Tear It Down

(Installment #9 in a series of reflections from “The Gulag Archipelago”)

When Solzhenitsyn was arrested and later interrogated, a large part of his questioning revolved around his suitcase full of notebooks and his war diary. He intended to be a writer and, not believing in the capacities of memory alone, he committed his experiences on the war front to writing. He wrote down his thoughts as well as the stories and tales he heard from others.

These things were all being used against him and to save himself he “repented” as thoroughly as he could. In the fourth month of his ongoing interrogation, that period concluding, all of his notebooks and his diary “were cast into the hellish maw of the Lubyanka furnace, where they burst into flame…and flew out the highest chimney in black butterflies of soot.”

He continues:

Oh, that soot! It kept falling on and on in that first postwar May…My doomed diary was only one momentary plume of that soot. I recalled a frosty sunny morning in March when I was sitting in the interrogator’s office. He was asking his customary crude questions and writing down my answers, distorting my words as he did so. The sun played in the melting latticework of the frost on the wide window, through which at times I felt very much like jumping, so as to flash through Moscow at least in death and smash onto the sidewalk five floors below…in the gaps where the frost had melted, the rooftops of Moscow could be seen, rooftop after rooftop, and above them merry little puffs of smoke. But I was staring not in that direction but at a mound of piled-up manuscripts – someone else’s- covering the entire center of the floor in this half-empty room, thirty-six square yards in area, manuscripts which had been dumped there a little while before and had not yet been examined. In notebooks, in file folders, in homemade binders, in tied and untied bundles, and simply in loose pages. The manuscripts lay there like the burial mound of some interred human spirit, it’s conical top rearing higher than the interrogator’s desk, almost blocking me from his view. And brotherly pity ached in me for the labor of that unknown person who had been arrested the previous night, these spoils from the search of his premises having been dumped that very morning on the parquet floor of the torture chamber, at the feet of that thirteen-foot Stalin. I sat there and wondered: Whose extraordinary life had they brought in for torment, for dismemberment, and then for burning?

Oh, how many ideas and works had perished in that building – a whole lost culture? Oh, soot, from the Lubyanka chimneys! And the most hurtful thing of all was that our descendants would consider our generation more stupid, less gifted, less vocal than in actual fact it was.

Today the west is bent on self-destructing. But it is not the west entirely. Vast swaths of western people still think, create, write, and do good. It is the State in the west that is the destroying power. It serves only itself and sees the people as its servants. It seeks to tear down our history and hide it from future generations. It seeks to proclaim itself in its modern form as the only good. All that came before, all that built the very foundation on which it now stands, it calls evil.

A friend of mine once told me about his nephew who was quite the intellect. He was so smart he was given a full-ride scholarship to study engineering at a prestigious university. During one school break he returned home to visit his family, and trying to be helpful, he asked his dad if there was anything he could do to help out while he was home. His father told him the old shed out back was beyond repair and, if he didn’t mind, he could tear it down. The young man was happy to help, so the next day he grabbed a sledgehammer, went inside the shed, and began beating on the walls. Sure enough, having already deteriorated a great deal, the shed soon collapsed…right on top of the boy’s head!

The western powers are like that young man. Full of smarts, they have stepped into power and taken to beating down the walls of western life and culture. And soon it will collapse on their heads. And ours too.

Innocence and Guilt

Therefore, the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. -Habakkuk 1:4 NIV

Solzhenitsyn writes a good deal about the injustice experienced by the Soviet system. People were shot or imprisoned for the smallest of offenses, often for things that were not illegal, but rather uncomfortable for those in power to hear. He cites an example of a peasant man who tried to dutifully serve the State in hopes of gaining some help for his six children (page 76):

Because he had six mouths to feed he devoted himself whole-heartedly to collective farm work, and kept hoping he would get some return for his labor. And he did – they awarded him a decoration. They awarded it at a special assembly, made speeches. In his reply, the peasant got carried away. He said, “Now if I could just have a sack of flour instead of this decoration! Couldn’t I somehow?” A wolflike laugh rocketed through the hall, and the newly decorated hero went off to exile, together with all six of those dependent mouths.

Solzhenitsyn continues:

The very concept of guilt had been repealed by the proletarian revolution and, at the beginning of the thirties, was defined as rightist opportunism. So, we can’t even discuss these out-of-date concepts, guilt and innocence.

There is a growing loss of confidence in our justice system. For good reason. The smallest of offenses are severely punished if you are not a part of the Statist system, and the gravest offense is ignored if you are.

