Opus 2022-261: Shadows of Gulag: Prophecy

I have finally finished The Gulag Archipelago.  It was a long slog.  Solzhenitsyn is a good writer.  He uses humor along with revelations of his own inner thoughts.  There are times when it seems a bit choppy but that was due to the conditions of trying to write in a police state.  He tries to explain this.

“I must explain that never once did this whole book, in all its parts, lie on the same desk at the same time!” (Emphasis in original) p. 526

I would highly recommend that all read it for the first time like I have just done or re-read it if you did it years ago.  It is often like reading the newspaper today, or would be if the newspapers were into reporting the news.  I hope I can get the energy and organization to go through and reflect on what I saw and others should see.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.  Translated by Thomas P. Whitney.  The Gulag Archipelago, Vol 3.  New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-243: Communist Style Future Planning

Did the millions who were killed in the Communist butchery strength or weaken modern Russia?  The twentieth century was the Socialist Death Era.  Between the National Socialists and the International Communist they set records in sociopathic killing that we can hope are never surpassed.  My thinking is focused on the Soviet Union because I just finished the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago.  It is a brutal reminder of the history that our current leaders would rather we not dwell on.

On the weakness side you need to take into consideration that the first targets were the best and the brightest.  The Russian Revolution was the product of the intellectuals working toward a perfect world in which they were in charge.  They didn’t know that the first step in achieving Utopia is to kill off all the creators.  So the first wave of people brutalized and murdered in the Soviet prison camps were the college professors, engineers, scientists, doctors and anyone else who had shown they had a creative bent.  In many of the cases it could not have happened to a more deserving bunch.  As time went on they kept weeding out people who had initiative and spoke up with an idea that went against the grain of the political officers.  

How much did the Communists lower the average IQ of the Soviet Union with their killing?

On the strength side you must understand the masses of compliant, non-resistant sheep that were slaughtered.  When they ran out of college professors and top-notch students they went for what was left over.  They had quotas to meet and if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time you found yourself on the way to a work gang.  The work often involved working in Arctic conditions with no coat and broken down shoes.  You also were starved.  

Which will have the greatest influence in the long run?

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-230: On the Street: Enjoying My Freedom

As I have been reading and studying I found myself wondering how life would be different if our overlords of the Progressive Left ever get their wish.  I began to reflect on my typical morning:  I get up, spend time in worship and study, have breakfast, walk, do a bit of work and take a shower.

Sounds okay.  How would that change if the Biden controllers get their way?

Let’s start at the beginning.  Under the socialist regime I would not wake up in my own home.  I never read or watched Doctor Zhivago but one of the vignettes that I have heard describes how he returned to his large home after the Communists were in charge.  Instead of the house he left he is assigned one room.  The rest is given out to the proletariat.  Goodby home.

I would also be up and out on the governments schedule, probably eating at a common table out of a common pot.  There would be none of this worship nonsense and instead of a retirement check I would be assigned a place to contribute my work to the people.  Also, you can forget the air conditioning.  

I would not be able to walk safely.  Not only would the thieves and murders be running loose but the Gestapo thugs would feel free to stop me, ask for my papers and haul me to jail because I did not button my shirt all the way, or because I didn’t have a shirt with buttons.  I would not have a hot shower.  I would be totally stifled.  

Welcome to Utopia, or at least Utopia for the leaders of the party.

Keep in mind that the center concept of Communism is to get it for yourself at the expense of everyone else.  I know that is not how they market it but inside every Marxist mind there is this little voice that says, “I am one of the special ones.  Everyone else is below me.  In the end I will emerge with all the toys.”

What these precious special people don’t understand that under Communism they are always expendable.  The execution of previous bright lights was a regular occurrence in the Soviet Union.  Make note,

“And the first detachment of killers, those Chekists and convoy guards and also some thieves, who had participated in the ‘Kashketin executions,’ were also shot soon afterwards as witnesses.
    “In 1938 Kashketin himself was awarded the Order of Lenin ‘for special services to the Party and the government.’  And one year later he was shot in Lefortovo.” page 390

You don’t read that in the Communist Manifesto.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.  Translated by Thomas P. Whitney.  The Gulag Archipelago, Vol 2.  New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-221: The Game of Law

More and more Americans are asking what kind of games the Proregressives* are playing with out legal system.  We have watched cities burn with few arrests and those arrested turned loose.  We have read about criminals arrested with a huge load of illegal drugs and they walk free.  Recently we had some of Stephen Colbert’s staff were wandering around the capital unescorted after hours.  It is called trespass.  They were out on the street again shortly.  Those arrested for trespass on January 6 are still in jail a year and a half later.  Their big crime was they were Trump supporters.  It makes a difference.

