.A quote from a Cheka security official at the time of Lenin follows - taken from Constructive Generation by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. We are not carrying out war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourqeoisie as a class. We are looking for evidence or witnesses to reveal deeds or words against the Soviet power. The first question we ask is: to what class does he belong, what are his origins, upbringing, education, or profession? These questions define the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the Red Terror.
From the same book we see the thoughts of an American communist who changed his views as he grew older. He is writing to an old comrade who had not changed his views. What kind of revolution do you think you and your radical comrades would bring to the lives of people - ordinary people who supported the "vile policies of Ronald Reagan" in such unprecedented numbers, people for whom you have so little real sympathy and such obvious contempt? The answer is self-evident: exactly the same kind of revolution that radicals of our "common heritage" have brought to the lives of ordinary people every time they seized power. For when the people refuse to believe as they should, it becomes necessary to make them believe by force. It is the unbelieving people who require "Revolutionary Watch Committees" to keep tabs on their neighborhoods, the gulags to dispose of their intractable elements, the censors to keep them in ignorance, and the police to keep them afraid. It is the reality of ordinary humanity that necessitates the totalitarian measures; it is the people that requires its own suppression for the revolution that is made in its name. To the revolutionaries the Idea of "the people" is more important than the people themselves.
The compassionate ideas of our common heritage are really masks of hostility and comtempt. We revolutionaries are the enemies of the very people we claim to defend. Our promise of liberation is only a warrant for a new and more terrible oppression...
...The radical truth is the permanent war that observes no truce and respects no law, whose aim is to destroy the only world that we know.
This is the "compassionate" cause that makes radicals superior to ordinary humanity and tranforms the rest of us into "class enemies" and unpersons and objects of contempt.
Take a careful look at what you still believe, because it is a mirror of the dark center of the radical heart: not compassion but resentment - the envious whine of have not and want; not the longing for justice but the desire for revenge; not a quest for peace but a call to arms. It is war that feeds the true radical passions, which are not altruism and love but nihilism and hate...
... This is the poisoned well of the radical heart; the displacement of real emotions into political fantasies; the rejection of present communities for a future illusion; the denial of flesh-and-blood human beings for an Idea of humanity that is more important than humanity itself. This is the problem of "our common heritage", as you so delicately name it, and it is our problem as well.
The following was sent to me from a friend. It is a typical example of the problems found with those who propose socialism as a solution (who will do the work that pays for the entitlements?).
A couple days ago, I was talking with a gal up in [town's name] who is of the liberal/progressive bent - called socialism in the article below. She readily admits to being a progressive/socialist and wants "our government to change to socialism - a government that provides for and takes care of its people . . . . instead of the "fascist government" we have now. . .
Keep in mind, this is a person who under-reports income at tax time, readily has a hand awaiting to grab the "entitlement" check from the govt, receives the "entitlement" of free medical checkups etc., lives in an illegal (non-permitted vacation-only) dwelling on someone else's property (no property taxes being paid on this illegal dwelling), and firmly believes it is the obligation of the American taxpayers to provide these "entitlements" to the masses! Mind you, this person chooses not to pay for medical insurance - the government should provide medical care (a la a socialist govt provides for its people) - and instead spends the money on personal pleasures, such as cruises, trips to Hawaii, and other exotic places. A recent hospital stay was allegedly shortened when the hospital discovered the person had no money or medical insurance (said person believes this hospital stay wouldn't have been shortened were our government socialist - as in what Obama is offering).
The events in Russia between 1917 and 1921 began with a brutal minority who disrupted the process of democracy, killed the majority who opposed them, and continued the process of killing the opposition with each change in leadership. The single-party system that continued in Russia kept the majority from taking over. Therefore, there was never a true democracy in Russia. The huge socialist-communist bureaucracy was parasitic, corrupt, and unable to generate sufficient food and consumer goods to satisfy the demand.
The idea of class struggle is seen in the history of the United States as the lower economic class introduced graduated-percentage income tax, insurance of all kinds (which is a form of socialism), and huge government bureaucracies based upon laws (force) rather than incentives. One of the latest examples of forced socialism is the health insurers and health providers causing the uninsured to pay 2.5 times the rate paid by the health insurers for health care. This eventually leads to complete dependence on the state by the uninsured and forces the taxpayers to pay their medical bills. Those who could otherwise have been able to afford health care are fleeced of their savings to become impoverished "wards" of the state.
Examples of what happens within a socialist-ruled country:
1. The state becomes the first priority and the individual exists merely to serve the state (very similar to feudalism or slavery, which were supposedly overcome).
2. Supply and demand are monitored and controlled by the government and there is almost never enough consumer goods at any given location to supply the demand. Even when some capitalistic concepts are introduced, the paranoid rulers tend to maintain control.
3. Elections are supposedly democratic, but usually there is but one candidate chosen by the single majority-party for each office - and the people must vote "yes" or "no" for this candidate. Those who vote "no" are likely to be punished severely.
4. Secret police are used to discover dissidents, rewards are given to informers, complaints are quelled by force, and political opposition is dealt with by execution or banishment.
5. The populace is denied arms of any kind because the rulers fear being deposed by force (either assassination or revolution).
6. Other (usually neighboring) countries are "annexed" by force and whole populations of those countries are are removed to other parts of the empire to prevent nationalism from causing trouble for the conquerors. People from the conquering country are moved into the subject country to take the place of the people who were removed. When Putin invaded Georgia, he used the excuse of protecting the Russians who were placed in Georgia - so they serve another political purpose as well.
7. Rather than having two tests for children - one for aptitude and the other for interests - there is only an aptitude test which allows the state to place individuals in jobs which they can do well but which bore them. This removes the creative incentive and promotes laziness and inefficiency.
8. The workers and peasants are each held to their place of work and kept at work in that place.
9. All radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of communication are controlled by the state and used for state propaganda. There is no freedom of the press.
10. The government is a maze of committees and bureaucracy - and blatant corruption exists in all levels of government.
11. Language is monitored and controlled by the state so that only acceptable words are introduced into the peoples' vocabulary. Words often introduce concepts that the people are not supposed to know - and this could lead to discontent.
12. Government bureacracies become so excessive that merely paying the bureaucrats is a huge tax burden.
13. Barriers, either physical or bureaucratic (or both), are placed around the country to prevent people from escaping. Those who are caught attempting to escape are either shot, imprisoned, or placed in slave camps.
14. The constitutions of communist countries do not usually contain a bill of rights - and if some rights for individuals are allowed, these rights are minimal.
15. Children are brainwashed, made wards of the state, and sometimes even produced in quantity by the state (as was done in National Socialist Germany under Hitler). Children are encouraged to inform on their parents.
16. Usually, religions are discouraged and the state with its current ruler are substituted for religion and God.
17. Schools are places for people to learn skills and party-fed propaganda. True education is denied in fields that could cause individual thought and possible dissension.
At one time, the world olympics was not so politically rotten as it is today. Then the Russians/USSR began to train their athletes full-time so that they were even more professional than professionals in the United States. This was the beginning of the end for "honor" in the olympics.
Variations of the above are found in target countries that have not completely become communist. For instance, in the United States, institutions of higher learning have been taken over by the far left to feed the students propaganda slanted against the government and those who support a non-communist society. These same professors and administrators are the ones who write the textbooks for the young people in grade schools, middle schools, and high schools. Most of the media in the U.S. is now under communist/socialist control and this allows propaganda to be fed to most of the people. Many public schools are now devoid of subjects such as geography, history, and math. When history is taught, it is a different history - based upon political correctness, anti-Americanism, and slanted information. The most logical political party for communist infiltration and control was the old Democratic Party - and now it has become a communist/socialist party using all the dirty tactics common to communist parties throughout the world. Communist infiltration into the Republican Party has driven it to the far right in ways that cause a reaction against the party by the independents and many republicans. Granted, this is more subtle than the blatant communism of the Democratic Party. It is necessary that the communists remove any right for the people be armed, and infiltration into both major parties in the U.S. has led to more legislation and attempts at legislation to take away guns from the people. Income tax was created by the Socialist movement in the U.S. and has proven to be a disaster fueled by ignorance and greed.
Income Tax There is a movement in the United States to encourage parents to send their children to private schools rather than communist-dominated public schools. However, this is expensive and parents should be compensated for these expenses since their taxes still pay for the public schools. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way to begin to fight against the well-entrenched communists and communist puppets in the public schools. If enough parents removed their children from the public schools, the public schools would become a thing of the past and private enterprise would very likely give Americans better schooling than government-funded institutions. institutions.
Communist infiltration into the legislature in California as of September of 2008, has led to a bill (AB 1322) to be passed and placed on the governor's desk for signature. This bill essentially allows communists and those from communist front organizations to legally teach in schools in California (before, there were such people in the school system but they were there illegally). This is definite proof that either the legislature in both houses is dominantly communist or sympathetic to the communists. See Communism in California.
The communists in target countries rely upon human weakness to further their cause. Fear, greed, laziness, ignorance, intolerance, stupidity, gullibility, and the like are their allies. For decades, the communist infiltration into schools and the media in the United states has been bearing fruit. Each new generation is a little less informed than the last. Once historic truths are lost, they are not found again because the current generation does not even know that such truths ever existed. Therefore, each generation becomes more ignorant than the last. Lies are substituted for truth, repeated over and over again - and these become the new history and the new concepts which destroy faith in the U.S. Constitution, its creators, and the current government. The two history channels on television tend to counteract this tendency as do magazines like the National Review. However, most people tend to watch sensational Hollywood-distortions of history, Hollywood violence, Hollywood political propaganda, liberal news channels, liberal talk shows, and game shows which encourage immorality - and the liberal news magazines and newspapers outnumber the conservative publications by over a thousand to one. The communists need only encourage a drive-by shooting to cause the non-thinkers to give up their guns voluntarily (as if this will take the guns away from the killers). Perhaps these poor fools actually believe that their actions will stop guns from getting into criminal hands. Most of them are not aware of the history of prohibition in the U.S. when organized crime profited from liquor being illegal and more people drank more alcohol than ever before. Nor are they aware that communist infiltrators can cause certain elements in society to become killers.
Added February 24, 2013
Although I believe that National Review was taken over long ago by the Shadow Party, it still has some interesting things in it such as this one which is in the February 25, 2013, issue. In 2008, Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer, accused officials in the interior ministry of corruption. Those same officials had him arrested for tax evasion. He was held for almost a year without trial, during which time officials pressured him to recant his accusations. He refused. They tortured him to death. That was in November 2009 - and Moscow has now announced that Magnitsky will be put on trial, posthumously. The Kremlin's behavior in this entire affair has been completely Soviet.
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SOME GERMAN HISTORY - THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM
Socialism: Public collective ownership or control of the basic
means of production, distribution, and exchange with the avowed
aim of operating for use rather than for profit, and assuring to each
member of society an equitable share of goods, services, and
welfare benefits; as a system of social and economic organizations
planned, attempted, or achieved through various methods.Taken from a two-volume dictionary published in 1960.
German history began during the 9th and 10th centuries from what had been a group of German tribes, most of which had settled in the lands between the Rhine and the Vistula, but moved on to the west and south. There were times when the tribes formed alliances and times when they fought one another. Usually, when the tribes cooperated with one another, it was because a strong ruler, or extreme circumstances imposed from without, forced them to do so. When a loose coalition was formed with a German king at its head, there was still enough bickering and suspicion among the various state rulers that a true union was impossible.
The tribes evolved into German states with territorial boundaries and rulers with various ranks (dukes, barons, princes, etc.) but the same pattern persisted in which true unity eluded them. This was a problem because other nations could defeat each state separately in times of war - nor was mutual cooperation in other affairs possible.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the Germanic territories consisted of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, and a number of smaller German states. However, Prussia and Austria were not considered part of Germany at that particular time. The existence of two major powers and the ambitions of the princes of the lesser states to hold on to their respective sovereignties made a German federal state impossible. Only a loose coalition called the Germanic Confederation was established after much discussion. This was primarily a defensive alliance and also served as a peace treaty among 39 German states. There was no overall German ruler. The chief organ was the Diet of Frankfurt convening under Austrian chairmanship in a plenary council on which each state had at least one, and the major states up to four, votes - or in small council where 11 major states had one vote each while the smaller ones voted together in six curiae.
This loose confederation was the closest thing to German unity that had been formed to date. There were still nationalist political forces at work as well as liberal reform movements which attempted to remove power from the rulers and place it in the hands of the people. In 1834 the German Customs Union was created by Prussia and most of the south and central German states, but the rest did not join immediately, the Northwest remaining out of it for two more decades.
Austria and Prussia, particularly, fought against the liberal reforms but were unsuccessful. Between 1814 and 1819 all southern German states had introduced constitutions, and there were parliaments who served as examples and training grounds for the growing German liberalism. After the French revolution of July 1830, some of the medium-sized states of northern Germany had constitutions, and in 1840 stronger popular movements became noticeable.
The liberal movements were strongly opposed by the rulers of the German nation-states as well as those of the other European nations who still had rule via monarchy. Most of the European royalty were related by blood and attempted to keep the their hold on a society that had begun as feudalism and was evolving into something that threatened the absolute authority of those in charge. An attack from liberals upon one royal ruler was considered a threat to them all.
There was a Prussian movement to reform the Germanic Confederation into a true union when a revolution in Hungary began in 1848 and carried on into 1849. At that time, Hungary was a part of Austria. Austrian troops alone were not able to suppress the revolution, so Czar Nicholas of Russia sent troops to aid the Austrians. Consequently, the revolution failed and Austria kept Hungary. However, there were political repercussions aimed at Prussia where impetus for the growing liberal movement was attributed, and the Prussian movement to reform the Germanic Confederation failed.
Otto von Bismarck entered politics during the Revolution of 1848-1849 as a diehard member of the Prussian Assembly. He became the Prussian representative of the Diet of the restored Germanic Confederation after the collapse of the revolution. In Frankfurt, however, the overbearing policy that Austria conducted after 1850 turned him into a radical advocate of Prussian self-interest, which he proposed to advance by all diplomatic and military means. By a Prussian success, he also hoped to defeat the liberal movement in Germany. In assuming direction of the Prussian government in 1862, Bismarck opposed Parliament in a heavy-handed manner, demonstrating that the liberals who controlled Parliament were essentially powerless. Under Bismarck a new German confederation evolved and a new constitution (1867).
German industry changed Germany from economic insecurity to prosperity as the industrial age progressed. The old Bismarckian constitution left no opportunity for responsible exercise of German power. Apprehension that regional traditions in Germany would disrupt the Confederation, Bismarck accepted collaboration with the National Liberal Party.
The National Liberals rejoiced over German unification and were ready to wait for full realization of constitutional liberties until the death of the old emperor and the succession of his liberal son. As a concession to the liberals, Bismarck agreed to give the federal government greater authority than he had planned. Another link between Bismarck and the liberals was their common dislike of the political aspirations of German Catholicism.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels issued the Communist Manifesto on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. There was no immediate response to it. However, in the late 1850's a socialist movement arose among the industrial proletariat of Germany under the leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle attempted to advance socialism using tactical (short-range schemes). When he died, Wilhelm Liebknecht became the new leader. The program of the Social Democratic Party led by Liebknecht interpreted the ultimate causes of and aims of political action in terms of Marxist philosophy, but its immediate demands were radical rather than revolutionary. The Social Democrats were internationalists, pacifists, antimilitarists, and democrats. [Does this sound familiar?]
There was a depression - and after the depression, in 1873, the Social Democrats attracted more and more industrial workers. The liberals (not the same as the Socialists of the time) of this age did not understand the material and moral destitution of these millions, nor were the Christian churches equal to the task. Socialism offered the workers not only a panacea for their lot, but also a means of restoring their self-respect as members of a class destined to play an historical role. The Social Democratic Party was more than a political party, and more than the labor unions which developed under its direction. It was also a religious organization to its followers.
Bismarck had lost faith in economic liberalism and had become a kind of state socialist. He saw in the Social Democratic movement a major threat to society, and he used two attempts to assassinate William I in 1878, to pass legislation outlawing that party. The Liberals were afraid that other oppositional groups might be treated by Bismarck in a similar manner. There was a split in the National Liberal Party into two factions. One remained loyal to consolidation of the empire. The other was composed of secessionists. Bismarck had finally triggered the split with his domineering policies affecting free trade.
After 1879, Bismarck's power was severely diminished. The secessionists had merged with another party defending free trade to become the Left Liberals. The National Liberal Party became a shadow of its former self after the split, and the Left Liberals did not carry on the old party heritage. The Social Democratic Party thus became the dominant party for left opposition.
The Social Democratic Party had been outlawed, but Bismarck felt that it could never be annihilated by repressive measures. [Note that outlawing the Communist Party in the United States has not worked.] His solution was to propose programs of a socialist nature (social security and various types of insurance) to appease members of the Social Democratic Party. These measures failed because the leaders of the Social Democratic Party wanted self-rule from above and international membership. Subsequently, in spite of Bismarck's efforts, their ranks grew in number.
On March 9, 1988, William I died and his son, William II, ascended the throne. William II was militaristic and authoritarian, but he believed in a personal regime rather than government by ministers. There was conflict between William II and and Bismarck - and Bismarck was dismissed on March 18, 1890. Bismarck's successor, Leo von Caprivi, somehow managed to limit the personal regime of the new emperor. In any case, the policies of Wililam II had not been succeeding, and his capabilities were inadequate to the task of governing in an authoritarian manner. Under William II and with Germany's industrial might, the German military grew and included a new navy. This set the stage for the various machinations between nations that led to World War I.
As World War I began, Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, declared that the war was one of Germany's national defense and integrity. He felt that this declaration would keep England out of the war and also persuade the Social Democratic Party leaders to lend support to the war effort. On the other hand, it was argued that the patriotic attitude of the Social Democratic Party called for the democratization of the German Constitution, beginning with the abolition of the three-classes suffrage in Prussia. There was grim debate in war aims between champions of peace by international compromise and those of peace through victory.
On the question of German constitutional reform, Bethmann-Hollweg promised changes for the postwar period. Ludendorff, deputy chief of staff for the German Army, demanded dismissal of the chancellor. William II accepted Ludendorff's demand, making Ludendorff the virtual dictator of Germany for the ensuing 15 months.
The Social Democrats and the Progressives were concerned about the prospects of the war and the effects of the blockade upon the German people. Some of the Center Party (Catholics) also were concerned. Bethmann-Hollweg resigned and the three parties passed a resolution in favor of a conciliatory peace.
The Germans had moved exiled Lenin back into Russia hoping that he would cause Russia to end her war effort. Just as * Nancy Pelosi in America today has been attempting to sabotage the American war effort by putting her party's interests first, Lenin preferred that Russia lose the war so that his party could take over. Consequently, General Ludendorff felt that the ensuing Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia which Lenin had created offered him (Ludendorff) a chance to win the war. If the war in the East could be won quickly, the German troops in the East could be moved to the West and concentrated there before the Americans could affectively assist the allies. This did not happen because there was opposition to the Bolsheviks (Russian Social Democrats) under Lenin, and Ludendorff was forced to call for peace.
* [Nancy Pelosi is, in many ways, another incarnation of Lenin. Both came from approximately the same social class (Lenin had to change his name and keep his true background a secret so that the masses would accept him). Both were interested in personal power and promoting fascist-socialism rather than the good of their respective nations. Pelosi with her visit to Syria - where Hussein's WMD's were sent - and her warm welcome by the Syrians - did more to cause the the war in Iraq to continue than any other action she could have taken. Furthermore, it sent a message of U.S. weakness and lack of resolve to other terrorist countries. This is only one of many actions similar to what Carter has been doing, and clearly shows how she feels about America.]
For many years, the Social Democratic Party had been the radical opponent of monarchy and militarism, and during the war its unity and prestige had suffered. Its leader's attempts to achieve their aims became splintered and the party split into the Independent Socialists and the Major Socialists. And there were other groups who went so far as to look for a revolutionary fight against the regime.
Bolshevik peace propaganda led to mass strikes in January 1918. At the end of October a German admiral's battle plan led to mutiny and the German Navy then came under the command of various revolutionary sailor's councils. In November, the revolution spread through the German cities. Ultimately, the Emperor resigned and the Socialists elected an executive committee and a council of people's commissars to take over the German government. Most of the Germans objected to the strong radical groups in Berlin. The Independent Socialists wanted to drive the revolution onward before returning to democratic practices, but two influential men urged the earliest possible date for democratic elections. A national conference of council delegates supported their position and national elections were set for January 19, 1919.
