Future Gulags - Part III

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.) 

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].

Yes, Stalin died in 1953, probably helped along on his journey by those tired of his capriciously deadly ways. 

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.

Gulags, Past and Present

Note: This post is the first of several that will address a book first published almost 50 years ago and its author's prophetic insights into our world today.  

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As usual, I’m involved in re-reading a book I first read years ago. It’s one of those books that many people bought because it received so much publicity when it first appeared, and they thought it would look good on their bookshelves. Written by a Nobel laureate, it was, however, non-fiction, quite long, and filled with pages of tedious, highly disturbing facts...so most of those who bought it never actually read it. This is a shame since it offers a detailed description of the blueprint followed by totalitarians of the left and the right once they take the reins of political power. 

The book? Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Its three volumes have been published in paperback editions, but the first two volumes are also available in a single hardcover. For those who might balk at reading this long work in its original entirety, an authorized abridged edition has been published. My copy Is the hardcover edition containing the unabridged Volumes 1 and 2, which I purchased shortly after it was first published back in 1973. Just an FYI: here’s a link to a used copy of the edition I own: The Gulag Archipelago. I’m sure you can find other, newer, and less expensive editions.

Before he turned his talents to researching and documenting the history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union’s brutal treatment of its own citizens by Lenin, Stalin, and their toadies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was already a highly respected best-selling novelist. His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) gives us a glimpse of the horrors of the Siberian Gulag by telling the story of one man's struggle against the dehumanizing evils of Soviet communism. Among his other novels, I managed to read In the First Circle (1968), Cancer Ward (1968), and August 1914 (1971). As I recall, I read all of these novels while at sea during my Navy years. There was no TV aboard ship and certainly no Internet in those days, so when I wasn’t working, flying, sleeping, or eating, I could usually find an hour or two to read.

But it was Solzhenitsyn's great non-fiction work, The Gulag Archipelago, that for me had its greatest impact. It's one thing to read a work of fiction, even one based on and reflecting historical realities, but it's quite another to encounter the lives and deaths of thousands of real people with real names and real families, human beings devoured by a system of almost unspeakable evil. 

Both historian and prophet, Solzhenitsyn’s painstaking research presents his readers with the reality of communist ideology brought to life...or, perhaps more accurately, to death. He pulls no punches, and as we read we encounter the logical consequence of atheistic materialism, the culmination of a socialism that denies the sanctity of life and deifies the state. Solzhenitsyn bares the truth of the communist state as a cruel, demanding, capricious, and unforgiving god. In 1985 he summed it all up:

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then, I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by the upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as precisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

To read The Gulag Archipelago is to come to the undeniable conclusion that communism is nothing less than Satanic. And the sad truth is that so-called “democratic socialism” too often chooses to follow a similar path because to maintain its grip on political power socialist governments demand universal acceptance. Those who disagree must be silenced, one way or another.

I was led to turn once again to Solzhenitsyn's book after listening to some rather shrill comments made by Biden administration folks, some members of Congress, media pundits, and others who seem to have embraced rather unsettling approaches to dealing with their political opponents. Some examples:

• President Joe Biden seemed to dismiss the Islamist terrorism that has threatened our civilization over that past few decades, and decided to focus instead on "domestic terrorism" by means of executive order. By this, of course, he doesn't mean the months of destructive attacks, the riots, and the deaths perpetrated by far left groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. No, the president is focused on supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump...you know, that collection of a few hundred January 6 wackos accused of trying to overthrow the government by means of an unarmed insurrection. Interestingly, beginning the day of his inauguration, Antifa and its allies have been rioting every night, continuing to work their destructive ways in our cities, but we hear not a word about it from the Biden administration. One gets the impression that the only folks deemed to be "terrorists" are conservative political opponents of Joe Biden.
  

• David Atkins, newly elected as a California member of the Democratic National Committee, told his Democrat colleagues to "start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan" so that we can "deprogam 75 million people" -- presumably speaking of Trump voters. Of course, such deprogramming can succeed only if its targets (victims?) are denied access to their usual sources of news and information. In other words, deprogramming demands a significant degree of censorship and the elimination of the Constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, among others. 

