Our Happy Bygone Days

and Balts, and I agreed with them wholeheartedly". Soviet Union was a land of spiritual and educated men and women who loved their work, were proud of their country, despised money as a symbol, were hospitable and kind. St. Gowans (Hail the Reds –  http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/reds.html) eloquently eulogized the lost paradise:

Over thirteen years ago Soviet Socialism was done in, and Anglo-American Liberalism won the third great victory in one century. These were hard years for the Russians – life expectancy dropped drastically, industry collapsed, great achievements of the Soviet days were reversed. But life of the ordinary man and woman in the victorious Western Europe and America as well, became much worse, because the moneyed classes lost their fear of workers’ revolts and an alternative system that they would demand. The social gains of the Western working class were obtained thanks to this scare of socialism in the Soviet Union, but these gains are now being taken back as Russia itself was turned into a middle-sized country of little importance.

Stephen Gowans understood it; actually his essay is a complaint against "gleeful" Howard Zinn and other Western leftists who provided the left flank of the anti-communist Cold War front. Howard Zinn is not alone in his refusal to admit his collaboration with the enemy. A Brutish Trotskyite Alan Woods published now a verbose tripartite article, a response to my Celia in the Woods . He published it in English, Russian and Spanish, equally full of glee.

Woods mentions that his guru Trotsky "always stood for the unconditional defense of the USSR against imperialism and capitalism". But he and his kin rejected his advice. For him, the Russian communists are "Stalinists" and he gleefully asked:

"Let us begin with some awkward questions for our Stalinist opponents. The first question is: if we accept what you say, that the Soviet Union was a socialist paradise, them how come it collapsed?"

These are valid questions, and they should be answered.

It is a sad truth that people’s minds may be manipulated. Vast majority of men and women will act against their own best interests if convinced that "this is right". I witnessed it recently in an Israeli Kibbutz rich, stable, prosperous enterprise. The average kibbutz member’s share of communal property was close to a million dollars. They went through privatization and "income differentiation" scam and became paupers. Now many kibbutz members, yesterday’s millionaires, survive by collecting leftovers in the fields. This vast property went to a few well-placed families.

I asked some kibbutz members: "The privatization was not forced upon you. You accepted it, you voted for it. Why did you raise your hand for the scheme that was sure to ruin you?"

"We were told that it is more progressive!" they told me.

If that was the case for a few thousands of well educated and prosperous Israeli kibbutzniks, it was even easier to convince millions of innocent Russians-Soviets that "state ownership is detrimental to all development" as this idea was broadcast daily to millions by million voices from the West. Trotskyites played a very prominent part in this ideological warfare, as they glibly operated quotes from, Marx, convincing the Russians that what they have was in no way socialism or communism, but "nomenklatura rule."

Socialism in Russia lost the Cold War, as it lost the war for discourse; anti-communism became an integral part of every political or philosophical movement in Europe and in North America. The Trotskyites formed the left wing of the anti-communist front, next to Euro-communists or Berlinguer and deconstructionists followers of Derrida, Eventually this united anti-communist front succeeded to undermine the Soviet people’s morale.

The word-wide anti-Stalinist campaign was a powerful ideological weapon in the war for discourse, for the images of Lenin and Stalin were sacred to the Soviet people. Myopic Khrushchev presented himself that he fights a war for Stalin’s legacy against other Stalin’s ministers; but he actually willingly undermined the sacred structure of Soviet society and Socialism and damaged it irreparably.

Looking back, we understand that a major share of the Western leftists’ complaints against Stalin and against the USSR were without any merit.

The so-called "Russian cruelty" and the "Gulag horrors" were Euro-centric racist slurs. Indeed, the US has a bigger jail population than Russia ever did. In a recent article in The Guardian, October 26, 2004 Woods can read about your average British brutality….

"British forces killed around 10,000 Kenyans during the Mau Mau campaign, compared with the 600 deaths among the colonial force and European civilians. Some British battalions kept scoreboards recording kills, and gave wards to the first sub unit to kill an insurgent, whose hands were often chopped off to make fingerprinting easier. There were even "Free Fire Zones" set up, where any African could be shot on sight. As opposition to British rule intensified, brutal "resettlement" operations, which led to the deaths of tens if thousands, forced around 90,000 into detention camps. In this 1950’s version of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, forced labour and beatings were systematic and disease rampant." Indeed, peoples of the Soviet-led world never ever experienced anything similar to the devastation meted out by the Anglo-American forces.

