Category Archives: Communism

Truman

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trumanThis book written by David McCullough is absolutely amazing. My wife had been telling me for years that it was something I would completely enjoy, but I had put off reading it because of the 992 pages. I learned that she was right when I finally got around to reading the book.

I understand the book rejuvenated the reputation of President Harry S. Truman after he left the presidency in near disgrace with an approval rating in the low twenty percent range because of the general disapproval (disgust) for the Korean War. I wrote a personal review of the book that had in excess of twenty-five pages, which should be a good indication of what I thought about the book. I promise to maintain my pledge to hold reviews on this site to two pages.

The Amazon selection for the most useful positive and less positive reviews is a good place to start. For the first category, it says in part, “For most of the 1,000 or so pages it read like a novel, a real page turner…” A three star review says, “While it is OK for a historian to like the subject of a biography, he should not love him. David McCullough likes Harry Truman a bit too much.”

I need to add that I began reading this lengthy biography with a personal bias. My father was an ardent Roosevelt Democrat, and he said on many occasions that Truman was one of the greatest presidents. I was fascinated with that assessment in my youth when I was struggling with understanding anything at all about politics, mostly because my Dad seldom if ever said anything like that about FDR. Why, I asked myself, would my Dad love FDR, but would so frequently talk about Truman being a great president. This book answers that question. Ann Coulter also answers that question in one of her books. She is critical of every Democrat president. She says of Truman that he was wrong about many of his policies, “But there is no doubt he loved his country.” Continue reading →

China’s Megatrends, The 8 Pillars of a New Society

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china-megatrendsThis book by John and Doris Naisbitt is a follow-up to his book “Megatrends.” The authors lived and travelled in China, did extensive interviewing, and developed an institute to analyze what had launched the country from the poverty and backwardness under Mao to becoming an economic power with many millionaires and a growing middle class. China is described as being created into an entirely new social and economic system and political model. The system is described as a “vertical democracy.”

Some of the reviewers on Amazon reflect the discomfort I felt when reading the gentle criticism of the control imposed by the Communist government. Late in the book the authors write about the “three T’s,” which are “Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen.” They then give a scathing criticism of Tibet, saying that 90 percent of the people live as serfs in comparison to the millions of Chinese who have been pulled out of poverty by the economic growth engineered by the central government. Taiwan is described as having China as its largest trading partner. Tiananmen receives harsh although brief criticism. It is described as a tragedy that is still casting clouds over China. And, as much sympathy as we have for China, it has not yet done enough to sweep those clouds away.

The descriptions of how Deng Xiaoping began turning China into a free market powerhouse with government control after Mao’s death is a fascinating story. On the question of why the country decided to use capitalism under communist control is explained by Deng with the aphorism, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” The current leader Hu Jintao is quoted as saying, “We will improve policies to encourage people to start businesses.”

There is a discussion of the primary conflict between socialism and capitalism over freedom and fairness. “Do we choose a system where all are equally treated so that no one gets too far ahead? Or do we choose freedom for individuals who through their talents and hard work gain levels of achievements far above others?” It seemed to me the author answers that in the book. The people in China who succeed through talent and hard work are allowed to have much more than others, and the system, according to the author, is working.

The Olympics is undoubtedly a good example of what strong government control can accomplish. The Olympics were considered a great success at the cost of $1.9 billion for venues and $42 billion for infrastructure improvements. The fact that 1.5 million people had to move out of their homes makes it obvious that the construction would have been difficult or impossible in a less authoritarian system.

China opened to foreign support and technology transfer to begin development, restricted foreign shareholdings, and strengthened Chinese corporations by encouraging fierce competition among them. Deng commented when touring a Ford plant in the U.S., “We want to learn from you.” However, the U.S. failed to understand the true meaning of that statement. There is a description of opposing Chinese warlords preparing for battle. One sent twenty boats packed with straw across the river separating them, and the other army unleashed a huge assault with arrows. The boats were pulled back and the 100,000 arrows that were collected to be used against those who had shot them. The Chinese who left to learn in other countries and return to build businesses are called “sea turtles.”

