Author Archives: advocate

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.

Deadbeat

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Matt Ball on Words@Random has a fascinating description of the origin of this word. It is used today to describe someone who is doesn’t pay debts, is lazy, or both. The verb “beat” in the 1800s meant “to swindle or cheat.” Deadbeat was used in military slang in the Civil War to describe a soldier who shirked duty, especially by faking injury or illness. I believe the most common usage today goes to those who don’t meet their financial obligations, such as “deadbeat dads.”

Common Sense in 2012: Prosperity and Charity for America

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This book was written by Art Robinson, and in his words, “…for the voters of Congressional District 4 in Oregon. It explains, to the best of my ability, the issues facing us all in the 2012 elections.” A copy of the book was mailed to all subscribers of Dr. Robinson’s newsletter “Access to Energy” along with a request for donation. I donated despite the fact that I am a resident of Colorado. I believe it is important to support someone offering to serve as a citizen volunteer in Congress who promises to use common sense. His son Matthew is running against the incumbent Peter DeFazio in the Democratic primary. Dr. Robinson judges that Oregon’s District 4 will have a significantly better representative regardless of the general election outcome should Matthew win the primary.

I’ve followed developments in Oregon District 4 since Dr. Robinson and his family began his campaign for the 2010 election. I donated to that campaign in hopes of helping an honorable and ethical scientist who was willing to take the slings and arrows of a long time politician. The back cover of the book provides endorsements of Dr. Robinson from several renowned scientists. However, to illustrate my point about what he faces, the back cover ends with a quote from opponent Peter DeFazio, “Robinson is a ‘pathological nut job’.” I suggest readers consider donating to the campaign to replace DeFazio and request a copy of Dr. Robinson’s book.

The book is provides details of the Constitutional. Countless quotes by the Founders and other great thinkers explain Dr. Robinson’s positions. The erosion of liberty created by growth in government is documented with several examples. There is a graph that shows the percentage of U.S. population with jobs. Jobs began to be lost by the year 2000 “…in an economy that was gradually being strangled by Big Government.” Government has expanded relentlessly since taxing of income began in 1913. Manufacturing jobs have been hit especially hard. Reference is given to the astonishing mass of regulations that have been created that has made the U.S. increasingly unfriendly to all businesses. The federal debt “…has grown so large that service of this debt is draining away huge amounts of resources that are needed for the production of goods and services by American industry and workers.”

Chapter 1 is titled “Who is Art Robinson,” and introduces him as “…a successful scientist, businessman, and father. He lives with his family on their family farm…and works at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.” He introduces his wife Laurelee and their six children. The children were all home schooled and developed a home schooling curriculum that has been used by 60,000 American children for grades 1 through 12. The family business, which also publishes children’s books, has allowed the children to put each other through college and graduate school.

Laurelee tragically died after a 24 hour illness in 1988, but the strength of the family’s belief in each other and God led to “A silent, almost eerie calm…” I challenge anyone to read about the family and their successes and not be both touched and impressed.

It also is not difficult to be the opposite of impressed with the Congressional opponent. There was a billboard prominently displayed that showed Art Robinson and the words “Energy company CEO’s shouldn’t pay taxes.” The only very thin thread that connects this statement to the truth is that Dr. Robinson had suggested solving a national energy crisis by “…forgoing taxes on the industries and workers required to solve this problem…” It is true that CEOs are energy company employees. DeFazio, in the same vein as saying “Robinson is a ‘pathological nut job’,” also said that he lived in a “survivalist compound” and his campaign was supported by “money launderers.” In fact 99.3% of Robinson’s campaign contributions came from individuals. DeFazio also said that Robinson wanted to allow drinking water to be contaminated with nuclear waste.

