Category Archives: Communism

Soviet Support to Western Peace Organizations

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This subject was first discussed in a post dated February 25, 2011 after I had received comments from a senior DOE official about my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked.” One of the comments was about the massive support the Soviet Union had given to groups that protested places such as Rocky Flats. My most recent post was about an organization named Citizens Against Nuclear Disinformation In Denver (CANDID) that was formed by nuclear scientists and engineers frustrated by the flood rhetoric being spread by the ill-informed mainstream media and anti-nuclear groups following the highly publicized FBI raid of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in June 1989. There was a CANDID article authored by Dr. Michael R. Fox titled “The Counterfeit Peace Makers” published in December 1993 that discusses the work by the Communists to influence the “peace movements.” Dr. Fox mentions that a good scouting report would be useful to understand “…the values, agendas, tactics and influence on some to the participants. Specifically, the peace groups could stand a little more glare of scrutiny.”

“That these critics have reveled in portraying Rocky Flats workers as being a collection of careless devils incarnate, RF employees and friends may still be amazed as to how their critics could have reached such conclusions. A scouting report is thus provided.”

“To understand the Western Peace Movement (WPM)…it is best to understand the World Peace Council (WPC). The FBI has identified this organization as ‘the largest and most active Soviet international front organization, with affiliates in approximately 140 countries.’ The WPC worked through its U.S. supporting groups:  the U.S. Peace Council (USPC) and the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Since the ‘C-word’ turns off many Americans, the WPM developed into many nice-sounding appealing organizations. Most of them were either controlled or influenced by the WPC. Since most of these groups contain members having undiluted contempt for the U.S., for capitalism, for individual freedom, and especially the U.S. military capabilities, it is not essential for the KGB or other Soviet agents…to control them. Without external control and minimum external influence they voluntarily performed their men-spirited missions, including discrediting Rocky Flats workers. All of this, of course, is done in the name of ‘peace.'”

“The WPM, almost since its inception in the 1920s, has been cursed with infiltrators from the political left, including infiltrations from the CPUSA. The pursuit of peace by true pacifists was conducted in such a way as to be willing to criticize and oppose all belligerents in…conflicts. Not so the WPM. Its motivations were and still are to discredit and dismantle the U.S. military capabilities, not those of the Soviets…”

“A major player in all of this anti-American activity is the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)…This group has been very influential in promoting a decidedly anti-American agenda among the media, churches and clergy, and the Western Peace Movement on any number of issues has enjoyed the support of 100-200 members of Congress. It is no accident that these groups appear to be anti-American and critical of RF employees. They appear that way because they are that way, by design, training, and ideology.”

“An extraordinary debate about the nature of Pacifism has continued for 5 decades. A recent analysis of the debate was authored by Guenther Lewy…Lewy concludes, ‘While at one time pacifists were single-mindedly devoted to the principles of non-violence and reconciliation, today most pacifists groups defend the moral legitimacy of the armed struggle and guerrilla warfare, and they praise and support the Communist regimes emerging from such conflicts…”

“Finally, it comes as a surprise to many examining the peace issues to discover the existence of hundreds of peace groups in Eastern Europe. It is through their eyes that one can more clearly see the moral bankruptcy of the Western Peace Movement. People in these Eastern peace groups risked death itself fighting for their freedom through the use of the spoken and written word, and to rid themselves of their bestial tormentors, jailers, and murderers. Because the WPM is so heavily infused with Soviet apologists, it did not demand liberty, freedom, and civil rights for the people of Eastern Europe as a condition of nuclear disarmament of the West. In fact, the WPM ignored the appeals for human rights from Eastern groups….some leaders of the WPM forbade criticism of the Soviets.”

Warning to the West–Part II

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The first review about this book discussed the speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the AFL-CIO union and the U.S. Congress. This review is about a speech he gave to the members of the Senate and House of Representative on July 15, 1975 and both an interview and a speech on the BBC. His first comment in the speech to Congress was to thank the Senate for “…twice endeavoring to declare me an honorary citizen of the United States.” He quickly transitioned to his warnings to the West. He pointed out that in 1973, the year the United States embarked on detente and “…was precisely the year when starvation rations in Soviet prisons and concentration camps were reduced even further. He then mentions that the United States had the burden of leadership “…for at least half the world.” “We do not look upon you as Democrats or Republicans…we see statesmen, each of whom will play a direct and decisive role in the further course of world history, as it proceeds toward tragedy or salvation.”