What has been accomplished required more than learning from successful foreign companies. The government had to emancipate the minds of the people to make them the engine to the economic successes. Education was emphasized, and people were taught they could succeed with work instead of coasting along and getting what everyone else was getting. The book mentions the eighteen impoverished famers on a collective that wasn’t growing enough food for survival who secretly agreed to divide the collective in Xiaogang village into private plots at risk of being prosecuted. The result was a marked increase in grain production. Their example became a model for converting State Owned Enterprises into successful free enterprise companies. The government frames the policies and priorities and the people create their own roles. Progress is made “while sustaining order and harmony.” This system is compared to the political system in the U.S. where frequent elections freezes the government into inaction while the politicians posture for reelection.  In China, “The constancy of the ruling political party allows long-term planning without the disruption and changing politics of thinking and acting that are focused on elections.”

The book does address problems created by corruption, and describes how the government is working with limited success to eliminate corruption from government. The terrible pollution problems are also discussed. One “sea turtle” commented that she knew she was home when she breathed the polluted air. The book discusses censorship, and mentions that the U.S. has a history of censoring books such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I didn’t see how that equates to, for example, the censorship of the Internet. The book mentions two things that surprised me about that. First, it blames companies such as Cisco for building the equipment that allows the censorship. Then it mentions, “Few in China complain about Internet control.” I felt myself wanting to use the crass, “Well duh! when I read that.

China has problems created by the one child policy. There is a large excess of young men. There also is the problem of “six-pocket little emperors,” or little boys with two parents and four grandparents who have no one else to spoil. Oddly, the censorship of the Internet is said to be necessary to keep children from becoming addicted to being on the computer all the time.

I’m guessing the authors would explain the surprisingly low average of three stars of Amazon reviews as being caused by what they call the continuing misunderstanding Americans have of the Chinese people. We impose our views of democracy and freedom when we consider China. The authors end their book with the observation, “To what degree it will match western perceptions troubles on the West. China has its own goals and dreams. How to get there, China and its people will decide.” The Chinese people are accustomed to and comfortable with government control. They don’t care whether the control is a capitalist country with a communist coat. “The Chinese believe in performance legitimacy. If the government governs well, it is perceived as legitimate.” China has achieved its transformation by “actually decentralizing power more than any country in the world.” China calls its market economy “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The United States is evolving toward socialism with American characteristics.

The Road to Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

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This book by Ted Gottfried is in first of a series covering the history of the Soviet (meaning council of workers, peasants and/or soldiers) Union. The illustrations by Melanie Reim are in the style of Soviet propaganda posters. The book is easy to read, and the key players and events are presented in sufficient detail to give someone new to the subject a good introduction to the remarkable series of events that led the Communists to take over Russia and begin the experiment called the Soviet Union that wouldn’t end for nine decades. Other books take many more pages to present the information in greater detail, which is a validation of the value of this book for someone who wants to read the basic facts.

The peasants who produced the food and wealth for the Romanov Empire lived in primitive and deprived conditions. The tsar and aristocrats seldom if ever considered what was in the best interest of the peasants. Tsar Alexander II issued an emancipation proclamation to free the serfs, but the mortgages and interest on the land sales kept them enslaved. Undeveloped infrastructure often resulted in failure to transport what was produced on the farms to markets and population centers, and there were frequent famines while food rotted near where it was produced.

The eventual success of the Communist revolution was possible because no one other than the Communists promised to do anything to ease the suffering of the peasants. The seeds of the revolution began in the early 1800s when Georg Hegel began campaigning to improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden. Karl Marx was one of Hegel’s disciples, and would write The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Marx also wrote Das Kapital, which predicted that revolution had to occur in an industrialized country and would not occur in pre-industrialized Russia. The teachings of Marx became the basis of the views taken by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Zinoviev. Marx suffered from many medical problems and went through many periods of poverty. Only one of his children lived to see the successful Communist revolution. Marx received financial support from Friedrich Engels, whose money came from an inherited mill.