The elections were a smashing defeat for the Independent Socialists, with 5.6% for the Independent Socialists and 41.5% for the Majority Socialists. These percentages, when added together, did not produce a majority in favor of socialism. The Majority Socialists were, therefore, forced to form a coalition with the new Democratic Party (which had taken the place of the Progressives) and the Center Party.
The Majority Socialists had formed a practical working alliance with the old bureaucracy and the army. These forces defeated the forces of the more radical left. There was a cold-blooded murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on January 15, 1919, and other excesses averse to democratic processes. While a new constitution was being drafted, during the spring and summer, the counter-revolutionaries gained strength. However, this was all incidental to the events posed by external forces.
On November 11, 1918, an armistice had been signed by which a renewal of hostilities was impossible. Germany succumbed to harsh terms, signing over her battle fleet and heavy armaments. She was to evacuate all foreign territories and withdraw from the Rhine. On January 18, 1919, the peace conference opened and in May the draft of the peace treaty was complete. Germany had to concede all of her colonies and many of her territories - and there were other severe measures imposed. The treaty caused consternation among all German political parties, but nothing could be done but accept the terms.
The Weimar Constitution of August 11, 1919, established a German Riech more centralized than that of Bismarck. The federal government had full tax authority, was responsible for all defense matters, took ownership of all railroads, etc. The President was elected by the people, but the Chancellor he appointed must be endorsed by the majority of the Reichstag. But then the President could dissolve the Reichstag and suspend constitutional guarantees in times of national emergency. And there were numerous lesser details. Bear in mind that the checks and balances found in the United States Constitution did not exist in Germany, and that the possibility of a German President becoming a dictator existed. This was one of the mistakes that the Germans made which would come to haunt them in later times.
During the German Revolution of 1919, the German middle class had swelled the ranks of the Democratic Party. Democracy seemed the best defense against social revolution and the best hope of preserving the Reich. The social revolution was defeated by the Social Democrats, but the peace treaty shattered the expectations for international cooperation. The majority of the Democratic Party had rejected the peace treaty, but it was still identified by the German public with defeat and surrender. The rumor was spread (probably by the party opposition) that the German Army had not been defeated, but "stabbed in the back" by all the socialists with the connivance of the Democrats. In April 1920, a coup was staged and then defeated.
The decline of the Democratic Party continued in subsequent elections, but the Social Democrats recovered. In 1922, the Independent Socialists and the Majority Socialists who together had once been the Social Democrats, re-united. Even so, the unity of the working classes was not restored and a substantial part of the independent votes went to the Communist Party.
Subsequent events after the peace treaty was signed led to a breakdown of the German economy. There were internal revolts, one of the most serious being an attempt by the National Socialists (Nazis) under Adolf Hitler to seize the Bavarian government and march against Berlin (1923).
In the course of the ensuing years, German liberalism lost its foremost leader, and growing unemployment led to conflict between the German People's Party and the Social Democrats. A member of the Center Party, Heinrich Bruning, formed a cabinet without the Social Democrats, hoping that the German Nationalist Party could be won over - and new elections were held on September 14, 1930. Instead, the National Socialists (Nazis) gained in Parliamentary representation - from 12 to 107 seats. The parliamentary machine was crippled for Bruning, so he began to rule by using the emergency Presidential powers. He was fighting an economic crisis, a fascist threat, and impossibility of establishing unity with the Communist Party. The Social Democratic Party decided to tolerate Bruning's policy, and even supported the re-election of Hindenburg over Hitler.
The German Army was the chief support for the Bruning cabinet. However, the cabinet was increasingly criticized by the National Socialists (Nazis) and Nationalists for its meek attitude in foreign affairs and dependence upon the Social Democrats. The army was already affected by the Nazi propaganda, particularly on the junior officer level. Moreover, most of the army felt that the National Socialist Party platform contained elements which could be used to rebuild a strong Germany with army backing. With all this in mind, the President was persuaded to replace Bruning with Franz von Papen.
Parliament was dissolved and new elections were held on July 31, 1932. Only the Nazis did well in during the election, doubling their vote and thus becoming by far the largest party. Nevertheless, Hitler's demand for chancellorship was rejected. Instead, Parliament was dissolved again and another election was held on November 6, 1932, at a time when the first signs of a business recovery were visible. The Nazis lost 2 million votes and there were signs that its leadership was divided. General von Schleicher became chancellor and plotted to build popular support against the Social Democratic Party by playing trade unions against it and attracting the socialist elements of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party. He made a deal which seemed to commit the Nazis to responsibility without giving them the appearance of power. Hitler was to be Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick (also a Nazi) was to be minister of the interior, and Hermann Goering was to be minister of air. Nationalists would be appointed Vice Chancellor, and ministers of the army, foreign affairs, economics, and labor. President Hindenburg approved the scheme which seemed to chain the Nazis to a conservative nationalism. Hitler was made Chancellor on January 29, 1933.
Hitler had grown up in the midst of the social and political disintegration of the dying Habsburg Empire. His pan-German beliefs attracted him to the prosperous and strong German Empire, and as a corporal in the German Army during World War I, he imbibed the ideals of Prussian militarism. To him the Peace Treaty of Versailles seemed only a temporary armistice that provided a breathing spell for the German drive to world supremacy.
Army circles first launched him on a political career in Munich after the war, and some German industrialists helped him from time to time. In southern Bavaria where the reaction against the events of 1918-1919 was particularly violent, Hitler soon gained political publicity which emboldened him to try the seizure of power in 1923. The failure of this attempt, led him to the use of outwardly legal means of gaining power. After 1926, the National Socialist Party spread its organizational network all over Germany. The depression of 1929 soon multiplied the ranks of the party. In early 1933, the party had more than a million contributing members and an additional million in its semi-military "storm troop" organizations.
The National Socialist Party was tightly organized, animated by the enthusiasm and cupidity that Hitler's oratory aroused. It found its chief popular strength among the lower middle classes and farmers. Former army officers and dissatisfied intellectuals served as the Nazis main functionaries. It was built on a single leadership principle which committed each member to absolute obedience to Hitler, who claimed to be not only their military leader, but also the prophet of a new religion destined to rule for the next millennium. Hitler preached the supremacy of the Nordic ("Aryan") race over the "lower races" like the Latin and the Slav, and over the "subhuman races" like the Jews or Negroes.
Hitler first consolidated Nazi control over Germany herself. This included:
(1) the registration and subsequent removal of all firearms from the populace,
(2) intimidation by use of the storm troopers against the activities of all other political parties,
(3) arson as a means of terrifying the public,
(4) the suspension of the approval of Parliament for legislation or for monetary expenditures,
(5) Nazi control of the trade unions,
(6) the abolishing of state rights,
(7) the merging of the Prussian government with German government,
(8) the appointment of Nazi governors to supervise and direct the state governments,
(9) the abolishing of free discussion,
(10) censorship of the press, radio, education, and the arts,
(11) and the eventual outlawing of all political parties other than the National Socialist Party.Captain Ernst Rohm who commanded the storm troopers (Hitler's thugs) accused Hitler of selling out socialism to the old generals and capitalists. Hitler, no longer needing Rohm, directed the shooting of all officers and conservatives who were suspected of opposing him. After the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler merged the office of President with the office of Chancellor, making Hitler the de facto dictator of Germany.
Hitler fulfilled his promise of public work projects which included a system of express highways, but was mostly concerned with German rearmament, contrary to the Treaty of Versailles. The other nations, filled with the desire for peace and preferring to look the other way (as most of the American Democrats are doing today in the face of a nuclear disaster), let Germany continue even though intelligence reports indicated what was happening. In spite of the socialistic slogans of the Nazis and growing government control, the German economic system remained capitalistic, and its economic policy resulted in even greater cartellization of German industries than had existed before.
By the brutal methods of the German secret police, a ruthless terror against dissenters was maintained. Concentration camps were filled with scapegoats (Jews) and political prisoners - most of whom eventually were gassed and either buried or burned. Small groups of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, openly criticized the government policies but held their criticisms to ecclesiastical and religious matters. Some of the old army chiefs plotted against Hitler, but were discovered and Hitler had them removed and then took command of the army himself. During the war, Hitler became one of his own worst enemies with his mismanagement of the German military. It is doubtful that the allies could have won without his help.
Second, in Hitler's master plan was the removal of all limitations placed upon German freedom of unilateral action. On October 14, 1933, Germany withdrew from the disarmament conference and League of Nations, claiming the institution at Geneva was only a device to hold Germany in chains. None of the former allied countries - not even France - was willing any longer to go to war in defense of the Versailles Treaty. A Nazi revolt was staged in Austria in the course of which the Austrian Chancellor was murdered. This backfired on Hitler, exposing his aims and methods to the world. However, no adequate action was taken against him. He continued with a program designed to protect Germany until she was ready to strike militarily.
Third, in Hitler's master plan, was for him to rule the continent. On January 26, 1934, Hitler revealed his German Air Force and announced the introduction of compulsory military service in open violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Western powers found it difficult to issue a concerted protest, and impossible to take concerted action. This was typical of what continued to happen until Hitler started World War II by moving militarily against Poland. The various alliances brought the other nations into the war and everyone lost - but especially Germany and Japan.
After World War II, Germany was divided among the Allies with a strong division between the East (Russia) and the West (Britain, France, and the United States). It did not re-unite until many years had passed. In the interim the part of Germany under the Western powers was allowed a new constitution based upon separation of powers. Under this constitution, the President of the Bund is elected for five years by a federal assembly consisting of the members if the Bundestag and an equal number of special delegates elected by the Landtage. His position was decidedly less powerful than that of a president under Weimar Republic but stronger than that of presidents of Western parliamentary states. There was a constitutional tribunal and a supreme court, an elaborate bill of rights including both civil and social rights. The rights were very carefully worded to avoid any future difficulties such as those suffered under the Nazis. There was no direct legislation by the people. There was still the provision that the Bundestag can be dissolved by the President using his emergency powers. This could lead to another dictatorship. Other provisions were too numerous to be shown here. Today, the government in Germany is still essentially the same and the political parties are also very similar to those already mentioned.
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A SHORT HISTORY OF COMMUNISM
The short history that follows is not complete at this time and may
never be complete as new information comes to light. It is a work-in-progress
and as time allows it will become more complete. Please be patient and
check it from time to time to see what has been added.Karl Marx - The Revolution of 1905 - Lenin - The Social Democrats
World War I - Lenin Returns - The Bolshevik Revolution - Civil War - The New Economic Policy
The Big Picture - The Plight of the Church - The Soviet Political System - Soviet Propaganda
Incarnations of the Cheka - Stalin's Reign - Nikita Kruschev - The Cold War - 1960 - 1961 - 1962 - 1963
1963 - Relations between Communist Nations - 1964 and the Ousting of Kruschev
1989 - 1990 - 1991 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009
Russian History - The Decembrists Russia was once a nation ruled by a czar and his family. The American Revolution followed by the French Revolution sent shock waves around the world and caused many people under the rule of kings, queens, czars, dictators, and any other autocracies to think about their lot in life and how it might be changed for the better.
The first attempt to replace the Russian aristocracy with a constitutional regime was the revolt of the Decembrists in 1875. The leaders of the revolt were officers attached to some of the aristocratic guards regiments stationed in the capital. Most had been influenced by the French Revolution. The czar, Nicholas I, disposed of the troops with artillery fire, hanged the ringleaders, banished many of the participants to Siberia, and tightened his control of his subjects.
Severe police measures and censorship followed. However, certain students of the educated classes were influenced by Aleksandr Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Nikolai G. Chernyshevski. Thus, the movement did not die with the end of that revolution.
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Karl Marx Karl Marx was a German Socialist who was born in Treves on May 5, 1818, and died in London on March 14, 1883. He was educated at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin. In 1842, he took up journalism and eventually became the editor of the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung. He focused on socialist articles to the extent that the paper was suppressed in 1843. Marx then moved to Paris to become one the editors of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher to which he contributed articles on the "Hegelian Philosophy of Right".
In 1845, he was expelled from France and retired to Brussels where he assisted in organizing the German Workingmen's Association. He was also active in the organization of the Communist League, and with Engels issued the famous Communist Manifesto in 1848, which was the first public declaration of international socialism.
Between 1848 and 1869, Marx became active in revolutionary movements in Germany, and in political writing for newspapers and periodicals. In 1873, he devoted his time to completing a work on capitalism, Das Kapital.
Marx is considered the founder of the modern socialist school. Das Kapital is a tribute to his acute reasoning and extensive reading, although it is long, obscure, and filled with tortuous meanings. In it, Marx analyzes his theory of value, which is the measure of the amount of labor required to produce a commodity. He explains how the laborer, under capitalism, is exploited.
His theories were not new and Marx succeeded in confusing rather then elucidating them. He also traces the development of capitalistic production, the growth of the working class (proletariat), and how this revolutionizes society. He lays down the principle that the fundamental factor in the development of society is the method of production and exchange.
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The Revolution of 1905 In the revolution of 1905, there were workers' strikes and demonstrations, peasant riots and seizures of large estates, mutinies in the units of the army and navy, and outbreaks against Russian rule in Poland and other non-Russian parts of the empire. Soviets (councils composed of representatives of workers and revolutionary organizations) appeared in a number of towns and cities. The climax was reached in October of 1905 when a general strike paralyzed industry and transportation.
As a result of all this, Nicholas II granted a constitution providing for (1) a Duma (parliament) to be elected on a broad electoral franchise to exercise legislative powers, and (2) certain guarantees of civil liberties. Subsequently anti-Jewish riots swept the country and were used as an excuse to suppress the revolutionary movement. The Soviets were suppressed and an armed uprising in Moscow was put down. Governmental authority was re-established throughout the country, causing some of the governmental concessions to be withdrawn.
Although the goals of the revolution of 1905 were (for the most part) defeated, the revolution succeeded in rallying four forces. There was (1) the organized workers' union under Social Democratic leadership, (2) the rebellious peasants who wanted the estates of the landed gentry, (3) the discontented ethnic minorities eager to escape from Russian rule, and (4) the Soviets as extralegal agencies of revolutionary action.
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Lenin Vladimir Ilich Lenin was born in Simbirsk, Russia, on April 22, 1870, and died in Moscow on January 21, 1924. He was the son of a provincial school inspector who had been raised to the rank of nobility by promotion in government service. His mother was the daughter of a physician who was partly of German descent. She taught him to read and to play the piano, and the whole family read aloud and sang together the great poems and songs of the Russian and European culture.
In 1887, Lenin's brother, Aleksandr, was executed for leading an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Czar. Shortly afterward, Lenin graduated from Simbirsk secondary school with a medal for being the best student. In the fall of 1887, Lenin was admitted to the University of Kazan.
Within a few months, Lenin was expelled from the University for taking part in a student demonstration. Thereafter, he began to read the works of Karl Marx which caused him to organize a Marxist circle. In 1891, he was granted permission to take a law exam which he passed and went on to set up a law practice. Yet he spent most of his time training small numbers of workers in Marxist philosphy.
In 1895, when in Switzerland for medical treatment, Lenin met Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov, the "father of Russian Marxism". When Lenin returned to Russia in the fall, he plunged into the work of Social Democratic agitation along with Julius Martov, the future leader of a rival faction. Both men were arrested and Lenin spent a year in jail, after which he was exiled to Siberia. While in exile, he wrote The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In this book, he analyzed Russian economic life in Marxist fashion and concluded that, as a result of capitalism, a bourgeois revolution was the next important step on the road to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and socialism in Russia.
In 1900, Lenin was released and went abroad to become part of a group publishing Iskra (the spark), seeking to recall the Social Democrats inside Russia to the task of preparing for the overthrow of the czar and capture of political power. [Note how history repeats itself as in the United States today, the far-left democrats are socialists which could easily be called the Social Democrats.]
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The Social Democrats The Social Democrats were divided into factions. The Mensheviks held that Russia was not economically ripe for socialism. Therefore, the proper tactic for a socialist party would be to cooperate with the more liberal middle class elements in working for a "bourgeois" liberal revolution, which would bring to Russia political and civil liberties and the necessary economic and cultural progress. These would make possible a socialist organization of society.
Lenin also recognized that a democratic revolution must precede a socialist revolution, but envisaged an alliance of the industrial workers and the peasants with their antagonism to the land-owning class. Lenin also laid much stress upon the necessity for iron centralized discipline in the revolutionary party.
A third viewpoint was between the first two and was held by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky believed that the working class should seize power without the cooperation of the middle class, but he also believed that a Marxist working class revolution in Russia would be quickly crushed unless it succeeded in kindling revolutions in other more economically advanced nations. This theory is also found in the writings of Lenin and Stalin.
The Socialist Revolutionaries represented another trend, placing in the forefront of their demands the nationalization of the land and confiscation of the big estates. Unlike the Marxist parties, they defended and practiced individual terrorism against prominent officials of hte Czarist regime, and carried out a number of assassinations.
In 1903, there was Party Congress in Brussels and London (these socialists were not welcome in Russia). During and after this congress, Lenin was at odds with all the other prominent Marxist leaders on the issues of organization and tactics. This resulted in the splitting of the party into two major opposing factions: the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and the Mensheviks under Martov and the others. The Bolsheviks found themselves without either party organ or control of the Central Committee.
Lenin clearly expressed his conviction that the Russian bourgeois revolution should end in a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry" with the Party leading and the peasants as the bourgeois. Although the Mensheviks remained in power, Lenin kept his factional machinery in place, and between 1907 and 1917 the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were two warring groups.
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World War I At the outbreak of World War I, Lenin denounced the European socialists who were willing to remain loyal to the war effort of their respective governments, and (much as it appears that Nancy Pelosi has done today) he declared the defeat of his country to be the "lesser evil" since it would weaken the power of those who were in currently opposing him.
At the beginning of World War I, Russia was on the side of the allies and the war was fairly popular in there. Revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky were in exile and lesser revolutionaries had declared a political truce, keeping their loyalties for their country above their party loyalties. However, Russia was technologically and economically inferior, causing her to suffer casualties totaling between 6 and 8 million dead, wounded, and taken prisoner. Bottlenecks developed in industry and transportation which resulted in food shortages in many cities. The Duma became a source of criticism in governmental inefficiency. There was an apparent scandal as various rumors circulated among the nobility about Rasputin's influence on the Czarina. This led to the assassination of Rasputin by members of the nobility, inflaming the common people against them.
The consequences of the foregoing was the fall of the czarist regime on March 12, 1917. Thus, the fall was the result of internal collapse rather than a deliberate plot. The movement started with bread riots and demonstrations, and swelled as a result of strikes. It turned into a revolution on the 12th when troops were called out against rioters. The troops refused to fire and fraternized with the demonstrators. Nicholas II quickly abdicated in favor of his brother, and his brother refused the throne. A provisional government was set in place with Prince Georgi E. Lvov as the head. He was rapidly succeeded by Aleksandr F. Kerenski, a revolutionary. A rival authority with more real power was the Soviets (democratic councils) which were organized in small towns, cities, military units, and peasant communities.
At first the Soviets were under the control of the moderate revolutionaries, but the provisional government was not strong enough to stabilize the situation and carry on the war effort effectively. Discipline in the army was never restored and there were mass desertions from the front. The industrial workers began with demands for higher wages and shorter hours, and ended in seizing the factories and driving away the owners and the foremen. The peasants seized the land and distributed it roughly among themselves.
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Lenin Returns On April 16, 1917, Lenin returned to Russia in a sealed train provided by the Germans in hopes that his arrival would hasten the end of Russian resistance. Lenin noticed that the trend of the revolution was to the left as the provisional government immediately instituted political and civil liberties, and decreed the release of all political prisoners. The following day, Lenin began taking steps which led to the overthrow of the provisional government.
The war ended before the Germans could take control of Russia, but Lenin and Leon Trotsky established a new government for the Russian Soviet Republic with Lenin at its head - where he remained until the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed in 1922.
Although he had never held any public office, Lenin began his new career vigorously. He directed the the organization of the secret police (the Cheka - later to become the KGB) and the Red Army with Trotsky as War Commissar. The immediate task of the Cheka and the Red Army was to squelch the growing resistance to Bolshevik rule.
