68 years ago today, the largest war in history began

[knight66]

Not so sure that Stalin was the only one to confront Hitler. Remember there was the pact they had together that allowed Stalin some land grabs of his own. Eventually Stalin confronted Hitler by throwing millions of his people into certain death and operating a scorched earth policy. He was as brutal with his own people as he was towards his enemy.

The allies were much more careful not to go down the cannon fodder route and I think it fair to say that a number faced Hitler down. What do you think D day and the subsequent months was all about?

However, by 1956 I believe there was no stomach for yet more war in Europe. So, then indeed, the new Stalin got his way.

Mike

[Sarastro]

I am curious about "the positive" aspects of Communism: is there anyone of them that would have not been achieved had Communism never took over this or that country?

Oddly enough, my ethics teacher here, in the US, told us that communism would have been the best system ever, had it not been for the human greed and desire to possess.

Many people (like you) instantly connect socialism to Stalinism, which was neither communism nor socialism, but rather a total abuse of power and the desire to spread his rule over neighboring regions. It only bore the name of "socialism," whereas it was not. Note that many European countries, Canada, and Singapore are mixed economies (a mixture of capitalism and socialism). Besides, social democratic parties are dominant in the UK, second-placed in Italy, Germany, and Sweden. Sweden by far has the higher standard of living. In a socialist society you are taken care of and are not left without a job. One of the suggested flaws of socialism is that you can not actually become extremely rich. But this is not true, just look at the founder of IKEA, a Swede. Besides, I haven't hear of any major economic crises in Europe over the past sixty years.

As we all saw last fall, free market economy can not exist on its own. Well, it can, but how long might it take to self-heal? The unemployment rate in California is 11.6%, or somewhat over 4 million people. I bet you wouldn't want to be one of those poor fellows who have degrees but can not find a job. Some of them are so desperate that they shoot their families and themselves. It is clear by now that the government has to step in and to a certain extent regulate the economy. Mr.Obama seems to understand this, ans his new reforms are quite socialist. As for Europe, the world economic meltdown did not strike it as hard, since it is more socialist. One more difference is that socialist countries provide free education and medical assistance for the people. In the American model you have to pay for everything yourself. I wanted to start a little argument about which model is better, but it seems that both are flawed , so I'd rather wrap up. There are just people who love independence, and there are people who favor socialist views... can't do anything with it.

Again, it is understandable that you react on the word "socialism" in such a way, but it is a purely economical model, not political, and what was executed in the Soviet Union was not socialism, it was a distorted version of it in economics and something different politically.

Eventually Stalin confronted Hitler by throwing millions of his people into certain death and operating a scorched earth policy. He was as brutal with his own people as he was towards his enemy.

Well, you can't say "his own people," since he was Georgian by nationality (and born in Georgia), and his people would be the Georgians. Maybe that is why he did not care about the Slavs?

[Sarastro]

And I probably need to note that I am not advocating for the "pure socialism," but it seems that a droplet of it in the economic system of any country is beneficial.

There is just this confusion of terms...maybe I should've used "welfare states" instead. Here:

Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies, while maintaining private ownership of capital and private business enterprise. Social democrats also promote tax-funded welfare programs and regulation of markets. Many social democrats, particularly in European welfare states, refer to themselves as "socialists", introducing a degree of ambiguity to the understanding of what the term means.

[knight66]

Well, you can't say "his own people," since he was Georgian by nationality (and born in Georgia), and his people would be the Georgians. Maybe that is why he did not care about the Slavs?

If he ruled them, they were his people. He may have shown some favour to specific Georgians; but was quick to have them shot when his paranoia set in.

Mike

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

If he ruled them, they were his people. He may have shown some favour to specific Georgians; but was quick to have them shot when his paranoia set in.

However, Stalin is regarded as a great national hero in Georgia even today, for reasons that are probably tribalistic and have nothing to do with communism. There are Stalin streets, parks, and statues. And be sure to check out the Stalin Museum, in his hometown of Gori:

http://www.stalinmuseum.ge/museumeng.html

[knight66]

Yes, cue for a diatribe on the machostic nature of some peoples and the craving for the firm smack of a Tsar in particular by this people.

Mike

[Sarastro]

However, by 1956 I believe there was no stomach for yet more war in Europe.

