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QuoteReplyTopic: Forecasts and results of the Communist experiment. Posted: 30-Mar-2012 at 11:50
Utopia is at power. Forecasts and results of the
Communist experiment.
I rely
on Raymon Aron"s and Carl Popper's ideas in this article. My
advantage consists in comparison with
these authors that I have own theory of interrelation between the social
conflict and social control. Popper had given criticism of prophecies of Marx
in the book «Open society and his enemies». I had developed Popper's this plan
in this article.
This experiment was finished in Russia in
1991, It is time to do conclusions from this
experiment:
•The first
forecast Marx: the prohibition of
wars, establishing democratic peace among peoples.
Result: the Soviet Union has committed aggression against Finland in 1939,
against
Afghanistan in 1979; the USSR came to economic
collapse as a result of military
competition with USA during the “cold” war.Responsibility for disorder of Russian army lies just on Bolsheviks in
1917. When Bolsheviks had seized power
and had taken on itself the responsibility for managing of the country, they
have showed own total incompetence under signing of the shameful Brest’s peace with Germany or,
perhaps, have begun to betray the national interests of Russia in exchange for
money German intelligence. Just responsibility lies on Bolsheviks of the
collapse of the Russian army in 1917. This defeat in war with Germany had
become the lesson for the Bolsheviks, and they later became to spend all forces
of the country for preparation to war. Stalin did not feel embarrassed to enter
to collusion even with Hitler. Bolsheviks conducted the secret terrorist
operations in worldwide. Thus, the Bolshevik’s Russia became the aggressor and
the source of the terrorist threat often. But communism crash in Russia hasn't stopped
military rivalry of Russia against the USA and the NATO. Conclusion:
the complete ban of wars is a utopia.
•Second
forecast Marx: socialism should win in worldwide.
Result: The affair of socialism is lost nearly everywhere today. Socialist
regimes have preserved only in North Korea, China and Cuba today. Only one‐party communist system has remained from a totalitarian regime in China today. Market
and private property
had restored in the economy of China today. A demonstration
student at Tiananmen Square, demanding the
restoration of democracy, was crushed by tanks
on 3 June 1989. But in economic
development of China has achieved huge success
thanks to very low cost of wage labor and
huge zeal of Chinese workers,low taxes, absence of old-age pensions for
workers. As a result of the cost of Chinese goods is very low, although their
quality is a very low also. Hunger has
started in Cuba without Soviet help, condition of health of old dictator
Fidel Castro deteriorated badly, he has carried heavy operation, so the
democratic opposition waits of his death with impatience so as to restore
democracy, market and private property, to develop tourism. If the Soviet State
enterprises lost continuously to foreign private enterprisesin a foreign market, if the Communists lost on elections in developed
Western countries constantly, that the Soviet communists tried to win these
countries with help armed forces, to established the communist tyranny and to
take away these effective enterprise at private owners in favor
of the State and to make them ineffective. Russians
Bolsheviks wont to organize the export of revolution, exports of Utopia, which
means exporting of Asian formation in other countries on bayonets of Soviet soldiers
or with help of the organization to seize
power in other country
by the Communists from this countries on Soviet money. USSR sent large sums of money on the support of the Communist parties
and regimes with the Socialist orientation worldwide. This had led to the
emergence of political groups in other countries, which built the visibility of
the Communist work, this had led to senseless waste of State’s funds in the
USSR, that was one of causes of economic collapse of communist regime in the
USSR eventually.
• Third forecast
Marx: The market, the exploitation of man to man,
private
ownership of the means of production should to
die.
Result: It is economic collapse of socialism, which had the following
manifestations::
A. The
emergence of deficit for some kinds of goods. Terrible hunger arisen repeatedly at time of government of Stalin and
Lenin, for example hunger in the cities during the
civil war, hunger in the Volga region, hunger
after the beginning of collectivization, hunger after the end of the Second
World war. These periodic cases of hunger had led to huge human victims. To
cope with hunger Soviet regime has entered repeatedly the
distribution of products on cards and voting,
in fact, this regime is supported population of Russia in condition
of balancing on the verge of hunger permanently in all its history.Last period of deterioration for economic position of the population had
become duringthe government of
Gorbachev when only bread and birch’s juice had remained on theshelves of supermarkets in free sale. Soviet people were able to survive
only with help their
own kitchen-gardens, breeding of cattle in
personal house‐keeping, through the sale of products on the “colhos’s” market
and illegal purchase with surcharge of deficit goods from familiar sellers.
