Saturday, October 27, 2007
Archipelagic in thought and letter
Some archelagic poets and writers were at a convocation, a ‘gathering of voices’, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on 9th October to celebrate the launch of Clutag Press’ first volume of the literary magazine Archipelago. The Library also chose the occasion to launch their first series of BODcasts and because they did you can listen to what was said by all the speakers there. Among those speakers was Seamus Heaney - BODcast available directly here [mp3 file] - who quoted a wise man, fellow poet Czeslaw Milosz.
“What is articulated, strengthens. What is not articulated tends towards the non-being.”
Pete Baker @ 06:27 PM
harry,
I think it might be you on needs the lesson on pre and post-war central and eastern European history if you think that the eastern bloc came about through the undemocratic overthrow of governments in those states.
I note the absence of specific examples. It seems to me the Soviets wanted stability and peace, especially in Europe. After all they were terrified of being attacked again. Africa and Asia were seen as fair game by both sides, although again no specific example of a democratic government overthrown by the KGB.
Vietnam was denied the referendum promised due to the French and the Americans. Hence the civil war in which the Americans interfered. Koreans in the south may not want to join with the north now, but they did when the Americans and their allies abused the UN to interfere there too.
Once again historical fact defeats blatant and inaccurate assertion from the right.
See how easily we can all be self-righteous?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 10:14 AMHarry - to put it mildly our historical perspectives differ slightly. Do you really, honestly, believe that Ho Chi Minh lacked majority popular support in Vietnam ?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 10:44 AMHarry
The CIA are quite well known for having a hand in the coups in the following places:
Iran 1953
Guatemala 1954
Congo 1960
Iraq 1963
Nicaragua 1981-1990“How many democratically elected governments were undermined by the KGB? Dozens and dozens I think.”
You don’t become somehow ‘good’ just because there’s someone worse than you.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 11:26 AMElliot, how many of the above cases were democratic governments?
As I recall the Left got their knickers in a twist about the Contras in the 1980’s, I too assumed at the time, being a silly misguided student that this was a case of US interference in a democratic country. I little realised that the Sandinistas who were subject to universal wankfests in the British and European media were in fact genocidal thugs (ask the native Indian populations about their treatment by Oriega, it was as awful as his treatment of his 12 year old step daughter, but no the BBC didn’t report much about that did it?).
The Sandinistas who’d never won as much as an election to the post of head of Managua South Central’s drainage department turned a sleepy central American country into a bridgehead of Soviet military expansionism. The Contras fought them, demanded democracy, were universally excoriated by the liberal inteligensia but curiously enough won the popular election which saw the “hugely popular” Sandinistas being kicked out on their arses and then funny enough the Contras stopped fighting and peace and democracy was brought to Nicaragua.
Garibaldy I admire your justification for the massively undemocratic siezure and enslavement of much of eastern and central Europe. I’m sure you’ll get hearty agreement from your Polish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Ukranian, Hungarian, Slovenian etc. neighbours about how the USSR was merely a benign force for peace and stability in Europe. I imagine they’ll agree completely with your opinion that the United States - the country which single handedly revived, enriched, protected and nurtured the devastated and traumatised nations of western Europe post 1945 and oversaw their transformation into the rich happy states they are today - was the real villain of the Cold War. Just don’t stand too near them if they’re drinking when you propound this theory, you could be swamped by a tsunami of liquid in the explosion of indignation.
But hey, the US was the villain in the Korean war, imagine if only the South Koreans could have enjoyed the benefits of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Kim Il Sing’s benevolent rule. Then there wouldn’t have been millions of South Koreans fleeing into the horrors of typhoons and pirates in the South China Sea to escape tyranny, oh wait that was the South Vietnamese escaping the benefits of kind old Uncle Ho’s “agrarian reforms” wasn’t it? My, now I’m confused I thought the Left wing dictatorships were the nice guys and it was the Americans who were the bad people, oh dear seems the sad, pathetic, illusions of the 1970’s Left will simply not lie down and die right.
