Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Chuck0 wrote:
> >The Soviet experiment failed.
>
> The USSR indeed failed, but it wasn't an "experiment" in the sense of
> putting ideas into practice under laboratory conditions.
And as soon as one gets the ridiculous idea that whole movements of humanity are (forsooth) "experiements" out of one's head, it becomes by no means obvious that, though ultimately defeated, it is quite correct to say the USSR failed (or rather the movement of humanity it exemplified failed). Let me try to get the feeling of one of the most vivid memories of my youth (when I was about 12 to be exact).
During the '40s there was an ex-preacher (presbyterian I think) by the name of Gabriel Heater who had a popular nightly news show. I still remember vividly his two opening sentences, with a cadence that reverberates down the years. Either "There's GOOD news toNIGHT folks" or (often in that particular year) "There's BAD news to NIGHT folks." It was the latter I remember, on the eve of the battle of El Alamein, and when no one in the west really expected the defense of Stalingrad to be victorious. The vision or nightmare that impelled the bad news that night (and it was a by no means unrealistic one) was of German and Japanese armies meeting in India.
How would you like it if instead of photographs of Soviet and U.S. soldiers meeting at the Elbe the photos that dominated the last half century had been of Japanese and German troops meeting at the Ganges. The most German divisions that the U.S. ever faced in the west was 85. The Soviet Union held off 205 German divisions. U.S. deaths: roughly 380,000. Soviet deaths: 20 million.
And then when one compares the horror of the last 10 years in the fSU to the worse that occurred under Stalin -- a failure? Don't be silly. It remains the single greatest event of the 20th century -- probably of the last millenium.
Carrol