B. Domestic
industrial products are unable to compete on the world market. The Soviet Union became raw material's appendage of Western economies.
USSR began to export grain in large scale abroad in exchange for industrial equipment
with 1920s; incidentally, this was one
of the main causes of hunger after the beginning of collectivization. Thus,
the hunger was artificial, resulting in
incorrect economic policies of the Communist regime. As a result of
collectivization agriculture of Russia was disorganized definitively. Agriculture
of Russia could not ensure the needs of population of even their own country;
therefore, the Communist regime was forced to
import the grain from abroad in 1960s. This regime had founded a new export goods – oil and gas. Geologists
had discovered a new
field of
these energy carriers in Western Siberia. Prices of energy carriers had
fallen in the 1990s, this had
become to cause of deficit of many goods in
USSR and cause of collapse for
communist regime. Prices of energy carriers
had risen again in recent 10 years that is one of the main
causes of relative economic well‐being of the
modern Russia today. If country has made a stake on the
export of raw materials that this country has the vulnerable economic position,
cause of this is that its economic successes could finish to economic collapse suddenly
for many reasons, for example, because the depletion of fields this rawmaterial, because sharp fall of prices for this kind of raw materials,
because the invention
of substitute for this kind of raw materials.
For example, thermonuclear stations will can become an inexhaustible source of
energy in future instead of oil and gas.
C. It turned
out that state enterprises work less
efficiently than private enterprises.
Not
only experience of socialism in Russia indicates to this fact, but the
experience of the government of Social‐Democrats in Sweden indicates to this
fact too. Private firms give more profit under production of goods, quality of
this goods is better. This fact is recognized around the all world, so
governments tries to privatize State enterprises everywhere as far as possible.
This fact was explained that the leadership of the State enterprise is not
afraid of the devastation of its business
and it is able to pay their debts from the
State budget, all State enterprises are losing money. Economic stimulus in
private enterprise make the control in this enterprise more effective compared
with the administrative control in State enterprises.
D. Exploitation
of man to men has not disappeared under socialism. The notion “exploitation” is essentially a synonym of notion “social control”, and social control cannot be
deleted from the social structure. If worker worked to the entrepreneur under
capitalism that worker worked to the official under socialism. It is almost no
difference for the worker on who to work, but entrepreneur pays more money than
official usually.
E. Remuneration
according to quantity and quality of labour under capitalism had been
changed to remuneration according to level of the
occupied post under socialism. Workers can work badly under socialism, but it was
important to retain his post, so workers walked to plant without clear
objectives, drank vodka in plant, played cards, went shopping in working time,
but tried don’t to commit the truancies. Thus, labour discipline was very bad
under socialism. Collective farmers worked badly under Stalin because they get wages nothing, and collective farmers
worked badly under Khrushchev and Brezhnev because they get wages
something all equally. Himself Brezhnev
was lazy and sick man, therefore he worked only two hours in day in end of his life, he read the books never and
spent rest time to hunting or watching TV. Soviet elite imitated to own ruler
always.
F. Sector of the
slave economy is the GULAG (State government
of camps), GULAGhas arose inUSSR under Stalin. GULAG required of the recruitment new and new slaves, because theduration of the life for prisoners was very
low because of the hard conditions of labour. Ifthe prisoner exceeded the day’s norm of
productivity for labour on 50% that hereceived even one herring in addition to the own food norm of bread (Stalin’s norm). If
the prisoner didn’t to carry out norm of productivity for labour, that he didn’t
received own food norm of bread in
this day and died from hunger soon. This was a
senseless embezzlement of workforce’s resource. This is contrary to human
rights. GULAG is a sample of barracks socialism.
G. industrialization
was conducted at the expense of robbery of villages, as result the main export’s sector of economy (agriculture) was devastated.
•Fourth
forecast Marx: The death of religion
must occur, because, according to Marx, religion is
opium for people.
Result: It is the collapse of all attempts to forbid religion and flowering of
everyday immorality. But it was able to put the Church under control of the KGB
(Committee of State Security): all appointments to post of the priest were with
the permission of the Commissioner to affairs of religion, it were a many of
informers among the priests. A large share of priests had been in the GULAG,
where many of them died. Large part of
the Church values was robbed by Soviet power.
Patriarch Tikhon had died in prison. Many churches were dynamited or desecrated
by order of the authorities. Powers could undermine the faith in God among the
large part of population; this has led to increased
the number of suicides, divorces, abortions,
level of crime, flourishing domestic drunkenness.