Stick with the historical facts boys.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 12:36 PM*Do you really, honestly, believe that Ho Chi Minh lacked majority popular support in Vietnam ?*
Oh I’m not sure Dewi, why not ask the millions of South Vietnamese boat people, refugees and political prisoners who were enslaved and terrorised and murdered by the forces of the North, maybe they could tell you how popular Communism was.
I mean how could anybody deny the benefits of Asian Communism when you’ve got glorious beacons of liberty like Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Il Sung to guide you?
Even better why don’t the Communists have a free and fair election in Vietnam, you know with a free press and all? If they’re so popular they’d win hands down wouldn’t they?
What? Wouldn’t they?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 12:43 PMHarry,
And I admire your ability to tell us to stick to the facts while thoroughly ignoring them. We’ve been over all this before. Although I will say in that list of countries you gave, one wasn’t under Soviet rule, and several of the others had fascist governments that were removed by the Soviets. So I would say that yes, at the time the people who weren’t hate-filled, racist Nazi collaborators were quite pleased to see the Soviets.
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 02:53 PMHarry - I think I,ve finally twigged that we should not use a thread on poetry to rant about ideological conflicts. I’m usually the worse culprit - but let’s request a thread on Vietnam on some suitable anniversary for a full and frank discussion ?
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 06:50 PM*the people who weren’t hate-filled, racist Nazi collaborators were quite pleased to see the Soviets.*
Ah yes, anyone who didn’t support the Soviet takeover of their countries were Nazi colaborators, man you really bought into that Communist propaganda big time didn’t you?
The Nazis were crushed in 1945, most of the subverting of eastern European nations in order that they be made Soviet satellites occurred in the period 1947-50, so factually you are incorrect. I suppose you believe that the Hungarians who rebelled in 1956, the Czechs in 1968, the Poles in 1981 and the Berliners who ripped down the wall in 1989 were all closet members of the Waffen SS do you?
Dewi you may be right that this isn’t the thread but I find that I go with the threads as they develop. I am just frustrated that twenty years after the people of eastern and central Europe finally got their liberty, there are still liberals who grew up fat and happy in the west who still believe that Communist enslavement wasn’t a bad thing.
They seem to take either the approach that in the ideological struggle between liberal democracy and Marxist imperialism both sides were equally at fault or even more bizarrely that the Marxists were actually morally superior.
To look from the peaceful prosperity of western democratic society and gaze across the mountains of millions of dead victims of Marxism and look at the hollow eyed misery of the people who were imprisoned in those regimes and then conclude that the United States was the real villain of the Cold War takes an amount of cognitive dissonance that could probably only be cured by psychiatric treatment!
Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 @ 10:55 PMThere were unity governments in place that were appointed not elected.
As for Hungary, yes I do believe there was a lot of fascist involvement in 1956. There is a lot of evidence for it. The rest of the stuff is not relevant to the debate about the creation of the socialist states, not their collapse.Let’s be clear about something. Hitler’s willing excecutioners were not just German. Huge segments of the population in all those countries were incredibly hate-filled, anti-semetic and right-wing. They were far from democrats. These were not stable “normal” circumstances, and the creation of the states must be seen in those terms. So if we want to look at things as historians we must look at them in that context.
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 06:43 AMGaribaldy, you clearly are convinced that Soviet enslavement was a great thing for the peoples of eastern and central Europe and that it was something that the peoples of those imprisoned nations desired for themselves. This is, I am afraid, a stunning example of the cognitive dissonance to which I refer above.
Can I ask you one simple question, a yes or no wil suffice; in the struggle between Marxist imperialism of the Soviet variety and liberal democracy of the western European variety, which came to an end with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, do you believe the right side won?
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 07:24 AMI reject the terms of your question Harry. You speak of Soviet imperialism but neglect to mention the capitalist imperialism which continues to starve millions and leave around a billion in life threatening poverty. Never mind the various imperialist military adventures, repressive capitalist governments etc. Our lifestyles cannot be separated from the exploitation of other areas of the world (or of people within western democracies for that matter).
So what I will say is that I think a socialist world would be fairer and more equitable than the one we have today. I am also happy to acknowledge the many mistakes made by the Soviets. But equally I am happy to laud their many achievements.
