Quotulatiousness

March 19, 2020

Stalin’s Paranoid Military Purges – The Great Terror | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1938 Part 4 of 4

Filed under: History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 18 Mar 2020

In 1938, Stalin has his military leadership purged, and has thousands of his comrades killed or locked up. The reasons as to why he did it are still open for debate.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss

Sources:
From the Noun Project:
– Saluting Veteran by Eric Lamar Pearine
– Russian_soldier_1553396 (Edited) by Wonmo Kang
– Prison by FORMGUT
– Law_585610 by Delwar Hossain
Photos from Color by Klimbim

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Watchman” – Yi Nantiro
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Death And Glory 1” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
This episode was hard to write, mainly because of the ambiguity that this topic is still clouded in today. There are no conclusive answers as to why Stalin did what he did, and why he stopped doing what he was doing in 1938. This episode features some of the explanations of the purges and the Great Terror. This certainly is a remarkable piece of Soviet History, and one that would dramatically influence the performance of the Red Army in 1939 and beyond. Those who followed our World War Two series know that already in December ’39, the direct consequences of the purges in ’37 and ’38 are gigantic. I would also like to note here that we would like the comment section to stick to factual debate.
cheers, Joram

QotD: Everybody knows the good guys lost the war

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, Quotations, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There is a Leonard Cohen song that came out in the nineties. I want to say early nineties, but for much of that decade I had small children, so it all runs together. Also, I’m uncaffeinated and late and too lazy to look.

Anyway, the song is called “Everybody knows” and it’s a marvel of double-meaning.

What the song says explicitly is a bunch of stuff people like my brother — look, European, left — believed at the time. Stuff like “Everybody knows the war is over/everybody knows the good guys lost.”

Bizarrely, before they went into hysterical denial of communism being the regime in the USSR and starting to call those seeking to re-establish it “right wingers” the left kept insisting the good guys had lost the cold war. Apparently we just look richer and more concerned for the right of the individual, but the evil Kapitalism of Amerika (it’s much more scary written with a K) kills more people than the Gulag and destroys everyone’s soul in the process. We’re just sneaky about it. So sneaky, in fact, that we don’t need to prevent people from leaving, we need to prevent people from coming here. That’s how sneaky we are.

Stop laughing. There’s a good chance your college student believes this. There’s also a good chance your college student is stupid enough to buy Bernie’s line that bread lines are preferable to our over abundance of food, because at least “everyone is equal.” Someone should ask comrade Bernie about the State stores for very important functionaries that crop up everywhere that has tried the communist slimming diet (It is to die for) and which has goods comparable with what the low middle class in America can afford, sprinkled with a few gold geegaws which is the communists idea of classy.

Sarah Hoyt, “Everybody Knows”, According to Hoyt, 2019-12-11.

March 12, 2020

Comrade Sanders

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Arthur Chrenkoff points out the amazing double-standard that has helped Bernie Sanders become a major candidate for the Democratic nomination:

Imagine a credible candidate for a significant elected office – never mind the Presidency of the United States of America, the elected office in the world – who has spent his career cheering on Mussolini, Franco and assorted Latin America authoritarian strongmen, who admires Nazi Germany’s record in job creation and public infrastructure, and who, while eschewing excesses of the past, proclaims himself a proud national socialist, but to reassure all he says he is a democratic national socialist.

Now think of Bernie Sanders and you can once again understand the pervasive double standard in our politics. The hypothetical candidate from the previous paragraph – and he or she are very much hypothetical – would be considered a political and social pariah. Bernie, on the other hand, is lionised by millions and until very recently, prior to the miraculous, Dr Frankenstein-like reanimation of Joe Biden, has been considered a probable presidential candidate by a major political party (coincidentally, of which he has never been a member in his entire career).

