The Nature of the Phenomenon
Regardless of how a society arrives at an incomplete social structure, it becomes a palpable problem because it is actively reproduced from below — that is, in a thoroughly democratic fashion — through traditions of obsessive standardization of forms of social activity and expectations of a "strong hand." The "upper strata," for their part, understand the defectiveness and inherent emptiness of such a social order, but are "forced to work with what they have," which in turn leads to the encouragement of the "grey biomass."
In such a society — post-colonial, post-totalitarian — the level of corruption "from above" is always extraordinarily high, and adequate vocational guidance "from below" is extremely low (among the successful, few are people who "found their calling"; many are those who "landed a comfortable position").
Reproduction and ideological justification of the tradition of a society with an incomplete social structure
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Book: "The USSR — Civilization of the Future. Stalin's Innovations," by Kara-Murza
In just a quarter of a century, Soviet Russia made an incredible leap into the future, transforming itself from a semi-feudal, semi-literate agrarian country into a leader of scientific progress, carrying out a scientific-technological revolution on the heels of its social one. The Soviet Union laid the foundations of a fundamentally new civilization of the future — one oriented toward tomorrow, straining toward the Cosmos, placing its bet on the best that is in man, above all on the passion for knowledge, and nurturing the man-Creator rather than a dull ruminating beast. And today, when the Western "civilization of consumption" has definitively reached a dead end (the current global crisis is merely the "first warning bell" of the coming catastrophe), it becomes abundantly clear that a return to the Soviet path of innovation is the only chance of survival — not only for Russia, but for all of humanity. |
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Book: "Jews, Dissidents, and Eurocommunism"
As S. Kara-Murza argues, Soviet society was opposed by a long-developed anti-Soviet project in which part of the Soviet intelligentsia participated — the so-called dissidents and Soviet Jews — as well as an important current within the Western left-wing elite: Eurocommunism. Why this entire elite — both ours and Western — became an enemy of the Soviet system, and what role it played in its demise, is the subject of this book. |
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Kara-Murza: "The Intelligentsia on the Ashes of Their Native Land"
However shielded an intellectual who enthusiastically rushed after Gorbachev and Yeltsin may be — by ideological intoxication, cynicism, or mental agility — he can no longer avoid acknowledging to himself: the meaning of the project in which he participated is clear; that project, whatever ideals it may invoke, means the severing of all of Russia's previous trajectory, its grinding to dust in order to build a new, alien order; the majority of the people neither understand nor accept this project. |
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Causes
1. A primitive level of development, akin to a clan-based matriarchy. In such communities, the values of tradition, norms, and ritual dominate. Any deviation of significance from the "norm" is expelled.
2. The result of conquest. Hitler and Stalin, having seized Poland, directed their repressions in the overwhelming majority of cases against the educated classes. Hitler sought in this way to "graft German fruit onto Polish stock"; Stalin — see below.
3. The result of a totalitarian dictatorship. In general, the social demand for a dictator ("a strong supreme power") can only arise in a society with a feminine dominant. A dictator, upon coming to power, encourages The Feminine Essence of Russia as his social base. A peculiar "social contract" emerges: the ideological and financial support of loyalty and conformism at the expense of ambition and independence; the latter is pushed to the margins of public life and cut off from real financial flows by the bureaucratic apparatus.
In extreme cases, matters progress to the physical elimination of those who hold opposing views and practices. The extermination of talented individuals yields the system a tidy profit, which it can channel into mega-projects, creating the illusion that it is precisely the grey mass, united, that can build pyramids, dam the Yenisei, and so forth. Young people — often not the most capable — gain a multitude of vacancies in the course of destroying the old elite, vacancies they could otherwise scarcely have hoped for.
The Fascist Practice
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On the afternoon of July 2, Professor Kazimierz Bartel — who had previously served several times as head of the Polish government — was arrested. During the night of July 3–4, 1941, between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., several groups composed of SS men, police, and field gendarmes under the command of SS officers carried out the arrest of professors from institutions of higher education in Lviv. In addition to the professors, all men over the age of 18 present in the apartments were taken. Several dozen professors and all the men found in their dwellings were arrested. The lists had been compiled prior to the invasion. It is believed that Ukrainian students from Lviv universities who had fled to Kraków in 1939 following the entry of Soviet troops into Western Ukraine may have assisted the Germans in this. It is also noted that a certain Dutchman, Pieter Nicolaas Menten, the owner of an estate who had access to wealthy households and knew well what could be plundered there, may have had a hand in compiling these lists. In the early morning of July 4, one of the professors and most of the domestic staff were released, while the rest were transported to the Wuleckie Hills outside the city to be executed, or were shot in the inner courtyard of the Abrahamowicz Educational Home. Professor Kazimierz Bartel was shot later, on July 26, 1941. In October 1943, the bodies of those executed were exhumed, transported to the Krzywczyce Forest, and burned together with hundreds of other corpses, as part of efforts to conceal the traces of Nazi crimes. As Polish historian Zygmunt Albert notes, the homes of those executed were taken over by senior officials of the Gestapo and the Ukrainian police. |
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Lenin's Methods
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As head of government, Lenin constantly demanded harsher repression: "Carry out mass terror, shoot and deport hundreds of prostitutes who are getting soldiers drunk, former officers, etc. Not a moment's delay" (to Nizhny Novgorod); "Shoot the conspirators and the waverers, asking no one and permitting no idiotic red tape" (to Saratov); "hang, under the guise of 'Greens' (we'll pin it on them later), officials, the wealthy, priests, kulaks, landowners. Pay the killers 100,000 rubles each"; "I propose to launch an investigation and shoot those guilty of negligence"; "It was shameful to waver and not shoot for failure to appear"; "appoint your own commanders and shoot conspirators and waverers, asking no one, permitting no idiotic red tape" (to a Narkomprod commissar); "Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Take their grain from them. Designate hostages... See to it that for hundreds of versts around, the people see, tremble, know, cry out: they are strangling and will strangle the bloodsucker kulaks" (directive to Penza). In a resolution on Dzerzhinsky's letter concerning a million captive Cossacks: "Shoot every last one of them." In a document signed by Sverdlov, whose main provisions clearly originated with Lenin, "all responsible comrades working in Cossack regions" were instructed: "It is necessary to recognize as the only correct course the most merciless struggle against all the upper strata of the Cossacks through their wholesale extermination... Carry out mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating them to a man; carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who have taken any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet Power." |
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