Russian Gulag pales when you compare it to the Israeli concentration camps for Palestinians: he biggest of them is using the whole of Gaza Strip, with one million strong population. The so-called "Stalin’s atrocities" could never ever compete with the US atrocities in occupied Germany, with nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and firebombing of Tokyo, besides millions killed in Vietnam and Algeria.

Soviet troops have foiled the attempted coup d’etat in Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Left bewailed it, but in the same period, the Americans were fighting the pro-communist insurgencies in Greece and Malaya, Nicaragua and Cuba, Indonesia and Cambodia. Mea culpa, I have to admit that as a young dissident I supported the Prague Spring when it was unfolding, but now I regret that the Soviet Communists did not dare to do Tiananmen in Moscow and arrest the pro-American "velvet putschists" in 1990’s.

The "Afghanistan Invasion of 1980" - was denounced by the West, from Trotskyites of Woods - to the American President. But was this justifiable? The Soviet troops came into Afghanistan at the express request of the Afghan president, according to the Defense Treaty between Afghanistan and the USSR, in order to stop the CIA-led insurgency. Here is a short excerpt from and interview given by Zbigniew Brzezinski, alluringly called "How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess" (Le Nouvel Observateur (France), January 15-21, 1998).

Q: The former Director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs (From The Shadows), that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan over 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the US National Security Advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

A: Yes, according to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during the 1980’s, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for sending secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president, in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired a Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

A: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the Afghan border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its own Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost ten years, the Soviets had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the complete break-up of the Soviet empire.

Practically every "anti-Stalinist" and "anti-Sovieteer" claim can be countered. People who denounce "Russian cruelty" expressed in the downing of the South Korean spy plane, spent no tears over the fate of the Iranian Airbus gunned down by the Yanks. They regretted Sacharov’s exile from USSR but ignored Israel’s Vanunun’s sentence.

It is a fact that the Western Left felt its belonging to the West more than its solidarity with the Left in the East. Alan Woods and his Trotskyites were committed to the Western supremacy. This is not by chance that in his essay he described Russia 16 times as "backward". He wrote: "Russia, is an extremely backward country, frightful backwardness…semi-feudal country like Russia, a backward Asiatic country, peasant country like Russia, backward agrarian Russia, terrible backwardness etc. etc. What is this if not typical Western arrogance, Euro-centrism of a most brutal kind?

Russia, the country of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, of Lenin, of Stalin, of Florensky, was one of the most spiritually advanced countries. And Communism is – if anything – a victory of spirit. Woods and other Trots despised spirit and worshipped material progress, for only from this point of view Russia could be perceived as "backward." Success and failure of Socialism in the East could not be explained within the confines of the vulgar-Marxist dogma. Marx was disgusted with these vulgar materialist "Marxists."

Socialism won in the East – not because the East was backward, but because the East was the most spiritual part of the planet, less ruined by modernity and alienation. Socialism was not successful in the West because the West was spiritually impoverished and subdued by latter-day Hobessians.

In two words, the difference between the West and the East was not in the amount of steel and electricity produced. The difference was philosophical and metaphysical. Carl Schmidt wrote that: "all of the most pregnant concepts of modern doctrine are secularized theological concepts." And the doctrinal differenced of the East and the West fit this description to the jot.

In the Anglo-American West, Hobbes based his vision of society on "Man-to-Man-is-Wolf" approach, won the day. Men are united only by common enemy, he wrote. In a way, he was right.

The Soviet Communists eventually solved their material problems and created a care-free society, where everyone’s life-hood was assured. But in order to advance materially, they accepted some of the Modernist ideas, uprooting and alienation struck home. The extreme materialists, those post-Stalin leaders were convinced that as long as they produce enough material goods they can manage. The sacrality of Lenin and Stalin was demolished by Khrushchev; and the desacrilized society couldn’t survive for long.

Practically, Soviet Union collapsed because of its leaders who betrayed the people. This uprooting created a chasm between the people and the elites in the CPSU and these leaders started to shift their money to the French Riviera. They sold the wealth of the USSR to US companies, impoverished the working class and ruined the country. This collapse should be a lesson to all of us; the communists must fight the alienation and uprooting as their greatest enemy; they should not allow the enemy to de-sacralise

The Jewish question played an important role in the rise and in the collapse of Soviet socialism. The Western Left had a very strong Jewish connection. Some of them were tainted with Zionist nationalism and turned their pens and efforts against Socialism when they perceived that Socialism eventually became predominately Russian. In order to justify their betrayal, they had spread the black lie of "Russian anti-Semitism".