To the best of my knowledge, Sanders has never expressed any regret, misgivings or second thoughts about a lifetime of cheerleading for virtually every socialist/communist government around the world, from the Soviet Union to Vietnam and from Cuba to, most recently, Venezuela. It is not like the true nature of these regimes has been a secret until now. Anyone with any modicum of knowledge and common sense could see all long these were all totalitarian dictatorships and mass abusers of human rights, which nationalised poverty and whatever their meager economic or social progress it has been achieved at an unacceptable cost.

[…]

That an old Chomskyite like Sanders came so close to being the Democrat presidential candidate tells of a sickness at the heart of a major political party. Democrats still staunchly believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset but almost ended up with an actual communist sympathser in charge. History didn’t end in 1989; it repeats itself like vomit rising in your throat.

On a lighter note, Larry Correia is amused at the current top two Democratic contenders:

That is about the most pathetic match up of losers to ever occur in any political contest in the history of ever.

Sanders is a Marxist doofus. His plans are gibberish. His philosophy is bullshit, designed to appeal to wishful thinkers who can’t do math, and greedy ass mooches. But don’t worry, he’s a total squish without an ounce of fight in him, so the DNC’s just gonna roll him over to make from for their chosen one …

Joe Biden! Who is either suffering from dementia, or is just really really dumb. (insert porque no los dos? meme girl here)

They can’t let Joe speak for more than five minutes because they know he’ll go off script and start babbling incoherently. And I’m not talking Trumpian style stream of consciousness yammering, but weird ass, dog faced pony soldiers, corn pop, hairy legs, girl sniffing, finger biting, he’ll slap you, fight me IRL, you wanna step outside?

I’ve known people who worked with Joe Biden years ago, and they all said the same thing. With him, what you see is what you get. There is no act. That’s how Joe Biden is. And he was a weird scoundrel back then, but I’m pretty sure his mind is going now.

On the plus side, Jill Biden moves faster than the Secret Service, and that lady will throw hands. Respect.

All the DNC needed to do was find somebody decent and dignified to run against Trump, but oh no, they went batshit crazy instead, and their anointed one is a doddering, senile, fool, who is so corrupt his son, Crackhead McStripperbang makes millions of dollars for imaginary jobs not at all related to his dad’s position, and they don’t even try and hide it. But don’t worry, Biden’s gonna come from behind, because nothing wins swing states like threatening to slap construction workers who are suspicious that Beto O’Dork actually does want to take their AR-14s.

As somebody who would rather reach into his own chest and pluck out his heart than vote democrat, I will admit that I find it terribly amusing all the liberals I know who are weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth about Old Rich White Guys There Are No Women Or People Of Color Running … While Tulsi Gabbard is over there, like WTF?

Sorry, progs. She said hurtful things about Hillary, so the media and Google basically Thanos-snapped her into dust. Meanwhile, the right are eagerly betting on whether Nikki Haley is going to run in 2024 or not … So who are the real misogynist bigots?

March 4, 2020

Resistance in China – Myth or Reality? – WW2 – War Against Humanity 009

Filed under: China, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 3 Mar 2020

The war in China already started in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. Early resistance was small and was met by heavy Japanese retaliations. But throughout the 30’s, the movement started to grow.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Join our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN.
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

Sources:
Library of Congress
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Chinese anti-Japanese posters, courtesy of pictoright
SHANGHAI, CHINA-1921

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Yi Nantiro – “Watchmen”
Yi Nantiro – “A Single Grain of Rice”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Rannar Sillard – “Split Decision”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

February 27, 2020

A French Civil War in 1937? – WW2 feat. Hearts of Iron IV [sponsored]

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, Germany, History, Italy, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Feb 2020

This video is sponsored by Paradox Interactive. Indy shares his thoughts on what he thinks would have happened if the French would have decided to meddle in the Spanish Civil War – triggering a Civil War.

Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance is now available! You can play Hearts of Iron IV for free until next Sunday, the 1st of March! Discover it here: https://pdxint.at/39Re5ld

Watch our first collab video with HoI4 about the Spanish Civil War here: https://youtu.be/7QE1hvH8ZVU
Watch our Between Two Wars episode on the Spanish Civil War here: https://youtu.be/ncUkPavahCU
Watch our Between Two Wars episode on the French February Revolution in 1934 here: https://youtu.be/tLm1gWnlcYw

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Join our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN.
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Directed by: Wieke Kapteijns
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Guido Becker
Gameplay scenes: Sietse Kenter

Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Daniel Weiss

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

February 23, 2020

China’s government and the coronavirus epidemic

Filed under: Bureaucracy, China, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Aaron Sarin shows how the Chinese government has systematically failed to respond adequately to the epidemic which broke out late in 2019in Wuhan and risks “losing the Mandate of Heaven”:

As of this writing, the epidemic’s death toll is still rising, and many of these deaths can ultimately be traced to the paranoid rigidity of the Xi Jinping administration. By late December 2019, doctors in Wuhan were already sounding the alarm over cases of what appeared to them to be SARS. Instead of listening to their warnings, the authorities summoned eight of these doctors for a dressing-down. They were warned of the punishments they could face for “rumour-mongering.” News of their detention was broadcast to tens of millions: a clear message to anyone else who might have been thinking about discussing viruses in public.

The Party’s leaders actually knew enough to be worried by this point — they alerted the World Health Organisation on December 31st — and yet still they hid the truth from the public. This neurotic obsession with secrecy has certainly cost lives. If the medical community had been informed of the outbreak back in December, hospitals could have stockpiled the necessary supplies. But now there are drastic shortages, and patients are dying in hallways and waiting rooms.

Even the critics of authoritarian dictatorship will usually agree that the system beats democracy for sheer efficiency, but the coronavirus debacle has turned that old wisdom on its head. Where we might have expected cold and methodical governance, we have found dithering bureaucrats, unable to take a step in any direction, paralysed by what Xu Zhangrun calls “systemic impotence.” Weeks went by and citizens swarmed in and out of Wuhan, picking up the virus and transporting it to the far corners of the country. Local government officials stayed quiet, wary of the heavy hand of Xi Jinping. On January 23rd, a citywide quarantine was finally announced, but eight long hours passed before it was enacted — time enough for a million or more to flee the city.

The Wuhan lockdown was repeated in other parts of the country (most recently the southern megacity of Guangzhou), and some observers praised the speed with which new hospitals were constructed from scratch. These very visible displays of its power aside, the Party has moved far too slowly at every stage of the crisis. Diagnostic testing required samples to be sent all the way to a laboratory in Beijing, and this delayed the distribution of testing kits to many of the hospitals in Wuhan. Even when testing kits were available, patients still found themselves trapped in a Kafka-esque web of bureaucracy. According to Reuters, the tests have been refused to people who fail to make it through a complex reporting system involving hospital authorities, district authorities, city health authorities, and disease control officials.

None of this should come as a surprise. The cliché about the efficiency of authoritarian systems was always, on closer analysis, something of a low-resolution image. In the old days of the Soviet Union, speedy industrial growth obscured the reality of a fragile system largely devoid of autonomous decision making. During the 1920s, the Communist Party’s state planning committee Gosplan was established with the impressive-sounding mission of creating a series of five-year plans to govern the economy. But over the next 70 years, the vast majority of these plans were radically revised and rewritten, or more frequently ignored altogether in favour of Joseph Stalin’s arbitrary dictates. Indeed, Gosplan actively tried to avoid making decisions at all, because committee members knew Stalin would have them shot and replaced if their ideas produced unwelcome results. In the end, fear saps the efficiency of all authoritarian regimes, and the Chinese Communist Party is no exception.