The landowners and aristocrats often lived beyond their means, and by the 1880s many were deeply in debt to the tsars. They were baffled that their university-educated children became radicals dedicated to bringing down the monarchy. Alexander Ulianov was in that category, and was hanged for being part of a plot by the ultraviolent group called “People’s Will” to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Ulianov’s brother was Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, who would change his name to Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had a checkered history as a Communist leader, since he often ran away from conflict. He fled to Finland soon after shooting broke out in the rebellion that began in 1905 and didn’t return to Russia until the revolution was a reality in 1917.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family were protected from assassins in the early 1900s by a well-funded secret police that carried out “a hideous reign of terror” that “spread all over Russia.”

A bizarre part of the Romanov story involved the frantic efforts of the tsarina to save her son Alexis from hemophilia. She found a holy man in Siberia named Rasputin, or the “Mad Monk,” who seemed to be the only person who could control the bleeding. Rasputin gained immense influence over the tsarina. He was soon courted by everyone who wanted some appointment or favor from the tsar and tsarina. He was described as a filthy man who had hypnotic power, and he often demanded sexual favors for his assistance. There was a plot to murder him, and he did not die easily. Food spiked with cyanide seemed to have no effect. A gunshot to the head momentarily stunned him, but he wandered off and didn’t die until he was hit with more bullets.

The book describes the frequent and violent oppression of Jews in Russia based on rumors that Jews were using the blood of Christian children to prepare for the Passover feast. Jews were savagely murdered in pogroms fostered by the reports. Tsar Nicholas used the anger at the Jews to defuse unrest against his regime among the oppressed peasants. By 1917 more than a third of the surviving Jews had left Russia and immigrated to the United States.

The Second Party Communist Congress was held in Brussels in 1903, and Lenin dominated the meeting. He insisted party membership be restricted to professional revolutionaries, and they called themselves Bolsheviks (those of the majority). Those who didn’t agree with the restrictions were called the Mensheviks (those of the minority). The Communists held several congresses, and effectively made little progress. World War I gave them their chance. Millions of poorly supplied Russian soldiers died, and the tsar decided he had to take direct control of the military at the front. That of course took him out of the royal court and gave more power to Rasputin. Crops rotted in the fields because most of the young men who would normally have done the harvesting were dead or still with the army. Protests and troop rebellions were common. Nicholas was forced to abdicate, his brother refused the crown, and three hundred years of Romanov rule ended. The charismatic Kerensky established a provisional government.

The Germans paid Lenin with millions of dollars in gold to destabilize the Russian regime and transported him and thirty-one other radical Russians in a sealed rail car to St. Petersburg. Lenin’s collaboration with the Germans was eventually revealed, and he was forced to escape to Finland. However, Bolshevism was on a steady rise as more and more thousands joined. The Provisional Government faded away and the Bolsheviks took over in an almost bloodless revolution. The tsar and his family would eventually be executed and buried in secret.

The Communists began to be attacked from all sides. Approximately 60,000 Czechs who had volunteered to fight Germany began attacking via the Trans-Siberian Railway. White Russian forces attacked from several fronts. Western countries including the United States landed troops in Russia to oppose the Communists. The Japanese seized Vladivostok. Trotsky organized the Red Army under former tsarist military officers, and they prevailed. Stalin would never forgive Trotsky for enlisting the tsarists, and probably also never forgave him for being credited with winning. Lenin wanted to expand the revolution and ordered Stalin to invade Poland against Trotsky’s advice. The Poles counterattacked and defeated the Reds. Stalin was recalled to Moscow and censured by Lenin. (George Orwell’s fairy story “Animal Farm” is  about how Stalin eventually vilified Trotsky to gain complete control.)

