Great article --- but I'd trace most of today's problems including Russia to a profound mistake by mid-20th century intellectuals to recognize that communism and fascism are the exact same thing.
Western liberals rightly condemned fascism, but not communism. they contorted themselves into non sequitor pretzels of "left / right political s…
Great article --- but I'd trace most of today's problems including Russia to a profound mistake by mid-20th century intellectuals to recognize that communism and fascism are the exact same thing.
Western liberals rightly condemned fascism, but not communism. they contorted themselves into non sequitor pretzels of "left / right political spectrum" where one somehow ended up at the extreme opposite end from the other. This was patently wrong: life under communism, and the regime's crimes, were indistinguishable from fascism, and communism should have been rejected utterly, unequivocally.
If the recognition that fascism and communism are the same became internalized in 1945, many of our problems today would not exist. Would America and Allies have traded with Hitler? Would they have bought his oil, or transferred technology to companies he controlled? The answer is plainly no. It should have been just as plain when asked about China (still communist) or Russia (never took responsibility for tens of millions dead and purged).
Can't trade with communists. Can't wink and nod, or construct moral equivalencies, or draw up "spectrums" that indulge the pretense that communism is any less brutal, or authoritarian, or deadly than fascism. Acknowledge this, and many of today's seemingly incomprehensible or unexpected developments begin to make perfect sense.
There's a good deal of truth in this. If one disregards ideology and looks at the functional systems of National Socialist Germany and Stalinist Russia, they had a lot in common. It's no coincidence, for instance, that both Hitler and Stalin distrusted and feared their military leaders. Both correctly judged that in a totalitarian state, the military was one of two institutions—the other was the security services—that possessed the power to overthrow the regime. Thus both dictators conducted purges of the military leadership and took measures severely to limit the autonomy of the armed forces.
Of course, the two regimes came to power by different means and superficially there appeared to be many differences between them. One lasted seven decades, the other a mere twelve years. I believe, however, that if Nazi Germany had not been defeated, it would have developed in such a way as to greatly resemble the post-Stalinist USSR, with a collective leadership replacing one-man dictatorship, a more or less centralized economy, and a great conspiracy of silence regarding certain parts of the past.
Unfathomable to imagine, but if Hitler had stopped at Poland in 1939, carving it up with Stalin, and cut a deal with both France and Britain not to fight (who didn't want a war anyway) - Nazi Germany would have turned into a military behemoth (probably with nuclear weapons), and lasting far longer than twelve years. Hitler was only 56 when he committed suicide in 1945. Without WW2 he might have been in power for another twenty years. A very frightening what if.
You write that Western liberals did not condemn communism. Who do you mean? Take the four Democratic Presidents from 1945 until 1991 - from Truman, through Kennedy, Johnson (who fought a war in Viet Nam over it), and Carter - all condemned Communism and recognized it for what it was - sheer totalitarianism hiding under an ideological face, with all the terrors therein.
And respectfully, if you are using today's Russia as an example of Communism, I think you are mistaken. Under Putin it has become a mafia run autocracy attempting to run a capitalist society, complete with profits, corporations, banks, credit cards, stock market, property rights and a (struggling) middle class. Hardly Communist. Putin in his delusions of grandeur wants to have the Empire as it existed under the Soviet Union, without the messy ideology, just the nationalism thank you very much, with all the billions in his and his oligarchs' pockets.
You're right that plenty in the West did condemn communism, but it wasn't rejected utterly by intellectuals in the West in the same way as fascism. If it had, no U.S. company would do business with the CPP.
As for Russia, if it ever acknowledged the barbarity and atrocity of its communist years, it might also have ended many of the trappings of the old regime -- like corruption, propaganda, and the collective lies that have allowed Putin & cronies to thrive.
I certainly agree that in the '30's through the '40's there was admiration for the Soviet Union from many of America's academic elite, quite prevalent before its atrocities came to light. Its ideology was attractive, as was the Republicans in Spain at the advent of their civil war with Franco. In my opinion, the dichotomy between fascism and communism, at least in American eyes, started in Spain in 1936.