What about the Prague Spring in 1968? Same scenario.

Besides, although

The UK went to war because Germany invaded Poland

but

France, Britain, and the countries of the Commonwealth declared war on Germany but provided little military support to Poland other than a small French attack into the Saarland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II#Course_of_the_war

So, it is really unclear to me what were the real reasons, if after the war for many years the human rights defenders did nothing for the human rights just there in Europe. Thankfully, they liberated many African states, as well as India and Latin America...but that did not require any military action, I suppose?

[knight66]

You view history as black and white, which it is not. I am not happy that so much of Europe disappeared into a repressive mist. But, economically, I don't think that the UK could have sustained a war much beyond what they did.

I believe a lot has to be read from older history. Dealing with Russia has always been a thorny matter. Napoleon failed, Hitler forgot that lesson and stretched his supply lines way too far, experiencing the debilitating Russian winter, where the land being invaded had been substantially stripped of supplies and deserted.

That lesson sat fresh for those who might have been hungry for more fighting. There was ample proof that the Russian hierarchy was prepared to sacrifice its citizens en masse in a way the democracies were not. It was a bit like the suicide bomber attitude writ large. There is no way to deal with such an attitude in the short term.

Prague Spring in 1968 was deeply shocking. But the 'invasion' was one of a satellite state of the Communists, not an invasion of fresh territory. Just last year Ossetia was invaded and we did very little...being already stretched by involvement in two separate conflicts that we ought never to have been involved in.

Mike

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

There was ample proof that the Russian hierarchy was prepared to sacrifice its citizens en masse in a way the democracies were not. It was a bit like the suicide bomber attitude writ large. There is no way to deal with such an attitude in the short term.

I would not call this a "suicide bomber attitude" but the stance of people who were involved in a brutal struggle for survival. Nazism was a genocidally anti-Slavic ideology. This is why the situation in Poland and the USSR was so much harsher than in places like France, Denmark, and Belgium. The non-Jewish population of the Western countries was not targeted for mass extermination.

What the Nazis envisioned for the East:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

[knight66]

Well, reading other than Wyki........the Russian way to defeat Germany was mainly centred on sacrifice of enormous number of people....because they could spare them. This was the ideology there. Of course, it was a struggle for survival. Who would deny it. But rather as in WW1, the generals would sacrifice enormous numbers, because they could. Stalin in WWII because he could.

Mike

[MishaK]

Though I wouldn't blame Churchill or FDR for their "cowardice" in Yalta, I am surprised to know that none of the Western countries intervened with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. It was plain violation of the country's sovereignty and the human rights.

It's very simple, really. It's called the age of nuclear weapons. Nobody in the West considered either the fate of Hungary or the principle of national sovereignty important enough to risk nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Oddly enough, my ethics teacher here, in the US, told us that communism would have been the best system ever, had it not been for the human greed and desire to possess.

Yes, but that is a very big qualifier. So big as to render the concept unworkable. If communism is a system that can only work for a society of hypothetical, utopian humans devoid of desires and egos, then it is of little practical use. The problem is that Marxism is so utopian that in order for any form of communism to be implemented it necessarily requires the violence and repression of some form of Leninism/Maoism/what have you. Where Marx really jumped head first into bullshitland was when he ascribed some 'scientific' methodology to his completely fictitious idea of the 'inevitability' of the demise of capitalism and the eventual victory of communism. This had two problems: firstly, there is no science to predicting the future and anytime you have millions of disparate individuals working on bringing the future about, you will have millions of possible outcomes. Inevitability, my left foot. This whole communist fascination with pseudo-science has given science all over the eastern block a bad name and is co-responsible for the rise of mysticism, sects and all sorts of other mistaken pseudo-religious worship in eastern Europe since the wall came down. Secondly, humans are by nature impatient. This is due to their mortality. If they are promised radical social change, they will want to see it within their own lifetime. So if someone tells you that capitalism is digging its own grave and that eventually communism will come about quite naturally, there will be this inexorable urge to assist the natural process by speeding things up a bit. Enter Leninist Bolsheviks. You see, this whole idea of perhaps waiting a few generations for capitalism to finally finish digging its own grave is massively unappealing and just not a great way to rally the masses politically. (I mean, what's their slogan gonna be: We demand social change! ... but we're not gonna do anything about it until whenever Capitalism finally commits suicide?) So the combination of a righteous conviction that communism is the 'inevitable' ultimate stage of human social development plus a revolutionary urge to end social injustice in the present produces a lethally dangerous combination of severe zealotry: communist revolutionaries convinced that they are doing the right thing will walk over bodies to achieve their aims. Because of its teleology, communism is inherently a kind of religion (any ideology that promises a kind of ultimate salvation in the form of utopia achieved is inherently dangerous in the same way, whether from the left or the right end of the spectrum). It leads by nature to the sort of abuses we have seen in every country that has ever used that label to ideologically describe itself.