Li Wenliang has emerged as the most vivid symbol of the Party’s latest failure. Li was one of the Wuhan doctors disgraced for discussing the coronavirus on social media. A few days after his police warning, he contracted the virus himself, and on February 6th he died. It was during the period of Li’s short illness that the Party apparently realised its error and decided to absolve the doctors, but still the central government would accept no blame for the tragedy. Instead, the Supreme Court (which is controlled by the CCP) scolded the local government in Wuhan — an unusual move, no doubt designed to create a scapegoat for surging public anger. The truth is that the city’s officials had been faced with an impossible job. They obediently followed orders, and now they will be punished for it.

January 22, 2020

QotD: National “wealth”

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

All the wealth we’ve accumulated is ultimately between our ears.

While working on my book, I read all these different accounts of where capitalism comes from. I was amazed by how many of them start from the assumption that wealth is … stuff. Depending on which Marxist you’re talking to, capitalism is the ill-gotten-booty of the Industrial Revolution, slavery, imperialism, and the rest. I don’t want to get into all of that here — there will be plenty of time when the book comes out.

But all of these assumptions are based on the idea that having stuff makes you rich. Now, in fairness, that’s true for individuals. But it doesn’t really work that way for societies. Writing about Venezuela earlier this week is what got this in my head. Venezuela is poor and getting poorer by the minute: Babies are dying from starvation.

Meanwhile, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. According to lots of people, not just Marxists, this should make no sense. Oil is valuable. If you have more of it than anyone else, you should be able to make money. For a decade, the American Left loved Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro because they allegedly redistributed all of the country’s wealth from the rich to the poor. These dictators were using The Peoples’ resources for the common good. Blah blah blah.

It turns out that the greatest resource a country has is its institutions. In economics, an institution is just a rule, which is why the rule of law in general and property rights in particular are the most important institutions there are, with the exception of the family. Take away the rule of law in any country, anywhere and that country will get very poor, very fast. Stop protecting the fruits of someone’s labor, enforcing legal contracts, guarding against theft from the state or the mob (a distinction without a difference in Venezuela’s case) and wealth starts to evaporate.

But even that is too complicated. Oil is worthless on its own. If you went back in time to the Arabian Peninsula before oil became a valuable commodity, you wouldn’t look at the squabbling nomads and call them rich, even though they were playing polo with a goat’s head above billions of barrels of oil. Go get lost in the Amazon by yourself. What would you rather have, a map or big-ass diamond? The diamond only has value once you get out of the jungle, but you can’t get out without the map.

Jonah Goldberg, “America and the ‘Original Position'”, National Review, 2017-12-22.

January 1, 2020

Communist jokes through the ages

Filed under: History, Humour, Politics, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Catallaxy Files, Steve Kates recently read Hammer and Tickle: A History of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes by Ben Lewis:

It looks at the jokes themselves; the evolution of these jokes as communism aged and new leaders took over; it looks at the different kinds of jokes told in different communist countries; it examines the fate of those who told such jokes and the difference in the fate of those who made such jokes depending on who was the leader of the Party; it asks whether such jokes helped the communists consolidate power or whether they helped bring communism down; it looks into the difference between telling anti-Nazi jokes in Nazi Germany versus telling anti-communist jokes in communist countries; it asks about the psychology of those who told such jokes and whether they helped relieve tensions; and much else. But I will say this, some of I found really funny. This is my favourite.

    Khrushchev is walking through the Kremlin, getting worked up about the Soviet Union’s problems, and spits on the carpet in a gesture of disgust.

    “Behave yourself, Nikita Sergeyevich,” admonishes the aide. “Remember that the great Lenin walked through these halls!”

    “Shut up,” responds Khrushchev. “I can spit all I like here; the Queen of England gave me permission!”

    “The Queen of England?”

    “Yes! I spat on her carpet in Buckingham Palace too, and she said, ‘Mr Khrushchev, you can do that all you like in the Kremlin if you wish, but you can’t behave like this here …'”

Easy to see this one added to the Donald Trump canon and now that I have pointed it out, I expect it to be.