•Fifth forecast
of Marx: prohibition of the bourgeois culture and
ideology which, as if, justify the exploitation of man to man.
Results: It is the building of an ideological machine by deception for its own
people, it is the establishing of censorship, it is low level and low quality
of domestic culture. Talented artists were forced to emigrate, were expelled
abroad, have been in prison, were brought to suicide, but mediocre artists
edited their works huge circulations, which was difficult to sell. Thus, the
disappearance of competition among Soviet artists had led to total
degradation of quality for their artistic
works.
•Sixth forecast
of Marx: It is dictatorship of the proletariat with
subsequent death of State.
Results: It is the arbitrariness of the authorities and State terror against
its own people. It is deliberate initiating of civil fratricidal war. It is
prohibition of the opposition parties and the capital punishment of their
members. Voting was open from 1918 to 1936. Elections
become a farce gradually. Instead death of
State it became by tyrannical and then
oligarchic. Bodies of State terror have become
State security organs, which change your title periodically ‐ VChK, GPU, MGB,
and then the KGB. They can act contrary to law. Such functions have carried out
“oprichniks” when tsar Ivan Grozny (“terrible”) was. Malyita
Skuratov was personal hangman under Ivan
Grozny. Start Bolshevik’s terror was one from causes of the civil war. Deputies
of Constituent Assembly F. F. Kokoshkin and A. I. Shingarev were killed among
the first, and nothing remembers even about such formality, as deputy immunity.
• Seventh
forecast of Marx: building a classless
society.
Results: Classless society (communism) have left distant utopia, realty results
were the destruction of many representatives of nobility, priests, rich
peasants, Cossacks, the
bourgeoisie andmerchants, confiscation of property and State’s robbery under the Lenin’s slogan
“It need to rob property which was robed!”. This robbery was accompanied by
physical
destruction and imprisonment by the
representatives of these estates. This
policy has resulted to destruction of private entrepreneurship, the
disappearance of economic
stimuluses to labour, to equality in poverty,
economic ruin, because the
organizers of a large production were
destroyed or expelled from the country. The economic policy of military
communism had replaced the market to direct distribution of products and
clothing. But before it can distribute, first it need take away these products
from peasants under threat of execution, but
such an withdrawal has received a just resistance of peasants and it was one
from causes of the civil war. This war continued until such time as Lenin
replaced by food’s confiscation (“Prodrazvyorstka”) to food’s tax.
“Prodrazvyorstka” is state’s robbing of
peasants without any norms and restrictions. Unlike “Prodrazvyorstka” , the
size of the food’s tax was known in advance and was less than the size of “Prodrazvyorstka”.
Lenin replaced the policy of military communism to policy NEP (New Economic
Policy), that is he abolished the prohibition on petty trading, he entered the
convertible currency – the Golden Russian chervonets, Lenin has allowed again
that
enterprising man can become an employer (“nepman”).
Stalin destroy HEP and repressed “nepmans”. As a result of all these cataclysms
a new ruling layer (party “nomenclature”) appears.
Conclusion: As long there will be a division of public
labour, such long society will be built
at the social conflict and social control, until the
classless society will remain a unrealizable utopia.
2.7.4.5. The conclusions from the Communist
experiment:
Simplifying social structure is impossible. Religion,
private property, market, state, laws,
money, the separation of powers, democracy, a multi‐party system,
the constitution, art competition, scientific discussion, the prison system,
the army, law enforcement
authorities, social control and social conflict are a great social inventions, which will die
never and cannot be abolished without damage for
society, and without just resistance
of the population to this efforts of utopianists. Self‐ isolation of
utopian State will leads
Good article, detailed and well argumented. The communist experiment was an experiment on live flesh, conducted on the price on enormous human cost everywhere it was conducted; the persecution and destruction of free thought, political repression, full control over all kinds of human production, material or spiritual, was one of the main features of every variety of communism. Communism is a dictatorship, no matter what aims it proclaims for itself; and any dictatorship be definition is negative. The most idealistic human dreams give birth to the most terrible human nightmares in reality, and the communist utopia is destined to have inhuman face, no matter when it tries to recreate itself. I'll take my worst day as a lowly emigrant to US, or in disturbed and trying to find her way post-communist Bulgaria, rather than the best day my restricted, censored, forced on, lied to, terrified communist youth.
Welcome to the forum, Valeri Staricov, and have a good time here!
Nothing like a good shot of capitalism to get the blood flowing. That or tiswin.