The Subversive Man

And he who sings not with us today is against us! – Mayakovsky

(#7 in a series of observations based on “The Gulag Archipelago”)

Statists cannot bear dissent. “Dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials or similar content,” deemed subversive to the Soviet State was a crime. (page 66). This was enlarged to the extent that it went as far as including private conversations between friends, between a husband and wife, or even a private letter.

Any idea that dissented from whatever the newspaper printed on any given day was counted as a criminal offense. “After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken: Indeed, anything which does not completely fit in is…subveris!

During the war you were given 10 years in prison for “spreading rumors and panic.” Of course, the State decided what defined spreading rumors and panic.

Today we have the internet and social media as our main sources of information. The State in the west has taken it upon themselves to decide what is subversive and harmful “disinformation.” This became endemic during the Corona Virus “emergency.” Any view that didn’t align with the approved government view was censored, banned, or labeled as false disinformation. Recently, we are discovering that what was called disinformation was actually true information. That which was labeled as accurate and reliable turned out to be lies and distortions.

Just after I finished writing this post, news broke that Facebook was working with the FBI to alert them of anyone using the platform who posted statements that disagreed with the current regime in Washington. Dissent is a crime now. “He who sings not with us today is against us!”

When the State gets to decide what is truth and error, what is acceptable and unacceptable you can be certain it will always decide in its own favor. Whatever supports and strengthens the State will be deemed to be true. Whatever does not strengthen must weaken. Whatever does not fit the narrative, “does not completely fit in,” is subversive.

Defining a Terrorist

It is fascinating how the Soviet Criminal Code was abused when it came to laws against terrorism. As we see this playing out in the United States, we should realize it isn’t a new tactic. Solzhenitsyn says that “terror” began to be construed broadly not just as an act, like trying to bomb a politician’s carriage, but as punching someone who was a personal enemy.

What mattered most was who the act was against. If the person who was assaulted or offended was a party member, it was considered a terrorist act. If they weren’t a party member it was looked upon lightly. Terrorism also became broadly interpreted to include intent as well action. This, of course, led to the State being the ultimate judge as to what the citizen’s intent was.

Intent in the sense of preparation, to include not only a direct threat against an activist uttered near a beer hall (“Just you wait”) but also the quick-tempered retort of a peasant woman at the market (“Oh, drop dead”). Both qualified as TN – Terrorist Intent – and provided a basis for applying the article in all its severity.

The Patriot Act was put in place after 9/11 and was supposed to be used to battle against global terrorism. It is now being employed more broadly. Now, parents who protest and speak against the government curriculum at school board meetings are put on terrorist watch lists. Political protest by conservative populists is defined as a terrorist threat. While Antifa burning down cities is considered “mostly peaceful protests.” The distinction between who is and who isn’t a terrorist is based on who you support and what party you align with.  

Put a Label on Them

(Installment #5 – brief posts about The Archipelago Gulag)

In a previous post, I mentioned that Solzhenitsyn wrote about how the people who protested against the foolish plans of various communist Commissariats were labeled “limiters.” It was a simple word that packed a lot of punch. These were the naysayers, the unbelieving, the deniers, the people holding the country back from progress and prosperity.

In the same chapter (The History of Our Sewage Disposal System) the author talks about the origin and transformation of the term “Kulak.” A Kulak was a person who was a “miserly, dishonest rural trader who grew rich, not by his own labor, but through someone else’s, through usury and operating as a middleman.”

There were very few Kulaks before the Revolution. But after the Revolution, “by a transfer of meaning, the name kulak began to be applied (in official and propaganda literature, when it moved into general usage) to all those who in any way hired workers.”

The term was “inflated” so that over time “and by 1930 all strong peasants, in general, were being so-called – all peasants strong in management, strong in work, or even strong merely in convictions. The term Kulak was used to smash the strength of the peasantry.”

He goes on to explain the reason behind this vilification of the peasantry:

It became necessary to rid the villages also of those peasants who had merely manifested an aversion to joining the collective farms, or an absence of inclination for the collective life, which they had never seen with their own eyes, about which they knew nothing, and which they suspected (we now know how well-founded their suspicions were) would mean a life of forced labor and famine under the leadership of loafers. Then it was also necessary to get rid of those peasants, some of them not at all prosperous, who, because of their daring, their physical strength, their determination, their outspokenness at meetings, and their love of justice, were favorites of their fellow villagers and by virtue of their independence were therefore dangerous to the leadership of the collective farms.

A companion term, lessor known today, was “podkulachnik.” It meant “a person aiding the kulaks.” It meant you were considered an accomplice of the enemy.