World War I and the civil wars that followed left Russia in a devastated state. The peasants balked at planting crops when they were told they didn’t own the land. Lenin violated Communist principles by granting peasants ownership of their farms. However, famine had already begun. Lenin appealed to the Capitalist nations for food, and it began to arrive. Herbert Hoover organized a massive international relief effort that saved millions of Russians.

Stalin had taken complete control by the time Lenin died in 1924, and millions would die in purges and as slaves in the Gulags during his thirty-year reign.

Wormwood Forest, A Natural History of Chernobyl

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This book by Mary Mycio was given to me by a friend who told me I would love it. He was right. It describes the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 that scattered 20-40 tons of radioactive materials across large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The area is designated the “Zone of Alienation,” and 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled. There are over four million people still living in areas that are contaminated with at least one curie of cesium per square kilometer. The book has detailed information about the levels of contamination of the Zone and the effects on the animals, plants, insects, and fungus. Many sections are difficult to read because of the amount of technical information. However, I’m glad I read it.

The book begins with a quote from Revelation to explain the title. The quote is about a star called Wormwood that falls on the earth “…and the third part of the waters become wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.” Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the wormwood plant and Chernobyl is “…the Russianized version…”   The wormwood herb and other plants have thrived since the reactor disaster. There have been effects, such as pine trees that have grown into distorted shapes called “pine bushes.”

It was believed people would never be able to enter many areas contaminated by the disaster, but the author joined the fad of “atomic tourism” by obtaining permits to tour the Zone wearing her camouflage protective clothing and dosimeter. She writes she was shocked to discover the area “…has become Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing—at times unearthly—wilderness teeming with large animals…” There are large herds of wild boars, healthy populations of wolves and lynx because of the proliferation of their prey, wild horses, and a large variety of birds. The author observes that “…very little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl. What is known is that there are many, many more of them than before the disaster.

The book is undoubtedly controversial in many aspects. For example the author writes although plutonium is a heavy metal and therefore toxic, the myth that it is the “…deadliest substance known to man…” is not accurate. There are other toxins such as arsenic that win that distinction. I expect the effects on people and the various species described in the book will reinforce the opinions of those who oppose nuclear power and the general absence of longer term devastating effects will reinforce the opinions of those who are proponents. One of the author’s tour guides observed that there has not been mutant animals in the zone. He admitted when pressed that “Because with wild animals, mutants die.” Toads and frogs often develop malformations when exposed to toxins, but those are seen more often in the United States than in the Zone.

There were hundreds of children exposed to radioactive iodine who developed thyroid cancer. However, “… perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the disaster’s impact on people.” “Samosels,” or squatters, originally hid to prevent being evacuated from the Zone. They are dying at the expected ages despite being exposed to twice the maximum dose “allowed.” “Moreover, it seems impossible to tease the health effects of radiation out of the tangle of poverty, alcoholism, smoking, poor diet, and other factors that plague public health in the the places in the former Soviet Union that were unaffected by Chernobyl and that made life expectancy—especially among men—the lowest in Europe.” It is also observed the Samosels inhale “…too little plutonium to influence their dose.”

The “involuntary park” (a term coined by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling) appears to be proving wildlife will thrive after being made radioactive by cesium, iodine, strontium, and plutonium where there is little human activity. Touring the Zone converted the author from “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support—at least for giving a window of time for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels…” She describes how she believed life would be mutated if it managed to survive the holocaust, but Chernobyl showed her a different view. The ghost towns are a “…tragic testimony to the devastating effects of technology gone awry. But life in the Wormwood Forest was not only persevering, it was flourishing.”  Of course there were and are numerous media ventures to “…exploit Chernobyl’s inherent spookiness.”

There are interesting bits of historical background about the areas impacted by the disaster. For example, it is mentioned that Stalin’s forced collectivization created an artificial famine in the Ukraine that starved ten million people to death in 1932-1933. There are also bits that were fun to read. One example is that the ugly blob that formed after the reactor meltdown cooled is called the “elephant foot.” The authorities wanted to take a sample, so a machine gun was fired at the blob until a chip came off.

