>
>> Where Russians had been pushed from the 30's
>> onwards, to demographically overwhelm the dominent nationalities, once
>> independence came, post '91, there was payback.
>
> What a way to squander nationhood, by harrassing a
> near majority of your population for episodes in which
> they weren't primary participants.
Couldn't agree more. Was I signaling I applauded (to use another example) Muslim Kosovars forcing out Christian Orthodox Serbs, to payback for the repression of the 80's and 90's, before the KLA was formed? All nationalisms, whether of oppressed or oppressor nations, rest on ethic, exclusivist, racialist, culturally essentialist discourses which, when armed as they tend to be (are there Ghandian nationalists that ever win? I've always wondered if the huge slaughter in India post-Independence was anticipated) end up in megadeath.
Your recent posts
> here, a serial reproduction of the Black Book of
> Communism, suggest you think internationalism begins
> with Year Zero and ends at the Gulag.
Cambodia: Year Zero by Ponchaud, I only know about via reading Chomsky and Herman, "Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, " the first of that two vol. set from South End Press, I read back around '79. And, this undergrad dissertation, by a Cambodian-American, http://www- mcnair.berkeley.edu/uga/osl/mcnair/Sophal_Ear_canon.html . The chapter on Jean Lacouture vs. Chomsky, is of particular interest, along with the critique of the writers around the Journal of Contemporary Asia and those like Ben Kiernan and David Chandler that changed their views on the Khmer Rouge. Internationalism? In what way, were the Khmer Rouge, the PRC (the Soviet Union sent far more aid to the Vietnamese to fight the USG) that with the nutty Three Worlds Theory ended up backing Savimbi's slaughter of Angolans (thanks to Grover Norquist too), were the first regime to recognize Pinochet after the 9-11-73 Chilean coup, and their AmeriKKKan Maoist followers like Mike Klonsky supporting the placement of the NATO Euromissiles to counter the Soviet SS-20's, being Internationalists? You bring up the Black Book of Communism. (Though, I remind you and CB, that I've said before, I much prefer these neo-marxist critiques of the fSU and Soviet-type societies, see Agnes Heller, Ferenc Feher, G. Markus, "Dictatorship Over Needs, " R. Bahro, "The Alternative in Eastern Europe, " Tariq Ali ed., "The Stalinist Legacy, " Roy Medvedev, "Let History Judge, " David Rousset's 2 vols. on the Russian Revolution published by a Trot press, Paul Sweezy, "Post-Revolutionary Society, " Charles Bettelheim's 2 vols. from Monthly Review Press on the USSR, the autobio by A. Ciliga, a Communist, of his life in the GULAG, Samir Amin's chapter, "A Critique of Sovietism, " in his autobiographically tinged book from MR Press, "Re- Reading the Post-War Period.") The editor, S. Courtois, with his claim in the intro or preface of 100 million killed, is contradicted by the others in the tome, esp. Nicolas Werth. That # is way too high. Regardless, the book, authored mostly by ex-Maoists and ex-PCF Communists and ex-Trots, is a very useful compendium of the repressive aspects of the official Communist movement in the last century. I want a useful compendium of the crimes of USG and capitalist imperialism, I can peruse any copy of MERIP, NACLA, MR, the website of the National Security Archives, or such books as William Blum on the CIA or Michael McClintock's vols. on counter-insurgency published by Pantheon or his two vols. from Zed focusing on death squads in El Salvador and USG culpability/complicity.
> Now you're deploying Bauman on the battlefield. What
> the hell does he have to do with it? His argument
> about the Holocaust was that 'obstreperous' Jews
> defied an order-obsessed German 'gardening state.' I
> emphasize STATE. Are you saying that East European
> state actors brought African students to the continent
> so they could foment racism among their native
> constituencies in a bid to increase social cohesion
> and further consolidate power? That tortured
> through-line is about the only one I can discern in
> your latest tangle here, Michael.
