Guernica by Picasso
On 2/24/22 the world once again experienced unbridled power; the beginning of a war in Eastern Europe; and impending aftermath.
Unbridled Power
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
-Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
Stalin
Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign.
In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922 [this date is not coincidental-it has been 100 years], with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.
Starting in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms. Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with Stalin’s orders and were shot or exiled as punishment. The forced collectivization also led to widespread famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions.
Stalin ruled by terror and with a totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps. During the second half of the 1930s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph Stalin and German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of Finland. Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads.
As German troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets with the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943, during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia.
As the war progressed, Stalin participated in the major Allied conferences, including those in Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet empire.
Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke.
By some estimates, he was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people during his brutal rule.
Putin
In his fiery speech on 2/21/22, Putin talked about how:
Stalin handed lands taken from Poland to Ukraine, along with Romanian and Hungarian territory. Stalin is the good communist in this narrative, the wise Russian father handing out land to his graceful subjects. There’s no room for the complications of Stalin’s crimes or complicity with the Nazis in invading Poland in 1939—indeed, raise those issues in modern Russia and you may be falsely accused of pedophilia and left to die in prison, like 67-year-old historian Sergei Koltyrin.
From: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/22/putin-speech-ukraine-war-history-russia/
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the latest example of what happens when an autocratic leader goes unchecked and unleashed. I am appalled that a society allows one man to accumulate such power that he can unilaterally declare war on another sovereign nation, not to mention, imprisoning, torturing, and executing his own citizens. Timothy Snyder’s warning must be heeded.
War and Aftermath
In the early months of 2003, a colleague, Sebastian Knowles, and I compiled and presented an anti-war program entitled, Aftermath: A presentation for peace; for we foresaw the impending invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration which then took place in March of 2003. American military troops remained in Iraq until April 2021. It is estimated that over a half million people died due to the conflict.
Dreamers
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
-Siegfried Sassoon
From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Russian military vehicles invade Ukraine
"Ah, love, let us be true to one another!"
Ukrainian soldiers carry a casket containing a comrade.
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Conclusion
Authoritarianism is very dangerous and it is the responsibility of citizens to prohibit autocrats from a rise to power. Dona nobis pacem.
CPW
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