Socialist Plato utopianism? Twas bullshit nearly 2400 years when written...still is. Every tyrant since has marveled at the stupidity of this and those who embraced it. I still do.
Welcome to the forum Valery.
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
S. T. Friedman
Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'
Capitalism can be even worse than communism. In the modern world all the big corporations close their factories, send their workers to the dole queue, and move production to the Third World where workers are treated like slaves. In an ideal world all the big companies that use slave labor should be broken up, heavy industry should be nationalised to prevent its closure, imported goods should be heavily taxed, and the government should give people from poor backgrounds one-off loans to start their own small businesses (similar to the payouts ex-soldiers recieved after WWII)
Communism and socialism, even in their purest theoretical definitions, remain water bong dreams for those who show no or little incentive (certainly after they surrender their individual freedoms)...exhibit little motivation and believe in class warfare as a means to an end. Through the enforcement of distribution of goods and or services and or compensation without necessarily participating in the endeavor to realize personal success by earning it as an individual. Historically, they remain today what they were intended to be nearly two and half millennia ago...havens for the intellectual elitist, feigned or other, at the expense of the mass who is too ignorant to either discern or chooses not to discern the reality of the concept...because of the false security they have been offered.They...inherently believe (even with the contrary evidence of recorded history) that universal brotherhood is compulsory and will come about and therefor generally adopt an attitude of appeasement in avoidance of conflict even when the conflict may be a necessity for and of the state's and individuals security. And they demand that government intervene in virtually every facet of theirs lives... if they perceive they are incapable of competition in a free market. Nope. Sorry I pass.
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
S. T. Friedman
Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'
The factories in the third world are result of globalization, and it fact they are building the economies of those countries. If a worker in a US factory in, say, China is paid more that the same would be paid in a Chinese factory, how is he a slave? I'm against the globalization because it brings unemployment in the country from which the factory in question came from, not because of something else.
As for the government giving money for small business - this is unrealistic, IMHO, no country can do that for everyone from poorer background. Scholarships for good students and low-interest loans are better choices, more workable, and more stimulating. People need to have stimulus in order to fight with life - they shouldn't just be given, because then they just take and contribute nothing. This is my opinion anyway.
Anyway, the western countries are not capitalist in Marxist sense since the WWII - a country with social welfare is not a capitalist one per se, and all EU countries, and US are welfare countries, so they are in fact social democracies in my book, nor capitalist ones. Btw, in communism there wasn't social welfare, and if one is to lose his lob due to holding political opinions that are not accepted he is never able to find a job, nor is given welfare, so he is felt to die. I had an uncle, old communist, who went into disfavor during one of the cleansings in the Bulgarian political party, lost his job due to that reason, and wasn't able to work for like 15 years - after which he was allowed to work only as a janitor - a person with high education; and he had to be grateful for being alive. Only a person who never really lived in a communist country and hadn't experienced the total control one is under in, can hope that something better can come out of communism.
One was really caught by the collar, and cannot move no left, nor right, cannot travel outside the country, cannot listen to free radio stations, they being jammed, cannot read books that are uncensored, cannot refuse to enter the Communist Party, or one any of the youth organizations one is forced in school to enter in, cannot hold any opinion that is considered "not-correct"...one lives under a total informational blackout, a situation that it's really hard to be imagined if one had not lived it. Not all communist regimes were so oppressive, in the European-style-communism Russia, Bulgaria, Albania and Romania got the worst of it. We used to envy the brother's Yugoslavians, since Tito's communism was more humane than the Bulgarian one was - "a mile more west is a mile more of freedom" as a street wisdom would have it.
Most of my relatives actually miss communism - because my mother's family was in the system, my grandfather was a "fighter against the fashism and capitalism" so all their lives they got perks - my mother and aunt got into university for free and with low grades, got good jobs because of the political connections of their father, were given apartments, etc - this is what they miss; and they would say anything and believe anything they were told to to get them, not even feeling and about it. Me - I spit on it, communism wasted my youth, I have no good word to say about it. I'll eat ash and live like a dog and be happier with nothing, because no one can take nothing from you. Communism is total control - over everything one thinks, wants, dreams, earns, lives, on what one buys /one had to have a political permission to buy a TV, when I was a kid/, on what one says - what good is that? This was far more slavery than anything I've seen, because it takes your choices away, and what good is life without freedom of choice.