The next entry in the book is the text of an interview, which I read to be contentious at times, on the BBC March 1, 1976. Solzhenitsyn responded to a question as to why the Soviets had exiled him instead of sending him back to the concentration camps. He observed that this was an instance where the West took a strong stand, and “…the Soviet Politburo simply took fright.” “I think now …they do regret it–we must remember they …had no choice. This was a rare moment when the West demonstrated unprecedented firmness and forced them to retreat.” However, Solzhenitsyn expressed dismay about the West’s reactions in most circumstances. Russians believed that the West would help raise them from slavery, but the West separated their own freedoms from the fate of the Russians. The press is accused of participating by not understanding their responsibility to publish the truth instead of mediocre headlines. He accuses that the West stood by while several countries fell to Communist rule. Continue reading →

Warning to the West–Part I

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This book contains the texts of speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the United States and Britain after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. The first two in this review will be were given to the AFL-CIO. Solzhenitsyn condemned the Soviet Union and “…its intolerable policy of repression, yet also sharply criticizes those complacent Westerners who support their government’s misguided policy of detente and timidly fear to take up the obligations that freedom-hungry people expect from the leading democracies of the world. ‘Interfere more and more, he pleads…We beg you to come and interfere’.” As an aside from the speeches, Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Gerald Ford for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1974-1975 with warnings about detente with the Soviets. Solzhenitsyn said in one of his AFL-CIO speeches that the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” Detente with the Soviets did not end until Reagan replaced Carter and declared the USSR to be “The Evil Empire.” 

Solzhenitsyn begins his first speech to the labor leaders with a short history of the Russian Revolution and tells them “…only four months after the October Revolution…all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were denouncing the Communists who had deceived them…” The Communists had fled from Petrograd to Moscow, and had given orders to open fire on the crowds of factory workers demanding election of independent officers. A lathe operator named Alexander Shliapnikov led the Communists before the Revolution: Lenin wasn’t even in the country. Shliapnikov charged in 1921 that the Communist leadership had betrayed the interests of the workers, and he disappeared.

Solzhenitsyn thanked the AFL for publishing a map of Soviet concentration camps to counteract charges by Liberals in the U.S. who were claiming the camps did not exist. He points out that Liberals weren’t the only group supporting the Communists. Capitalists were encouraging business dealings with the Soviets, which of course gave badly needed economic support. He mentions Armand Hammer by name. Some American businessmen arrange an exhibit of criminological technology in Moscow. The KGB purchased the equipment, copied it, and used it to spy on citizens. Solzhenitsyn tells a story about Lenin predicting that Western Capitalists would compete with each other to sell the Soviets everything they needed without any concern for the future. He predicts that “…when the bourgeoisie a rope and the bourgeoisie will hang itself.” Lenin is asked where they would get enough rope for that, he replied, “They will sell it to us themselves.” Continue reading →

Gulag Voices, Surviving the Gulag

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The first two parts of the review of Anne Applebaum’s collection of writings by survivors of the Soviet slave complex were about daily life and women in the Gulag, which Applebaum writes is an acronym for the Soviet term “Main Camp Administration.” (Wikipedia says it is “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”) The people who wrote the memoirs were remarkable because they were literate and they survived. A large number of the estimated 25 million people who were sentenced to the concentration camps, labor camps, exile villages, criminal and political camps, and prisons did not survive. One writer observed only a few people in the slave camps would survive the first few months of imprisonment. There was mention of an unfunny joke that the first few years were the hardest. This part of the review is about how people used cleverness and religious faith to survive.

Dimitry S. Likhachev was an intellectual who was imprisoned after he was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. He and fellow literature club members saluted one another in ancient Greek, which was interpreted to mean he was an enemy of the state. He was arrested after an acquaintance visited him and asked whether his library had anything anti-Soviet after looking at a copy of Henry Ford’s The International Jew, describes Jews as “vicious capitalists and Bolsheviks.” He describes his initial imprisonment and some of the people in detail. One person in his cell had been the head of the Petrograd Boy Scouts. He mentions that a favorite game of the “warders” was to sweep a rat back and forth with brooms as it attempted escape until the rat died of exhaustion. He writes about the irony that he was arrested for meeting once weekly for intellectual discussions to be thrown in with people who had similar discussions continually while in prison. Likhachev was released after four years and became “…Russia’s best-known literary historian, critic, and scholar.” Continue reading →

