The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
My piece at City Journal, Fruits from the Tree of Malice, is an update to the article I wrote last year about the hidden Soviet Archives.
In the Spring 2010 issue of City Journal, I described an archive of documents from Soviet government agencies smuggled to the West by the Russian researcher Pavel Stroilov and the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. These documents, I noted, were available to anyone who wanted to consult them. But nobody did. Publishers were indifferent. Only a fraction of the documents had been translated into English. This was, I argued, a symptom of the world’s dangerous indifference to the enormity of Communist crimes.
Yesterday, Okan sent me a link to this piece describing the reaction of the editors at the New York Times and the Guardian to the revelation of the existence of the Wikileaks cache:
"...an organization called WikiLeaks, a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks’s leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence, offered The Guardian half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables. The Guardian suggested — to increase the impact as well as to share the labor of handling such a trove — that The New York Times be invited to share this exclusive bounty. The source agreed. Was I interested?
I was interested."
Okan asked a question so obvious I'm embarrassed to say I didn't ask it first. Of course it should have occurred to me immediately:
Why no such interest in the Soviet archives?
- Comment (25)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (6)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Dec '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Claire,
I assume your question is rhetorical.
Oct '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Why no such interest? Because the Guardian and the New York Times have no desire to besmirch the reputation of their late ideological compatriots.
Edited on Jan 27, 2011 at 5:06pmMay '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
1.) Damning information tends to be sought by those to whom the information is useful. Neither the Guardian nor the New York Times have a bone to pick with ex-Soviet leaders, so they don't care about information that indicts them.
2.) We "know" how bad Soviet socialism was. More people are concerned with the covert activity of an actual government than with that of a defunct government.
Dec '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Maybe they worry about how many times and in what context the name 'Sulzberger' will appear in those archives.
Or maybe they worry there will be a note from the 1950s mentioning how the GRU (military intelligence) managed to turn a young Annapolis grad from the US state of Georgia who was in Adm. Rickover's nuclear propulsion program. Given the course of history from the 1970s on, that wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Aug '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
And no dough. And this isn't from the usual suspects, but this is the peso with the say-so. Yup, the NYT , si claro ? Like that dog Duranty returning to his own vomit. Assange has to be about the benjamins. Thanks for reminding people about Ashton. The Venona Papers are free too, but few have perused them on their own time.
Dec '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Michael Labeit: 1.) Damning information tends to be sought by those to whom the information is useful. Neither the Guardian nor the New York Times have a bone to pick with ex-Soviet leaders, so they don't care about information that indicts them.
2.) We "know" how bad Soviet socialism was. More people are concerned with the covert activity of an actual government than with that of a defunct government. · Jan 27 at 5:11pm
I think some hypothetical "hidden Nazi archives" might get some interest, don't you?
May '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Mike LaRoche: Why no such interest? Because the Guardian and the New York Times have no desire to besmirch the reputation of their late ideological compatriots.
Entirely correct, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Jun '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Fellow-travelers don't rat, Claire; it's in The Code. Watch any mob movie, you'll see.
May '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Does making these Soviet archives public advance the cause of socialism?
Besides they might turn up another Walter Duranty.
Aug '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
I thought the obvious question was:
Why aren't the Soviet documents hosted by Wikileaks? I thought the whole point of the website was to host exactly these kinds of lone whistleblower documents (unless Assange is now dictating what gets hosted and what gets turned down).
Also, why doesn't Wikileaks sic their team of volunteers and translators onto Stroilov's cache?
Edited on Jan 27, 2011 at 6:12pmMay '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
BTW, Claire, I neglected to say that I think you are just about the greatest person in the world for harking back to these documents.
[I have bever used the verb to hark before in my life, and probably will never use it again.]
Oct '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Claire, they don't want to upset what remains of the "red scare" myth: the idea that communist paranoia in the 50s and 60s was unjustified (now-declassified KGB documents clearly show it was).
The fact that Joseph McCarthy was justified (though partisan) undermines their meme of right-wing paranoia, fear and superstition.
Dec '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Is this the same archive where the Ludwig von Mises lost papers came from? These were recovered and translated (196 "large files") and compiled in a massive Mises biography. I'm reading it right now...dry, but fascinating.
May '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
It has long been a consternation to me that the crimes of the Soviet Union never rated the same indignation reserved for the nazis.
Why no interest in the Soviet archives? I think we perceived the Soviet threat (my baby-boom generation, anyway) as a kind of distant abstraction. Our conflicts were carried out by proxy and, eventually we became the bad guys in the narrative. We thought Reagan was a nut-job to pronounce them evil. The worst villain was not Josef Stalin - it was Joe McCarthy. Don't forget that military-industrial bunch, stirring up fear to make a buck.
The closed nature of Soviet society kept us from knowing the truth and our own navel-gazing nature didn't arouse much curiosity.
We were anti-anti communists. It sounds so egalitarian, from each according to his ability to each according to his need. And they are so equal. Equal, equal, equal. Sounds good; what's the big deal?
Now we have to admit we were wrong and the reactionaries were right? I don't think so. Just forget about it; it doesn't matter anymore anyway... no one cares...
Nov '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
When you’re done with those Soviet documents, and having written a book about Margaret Thatcher, I wonder if you would consider writing a book about Sir John James Cowperthwaite, financial minister of Hong Kong from 1961-1971. His was the wisdom that built Hong Kong’s prosperity and he did it against constant opposition from the British socialists. If not for Cowperthwaite they would have sewn the seeds of poverty in Hong Kong much the way they did in Kenya and India.
I’m not sure whether Thatcher was inspired by Cowperthwaite, but she might have been. I don’t think there exists a good book telling his story, and it’s a good story.
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
AmishDude
Michael Labeit: 1.) Damning information tends to be sought by those to whom the information is useful. Neither the Guardian nor the New York Times have a bone to pick with ex-Soviet leaders, so they don't care about information that indicts them.
2.) We "know" how bad Soviet socialism was. More people are concerned with the covert activity of an actual government than with that of a defunct government. · Jan 27 at 5:11pm
I think some hypothetical "hidden Nazi archives" might get some interest, don't you? · Jan 27 at 5:15pm
That's the point I made in the first article--of course it would.
Jun '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
You know I'm interested, but then again, I've never been on the pulse of popular opinion.
Most have forgotten or have never made the extra effort to understand it's significance then and now. Nazism was a slam dunk... bad. Communism... hmm, but it was such a NICE idea! Especially since right-wingers hated it so much.
The only funny thing that pops up fairly often is seeing the reactions of people when Russia acts up on the international stage; "Oh, there go those Commies again." Uh, not quite, but if you don't like what the Russian Government is doing, I'll just let it be for now.
Edited on Jan 27, 2011 at 11:20pmRe: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
outstripp: BTW, Claire, I neglected to say that I think you are just about the greatest person in the world for harking back to these documents.
[I have bever used the verb to hark before in my life, and probably will never use it again.] · Jan 27 at 6:10pm
It's kind of you to say, but I don't think this says how great I am: It was Stroilov and Bukovsky who took terrible risks to bring those papers to the world. Bukovsky spent the prime of his life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital because he insisted upon speaking the truth. Their claim to greatness seems quite a bit stronger than mine, to say the least.
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
And my point--in the second article--is that the Soviet empire is not so defunct as we think. It continues to shape the modern world, even in death.
Aug '10
Re: The Soviet Archives and Wikileaks
Right on, Claire. We celebrated too early the end of the Cold War. The effects of Soviet diplomacy, misinformation and propaganda are still powerful. So much for our Partners in Peace.
Thanks for reminding us of these documents. If you deny greatness, then please accept Terrific!