I therefore thought I might have a look at what passes for Donald Trump jokes. And google all you like, there really is not much although there was this: Donald Trump Jokes. None were funny but I did like this:

    Where’s Donald Trump’s favorite place to shop?

    Wall-mart!

Mere pun though it is, it seems appropriate. At least it’s policy-related and almost entirely a joke that could only be told about Trump. The rest are re-treads, never specifically about anything related to Trump himself and his policies, but are almost entirely forms of insult than anything with any associated wit or insight. The most interesting part to me about the communist jokes was that the ones that became acceptable were those directed at the failures of communism relative to the promises that had originally been made. Lots like that. The way to end up in the gulag was to tell jokes about actual party leaders, especially Lenin and Stalin. Very few like that.

I rather liked the one from the Amazon page for the Kindle edition: “Q: Why, despite all the shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germany always 2-ply? A: Because they had to send a copy of everything they did to Moscow.”

December 29, 2019

Changing western views about China

Filed under: Business, China, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

John Gray charts the image of China that has held steady for years among western countries but which has been severely shaken with the unrest in Hong Kong and the Chinese government’s reactions:

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the great school of Mao Zedong Thought”, 1969.
A poster from the Cultural Revolution, featuring an image of Chairman Mao, published by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The most important year of the decade is the one that is just ending. The struggle that will most deeply shape the global scene in years to come is not occurring in Britain, the US, Europe or any Western country. It is underway in Hong Kong, where a popular demand for democracy is confronting the immovable power of the world’s most highly developed authoritarian state.

It is a struggle no government wants to see escalate. More realistic than its Western counterparts, the Chinese leadership shows few signs of believing the conflict can be definitively resolved any time soon. Incremental concessions and large-scale repression both carry high levels of risk for Xi Jinping’s regime. The ideal end-state for Beijing is probably long-term containment. But the situation in the former colony is not stable, and it is difficult to exaggerate the impact that suppressing the protestors by force would have on China’s position in the world.

It is often pointed out that Hong Kong’s economic importance has dwindled with the rise of mainland cities such as Shanghai. But this leaves out how much two-system governance shapes global perceptions of China and its future. Xi’s progress towards a neo-totalitarian surveillance state has deflated the Western elites’ confidence that China is on a path of slow evolution towards liberal democracy. Yet the fantasy still lingers. The likelihood that China will be an authoritarian great power in any realistically imaginable future is too disturbing to contemplate.

It is worth recalling the comforting tale on which Western governments have modelled China’s development. The country was getting rapidly richer, and while average incomes remained low by international standards, the middle class was steadily growing. This process of embourgeoisement would lead to stronger demands for democratic freedoms, and China would become ever more like the West. Embedded in practically every Western government and regularly invoked by the Western businesses that operate in China, this is a story with almost no basis in reality.

It is true that the rise of the middle classes in early 19th-century Europe coincided with an expansion of liberal freedoms in some countries. This was the main thrust of Marx’s analysis of bourgeois democracy. (A little-noted aspect of recent liberal thinking is that it relies heavily on a crude version of Marxian class analysis.) But there is nothing in the historical record that says the middle classes are inherently a force promoting liberalism. In the late 19th century, they backed the restoration of monarchy and empire in France and militarism In Prussia. In the early 20th century, large sections of the European middle classes embraced ethnic nationalism and then fascism. There was not much sign of the freedom-loving bourgeoisie in interwar Europe.

Protests continue in Hong Kong, 25 November 2019.
Photo by Studio Incendo via Wikimedia Commons

While it is so far less developed, a similar pattern of bourgeois support for illiberal politics has emerged in many European countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Across the continent, far-Right parties enjoy the support of significant sections of the middle classes. In America, Trump’s constituency includes many from precarious middle income groups.

So, the linkage between the middle classes and liberal values is tenuous throughout Western countries. In the UK and other English-speaking countries, it is middle class students, professors and administrators that have shut down freedom of inquiry and expression in higher education. Woke capitalism and much of the mainstream media are continuing this trend. Threatened by what they call populism, bourgeois liberals have ditched the values that once defined them. Far from being a universal law, middle class support for liberalism looks like a brief historical accident.