If the Asian workers were paid the same as Europeans or Americans, fair enough. But many companies pay them ridiculously low wages and employ child slaves. Sweatshops are as terrible a crime as genocide, but the greedy capitalists always seem to escape punishment. Communism may have been repressive, but at least everyone had a job, free healthcare and a reasonable standard of living (not perfect, but things would have been a lot worse without Stalin)
Good article, detailed and well argumented. The communist experiment was an experiment on live flesh, conducted on the price on enormous human cost everywhere it was conducted; the persecution and destruction of free thought, political repression, full control over all kinds of human production, material or spiritual, was one of the main features of every variety of communism. Communism is a dictatorship, no matter what aims it proclaims for itself; and any dictatorship be definition is negative. The most idealistic human dreams give birth to the most terrible human nightmares in reality, and the communist utopia is destined to have inhuman face, no matter when it tries to recreate itself. I'll take my worst day as a lowly emigrant to US, or in disturbed and trying to find her way post-communist Bulgaria, rather than the best day my restricted, censored, forced on, lied to, terrified communist youth.
Welcome to the forum, Valeri Staricov, and have a good time here!
My article is not speculative reasonings, My article relies on results of communistic experiment in Russia.
This my article was banned on the majority of the Russian historical forums today. It expelled me from postgraduate study and it don't take for work me as the teacher of university, it don't print and don't approve my textbook «Interesting social science» because of this my article and other my similar ideas as old liars-Marxists have dominant positions in social sciences and today in Russia. I studied at philosophical faculty of the Ural state university (Ekaterinburg) in 1979-1985. I began to hate communistic dialectics and Marxist scholasticism there, I fell in love with the western sociology. This hatred to Marxist scholasticism became my main incentive as I wasn't exposed to repressions. I worked as the teacher of history and social science at school of 13 years. Teachers learn today in Russia according to unsuitable for teaching textbooks on social science. Therefore I published in Russia and the USA my textbook on social science and my book about personality types.
Well done Valery!Surplus value is still unsolved.New math&economic model follows?
In my opinion, the surplus value, wealth, prestige and power are a prize to the winner. Society is constructed on the conflict and control relations. The strongest in the market competition survives and becomes the controler. The social inequality is a consequence of such building of society on the conflict and control relations. Communists tried to construct in Russia equality under socialism, communists tried to destroy the conflict and control, as a result communists destroyed at people incentives to work, communists turned society into an almshouse where people ceased to work because of that ruin and hunger came. It not speculative reasonings, I worked at plant as the electrician under socialism and I saw absence of incentives to work under socialism.
Nothing like a good shot of capitalism to get the blood flowing. That or tiswin.
Socialist Plato utopianism? Twas bullshit nearly 2400 years when written...still is. Every tyrant since has marveled at the stupidity of this and those who embraced it. I still do.
Gittler tried to construct Platon's utopia, but it turned out nothing at Gittler from this attempt except national catastrophe for Germany. About it Carl Popper wrote in the book "Open society and its enemies".
Capitalism can be even worse than communism. In the modern world all the big corporations close their factories, send their workers to the dole queue, and move production to the Third World where workers are treated like slaves. In an ideal world all the big companies that use slave labor should be broken up, heavy industry should be nationalised to prevent its closure, imported goods should be heavily taxed, and the government should give people from poor backgrounds one-off loans to start their own small businesses (similar to the payouts ex-soldiers recieved after WWII)
Unlike you, I lived at a socialism and under capitalism, I can compare these two social orders. Therefore I can judge with full responsibility that capitalism is better than a socialism. Only idlers and disabled people are sorry about socialism crash in the USSR. If businessmen transfer production to countries of Third world, it means that the salary in the developed countries is too high. If to nationalize the heavy industry, it can become noncompetitive in comparison with a private plants because of disappearance of incentives to labour. The excessive increase in taxes at import production leads eventually to trading wars and reduction of own export to other countries. If to give loans to those poor people who can't obviously give this money, it can lead to an economic crisis and economic crash. The modern economic crisis began because these loans gave to hopeless clients in the USA.
If the Asian workers were paid the same as Europeans or Americans, fair enough. But many companies pay them ridiculously low wages and employ child slaves. Sweatshops are as terrible a crime as genocide, but the greedy capitalists always seem to escape punishment. Communism may have been repressive, but at least everyone had a job, free healthcare and a reasonable standard of living (not perfect, but things would have been a lot worse without Stalin)
Well, if the companies pay lower than in the US, but more than the native companies would pay, then the workers there are profit from the difference, no? As for the child slaves - this is another question, it has to be resolved, but it is up to the work laws in the countries themselves to do that.
