It's the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution and the BBC's James Rodgers looks at the hard time Russia's Communists have today:These were people who toiled all their lives to build a Communist utopia, only to find that their reward was a penance of a pension doled out in the harsh, new, capitalist Russia of the 1990s.
Actually, Mr. Rodgers, they toiled all their lives in the service of a totalitarian regime that was bent on turning the entire planet into a prison camp and murdered 100 million people trying and in a just world their "reward" would have been something more appropriate than a pension. But such an oversight isn't surprising. Mr. Rodgers spends gallons of ink writing about Russia's Communists' idealism, nostalgia and hopes for the future, but spares not a drop for the victims of their brutish, tyrannical ideology.
I wonder if the BBC will follow this up with a similar puff piece about Neo-Nazis in Germany.
I also wonder if the Moon is made of cheese.
David?
ReplyDeleteIs that one of those 'before and after' photos where former party members are "photoshopped"?
Oh, yeh. I think Comrade Trotsky himself used to grace the bottom of the podium on this one. Before he became, you know, an unperson.
ReplyDeleteI would take exception with the "appropriate reward" for old USSRian people. My family was in the USSR until it could get out in the mid 70s, and I can say that we were neither "building a bright commie-flavored future for everyone", nor working diligently in the Department of Enslaving Everybody Else. More like, doing our best to stay fed and un-disappeared until the opportunity to emmigrate presented itself.
Happily loyal US citizens now.