One of my favorite passages in the book was a discussion of the author attending a third grade class trip to the New York Hall of Science. There was a terrarium with a sign: “The Impact of Radiation on Rats.” There was nothing in the terrarium except plants, and author decided the radiation had made the rats invisible. Another passage tells a joke about a “babushka” selling apples labeled “Chernobyl.” A passerby notes that no one will buy apples from there and is told people will certainly buy them for their husband, wife, and mother-in-law.

I was interested in the author’s willingness to expose herself to the radiation levels during her tours. She writes she did not wear a cumulative dosimeter. She calculated an estimated exposure of a few hundred millirems, which isn’t much, but she judged her exposure to be “enough.”

Anyone interested in taking a tour of the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl should read this book. Approval for a visit is obtained by sending a fax to Chernobylinterinform.

I’m going to let the author have the final say with words written in her closing. “If a nuclear disaster really is …in your metaphoric backyard…it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”

Animal Farm

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This book by Eric Blair writing under the pseudonym of George Orwell is a departure from the usual non-fiction books reviewed at this web site. The book is even subtitled “A Fairy Story.” However, the story is based on the reality of the brutality of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Orwell had first-hand experience with the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky when he was serving as a foot soldier with Communist forces fighting the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat by a bullet during combat, but miraculously survived. He then narrowly escaped the Stalinist purge of his Trotsky infantry unit which resulted in execution or imprisonment of those who did not escape. A review of the book “Homage to Catalonia” was posted in May 2011 for those interested in the full story.

Russell Baker wrote a wonderful Preface for Animal Farm, and I intend to use that freely. Stalin had worked diligently to destroy every trace of Trotsky’s contribution to the Russian revolution, and that resulted in millions of people being executed or imprisoned in the Gulag where death was almost certain from the conditions of slave labor. The Stalinists drained the Spanish treasury of gold during this time, but weren’t satisfied with that. They insisted that their allies, including the Trotskyites and Anarchists helping them fight Franco’s Fascists, had to be vilified for supposed support of Franco. That led to the executions and imprisonment of thousands who had fought at the side of the Stalinists. Those actions paved the way for the eventual victory of Franco’s forces. Orwell was quite angry from what he had observed. He was alarmed that “decent people in the Western democracies had succumbed to a dangerously romantic view of the Russian revolution that blinded them to the Soviet reality.” He wrote Animal Farm to warn the world about the immorality of Stalinism. Continue reading →

Reinventing Collapse, The Soviet Example and American Prospects

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This book by Dmitry Orlov predicts a U.S. economic collapse, and it is both interesting and often oddly entertaining. The author was born and grew up in Leningrad, but lived in the U.S. until the mid-seventies. He had several visits to the Soviet Union during the years that political system was preparing to collapse or after it had collapsed. He believes that the U.S. will only have the option of inflating to escape excessive debt or defaulting on obligations. “But the results are the same: a worthless national currency and unhappy international creditors unwilling to extend further credit.” That scenario leads to the need, if the author is correct or partially correct, for individuals to consider what they should do, or prepare to do, if there is a collapse of the U.S. economy.  I don’t agree with some of what is written (the risk from global warming, as one example) but I believe the book is worthwhile.

The descriptions of the visits to the Soviet Union are an example of how the author can take the edge off serious matters with clever writing. “The stores were largely empty (in the sense of being quite uncontaminated by consumer goods) and often closed.” He quickly learned a half-liter of vodka could be easily exchanged for ten liters of gasoline, “…giving vodka far greater effective energy density than rocket fuel.” People were willing to exchange items of great value for American jeans. This is an important point. When an economy collapses, it is important to have desirable items to barter for what is needed for survival. The author also warns that, “Access to actual physical resources and assets…and relationships, quickly becomes much more valuable than mere cash.” Continue reading →