As for the free heath care - there is nothing as ruinous as free health care, I have very few real teeth left due to free dental care, and had to do implants here. Believe it or not, I had root canal done with the root being alive, because the dentists would spare the arsenic that they used to kill the nerve before taking it out, and you cannot go complain about this, because there is no one to complain to; the materials were old and the filling out fall out of your mouth months after being put in. People were habitually misdiagnosed, because the medical implements and mashinery that was used in Bulgaria was outdated with decades, and the meds prescribed were outdated, bad quality, and wouldn't be approved now in in the US. What good is such health care? On the opposite, I'd rather pay, if I know I'll get what I pay for, and my money will go for paying new mashinery and importing good meds and materials.
Everyone had a job - that was paid less that the welfare is here, and was about 10% of what was paid in western countries at the time; no one could just buy an apartment, one had to be approved politically to be allowed to go on line and wait 20 years for a small 2 room apartment, far worse that what I see here as governmentally sponsored homes for unemployed. In fact, people had shelter only because the lived with their relatives, 2-3 families in 2 rooms apartments. I had lived with the family of my ex, 9 people in 2 rooms, believe it or not.
I would say that the US unemployed for life people live better than the working people in communist Bulgaria. And old lady I know in Spokane has a Bulgarian retirement that equals $100, for 35 years she worked in a factory, while the welfare she gets here is $300, plus food coupons, free medical, and half payed rent - so she doesn't dare to return to Bulgaria from a fear that she may starve to death - all people who's retirement is based on their working diring communist time have very low retirements, my mother gets like $150 for 30 years working as a magazine editor.
And no matter how one worked, good or bad - one couldn't change his/her lot at all. In such atmosphere all kinds of corruption and harassment were rife - since it depended on a political figure if one was to get a place to live, or to get a job, all kinds of pressing against the wall were used all the time. That one would have a job, or a shelter wasn't guaranteed - it was done only f the person in question was "polticaly reliable" - in other words, repeating as a parrot what the directives are in the moment, and had no personal opinions per se.
If you are looking for slavery - communism was an absolute slavery, slavery of the body and the soul, in which any freedom of thought or action was strictly forbidden, and impossible. What's more, in the factories people worked unprotected, because the government didn't want to spend money for eye-shields, or masks - that's one of the reasons why in Bulgaria the life expectancy if 68 years, and a man over 60 is good practically for nothing. I worked for couple of months in a hospital for kids with infectious diseases - and I got no gloves, no protection at all, changing dirty diapers full with all kinds of bacteria with bare hands. I worked in a factory where people worked metals with no protection at all, and got eye diseases in several years. The works conditions were worse that in sweat shops, with no choice for anything better.
As for Stalin - he was nothing better than Hitler, the genocide that he put of his own people is estimated at 23 mln people /only the political cleansing and the Golodomor/, Hitler, with the concentration camps and the civilians killed, did only half of that number http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html . The worse genocides on the 20th century were committed by communist regimes. The uprooting whole peoples and moving them to Siberia, the Golodomor in Ukraine, the political cleansings, destroying the peasants - I cannot imagine how possibly it could be worse without him.
My article is not speculative reasonings, My article relies on results of communistic experiment in Russia.
This my article was banned on the majority of the Russian historical forums today. It expelled me from postgraduate study and it don't take for work me as the teacher of university, it don't print and don't approve my textbook «Interesting social science» because of this my article and other my similar ideas as old liars-Marxists have dominant positions in social sciences and today in Russia. I studied at philosophical faculty of the Ural state university (Ekaterinburg) in 1979-1985. I began to hate communistic dialectics and Marxist scholasticism there, I fell in love with the western sociology. This hatred to Marxist scholasticism became my main incentive as I wasn't exposed to repressions. I worked as the teacher of history and social science at school of 13 years. Teachers learn today in Russia according to unsuitable for teaching textbooks on social science. Therefore I published in Russia and the USA my textbook on social science and my book about personality types.
I'm surprised that even now your article would be banned, 20 years after communism failed and Russia is not communist anymore. I also wanted to study philosophy at the university, but friends that got there told me that all that is studied there is marxist revelations about other philosophers, not the philosophers themselves, so I opted for Education. Before communism fell, all that was translated and sold was Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and pieces from Plato, More, Aristotle - only what pieces suited Marxism; only after 1990 other philosophic works started to be translated. I used to read heavily in Russian, since in Bulgaria there were Russian bookstores, and I'd buy from there mostly history books, but literature and philosophy also.
