Reportage being what it is, it's best to follow the old-school reporter's adage: "Even if your mother says she loves you, fact-check it." This has been clear the last week with the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution that began the USSR [being on an older calendar, our November was their October]. Predictably, the Western press has nothing good to say about the Soviet Union and has reduced that long history to an aspect of Joseph Stalin's years as leader.
I did read one clever joke which goes like this:
The Soviet Union is founded and Lenin dies and goes to Hell. Soon after, the Devil becomes so agitated with Lenin trying to organize the doomed residents of Hell he calls God and asks for a trade, Lenin for God's worst angel. God makes the trade. Later on, the Devil calls God to see how things are going, but his call is answered by a bureaucrat Angel who tells the Devil "God doesn't exist."
Funny, but what the USSR did was serious. It took an exploited country in peonage and reorganized its resources to become a First-World Industrial country and "power". It did this despite a bank-imposed Western economic Depression of the 1930's and invasions by the capitalist West. Keep that in mind: while the US and UK witnessed bread lines and a shrinking of available money, this backward, mystical Czarist-ruled country was building factories, universities, and seeing the first rural to urban migration of an educated cadre of people.
Enter Stalin in the Western nightmare. Since we cannot focus on the achievements of the USSR during these years, AND LEARN FROM THEM, Uncle Joe is trotted out as a tyrant and murderer of millions of people, period.
Can you hear the liberals and conservatives howl if "I" were to reduce the US Revolution to the slaughter of millions of Native Americans? The Native Americans got in the way of Western imperial expansion. As Primo Levi would say, those who could not be complicit, perished. So too in Stalin's years: how many of us know people stuck in their old ways and who refuse - as Che put it - to be "housebroken"? Stalin exterminated them for holding on to their peonage and peonage values, and this is just as cruel. But just as our liberals and conservatives would say US history is more complicated than just bleeding the lives of Natives, the USSR's is too.
When I worked at San Francisco's YMCA - one of the best jobs I have ever had - I met many Russian retirees who were patrons. They were very proud of what the USSR did and the technical education it afforded them. They would always introduce themselves as Russians who had post-doctoral degrees in [fill in the blank].
Similarly, at the end of the Ibero-American Summit in Chile, Spain's king told President Hugo Chavez to shut up. Predictably, this was badly reported. Of course, the end of the story is King Juan Carlos hailed a hero in Europe for "putting Chavez in his place." No irony here, which should remind us that Spain is still part of Europe.
The reports I read from the BBC and the Miami Herald reported that Chavez called former Spanish PM a "a fascist," and current PM Zapatero interrupted to ask for more civility. Chavez persisted, and the king stepped in using the verb tense you would use with a child "Why don't you shut up?" No mention that Aznar was behind backing the coup against Chavez's elected government. The BBC and Miami Herald are silent on this. Chavez, like Stalin, cannot be credited with sanity or achievement, only insanity.
I did read one clever joke which goes like this:
The Soviet Union is founded and Lenin dies and goes to Hell. Soon after, the Devil becomes so agitated with Lenin trying to organize the doomed residents of Hell he calls God and asks for a trade, Lenin for God's worst angel. God makes the trade. Later on, the Devil calls God to see how things are going, but his call is answered by a bureaucrat Angel who tells the Devil "God doesn't exist."
Funny, but what the USSR did was serious. It took an exploited country in peonage and reorganized its resources to become a First-World Industrial country and "power". It did this despite a bank-imposed Western economic Depression of the 1930's and invasions by the capitalist West. Keep that in mind: while the US and UK witnessed bread lines and a shrinking of available money, this backward, mystical Czarist-ruled country was building factories, universities, and seeing the first rural to urban migration of an educated cadre of people.
Enter Stalin in the Western nightmare. Since we cannot focus on the achievements of the USSR during these years, AND LEARN FROM THEM, Uncle Joe is trotted out as a tyrant and murderer of millions of people, period.
Can you hear the liberals and conservatives howl if "I" were to reduce the US Revolution to the slaughter of millions of Native Americans? The Native Americans got in the way of Western imperial expansion. As Primo Levi would say, those who could not be complicit, perished. So too in Stalin's years: how many of us know people stuck in their old ways and who refuse - as Che put it - to be "housebroken"? Stalin exterminated them for holding on to their peonage and peonage values, and this is just as cruel. But just as our liberals and conservatives would say US history is more complicated than just bleeding the lives of Natives, the USSR's is too.
When I worked at San Francisco's YMCA - one of the best jobs I have ever had - I met many Russian retirees who were patrons. They were very proud of what the USSR did and the technical education it afforded them. They would always introduce themselves as Russians who had post-doctoral degrees in [fill in the blank].
Similarly, at the end of the Ibero-American Summit in Chile, Spain's king told President Hugo Chavez to shut up. Predictably, this was badly reported. Of course, the end of the story is King Juan Carlos hailed a hero in Europe for "putting Chavez in his place." No irony here, which should remind us that Spain is still part of Europe.
The reports I read from the BBC and the Miami Herald reported that Chavez called former Spanish PM a "a fascist," and current PM Zapatero interrupted to ask for more civility. Chavez persisted, and the king stepped in using the verb tense you would use with a child "Why don't you shut up?" No mention that Aznar was behind backing the coup against Chavez's elected government. The BBC and Miami Herald are silent on this. Chavez, like Stalin, cannot be credited with sanity or achievement, only insanity.
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