Stench and Terror
Posted by Peter W. Schramm
Gary Saul Morson reviews Inside the Stalin Archives: Inside the New Russia. I read into Inside (part of the Yale University Press’s Annals of Communism series) a few months ago and the thing was so familiar--I could smell it all again--I had to put it down and remember picking up a book about American things. Morson explains why I did that.
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The current generation has no memory of the Soviet Union (and its various satellites) and the pervasive fear in which its citizens lived. Therefore, they are unable to appreciate real evil. To them, real evil is "Bush lied" or the CEO of Haliburton. Wonderful article. We will make this part of our reading assignments in our home school curriculum.
So, JD, since you probably can't remember the Holocaust, does that mean you can't appreciate "real" evil? Or maybe you can still decide which one (communism or antisemitic fascism) constitutes more "realness", regardless of where you are in time and culture? It seems as though you can pass a whole lot of judgment on younger generations for a guy who has missed a whole lot of perceived historical "evil" as well . . .
Amazing review of an apparently amazing book. And yes, appalling. Were it not true, we be scandalized by the author who could dare to imagine that humans, indeed at on time nearly a majority of humans, could be brought so utterly low.
The stench!
And then there is what they did to Isaac Babel...words fail...God help the poor Russians, to say nothing at the moment of the massive populations soul-brutalized elsewhere, for the damage is such that one must wonder if they can ever recover.