There are some personal stories in the book that are quite interesting. Some are sad stories. One of those is about the Robinson’s research on “metabolic profiling,” which could have had significant impact on diagnosis of disease. They learned years later that a competing scientist entered the laboratory and scrambled the labels on the samples, which of course destroyed the experiment. You can almost feel the pain as Dr. Robinson wrote that the research “…could have saved Laurelee’s life in 1988, by getting her to surgery in time, and the lives of countless other people.”

There are also some fun stories. I particularly enjoyed one about Dr. Robinson being stopped by an officer who asked to see the permit for the wide load he was hauling. The officer inquired why the map for the route wasn’t attached to the permit. He was told it had been taken apart to allow the map to be unfolded and read. When asked where the staple was that had been removed to separate the map, he was told that the staple hadn’t been saved. Dr. Robinson was allowed to proceed if he promised he would get a staple at the next station. He was stopped again, and informed, “We know all about you. We heard about you on the radio. You’re the guy without the staple.”

Another quite sad story is the targeting of the Robinson children at Oregon State University. The remarkable academic achievements are listed for each of the Robinson children. Three of the children are in graduate studies at Oregon State University, and after Dr. Robinson began his campaign against DeFazio, “…DeFazio supporters at OSU seriously interfered with their graduate work. The actions against them were, in my experience, unprecedented in American academia.”  It was difficult to misrepresent Dr. Robinson’s academic achievements when “Everywhere DeFazio looked there were Robinson young adults with doctorates…or earning doctorates at Oregon State University.” An OSU professor stepped in to assist the three students, and was blackballed. “An outpouring of public support for the students and Professor Higginbotham made the rescue of the students possible.” Dr. Robinson writes that he did not want to make this public, but was forced to do so when he learned that one of his children and the professor were in immediate danger of permanent dismissal without cause from OSU.

There are always two sides in a dispute, and I’ll be open to considering the other side when Mr. DeFazio publishes his book. In the interim, I suggest you donate to Art Robinson’s campaign and request a copy of his book.

Amen

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Wikipedia says the word is a declaration of affirmation meaning “So be it; truly.” It is found in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and is a concluding word for prayers and hymns. Simplybible.com says when it is used at “…the end of a prayer it expresses the genuineness or truth of the petition or praise. Amen means ‘truly’ or ‘fair dinkum’.” It also is used colloquially to express strong agreement, as in “amen to that.”

Fair and Square

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The Phrase Finder says the meaning is “Honest and straightforward, especially of business dealings.” The origin is also straightforward, since “square” meant “fair and honest” in the 16th century. The expression is therefore tautological, which means to use different words that mean the same.

Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

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This book presents Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analysis of the three presidential administrations preceding Barrack Obama. Those administrations represents the period after the United States had emerged as the victor of the Cold War and the “…three American presidents were not mere heads of state but the de facto leaders of the world.” Brzezinski was President Carter’s National Security Advisor. One reviewer of the book on Amazon refers to him as “…the finest foreign policy thinker of the past 100 years.” The review selected to present the less than complimentary side say the book presents “…few insights, but two extremely well-written chapters.” The assessments of the three presidents should not be a surprise to someone who has followed Brzezinski. He has been said to have been a prime source of President Obama’s anti-Iraqi war policy.

The author states that the “…emergence as the world’s most powerful state has saddled Washington’s leadership with three central missions…” A truncated version of those missions is: management of central power relationships, containment and termination of conflicts, and addressing inequalities in the human condition. “One superpower, fifteen years, three presidents: that in a nutshell is the focus of this book.”

George H. W. Bush came into office with an extensive background in foreign affairs, and was by far the most diplomatically skillful of the three presidents. He proved to be a superb crisis manager, but the author judges he ultimately failed as a strategic visionary. His greatest failure was not continuing the first Iraq War to remove Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. That allowed a Shiite rebellion to be crushed and Hussein to remain in power. He was said to have brilliantly and successfully dismantled the Soviet empire and cut down Hussein’s excessive ambitions, but exploited neither. (I have researched the UN resolutions that resulted in ending the Iraq War and dispute Mr. Brzezinski’s assessment as will be detailed in a blog posting.)

