Monday, June 11, 2007

"Poisoned Love Affair," Indeed

Interesting piece on line at the New Statesman written by Robert Service.  Service’s piece was written more as a critique of a review which somewhat criticized his book Comrades!: A History of World Communism, which I must state I have not had the pleasure of reading, but none-the-less, it makes for an interesting read.  A couple of short excerpts.

Communism, like nuclear fuel, has a long afterlife. In country after country across Europe - from Russia to Albania - it has been discredited for its record in power.

And more importantly, this.

The point is that repression was not some aberrant phenomenon under communist rule around the world. It was ideologically condoned in advance; it proved also to be a practical necessity for the consolidation of communist states. Communists from the 1920s through to the 1940s were frank about this: they eulogised dictatorship. Subsequently, they avoided debate on the matter or else contended that they would break with the models provided by historical communist states. They never explained how they would introduce communism except by massive force. The ghosts of the victims of all those bloody purges cry out for us to reject the printed apologias for the communist past.

Service’s piece is titled Party politics.

Linked via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/11 at 07:55 AM
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