This false narrative is carried out by the Trotskyite Alan Woods. I wrote in my article: "Were Jews persecuted as a racial group under Stalin? Obviously not, for Stalin’s daughter was married to a Jewish man; some of his best friends and party leaders had Jewish wives (Molotov, Voroshilov) – or many Jewish sons and daughters-in-law (Malenkov, Khrushchev). So much for racism. Were Jews discriminated against under Stalin? In 1936 at the pinnacle of Stalin’s power, the Central Committee and Politburo included nine Jews".

The best reply that Woods could think off is: "This is absolutely incredible. It is common knowledge today that Stalin was a rabid anti-Semite." The reference to common knowledge is not considered to be an argument. Indeed, it was also "common knowledge" in England that woman do witchcraft and that the nobles and the royalty have blue blood in their veins! Today it is common knowledge that da Vinci code tells us that the Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene.

Writers spit off that "The Bolshevik Revolution gave freedom to the Jews". As a matter of fact, Jews were always free – even when the majority of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians were serfs. All limitations on Jewish rights were removed – not by Bolsheviks, but by the bourgeois February revolution.

Woods also writes that: "After 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks even granted those Jews who wished to live in their own autonomous region, the area known as "Birobidjan". Wrong again. This was done by the so-called "rabid anti-Semite Stalin" in 1934, not by Lenin in 1917.

Woods as a Trotskyite writes that: "On February 28, 1953, before Stalin died, there were deportations to Siberia of a large number of Jews from Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union". This is another Zionist story of "eternal persecution of Eternal People." There were no deportations or plans of deportations. A Russian, world-renowned and respected historian, Kostyrchenko, who proved by documentation in his paper called "Deportation or Mystification?" –  http://www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/125/kost.htm – that it is an urban legend promoted by a Zionist, Professor Jacob Etinger of the Hebrew University, a man who readily admits his "deep hatred of Communism".

Woods and other anti-Sovieteers wrote that: "Members of the JAFC (Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee) were accused of being part of a Zionist-US conspiracy against the Soviet Union: all accused of espionage, nationalistic propaganda, and of seeking to establish a Jewish republic in the Crimea as a "bridgehead" for American Imperialism."

Does Woods and other anti-Sovieteers know of a reason to doubt that they thought to establish a Jewish Crimea on the ruins of Tatar villages, a sister state to Israel established on the ruins of Palestinian villages? Publications in the Russian post-Soviet media and Israeli media indicate that the Jewish activists of JAFC supported the expulsion of Tatars and envisaged the creation of a Jewish Crimean Republic. Mass immigration of Russian Jews to Israel in 1990’s furnished an additional proof that Zionist nationalist propaganda was quite successful.

Again, Woods writes that: "In 1953, Stalin ordered all Jewish Colonels and Generals in the KGB, and a total of some 50 senior officers and generals were taken into custody". Apparently this "rabid anti-Semite Stalin" still has so many Jews in the top positions of the Soviet Red Army and in the feared State Security after 30 years of Stalin’s rule!

For Woods, the Zionists are always innocent. Whether they were involved in the excesses of the State Security or promoted mass deportations of the Tatars’ whether they bent towards Zionism or are allied with the US – they should not be touched. He further wrote: "Molotov’s wife was Jewish. Stalin forced Molotov to separate from his Jewish wife, and she was exiled in 1940 by a direct vote of the Politburo, while Molotov abstained."

If he would only read the Memoirs of Golda Meir of Israel, the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR, he would learn that Polina Molotov embraced Golda Meir, and tearfully called out: "Ich bim ein Yiddische tochter". (I am a Jewish daughter). Such nationalistic and Zionist feelings were not very palatable to the Soviet State and made Mme. Molotov quite unstable for her position as the Deputy Member of the CPSU Politburo. As I said previously, Woods and others support Jewish Zionism and nationalism, but are too intolerant to anything else in the "backward Russia." Stalin’s Russia treated Jews and other nationalities as equals – not as superiors like some other places. If Jewish nationalism was to be treated in England and the US as it was in Russia in the days of Stalin, the citizens of Baghdad and Tehran, Basra and Ramallah would be able to sleep peacefully in their own homes.