The resistance (the White Forces) took control of the Ukraine, southern Russia, and Siberia. They were supported by the allies in hopes of getting Russia back into the war. Meantime, the Poles invaded the Ukraine on their own account.
The Cheka was formed on December 20, 1917, six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the first Soviet security and intelligence agency. Feliks Dzerzhinsky was the Polish-born head of the Cheka. "He had been a professional revolutionary for over twenty years, spending eleven of them in czarist prisons, penal servitude, or in exile. Like Lenin, he was an incorruptible alcoholic, prepared to sacrifice himself and others in defense of the revolution."
Under the czar, the secret police were called The Okhrana, and were hated by most of the Russians. When the Bolsheviks took power, many of those who had worked for the Okhrana changed their names and applied for jobs in the Cheka. Intelligence techniques and tradecraft of the Okhrana were adopted by the Cheka. In essence, the Cheka was the reincarnation of the Okhrana but was much worse.
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The Bolshevik Revolution The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in November of 1917. The Bolshevik Party later changed its name to the "Communist Party" although it was not actually communistic but rather socialistic in nature. Lenin was one of the leaders of the party, and as early as April 1917, he formally demanded a "republic of Soviets".
For the most part, the way of the Bolsheviks was smoothed as they took the reins of power. They acquired power in the Soviets. Red Guards (armed workers), sailors from a nearby naval base, and rebellious soldiers took over Petrograd and stormed Winter Palace, headquarters of the disintegrating provisional government. This coincided with the opening of a second Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. This congress passed decrees which laid the foundation of a future Soviet state. All power was transferred to the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies. Private property in land was abolished. All subsoil mineral resources were declared state property, and land was "transferred to the use of all those who work it". There was also an appeal "to all combatant peoples and governments to begin immediate negotiations for an honest democratic peace." A law was passed establishing workers' control over industrial enterprises. This was followed in 1918 by sweeping nationalization of all industrial enterprises.
In the first Soviet cabinet, Lenin was president of the Council of Peoples Commissars (ministers). Trotsky was Commissar of Foreign Affairs (a post he soon exchanged for War Commissar). Stalin was Commissar for Nationalities.
The paragraphs which follow were taken almost word-for-word from The Sword and the Shield (the history of the KGB from its inception as the Cheka to the present as provided by from files taken from the KGB archives by Vasili Mitrokhin).
The Cheka's intelligence operations both at home and abroad were profoundly influenced not merely by the legacy of the Okhrana, but also by the Bolsheviks own pre-revolutionary experience in a largely illegal clandestine underground. Many of the Bolshevik leaders had become so used to living under false identities before 1917 that they retained their aliases after the revolution. The Russian nobleman Vladimir Ilyich Ulnov kept the pseudonym "Lenin", and Georgian Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili continued to be known as "Stalin". [Had it be known than Lenin was actually a nobleman by birth it would not have set well with people who had killed the hated nobility. Dzugashvili had his own reasons for remaining "Stalin" as will be shown.]
Both Lenin and Stalin retained many of the habits of mind developed during their underground existence. On highly sensitive matters, Lenin would insist that no copy of his instructions be made, and that the original either be returned to him or destroyed by the recipient. Happily for the historian, his instructions were not always carried out.
Stalin continued to doctor his own pre-Revolutionary record during the 1920s, changing even the day of his birth. The correct date, December 6, 1878, was not made public until 1996. During a visit to a secret section of the Moscow Main Archives, Mitrokhin was once shown an Okhrana file on Dzugashvili (Stalin). The file cover and title followed standard Okhrana format, but upon looking inside, Mitrokhin discovered that the contents had been entirely removed. The probability is that the Okhrana had compromising materials on young Dzugashvili, and that at the first opportunity Stalin had arranged for the file to be gutted. In typical bureaucratic fashion, however, the cover was preserved since the existence of the file was indelibly recorded in secret registers.
Miktrokhin suspects that whoever emptied the file, presumably on Stalin's instructions, was later eliminated. What Stalin was most anxious to destroy may have been evidence that he had been an Okhranian informer. Although this falls short of conclusive proof, a possible trace of that evidence still survives. According to reports from an Okhranian agent discovered in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Baku Bolsheviks before the First World War confronted Dzugashvili-Stalin with the accusation that he was a provocateur, an agent of the Czar's Security Police, and that he had embezzled Party funds.
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Civil War A Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of universal suffrage met in Petrograd on January 18, 1918. The majority of the delegates were Socialist Revolutionaries and the assembly was dispersed by Bolshevik sailors when it refused to accept the Bolshevik program. From this time on, the Soviets remained the sole organs of legislation and administration, and the Soviets were completely dominated by the Communist Party. Political opposition by Socialist parties, tolerated on a very small scale in the first years of the Soviet regime, was finally extinguished altogether.
Negotiations for peace with the Central Powers led to an extremely harsh treaty. Russia was required to give up not only all territory which the Germans had acquired through military means, but also the Ukraine (their major source of food and mineral wealth), southern European Russia, and the Baltic coastal areas. The other prominent Communists opposed acceptance of the treaty, but Lenin insisted that there was no alternative since the Russian Army had completely collapsed.
The international war ceased after this treaty was signed, but a bitter civil war raged in Russia for three years. The new Soviet regime was faced with staggering economic difficulties. The separation of the Ukraine left Russia with a food and fuel shortage. Industrial output declined heavily, and it was impossible to offer peasants normal compensation for their produce. Paper money depreciated rapidly into worthlessness.
A change of mood took place among the peasants when the Soviet government began to requisition food, organized a "committee of the poor" designed to split villages, and to use the poorest peasants to suppress the resistance of the others. Many local uprisings took place. In the summer of 1918 clashes broke out between Soviets and a corps of Czechoslavak soldiers, men who had deserted from the Austro-Hungarian Army to the Russian Army and who were being sent to the western front by way of Vladivostok. Anti-Soviet forces rallied around the Czechs and a government purporting to represent the dissolved Constituent Assembly was set up at Samara (Kuibyshev) on the Volga. There were landings of American and British troops at Archangel in northern Russia, of British troops at Murmansk, and of Japanese and American forces at Vladivostok in the Far East. An uprising organized by the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow was quickly suppressed.
In September of 1918, a Socialist Revolutionary woman fired a gun at Lenin, seriously wounding him. The anti-Soviet army on the Volga captured Kazan. The territory under Soviet control shrank almost to the size of a medieval grand duchy of Moscow.
The Soviets countered with ruthless terrorism. More than 500 people, mostly members of the "bourgeoisie", were shot in Leningrad alone as a reprisal for the attack on Lenin. "Red terror" was openly proclaimed and raged against suspects in all towns and villages. About this period, The Sword and the Shield contained the following.
During the civil war, beginning in May 1918, the Bolsheviks had to fight for survival against powerful but divided White Russian armies. Lenin viewed their enemies as a conspiracy of Western capitalism. This theory was reinforced by Lenin (who was extremely paranoid) as time went on, and translated itself into the views of the those in the Cheka. In reality, such a "conspiracy" was the work of a group of politically naive Western diplomats and adventurous secret agents who were left to their own devices during the early months of the Bolshevik regime. This paranoid delusion was the beginning of at attitude which continued to pervade and obstruct rational thought within the Cheka as it continued through its various incarnations to the present.
Those in favor of the provisional government following the first revolution were a threat to the Bolsheviks, as were the White Russian armies. There were also Ukrainian nationalists who were fighting both the Whites and the Reds for control of their own country.
The Bolsheviks were initially a small minority who became a majority by murdering those who stood in their way. Their chief tool was the Cheka. The peasants stood to lose their land to the state, and when they resisted whole villages were murdered. The nobility or anyone who was educated were hated by the working class and were murdered. The officers in the army and navy were part of the educated and were murdered. Those who were in favor of the provisional government were murdered. The Socialists who did not agree with Lenin's views were murdered. Any White Russians or Ukrainian nationalists were murdered.
On October 15 it was reported to Lenin that 800 alleged counter-revolutionaries had been shot and 6,229 imprisoned. During the civil war, Cheka executions probably numbered as many as 250,000 and may have exceeded the number of deaths in battle. The Bolshevik leadership would be responsible for the rebirth of the hated Okhrana in a more terrible form. In Lenin's book, The State and the Revolution, he had proclaimed that after the revolution there would be no need for a police force, let alone a political force.
Even at a time when the Soviet regime was fighting for its survival during the civil war, many of its supporters were sickened by the scale of the Cheka's brutality. A number of Cheka interrogators, some only in their teens, employed scarcely believable tortures. In Karkhov the skin was peeled off victims' hands to form gloves of human skin. In Voronezh naked prisoners were rolled around in barrels studded with nails. In Poltava priests were impaled. In Odassa, captured White officers were tied to stakes and fed slowly into furnaces. In Kiev cages of rats were fixed to prisoners' bodies and heated until the rats gnawed their way into the victims' intestines.
Some of the secret documents in the KGB archives carry a note that only 10 copies be made. One was for Lenin and other nine for Cheka department heads. Lenin kept abreast of Cheka affairs even into operational details and technology, once telling the Cheka chief to construct large electromagnets capable of detecting hidden weapons in house-to-house searches. He was certainly aware of the the atrocities of the Cheka in direct contradiction of his own words.
With the recapture of Kazan, Trotsky's newly organized Red Army began to develop into an organized fighting force. The anti-Soviet movement on the Volga gradually melted away. The military defeat of Germany in the autumn of 1918 led to a withdrawal of German forces from the Ukraine and made possible a new Soviet occupation which reached to the Black Sea. The civil war which had till now been fought mainly by improvised, poorly disciplined units on both sides, assumed a more organized form in 1919.
White (anti-Soviet) armies of which the strongest were led by Admiral Aleksandr V. Kolchak in Siberia and eastern Russia, and by General Anton E. Denikin in the south, oppeared in various parts of Russia and received help in munitions and supplies from abroad (especially from Great Britain). Meantime, the Soviet Red Army was growing in size and military efficiency until, at the height of the struggle it numbered five million.
Kolchak's greatest success was achieved in March 1919, when his forces approached the Volga. However, he was decisively defeated in the spring and early summer, and by the end of 1919 only shattered remnants of his army remained. Kolchak was captured and executed.
Based in the Cossack region of the Don and Kuban, Denikin launched a powerful offensive in 1919. He managed to occupy Orel within 250 miles of Moscow while another White general, Nikolai N. Yudenich, struck at Petrograd. Yudenich was driven back and Denikin's military collapse was even faster than his advance. By the spring of 1920 Denikin had been driven into the Crimean Peninsula. He resigned his command in favor of General (Baron) Pyotr Wrangel, who held out in the Crimea until November of 1920 when he was overrun by the Red Army. Wrangel escaped to Constantinople with most of his troops and many civilians.
The course of the civil war was affected by peasant uprisings against both Reds and Whites. The Ukrainian nationalist movement was a "third force" in the civil war in the south. They were most effective in Guerilla warfare and drew support from the Ukrainian peasants.
The civil war was complicated even more by a national war with Poland from April until October 1920. This began with an attempt by the Polish leader, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, to free the Ukraine from Soviet rule. Pilsudski, allied with the Ukrainian nationalists, occupied Kiev for a short time. However, the Poles were overextended and the Red Army drove them back to the outskirts of Warsaw and Lvov in August 1920. Here, the Poles rallied and pushed back the Russians. The war ended officially on October 12, 1920, with the signing of a peace treaty. Under the treaty, the border between the Soviet Union and Poland was drawn slightly west of the military demarcation line that existed before the war.
Although organized military opposition was crushed by the end of 1920, the Soviet Union was in an economic crisis. Industrial production had dropped to a fifth of the pre-war figure. Transportation was disorganized. The system of requisitioning the "surplus" food of the peasants was bitterly resented and still provoked peasant uprisings. Those in the cities were starving and epidemic diseases were rife.
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The New Economic Policy (NEP) A mutiny of sailors at the Kreinstadt Naval Base in March 1921 coincided with an especially severe peasant rebellion in Tambov Province. This hastened the end of the economic system known as "War Communism" and the production of the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP).
The NEP's main features were (1) the substitution of a fixed tax for the former requisitioning of the peasants' so-called surplus grain grain and other food, (2) the stabilization of currency at the old rate, (3) the legalization within the country of private trade and small industry, and (4) the sanctioning of industrial and mining concessions to foreign capital. The government kept the large industry, mines, banks, and railways for itself - and foreign trade remained a state monopoly. The dictatorship of the Communist Party remained unchanged.
A famine in 1921-1922 took millions of lives. Relief efforts from foreign organizations were severely obstructed by the Communists who considered the aid to be part of a plot to undermine their iron rule. This proved to be another example of the almost homicidal paranoia of the Communists. After this there was improvement and recovery.
Lenin died on January 21, 1924, and there was no weakening of Communist authority. Trotsky was removed from office, and a triumvirate was then in power consisting of Stalin, Grigori E. Zinoviev, and Lev B. Kamenev. Soon a political breach developed between Stalin and the other two when they agreed with Trotsky. Trotsky argued that the promotion of a "permanent" revolution to convert the entire world to socialism was the immediate task before the Party. Stalin held that "socialism in one country" was possible. Trotsky was arrested toward the end of 1927 and banished to Turkestan. In 1929 he was expelled from Russia. Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico by an agent of the NKGB, Ramon Mercader, in 1940. For some reason, Trotsky had enraged Stalin beyond rational thought.
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The Big Picture When the Bolsheviks seized power in November of 1917, they first permitted the larger groups of minority people to secede. The remaining Russian territory was organized as the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (RSFSR). On July 10, the RSFSR received its first constitution which provided for autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts, and national districts for the small minority peoples remaining with the Russian Federation.
During 1918-1920, much of the RSFSR itself rebelled against Communist rule, restricting the domain of the new republic to part of European Russia. By 1920, however, the RSFSR had re-conquered most the seceding areas, whose subsequent treatment was not uniform. The Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Caucasus were forced to become Soviet republics tightly allied with RSFSR. Central Asia, though ethically non-Russian, was re-annexed by the RSFSR.
On December 30, 1922, as a result of RSFSR pressure, the Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Caucasus Soviet republics joined the RSFSR to form a new nation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). A USSR constitution drafted by Stalin was formally adopted on July 6, 1923. In 1924, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia were detached from the RSFSR, and in 1925, they became the fifth and sixth constituent republics of the USSR. Then in 1929, the Tadzhik SSR was created from RSFSR territory. The new USSR constitution of 1936 formed the Kazakh and Kirgiz SSRs from RSFSR regions. Thus five administrative changes removed all of Soviet Central Asia from the RSFSR's domain, which henceforth was confined to the predominantly Russian-inhabited Siberia and parts of the European USSR.
In 1940, the Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed partly from the newly annexed Finnish territory and partly from the Karelian ASSR of the northwestern RSFSR. In 1956, however, the RSFSR re-annexed Karelia, which was reduced to the status of an autonomous republic. The official explanation for re-incorporation was that Russians far outnumbered Karelians and Finns in the republic. This may well have been true because the people of conquered areas were almost routinely forced to disperse into other areas while Russians were forced to migrate into the conquered areas. This prevented nationalism from re-asserting itself in the conquered areas.
As a result of the USSR's victory in World War II, the RSFSR also annexed the East Prussian region of Konigsberg, which was renamed Kalizingrad Oblast, as well as additional Finnish territory, Tuva, the Kuril Islands, and Southern Sakhalin.
The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was the largest of 15 Union republics, extending 5,000 miles from east to west and 2,500 miles from north to south. It was bounded on the north by seas of the Arctic Ocean; on the east by seas of the Pacific Ocean; on the south by Korea, China, the Mongolian People's Republic, the Kazakh SSR, the Caspian Sea, the Azerbaidzhan SSR, and the Georgian SSR; on the southwest by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov; and on the west by the Ukrainian SSR, the Estonian SSR, the Baltic Sea, Finland, and Norway. Included in it was the detached oblast of Kalingrad on the Baltic between the Lithuanian SSR and Poland.
The foreign policy of the Soviet Union was dominated by (1) the national interests of the Russian empire and (2) the avowed ambition of the Communist Party to cooperate with the Communist movement throughout the world to promote world revolution along Soviet lines.
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The Plight of the Church The church had always been somewhat subservient to the government under various regimes, but within, its ideas and values remained regardless of outward appearances and actions. Under the Soviets, the church in Russia was separated from the state and persecuted. The purposes were obvious. First, the church had to be deprived of all means of influencing national life which was to be rebuilt on an anti-religious pattern with the current dictator to take the place of God in the minds of the people. So the church was prohibited from having any educational or missionary activity. Destruction of churches, heavy taxation, deportation and execution of clergy and active laymen - all the measures were but details in the general scheme of a complete transformation of the whole community. The heads of state felt that they could ill-afford any ideas or concepts other than what they wished the people to know. Even language was slowly altered to permit only a particular view of history and morals that would favor the current regime.
The administration of the church was disrupted - and for a time no administration existed. An attempt to construct another organization to compete with the historical church, made by a group of clergy and sponsored by the government, failed to attract many believers. Several such attempts were made, but ceased to exist long before WWII. In the meantime, one of the bishops was permitted to assume the functions of the acting head, his actions being controlled by the government.
During and after WWII, the church took a more active role and several training colleges for the ministry were established - but, by strict law, "religous propaganda" was still illegal.
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The Soviet Political System The entire Soviet political system would be incomprehensible without taking into account the predominant role of the Communist Party which was the sole legal political force in the country. According to Stalin, "in the USSR there is no basis for the existence of several parties, or, consequently, for the freedom of parties - in the Soviet Union, there is a basis only for the Communist Party."
In Article 126 of the Soviet Constitution was found "The most active and politically conscious citizens...united in the All-Union Communist Party...which is the vanguard of the working people...and represents the leading nucleus of all organizations of the working people."
Complete domination by the Communist Party was assured by the unwritten law in the Soviet Union that everyone who holds an important executive position, not only in government but in the armed forces, in management of industry, trade and transportation, in the trade union and youth organizations, must be a member of the party and subject to party discipline.
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Soviet Propaganda Soviet propaganda outside the Soviet frontiers was closely intermeshed with the foreign policy of the Soviet government and with the aims of international communism. It attempted to represent the Soviet regime as the champion of peace and to attach the stigma of "war monger" to any government, group, or individual in a country associated with opposition to communism. We see the same type of propaganda today, coming from the socialist left (the current-day communists who dominate the Democratic Party in the U.S.).
A favorite propaganda method was to take groups of trade unionists, intellectuals, and others, recruited from known sympathizers with the Soviet system, on conducted tours in the Soviet Union. Before WWII, and especially in the early 1930s, larger tourist groups were admitted to Russia without very much political discrimination, except in the case of known critics of communism. This practice was substantially reduced during the period of political purges before the outbreak of the war, and was not resumed until some years after Stalin's death.
A characteristic feature of Soviet propaganda organization is the creation, under sponsorship and control of communist parties in various countries, of fringe or fellow-traveler organizations, ostensibly not connected with communism, but invariably taking the communist position on disputed issues. Scores of such organizations were identified by name and classified as subversive by the office of the attorney general of the United States.
Propaganda is geared to such ideas as professed support of peace; hostility to the alleged aggressive aims of the United States and other western powers; and support of the Soviet Union, the "peoples democracies", and the Communist regime in China. Standard communist propaganda appeals in all European countries called for the denunciation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), withdrawal of American troops from Europe, opposition to re-arming Germany and Japan, and spreading funds appropriated for armaments on other objects. [We see a similar pattern today in the conduct of many of the Democrats in the United States.] The peace agitation was of a strictly unilateral character. There were never any communist protests against the burden of heavy armaments in Soviet Union and other countries under communist political control.
A very strenuous attempt was made to link communist international propaganda with the cause of peace. A congress held in Stockholm and Warsaw led to the organization of a World Peace Council (WPC) which held its first session in Berlin in February of 1951. At this session the WPC endorsed legislation against war propaganda and urged its national committees to denounce and boycott all publications, school films, radio broadcasts, etc., which contain any incitement to war and to launch a great campaign of enlightenment in which thousands of men of good will in each country will ceaselessly expose the falsehoods that aid the preparation of war. [The schools today in Georgetown, California, USA, have gone so far as to not allow anything pertaining to war to come through the spam filter for the teachers and administrators. Nor are any books pertaining to war allowed in the school library. Had the founding fathers of the U.S. felt the same way, North America would still be ruled by a British king - perhaps be under Hitler's Third Reich.]
