From Russia, With Euphemisms

@JonahNRO on the historical ignorance of the Olympics coverage:

In America, we constantly, almost obsessively, wrestle with the “legacy of slavery.” That speaks well of us. But what does it say that so few care that the Soviet Union was built — literally — on the legacy of slavery? The founding fathers of the Russian Revolution — Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky — started “small,” merely throwing hundreds of thousands of people into kontslagerya (concentration camps).

By the time Western intellectuals and youthful folksingers like Pete Seeger were lavishing praise on the Soviet Union as the greatest experiment in the world, Joseph Stalin was corralling millions of his own people into slavery. Not metaphorical slavery, but real slavery complete with systematized torture, rape, and starvation. Watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, you’d have no idea that from the Moscow metro system to, literally, the roads to Sochi, the Soviet Union — the supposed epitome of modernity and “scientific socialism” — was built on a mountain of broken lives and unremembered corpses.

As he points out, imagine the outrage if similar language were used to describe the Nazi regime, complete with Swastikas. In a sane world, the hammer and sickle would draw just as much, if not more opprobrium.

16 thoughts on “From Russia, With Euphemisms”

  1. The Tsars were murderous, autocrats who made law by fiat,

    The Leninists and Stalinsts were Murderous Oligarchs who made law by “Politburo”
    and murdered millions .

    Sadly for the russian people, Putin is trending into the first role.

        1. Uhhh, how am I going to impeach Obama? I am neither the House nor the Senate…

          Weren’t you the one saying something about how terrible it is people don’t know how government works?

          Hmm, maybe I can pull an Obama and declare that I have the powers to impeach and then impeach Obama.

  2. The system existed before they went to power. Plus I thought the US still had prison workshops? Unlike other places.

    1. Yes, they do. I see nothing intrinsically wrong with that. The difference is what “crimes” they’re put in prison for (though I’m not defending the War on (Some) Drugs).

          1. …and by what you describe means working as a Janitor, in the Mess or doing Groundswork, not working in a sweatshop.

            But I am not surprised you support molesting children….

            How do you know what I support you window-licking retard?!

        1. That is shocking. How can there be such a wage disparity? Obviously the elite prisoners are exploiting the poor prisoners, with Obama’s blessing, and I think the only solution is a more just system brought about through revolution, where the low-paid prisoners shank the Democrat elites, who make up the vast majority of the prison population (a scary, politically connected majority whose ties run directly to Eric Holder).

        2. They would make more but the government takes out money for room and board. I thought you liked high taxes to pay for government services.

  3. This may be off-topic, but I saw this yesterday in a comment at Ace of Spades.

    It’s a post by a Venezuelan blogger describing the situation in his country:

    Civil Protests, Government Violent Repression and Killings in Venezuela. February 2014

    The first half is a depressing litany of shortages and people standing in long lines for basic necessities, which is utterly familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of life in the Soviet Union.

    It is beyond infuriating to me that so many want to bring that hell to America.

    1. Its the typical failure you see in these centrally planned economic systems. It just does not respond to user demand like it should. I bet the Venezuelan military still got their new fighters and assault rifles this year though. As for the Soviet Union FWIW I have heard, on not very reliable sources but still, that there were always issues with production of consumer goods in quantity and quality, but it got worse in their last decade. Apparently they had issues with oil extraction and production. Namely their equipment was utterly obsolete and mostly broken. However Gosplan did not take this little insignificant fact seriously. I still remember seeing a documentary of a canned fish factory in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles away from the sea and from the final market just because they wanted to keep those people in full employment. That’s how inefficient that economic system was.

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