I'd be interested in peeking in your books - who can one order them here? I'd rather get them in Russian, I read Russian fluently /even though I lost the habit of speaking it, haven't spoken it for more than 10 years, and before that only occasionally, besides my speech is full with grammatical mistakes - I never completely got down the grammar cases/.
"As for Stalin - he was nothing better than Hitler, the genocide that he put of his own people is estimated at 23 mln people /only the political cleansing and the Golodomor/, Hitler, with the concentration camps and the civilians killed, did only half of that number http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html . The worse genocides on the 20th century were committed by communist regimes. The uprooting whole peoples and moving them to Siberia, the Golodomor in Ukraine, the political cleansings, destroying the peasants - I cannot imagine how possibly it could be worse without him."
Don, It galls me that so many young people today are not aware of this. They are not being taught in school. They do get endless diatribes about the 'Holocaust', and Hitler is a TV star.
It wasn't just the Soviet peoples murdered in Stalin's purges, but many foreign workers who came to Russia to help start the glorious 'five year plan'. Thousands of americans who were fleeing the depression and lured by promises and fat contracts. Ford Motor Company and other industrialists signed huge contracts and sent scads of workers to Russia. In just 5 years the purges went full force and thousands of foreign workers, their passports confiscated, "disappeared' into trenches dug in the woods by the NKVD.
I didn't know that about US workers, thank you for the info, uncleffred. I know though that many Armenians who lived in the US went to USSR, after being promised that Armenia would be independent, so they figured they finally have a chance to have their own country - so they sold their businesses here and went on, only to have all their money taken from them, their passports confiscated, and themselves sheep-herded in the collective agricultural units /kolhozes/, with no right to travel; the richest and most educated of them were accused in being "American spies" and killed, so they can't complain.
It's a big mistake that those facts are not taught in schools, about the true character of the Stalinist regime, and the huge human cost it involved. AFAIK, this are not taught in the US schools, at least I had never seen a single lesson about that, in any of the history textbooks I see used in all the schools I substitute - while the kids study the "Diary of Anne Frank", and the Holocaust is well covered in lessons, movies, documentaries in variety of social study and language art classes I've been in. People have to know all the terrible lessons of history, so they don't get repeated again. Communism is it's Stalinist face wasn't much better that nazism, only it's promises were great, so people believed them.
I was pounded in my head since kindergarden that in communism everyone give as much as they can, and given all they need; the slogan was "from everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs" - which was a big fat lie. Communism never cared for people who were disabled, or with special needs, those people were despised, the families with kids with special need gave them up to the state and those kids were stuck in care-homes in some god-forsaken villages, to be fed like animals and tied to their beds, so they don't need to be taught anything, most of them never learned even how to speak, and were there until they died, many of then abused in variety of ways.
There are no kids with special need visible in Bulgarian schools, or on the streets - not because they haven't been born, but because they were hidden as a dirty secret and little by little eliminated. I had been in a home for abandoned kids, as a part of my education - there were 1 teacher and 2 paras for the whole home, about 300 kids, and the teacher said "We cannot teach them anything, we only care for them" - meaning providing food and shelter. The kids were dressed in rags, filthy, scabbed over, terrible sight. I had seen movies about the homes for special kids, they tied to their beds, and muuing like cows, because they never learned how to talk. What kind of "to everyone according to his needs" is that?
I've been trying to explain to my mother how in the US kids with problems go to school like everyone else, and do special classes, and all she expresses is disgust that those kids exist, and that they are not separated like those in Bulgaria - this is to show how unsensitive and even cruel people became in result of this communist practice toward children who are nothing in blame to be born like they are. When I see here kids with Down, autism, etc, I think that they are so lucky to be born here, and not in Bulgaria.
I cannot find on the net materials about the condition of kids with special needs in communist Bulgaria, but there are some for after this time - which is a result of the attitude 45 years communism planted in the Bulgarian society. I'll post some of them - imagine them far worse in communist time, before Bulgaria started receiving money from different world organizations to improve the lives of those kids a little.