December 19, 2019

Vive la Résistance! well, not really… French Resistance 1940 – WW2 – War Against Humanity 007

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 18 Dec 2019

Immediately after France is occupied by the Nazis in 1940, the French are divided about what to do; resist for collaborate? To put it mildly, it’s complicated.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Join our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN.
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by: Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/

Sources: Bundesarchiv, Mémorial de la Shoah
Icons via the Noun Project: collaboration by Pause08, protester by Blaise Sewell, Dove by Luis Prado, confused by Llisole

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

Spartacus Olsson
16 hours ago
In the aftermath of WW2, everyone was probably pretty tired of the whole tragedy, and ready to just move on. Many of the people that I have met that lived through the war didn’t like talking about the war much. But somehow I had the privilege of getting many of the them that I met to open up and talk about it to me. Maybe not so much because of any personal quality I have other than being very persistent and curious — a pain in the neck is another way of putting it.

Anyway, we talked about many things, terrible things, great things, sad, and happy stories. But there was one thing I never heard anybody talk about, and that was indecision. Fear and regret, yes — everyone spoke of that, but not indecision. There was always an undertone of manifest destiny or complete meaninglessness.

But, when you think about it, how could you not be indecisive when faced with this kind of calamity? How can you not wonder if this is destiny, or just bad luck? How can you not be shocked into a stupor, at least at first? And even if you’re an ideologically convinced partisan or combatant, how do you know for sure what the right thing to do is? Well, when you start looking into it all, those questions were pretty much what gripped France in 1940 after the sudden, tragic loss of independence.

I think that indecision is not something we want to remember, perhaps we shouldn’t if we want to stay our course, perhaps we’re wired not to, so that we can focus better on what we finally decide. But for others who want to learn from our mistakes, and our successes — it is in the moment of indecision that we display our thinking, our reasoning, the true origin of our cause.

I should also tell you that I grew up in France, so this is in many ways the story of the adults around me when I was a child.

December 13, 2019

Communist Boots Are Made For Walking – Mao‘s Long March | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1935 Part 3 of 4

Filed under: China, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published 12 Dec 2019

From 1927 to 1934, the Chinese Communists lived in a state within the National Chinese State led by Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1935, the Nationalists strike and the Communists follow their leader Mao Zedong on a Long March Northwards.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kaminski

Colorizations:
– Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

December 6, 2019

Mikhail Gorbachev and the “third generation”

Filed under: Government, History, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian explains why Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika was doomed to fail:

US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the Hofdi House in Reykjavik, Iceland during the Reyjavik Summit in 1986.
Official US government photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Perestroika‘s what happens when you turn the reins over to the third generation — the generation that didn’t come up hard, and thus wasn’t forced to deal with objective reality. For all his faults, and for all the debate over whether Stalin was “really” a Communist (hint: he was), the Boss knew what it takes to hold onto power in a one-party state. He learned his craft in the hardest school — maneuvering against Lenin and Trotsky, two of the coldest, most ruthless sons-of-bitches ever to draw breath. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, survived both the Great Purge and the Great Patriotic War for the Motherland — an achievement, as you can imagine, that pretty much no one else of consequence could boast.

Mikhail Gorbachev, by contrast, was born in 1931. His childhood was affected by the war — as was every Russian child’s — but his grandfather was a kolkhoznik from way back; Mikhail was wired in to the Party from birth. Stalin died in 1953. Gorbachev was 22 — in an earlier generation he could’ve been a serious player at that age, but the postwar generation didn’t start rising until their 30s, or more usually their 40s. He was still at university when the Boss kicked the bucket; he didn’t start his official political career until 1955, and wasn’t recognized as a bona-fide comer until the late 1960s.

