Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why They Never Buried Us
“We will bury you,” Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev told western diplomats in 1956, and as late as the nineteen-eighties even many Americans remained convinced that the Soviet economy was producing respectable levels of economic growth. “Those in the U.S. who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic…collapse,” wrote Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 1981, “are only kidding themselves.”
With this in mind as I was doing some Cold War reading just now, I came across a remarkable passage in A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev. Himself a member of the politiburo, Yakovlev, who died in 2005, devoted his final years to investigating the crimes of the Communist Party.
“[W]hile on an official trip to the Primorsky district [a district on the Black Sea],” Yakovlev writes,
I heard Nikita Khrushchev speak….He was on his way back from China….He flew into a rage, shouted, and threatened drastic action when the captains of some fishing vessels reported on the disgraceful state of the fishing industry. They’d fill their fishing nets four or five times but often weren’t able to offlaod their catch for lack of processing equipment on shore. So they’d throw the fish back in the sea. And this would be repeated season after season.
So there’s our planned economy for you, Khrushchev fumed. Spotting Mikoyan [Anastas Mikoyan, a member of the politburo who was close to Khrushchev] in the audience, he dressed him down on the spot, and he phoned Malenkov [Georgy Malenkov, another senior Soviet] in Moscow with orders to buy new processing equipment—special vessles, as I recall, from Denmark. He glowed with energy. The captains were ecstatic. Later, back in Moscow, I inquired into what had been done on his instructions. The answer: absolutely nothing.
Ronald Reagan, who held a degree from Eureka College, understood that the Soviet economy was doomed by its very nature. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who studied at Philips Exeter, Harvard, and Cambridge, did not.
Who was kidding whom?
Published in General
Yakovlev’s book is a real gem!
·30 minutes ago
Victor Suvorov? I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the name’s a new one on me. Is there one book with which I should start? ·8 hours ago
Peter – I am glad I can make my first post as Ricochet member to be of some help to you :)
Viktor Suvorov (Rezun) is a very well-know and very controversial author. His primary book – Icebreaker – argues that Stalin was planning to invade Germany in summer of 1941. Obviously, it contradicts everything that was taught for 60 years, and caused quite a stir. But even bigger controversy was that Hitler found out about Stalin’s plans and made a preemptive strike. In many people’s minds it is as close as it gets to justifying German attack.
By the way – while “Primorsk” means “near the sea” in Russian, Primorsk district is in Pacific (Vladivostok); not on Black Sea :)
The main difference between conservatives and “progrssives” (and in that category I include the Democtratic party, European Social Democrats and socialists of all stripes) is that we understand human nature and the limitations therein. They continue to chase an impossible utopian ideal that destroys freedom and has bankrupted the world.
We misunderheard the Soviet Premiere when he thundered “We will Barry you!”
I truly think that the reason the Soviet Union lasted long after it’s “sell-by” date is the support it received from the leftist intellectuals in the respectable western countries. Castro still benefits from this psychological comfort and support.
The same is definitely true about what happened in the first three years of the Iraq war — no one wants to mention the powerful support that is drawn from the western intellectual’s support for the “insurgents” and their demonizing of our war effort.
I too often read commentary about both these times and yet never see this folded into the analysis.