While the wording of the resolutions was apparently designed to appeal to the pacifist, the viewpoint expressed clearly reflected the communist inspiration of the movement. It was taken for granted that the United States was the aggressor in the Korean War. Typical of the tone and spirit of the comment on Korean hostilities was the following by the metropolitan Nikolai, a high Soviet ecclesiastical dignitary. From the first day of their aggression in Korea the American neo-fascists proceeded systematically and ruthlessly to destroy the Korean nation. The horrible atrocities, the barbaric bombings of peaceful towns and communities, were undertaken with the sole purpose of wiping out the civilian population. Investigation has proved that the American troops are applying Himmler's technique of inhuman torture to Korean patriots.
Similar anti-American atrocity propaganda was to be found in a report submitted by a women's commission which visited North Korea under the sponsorship of the Women's International Democratic Federation. Members of this commission apparently accepted uncritically everything their communist hosts told them and signed their names to a report from which the following typical excerpts were taken. The people of Korea are being subjected by the American occupants to a merciless and methodical campaign of extermination... In the districts temporarily occupied by American and Syngman Rhee forces, in the period of occupation, hundreds of thousands of civilians, entire families from old men to little children, have been tortured, beaten to death, burned, and buried alive... These mass tortures and mass murders surpass the crimes committed by Hitler...
It is perhaps noteworthy that the inevitability of war, so long as the capitalist system remains, is an integral part of communist theory. The Sixth Congress of the Communist International reproached modern socialists for having substituted bourgeois deceit of capitalism for the theory of the inevitability of war under capitalism.
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Incarnations of the Cheka The Cheka had numerous incarnations.
(1) In February 1922 it was incorporated into the NKVD as the GPU.
(2) In July 1923 it became the OGPU.
(3) In July 1934 it was re-incorporated into the NKVD as the GUGB.
(4) In February 1941 it became the NKGB.
(5) In July 1941 it was again incorporated into the NKVD as the GUGB.
(6) In April 1943 it became the NKGB.
(7) In March 1946 it became the MGB.
(8) From October 1947 to November 1951 it was the "Foreign Intelligence" as part of KI.
(9) In March 1953 it was combined with the MVD to form an enlarged MVD.
(10) In March 1954 it became the KGB.
(11) Department A, the department of disinformation, of the KGB became essentially the new KGB and was called the SVR. The last revolution in Russia overthrew the Communist Party. In the power vacuum that followed, the old Communists started anew with new names. The Soviet Union had been temporarily dissolved so that military might became extremely expensive. The solution was to focus the efforts of the old KGB on disinformation and undermining the target nations' youth and news media. Since this had been going on since the late 1930s, the follow-through was not very expensive and is being continued to the present with excellent results.
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Stalin's Reign For 25 years, Stalin was the undisputed dictator of the Soviet Union. He took the Soviets through World War II and he was given credit for promoting industrialization and collective farming, and for rallying the people after the German invasion of 1944. However, Stalin suffered from extreme paranoia, and anyone who was perceived to be a threat to his dictatorship, immediately or in the future - even Soviet war heroes - was dealth with severely regardless of innocence or guilt. Stalin would charge his targets with treason, personally order their confessions under torture, and then have them executed. He kept his closest lieutenants in a state of constant terror of his next move, and bungled the military leadership of World War II with micro-managing.
Stalin isolated the Soviet people from the rest of the world, fearing that they would realize that the propaganda fed to them by the current model of the KGB was untrue. Tourists were not admitted into the Soviet Union, very few visas were granted to individual travelers, and there was ostentatious police surveillance of foreign embassies and Soviet citizens. Laws were passed making it a crime for Soviet citizens to give unauthorized information to anyone. Marriage between Soviet citizens and foreigners was forbidden and a number of Russian women who had married Britons or Americans were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union to join their husbands abroad.
Scientific and other intellectual contacts with the West were almost entirely suspended and "kowtowing to the West" became a term of reproach. There was systematic effort to prove Russian national superiority by digging up and often exaggerating the significance of experiments by Russians in such fields as wireless telegraphy, aviation, the discovery of the internal combustion engine, etc.
Radio broadcasts within the Soviet Union were filled with Soviet propaganda. Ham radio operators were outlawed because what they might hear from abroad. Soviet language was monitored to prevent certain words from becoming a part of it, and only words which explained the world in terms of Marxism and pro-Soviet concepts were kept. The departments of the current version of the KGB enforced these laws through informers and undercover agents with the general population.
The totality of the above was known internationally as "the iron curtain", and the Soviet Union was considered to be a prison. Today, we have experienced the presence of Sadam Hussein who looked upon Stalin as his idol and mentor, who modeled his regime after that of Stalin's, and who even attempted to look like Stalin. For a closer look at Stalin's methods, one need only to look upon those of Hussein.
Near the end of Stalin's life, the Jewish newspapers, publishing houses, and theaters were closed in the Soviet Union. A number of Jewish communists in Czechoslavakia were accused, tortured, put on trial, and executed.
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Nikita Kruschev Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev was born in 1894 as the son of a miner in the Kursk region of central Russia, a veteran leading figure in the Communist Party organization. Krushchev had served for some years as secretary of the Moscow Party Committee and for a still longer time was secretary of the party organization in the Ukraine. He rose to supreme power on March 27, 1958, succeeding Nikolai Bulganin as prime minister and combining this office with that of first secretary of the Communist Party. This was possible as a result of political shifts and upheavals which took place over a period of five years following Stalin's death.
Due to the extreme secrecy of the Soviets, the underlying causes of these changes are not known. However, the first noteworthy change was on March 21, 1953, when Molenkov relinquished the office of first secretary of the Communist Party, being replaced by Krushchev in this office, while Molenkov remained as prime minister. A more sensational move in the power struggle was indicated when it was announced on July 10 that Beria had been expelled from the Communist Party as an "enemy of the people". Beria and his subordinates were shot a few months later.
The next big change occurred in February 1955, when Molenkov gave up his post as prime minister and was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin. This was a bloodless purge; Molenkov received the post of minister of electric power. The triumvirate that had taken over after Stalin's death had disappeared because Molenkov was visibly losing power and influence. It was succeeded for a time by a duovirate, Krushchev and Bulganin, the former being the top man in the party, the latter the top man in the Soviet government.
In contrast to Stalin, who had never left the Soviet Union except for a brief visit to Tehran, Iran, during World War II, Krushchev and Bulganin assumed the role of traveling diplomats, going together to Yugoslavia, to the summit in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955, and subsequently to India, Burma, and Great Britain.
The next striking development was the sensational denigration of Stalin by Kruschev in a speech delivered at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party on February 25, 1956. Although the speech was private, news of its contents leaked out and produced perhaps even greater repercussions in Communist parties outside the Soviet Union than existed in the well-disciplined population of the USSR.
Throughout his dictatorship, Stalin had been deified. Those delivering public speeches were obsequiously pro-Stalin, and the speeches were filled with his alleged greatness, virtue, and wisdom. Similar adulation was required for Communist parties in foreign countries. Eulogistic speeches were delivered after Stalin's death, and his body was embalmed and preserved in the same mausoleum as Lenin's in Moscow's Red Square.
At the 20th Party Congress the minister of foreign trade, Anastas Mikoyan, aroused attention by indulging in a few moderately worded criticisms of Stalin. Krushchev went much farther. In his secret speech, he drew a startling picture of the deceased dictator as a paranoid tyrant. Although the facts revealed by Krushchev were sensational and horrifying, the conclusions drawn from these facts were qualified and reserved.
A big step toward Krushchev's consolidation of Supreme Power in his own hands was indicated when an official communique on July 3, 1957, announced the expulsion from the party Presidium of four of Krushchev's principal opponents, Molenkov, Molotov, Lazar M, Kaganovich, and Dmitri T. Shepilov, who for a time had succeeded Molotov as minister of foreign affairs. The Presidium was simultaneously enlarged from 11 to 15 members, of whom the majority also belonged to the party Secretariat, where Krushchev had long been the dominant figure.
Marshal Georgi Zhukov, a prominent military commander during World War II, had been rising along with Krushchev. In 1955, Zhukov was appointed minister of defense and, in 1957, received a seat on the Presidium. But on October 26, 1957, he was stripped of these posts on the grounds that he had not been paying sufficient attention to party leadership in military affairs. In 1958, Bulganin resigned, leaving Krushchev as the political heir to Stalin.
In the years following Stalin's death, there were no more mass uprootings and deportations, and a considerable number of persons incarcerated in slave labor camps were released. Some of the camps were somewhat humanized and supply of food and clothing was improved.
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Highlights and Comments on KGB Connections
The Cold War After World War II, the Soviet Union kept its territorial gains even to the point of constructing a wall between East and West Berlin. There were many attempts to prevent the western powers from holding West Berlin. There were constant attempts to lure western aircraft and ships into communist territory sufficient to allow them to be either eliminated or captured. Soviet agents managed to successfully steal the secrets of the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the only thing preventing more overt aggression by the Soviet Union was the threat of atomic reprisal.
The most obvious example of Soviet skullduggery was when they cut off Berlin from any access other than by air. The allies supplied Berlin by air after that and this was known as the "Berlin Airlift" in which food, coal, and other supplies were airlifted into Berlin at great expense. World opinion eventually turned against the Soviet Union to the point that it was realized that the Soviets were losing strategically. But while the Berlin Airlift was going on, aircrews were forced to maintain a narrow corridor into Berlin. Straying outside that corridor meant being shot down by Soviet fighters which were always waiting and ready. To cause aircraft to stray out of the corridor, these same Soviet fighter planes were used to meet the supplying aircraft head-on, usually turning away only at the last instant - and sometimes there were collisions when that turning away was not soon enough.
For communism to gain a foothold within a nation, there must be a large number of oppressed or unhappy people within that nation. After the war, China was a nation in which many people were starving or worse. There was an attempt within the United States to provide money sufficient to bail out the Chinese economy and therefore eliminate the immediate threat of a communist takeover. A Soviet mole, Harry Dexter White, in the United States government had attained a key position and was able to prevent any dollars going to China. Consequently, the Chinese Nationalists were forced to flee to Formosa (Taiwan) and the Chinese communists were able to takeover China.
The Korean War was considered a "police action" in which nuclear weapons would not be used. Communist North Korea began to invade South Korea, U.S. forces came to the rescue, and then China entered the war with help from the Soviet Union. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis during which the Soviets attempted to place intermediate range atomic ballistic missiles in Cuba - aimed at the United States. It reached its peak when President Kennedy used a naval blockage to intercept Soviet ships bound for Cuba. Kennedy and Kruschev reached an agreement in which United States missiles and aircraft in Turkey were removed. The removal was not something that seriously hurt United States capabilities and was not publicized at the time. Kennedy then got what he wanted - honors for the next election - and Kruschev got what he wanted - honors for having the U. S. threat in Turkey removed.
The "cold war" was not really cold. It might better be called "warm". Soviet trawlers were used extensively as spy ships, shielders of Soviet submarines, and a means to kill Americans or their allies. The trawlers are filled with electronic equipment rather than fish. This allows them to listen into any radio communications between ships, aircraft, or bases on land. We try to keep track of Soviet submarines, but trawlers make this difficult because submarines can hide in their radar or sonar "shadow" when necessary to infiltrate into our sensitive areas. Before global-positioning-system (GPS) satellites were placed in orbit (which included the time period called the cold war), trawlers were used to jam radar on aircraft, mimic radio stations used by aircraft-borne automatic direction finders, impersonate controllers and ground-control-approach (GCA) personnel, and any other means possible to misdirect allied aircraft into places where they could be "legally" intercepted and shot down.
Typically, the Russians would wait until weather would deteriorate to the point that celestial and LORAN navigation was impossible. Then they would jam the aircraft radar - which prevented its use as a positioning aid and also its use as a means to prevent the aircraft from entering thunderclouds (cumulonimbus clouds). An English-speaking trawler crewmember would then be able to direct the aircraft into areas where it would meet a mountain, a thundercloud, or the ocean - or cross a border into a communist country where it would be shot down. The people on the trawler would coordinate with other radio or radar-jamming stations to gain the correct effect upon the crew of the aircraft. There were times when being close to a communist border was enough for the them to shoot the aircraft down and then lie about its actual location at the time of the incident. This happened most frequently to aircraft carrying passengers rather than supplies or weapons of any kind. Of course, the Soviets were innocent of all this and would tell the world just how innocent they were. Having experienced this type aggression myself, I can attest to the fact that the Soviets were guilty of being murderers and liars. Had it been up to me, any known Soviet trawler would suddenly have been caused to disappear.
The foregoing paragraphs described events which were typical of the period known as the cold war. Cold or hot, the war had its casualties and lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1992. At that point, it took a break except for the constant subversion of the American youth and the American media - and now threatens to begin again with the reign of Putin who was once head of the KGB.
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1960 In 1960, the total population of the USSR was 114,800,000. At least 55% were female and 42% were male. The sexes were disproportionate due to the loss of men in WWII. Thirty percent of the population were children under the age of sixteen. Sixty-nine percent of the total lived in the European USSR west of the Ural Mountains.
The Soviet government was officially atheistic, disseminating atheist propaganda through the schools, press, radio, television, museums, theaters, and the arts. According to Soviet officials, the Russian Orthodox Church had 50 million adherents, the Sunnite Moslem sect 30 million, the Hebrew faith 2.3 million, and the Baptist Church 500 thousand. Other religious groups were Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Armenian, Gregorian, and Buddhist.
A Party decree published January 10, 1960, severely criticized Soviet internal propaganda for ineffectiveness, and ordered drastic improvements. According to the decree, the following anti-communist attitudes were widespread among the Soviet population: (1) love of private property, (2) admiration for western culture, (3) minority race secessionism, (4) belief in religion, (5) disinterest in politics, (6) scorn for labor, (7) waste of public property, (8) bureaucracy, (9) bribery, (10) speculation, (11) drunkeness, (12) hooliganism, (13) bourgeois ideology, (14) revision of Marxism, and (15) right-wing socialism.
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1961 In 1961, communist pressure in South Asia, Berlin, Cuba, the Congo, and other parts of the world continued. Some countries objected. Albania broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR in December and relations were strained throughout 1962. The USSR evacuated their submarines in Valona, Albania, and withdrew their technical experts. Soviet propaganda attacked the Albanian government and Albanian communists as as dogmatists, separationists, and deviationists. Albanians were loyal to Stalin and attacked Kruschev as an anti-Marxist. Albania had been receiving financial aid from communist China, and China considered Kruschev's criticisms of Stalin as both heretical and soft. Other Soviet satellites followed the Soviet lead in December of 1961 (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary).
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1962 During 1962, Moscow-aligned communist governments ruled 16 countries: the USSR, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Mongolian People's Republic, Communist China, North Korea, Tibet, North Vietnam, and Cuba. Yugoslavia and Albania were governed by communists independent of Moscow's control. Altogether, one-third of the world's population lived under communist rule.
Eighty-eight communist and communist-front labor and socialist parties of the world had a total membership of 41.5 million of whom 36.4 million lived within the Soviet orbit of nations. China's communist party had 17 million members, the USSR 9.7 million, Indonesia 1.75 million, and Italy 1.5 million.
When Albania and the USSR quarrelled, China supported Albania, which led to problems between the USSR and China. East Germany and Hungary shifted more to the side of China. Yugoslavia and most western European communist parties backed the USSR, but not the Italians.
Communist Parties were illegal in West Germany, Portugal, and Spain. The 10,000 member party in the United States concentrated much of its propaganda against the John Birch Society, defensive military preparations, and the CIA. The U.S. State Department issued new regulations forbidding members of the Communist Party to receive U.S. passports, and revoked passports of several communist leaders. The U.S. Communist Party National Organizational Secretary was sentenced to six years imprisonment for refusing to tell a federal grand jury why the Communist Party did not register with the Justice Department. The editor of the Party newspaper received the same sentence. However, the cases were appealed and the sentences overturned. More arrests were made and the Party was fined $120,000. Subsequently, the U.S. government sued the Communist Party for $500,000 in delinquent income taxes. An officer of the International Longshoreman's and Warehousemen's Union was sentenced to six months in prison for violating a labor act that forbade communists to serve as union officials.
Edgar J. Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), published a book titled A Study of Communism, which revealed data of subversive activity in the U.S. Several states in the U.S. now have required that compulsory courses on Communism be taught in high schools. Very likely, as of 2008, such courses are either no longer compulsory or have been altered for political correctness, as communists or communist sympathizers have seized the reigns in many of the schools in the U.S.
The number of known communists in the world in 1962 were:
Western Europe - 2 million
Eastern Europe - 6 million
Far East - 1.9 million
Middle East - 200,000
Africa - 12,000
Latin America - 200,000
Canada - too small to mention
United States - 10,000The Communist Party in 1962 was illegal in West Germany, Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya, the Phillipines, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco, Portuguese Colonies; South Africa, Spanish Colonies, Sudan, the United Arab Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatamala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Venezuela.
In 1962, the communization of Cuba continued with trade unions, armed forces, government bureaucracy, and instruction of the populace in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. In Canada, the small minority party was chiefly active in mining, fishing, and electrical trade unions. There was also opposition to U.S. political, military, and economic influence in Canada. In Africa, the numerically weak party used its main efforts to infiltrate non-communist labor unions, student organizations, and liberal political parties.
During this same time period, the Council of Ministers in Russia consisted of Nikita S. Kruschev, 7 deputy premiers, the premiers of 15 Soviet republics, and about 40 ministers or heads of organizations of ministerial rank. The Council was the chief legislative and executive organ of the USSR, and was appointed by the Supreme Soviet or the latter's Presidium,. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet consisted of a president (Leonid I. Brezhnev, who was the titular head of the Soviet government), 15 vice presidents (the presidents of the 15 Soviet republics), a secretary, and 16 members. It had legislative, appointive, judicial, and treaty-making powers. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR, consisted of two equal houses elected for four years, the Soviet of the Union with 791 members (one deputy for each for every 300,000 inhabitants), and the 652-man Soviet of Nationalities which included 25 deputies from each of the 15 Soviet republics, 11 from each of 20 autonomous oblasts, and one from each of 10 national areas.
Kruschev was both chairman of the Presidium and first secretary of the party Secretariat. On March 18, elections were held for a new Supreme Court. The Communist bloc of candidates ran for office unopposed (this was normal for a dictatorship of one party - the Communist Party). In November, there was a division of the most regional and local governments and party organizations into separate educational and industrial divisions - so the the average region would have two governments (urban and rural) and two similar party groups. Education, welfare, and other routine governmental functions would be divided between these industrial and and agricultural organs of authority. The courts and police would remain under control of the Soviet government.
In 1962, one-third of the college graduates in the USSR were engineers (a far cry from what has been happening in the U.S. in the last few years). This was due to the Communist Party insisting upon having the necessary people to help them progress in technology. The general level of education in the USSR was still below that of the United States at that time. Sixty percent of all Soviet workers and 77% of all collective farmers had no more than a grade-school education.
The college system of the Communist Party consisted of regional three-year schools, inter-regional and republic four-year schools, higher party schools, and the Academy of Social Science. The colleges trained party memhers for work in administration or propaganda for the party.
There were 6,800 newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 67 million, and 4,700 periodicals with an annual circulation of 1,355 million. There were 381,000 libraries with 1,900 million books. One point two billion copies of books and pamphlets were published in 1962. In March, the Communist Party warned Soviet composers to avoid formalism and modernism in their musical compositions.
In 1962, the government continued to disseminate atheistic propaganda through the schools, press, radio, television, museums, theaters, and arts. It decreed that April 29, the Russian Orthodox Easter Sunday, be a work day, and April 30 as a day of rest. According to Soviet officials, the Russian Orthodox Church has 50 million adherents, the Muslims 26 million, the Jews 2 million, and the Baptists 500 thousand. Other religious sects were smaller in number. During 1962, the Soviet press complained that religion was still a strong force in Soviet life, and urged intensification of anti-religious propaganda. More than 20 Pentacostal ministers and at least 7 ministers of the Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned for illegal religious activities, and an Orthodox archbishop in the Ukraine was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for alleged embezzlement of church funds. An anti-Jewish quota system prevented many Jews from entering college or working in high government offices.
