from a literary leftists biography…

It is not clear that she was murdered because she was going to defect; that is pure speculation at this juncture. ..Stalin had lots of committed hard-core loyal Communists killed for less, so the mere fact that she was murdered, without more, does not necessarily imply that she was about to repudiate Communism

I see your point. There does not appear to be enough evidence to judge if she was a Rohm/Bukharin/Zinoviev/loyal “victim” or if she was going to go the Chambers/defection route.

There were many who got their knickers in a twist because in the late 1930s Stalin had killed many members of the Communist hierarchy. How could he kill loyal Communists? Many of these people blithly ignored the millions- shall we say tens of millions – of non-Communist Russians that Lenin and Stalin had previously killed.

I read Martin Amis’s book Koba the Dread about 6 months before Neo posted on it. While numerous volumes have already been written on Koba, Amis’s book brings up some interesting points.

Amis reported that Pipes suggested that during the ~1918-1922 Civil War, the secret police had killed more people than had been killed in battle. Not to mention the War Communism-caused famines, partially alleviated by Herbert-Hoover led aid from the West.

Amis speculated that a reason for Koba’s killing off most the Communist hierarchy was the results of a secret ballot on the composition of the Central Committee at the Seventeenth Party Congress Party Congress in 1934- a.k.a. Congress of Victors, Congress of Vultures, Congress of Vampires. [The latter two were Amis’s suggestions.]

A not insignificant proportion of the ~ 1200 ballots- variously reported as between 120 and 300[by Kruschchev]- had crossed out Stalin’s name. Amis suggests that Stalin killed off most of the Communist hierarchy to kill off potential “traitors” to Stalin and to strike fear into the minds of surviving potential “traitors.”

A further “benefit” to Stalin was that by killing off the hierarchy he killed off institutional memory, resulting in fewer people to oppose his rewriting of Party history. For example- while Stalin was an insignificant player in the Civil War, Stalin rewrote history to show his being a significant participant in the Civil War. With fewer people alive to contradict this, the lie had a better chance of being accepted.

While I didn’t have the direct exposure to American Communists that Neo did in her childhood- she told of an uncle- I found out later that someone I knew slightly from my childhood was a Red diaper baby. I didn’t know it when I was growing up, but when this acquaintance became a published author, the truth came out that many of his relativeS of his were Commies- one of whom was called to testify. All of this was hidden when I was a child. But as I said, I only knew him slightly.

I guess now we are putting the parts together, i must do my proper duty. and put out the welcome mats to those who are seeing the puzzle come together before them.

that they are a product of history whether they know it or not… and the history tells us where we are going and whence we came…

Welcome To The Club everyone!!!

Ella – Welcome To The Club
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voBOOMSATnI
Ella is a latvian pop-star & socialite.

now you know
The war is not over…

Valters & Kaža – The war is not over
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6lNjSA40o

The war is not over, everyone knows it
It’s just a reason to make us believe
That someone is loser, someone is winner
To make us believe that’s the way it should be
But I don’t wanna believe

This fairy tail has gone to far…

Welcome to the game..
The purpose of your life is now…
Batteries are NOT included…

🙂

[i needed something to lighten things up… ]

Bullitt is fortunate he never acted (except for praise, influence peddling & etc.) on his willful blindness to the nature of his beliefs. He is one more reason why socialism afflicts the world today. He wished for it, he wanted it, he willed it, he aided it, he abetted it, and when it arrived, went “oops.” Not good enough.*

I have this problem with Sakharov. I’m pleased he became an opponent of Communism, but his participation in the Soviet bomb project–supplying nuclear weapons to Stalin–outweighs any good he might have done.

The evils of Bullitt, Poymz, and Sakharov live on. Their good, if any, not so much.

*If he’d carried out a secret campaign of assassination against communist sympathizers and spies (he must have known some) in the State Department, then I might offer a crumb of forgiveness.

IIRC, and I may be wrong, not one of them said, “Boy did we make a mistake!” Nor was there one letter to the Guild suggesting that maybe they had been a little too harsh to Elia Kazan.

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

Note that this was before Stalin: Lenin wasn’t exactly a walk on the beach, either.

As for the “dream” of socialism or another equalizing system, let’s recall that dreams of instant gratification (i.e. material, physical, ego) are a principle cause of progressive corruption of individuals, society, and humanity. The resources of this world, whether natural or human (i.e. individual), are finitely accessible and strictly finite, respectively.

Not everyone can enjoy a beachfront property in Hawaii.

The ideal system… The ideal compromise, may well be American conservatism, which is a philosophy effectively described as classical liberalism tempered by Christian principles.

We do not need and cannot afford a race to the bottom.

Durant, on the other hand, seemed to have kept his eyes and his mind open regarding communism, and threw the b.s. flag when its lies and contradictions became apparent. No, he didn’t burn his bridges to the Left, but he did acknowledge its massive problems. That counts for something in my book.