Left Anticommunism

by **proldic** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 3:49 pm

From Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism (1997 City Lights) by Michael Parenti Chapter 3 Left Anticommunism In the US, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were being intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were malicious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was oppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regimes’ atheist ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the US played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disenfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gains power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum. Genuflection to Orthodoxy Many on the US Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements” and “ then beat people into submission…You start out as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the Right…We’re seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and are enthusiastic free-marketers and praising Americans” Chomsky’s imagery is heavily indebted to the same US corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of “communist thugs” who merely wanted power rather than the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not ‘very quickly” switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than 70 years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union’s waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to the capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin’s violent repression of the Russian Parliament in 1993. Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power-hungry Reds who pursue power for powers sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and the powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed. For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the US have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist left. Adam Hotschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lacka- daisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility”. In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in cold war condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of being communist. If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchunters. Purging the left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some 12 unions were expelled from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late ‘40’s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations. The strategy did not work. The ADA and others on the left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those ton the right. Then and now, many in the left have failed to realize that those that fight for social change on behalf of the less-privileged elements of society will be red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communist or not. Even when attacking the right, left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anti-communist credentials….while professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and of the Left”, individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given US leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote. A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of WWII, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that “a willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is THE test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous.” Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Stalinist hordes. Sorely lacking within the US Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades since the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish – while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world... Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by the masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington, Vermont, in 1971. the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words). Slinging Labels Those of us who refused to join the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists”, even if we dislike Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the left we refused to uncritically swallow US media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on Left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did. Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most US leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participating in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration. That many US leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin’s writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the “Leninist” label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and run their countries by force, and that is an idea that is appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power’s sake. When it comes to Red- bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound no better than the worst on the Right. At the time of the 1996 bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: “Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize.” US media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in Parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful; revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists. Lenin constantly dealt with the problem of avoiding the two extremes of liberal bourgeois opportunism and ultra-left adventurism. Yet he himself is identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left. Whether Lenin’s approach to revolution is desirable or even relevant today is a question that warrants critical examination. But a useful evaluation is not likely to come from people who misrepresent his theory and practice (See The State and Revolution; “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder; What is to Be Done?, and various articles and statements still available in collected editions. See also John Ehrenberg’s treatment of Marxism-Leninism in his The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Marxism’s Theory of Socialist Democracy [Routledge 1992]). Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=proldic@rigorousintuition>proldic</A> at: 11/23/05 4:14 pm

by **proldic** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 3:57 pm

From Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism (1997 City Lights) by Michael Parenti Chapter 3 Left Anticommunism, continued Pure Socialism vs Siege Socialism The upheavals of Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some US leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism”, or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world – as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize. First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West, as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like moist other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most US leaders possess. The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the US press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement that sported a sauna, indoor pool, and fitness center shared by all the residents. They could also shop in stores that carried Western goods. The US press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though not usually of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent lifestyles enjoyed buy the Western plutocracy. Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for personal gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and ;lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the US, the spread between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1. Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance. Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India. All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free- market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the US. But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of h history. It compares an ideal argument against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage. The pure socialist’s ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how internal attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed. The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power, There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution. The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism – not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience – could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historical juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the philosopher Carl Shames argued: “How do the left critics know that the fundamental problem was the ‘nature’ of the ruling revolutionary parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this ‘nature’ come from? Was this ‘nature’ disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it?….Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation of existing communist societies, the positive of ‘socialism’ and the negative of ‘bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny’ interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life.”…. To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, a ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of the production without the benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this workers syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the US-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on an national scale. Decentralization vs Survival For a revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces neccissitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to everyone’s liking. Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in towns across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The King had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-equipped troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself sovereign…acting on [their] own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack against the bourgeoisie forces.” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.” Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency – which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-1920, 14 capitalist nations invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolshevik’s siege psychology… Thus, in 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to…factional groups within the party. “The time has come to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” In short , he became anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution – like every other – that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way. By the late 1920’s, the Soviets faced a choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agricultural collectivization and full-speed industrialization…the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy among the various Soviet Republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base. The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane, and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked on a r rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of invasion from the West. Stalin’s prophecy that the USSR had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced 1000’s of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviet citizens who perished in the war, and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward. All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the eventual suppression of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all cultural life, and the mass deportation of “suspect” nationalities. The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista officer noted that Nicaraguans were not “a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, US-sponsored military war. She bemoaned the fact that the war had forced her country to put off much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola, and numerous other countries in which US-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmland, villages, health centers, power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousand – the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. That reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society. The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the US Left would d be free from the yoke of existing communism. In fact, the capitalist restoration in Easter Europe seriously weakened the numerous third-world liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union, and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with US global counterrevolutionaries around the globe. In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins puts it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay”. Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism, and having perceived communism as nothing but unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.