The social market economies of Western Europe you describe are really neither here nor there. It would be wrong to label them socialist. In essence, they are non-ideological, pragmatic constructs evolved from decades of political compromises. That is difficult to grasp for the ideologically blind, like JDP or Coopmv, but modern Europe really has nothing to do with socialism. Their current system is merely the latest answer to the question of how to harness the market for the greatest social good. The free market ideologues all fail to grasp that there is by nature no such thing as a completely free market. All markets inherently require regulation, to ensure enforceability of contracts, prevent abuse, sanction uncompetitive and other behaviors that undermine the functioning of the market, etc. Without regulation the market is too volatile and unpredictable and the risks and costs of doing business are too high. The recent crisis illustrates precisely these dangers of an underregulated market: when risks aren't disclosed and disclosure isn't adequately monitored by a regulatory body, when corporate interests are permitted to consolidate to such an extent that they occupy a market dominant position, when lending and borrowing aren't monitored to ensure risk is minimized or at least adequately hedged, then the market risks devastating collapse. You are right that the free marketers are also mistaken to think that the market will self correct. This is untrue. What the un- or underregulated market does is to swing from one extreme to the other. Huge bubbles are followed by huge busts. The problem is that in an underregulated market these 'corrections' may take a generation or more to occur, leaving many people unable to control their economic future. This is neither morally just nor macroeconomically efficient.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

This whole communist fascination with pseudo-science has given science all over the eastern block a bad name and is co-responsible for the rise of mysticism, sects and all sorts of other mistaken pseudo-religious worship in eastern Europe since the wall came down.

Although I agree with your analysis of Marxism and the flaws thereof, I want to take issue with this statement.

1. I don't think science has ever had "a bad name" in the Eastern Bloc; rather the opposite. First, educated people in those countries knew the difference between real science and ideological claptrap, because they saw the difference between the two in their everyday lives. Since real science could cure diseases and shoot rockets into space, it was highly prestigious. Sciences were also popular areas of study because it was difficult to ideologize them, unlike such subjects as economics and philosophy. If science has lost some of its prestige in those countries, it is mainly because the whole state support system for science collapsed along with the socialist system. In short, there's no money left for scientific research, so people have to do something else.

2. The rise of "mysticism" et al. actually predates the collapse of the system by a couple of decades at least; it is rooted above all in the failure of communist ideology to deliver the goods, and in the destruction of traditional religion. (You might want to track down the Latvian documentary Is It Easy to Be Young?, which was made in the mid-1980s and shows this phenomenon in some detail.) There was also a much stronger novelty value to these beliefs than in more open Western countries. But continuing adherence to mystical beliefs is also a result of the difficulties and disappointments of the post-Communist transition period.

[bwv 1080]

Not so sure that Stalin was the only one to confront Hitler. Remember there was the pact they had together that allowed Stalin some land grabs of his own. Eventually Stalin confronted Hitler by throwing millions of his people into certain death and operating a scorched earth policy. He was as brutal with his own people as he was towards his enemy.

The allies were much more careful not to go down the cannon fodder route and I think it fair to say that a number faced Hitler down. What do you think D day and the subsequent months was all about?

However, by 1956 I believe there was no stomach for yet more war in Europe. So, then indeed, the new Stalin got his way.

Mike

by 1943 the soviet army became the most effective of the war.  It was not solely a matter of numbers or willingness to take casualties, the Soviets had the best tanks, the largest quantity of artillery and operational strategies that did the blitzkrieg better than Germany.  D-Day was june 1944, by that time the Soviets had won Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk, each of which was larger than Normandy.  In 1944 they launched Bagration which was the largest defeat suffered by Germany in the war.  80% of German casualties occurred on the Eastern front

[knight66]

Not sure what you are trying to prove here. Look at the comparative casualty figures. I don't think I have said anything at all that is less than true, though as I think I indicated, it is always complex and I am not writing a treatise.