Ths kind of thing is another example of how the elites are applying the values of the Soviet to the judicial system of the United States.  Solzhenitsyn saw the same thing going on in the prison system of Communist Russia.  There were at least two types of trial.  One trial was criminal and the other was political.

“Nor had the thieves ever been put through the same kind of interrogation.  Their entire interrogation had consisted of two sessions, an easy trial, and an easy sentence, and they wouldn’t have to serve it out.  They would be released ahead of time:  either they would be amnestied or else they would simply escape....  And he was supported in this pride by all the chiefs in blue shoulder boards and blue piping.  ‘Oh, that’s nothing.  Even though you’re a bandit and a murderer, you are not a traitor of the Motherland, you are one of our own people; you will reform.’”  (Emphasis in original) p. 505

Does this sound like what is going on in our courts?  It should.  Everything we see happening is designed to bring fear to the streets and terrorize the citizens into subjects.

Be aware.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.  Translated by Thomas P. Whitney.  The Gulag Archipelago, Vol 1.  New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-216: The Show Must Go On

The January 6 “hearings” are frightening, or they should be to average Americans.  They are right out of the Communist play book.  That is why you see the term “show trial”.  It is used historically to refer to the series of trials put on by Stalin in the Soviet Union around 1937.  They were done with great theater and attention of dramatic detail.  They were widely publicized and made open to the public and the media.  They were all circus and no justice.  

Aleksnandr Solzhenitsyn goes into a lot of detail as he describes them.  One of the things that stood out to me was this statement.

“The only witnesses heard were those of the prosecution.  Defense witnesses were not permitted to testify.”  p. 351

You would wonder if he was talking about 1937 or 2022.  Welcome the Amerika as morphed by the Democrats and Rinos.  You may not be able to change the clown show but you can wake up and stay that way.  Keep in mind that wake and woke are not the same thing.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.  Translated by Thomas P. Whitney.  The Gulag Archipelago, Vol 1.  New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-171: Playing Hard to Get

As I stated recently I have begun to read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  I had to do a bit of sleuthing to be able to do so.  I figured since it is a very famous work, it would be available at every library.  I began to get frustrated when I could not find it anywhere.  There is a tool that will search all of the 27 libraries in the area even if you do not have a card.  It came up empty.  I had given up and was starting to work up to a purchase when I tried one more thing.  

Instead of typing the author’s full name or the complete title I just typed in “Gulag”.  Almost instantly is showed up, all three volumes.  Amazing.  Being a trouble maker I copied the name as it appeared on the page of the library website and pasted it in the search box:  Nada.  I went to the library, pulled volume one off the shelf and went to the help desk.  “According to your computer you do not have this book.”  The librarian did all that I had done and had the same results.  She had some excuse.  I will check in a few weeks and see if the database has been repaired.  What is more likely is that they will discard the books.

This is just one of the types of things that “coincidently” seem to happen in our modern culture.  I remember going to Barnes and Noble looking for a best selling book by a conservative author.  I could not find it so I asked.  The clerk checked the computer and told me that none of the stores in the area had a copy but they had them in their central warehouse and I could get it an about a week.  Don’t you love liberals?

As I began reading The Gulag Archipelago I quickly started seeing why they would want to make this book hard to find.  Check out this from a footnote on page 13,

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:  What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?  Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the down stairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...  Or what about the Black Maria siting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur - what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked?  The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

This is not the kind of talk that Big Brother would want to get around.  No wonder the book is hard to find.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.  Translated by Thomas P. Whitney.  The Gulag Archipelago.  New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-157: Critical Mass: When?

What does it take to begin the violence?

For a small minority only the belief that no one is looking.  I have not met many people like this but they exist.  I had a friend with a very short fuse.  There were times when a questionable look could set him off.  I think he grew out of it, sort of.  These people are on both sides of the aisle but get nasty for different reasons.  Those on the right simply have a short fuse and know they are wrong.  Those on the left plan the violence and justify it for political reasons.  

For most people it is the point where they realize that there is no other way to deal with the elites that have control.  There is a quote I have heard in different ways that is attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  

“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.”

I don’t think the elites believe this.  They look at history and see the Jews rounded up and put in boxcars.  They forget the little dispute in Warsaw.  They look at the peasants of the Ukraine and today the Uhghurs in China.  They think that Joe Sixpack can be put in the same category.  They may be right.  They intend to keep pushing until they find out.

Like any explosion there is some kind of critical mass necessary.  The term comes from nuclear reactions but the idea can be applied to almost anything that destroys.  If you have ever been trying to renew a campfire and see the sudden emergence of the flame from glowing coals you have seen it reach critical mass in temperature.  I guess you could even say that pop corn releases its energy when that point is reached.  

What will it take in our society?  Who can tell.  Will our country survive?  History does not give a lot of hope but we should remember that our first revolution also defied the odds.

homo unius libri