• Shortly before election day, Keith Olberman, former MSNBC anchor, let loose with another of his mindless rants:

"Trump must be defeated...and his enablers, and his supporters...must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society." 

Heavens! All 75 million of them? He advocates prosecuting American citizens for supporting and voting for a particular candidate. Olbermann’s a very scary guy, but fortunately I don’t think too many people actually listen to him...one hopes.

• Washington Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin, a "Never Trumper" who labels herself a Republican, used Twitter to tell the world that any of those Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results must be disqualified from public office and ostracized from society:

"Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into 'polite' society."

Personally, I really don't think I'd want to be accepted into Rubin's idea of polite society. It sounds horribly impolite. It also begs the question: What about all those Democrats who rejected the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections? How about it, Jennifer, can we eject them from your polite society too? Oh, wait a minute...that would probably include you.

• Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) believes that all Trump voters should automatically be suspects for a domestic terrorist attack and should be looked at by law enforcement. Cohen was especially concerned about all those National Guardsmen who probably voted for Turmp and were assigned to protect the Capitol. Can you imagine? We must protect the nation from all those conservative, patriotic, military folks who risked their lives to protect Steve Cohen and the rest of us from the global terrorist threat because...well, they might morph into domestic terrorists.  

• And then the nation — OK, just a tiny slice of the nation — watched Katie Couric (I really didn’t know she was still around) on Bill Maher’s HBO show as she jumped on the “deprogram the conservatives” bandwagon: 

“I mean, it’s really bizarre, isn’t it, when you think about how AWOL so many members of Congress have gotten. But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the Internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie...And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.” 

For Katie and her friends, to disagree with them on policy or candidates is to commit a political mortal sin, one that demands repentance and conversion, apparently by interventionist means if necessary.

• Finally, we have Michael Beller, a staff PBS attorney, who not only suggested tossing Molotov cocktails at the Trump White House, and added:

“We go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away...We’ll put them into the re-education camps.” 

His comments, which were recorded and leaked by a conservative group, were so over the top that PBS actually fired him...at least for now.

I could offer dozens more, but these suffice to make my point. Reading them calls me back to Solzhenitsyn as he describes many of the attitudes that led to the horrific reality of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. More on that in my next post.

Another Churchill Book?

I can't imagine any twentieth-century statesman who's been the subject of more books than Winston Churchill. Scrolling through the results of a quick Amazon search will keep you busy for hours. I've probably read at least a dozen of the popular and not-so-popular Churchill biographies and more than a few of the fifty-plus books he authored, so I really didn't think the world needed another book on the man. And then, quite accidentally, I stumbled on a review of a book written by Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College. The rather long title of Arnn's book -- Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government -- sums up its contents well. Published late last year, the book focuses on Churchill's lifelong battles with the enemies of free, constitutional government. 

Churchill battled Hitler and his Nazis, the Soviet communism of Stalin and his brutal successors, and the West's foolish and ongoing dalliance with so-called democratic socialism. Churchill realized that democratic socialism would inevitably evolve into a form of authoritarianism that renounced both democracy or the rule of law. He witnessed the beginnings of this downward slide in his own nation just as we are witnesses to it in the United States today. Churchill didn't hesitate to share what he thought of socialism and socialists. In 1945, addressing the House of Commons, he said:

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

And then, in a 1948 speech in Perth, Australia, he said:

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

Churchill failed in life as often as he succeeded, perhaps more often, but one gets the sense that he saw failure as just another path to eventual success. 

He saw himself as a man with a mission, a sacred mission not just to save his nation but to save Western civilization from the evils that surrounded it. This motivated him to persevere in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.This attitude shines through in his "finest hour" speech, delivered on June 18, 1940 in the House of Commons. He concluded his address with these words:

"Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

During World War Two he was able to infect the British people with this same determination. He moved them to dig deeply into their national soul and respond to evil with an almost superhuman degree of courage and grit. Imagine hearing these words in June 1940, when things looked darkest:

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

He certainly had a way with words, didn't he? But perhaps his most famous words were heard on May 13, 1940 when he gave his first speech as Prime Minister before the House of Commons:

"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

Below I've included an audio recording of portions of this and another speech. I hope you enjoy them.

Read Larry Arnn's book and come to know why so many consider Winston Churchill the greatest statesman of modern times.