> For the record I am categorically against letting
> peasants having political power over anything larger
> than their village. No way. Illiterates. It's a bad
> idea. Those are the pogromchiki and the Cultural
> revolutionaries. (well maybe not the CR's -- I don't
> know my Chinese history -- but I have a hunch.)
>
Read Toltoi's Resurrection . . . .
---
This attempts of the Slavophiles and the Narodnaya Volya people to find enlightenment among the peasants are classic examples of intellectual disassociation from reality. When Gorky tried to go help the poor oppressed peasantry, he got the shit beaten out of him by trying to save a woman from being beaten by a mob of the fuckers. It's about as likely as getting them to convert to Judaism.
"Have you ever seen how a peasant beats his wife? I have. He begins with a rope or a strap. Peasant life is devoid of aesthetic pleasures -- music, theatres, magazines; naturally this gap has to be filled somehow. Tying up his wife or thrusting her legs into the opening of a floorboard, our good little peasant would begin, probably, methodically, cold-bloodedly, even sleepily, with measured blows, without listening to her screams and entreaties. Or rather he does listen -- and listens with delight: or what pleasure would there be in beating her? ... The blows rain down faster and faster, harder and harder -- countless blows. He begins to get excited and finds it to his taste. The animal cries of his tortured victim go to his head like vodka ... Finally, she grows quiet; she stops shrieking and only groans, her breath catching violently. And now the blows come even faster and more furiously. Suddenly he throws away the strap; like a madman he grabs a stick or branch, anything, and breaks it on her back with three terrifying blows. Enough! He stops, sites down at the table, heaves a sigh, and has another drink." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
God knows the way the peasantry were gotten rid of was a horrible, but I for one am glad that way of life is dead.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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