revolution, arguing that the moderate provisional government represented the “bourgeoisie.” Again, the use of a term that has no meaning except as a convenient label for any one who worked hard and tried to make something of his life. Whereas, the soviets meant by his words, a “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.” Now, if that isn’t an absurd mouthful of pure bullshit I don’t know what is!
Let’s take this stupidity apart and see what the hell the idiot was saying. A “revolutionary,” meaning something new? And then a what, a “democratic dictatorship?” This absurd reasoning creates a direct verbal short circuit. If a group is democratic, meaning ruled by a voting majority, then this body cannot, at the same time, be a “dictatorship” which means the opposite. Lenin was here purely full of shit! He suggests that his favorite group, the “Proletariat” were being persecuted by this “ democratic dictatorship” along with another group, the “peasantry.” One wonders how people could even sit still and listen to these ravings from what is obviously an illogical and demented ranting madman. Anyone interested in the subject is invited to get a copy of the famous and hysterically funny Russian movie "Dogheart", an ironic "poke in the eye" of communalism in all its hideous manifestations.
In July, 1917, after an abortive mass uprising in Petrograd, Lenin was forced to flee to Finland- sad he wasn’t killed there, the world would have been so much better off. Although the Bolsheviks were represented only by a minority in the first all-Russian Soviet congress (June, 1917), they soon gained decisive power. In Nov, 1917 (October according to the old style calendar), the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, who had returned to Petrograd, overthrew Kerensky's weak and disorganized regime establishing a Soviet government.
And then,what? Quite determinedly, the idiots set about establishing the most abusive and absolute dictatorship the world had even seen. The system, under Lenin, persecuted everyone; his beloved Proletariat along with anyone else who got in his way or in the way of all his equally power hungry and demented followers, all were simply murdered or locked up in the hundreds of Gulags spread around the country.
In the 30’s the farmers in the Ukraine and elsewhere who had owned and farmed their land for
The mass slaughter went on and on for 70 years. People were imprisoned for merely telling jokes about Stalin. My wife’s Mother’s sister was sentenced to seven years for exactly that. The state emasculated its men, providing cheap vodka, taking away their children, forcing the women into the factories and trying to destroy the family unit- all the while, creating the largest prison-state ever seen. In the end, more than 20 million human beings were murdered for this most baseless and fatuous of history’s stupid ideas.
In Russia, there was never any workers revolution- there was only the elimination of one harsh and ruthless ruling clique by another even more harsh and even more ruthless. The poor proletariat never had a chance. The “Workers Paradise was created solely to serve the communist elite. What a colossal waste! How could the educated Russian people put up with those overfed, brutal and ugly hogs chowing down at the public trough for all those years? The Soviet government effectively robbed millions of their lives, paying them a pittance while working them in to early graves.
Everyone, by the 50’s, with even a scintilla of intelligence, knew perfectly well that the system was a farce and the country a shambles. Even those in high positions understood that it wasn’t working and wasn’t going to work. But, the Pigs at the top had the guns, they had the KGB, they had the prisons and they had the hired killers. The system, by that time, was immense and pervasive- repression had been perfected to an unheard of degree. A single utterance of disloyalty or a questioning of any decree by the Pigs was cause for death or imprisonment. People kept quiet because they were afraid- it is as simple as that- government by fear.
All western constitutions recognize the dangers and risks of excessive power being vested in the hands of any single person. After finally ridding themselves of the beastly weight of the syphilitic and increasingly congenitally defective monarchies, the emerging western democracies established a balance of power between the various governmental components such that no one person or part could dominate, thus guaranteeing that none of them could be taken over by ruthless tyrants, kings, dictators or other megalomaniacal whackos.
No single individual anywhere has the right to make decisions for everyone- not now, not then, not ever! In the west, the rights of the individual are recognized as the cornerstone of the jurist prudence system. The right of the collective majority cannot be used to diminish the rights of the individual. In the United States these rights are enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, in France, this is called the “Rights of Man,” In the UK, an early version was called the Magna Charta. By contrast, under the Soviet system, the individual had no rights whatsoever. In fact, no one had any rights except high party officials and whatever any of them had, including their lives, could be taken away in an instant if the “supreme leader” was so disposed.
Today, we live in a world where such retro-thought has thankfully, all but disappeared. Castro, the senile geriatric, is one of the last purely communist dictators- others, such as Egypt’s Mubarak, Rhodesia’s Mugabee and the backward, bearded clerics in the Islamic theocracies, represent the last of this dwindling minority of criminal governments.
Russia today is somewhat on the mend. She is slowly waking up and trying to rid herself of the last vestiges of 70 years of hedonistic feasting at the expense of the people by the gross, greedy and overbearing party elite. Unfortunately, many similar greedy pigs (oligarchs) have arisen, taking advantage of the chaos and ruthlessly stealing the infrastructure from the people. Despite this, Moscow today is a vibrant and tough metropolis coming to grips with the myriad needs of a modern civilization. The city increasingly is interacting with western business, individuals and interests. Foreign banks are springing up everywhere.
Société Nationale, one of the largest French banks has ten branches in Moscow, Citi Bank is there. People in Moscow can join the world in the greatest economic growth machine ever- debt financing. Today, almost anyone with a job in Russia can get credit to purchase a car, today banks actually extend home mortgages, credit card use is growing, however, this is still mostly relegated to hotels and the better restaurants frequented by the thousands of foreigner’s living in the city.
Russia is trying to make up for her disastrous 70-year experiment in trying to use a political system to force changes in human nature. To be sure, there remains much to be done. The Soviet system was terribly destructive on the environment as well as everything else- the system was as hard on Mother Nature as it was on its slaves- destroying both with gay abandon on idiotic whims. Rivers and lakes slowly are being cleaned up- roads are being repaired, the electric system is being upgraded.
Perhaps, one of the biggest drawbacks to participation in international civil and social life and one that Russia is slowly beginning to deal with is the Cyrillic alphabet with its P’s for R’s and backward E’s for whatever. No western person, speaking German, French, English or Italian, can possibly even find a bathroom, let alone rent a car and hope to find an address. Menus and street signs are incomprehensible -but, slowly, even this is changing.
The past mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luchkov and his staff placed signage in English in the Metro (subway) and many street intersections. There are