What this meant was that Gorbachev grew up in the kinder, gentler Soviet Union — the one where Khrushchev released a whole bunch of folks from the Gulag and denounced cults of personality. This is not to say that Gorbachev wasn’t a sincere Communist; he was. In fact, that was his problem — he was too sincere. The earlier generations faced the stark choice between hewing to orthodox Marxism, or hanging on to power. They chose the latter, of course, and that’s why Trotsky had to go — he kept on claiming to be the only true Marxist of the bunch (which he was, of course, but that’s a story for another day). Gorbachev, though, got to see Communism “working,” and from this he deduced — not unreasonably for someone who didn’t come up hard — that Communism’s manifest failures were due to not following Marx and Lenin more exactly. Marx and Lenin talked a great game about “openness” (glasnost), “democracy,” and all that “improving the lot of the People” jazz.

So he did all that, the fool, not realizing that Communism “worked,” such as it did, only through repression. Take your foot off The People’s neck enough to let them breathe, by all means — that was Comrade Khrushchev’s great insight — but if you ease off any further, they’ll try to wriggle out … and eventually kill you, their tormentor. Having never seen The People at close range — as everyone in the previous generations had — he couldn’t understand this, and so crashed the system.

December 3, 2019

The Hungarian Romanian War & The Downfall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic I THE GREAT WAR 1919

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published 2 Dec 2019

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In early 1919 Hungary was one of the European territories that saw a communist revolution. Bela Kun and his supporters established the Hungarian Soviet Republic while the country was in great turmoil and fighting against the Romanians, the Czechoslovaks, the Serbs and within Hungary itself.

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» SOURCES
Balogh, Eva S. “István Friedrich and the Hungarian Coup d’État of 1919: A Reevaluation” in Slavic Review, 1 June 1976, Vol.35(2): 269-286.

Borodziej, Wlodzimierz and Maciej Gorny. Der Vergessene Weltkrieg. Europas Osten 1912-1923. Band II – Nationen 1917-1923 (wbg Theiss, 2018).

Gosztony, Peter. “The Collapse of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 69-80.

Hetes, Tibor. “The Northern Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 55-60.

Horthy, Admiral Nicholas. Admiral Nicholas Horthy Memoirs. Simon Publications LLC, (2000).

Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).

Nouzille, Jean. “The July Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army as seen by France,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 81-88.

Révész, Tamás: “Post-war Turmoil and Violence (Hungary)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2019-08-05.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…

Torrey, Glenn. “The Romanian Intervention in Hungary, 1919,” in Pastor, Peter, ed. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and its Neighbor States, 1918-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): 301-320.

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“Useful idiots” during the Cold War

Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Robert Reilly reviews Judgement in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity by Vladimir Bukovsky, which has recently been republished in English:

Krushchev, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders review the Revolution parade in Red Square, 1962.
LIFE magazine photo by Stan Wayman.

Judgment In Moscow contains autobiographical elements but is principally concerned with providing and analyzing documentary evidence for what should have been the USSR equivalent of what the Nuremberg Trials had been for Nazi Germany. In 1991, Bukovsky returned to the Soviet Union to take part in the “trial of the communist party” that was held in 1992. In an audacious move the Communist Party had sued then-President Boris Yeltsin to get its property back. To prepare a defense, Yeltsin ordered that the secret Central Committee archives be opened to Bukovsky. The order was obeyed, but only partially and for a short time. The trial fizzled, but Bukovsky, with the aid of a hand-held scanner, was able to gather many thousands of pages of top-secret Central Committee and Politburo documents and get them out of Russia. Some of these key documents are what we have in this priceless book. They are eye-opening.

During the Cold War, we had to speculate as to why, for instance, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and how the decision was made. Now we know for certain. Bukovsky provides the minutes of the Politburo meetings in which the invasion was decided. The Reagan administration was highly skeptical of détente and was therefore criticized for war-mongering. The skepticism was well-placed because, as the documents reveal, détente was simply a façade for advancing Soviet power and manipulating Western publics and governments against the Reagan plan to place Pershing IIs and cruise missiles in Europe to defend it against burgeoning Soviet power, including the SS-20s.