You projected some picture of my non-existent Grand Theory. Had no
thought at all that the students were sent to Patrice Lumumba Univ. to
foment racist response by Slavic Peoples. (As part Polish and Italian, a
large part of my radicalization was rejecting the George Wallace voting,
pre-Vatican II Church going relatives I have.) Though, as in all parts of
Comintern history there was some training in methods that have no support
in marxist strategic doctrines since they were rejected by Plekanov in
terrorism. See, the two books on the Stasi, I cited, or scholarship on
groups like the PFLP-GC and Abu Nidal, that received Soviet, East German
and Syrian support. Life is full of contingency and overdetermination
however, Grand Theories or Narratives, got a welcome exit door by the
pomos, fwiw. Your suggestion below, I try for middle range theories ala say
Robert Merton, is good though.
>
> May I suggest a more commonsensical mode of inquiry?
> You seem to either focus excessively on minutiae
> (pedigrees of publication, etc.) or resort immediately
> to the meta-theories of someone like Bauman. I think
> something in between would yield saner results.
>
>
>> More stuff to contest rosy pix of ghost of Walter
>> Duranty of the fSU
My gibe at our Russian journalist poster. Between his inability ever to say a negative thing about Soviet or Russian society and it's polity, it gets hella tiresome. (though seeing Chris Doss at ISKRA list here, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ISKRA , "Marxist List about former USSR and Russia.") full of the more sectarian Trots makes me understand, a bit, why, he is so snarlish towards the, "anti-Soviet Western Left.")On my part, if I wanted to post the obverse, as what is perceived to be my overwhelmingly negative scorecard, if this was a Cold War liberal list hosted by a TNR intern or editor, y'all even CB might be surprised at the pro-USSR verbiage I might post. But, why bother? If I wanted to write something like the zillions of books lauding the Soviet Union like the Webbs, "Soviet Civilization, " anything by Anna Louise Strong (see the bio by her poli sci son, Tracy) or Albert Rhys Williams, say (too obscure that last one? see cold war liberal William L. O' Neill, "A Better World: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals, " though, as scholarship (and given that David Caute is a leftist) better politics on the same in, " Communism and the French Intellectuals, " and, "The Fellow Travellers: A postscript to the Enlightenment, " both by David Caute.
>
> Taken from David Horowitz's website? Christ, man, I
> don't recall anybody here assembling a Duranty Defense
> squad, and I think people here are pretty sympathetic
> to all manner of misdeeds and sufferings. And I think
> people here know there history. Who or what are you
> arguing against?
So, if you want to say like Harold Rosenberg polemicizing against lit critter, just deceased, Leslie Fiedler, in, "Couch Liberalism and the Guilty Past, " from Dissent in the late 50's, that we were ALL anti- Stalinists, go ahead. Wasn't accusing you of wearing the mustache of Uncle Joe! But, all the discord and ugly feelings I've seen for a quarter century when the beautiful utopian fantasies of the naive and cynical among our ranks get betrayed once again by the bureaucrats and militarists of the "Left", and all the conversations I've had with ex-cadre and rank and file of the CPUSA, belie any comfortable certitude that such as you say, as being a tendency of the past, long ago buried in 1956 or '68 or '89, is to be too kind.(Maybe Shane Mage can scan the ridiculous piece from Political Affairs of the CPUSA in 1950 when Alexander Tractenberg, blasted Paul Sweezy and MR, then only a yr. old. for counter-revolutionary slanders. Cited in, "Radical Paradoxes: Dilemmas of the American Left, 1945-1970, " by Peter Clecak, chapter on Sweezy. The invective was as great as, in 1933 in, "The Communist, " a journal of the CPUSA, Sidney Hook was blasted as a Renegade Revisionist, yrs. before he became an anti-communist. See Christopher Phelps study of Hook, ATC published a chapter. Phelps was the book review editor at MR for a while. Member of Solidarity. In Ohio, too, though methinks our Ohioan and he have little in common politically.)
-- Michael Pugliese