Oh he's not rabid. He's merely tedious.

Lenin’s Tomb is all well and good (and is the first thing I usually recommend for general reading on late 20th century That General Neck of the Woods through just after the breakup of the USSR), but it doesn’t pack the emotional whammy that plenty of other materials on the Stalin era do. If you should have the urge for further reading on that era, I’m sure I can come up with a title or two.

re soviet vs nazi,

reminds me of a recent remark I made, where I was comparing the Che and Osama, and people were shocked...

"He's also gorgeous, but this is largely irrelevant."

Somehow, I suspect, not to you.

The fact is one can almost get away with saying "the romance of communism" but not the "romance of Naziism".

One difference, in fairness to the Lefties, is that at least communism has had a certain undeniable egalitarianism, while Naziism by its very nature was against same.

Christopher Hitchens, soft of Stalin, that's news to me, but perhaps so. Somewhere I recently read (Skeptical Inquirer?) that Einstein couldn't bring himself to fully trash Stalin.

I guess it's all relative.

Well, isn't it because most of the millions who died because of Communism died because of famine and hunger due to forced collectivisations and other planned economy shenanigans, rather than extermination camps and such, in the ilk of Mugabe and possibly before long, Chavez too? Gulags notwithstanding. So Communism as a well-meaning catastrophe, rather than a race-supremacist extermination drive.

But, the Communist emphasis on the collective does make individuals easier to vaporize. Could be interesting to list pros and cons of various types of dictatorships and totalitarian states.

"in the ilk of Mugabe and possibly before long, Chavez too" referring to planned economy shenanigans, and not extermination camps.

Communism as a well-meaning catastrophe, rather than a race-supremacist extermination drive

Perhaps not race-supremacist, but the Soviets certainly were masters (and the post-Soviets are still masters) of conspiracy theories; just because collectivization may not have exactly been intended as genocide doesn't necessarily mean it didn't involve the intentional wiping out of large numbers of people. And whether or not you believe that the devastating effects of collectivization were intentional, it's even more difficult to make the argument that episodes like the North Caucasian and other mass deportations of the WWII era were anything other than attempts to wipe out entire peoples.

how big a proportion of Soviet atrocities were committed under Stalin? In light of;

Seven of the eight nationalities had been given their own (or shared) autonomous republics or regions by Lenin in the early 1920s (the exception being the Meskhetians). What Lenin gave, Stalin took away.

What in communism causes these failings: Whether it is the ideological disrespect for the individual and anything non-party loyal, or if it is because communism has, for various reasons, no formal way of challenging and deposing bad leaders, inevitably leading to the murderous dictator taking reins.

I also believe a lot of sympathy for communism comes from failings of capitalism. As in; there never would have been Marxism without a impoverished and despondent working class. Sympathy for the opposition, still something quite evident in the common mixture of anti-globalism, anti-capitalism, environmentalism, and anti-americanism in general. Far as I understand, Maoists are popular in Nepal because the peasants have few others to turn to.

a Nazi-themed lounge would never be socially acceptable

I'd be there though, in my best field-gray Obersturmbannführer uniform. The Horst Wessel lied playing softly, Bavarian beer maids and Hitler screaming madly from the loudspeakers, to the happy clatter of knee-high, steel-shod army boots... Oh yes, the Nazis may have lost the war militarily, politically and morally, but their sense of aesthetics is undefeated to this day.

Alle,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dffWs-wRDdQ&mode=related&search=

one of my favorite songs, but the youtube sound is really crappy there - you can find some of it here but without video:

http://www.last.fm/music/Hanzel+und+Gretyl/_/Mein+Kommandant

Ah, thank you much, Miss eerie.

In reference to Klaus' comments and your friend's observations of Soviet kitsch, Stalin and Hitler were roughly co-equal in democidal fury when you divide reasonable estimates of their victims by unit of time.

Aside for differing motivations for genocidal slaughter ( racial imperialism vs. paranoiac mania), the Soviets were always at pains to provide fig leaf excuses for their Western apologists, the Nazis were not. Hitler did not care a fig for the welfare or standing of his foreign quislings and admirers.

Nazi brutality was openly brazen and an intrinsic part of the movement's political mystique while Communist mass-murder, except during Lenin's Red Terror, was usually shaded by some kind of potemkin village.

A useful policy, one that won the Communists many brilliant useful idiots like Eric Hobsbawm.

Possibly also that the Nazi regime was overthrown in the midst of its worst genocidal fury, while the Soviet regime was old and basically ineffectual towards the end. Hard to have lighthearted fun with Hitler or the SS; less hard with the procession of old men who preceded Gorbachev.

shaheen -- Thanks, but too noisy, and I like my Nazis without dreadlocks.

zenpundit -- Nazi brutality was openly brazen and an intrinsic part of the movement's political mystique while Communist mass-murder, except during Lenin's Red Terror, was usually shaded by some kind of potemkin village.