Gulag Voices, Women in the Gulag

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The first posting about the Annals of Communism edited by Anne Applebaum gave a summary of the memoirs that gave a view into daily life in the camps called the Gulag, which was an acronym for the Soviet term, “Main Camp Administration.” This posting is about women in the camps. Most of the memoirs have descriptions that are difficult to read, but I consider these memoirs to be the most difficult. Women were gang raped and/or had to use sex to survive. There is a very brief mention that it wasn’t just women who were victimized. It is described that sexual depravity was rampant, and that raping men was common. My interpretation is that the brutally inhumane conditions and treatment of the people resulted in destruction of their health, but also destroyed the humanity of many if not most of the prisoners. The memoirs of Elena Glinka and Hava Volovich are particularly disturbing.

Elena Glinka was a young engineer when she was arrested in 1950 and imprisoned for six years. She talked little about her experiences. There is a description of how women on a prison transport ship were raped, killed, and thrown overboard. Elena’s third-person memoir, the “Kolyma Tram,” describes how the prisoners gave the guards alcohol until they were in a drunken stupor after the word spread that women had arrived in the camp. (No explanation is given why they had access to so much alcohol.) The prisoners threw rags on the ground for makeshift bedding, lined up, and began to rape the women. One prisoner was the “Kolyma Tram driver.” He would shout, “Mount Up!” to signal it was the next man’s turn until the driver shouted “Show’s over!” Women who died were dragged to a pile of bodies while survivors were doused with water. The lines then formed again. Elena was spared the treatment of the other women. She was young and pretty, and the camp boss chose her for himself. She “…thanked God that she’d become the property of just one. Continue reading →

Gulag Voices, Daily Life in the Gulag

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Gulag Voices is a volume in the Annals of Communism series edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum. Applebaum warns that the stories should not be taken as a complete cross section of experiences in the Gulag, which is an acronym for the Soviet term, “Main Camp Administration,” because all the writers were literate and survived. Most of the prisoners in the camps were not literate, and did not survive. There are estimates that as many as 25 million people or 15% of the population of the Soviet Union faced imprisonment and slave labor in the Gulag. The memoirs describe the brutality of life in the camps, and the treatment of the prisoners as work animals often results in them losing their humanity. However, there are sprinklings of humanity and kindness amongst the horror. The review will be split into three parts; this part will be about daily life, the second will be about women in the camps (the most brutal of the descriptions), and the final review will be about how people used their relatively good fortune, cleverness, religion, or strength of character to survive. 
 
Kazimier Zarod was a Polish civil servant and army reservist who fled from Warsaw to eastern Poland after the German invasion. He was arrested when the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and was sent to a Siberian forestry camp. There were 108,000 Poles sent to the Gulag and 292,000 were sent to “exile camps.” The Soviet Union concluded a temporary truce with Poland after being invaded by Germany. Stalin allowed a Polish army to be formed, and Zarod marched out of Russia with what was called “Ander’s Army.” He travelled to Tehran, Bombay, Cape Town, and Britain where he joined the Royal Air Force Bomber Command. He provided descriptions of daily life in the prison camp. The black rye bread that was the main diet was allocated based on the amount of work performed, and many were able to earn 75 percent or 800 grams of bread early in their captivity. The allocation shrank as the men weakened, and stealing another’s bread brought a death sentence. The work details began at 5:30 after the morning soup was served. Work continued until 6:00 P.M. and ranks formed at 9:00 to be counted and perhaps recounted if the numbers weren’t correct.

Anatoly Zhigulin became famous for his poetry after his imprisonment. He describes how some were arrested for telling a joke about Stalin or listening to a joke about Stalin. Zhigulin and his friends went further by forming cells to publish anti-Stalinist leaflets. Zhigulin realized he was going to starve to death when he became too weak to earn a decent allocation of bread. Malnutrition “was not on the official list of recognized illnesses,” so he made himself sick by drinking icy water and deep-breathing forty-below air to earn several days of rest in the hospital. He also described how his crew boss, Sergei Zakharchenco, had a knack for laying out roadbeds that required little digging. The crew then would meet their allocation of digging by mixing snow and branches with the dirt. However, he faced starvation again, and committed “Samorub,” which was cutting yourself with your ax. He carefully planned the cut to make it look accidental, because it was considered sabotage if it was intentional. He aimed at the gap beside the big toe, made certain the guard was watching, and chopped through his boot. It earned him a couple of months off. Continue reading →