Bill Clinton had no experience and was focused almost exclusively on domestic affairs. He is described as “…the brightest and most futuristic, be he lacked strategic consistency…” His focus was globalization, although his critics called it “globaloney.” The foreign policy meetings held during his time in office were described as having little structure. It was said an observer would not have been able to guess that Clinton was the president and not just another person participating in the discussions. His effectiveness in all areas “…suffered from the president’s declining capacity to inspire and lead because of his personal difficulties…”

Clinton is especially criticized for his poor record of dealing with North Korea, India, and Pakistan in their development of nuclear weapons. Sanctions against Iran made it virtually impossible to have open relations with that country. Expansion of NATO and admission of China into the World Trade Organization are listed as Clinton successes. The Senate dealt Clinton and Gore a defeat when it voted 95 to 0 to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol is described as being the “whipping boy” for White House skeptics about the soundness of science in the global warming predictions.

The precipitous withdrawal of forces after the “Black Hawk Down” event encouraged those who believed the United States to be weak. However, the intense bombing campaign by NATO against Serbians sent a different message, as did the mistaken bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. Clinton also approved bombing Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. His Middle East policy drifted from fair to lopsided in favor of Israel which resulted in worse Israeli-Palestinian relations than when he took office. He “…did not leave a historically grand imprint on the world.” His autobiography of over a thousand pages devotes only a few pages to foreign policy.

George W. Bush began with restrained foreign policy. He is described as having “…strong gut instincts but no knowledge of global complexities and a temperament prone to dogmatic formulations.” He dramatically changed from almost completely delegating foreign policy immediately after the 9/11 attacks. His advisors convinced him he was the “…commander in chief of ‘a nation at war’.” He was characterized as arrogant in his approach to foreign policy. The invasion of Iraq is described as his “original sin” that resulted in damage to the nation’s reputation throughout the Middle East and helped encourage the formation of al Qaeda. The author writes that “…the war has caused calamitous damage to America’s global standing…(and) has been a geopolitical disaster.” The actions have divided allies and united  enemies. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found caused worldwide distrust. The author can’t help but contain his glee in one regard. “Perhaps the war’s only saving grace is that it made Iraq the cemetery of neocon dreams.”

The book provides a summary of world events leading up and during the fifteen years that is the focus. There are also thumbnail sketches of the key advisors to each of the three presidents. The author can’t resist making light of Ronald Reagan and the “fairy tale” of “an Evil Empire seeking global dominion.” He also disagrees strenuously that Reagan was the architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and mentions numerous other people who had, in his opinion, a larger role. The Solidarity movement in Poland led to upheavals in Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev was seen as a key player because he allowed political dissent.

The thinking of the author and assessment of the three presidents is mostly focused on the differences between the globalization approach followed by Clinton and the neoconservative doctrine adopted by George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. I’m confident that many so-called “neoconservatives,” including Charles Krauthammer, would disagree with the author’s declaration that “It was essentially an updated version of imperialism and was not primarily concerned with new global realities or novel social trends.” My recollection of the aftermath of 9/11 is radically different than that of the author. He writes that the fear of terrorism that was created “…began to verge on social intolerance, especially toward those whose ethnic origins or appearance could be viewed as giving grounds for suspicion.”

There is interesting information about the well-funded foreign policy lobbies.“The most active of these have been the Israeli-American and Cuban-American lobbies, both of which have the resources to make a difference in congressional fund-raising and command large electoral support in two major states, New York and Florida.”

The final chapter leads by describing “…Bush I was the policeman…Clinton was the social welfare advocate…(and) Bush II was the vigilante…” The “report card” gives Bush I a solid B, Clinton and uneven C, and Bush II a failed F. The author then predicts there will be a second chance if “…the next president (is) aware that the strength of a great power is diminished if it ceases to serve an idea…to the aspirations of politically awakened humanity.”