Also, Communism had some seriously appealing sides to it, long before Stalin, and in theory after him. Nazism really did not, at least not after nationalism and militarism were so discredited. Many good & intelligent people became Communists when it was not yet a doctrine of mass murder, and it's not surprising that they managed to continue recruiting smart people, even after the movement as such had become irreparably corrupt. Especially since they then had a superpower to aid them with propaganda.

And then of course, the whole idea got a new lease on life among young western leftists through the Maoist break with the Soviet Union, and the range of third world and anticolonial issues that popped up then, where much of western democracy annoyingly ended up on the wrong side. (Vietnam etc.)

Point being: it's much harder to pin genocide on a movement that collapsed only gradually and recently, and was backed by a lot of still-living intellectuals, humanitarians and artists, than it is to do it with a movement that was destroyed in war and then held out as the horror of the 20th century for the whole world to see, and whose values no one shares anymore.

whose values no one shares anymore.

whose values no one shares anymore

If only that were true. However, having spent probably the most chilling day of my life at the Novosibirsk regional party meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (possibly the most misnamed political organization I’ve ever experienced), I believe I can accurately state that there are a lot of bigoted wack jobs out there, and in order to become genocidal, some of them just need the opportunity. It was very creepy to be the only Jew in the room, one presumes; something like it must have been to listen to Hitler in 1929. (Hey, if I control the world’s financial system, how come I’m still paying off grad school loans?)

On the way back to campus, once we were booted out of the room by the Party leadership (although they had specifically invited us, they explained “well, the afternoon is our campaign strategy planning session, and you can never tell who the KGB operatives are – you understand, of course, why you have to leave now” – so let me get this straight. Are we KGB, or do we control the world financial system?), the others in my group (Russian professors) were trying to comfort me that Zhirinovsky was just a wack job and we should pay him no mind. But Russia at large, and the Novosibirsk region in general, were filled with unemployed military industry workers, just the sort of people who are normally wont to blame [insert X politically suspect minority] when socioeconomics turn ugly, and the LDPR reps told us their area membership over the past year had increased by 800%.

So yeah, maybe it’s because I spent Memorial Day in the Holocaust Museum seeing photos and footage that include places I’ve been and could easily include my relatives, but I’m kind of in a “never forget” mood.

It was very creepy to be the only Jew in the room, one presumes; something like it must have been to listen to Hitler in 1929.

Yeah, I can imagine. They're lunatics. What I should have said, is that no one (or, rather: extremely few reasonably smart and politically savvy people) in the West shares those values anymore.

But Russia is of course very different in that regard. As is the main area of interest to 'Aqoul, where ultranationalism, leader cult and ethnic/religious bigotry are having a ball of a time. I didn't mean to downplay that in any way.

(Hey, if I control the world’s financial system, how come I’m still paying off grad school loans?)

Cause you've spent it all on spreading Zionism, promiscuity and AIDS, dummy.

Point being: it's much harder to pin genocide on a movement that collapsed only gradually and recently, and was backed by a lot of still-living intellectuals, humanitarians and artists, than it is to do it with a movement that was destroyed in war and then held out as the horror of the 20th century for the whole world to see, and whose values no one shares anymore.

Modern Marxist/Communist apologists have a hilarious excuse for these excesses that Facists don't: Communism is great but it's never been tried.

You see, Stalin & Co. weren't really Marxists! They perverted True Marxism for their own ends! Thus, Communism isn't really to blame for the resulting social and economic clusterfuck because Stalin & Mao and everybody else weren't doing it right. This is not a claim that can be made with respect to Hitler and Nazism. You can say a lot of things about Hitler, but you can't say he wasn't a real Nazi.

I have to admit, I really love this excuse -- it's a source of endless amusement in the right/wrong company, e.g., sitting next to an unrepentant Marxist Uni professor on a moderately long flight. Modern Marxists/Communists are the economic equivalent of parapsychologists. The analogy is almost exact. They take great umbrage, however, at being referred to as "para-economists."

"para-economists"

Another cool term to plagiarize.

I must admit I feel in some way the same about religion. While this may or may not annoy people here, I tend to see a link between blind fanaticism and religious / ideological / ethnic / nationalist convictions. The good Bertrand Russell said that all movements go too far. So while it may be argued that one should not blame Christ for the Christians, or the Prophet for the Muslims, I can't help but think the problem lies with the movement itself. Good people get good things out of religion, but bad people can't handle it, they crave dogmatic adherence to escape the void of freedom. Better have the latent fanatics despair about the lack of conviction in modern society, as with Strauss and Qutb, than give them a platform of respect in the name of some conviction.

Ah well.

Are we KGB, or do we control the world financial system?

Both, obviously. That's *how* you control the world financial system, with help from the Masons.

* * *

What I really want to know is how Che Guevera can be made into a damned icon by American teenagers. Hey, let's make Beria and Heydrich t-shirts while were at it. My political executioners killed more people than yours.

Stupid children. Probably would buy t-shirts with Idi Amin if they made a movie about him rebelling against the evil British imperialists.