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 07:40 AMSo, the literary folks are slowly catching up with the slowly evolving political archipelago as outlined in Strand Three of the 1998 Agreement. [pdf file]
Hows about a little sample from the literary world of St John of Hume in his “Personal Views”:
p130 ... we do not expect the centre to solve our problems . we expect it to make it possible for us to resolve them ourselves . we are polygamists. rather than put all our hopes in the Belfast or London baskets, we look for opportunities and partnerships with an entire harem of centres
p131 ... in a polycentric world, promiscuity is an advantageIronically, his three-stranded analysis failed to complement his post-nationalist/regionalist concepts outlined above.
Variety is the spice of life and the archipelago dish has many distinctive flavours. Pass on the salt ...
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 07:56 AM“What is articulated, strengthens” ... prejudice?
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 07:59 AM*I think a socialist world would be fairer and more equitable than the one we have today.*
That’s plain enough then, I’ll take that as a no.
Amazing! You believe that a system of government which never managed to achieve the consent of a majority of voters in a single national election in a hundred years but which during its time of operation saw the murder of at least a hundred million innocent men women and children and the enslavement of at least a billion more, is superior to the system in which you are free to express your political views and leads you and your family to live in peace, health and prosperity.
Have you tried Pyongyang, Garibaldy? I believe the weather’s lovely at this time of year.
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 08:27 AMOh sorry one other thing, name one single achievement of the Soviets that the Russian people wouldn’t have been able to achieve with a liberal democratic government?
Remember Joe Stalin and his Communist friends almost single handedly led Russia to massive defeat when his ally and friend Adolf Hitler betrayed him and attacked a Red Army that had been utterly demoralised and eviscerated by paranoid Communist purges.
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 08:32 AM“Oh sorry one other thing, name one single achievement of the Soviets that the Russian people wouldn’t have been able to achieve with a liberal democratic government”
Kursk Salient.
Can’t resist can I.
Posted by on Oct 31, 2007 @ 06:05 PMIf the Russians had had a competent, democratic government instead of paranoid scizophrenic Communists in charge, the Germans never would have got as far as the Kursk salient in the first place!
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 12:22 AMYeah Harry. It wasn’t like the German army was walking all over all types of governments all over Europe. Britain survived only because it was an island. The Soviets survived because of their ability to mobilise human and material resources.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 07:39 AM*The Soviets survived because of their ability to mobilise human and material resources.*
Yes after allying with, arming and supplying the Nazis the Communists finally mobilised to fight them.
Maybe the Nazis would have caused serious problems to the Russians under a democratic government but at least in that situation the Russian army would have started the war as a functioning, well armed, disciplined force with well trained officers rather than the dysfunctional, paranoid, ill equipped rabble that Stalin’s purges had created and which lost millions of prisoners and millions of square miles of territory because the Communists couldn’t believe their good friends the Nazis would ever attack them.
I repeat my question:
“Name one single achievement of the Soviets that the Russian people wouldn’t have been able to achieve with a liberal democratic government?”
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 10:22 AMFirst in Space ?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 12:42 PMThey would have got there a lot earlier if their famous “chief designer”, the father of Russian rocketry and whose name escape me just at this moment, hadn’t spent six years in the gulag as a result of one of the insane Communist purges.
This man was way ahead of Von Braun in developing ballistic weapons but of course instead of the Red Army having the ability to launch cruise missles on Berlin in 1943, he was languishing in a prsion cell as a result of Communist insanity.
Try harder Dewi, you’re doing great son, you’ll come up with something eventually. ;-)
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 01:24 PMSome half decent agitprop posters ?
The word Stakanovite - always loved it.
The liberation of Afghanistan with resultant opening of Celtic lapis lazuli trade ?Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 01:57 PMAnd of course Detective Arklady Renko - incomparable star from the pen of Cruz Smith….
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 02:03 PMSeriously read “At the Court of the Red Tsar” horrific stuff.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 02:09 PMDewi, d’ya think we’ve thrashed this thread to death already?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 02:16 PM