The Soviet population was aggressively taxed - in fact, since 1962 two-thirds of the national income was taken by the government in taxes (in the U.S. today the situation is similar when all levels of government taxation and all types of taxes are included - we seem to be following along the same path). On September 22, a reduction in income taxes, which had been promised to take effect in October, was indefinitely postponed.
The standard of living in the USSR was low, especially outside Moscow. There were a shortages of meat, milk, dairy products, sugar, clothing, shoes, furniture, and many aged collective farmers received no pensions.
There was a tendency to re-centralize since 1957 (a cyclic phenomenon). The USSR was divided into 40 large industrial areas. In each area, the planning and coordination of industry was entrusted to councils which took over the functions formerly executed by more than 100 small regional economic boards. The 40 councils, in turn were managed by a newly created Council of the National Economy. This is a point that should be emphasized. Under Russian Communism, all supply and demand is regulated by bureaucracies. This is a slow, bumbling system when compared to a capitalistic society in which people are free to create their own businesses to counter the changing demands of consumers. Where the capitalistic system is free and operated by automatic incentives for those participating, the communist system is operated by committees composed of those who are both insulated and relatively disinterested.
In the first months of 1962, the total area under crops was about 520 million acres, of which about two-thirds belonged to the 42,000 collective farms, and one-third to the 8,270 state farms. Collective and state farm families privately owned 2.9% of the beef cattle, 45% of the dairy cows, 26% of the hogs, and 24% of the sheep and goats. In March, committees composed of government and Communist Party officials were organized at the local government level to enforce strict supervision over collective and state farms. The committees usurped certain planning functions which had been entrusted to the farms since 1955. Subsequently, the state purchase prices for meat was raised 35% for purchase from collective farms and private gardens, and 25% for state farms.
The most drastic development in agriculture was Kruschev's condemnation of the crop rotation system which had existed since the 1930s. The system allowed one-fourth of the land to lie fallow. Kruschev decided that this was wasteful, so he ordered all fallow land to be sown with crops which could be used for animal fodder. The Soviet agronomists feared that the soil would be depleted, the president of Soviet Academy of Agricultural Science resigned, and the other academicians were dismissed. Furthermore, Kruschev declared that state funds for industrial development and armament would be diverted to agriculture, that state farms must use existing agricultural machinery and not demand more, and that state farmers be forbidden to have private gardens. But regardless of the miner's son's heavy-handed manipulations, the next harvest was poor. There was drought in part of the USSR and excessive rainfall in other parts.
The U.S. had been aware for some time of a Soviet-supported arms build-up in Cuba. On September 26, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution declaring that the U.S. would "prevent by whatever means may be necessary, including the use of arms, the extension by force or threat of Cuba's aggressive or subversive activities in any part of this hemisphere." On October 22, President Kennedy revealed that there were missile sites being placed in Cuba for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads for 1,000 miles, while other sites indicated that they were capable of containing missiles with a range at least twice that distance. Moreover, Soviet bombers were being uncrated in Cuba.
Subsequently, the U.S. insisted that the Soviets dismantle the sites that were being placed in Cuba. During the confrontation at sea, there was fear that a nuclear conflict would develop. This led to a "hotline" being placed between the leaders of the two nations. According to the published information at the time, President Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba if the USSR dismantled the missile sites, removed the missiles, and removed the bombers from Cuba. Supposedly, Kennedy did not agree to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. However, many years after the event it was disclosed that Kennedy had agreed to later remove the missiles from Turkey. Apparently, this made both Kruschev and Kennedy secure in their respective spheres of political influence. The sites, missiles, and bombers were removed, and eventually the Soviets withdrew 10,000 men from Cuba. However, the removal of the men was grudgingly delayed, causing the U.S. to continue with its costly naval blockade around Cuba. This delay caused more friction between the U.S. and the USSR.
There had been an ideological conflict between the USSR and China since 1958, and it was intensified in 1962. The Russians condemned people who called themselved Marxist-Leninist and yet opposed the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence. The Chinese Communists warned that revisionists and reactionaries had launched anti-Chinese campaigns only to meet ignominious bankruptcy. The Chinese had been indoctrinated into communism by Stalin whom they still regarded in almost a religious light. Kruschev had defamed their hero when he deposed Stalin from his god-like status in the USSR. The Chinese leaders wanted a more aggressive movement toward communist world domination while Kruschev wanted a more subtle approach.
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1963 In 1963, Kruschev held the position of premier as well as chairman of the Presidium and first secretary of the Secretariat. The USSR had 41 million students of which 2.9 million were in colleges and universities. The Soviet press complained that attempts to provide "productive training" for high school students and the upper grades had not been very successful, since the factories tend to assign students to such menial jobs as loading or floor cleaning. On December 18, five hundred African exchange students marched on the Kremlin in Moscow and protested Soviet discrimination against negroes and the alleged murder by a Soviet citizen of a student from Ghana.
Governmental and party leaders attempted to suppress abstract art as well as literature that was overly critical of the Soviet regime. Several editors of literary magazines were dismissed. Several writers were temporarily exiled and two films were suppressed while another was remade. However, Soviet intellectuals and students continued to support the dissident artists and writers.
The Soviet press also complained that peasants refused to work on religious holidays; that many people had church weddings; and that religious belief existed among some intellectuals, members of the Young Communist League, and even members of the Communist Party. Several protestant, Jewish, and Moslem clergy were imprisoned on charges of speculation or of conducting religious propaganda. The government closed down some synagogues, churches, and mosques.
The Soviet budget included a 6% secret appropriation which was probably for military purposes, as well as hidden appropriations for the military in other parts of the budget. This was not unusual.
Due to adverse weather, the USSR was compelled to import 9 million tons of cereals as opposed to their past year's exports of 7.8 million tons. Much of the crop failure was also due to poor agricultural planning. Kruschev's emphasis had been on expanding farm acreage rather than increasing the yield per acre. Improved methods had been considered too slow and expensive. In the fall of 1963, Kruschev announced that the USSR would henceforth concentrate on irrigation and fertilizer to increase crop yields. [Note that diversification of crops would have helped.]
The crop failure of 1963 caused drastic alterations in Soviet economic planning for 1964-65. A crash program was decreed for immense expansion in the output of chemical fertilizers. This reduced appropriations for housing construction and the armed forces. A planned increase in the minimum wage was delayed, and expansion of the iron, steel, and electrical power industries was curtailed. Investments for agriculture and light industry was increased.
During this year, the USSR had 33 million government-operated radio receiving sets and 33 million loudspeakers wired to the those sets. It also had 9 million television sets and 130 television stations. These allowed Communist propaganda to be efficiently fed to the Soviet citizens.
In 1963, the Soviets operated 7 types of prison camps: one for juvenile girls, 2 for juvenile boys, and 4 (general, strong, strict, and special) for adults. The armed forces had disciplinary battalions for military offenders.
Communist terrorists continued to act against the government of Venezuela with bombings, kidnappings, and street riots. Cuba was accused of supporting communist in Latin American countries morally, financially, educationally, and militarily [this has proven to be a correct accusation]. Latin communist propaganda was largely against the U.S.
On May 11, after a secret trial, the Military Collegian of the Supreme Court issued the death sentence to the former assistant chief of the Foreign Division of the State Committee for Coordinating Scientific Research. He had allegedly betrayed secrets to a foreign power. His co-defendant, a British citizen, was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment.
In October, the Defense Ministry issued new instructions to army garrisons stationed near Soviet cities. Henceforth, all such garrisons would be under one command and its patrols would police the cities as well as the military installations. The police would continue to function but would share authority with the military patrols.
On October 31, a U.S. expert in Soviet affairs was arrested in Moscow on a charge of spying. Kennedy demanded his release and halted negotiations for a new cultural exchange pact with the USSR. On November 16, the man was released.
On November 22, President Kennedy was assassinated. Kruschev and his wife personally visited the U.S. to express their condolences. This expression appeared to be genuine.
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1963 - Relations between Communist Nations Relations with Communist China "might be compared to a married couple who had been completely incompatible but were not yet ready to be separated or divorced." Throughout the year the war of words between them became increasingly open and insulting.
In February, Peking accused Kruschev of blundering by backing down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Communist Chinese press insulted Kruschev, calling him "muddled in the head" and "cowardly as mice". This led to discussion between the two nations. The USSR jammed Russian-language broadcasts from Radio Peking, and both countries strengthened their border forces.
The Chinese drafted a letter from Chinese Communist leaders to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the USSR. which declared that the general policy of international communism should not be reduced to one of peaceful coexistence. It condemned the "passive attitude toward struggles of opposed nations for liberation," and maintained that neither the "contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoise" nor the "contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism" could be solved without revolution. Peking demanded that Moscow improve its relations with Albania and join in denouncing Yugoslav communists.
Kruschev denounced the letter as "groundless and slanderous" and announced that it would not be published in the Soviet press. In June, the USSR forbade the Chinese embassy in Moscow to distribute the letter. Nor did the Soviet press publish the letter, which severely criticized Soviet internal and foreign policies. Five Chinese embassy officials and students were expelled from Moscow for attempting to distribute the letter, and upon their return to Peking they were given a hero's welcome.
On July 25, 1963, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union initialed a partial nuclear test ban. The treaty was concluded on October 10 which banned above-ground nuclear tests. This forced an old quarrel between the USSR and China into the open, and the world communist movement began to split even further. Some communist parties began to pursue policies differing from both those of the USSR and China. Other nations believed that China still had years to go before becoming a member of the nuclear club. The treaty represented another step toward prevention of non-nuclear nations attaining nuclear status.
On September 6, in the Chinese Communist Party's official organ, Peking revealed that the Sino-Soviet ideological split had long affected their relations. Examples listed were (1) Soviet cancellation in 1959 of the 1957 agreement concerning assistance to Peking in producing atomic bombs, (2) Soviet support for India in the Sino-Indian border incident of 1959, (3) the Soviet uni-lateral decision in July of 1960 to recall all Soviet experts in China, and (4) the Soviet plot to overthrow the Ili regional government in Sinkiang-Uighur in 1962.
On September 7-8, Chinese passengers and crew of the Peking-Moscow express train were detained by Soviet border guards for attempting to smuggle anti-Soviet literature into the USSR. The Chinese on the frontier station of Naushki rioted for two days, were expelled, and the train was taken to Moscow by a Soviet crew. Shortly afterward, the Soviet press claimed that China had created 5,000 incidents along the Soviet-Chinese frontier in 1962, that 60,000 Chinese Muslims had fled from Sinkiang into Soviet Central Asia, and that Russian residents were being mistreated in the Manchurian port of Dairen.
It would seem that such rude and blatant language would cause more disruption of relations between nations. However, there was no rupture in diplomatic relations, and a trade agreement was concluded for the year. In June, a plan for future scientific cooperation was adopted.
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1964 and The Ousting of Kruschev Throughout 1964, the war of words between Russia and Communist China became increasingly intense and viiolent. The Chinese Communist Party singled out Kruschev for its bitterest attacks. It indirectly appealed to pro-Stalinist groups within the Soviet Communist Party and to the Soviet people themselves (who were hungry) to get rid their Premier.
China charged that Russia was being turned into a bourgeois state with the ultimate goal of national prosperity rather than of world revolution. Representing themselves as the true disciples of Marxism-Leninism, the Chinese leaders condemned Russia's leaders for suppressing workers' strikes, and for oppressing and exploiting non-Russian minorities within the USSR.
China accused Russia of collaborating with the United States so that the two could dominate the world. The Chinese suggested that Russia give back to the other communist countries all areas that czarist or Soviet Russia had annexed by guile or force. Thus Russia should surrender Bessarabia to Rumania; the western part of the Ukraine and western Belorussia to Poland; and eastern Siberia, Tuva, and part of Central Asia to China.
China scoffed at Russia's fear of nuclear war, ridiculing nuclear weapons as "paper tigers". Peking indicated that the Soviet-Chinese military alliance of 1950 had lost its meaning now that Russia had ruled out nuclear war as a means of achieving victory over capitalism.
Throughout the year, China promoted the development of new communist factions or splinter parties that would serve the cause of violent revolution rather than peaceful competition. Furthermore, Peking tried to persuade the Asian, African, and Latin American communist parties that they should not look to Russia for leadership, but to China, since a white man's country could not represent the true interests of non-white people.
The Soviet Union answered in kind through its newpapers and journals. China was charged with being Stalinist at home, imperialistic abroad, and in error in the version of communism it preached. The Soviet party accused Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of the Chinese Comunist Party, of making himself the center of a personality cult, just as Stalin had done in Russia. The Party countered China's charge that the Russians persecuted non-Russian minorities by accusing the Chinese of oppressing their Turkish and Mongolian minorities. Furthermore, world communism, Russia asserted, was threatened by China's encouragement of anti-Moscow splinter parties.
Most communist parties in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas sided with the USSR. The Soviet Union claimed the support of 65 of the 91 parties. Many of these pro-Soviet parties, however, had to expel, suppress, or pacify large pro-Chinese groups of Party members. At the close 1964, approximately one-quarter of the world's communist parties were split between pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions. China was supported officially by 18 communist parties. These included most parties in the Far East and Southeast Asia, plus the communists of Pakistan in South Asia, Tanganyika and Zanzibar in Africa, and Peru and Venezuela in South America.
Both Kruschev and his successors departed from strict communist economic doctrine in attempting to correct the situation in agriculture and industry in the USSR. The Russian leaders singled out centralized planning as one the primary causes of the economic slowdown. Under the central planning system, government agencies decided what crops to grow, which farms should grow them, and what goods should be produced and in what quantities.
On March 23, the government announced that collective state farms, rather than the central government agencies, would be responsible in the future for planning crop harvests to meet government requisitions.
The year 1964 was marked by severe state persecution of all religions, with more churches, mosques, temples, monasteries, and seminaries being forced to close. The most severely persecuted were illegal sects, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Pentacostals, and the True Orthodox Christian Wanderers. Several ministers of the latter two sects were sentenced to imprisonment in Central Asia. However, legal religions like the Russian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Old Believers, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Armenian, Moslem, Buddhist, and Jewish were also restricted. In April, several Seventh-Day Adventists in Central Asia were given prison sentences for teaching religion to their children. A cabinet minister of the Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Republic was dismissed for organizing a Moslem funeral banquet.
Anti-Semitism was detected in several official acts. Russia's 2,250,000 Jews outnumbered those in any other country except the United States. In February, three of five men arrested for profiteering had Jewish names. They all were sentenced to death for converting a Moscow hospital workshop into a private clothing factory. Unofficially, it was reported that 23 had been accused, and of these 18 were Jews. In May, reliable sources reported that 9 men executed for "economic crimes" had Jewish names. During June, the Soviet police removed the three-man governing board of the Jewish central synagogue in Moscow because Israeli diplomats allegedly had distributed political literature there.
In February, the American Jewish Committee in New York displayed a booklet, Judaism Without Embellishment. Written by Trofim Kichko, it had been published in Ukrainian by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. It depicted Jews as Nazi collaborators and conpirators with Zionism, Israel, and Western Capitalism. After many protests from Western communists, the Soviet press criticized the book. It was withdrawn from circulation in April. However, countless other anti-Semitic articles continued to appear in the Soviet provincial press.
The Kruschev government in early 1964 ordered the establishmen of an atheist institute, of professorships and departments of atheism in many colleges, and atheist sections in many magazines. Both college and high school teachers were assigned additional funds and books for the purpose of teaching atheism.
On October 14, 1964, Kruschev was deposed by "friends" he had chosen to maintain his interests at home while he worked on Soviet interests abroad. Leonid I. Brezhnev became first party secretary, and Aleksei N. Kosygin was named premier. This was the first time in Soviet history that a supreme leader was dethroned before his death. According to the Soviet press, Kruschev was accused of promoting unworkable projects, placing family members in important public offices, making key decisions on the spur of the moment without consulting his colleagues, and tolerating hero worship of himself.
On October 16, 1964, Communist China set off an atomic explosion in the Takla Makan Desert in the Sinkiang Province close to the Russian border. China's possession of the atomic bomb strengthened her bargaining position with Russia and with the world in general.
Back to Kruschev's deposing, in his defense, he probably had done the best he could for Russia, and had been much more lenient than had Stalin. The 1963 harvest failure caused severe shortage of food in the first half of 1964. Russia was forced to purchase grain abroad which was paid for by an entire year of Soviet gold output, and even though 11 million metric tons of grain was imported from capitalist nations, no flour was on sale in Moscow until late fall of 1964.
Because of lack of food for livestock, great numbers of animals were slaughtered. In 1964, cattle declined by 2%, sheep and goats by 5%, and hogs by 41%. Kruschev's plan for an abundance of meat from corn-fed hogs had come to nothing. Because of the slaughter, an abundance of meat was available early in 1964. Thereafter, there was a shortage. Although the improved harvest of 1964 was to Kruschev's credit, it came too late to help him and he became a political scapegoat even for adverse situations which were not his fault. He was blamed for the effect of the 1963 harvest on industry when the main cause was industrial inefficiency. The conflict with China was blamed on Kruschev even though his successors essentially followed the same foreign policy.
Before he was ousted, Kruschev saw several of his major projects completed. In September, the last section of the "Friendship" oil pipeline was completed, and began pumping oil more than 1,000 miles from the Volga Valley into Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary. In the same month, the larger Trans-Siberian oil pipeline was completed - from the Volga Valley to the eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk. In October, the Voga-Baltic deep canal was opened, enabling oceangoing ships to sail inland from the Baltic to the Caspian and Black Seas. These spectacular achievements came too late to help Kruschev.
[This gap in years may be filled at a later date.]
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1989 The communist system continued to be faulty as would have been any dictatorship by committee. In 1989, unpleasant things began to peak. The General Secretary at the time was Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev attempted a restructuring of the Soviet system, but the attempt ended in recrimination and re-entrenchment, and with the Soviet internal and exernal empire in increasing disarray. The initial optimism gave way to pessimism as economic progress continued to elude the Soviet customer, and as Gorbachev steadily lost patience with the forces he had unleashed but could no longer control.
At the beginning of the year, there was euphoria over a new style parliamentary election campaign and the restructured legislative system it brought forth. However, there was growing despair over the seeming insolubility of some of the country's myriad problems. Gorbachev's attitude toward his policies changed and he became less civil as they boomeranged enough to threaten the unitary system led by the Communist Party.
He had pushed through constitutional amendments in the fall of 1988, which resulted in a campaign to elect a grand new parliament called the Congress of People's Deputies. The nomination process insured the Communist Party's dominance in the new parliament. Even so, it was the first since 1918. Many of the 2,250 seats were hotly contested - something new in Soviet politics. Campaigners and voters both, in public, said nearly anything they wanted to say. The party stalwarts lost many seats and failed to gain a majority even when many of them ran unopposed. However, most candidates were at least low-level party members, insuring a party majority in the new Congress. By the end of the year, the new legislators had neither office nor staff to assist them. Gorbachev presided masterfully over both the Congress and the Supreme Soviet, but as the second session proceeded in November-December, his patience with critics began to wear thin and his parliamentary style became more abrupt. It was commented by one Western journalist that he seemed to like democracy so long as he got his way.
The post-Stalin split between reformers and conservatives had expanded toward the reform camp, dividing into extreme radical and moderate reformers, with conservatives to the right. The radical factions became an opposition bloc, while Gorbachev's conservatives dominated the government. The conservatives were forced into a defensive, reactive position.
More consumer goods became rationed in wider areas of the country while political and economic strikes took a further toll. Gorbachev was caught between radical economic advisors advocating new policies and political advisors fearing these policies.
In the course of its heavy-handed and often brutal means of acquiring new territories, the Russians had created enemies within their own ethnic minorities and these began to to boil over. Although hundreds of churches had been allowed to reopen, there was a new statute on religious rights which was still not in final form. Police were used energetically to quell demonstrations provided such demonstrations did not agree with Gorbachev's democratization. Gorbachev alienated the Chinese leaders during his visit to China by causing student demonstrations which grew out of control. The Soviet Union was forced to withdraw from their war in Afghanistan in mid-February, leaving another cloud on Gorbachev's record.