This is from 2008 "...[BUDAPEST/SOFIA/STRASBOURG, 13 October 2008] - For the first time in
central and eastern Europe, the European Committee of Social Rights
finds violations of the right to education (Article 17(2)) and the right
to non-discrimination (Article E) of the Revised European Social
Charter. The decision in the case of Mental Disability Advocacy Center
v. Bulgaria criticises the Bulgarian government for actively depriving
children with intellectual disabilities of education.In its
landmark decision which was made public today, the European Committee of
Social Rights responded to a 'collective complaint' under the European
Social Charter which was lodged against Bulgaria by the Mental
Disability Advocacy Center in February 2007. The Committee found
evidence that the Bulgarian government failed to provide education for
up to 3,000 children with intellectual disabilities living in so-called
'homes for mentally disabled children' across Bulgaria.
Today's
decision highlights the inadequacy of Bulgarian standards for inclusive
education. It notes that legislation and policies remain unimplemented
and unmonitored. Specifically, the European Committee on Social Rights
notes that:
mainstream schools are not accessible nor adaptable to children who live in 'homes for mentally disabled children'.
teacher
training is inadequate and educational curricula and teaching resources
are not adapted to the special learning needs of children with
intellectual disabilities.
the Bulgarian Government
failed to implement a 2002 law which provided that children in 'homes
for mentally disabled children' could be integrated into schools.
as
a result of the failure to implement the law, only 6.2 per cent of
children in 'homes for mentally disabled children' receive an education,
whereas primary school attendance for Bulgarian children in general is
approximately 94 per cent.
the disparity between
school attendance for children with and without disabilities is so great
that it constitutes discrimination against children with intellectual
disabilities living in 'homes for mentally disabled children'.
A
child placed in one of Bulgaria's 'homes for mentally disabled
children' is needlessly segregated, denied any hope and assistance of
entering and contributing to society, and will routinely suffer
violations of basic human rights recognised under international law.
These institutions are often located in remote rural areas and run by
unqualified staff with little understanding of the needs or rights of
children with intellectual and other types of disabilities. As a result,
neglect - as well as physical, sexual and emotional abuse - is common.
Human rights violations in these institutions have been commented on by
numerous international organisations and have been widely documented,
most recently by reports produced by the BBC, and France2...." http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18675
2010:
"...An unusual investigation that brought together prosecutors and human rights lawyers has revealed a grisly picture of neglect at Bulgarian state homes for mentally disabled children: 238 deaths since 2000.More than three-fourths of the deaths were found to have been
avoidable: 84 from physical deterioration caused by neglect; 36 from
exposure to cold or long-term immobility; 31 from malnutrition; 13 from
infections caused by poor hygiene; 6 from accidents; 15 were
unexplained.
While experts are shocked by the high death rates — the current
number of residents in such institutions is 1,296 — the cases appear
much like those in similar state care institutions across Eastern Europe
since Communism imploded 20 years ago.But the investigation is different in that the abuses were uncovered by an unusual team: prosecutors working alongside human rights lawyers from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee,
an international human rights organization based in Sofia. The effort
represents a strategic break from the familiar pattern of advocates'
naming and shaming governments for appalling standards of care for their
societies' most vulnerable citizens...."http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=120842
Feb 23, 2012:
"...Abandoned children in their cots at the Saint
Ivan Rilski home for medical and social care for children in Bulgaria. A
practice inherited from communist times, the abandonment of healthy and
disabled children by their families is most widespread in the 22
countries of central and eastern Europe
...A practice inherited from communist times, the abandonment of healthy and disabled children
by their families is most widespread in the 22 countries of central and
eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, according to UNICEF
mission chief Jean-Claude Legrand.In total, some 626,000 children, including at least 31,000 aged three
or under, live in state-run homes in these countries, he said.
At the Ivan Rilski home, the UNICEF mission found sufficient staff,
good facilities and no nutrition or hygiene problems "but this does not
cover the emotional and human attachment needs of these 75 children.""The staff usually cannot do much more than they already do in this
type of institution," Legrand said among rows of cribs, each baby
isolated from the rest...."http://my.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/bulgarias-abandoned-children-crave-tenderness-090244524.html
Here is a short video
Here a video that will wreck your heart, beware of images:
This is what communism left Bulgaria with - heap of broken promises to high heaven, and a very real hell in the backyard. I don't dare think what was the condition of those homes during communist time, when there was no medias to be afraid of and to EU to cater to.
This treatment of children wasn't happening only in Bulgaria - here a video from China, 1995 - those kids are not even with special needs, their only fault is that they were born, and that they were girls:
Communism everywhere is heartless, and cruel, and kills people whether slow or fast; not only you are killed, but you have to like it, while you are killed, and praise the leader, whoever the leader is in the moment. I don't know what is worse in the case - the injury, or the insult on the top of it.
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