Your last paragraph is right on. Of course, we can never expect Putin to acknowledge anything that might tarnish Russia (I'm not sure Yeltsin did either), either from the past or recognition of the blatant corruption of the present. He will only double down.
Great article --- but I'd trace most of today's problems including Russia to a profound mistake by mid-20th century intellectuals to recognize that communism and fascism are the exact same thing.
Western liberals rightly condemned fascism, but not communism. they contorted themselves into non sequitor pretzels of "left / right political spectrum" where one somehow ended up at the extreme opposite end from the other. This was patently wrong: life under communism, and the regime's crimes, were indistinguishable from fascism, and communism should have been rejected utterly, unequivocally.
If the recognition that fascism and communism are the same became internalized in 1945, many of our problems today would not exist. Would America and Allies have traded with Hitler? Would they have bought his oil, or transferred technology to companies he controlled? The answer is plainly no. It should have been just as plain when asked about China (still communist) or Russia (never took responsibility for tens of millions dead and purged).
Can't trade with communists. Can't wink and nod, or construct moral equivalencies, or draw up "spectrums" that indulge the pretense that communism is any less brutal, or authoritarian, or deadly than fascism. Acknowledge this, and many of today's seemingly incomprehensible or unexpected developments begin to make perfect sense.
There's a good deal of truth in this. If one disregards ideology and looks at the functional systems of National Socialist Germany and Stalinist Russia, they had a lot in common. It's no coincidence, for instance, that both Hitler and Stalin distrusted and feared their military leaders. Both correctly judged that in a totalitarian state, the military was one of two institutions—the other was the security services—that possessed the power to overthrow the regime. Thus both dictators conducted purges of the military leadership and took measures severely to limit the autonomy of the armed forces.
Of course, the two regimes came to power by different means and superficially there appeared to be many differences between them. One lasted seven decades, the other a mere twelve years. I believe, however, that if Nazi Germany had not been defeated, it would have developed in such a way as to greatly resemble the post-Stalinist USSR, with a collective leadership replacing one-man dictatorship, a more or less centralized economy, and a great conspiracy of silence regarding certain parts of the past.
Unfathomable to imagine, but if Hitler had stopped at Poland in 1939, carving it up with Stalin, and cut a deal with both France and Britain not to fight (who didn't want a war anyway) - Nazi Germany would have turned into a military behemoth (probably with nuclear weapons), and lasting far longer than twelve years. Hitler was only 56 when he committed suicide in 1945. Without WW2 he might have been in power for another twenty years. A very frightening what if.
You write that Western liberals did not condemn communism. Who do you mean? Take the four Democratic Presidents from 1945 until 1991 - from Truman, through Kennedy, Johnson (who fought a war in Viet Nam over it), and Carter - all condemned Communism and recognized it for what it was - sheer totalitarianism hiding under an ideological face, with all the terrors therein.
And respectfully, if you are using today's Russia as an example of Communism, I think you are mistaken. Under Putin it has become a mafia run autocracy attempting to run a capitalist society, complete with profits, corporations, banks, credit cards, stock market, property rights and a (struggling) middle class. Hardly Communist. Putin in his delusions of grandeur wants to have the Empire as it existed under the Soviet Union, without the messy ideology, just the nationalism thank you very much, with all the billions in his and his oligarchs' pockets.
Marx would be turning in his grave.
You're right that plenty in the West did condemn communism, but it wasn't rejected utterly by intellectuals in the West in the same way as fascism. If it had, no U.S. company would do business with the CPP.
As for Russia, if it ever acknowledged the barbarity and atrocity of its communist years, it might also have ended many of the trappings of the old regime -- like corruption, propaganda, and the collective lies that have allowed Putin & cronies to thrive.
I certainly agree that in the '30's through the '40's there was admiration for the Soviet Union from many of America's academic elite, quite prevalent before its atrocities came to light. Its ideology was attractive, as was the Republicans in Spain at the advent of their civil war with Franco. In my opinion, the dichotomy between fascism and communism, at least in American eyes, started in Spain in 1936.
Your last paragraph is right on. Of course, we can never expect Putin to acknowledge anything that might tarnish Russia (I'm not sure Yeltsin did either), either from the past or recognition of the blatant corruption of the present. He will only double down.