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1990 The problems of 1989 and preceding years began to come to a head. Gorbachev's reform program fell into disarray and was ignored increasingly as the country's leadership reached for emergency measures. Gorbachev was beseiged by new and formidable critics and challengers to his authority. By the end of 1990, the battered USSR encompassed a fledgling participatory political system locked in decision-making paralysis, a state structure in the process of rapid disintegration as separationist fever raced throughout the land, an economy neither command nor market in ruinous condition, a legal system which had become part of the problem rather than a solution, and a social system weakened by economic adversity and troubled by ethnic and religious conflict.
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1991 This was the last year of the Soviet system born in 1917. By year's end, the communist system and the Soviet state had collapsed, freeing Russia, the other union republics, and many peoples of the former USSR to begin shaping their own destinies. Gorbachev's reforms had led to the demise of Communist Party rule.
When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the USSR was composed of 15 union republics and many more autonomous republics, regions and districts with those larger entities. Gorbachev and the transitional union government had recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Georgian and Moldavian republics had declared their independence earlier and, after the failed coup, 8 of the ten union state's remaining republics had followed suit. Only Russia and Kazakhstan had remained in the decimated USSR. Efforts to keep the Soviet Union together failed as each entity was seized by nationalistic fervor.
Efforts by Soviet troops and paramilitary police to win back control of the breakaway Baltic republics early in 1991 did not succeed. In the first months of 1991, Gorbachev sent the army to patrol city streets, empowered by the KGB or secret police to carry out warrantless searches of economic enterprises, and deployed 50,000 troops to Moscow in an attempt to block a huge demonstration is support of his political rival, Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic parliament. Beginning in April, Gorbachev opened negotiations with the leaders of all but the most intransigent republics on working out the details for a new union treaty, to replace the one still in place from 1922.
The first direct election of a Russian president was held on June 12, and Yeltsin won with almost 60% of the vote. Yeltsin's new mandate for radical reform, as well as the deteriorating condition of the USSR, evoked a reaction from conservative leaders. A week after the election, the USSR Supreme Soviet went into a special closed session to hear alarming reports on the burgeoning crime problem, the crumbling of the union state, and putative foreign conspiracies against the Soviet Union. Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, without prior approval from Gorbachev, asked the legislature to give him extraordinary powers to deal with the country's crises. Only a last-minute attempt by Gorbachev blocked this attempt by Pavlov to seize power. Further political infighting kept Gorbachev in power, and in August there was a coup against him which failed but set the stage for the final collapse of the country.
In August, a union treaty transferring considerable powers away from the center was ready, but its scheduled signing was blocked by the coup against Gorbachev which Yeltsin boldly opposed. The coup was halted and the negative developments which the conservatives had set out to stop were accelerated. Damage control during the ensuing weeks failed. There was no more USSR. The Russian government gradually took over the institutions of the old USSR.
In early December, Yeltsin joined with Ukraine and Belarus to declare the Soviet Union dead and proclaim as its successor the Commonwealth of Independent States. As all of the remaining republics but Georgia, by then engulfed in civil war, joined the loose commonwealth, Gorbachev reluctantly acknowledged the demise of his dream of a renewed Soviet Union and resigned his presidency. It was clear that the future of that vast land no longer belonged to communism. It belonged to the republics of the former USSR.
Unfortunately, as time passed, those who were most adept in the past in the Communist Party political arena changed a few names and took over once again, attempting to reconstruct the old Soviet Union with headquarters in Moscow. They forced the Ukraine, the chief contributor of agricultural and mineral wealth, to cooperate and to give Russia their naval base and port on the Black Sea. By a combination of force and and charging exhorbitant prices for oil they proceeded to essentially "own" most of what had been the old USSR. The Russians secret police which had many names in its various incarnations, was kept in force without appreciable changes in personnel. Where there is a power vacuum, a tradition of subservience, and those ambitious and near enough to capture the fold, there will always be sheep and wolves to prey upon them.
[This gap in years will be filled at a later date.]
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2001 After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia maintained agreements made by the USSR with other countries. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the USSR and the United States was signed before the demise of the USSR. President Bush decided that the United States was no longer bound by this treaty and decided to withdraw from it because there was not sufficient inspection procedures to prevent cheating on the agreement. This made sense because Putin, the new Russian head of state, had once been an intelligence agent for the KGB and tended to think like one.
Putin also wanted to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The United Nations was subverted by the communist nations and very likely NATO would follow if Russian should be allowed to become a member. Bush would not agree - nor would he agree to a nuclear arms reduction treaty. He stated that it was obsolete. Again there was the fact that insufficient provisions for inspection were included.
After the fall of the USSR, a capitalistic economy was introduced in part, which included various companies being formed. In 2001, the Russian government continued to take back ownership and control of private industry. The government-controlled company called Gazprom seized control of NTV, Russia's only remaining independent TV network. Gazprom had loaned millions of dollars to NTV and now seized it supposedly as settlement for nonpayment of the debt. Government agents arrested senior executives on various charges. Many NTV journalists refused to work under the new management and moved to a smaller Moscow-based station called TV6. Moscow tax authorities moved to liquidate TV6 for alleged non-payment of taxes. By the end of 2001, all major broadcast outlets were in hands of the government.
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2002 Chechnya had been attempting to separate from Russia and had been using terrorist tactics. Chechen terrorists wired a theater with 250 pounds of explosives and held about 750 people hostage. The Russian security forces had piped in a sedative gas which left everyone inside unconscious. Ultimately, more than 120 hostages, as well as the terrorists, died from the gas. [This was almost as bad as what happened at Waco, Texas, in the United States during the Democratic administration with Janet Reno in charge as attorney general.] The Chechnyan war continued.
The TV6 license was revoked and it was taken off the air. It had become a haven for ex-NTV journalists and this was not to be allowed. Gazprom and a consortium of politicians and journalists took it over and it resumed broadcasting as TVS. Now it would be in line with government policies.
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2003 - 2006 Excerpts from the Encyclopedia Americana Annual.
Three former republics of the Soviet Union underwent major power shifts from 2003 to 2005 and established new governments in open defiance of the government of Russia. In 2003, widespread protests in Georgia forced President Eduard Shevardnadze to resign. In late 2004, a disputed election in Ukraine led reform candidate Viktor Yushchenko to defeat the Russian-backed candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, in a highly contested runoff election. Antigovernment protests in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005 forced President Askar Akayev to flee his country for his own safety.
These three changes of governments, known collectively as the "colored revolutions," were essentially peaceful and resulted in the displacement of pro-Russian leaders. All three involved Western influence, particularly the influence of nongovernmental organizations (NGO's), which supported parallel vote-counts, monitored the elections, and funded opposition to the incumbent regimes. All three proved to be major reversals for the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
Putin found himself on the defensive in the aftermath of these changes, and he reacted angrily to what he considered Western interference in local affairs. The dispute over the fraud-ridden presidential election in Ukraine triggered an angry torrent of old-fashioned Cold War style rhetoric. Bristling at perceived Western interference in his own "backyard," Putin denounced the administration of United States President George W. Bush as dictatorial in its international relations. Putin accused the West of acting like a "kind but strict uncle" that dared to lecture Russia, and he openly ridiculed President Bush's plans for national elections in Iraq in early 2005. The Bush administration responded in kind. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters on her way to Moscow for an official visit in April, chastised Putin's government for policies that she characterized as "setbacks" and expressed her concern that Russia was "reverting back to Soviet times."
Russian officials refer to that "backyard" - that is, the former republics of the Soviet Union in Europe and Central Asia - as the "near abroad." They consider the near abroad within Russia's sphere of influence, an area where Russia continues to wield considerable power. Russia controls the region's major transportation routes; is the key trading partner for most post-Soviet nations; supplies energy to those countries; and has the region's largest military force. In addition, an estimated 25 million ethnic Russians live in the former Soviet republics [placed there forcibly to fill the vacuum created by forcible removal of the original inhabitants by the Russians]. According to international affairs experts, President Putin fully expects the West to recognize and respect Russia's extensive interests in these countries. However, recent events, including the colored revolutions, have challenged Russia's predominant influence in the region and have strained relations with the United States and Europe.
The leaders of the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had been "annexed" by the Soviet Union prior to WWII (1939-1945), reinforced their rejection of Russia and its influence by joining the European Union in May of 2004. Russian concerns with Islamist movements and political unrest in authoritarian former republics in Central Asia were sharpened in May 2005 when Uzbekistan violently put down protests in the city of Andijon. Lingering conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia - as well as between Armenia and Azenbaijan - troubled Putin's government as well... Western condemnation of Russia's relationship with Belarus, its controversial military presence in Moldova, and the ongoing conflict in Chechnya proved particularly challenging for the Putin government.
Russia under Putin has pursued two interrelated foreign policy goals - to establish a secure political and economic sphere of influence in the near abroad; and again to be recognized as a great power. The Putin government has experienced setbacks in both ambitions. International affairs experts note, however, that these setbacks have only reinforced Putin's belief in the importance of his aims. To that end, his government has adopted a new multilateral (involving three or more countries) approach to foreign relations.
In April 2003, Russia formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan specifically to combat terrorism. The Russian air base at Kant in Kyrgyzstan represented one of the fruits of this agreement. CSTO participants also planned another Russian base for Tajikistan. Russia also became more active on the economic front, pressing for the consolidation of a "common economic space" among Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine.
As relations with the Western powers cooled, Russia reached out to China, particularly through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan forged the SCO in June 2001 to maintain regional peace, security, and stability, and strengthen economic and cultural relations. In August 2005, Russia and China conducted their first joint military exercises. The Chinese military represents one of the most important markets for Russian arms, making Russia's interest in the relationship both strategic and commercial. Putin appreciated an international partner that did not criticize his increasingly authoritarian domestic politics. China also expressed little interest in challenging Russia's influence in the near abroad. In response, Putin assured Chinese officials in 2005 that a key multibillion-dollar Siberian oil pipeline would go to China first and only later serve Japan. International affairs experts noted that Putin viewed energy resources as a significant asset in strengthening Russia's international influence, and he expected Russia oil and gas companies to use their resources to enhance Russian power.
The experts also noted that Putin needed more than a multilateral approach to foreign relations to succeed internationally. They pointed out that if Russia is to restore its sphere of influence and position as a great power, the Russian government must resolve conflicts on post-Soviet territory, particularly in breakaway Chechnya; it must combat political and economic instability and repression in neighboring countries such as Belarus and Uzbekistan; and it must compete economically with China, the European Union, and the United States for influence and markets. All three are daunting challenges, particularly for a man who has pledged to be one of the few leaders in Russian history to voluntarily give up power when his term of office ends in 2008.
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2007 From National Review, December 31, 2007, page 10
Vladimir Putin is giving a master class in modern dictatorship. Rigging the recent parliamentary election was child's play, because he had the political parties, the media, and big business under his thumb. There was no need to arrest opposition leaders, stuff ballot boxes, and intimidate voters in selected areas, but the secret police took those precautions on his behalf. This March his second term as president expires, and the constitution forbids him a third consecutive term. Simple: Just re-write the constitution. But Putin is too smart for that. He has announced that Dmitri Medvedev will have his backing in the presidential election, a fact that amounts to appointment. Forty-two now, Medvedev has been a Putin loyalist for years. He is a lawyer, the chairman of the board of Gazprom, the giant state gas monopoly, but he has no political base whatsoever. Putin is expected to control him the way a ventriloquist does his puppet. Medvedev began his performance with the immediate promise that as president he would appoint Putin his prime minister. After a break in that office, the constitution would allow Putin to become president again. Perfect! No wonder Putin admires Stalin and laments the breakdown of the Soviet Union. A caveat is in order, however. Should Medvedev learn the lesson properly and be true to form in the Kremlin, he is likely to devise some even more perfidious way to outmaneuver his master.
Excerpts from National Review, December 31, 2007, The Problem of My Country - A dissident looks homeward
by Vladimir Bukovsky with Paval Stroilov.[The situation in Putin's Russia today is explained in these excerpts. Bear in mind that Russian citizens are not allowed to have firearms for self-defense from the Russian mafia, the FSB, or for any other reason - because firearms would allow them to revolt too easily. The author was first denied his request to return but eventually managed to go back. He was nominated by other dissidents to run for president. His comments constitute the meat of the article. The reader should consider exploring the entire article. It is well-written, very informative, and much longer than what is shown below.]
...I had believed that Russia was a hopeless case since 1993... The outlook seemed very gloomy for a long time, but nobody could then foresee just how bad the reality would turn out to be... a restoration of the KGB's reign of terror... dozens of political prisoners, some of them in psychiatric torture chambers... Russia... once again a global threat.
Mikhail Trepushkin, the lawyer who represents the survivors of the 1999 apartment bombings - a series of terrorist acts blamed by the government on the Chechen extremists - has been imprisoned for his investigation of the attacks. His inquiry led him dangerously close to uncovering the role of the FSB - Russia's domestic security service and successor to the KGB - in the bombings. So the FSB planted a gun on him and also charged him with disclosure of state secrets... Mikhail is asthmatic... [his prison guards] deny him medicine; they put him in a newly painted cell with no fresh air, so he is slowly, but literally, suffocating.
Boris Stomakhin... who edited a small online newsletter, has been imprisoned for his criticism of Putin's regime... Trying to get away from FSB thugs,... Boris jumped out of a window and broke his spine and leg... he got no decent treatment... ended up practically paralyzed... sentenced to five years imprisonment... denied any special treatment... [and] warm clothes.
... there have been alarming reports about people once again put in lunatic asylums for their criticism of authorities... [as is] the case of... Andrei Novikov... for his articles criticizing the regime...
One thing the Kremlin fears is... next year's presidential election [2008], rigged as it certainly will be, may trigger a wave of mass protests... my pledge to implement the following if any of us [dissidents] comes to power.
1. Release all political prisoners
2. Stop political persecution and review the legislation [that was created for use in such persecution]
3. Stop abuse of psychiatry for repressive purposes
4. Stop law-enforcement agencies' use of torture and cruel treatment
5. Provide for a fair and independent judiciary as soon as possible
In National Review, December 3, 2007, is an article by Andrew Stuttaford regarding a book by Dr. Yuri Felshtinsky, a Russian-born historian who is now a U.S. citizen.
Felshtinsky tells tales of deception, conspiracy, and murder that have been features of Russian politics since the days of the Czar's secret police. As is stated in the article, "In a nation with no agreed narrative of past or present, who is to judge where paranoia ends and history begins?"
The article goes on to say "This place of shadows, contradiction, and lies is where Felshtinsky and former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko researched their book Blowing Up Russia. Litvinenko has been murdered since the book was published, by using radioactive poison - of course, the book was banned in Russia.
According to the article, the book "revolves around the allegation that the devastating bombings in Moscow" in September 1999, were the work of "elements within the FSB". It seems that the FSB was involved in creating a "provocation", bombing innocent citizens and claiming it was the work of Chechen terrorists. This, then, justifies the continuation of the war in Chechnya (a means of making Chechnya once more a part of a union headed in Moscow). [As is often the case, the left accuses the right of a dastardly thing that was actually perpetrated by the left - as is seen in the U.S. where there has been an allegation that the Bush administration was behind 9-11. And the left knows that if a lie is stated often enough, the public will believe it to be truth.] The renewed war in Chechnya changed the political climate to allow Putin the presidency. Putin had been head of the FSB before becoming prime minister under Yeltsin.
Apparently, Felshtinsky does not know where Litvinenko's "truths" begin or end, since Litvinenko's purpose was to discredit Putin. Litvinenko was supposedly financed by Berezovsky for some time, and it was Berezovsky who was first responsible for the publication of Putin's supposed involvement in the 1999 bombings. Even though this involvement is a suspicion, it was also a conclusion formed by Sergei Yushenov (an MP for the Liberal Russia Party); Yuri Shchekochikhin (the journalist and opposition MP who had arranged for an extract from Blowing Up Russian to be published in Russia's last independent newspaper); and presidential candidate Ivan Rybkhin (who described the bombings as a "crime committed by the security agencies"). Yushenov was gunned down, Shchekochikhin died of an "allergic reaction", and Rybkhin was poisoned. These are a series of strange coincidences.
Felshtinsky believes these events are evidence that, in the new Russia under FSB rule, the FSB heads and their allies can become wealthy by controlling Russia as if it were their own corporation - and becoming privy to the most severe of corporate politics.
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2008 Russia
As expected, Dmitri Medvedev was elected president with Putin as his prime minister, allowing Putin to maintain control in Russia. Putin continued to use the methods he prefered as head of the KGB. These methods have made made him popular within his own country or with the free nations of the world.
In September, Putin's minions moved into Georgia, killing and routing civilians. This was typical of Russian methods before the fall of the Soviet Union. After each annexation (conquest) of a nation, Russia was careful to remove a large segment of the subject nation's population and place Russians there instead. This helped to prevent nationalism from causing a revolt against Russia, provided an excess of Russian spies within the subject nation, and gave Russia an excuse to use military force to "keep the peace" should a revolt occur. This also provided the excuse needed for Russia to move into Georgia so that she might regain Georgia as part of new Soviet Union. Russians were placed within the Georgian borders over a period of time and when the Georgians objected, Russian troops and tanks moved in to take over. Putin has used various means to be certain that the troops remain until there can be a better excuse for complete "annexation" and subjugation of Georgia. If the past is any clue to the outcome, diplomacy without a strong threat of force will not remove Putin's thugs.
Putin had a strong motive for moving into Georgia as his next conquest. Georgia is a relatively weak nation militarily and an easy prey for a bully - as well as an obstacle to a true Russian oil monopoly in the the immediate area. Russia must be the sole provider of oil for Europe and the countries of the old Soviet Union so that she can maintain her extortion of favors from these countries. Georgia has an oil pipeline running through the country that threatens the Russian oil monopoly.
Putin's greed and use of force have alarmed the NATO nations and those nations whom Putin considers to be within Russia's sphere of influence. They have also started movements within Russia to oust Medvedev and Putin, claiming that Putin is putting Russia back on the road to Soviet-era communism.
In the October 20, 2008, issue of National Review is the following paragraph.
The Kremlin is once again in the mood to lash out. President Medvedev has allocated $50 billion for next year's armaments program, which includes the construction of new types of warships, nuclear submarines, and a space defense system. The smashing of Georgia has thoroughly frightened everyone around Russia's borders, so Medvedev and his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, are having to look farther afield as they use their weaponry to create a new power bloc against the United States. Russia has put one protective arm against Iran in order to scupper international sanctions aiming to halt its nuclear program, and is stretching its other arm out to the quasi-Communist or populist dictatorships of Bolivia and Venezuala, not forgetting the faithful Castros in Cuba. Russia has made a $1 billion military loan to Venezuala, announced an oil consortium, and dispatched two long-range bombers there. This November Venezuala will also stage joint military maneuvers with warships and 1,000 troops from Russia. Venezualan President Hugo Chavez says he is merely supporting the work of a "strategic ally," but in case anyone misses the point, he and the like-minded Bolivian President, Evo Morales, earlier accused the United States of interfering in their internal politics and even conspiring to overthrow them, and have expelled the U.S. ambassadors. Evidently the old Soviet dream of power is alive and well in Moscow.On the news of December 18, 2008: Putin has introduced legislation that makes it treason for anyone to criticize the Russian government. This legislation is certain to pass because Putin makes certain that anyone opposing it will be dealt with severely. This is the next step in setting up a total dictatorship with Putin as the Russian dictator.
The United States
In the United States, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party have their own websites filled with their usual propaganda designed to influence those who are either without adequate knowledge of history or who are gullible enough to believe the lies presented. Unfortunately, for the most part at least three generations have been without proper history courses (politically correct ones only) and many of the new generation are taken in by Barrack Obama who is the U.S. Presidential candidate at this time for the Democratic Party (the communists and socialists are gloating). Communists and communist sympathizers in the California legislature have passed a bill allowing Communists to teach in California schools (K-12 and above). See Communism in California on this website for further details.
ACORN is the acronym for a leftist group who (among other things) work on the downfall of the capitalistic system by influencing those who provide loans to do so for those who cannot afford to pay them. According to Richard Poe, author of The Shadow Party, Saul D. Alinsky was a master of infiltration who "viewed revolution as a gradual - even orderly - process, best accomplished by infiltrating and manipulating institutions ... such as churches, unions, ethnic organizations, and local political machines." According to Ph.D. Jerome R. Corsi's research Obama Nation, Obama was trained by Saul D. Alinsky and used this training to teach operatives of ACORN how to influence bank executives and others in key positions to provide loans to the "poor" (those who could not actually qualify for a loan). Furthermore, the executives of the two top underwriters (essentially providing a monopoly) for mortgages in the U.S. paid large amounts to fund Obama so that they might continue to prosper as executives even though their organizations might go bankrupt. This eventually led to the supposed necessity for a 700 billion dollar bail-out when the borrowers defaulted, creating a socialist-controlled bureaucracy and higher taxation for the people of the U.S.