Solzhenitsyn explains the effect:

And so I was that these two terms embraced everything that constituted the essence of the village, its energy, its keenness of wit, its love of hard work, its resistance, and its conscience. They were torn up by the roots – and collectivization was accomplished.

This is so instructive. When you hear the socialist/communist apply labels to people understand what they are doing and why they are doing it.

“The History of Our Sewage Disposal System”

(This is installment #4 in brief outtakes from “The Gulag Archipelago”)

It would be comical if it hadn’t created such great suffering and death. Solzhenitsyn’s chapter “The History of Our Sewage Disposal System” recounts the folly and arrogance of the Soviet system of economic governance. The Commissariats thought of themselves as smarter than the people who had been doing the actual work for generations. They imposed their grand ideas with great failure. But the failures were never owned as their own. Rather they said their ideas were never properly implemented and the workers were executed or imprisoned for their supposed failures.

One example the author cites is a Commissariat of Railroads whose solution to supply chain problems was to increase the size of rail cars. He insisted they not concern themselves with the engineers who protested that this would overload the rail cars and tracks and cause breakdowns. Those engineers were “rightly shot for their lack of faith in the possibilities of socialist transport.” (Page 45).

They even tagged the naysayers. They called them “limiters.”

He later writes about a man named Lysenko who ordered flax seeds to be sown on the ground covered with snow. The seed predictably swelled up and died. As a result, the fields didn’t produce anything for a year.

“Lysenko could not say that the snow was a kulak or that he himself was an ass. He accused the agronomists of being kulaks and of distorting his technology. And the agronomists went off to Serbia.” (Page 57).

It is interesting to observe how this is being repeated in our world today. The elites, who have no practical experience in the areas they seek to lord over, will never take responsibility for the failure of their stupid ideas. The blame for the failures in our electrical grid and energy supply won’t be placed squarely where it belongs, on utopian green energy schemes, it will always be the fault of someone else, someone further down the chain.

The recent collapse of Sri Lanka can easily be traced back to the influence the World Economic Forum and the ideas of the Great Reset had on Sri Lankan agricultural policies. Yet, instead of accepting responsibility, those who pushed the ideas that created the catastrophe, scrubbed their previous pronouncements from the inter web, acting as if they had no part in the calamity they created.

 In a broader more inclusive way this is what the Socialist/Communist always does. When you ask one of them why that system has always failed and always resulted in widespread misery and death everywhere it is tried, their retort is always it wasn’t done correctly.

The expert class among the Communists will always produce disaster and will never take responsibility. If they are not stopped the fruit of their Great Reset, and Green New Deal will be misery and suffering. Predictably, those who today push the policies that produce suffering will tomorrow wash their hands of any responsibility for the failure of those policies. It will be someone else’s fault. It always is with these people.  

Atheism – Communism’s Religion

(installment #3 – short takes from “The Gulag Archipelago”)

“In the spring of 1922 the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation…decided to intervene in church affairs. It was called on to carry out a ‘church revolution’ – to remove the existing leadership and replace it with one which would have only one ear turned to heaven and the other ear turned to the Lubyanka…Men of religion were an inevitable part of every annual ‘catch,’ and their silver locks gleamed in every cell and in every prisoner transport…

True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote: ‘You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear.’ (She received a ten-year sentence for that verse).

A Person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children!”

Socialism is soft communism. Both socialism and communism are imbued with a god complex. They require the fidelity and faith of the people. They shall have no other gods before them. If they can’t convince you to give up your faith, they will force you to keep it to yourself – don’t even tell your children. If you insist on your church, you must have leaders who listen to “Lubynaka” as well as heaven.

The communist utopian dream (nightmare) is atheistic. It cannot peacefully coexist with the church. The church and its dogmas are anathemas to the communistic state. Reliance on God is to them a rebellion against the state. Belief in Christ alone for salvation is a rejection of salvation by the state. Christianity, above all religions, is the enemy of communism. Communism requires Christianity be coopted and corrupted if it can’t be completely crushed.

Self Preservation

(Installment #2 in my series of brief observations from The Gulag Archipelago)

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.” (Page 17)

I appreciate Solzhenitsyn’s humility. He doesn’t set himself up as a hero or a man among men. He admits he was silent when he should have spoken up. He had his reasons – excuses. Excuses he came to see as cowardice.

He wrote: “I did not open my mouth, and the escalator dragged me implacably down into the nether world. And when I got to Okhotny Ryad, I continued to keep silent. Nor did I utter a cry at the Metrophole Hotel. Nor wave my arms on the Golgotha of Luybyanka Square…”

There is, I believe, a sense in which “The Gulag Archipelago” is a fruit of repentance. Like Peter, who denied Jesus while warming his hands around the fire, and repented in bitter tears; Solzhenitsyn recognized his cowardice, confessed it, and did what he could to rectify his error by penning this work.