The revelations of the extent to which the Soviet Union manipulated the “peace” movement in the West should be an embarrassment to its participants, who may have been too naïve at the time to know how they were being used. Others, of course, acceded to being used, or even cravenly sought to be used. The names of some of these useful idiots are in the documents.

Another thing these documents disclose, much to the embarrassment of many American Sovietologists, is that there were no “hawks” and “doves” in the Kremlin — a premise on which they had banked their academic careers. The unanimity of the Politburo decisions reveals that the senior Soviet leaders were all of one stripe. It was to their advantage to create the impression that there were hawks and doves so that they could game the policies of Western governments and the opinions of its publics. For instance, providing Western credits to the USSR — it was thought by many so-called Russian experts in the West — would strengthen the doves in the Kremlin, whereas denying credits would empower the hawks. By buying this line of thought, the West was induced to keep the Soviet Union on life-support for more than a decade past what would have been its earlier collapse, according to Bukovsky.

No one was a greater master of this deception than Mikael Gorbachev. The minutes from many Politburo meetings chaired by Gorbachev show that glasnost and perestroika were façades constructed to ensure the continued existence of the Soviet Union through even more Western subsidies. And it worked to the extent that credits and subsidies ballooned under the Western illusion that Gorbachev had to be supported to ensure his success — ignorant of the fact that Gorbachev conceived of success in ways inimical to Western freedom.

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.

November 30, 2019

Hong Kong and China

Filed under: China, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait considers the state of play in Hong Kong’s defiance of the Chinese Communist Party:

Protests continue in Hong Kong, 25 November 2019.
Photo by Studio Incendo via Wikimedia Commons

How can the HongKongers defeat the Chinese Communists (hereinafter termed ChiComs), and preserve their HongKonger way of life approximately as it now is? In the short run, they probably can’t. During the next few months, the ChiCom repression in Hong Kong will surely get ever nastier, and the bigger plan, to just gobble it up and digest it into ChiCom China will surely bash onwards.

But then again, I thought that these Hong kong demonstrations would all be snuffed out months ago. So what the hell do I know? I thought they’d just send in the tanks, and to hell with “world opinion”. But the ChiComs, it turned out, didn’t want to just kill everyone who dared to disobey, plus anyone else who happened to be standing about nearby. That would not be a good look for them. What are they? Russians? Far too unsophisticated. Instead the plan has been to divide and conquer, and it presumably still is. By putting violent agent provovateurs in among the demonstrators, and by ramping up the violence simultaneously perpetrated by the police, the plan was, and is, to turn the peaceful and hugely well attended demonstrations into far smaller, far more violent street battles of the sort that would disgust regular people. Who would then turn around and support law and order, increased spending on public housing, blah blah. So far, this has not worked.

And for as long as any ChiCom plan for Hong Kong continues not to work, “world opinion” has that much more time to shake itself free from the sneer quotes and get itself organised, to try to help Hong Kong to stay semi-free.

Those district rat-catcher (or whatever) elections last Sunday came at just the wrong time for the ChiComs, because they gave peaceful HongKongers the chance to make their opinions known, about creatures of a far more significant sort than rats, and at just the time when the ChiCom plan should have started seriously shutting the HongKongers up. These elections were a landslide.

The ChiComs are very keen to exude indifference to world opinion, but they clearly do care about it, because if they truly didn’t care about it, those tanks would have gone in months ago, just as I had assumed they would. So, since world opinion clearly has some effect, the first thing the rest of us can do to help the HongKongers is to keep our eyeballs on Hong Kong.

As I say, I continue to be pessimistic about the medium-term future in Hong Kong. But in the longer run, if the HongKongers can’t have a local victory, they can set about getting their revenge. And all of the rest of us who care can join in and help them.

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