by **AnnaLivia** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:30 pm

Ya know what, proldic? If you’re not careful, you’re gonna convince me that “The answer is, there IS an answer”. (and just when I was about to buy the t-shirt that says: “I feel so much better, now that I’ve given up all hope”) Now if only you could tell me we won’t run out of time to fix all this mess! (nah, I don’t ask for much, eh?) Not a perfect answer, but at least one a hell of a lot better than what’s got us by the throat today. (and I doubt you’d disagree that even just sanely restrained capitalism would beat the hell out of what we’ve got. Yes, I know you’d tell me it would eventually grow right back into what we’ve got. I AM paying attention, dude. But it ain’t, unfortunately, “just add water and PRESTO…instant wisdom”) I’d be a fucking genius if I hadn’t been taught so many things that aren’t true. (and I’m so average it makes me believe lots of other people would be, too.) I know you know that I’ve fully recognized that unrestrained capitalism is killing us all, and my own opposition to communism is not because I bought into the “nasty boogeyman is gonna get ya” thang. I’ve just thought communism is as easy to corrupt as any other system, and I wish to avoid concentrating power in any form, any more than necessary. Same like I want every right reserved to individuals that can be preserved, while still keeping the good of the society as a whole preserved. See again that American Indian philosophy. Theirs was a system of both communistic well-being for all, while the “government” sat lightly on the people. Balance, balance, balance in all things could be my motto, I guess. We’ve sure gotten far from the great things the Iroquois League taught us… I’m always saying that no such thing as a perfect system exists, and that any system humans can create, humans can also get around, so that’s why the line about the price of liberty being constant vigilance. Anyway, I’m rambling, but I gotta thank you really big for putting this up. Sometimes I wonder how I got to be my age, without this stuff EVER crossing my radar screen. This piece sure is a ton of great food for thought!! Is there a history teacher in all of America who knows this stuff, I wonder? this really is like finding a puzzle piece under the table that you didn't even know was missing yet.

by **Dreams End** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:45 pm

In your other post got lost the idea that the present day "neo-cons" are actually a creation of the intelligence community which grew out of a community of just such leftist anti-Soviet intellectuals. This explains why the move from Trotskyites to neo-con was, in fact, logical, in a twisted kind of way. Their overall purpose is the same, just a different mission. And, when the neo-cons get sacrificed to the wolves by the coming cia "counter-coup" they will have served a double purpose. I'd like to see more research into this, if this thread doesn't get sidetracked like the other one....or maybe this post of mine is sidetracking....