Mike

Edit: Some stats from everyone's favourite source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Total_dead

[Sarastro]

But, economically, I don't think that the UK could have sustained a war much beyond what they did.

I don't think it was necessary to declare a war, but what shocked me is that it was not even voiced, and none of the Western countries expressed their concerns publicly. So the bully felt more freedom... As for Ossetia, everyone knows now what was the reason for the invasion. There have been theories that actually state it was prepared by the US and negotiated when Bush visited Georgia, but to now nothing makes sense to me. And I am not much into conspiracy theories.

I certainly don't view history as black and white. It just makes little sense to me that the countries which signed the Pact and, as you say, went to liberate oppressed nations under the human rights flag actually did nothing or very little.


PS: Interestingly, before I came to this board, I knew a little about WWII, but the continuous battles over "who was the worst" which rise frequently here prompted me to read more on the subject matter. My views have changed since, though I see other haven't.

[Sarastro]

Yes, but that is a very big qualifier.

I know. It was an irony. I should have rolled my eyes.

[MishaK]

Although I agree with your analysis of Marxism and the flaws thereof, I want to take issue with this statement.

1. I don't think science has ever had "a bad name" in the Eastern Bloc; rather the opposite. First, educated people in those countries knew the difference between real science and ideological claptrap, because they saw the difference between the two in their everyday lives. Since real science could cure diseases and shoot rockets into space, it was highly prestigious. Sciences were also popular areas of study because it was difficult to ideologize them, unlike such subjects as economics and philosophy. If science has lost some of its prestige in those countries, it is mainly because the whole state support system for science collapsed along with the socialist system. In short, there's no money left for scientific research, so people have to do something else.

2. The rise of "mysticism" et al. actually predates the collapse of the system by a couple of decades at least; it is rooted above all in the failure of communist ideology to deliver the goods, and in the destruction of traditional religion. (You might want to track down the Latvian documentary Is It Easy to Be Young?, which was made in the mid-1980s and shows this phenomenon in some detail.) There was also a much stronger novelty value to these beliefs than in more open Western countries. But continuing adherence to mystical beliefs is also a result of the difficulties and disappointments of the post-Communist transition period.

I don't disagree with your points. Note that I said 'co-responsible', not exclusively responsible, in my original post. However, I would want to modify your first point somewhat. It is true that there was superb scientific work done in the Soviet bloc and that the educated knew the differences very well. But it isn't the educated who flock to the gurus. It is the uneducated who feel betrayed by the collapse of a system in which they believed and which extolled atheism and science, but which failed. As science and atheism were an explicit part of that system, they turned against both when they collapsed. It's not the only cause of it, but one of them. Plus, the educated people who understood the difference were among the first to leave and seek better lives in the US, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.

Back on topic, this is a very worthwhile article about a different aspect of our general ignorance in the West of what went on in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe during WWII:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22875

This is also a great article on the brutality of the Eastern Front, but unfortunately only available to subscribers:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22613

[Sarastro]

In short, there's no money left for scientific research, so people have to do something else.

An in the US, unfortunately, degrees in sciences (though very valuable) are not encouraged... people think it's hard, but they don't want to be blue collars, so they get diplomas in finance.

I work as a math tutor and once was mightily shocked when I saw the lady who had prepared my income tax come with her Beginning of Algebra textbook to our Center.

[Sarastro]

This is also a great article on the brutality of the Eastern Front, but unfortunately only available to subscribers:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22613

Could you copy and paste the text? I am not going to sell it...

[knight66]

I certainly don't view history as black and white.

Actually; I think that is exactly what you are doing. We both agree, what happened should not have happened, but your seeming shock at inaction needs to be tempered with some more reading about the complexities of the situation. One point was that Russia acted like a bully, other countries did not have the stomach or the capability to take Russia to the line. There were diplomatic efforts, brushed off by Russia, exactly as it did last year.

There is also the consideration that the countries who would have to have acted, because anything short of action would have been pointless, were either involved elsewhere already, don't forget Korea, or would not have found the popular support for round two.

Mike