Obama has a history of associations with anti-Americans such as those in Reverend Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ and Bill Ayers of the Weathermen. His record with Congress is one of voting as a socialist. Should Obama win, the U.S. will have both houses of Congress and the executive branch of the government controlled by socialists and those leaning toward socialism. See Barack Obama (BO) for more details.
As of October 10, 2008, members of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) have been discovered as apparent perpetrators of voter fraud in twelve states, definitely committing voter fraud in at least three of these states - and ACORN is being investigated by the FBI. In Ohio, the democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, has been preventing the investigation of the credentials of new voters by the counties where they voted. In some instances, there are more registered voters than there are those of voting age in the county. A federal judge has ruled that Brunner must come up with plan to avoid voter fraud - and lawsuits against the perpetrators are in progress. In one case, one person voted sixteen times under different names. As usual with socialist/communist organizations, their name indicates that their aims are noble, but ACORN, like the ACLU, has been involved in anti-American activities for some time. They are supposedly helping the poor - but in ways that destroy the nation in which the poor live.
On October 12, 2008, it was disclosed that the investigation of ACORN had uncovered one instance in which one person registered to vote 73 times, another 10 times, and in one case a seven-year-old girl was registered to vote. ACORN has been funded in part by Obama. It's operatives have been trained well in what to say and what not to say when they are investigated. They target the least educated of the population, those who have no knowledge of economics, history, government, the Constitution - and those who are most in need of money or other things (this is a tactic used by communists throughout the world). In one case, a person voted numerous times to obtain cigarettes from the ACORN operative. Cigarettes are addictive, so one can conclude that ACORN uses addictions as one means of obtaining bogus votes. It is a crime to register more than once, to give anything to someone as payment for registering, and to vote more than once. ACORN has been responsible for breaking all of these laws.
According to the latest news, Obama trained agents of ACORN and also acted as a lawyer for them in at least one instance. His involvement with Ayers has been shown to be an alliance to brainwash children in socialist philosophy rather than teaching them reading, writing, and arithmetic.
In the "debate" of October 14 between Obama and McCain, Obama lied as necessary to appear that he was innocent and McCain never followed up. Even when McCain mentioned that Obama had broken his agreement not to use public funds in his campaign, Obama never admitted that he had been caught in a lie. However, Obama was merely using the first rule of Communism: The end justifies the means. Consequently lying is not only permitted but encouraged. This rule was taught with all its subrules when ACORN operatives were being trained. Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dorn, used this rule during their more active role against the United States. One of the points that McCain finally mentioned was that Obama had donated $832,000 to ACORN from his campaign funds supposedly for "lighting and site preparation". ss ACORN has a long history of election fraud.
As of October 17, 2008, the threat of an FBI investigation seems to have caused ACORN's computers in Boston to mysteriously disappear (ACORN stated someone broke in and stole them). The Service Employees International Union sent a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court which subsequently overturned the lower court's action - supposedly to protect the rights of the Ohio voters. Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner is still refusing to link the voting precincts to the departments which handle driver's licenses and social security numbers (this is a requirement of federal law) and is not allowing the anyone at the local level to check on the credentials of newly registered voters. It would appear that the liberal members of the Supreme Court have triumphed and that voter fraud is no longer an important national issue. The man who started the Service Employees International Union is the same man who started ACORN. Both organizations are funded by George Soros.
As there is no doubt that voter fraud by ACORN has tainted at least 200,000 ballots in Ohio, it is likely that the vote in Ohio will be skewed - this is especially important considering the fact at in the past in the swing states as little as 600 votes could mean the difference between a democrat or a republican winning. Part of ACORN's job is to destroy the integrity of our democracy. It appears that ACORN is succeeding. Now at least 13 states have been targetted by ACORN and many of these are key battleground states. The Supreme Court ruling has set a precedent that will prevent the whole truth from being discovered and the FBI investigation will be hampered. Should Obama actually become President, the combination of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and a socialist administration will be enough to appoint at least two more Supreme Court socialist judges. This will be enough to effectively overturn the Constitution as it was intended to be by the founding fathers.
By law, those providing large campaign donations are supposed give their names and addresses. This law is supposed to screen donations from anti-American sources and reduce the impact of special interest groups. There have been over 3,000 campaign donations to Obama from those with false names. This is a form of money laundering from sources such as the Castro brothers in Cuba, the Hamas terrorists, China, and other enemies of the U.S. who support Obama. The Democrats have spent many times more on the election than the Republicans. Much of the money comes from unions who have been infiltrated by communists and which are allowed to spend the dollars of all their members regardless of the political affiliation of each member.
John McCain has been using a man he calls "Joe the Plumber" to illustrate some of his points regarding socialism versus capitalism. At one point, McCain mentioned the name of the man which inspired his parable. Obama went to this man's home and there was a verbal interchange which did not favor Obama and, in fact, exposed Obama as a socialist who wanted to redistribute the wealth from those of the middle class who worked hard for their money to those who had not yet acquired as much. This incensed the liberal media who immediately began attacking "Joe the Plumber" for daring to question Obama (their Messiah). This attack and the attacks on Sarah Palin are examples of what can be expected from a U.S. socialist/communist dictatorship and the dictatorship of a communist world government that is Obama's dream. The tactics of the radical Democrats in this election to a large extent mirror the tactics seen in the last election in Russia.
As of October 22, 2008, there are now 15 states where ACORN is being investigated for voter fraud. CNN was caught with a blatant and cruel lie regarding Sarah Palin when one interviewer claimed that her own party found her to be bad for them (the words used will not be published here). The lie was not corrected by CNN and proved to be another count against the liberal media which is being exposed for what it really is - not liberal but radical as defined by Alinsky.
In the book The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso, the author brings to light the fact that in 1983 at least two Democratic senators, Teddy Kennedy and John Tunney, were so fearful of Reagan's foreign policy vision that they sought KGB advice on how to argue against Reagan's anti-Soviet policies. According to the author this information comes from the files of the Soviet Union.
On November 4, 2008, Obama became the first neo-communist (sometimes called Alinskyites - and far more dangerous than the old-style communists) President of the United States. He was voted in by the young ladies who succumbed to his charm; the youths who had been brainwashed in their high schools, colleges, and universities (and possibly since kindergarten); and those who were unable to understand the difference between rhetoric and truth. Most of the older, wiser people knew better and voted for McCain. However, they were outnumbered by the younger people.
Perhaps it should be explained why so many Americans have succumbed to the lies of an enemy agent and why such an agent should have been placed in a position to even attempt to become President of the United States. Some of the facts leading up this critical moment in history can show just how it all happened. More details can be found in other parts of this website.
Communists have been placing agents in key parts of our nation since the 1930s. Their primary targets have been our media and our schools. Taking over the media and teaching our children the supposed advantages of socialism allowed people to be led into a supposed utopian dream. On the surface, Marxist philosophy sounds like the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. At one time, courses were taught in schools that exposed Marxism and communism for what it really is. By gradually taking over the schools, communists, socialists, and their sympathizers have eliminated those courses and either eliminated or distorted many other courses such as economics (other than Marxist economics), American history, American government, science courses, and math courses. By the time three generations had been exposed to socialist propaganda through the media and the schools, many Americans who knew better had died and the upcoming generations were largely composed of those ignorant of the truths needed to vote intelligently in - and to administer - a democratic republic.
Obama's people have been giving Obama/Biden buttons to teacher's unions and teachers have been giving those buttons to children along with the hype about the goodness of Obama. This, in most states, is illegal just as it is illegal to influence grade schoolers to accept any particular religion or religious denomination. However, the teacher's unions were infiltrated by communists long ago and that philosophy (often masked as "the philosophy of peace") permeates the unions today. Consequently, the teacher's unions are against anything that will allow children to attend private schools - children who attend private schools will escape brainwashing with socialist/Marxist philosophy. Bill Ayers and Obama, under the mask of education, funded the education of many younger children in their activist philosophy.
There is an article When Knowledge Is Critical written by Jay Nordlinger in the October 20, 2008, issue of National Review. This article explains the problems faced by those who were attempting to be truthful while teaching courses in universities some years ago - since then the problems have become worse. Sovietologists were those who taught students about the Soviet Union. Sinologists were those who taught students about Communist China. Then there are those who taught Middle East Studies. Today, a few names have changed (the studies on the Soviet Union is now studies on Russia). However, in all cases, then and now, "political correctness" prevented and prevents the professors from telling the truth and the courses provided by them were and are largely involved in selling philosophies that were considered evil by most people in the U.S. From the article: "One day, Pipes testified before Senator Jackson's committee... He took a hard and realistic line. Opposing him was an Ivy League Sovietologist who took the soft and unrealistic. As they were leaving, the Sovietologist said to Pipes, "I really agree with you, but if I talked as you do, I wouldn't be able to go to the Soviet Union. They wouldn't give me a visa."
Pipes says that, on balance, the Sovietologists did more harm than good - misleading the public, getting their subject "utterly wrong". And when the Soviet Union fell, they simply glided on. Some of them are now attending conferences hosted by Putin.
Daniel Pipes has paid a price for being out of step on the Middle East - for speaking bluntly about dictatorships, Islamism, and related matters. He would not be welcome in most faculty lounges. Also, he has received his share of threats, and not of the light kind either...
Professor Bernard Lewis, Chairman for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) believes in truth over political correctness. On the other hand, there is the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) led by Rashid Khalidi. MESA is an organization for "orthodox scholars" (leftists and those politically charged). ...Lewis said that there are course scholars who are with him and his crew, but who must keep their heads down, given the academic climate. "They explain that coming out openly would be destructive of their careers, and they're right - it would be."
You may wonder why it was necessary to eliminate math skills in the majority of our children. Math is a means of discovering the truths within a capitalistic economic system. If those truths are discovered, one realizes what a great system capitalism is and what is necessary to keep it that way. Socialism is a simple system without built in balances and safeguards. It begins by nationalizing a few industries, and continues this nationalization until most or all manufacturing and distributing is handled by government bureaucracies and committees. Socialism is a very straightforward system that features among other things
(1) the elimination of competition between manufacturers and distributors (the feature in capitalism that keeps prices down to a reasonable level),
(2) the elimination of production of new and more advanced items by inventors working in the private sector - the sources of progress in the U.S. such as the automobile with the assembly line and standardization of parts (Henry Ford), the airplane (Wilbur and Orville Wright), the light bulb (Thomas Alva Edison), the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell), etc,
(3) the elimination of much of the desire to work (under socialism you get paid whether you work hard or not and lazy people thrive), and
(4) the elimination of most advancement through merit (like the dictates created by many unions today, only the people there the longest get promoted).Under socialism, the government dictates when and where food, clothing, and other necessary items go. Since the committees making these decisions are isolated from the those who know what is needed at any particular place and at any particular time, supply and demand are askew from one another most of the time. People wait in lines for their necessities and usually do not get them within any reasonable amount of time. What they do receive may be clothes that do not fit or nutrition that is other than what is needed. In the old Soviet Union, people were not allowed to have radios or television sets. The government owned the radio stations and the only radio receivers were in public places with loudspeakers attached so that the people could hear only Soviet propaganda. These charges against socialism are not unfounded. Socialism has been around for a long time and has failed miserably as compared to capitalism. International communism which is largely dominated by either Russia or China (even if they no longer call their systems purely "communistic" in nature), is a dictatorship - the last phase that occurs in a system that started as "innocuous" socialism. International communism does not bring people up to a better level. Instead it attempts to destroy the better systems so that people in free countries are taken down to the low level of communism.
Communists, socialists, and their sympathizers and proponents have also infiltrated the major political parties in the United States, most of the industries in the United States, the U.S. government bureaucracies (including those enforcing the law), and even the churches. Their goals vary from sabotage and disruption to espionage and subversion. The Democratic Party in the United States has been infiltrated to the point that they no longer feel it necessary to remain so secretive - which is why Obama can be so openly socialistic (check his voting record). Since he is playing to an audience that exemplify ignorance of economic systems, the workings of government, U.S. history, math, science, and other knowledge needed to vote intelligently, Obama can use his skills as a lawyer to sway them. Aside from his rhetoric, he is well practiced in altering his body language to appear that he is sincere as he lies to us.
Perhaps even more frightening (if that is possible) is the infiltration of anti-American agents into our government bureaucracies. This is discussed at some length in Bureaucracy & Bureaucrats.
Communism and socialism go hand in hand, and for the most part are inseparable. Communism is a form of socialism and all socialism eventually leads to something like communism. The name of the system means nothing as it can change - one needs to look at the what the system actually is doing and how it is doing what it is doing to see what it really is. Whatever the name, the progression is the same - first, the nationalization of the media, the schools, industry, and distribution; second, the dictatorship of the government bureaucracies; and third the dictatorship of those who control the bureaucracies. The government buy-out of the mortgages and other provisions of the bail-out go a long way toward the ultimate goals of the socialists. There are those (often teachers here in the U.S.) who say that various non-communist countries in Europe are socialistic and that socialism is good. Actually, the European nations leaning toward socialism have not completed the cycle and are still evolving into what will become a government monopoly. And International Communism appears to be alive and well in the United States.
George Soros is supposedly the wealthiest man in the world, a socialist who wants a world government with himself in charge. Whether this is true or not, he funds various organizations which have leverage on other organizations which tend to hamstring free governments and to promote socialism. Soros was prosecuted for insider trading in France and was convicted but never punished. Putin is reputed to be the second wealthiest man in the world. Between Soros and Putin, it would easily be possible to manipulate the U.S. stock market in ways that hurt the U.S. economy - in fact Soros has done so in the past. On the program Huckabee on October 12, 2008, Governor Huckabee stated that for many days in the last half hour before the stock market was to close for the day, there was activity which manipulated the market adversely. Huckabee theorized that the stock market might be the victim of "economic terrorism". Perhaps Huckabee has a point.
Perhaps the best way to understand what has been happening in the United States since the McCarthy era is to read the books written by Saul Alinsky, Obama's "mentor" (Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals - available from Amazon). Alinsky had studied Marxism and Machiavelli's writings and had improved upon both so that Alinsky might be said to be a "Neo-Communist", a genius who had taken communism a step farther. On the first page of the Prologue in Rules for Radicals Alinsky writes: The revolutionary force today has two targets, moral as well as material. Its young protagonists are one moment reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also urge violence and cry, "Burn the system down!" They have no illusions about the system, but plenty of illusions about the way to change our world... They are now the vanguard, and they had to start almost from scratch. Few of us survived the Joe McCarthy holocaust of the early 1950s and of those there were even fewer whose understanding and insights had developed beyond dialectical materialism and orthodox Marxism...
In this we see that Alinsky has gone a step beyond orthodox Marxism and the violent approach to revolution. We also see that Joe McCarthy was correct in exposing the communists in our society for who and what they are. McCarthy's methods succeeded to a great extent, but was followed by a time when the communists went underground, infiltrated once again, and launched a campaign ridiculing McCarthy. McCarthy's methods are out of date today because most of the communists no longer call themselves communists and are, in fact, "Alinskyites". And these are much more difficult to root out, especially when they have infiltrated into almost every aspect of our society - our government, our schools, our media, and so forth.
We should thank Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid for what they have done to make us conscious of Alinsky and his methods. How kind of them to show us how they wish to remake our society and cause us to investigate Alinsky's writings. Obama as a presidential candidate focused us upon his past and caused us to find Alinsky as the root of the new communists. It is imperative that most of us read Alinsky's teachings so that we can effectively expose and counter those who use his methods to destroy our nation. Change? Alinsky's "change" meant to destroy the current organization so the a new organization could be established.
Also see Fascist Communist Tactics in the United States.
Post-election analysis has shown that it was the youth of America and the younger women who, without any pretense of common sense, voted Obama into the White House. This was due to generations of brainwashing (see Education) and Obama's charming lies.
China
According to an article in Scientific American (September 2008), RFID Tag - You're It, by Katherine Albrecht, the Chinese government is spending $6 billion to roll out radio frequency identification tags (RFID tags) which are national IDs for nearly one billion citizens and residents in China. Aldous Huxley's book, Brave New World, and George Orwell's book 1984 were written many years ago to attempt to depict the final stages of socialism - and China is following the path of Big Brother. On China's new ID cards will be all the personal information possible such as health and reproductive history, employment status, religious preference, ethnicity, and even the name and phone number of each cardholder's landlord. These cards will be forced upon the people with a stiff penalty for not having the card upon one's person. A radio signal triggers the card to send out a radio signal of its own, so that the Chinese government can see where every person is at any time. The signal also tells each inquiring official all about the cardholder. By controlling the populace in this manner, any kind of revolution - peaceful or otherwise - can be avoided. The article mentions measures being taken in the United States, both pro and con, regarding such RFID tags for U.S. citizens.
Back
2009 Venezuela
Hugo Chavez has arranged to have a third term as President in an election where Chavez owned the press, the courts, and the oil industry (which he "nationalized" from the U.S. companies) allowing him to use overwhelming funding for his campaign. He also used the carrot and the stick by paying some and punishing others. This was a typical election for a socialist or communist - similar in most respects to the one run in the United States by Barack Hussein Obama.
The United States
Neo-communist Obama has been inaugurated as President of the United States. His first major change is to ask for more dollars to be spent as a supposed economic bailout - and part of it will be spent to give dollars to the lower and middle economic classes as welfare. Even though this welfare is not needed, the real object of the welfare is to make the middle class dependent upon the government as socialism progresses in its take-over of the U.S. economy. Obama hopes that the greed and laziness will be triggered in the bulk of the working middle class. This is a move based upon Alinsky's teachings: (1) act with published motives that are not the real motives, (2) act in a manner that promotes something in which you do not believe at all, and (3) use the middle class as pawns as they are the source of power in the U.S. Dick Morris has referred to this last move as a "Trojan horse" by which we should not be fooled.
The bailout has already targeted the banks and lending agencies so that they will become a part of a government-owned monopoly. Every move is designed to make the people dependent upon the government. No private means to help the economy is being allowed in the communist-controlled legislation.
Taken from an e-mail being passed around. It is the opinion that is becoming most prevalent since B.O. took office.
I noted today that Senator McCain and numerous other elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, called upon America to unite behind President-Elect Obama. Well, I want to make it clear to all who will listen that I AM NOT uniting behind Obama! I will respect the Office which he holds, and I will acknowledge his abilities as an orator and wordsmith, BUT that is it. I have begun today to see what I can do to make sure that he is a one-term President!
Why am I doing this? It is because I do not share Obama's vision for America; I do not share his Pro-Choice beliefs; I do not share his radical Marxist's concept of re-distributing wealth; I do not share his stated views on raising taxes on those who make $150,000+ (the ceiling has been changed three times since August); I do not share his view that the military should be reduced by 25%; I do not share his views on homosexuality and his definition of marriage; I do not share his spiritual beliefs (at least the ones he has made public); I do not share his beliefs on how to re-work the healthcare system in America; I do not share his Strategic views of the Middle East, and certainly do not share his plan to sit down with terrorist regimes such as Iran.
Bottom line, my America is vastly different from Mr. Obama's, and I have a higher obligation to my Country and my God to do what is Right! For eight (8) years, the Liberals in our Society, led by numerous entertainers who would have no platform and no real credibility but for their celebrity status, have attacked President Bush, his family, and his spiritual beliefs! They have not moved toward the center in their beliefs and their philosophies, and they never came together nor compromised their personal beliefs for the betterment of our Country! They have portrayed my America as a land where everything is tolerated except being intolerant! They have been a vocal and irreverent minority for years; they have mocked and attacked the very core values so important to the founding and growth of our Country! They have made every effort to remove the name of God or Jesus Christ from our Society! They have challenged capital punishment, the right to bear firearms, and the most basic principles of our criminal code; they have attacked one of the most fundamental of all Freedoms, the right of free speech!
