I could go on and on writing about Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and its remarkable blend of the historical and the prophetic, but you need only open the book yourself, give it a read, and measure his portrayal of the reality of Soviet socialism against the guile and hatred expressed by today's leftists who, like their Soviet mentors, crave power above all else. You don't need me to point this out.
But because I'm on kind of a roll, in this last post on the subject I'll just leave you with a few more of Solzhenitsyn's observations that particularly struck me as I reread the book over 40 years after my first reading.
The Usefulness of the Mob. Let me begin by starting a truth about the lack of truth: the left must always lie. In fact, the lie is perhaps their primary rhetorical tool. Because their ideas are bankrupt and have led consistently to failure, the left cannot justify or even support them through rational argument or in a debate. And so, they lie. They lie repeatedly and loudly, and they do so in concert; i.e., they all join in to ensure we all hear it. Bombarded with the lie from every direction, the uninformed and unthinking begin to believe it.
Stalin realized the mob could be useful in spreading the lie, because the mob, all screaming the same thing, provided a public legitimacy to useful lies. To this end his minions created mobs to storm the streets and shout the lie.
Solzhenitsyn offers an example related to the famines that struck the Russian people and led to so many deaths. Of course, the famines resulted directly from Stalin's policies, but that truth could not be admitted. He, therefore, found convenient scapegoats, and before the predetermined court verdict mobs were formed:
The workers and employees wrathfully voted for the death penalty for the scoundrels on trial. And by the time of the Promparty trail, there were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even schoolchildren). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: "Death! Death! Death!" [GA, p. 48]
Yes, the people demand it! And the "newspaper march" indicates how useful it can be for those in power when they also control every media outlet.
Today many of our cities continue to be plagued by the rule of the mob, mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter supporters, a mob that strikes fear into the hearts of weak, leftist officials. And so, these mayors and governors dishonestly label the mob's destruction and murder as "peaceful protest" and then cave to their demands. The media, of course, ignores it all because the chaos comes from the left. It wasn't until the January 6 debacle at the Capitol that the media rose to the occasion and sharpened its pens to attack the rightist wackos who accomplished nothing. But the left and the media screamed: "Insurrection!" These "Trumpers" were obviously planning to overthrow the government. Exactly how they could accomplish this has never been explained.
I guess mobs are handy things, but it really depends on whose mob it is.
Crush Them All. Solzhenitsyn, in a masterful description of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of 1926 [GA, p. 60-67], shows his readers how this all-encompassing code could, in effect, convict anyone of anything or of nothing. For example, the interpretation of Section 10 of Article 58 was particularly broad. It stated:
Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of the Soviet power...and equally the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content [GA p. 66].
In describing Section 10's application, we are told:
The scope of "agitation containing an appeal" was enlarged to include face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. The word "appeal" could mean personal advice... "Subverting and weakening" the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken..."preparation of literary materials" covered every letter, note, or private diary...Thus, happily expanded, what thought was there, whether merely in the mind, spoken aloud, or jotted down, which was not covered by Section 10 [GA, p. 66].
Interestingly, Article 58 also treated the murder of a Party activist far more seriously than the murder of an ordinary citizen. Solzhenitsyn explains:
If a husband killed his wife's lover, it was very fortunate for him if the victim turned out not to be a Party member; he would be sentenced under Article 136 as a common criminal, who was a "social ally" and didn't require an armed escort. But if the lover turned out to have been a Party member, the husband became an enemy of the people with a 58-8 sentence [Article 58, Section 8 would likely result in execution instead of receiving a 10-year prison sentence. GA p.65]
Solzhenitsyn sums it well up by quoting the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:
And he who sings not with us today
is against
us!
They go on to arrest the innocent, especially those who innocently speak the truth. Indeed, the very concept of guilt or innocence are "out of date concepts" that mean absolutely nothing. It's all related to the "social prophylaxis" mentioned in my previous post (Future Gulags -- Part II). One wasn't arrested for what one had done, but for what one might do. At the end of World War II, those Soviet citizens who had lived under German invading forces were given 10-year sentences, just as captured Soviet soldiers who were POWs were sent to prison for at least 10 years after they were liberated.
Solzhenitsyn also mentioned Stalin’s apparent willingness to learn from Hitler when it came to Jews. Like his other internal targets, the innocence of Jewish citizens was ignored because of their “social origin” and their religion with its international presence. To be “cosmopolitan” was to be anti-Soviet, and a crime in itself. Solzhenitsyn describes another “wave” of arrests, this time of Jews.
During the last years of Stalin's life, a wave of Jews became noticeable. (Form 1950 on they were hauled in little by little as cosmopolitanites. And that was why the doctors' case was cooked up. It would appear that Stalin intended to arrange a great massacre of the Jews.)
Yes, Stalin died in 1953, probably helped along on his journey by those tired of his capriciously deadly ways.But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him -- apparently with the help of human hands -- to depart from his rib cage [GA, p. 92].
Sadly, those who aide and abet the ideological left forget or have never thought about all of this. Once the revolutionary left seizes power, the first ones they come after are usually the liberals, those who helped them get there. These are the most dangerous, the ones who know too much, the ones who must be silenced, must be crushed. I’ve written about this in another post (Madness Rising) describing the dozen years preceding the 1917 Revolution.
It's All About Power and Evil. Solzhenitsyn addresses the first, as the motivator, and the second, and the underlying attitude.
Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote [GA, p. 147].
And speaking specifically of those in the Soviet Security Services, those who had near-ultimate power over others, he writes:
You have a power over all the people in that military unit, or factory, or district, incomparably greater than that of a military commander, or factory director, or secretary of the district Communist Party. These men control people's military or official duties, wages, reputations, but you control people's freedom [GA, p. 148].
As for the presence of evil and its perception by those captivated by it, Solzhenitsyn rejects the usual depictions of evildoers found in literature, citing Shakespeare, Dickens, and Schiller:
The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers...Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate...Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short of a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. [GA, p. 173]
Rejecting these literary evildoers, Solzhenitsyn then describes the very different kind of evil driven by ideology:
But no; that’s not the way it is. To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. [GA, p.173]
Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors...Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, not passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed those millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago. [GA, p. 174]
Only the ideologue can take an active part in the slaughter of millions and do so willingly and without remorse because his ideology justifies it. This is the danger of ideology, whether of the left or right. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Xi Jinping, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jung-un, and so many others, including their thousands of followers, are happy to kill entire populations so long as it supports their ideological ends. Ideology permits anything. In the same way the pro-abortion zealots — who perpetrate the lie by calling themselves “pro-choice” — inevitably align politically with leftist ideologues. As I have often stated, someone who supports abortion will support absolutely any evil.
Enough!
Read Solzhenitsyn as he describes the last century and learn about the century we’re facing today. And as you read, pray for our world and its conversion. Only the hand of God can heal us.
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