God was merciful, and his silence among his few compatriots was answered by his voice echoing among millions through the decades since his testimony was put on paper and published.

Submissive Sheep

(Having recently reread “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I wanted to write down a few observations as it relates to our present political climate. I’m doing this in short blog posts for the reader’s sake)

In the chapter titled “Arrest,” Solzhenitsyn makes a point of looking back with the realization that one of the errors of the people under Stalin’s rule was the failure to resist. He explains this in several ways. First, most people assumed they had no reason to worry. They had done nothing wrong. Even if they were arrested, they believed it would be worked out because it would be a mistake.

Second, if you resisted by, for example, fleeing it would be seen as an admission of guilt. Running away would make it harder to sort things out. Just do what you are told, and they will realize their mistake and you will be a free man.

Third, they were afraid. They cowered and thought that if they kept quiet, didn’t speak out, and didn’t resist they would avoid the fate of others.

Fourth, (found in a footnote) the author makes the point that “We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.”

Tyranny was imposed upon people because they didn’t resist. “A submissive sheep is a find for a wolf.”

Tyrannical leaders rely on ignorance and cowardice. They depend on the people foolishly attributing to them virtues like justice and kindness that they do not possess. They require people who love security and existence more than freedom and life.

Ruling by Myth

Something strange is afoot. Our national leaders are creating myths, myths surrounding Covid-19 and its cure. These myths are accepted as fact. These myths have become practically religious in nature. To deny or even question the dogma is to be marked as a heretic worthy of ex-communication from the national cult, undeserving of the right to earn a living, travel, or receive health care. The priests, bureaucratic scientists under the leadership of the high priest, Fauci, make their pronouncements from their temples (CDC, FDA, NIH) and all are expected to bow and obey.

What myths? Here are two important ones. The Phizer vaccine is FDA approved. Well, not really. Read the documents. What was approved was a vaccine called Comirnaty. That vaccine is not available. No one, at least no one in the United States, has ever been given that vaccine. If you asked for it, you couldn’t get it.

There was a sleight of hand trick by the government. They knew part of the vaccine resistance was due to the view that available vaccines were experimental and under Emergency Use Authorization. So, they wanted a vaccine that was “FDA approved.” The FDA played along and approved a vaccine, but it’s not the vaccine everyone thinks. It’s different. How different is hard to say since Phizer isn’t forced to tell us what is in either, but even the FDA letter acknowledges there are differences.

An analogy I heard that describes the present situation is it is like having a concept car at a car show. Yes, that car exists (Comirnaty), you can see it, but you can’t buy it or drive it. Now, you can buy another car made by the same manufacturer. It may have the same drive train as the concept car (or maybe not), but it isn’t the same car. If you went to a dealer and said you wanted the concept car, they would say they couldn’t sell you that car because it is a concept car. It isn’t available, but you can buy this other car that they do make. The salesman would never sell you the other car and then tell you it is the same as the concept car.

FDA approval is a myth. It didn’t happen. The available Phizer vaccine still operates under the Emergency Use Authorization which is given to drugs that, under certain emergencies, are allowed to be sold even though they haven’t been tested and proven safe and effective to the degree that they can receive full FDA approval.

Myth number two: There is a law that requires people to be vaccinated or lose their jobs. Of course, that is what President Biden came out and implied. He was going to use OSHA to make that happen for companies that employ over 100 people. Companies started implementing that as if it were law almost immediately.

The problem is there is no such law. There are no OSHA requirements and it is questionable, at best, whether or not they can make such a law. The whole language of “mandate” needs to go away. We have three branches of government. The Executive Branch has administrative responsibilities, not legislative responsibilities. The Legislature (Congress and Senate) are responsible for making law. The Executive Branch is responsible to enforce the law. The Judicial Branch is supposed to interpret the law. But everything has become a governmental stew, one that doesn’t taste good by the way. The courts have been making law for a long time and now, with mandates, the executives (both state and national) are getting in on the act.

There is no law requiring anyone to be vaccinated. Employers may be pushing that as a requirement for employment, and whether or not that passes legal muster is still up in the air. But as far as the President coming out and having a news conference and saying something is so, doesn’t make it so. That is a myth.

These are Covid myths. Rulers are ruling by myth. There, I said it. I’m a Covid Heretic. Since it is Reformation Day, I’ll go ahead and nail this one on the door.