Unite behind Obama? Never! I am sure many of you who read this think that I am going overboard, but I refuse to retreat one more inch in favor of those whom I believe are the embodiment of Evil! President Bush made many mistakes during his Presidency, and I am not sure how history will judge him. However, I believe that he weighed his decisions in light of the long established Judeo-Christian principles of our Founding Fathers!!!
Majority rules in America, and I will honor the concept; however, I will fight with all of my power to be a voice in opposition to Obama and "his goals for America." I am going to be a thorn in the side of those who, if left unchecked, will destroy our Country!! Any more compromise is more defeat! I pray that the results of this election will wake up many Christians who have sat on the sidelines and allowed the Socialist-Marxist anti-God crowd to slowly change so much of what has been good in America!
Please join with me in this fight!
"Error of Opinion may be tolerated where Reason is left free to combat it."
- Thomas Jefferson"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's Will is - His good, pleasing and perfect Will."
The Holy Bible, (NIV), Romans 12:2God bless you and God bless our Country!!!"
Larry Sparks
2112 Camaro Lane
Hoover, AlabamaNovember 6, 2008
On January 26, 2009, Timothy Geithner was confirmed as the new Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Geithner was confirmed over the objections of the entire number of Republicans in the senate and three Democrats - who were not happy because Geithner had not paid all of his income tax for the last eight years and owed approximately $42,700. When Geithner realized that he was being considered for a cabinet post, he paid half of his owed taxes.
Geithner stated that he had merely overlooked what he owed even though the IRS had been telling him to pay for each of the last eight years. Obviously, Geithner was intentionally avoiding payment even though he stated otherwise. But on a lighter vein, as he heads the Internal Revenue Service, he may make policies that are sympathetic to people like himself who do not want to pay the IRS. Also, he may have been the only Democrat that Obama could find with such a "small" flaw. Perhaps Geithner can advise Congress to implement a better tax system since a better one has been much needed for many years.
January 30, 2009
Michael Steele was elected to head the Republican National Committee. Michael is a great choice for three reasons: (1) he is well qualified which includes an excellent mentality, (2) he wants to keep the Constitution as it is (no Marxist changes), and (3) he is black and cannot therefore be considered anti-black by those of the far left. We should be thankful for this as Michael is a strong, principled person who is not trying to please or cater to the communists in our political system.The votes in the House against an obviously communist "stimulus" package were not sufficient to stop the package from being adopted. However, all the Republicans voted against the package as well as eleven Democrats. This is a strong ray of hope because there are some Democrats who are not communists or what communists call "useful idiots". Perhaps this means that the Democratic Party can eventually be re-taken by the old-time Democrats who were pro-American and anti-Marxism. We need a two-party system if we are survive. A one-party system leads to bullying and domination.
Tom Daschle, a man who owed the IRS over $128,000 is B.O.'s pick for another cabinet post. Once chosen, Daschle paid his bill - this seems to be typical of B.O.'s choices. Perhaps these are the only ones B.O. can find who are so lacking in criminal tendencies.
Rush Limbaugh in an interview stated that if B.O. decided to do good things for America, Rush would hope that B.O. would succeed. However, if B.O.'s policies continued to smell like an unwashed armpit (actually Rush was kinder in his wording), Rush did not want B.O. to succeed. Of course, the American communists and their "useful idiots" took Rush's words out of context and began telling everyone that Rush wanted B.O. to fail - and they said more which was incorrect and dirty as usual.
As of February 4, 2009, Tom Daschle has withdrawn. The public outcry made he and his supporters realize that his dishonesty was too transparent. Geithner, who is merely another tax evader that is less than honest is guilty of nonpayment of a lesser amount. However he has not withdrawn. B.O. is busy trying to find a wealthy Democrat to put forth who will bend to his (B.O.'s) will and has actually paid his taxes. So we have a lying tax evader that will be our new Secretary of the Treasury.
Eric Holder who has always acted as it he were a friend of the Castro brothers in Cuba is still to be our new Attorney General. According to National Review, as Deputy Attorney General under Clinton, Holder was involved in the pardon of Marc Rich, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, who evaded arrest for racketeering, tax evasion, and trading with the enemy. Holder tried to pressure pressure prosecutors into negotiating with the fugitive's representatives, and then ran roughshod over his department's protocols and shielded Clinton from prosecutors' objections to a pardon - which Holder recommended. He also pushed through Clinton's 1999 commutations for several terrorists whose Puerto Rican organizations had carried out over 130 bombings in the U.S. Since B.O. was so friendly with other terrorists (Bill Ayres and his wife Bernardine Dohrn), it is logical that he would choose Holder.
On a brighter side, B.O. has stated that he wants to limit CEOs' salaries whose corporations share dollars from the bail-out - supposedly to $500,000 per year or less. And it looks like such CEOs will not be allowed golden parachutes. However, this will not affect those who already have their bail-out money.
Michelle Obama was hired by the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting". Her salary was raised in 2005 from $120,000 to $317,000 - at a time when B.O. (then a senator) requested a $1 million earmark for UC Medical Center. Since B.O. has a different job now, Michelle has resigned her position - yet, her vital position will now remain unfilled according the UC Medical Center. Other than attracting dollars for the hospital, what was her vital role?
The so-called stimulus package put forth mostly by Nancy Pelosi in the House has some very interesting things in it like:
a park for dogs
a shelter for prostitutes
dollars for the digital TV changeover
a national park
a frisbee golf course
and many, many more such wonderful things for the taxpayers to pay for. And we wonder how the democrats manage their budgets at home - what priorities they have. The spending package is just that - a way to break our economy. The Democrats (communists) want the bill passed very quickly before more people discover what is really in it. Alinsky, the guru for the Democratic communists, stated that to change to socialism, our free-enterprise society must be ruined. This is what Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are trying to do. If the spending package is approved, our grandchildren will probably be slaves under communism. Communists, socialists, progressives, whatever they call themselves, believe in the dictatorship of the state rather than the freedom of individuals.There are some worthy causes in the spending bill, but most of the bill is pork - and even the worthy causes are not things that will stimulate our economy. Instead, they should be voted upon as separate bills rather than porky earmarks on what was supposed to have been a stimulus bill. If the bill is passed, the inflation which will follow will tend to break more banks, make peoples' savings worth only a fraction of their value today, and devalue the American dollar on the world market so that the debts we owe other countries will be many times more than what they already are. And that will be only the beginning of our problems. B.O. is trying to scare the senators into passing the bill - but this is like telling folks to run because the house is burning down, but run into the fire.
Leon Panetta, Obama's new CIA chief, has about $700,000 worth of conflicts of interest from firms involved in national security who have paid him for his words and who will benefit from his expertise as the CIA director. It would appear that he has been bought.
If you want to know more about your President, click on Psychopathic Personalities. The information is there for those who can see and hear.
Obama's Goal
To render the Constitution, in it's present form, useless - either by acts of Congress which ignore the Constitution or by amendment. To cause the U.S. to become a communist rather than a free-enterprise nation - and subservient to a world government.
Obama's Strategy
1. To use only small ways of ruining the nation while projecting blame on others - and to do this until the election of 2012. This will help him to be re-elected.
2. To continue to aid Soros and the other anti-American billionaires in turning the United States political arrangement into essentially a single-party system - a vital necessity in communist nation.
3. After his re-election, he hopes to be able in some manner to become a virtual dictator by allowing himself to run for as manner terms as he wishes. If this fails, he hopes to have a puppet of his and Soros' elected - much as Putin has been doing in Russia.
4. In a short time, the United States will have become a communist nation under a world government as per Obama's handlers' plans and their major goal will have been attained.
Obama's Major Tactics
1. To continue to speak whenever possible at town meetings, on television, whatever so that B.O.'s primary tool of oratory can keep the people asleep and unaware of his true intentions.
2. To use ACORN and other communist organizations to influence the votes so that the communist Democrats (himself included) will win in the next election.
3. To continue to repeat useful lies because he believes (and perhaps rightly so) that a lie that is continually repeated will be cemented as "truth" in the minds of most Americans.
4. To continue to do things that he states being done for various noble reasons while actually being done for anti-American, underhanded, surreptitious reasons.
5. To make maximum use of the communist media in America to keep his popularity.
6. To push for "more and better" education so that more young Americans can be brainwashed into wanting a global communist world government.
February 9, 2009:
Obama had a townhall meeting and spoke on television, using fear as a means to extort support for the pork bill that he says has no earmarks. In this he is correct because the bill is largely pork and needs no earmarks - as most of what would have been earmarks was in the original bill. He also projected the "worst economic crisis since the great depression" as the result of the Bush administration. Actually, the socialist federal reserve, the government-supported lenders of housing loans, ACORN, the Democrat-controlled Congress, George Soros and the billionaire foundations, and B.O. himself with his scare tactics, are responsible for the recession and the depth of the recession. Whereas Franklin Roosevelt gave the people hope and incentive to hope during the great depression, Obama scares people into supporting a bill that is designed to kill the American economy in the long run so that our children and grandchildren will be virtual slaves. The townhall meeting was held in Elkhart, Indiana, the place which is second in the nation in unemployment. This was a means of dramatizing the anti-economy pork bill that the communist Democrats claim is a stimulus.
The pork bill was passed by the Senate after the communist Democrats bribed three Republicans to become turncoats and traitors - behind closed doors. So much for transparency in government. This is not the end because the House has to agree now and it may change something in the bill. The greatest problem with the bill is that it does nothing to cure the economic problems - instead, it spends money that future generations must pay - and it lowers the value of the American dollar in the international market which increases the actual size of our debts to other nations. Remember - B.O. has the goal of ruining our economy rather than helping it. This will be projected as a failure of capitalism so that the "useful idiots" in the nation will vote in socialism and eventually communism. Furthermore, attempting to borrow money from China again will either fail or present them with more of our dollars in the form of interest.
Meantime, Eric Holder, Obama's choice for Attorney General is doing his usual thing - taking the part of those against America. Guantanamo was set up to hold enemy prisoners of war who were anything but American citizens. They were either tried or to be tried by the military as has been the case in the past. The communist Democrats want them freed so that America will be attacked again. So now they will be tried by civilian courts with rights supposedly only given to U.S. citizens. The civilian courts are set up with different rules and the means of prosecution under those rules has largely been lost by now. Consequently, Eric Holder is using his post to see that evidence is thrown out as inadmissable under American civilian laws - and is insisting that the military charges be dropped so that new charges can be brought for trial as if these killers were American citizens. The result is that they will go free and kill again. This is typical of Holder's style in the past - he is the best defense attorney that anti-American killers can have - rather that a prosecuting attorney for the U.S.
Obama set up Judd Gregg as the Secretary of Commerce. : Gregg was a U.S. senator who was a well-entrenched incumbent. Losing him in the Senate would give the communist Democrats an edge that would eventually lead to a filibuster-proof Senate with the communist Democrats in charge. Gregg agreed if another Republican were to be in his place in the Senate. Another Republican was found but this time not an entrenched incumbent - instead, one that might have more trouble being elected in the next election. According to Obama, he was doing the Republicans a favor by placing one of them in his cabinet. But it goes farther than that. After the cabinet post for Gregg was established, one of the communist Democrat minions complained that Gregg would be bad for the communist Democrats. So Obama set it up for the census-taking to be administered in the White House rather than the Department of Commerce.
The census is supposed to be done by counting rather than estimating. Estimating can be manipulated by those doing the estimating. The Department of Commerce has always shown the methods used and let the public see how the process was being accomplished. The White House can be secretive and use methods designed to alter the votes from the electoral college as well as to place more government handouts in the hands of the communist Democrats while reducing help to Republican areas. By placing a Republican in as the head of the census and then using a another communist to complain about it, Obama has fixed it so the communists can have another nibble at our election system. It is best to remember what was once stated about psychopathic personalities. The most dangerous psychopaths from the standpoint of society as a whole are those who are not only intelligent and completely unscrupulous but also show sufficient self-control and purposefulness of behavior to achieve high political office.
A Few of the Communist Democrats' Antics Revealed
(How they get some of their money and ruin the U.S.
Taken from a list provided on the internet as e-mail.)1. Appointing Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner failed to pay the IRS $34,000 in back taxes during his employment at the International Monetary Fund regardless of his receiving extra compensation and explanatory brochures describing his tax liabilities.
2. Charlie Rangel, head of the tax-writing committee, did not report $75,000 on Costa Rican rental property.
3. Members of the House voted to give themselves $93,000 each of "petty cash" during the economic crisis.
4. Fannie Mae invested $133,900 in Chris Dodd, head of the Senate Banking Committee - supposedly to repel oversight of GSE prior to its meltdown - and $105,000 in Barack Obama when he was still a senator. Dodd also received $800,000 from Countrywide Financial, once the nation's largest mortgage lender and linked to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - whose meltdown was a trigger for the economic crisis. Countrywide was forced to pay $150,000,000 in mortgage assistance after a state investigation of its underwriting standards.
5. $1,000,000 is the estimated amount of donations to Democratic interests from the wife of Marc Rich and the Clinton Foundation. Rich was pardoned and the pardon was reviewed and blessed by Eric Holder, then Deputy Attorney General and now B.O. Attorney General.
6. Cabinet nominee, Tom Daschle was found to owe $140,000 in back taxes. He was found cheating on his income tax by failing to report $356,000.
7. TARP provided $12,000,000 to community bank One United regardless of the fact that it was "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses". Representative Maxine Waters who is a key contributor to the Fannie Mae meltdown is married to one of the ex-bank's directors.
8. $23,500,000 is the upper range of net worth for Representative Allan Mollahan which he acquired in four years through "tens of millions of dollars to groups associated with his own business partners".
9. House Appropriations Committee Chairman, David Obey, is earmarking $2,000,000,000 which is related to his son's lobbying efforts. Craig Obey, his son, is "a top lobbyist for the nonprofit group" that would receive approximately $2,000,000 from the "stimulus package.
10. Diane Feinstein's husband controls a company that has been awarded $3,700,000,000 in defense contracts. Despite this obvious conflict of interests, Diane Feinstein has been a member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee - and she has voted for appropriations worth billions for her husband's firm.
11. The "Stimulus" package contains $4,190,000,000 for ACORN, which is a communist group devoted to fraudulent elections and taking down the economy by forcing lenders to lend to those unable to pay back the loans.
12. The "Stimulus" package endangers U.S. exports worth $1,646,000,000 per year. This would help to finish ruining the U.S. economy and that of the world.
Universal Healthcare - 2009
It was discovered, after the "Stimulus" (spending) bill was passed by the predominantly communist U.S. Senate, that one of its provisions was for universal healthcare. The whole 647 page bill was presented originally in the House, then in the Senate, without time for anyone to adequately dig into it. It includes massive amounts of pork, much of it for the states that are primarily Democratic and none for the states that are primarily Republican. It was written surreptitiously behind closed doors as a means to put through every wish of the communists in our Congress. It was pushed through before anyone could discover the depth of its subterfuge.
One reason the old health insurance racket was never cleaned up by Congress was to make people want a new kind of healthcare system - one that the communists could use to forward their agenda. Communist legislation is almost never for incentives so that people want to do something. Instead, communism legislates for force to make people do something that is against their will.
The result of pushing through the spending bill - that will place the communists in a more powerful position and ruin our economy even further - is that Americans are beginning to realize that the communist triumverate (Pelosi, Reid, and Obama) cannot be trusted. Their true agenda is becoming even more apparent.
Universal healthcare as placed into law by the spending bill, forces everyone in the U.S. to have health care under the federal government. Under this plan, every health care provider must send the medical records of every one of their patients to the federal government. The federal government then decides who will be treated and who will not, what their treatment will be, when their treatment will be, who their doctors will be, and what facility will be used for their treatment.
On the surface this may sound just fine. Where it has been tried, it has often created a long line of recipients to be treated and treatment may or may not be of the quality desired. Furthermore, such a system creates a huge central power base (a government monopoly) which will be subject to the same politics found in any large bureaucracy and will cost more in taxes than even our current system. Such a huge bureaucracy creates many delays and problems that smaller, private systems do not. A huge black market in treatment will evolve very quickly under such a system. But the worst thing is that such a bureaucracy will eventually become a tool in the hands of the communists - to decide who lives and who dies, to blackmail and extort, and to keep track of where everyone is so that an American version of the KGB can find them.
Even if the current administration under Obama should strangely turn out to be benign, future administrations may not be. By choosing who can live and who can die, one can control which party is elected and which is not so that eventually there is a single-party system which is a dictatorship. With the new healthcare system, the government can know everything, including one's race, religion, political affiliation, income level, etc. This means that any of these known factors can be used to eliminate a segment of population by an administration headed by an individual who might want to eliminate a certain race, a certain religious group, a certain political group, or any other group that the leader deems to be a danger to him. The holocaust could happen all over again with different types of victims.
Other Comments
They got the airline pilots in 1991...now they will get the doctors ..
"But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners
For more on communism in the United States in 2009, see The Communist Triumvirate.
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IN CLOSING
This short history shows how international communism began - brutal events and practices which led to a totalitarian state. The totalitarian state, over many generations, led to a populace made largely of sheep who were fleeced by a few wolves who exercised power from a top that was largely insulated from the reality at the bottom. The last Russian revolution (1991) left a power vacuum that was eventually filled by essentially the same ones who had been overthrown. The paranoid wolves at the top executed the most creative people in their fear of losing their power.Today, communism is still in Russia as is the KGB. This is evidenced by the state taking over private industry once again, Putin taking more power, and Russia bullying the countries of the old USSR into becoming a second USSR.
When persuasion is implemented by force, political and civil rights are eventually non-existent or, when allowed, severely infringed. People are forcibly kept inside the country - while in a free country, such as the United States, people must be forcibly kept out.
Some people believe that the evolution of Russia and China will result in amiable relations. However, whether or not Russian leaders are becoming more friendly and less paranoid is irrelevant. It is irrelevant whether or not Russia and China move more toward capitalism or that the U.S move more toward socialism. It should be understood that the leaders of Russia and China, particularly, have a goal of world domination. The primary goal of their leaders remains the same while their methods become more sophisticated. They know that the majority of Americans are too complacent and stupid to see what they have been doing. They know that the majority of Americans become less educated and more brainwashed with each new generation so long as leftist agents remain in positions of power in American educational institutions and in the press.
Furthermore, the initial rise of communism saw communist parties and KGB clones breaking out all over the world. These parties and clones continue autonomously regardless of what happens in their parent countries. Communism (socialism) is seductive, promising a utopia to those who are either ill-educated or living in a state in which they are being abused. To look at a communist constitution in one of the countries that still have one, a person would think that the country would be a paradise where everyone is prosperous, content, and equal under the law. This is an illusion. The reality is what causes people to flee the communist oppression in the face of great odds and seek citizenship in true democratic republics.
The communists in the United States, whatever they call themselves, are an imminent threat to our way of life. They are the ones who want (1) government bureaucracies rather than private industry, (2) higher taxes to fund the bureaucracies, (3) laws as opposed to incentives, (4) removal of firearms from the people so that the communist/socialist elite can safely remain in power regardless of how obnoxious they become, (5) public control over children as opposed to parental control, (6) propaganda taught in schools rather than legitimate subjects, (7) media control for themselves alone, (8) atheism as opposed to religion of any kind, and (9) state ownership of all important industry and agriculture.
In a country like the United States, they move slowly and quietly (called soft revolution) to attain their goals a little at a time. They have been working on world communism since communism was called Bolshevism. They have succeeded in most of our colleges and universities in subverting our youth. They have managed to take most of Hollywood and the media in the U.S., allowing them to spew out socialist and anti-American propaganda. They have created laws that are unconstitutional and unfair.
One of their latest pieces of legislation (from the democrats, of course) prevents about one-quarter of combat veterans from owning firearms - the excuse is that these veterans were once treated for traumatic stress syndrome (combat fatigue). In fact, anyone who has ever been to a psychiatrist may be denied his or her rights under the second amendment. This is typical of the way the communist/socialist/democrats are taking away our rights under the constitution - always a little at a time so the frog does not know he is being boiled - always the rights of a small part of the population so that the majority who are unaffected will not protest. As one of the nation's forefathers once said, If we do not hang together, we will hang separately.
Socialism - No Longer in the Closet It is of vital concern that the American people (in fact people of all nations which are true democratic republics) awaken to what is happening in the country. Department A of the KGB, swarmed as clones long ago just as do killer bees. The clones are alive and well with different names, and one is in your neighborhood.
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