by **Qutb** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:48 pm

There's no doubt that the fall of communism has been an unmitigated disaster for the old East Bloc countries. For the majority of the population, anyway. The population of Russia has actually been shrinking, because the average Russian dies at an increasingly young age. In East Germany, unemployment has gone from 0% to 20% in 15 years. East Germans I know say many are nostalgic about the GDR years and deeply disappointed with what reunification has brought them. Crime, violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, prostitution, sex trade/human trafficking, and extremism (neo-Nazism, xenophobia, satanism even) have all become increasingly commonplace all over Eastern Europe, an inevitable consequence no doubt of the unleashing of almost unrestrained market forces and the resulting social divisions. And perhaps of the loss of the sense of "community", inculcated and sort of compulsory, for sure, but missed nonetheless in the colder new society of the Bundesrepublik. As one of my friends put it, "people used to be nicer to their neighbors". But I don't want to idealize the old Soviet Bloc too much either. I remember driving into East Berlin in 1990, and how big the difference in the standard of living was from West Germany. And I think post-WWII West Germany had a pretty decent social model, which has of course been under attack since reunification while the EU internal market and economic globalization have taken away many of the good industrial jobs. I know a few (ex-)Yugoslavs too, both Serbs and Muslims, and they're for the most part equally nostalgic about the Tito era. If you think Christians and Muslims can't live together in peace, that a "multi-cultural" society can't work, socialist Yugoslavia disproves that. (anecdote: in Croatia a few years ago, during the Kosovo war in fact, I met a relative of a Serb friend of mine who used to play in Tito's "court orchestra". He told me Tito used to come visit them (the musicians) every so often after practice and they would drink and sing old partisan songs together, apparently he was as unpretentious a state leader as there possibly could be)

by **robertdreed** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:01 pm

"If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was oppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regimes’ atheist ideology." Not so fast, Michael Parenti. I think we both know that there's more to case than that: <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/anti_rel.html">www.ibiblio.org/expo/sovi...i_rel.html</a> "...Anti-Religious Campaigns The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. By 1939 only about 500 of over 50,000 churches remained open. After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. Campaigns against other religions were closely associated with particular nationalities, especially if they recognized a foreign religious authority such as the Pope. By 1926, the Roman Catholic Church had no bishops left in the Soviet Union, andby 1941 only two of the almost 1,200 churches that had existed in 1917, mostly in Lithuania, were still active. The Ukrainian Catholic Church (Uniate), linked with Ukrainian nationalism, was forcibly subordinated in 1946 to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of Belorussia and Ukraine were suppressed twice, in the late 1920s and again in 1944. Attacks on Judaism were endemic throughout the Soviet period, and the organized practice of Judaism became almost impossible. Protestant denominations and other sects were also persecuted. The All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, established by the government in 1944, typically was forced to confine its activities to the narrow act of worship and denied most opportunities for religious teaching and publication. Fearful of a pan-Islamic movement, the Soviet regime systematically suppressed Islam by force, until 1941. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union that year led the government to adopt a policy of official toleration of Islam while actively encouraging atheism among Muslims..." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_settlements_in_the_Soviet_Union">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inv...viet_Union</a> "A number of religious sects ( such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Truly Orthodox Christians, Innokentians ("èííîêåíòüåâöû"), Adventists-Reformists ) were outlawed for their violation of the Soviet law "On the Separation of Church from the State and the School from the Church". In particular, these sects forbade their members to join the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol, or to serve in Soviet Army. Usually members of these sects and especially their leaders were subject to criminal law and treated on case-by-case basis. However on March 1, 1953, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree, "On Expulsion of Active Participants of the anti-Soviet Illegal Sect of Jehovists and their Family Members". According to this decree, about 9,400 Jehovah's Witnesses, including about 4,000 children, were resettled from the Baltic States, Moldova, and western parts of Belarus and Ukraine in 1951. In 1954, a decree of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers cancelled the "special settlement" restriction for members of these sects..." If you don't like those sources, I have others <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22religious+persecution%22+%22Soviet+Union%22+ussr&btnG=Search">www.google.com/search?hl=...tnG=Search</a> If you think I'm giving the USSR a bad rap, feel free to respond with your own links in responce.

Left Anticommunism

Left Anticommunism

Pure Socialism vs Siege Socialism

class is in session

Re: class is in session

Re: class is in session

class is in session: the Soviet Union and religion

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