Uncle Joe and the Watermelons

Recently Stalin seems to be threaded through a number of entities on this blog so I thought maybe I could add a few comments for further thought. I think most readers are aware of Uncle Joe. The watermelon: green on the outside, red in the middle. This is not by any means a coherent argument but rather 10 loosely related comments. I have made no allusions to the connection between Stalin’s reign and climate change. In fact, I have made no comment about climate change whatsoever.

1. To begin, Koba’s reign of tyranny, was a reign that was indulged by Western intellectuals.

2. The Cheka - The Extraordinary Commission - (a soviet state security organization) operated by instilling fear in people. People needed to know they were never safe for the Cheka to operate successfully.

3. Stalin, history books will tell us, waged war on the truth. Torture and fear were used to force people to collude in a fiction.

4. Bendy, the poet, was evicted from the Writer’s Union for writing a satirical opera (Bogatyrs).

5. Stalin was noted as saying ‘There is a man, there is a problem. No man, no problem.’

6. Tsipko, a noted Russian philosopher characterized the Bolsheviks as having a desire to astonish the world.

7. In December 1930 Stalin told the Institute of Red Professors ‘We have to turn upside down and turn over the whole pile of shit that has accumulated in questions of philosophy and natural science.’ According to Volkogonov, ‘... philosophy dried up ...’ and ...‘ no one had the courage to write anything more on the subject.’

8. Kolakowski: ‘Half starved people, lacking the bare necessities of life, attended meetings at which they repeated the government’s lies about how well off they were, and in a bizarre way they half believed what they were saying ... Truth, they knew, was a Party matter, and therefore lies became true even if they contradicted the plain facts of the experience.’ According to Kolakowski, means define the ends and means, in the USSR, were all you were ever going to get.

9. Santayanas description of Stalin the fanatic: He redoubles his efforts while forgetting his aims. He doesn’t want to think to know. He just wants to believe.

10. Malia, talking on the ubiquitous unreality of Soviet socialism tells us: In short, there is no such thing as socialism, and the Soviet Union built it.’

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