What gave socialism a shot was that the hypertrophic nationalism of the first half of the twentieth century plunged the world into not just one but two world wars. Without these catastrophes, it is inconceivable that so many devotees of Marx would have come to power in the seventy years after 1917. The world wars made the case for socialism in multiple ways. First, they seemed to confirm the destructive tendencies of “imperialism, the highest form of capitalism”, in Vladimir Lenin’s words. Second, they greatly expanded the role of the state, which became the principal purchaser of goods and services in most combatant countries, creating precisely the kind of state-controlled economy that socialist theory claimed would perform better than free markets. Third, the wars acted as a great leveler, imposing very high marginal rates of taxation, wage controls, and price controls in ways that tended to reduce wealth and income disparities. Fourth, in 1917 the German government financed the Bolshevik coup in Russia that brought Lenin to power.
The tragedy was that those who promised utopia generally delivered hell on earth. According to the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, the “grand total of victims of Communism was between 85 and 100 million” for the twentieth century as a whole. The lowest estimate for the total number of Soviet citizens who lost their lives as a direct result of Stalin’s policies was more than 20 million, a quarter of them in the years after World War II. Mao alone, as Frank Dikötter has shown, accounted for tens of millions: two million between 1949 and 1951, another three million by the end of the 1950s, a staggering 45 million in the man-made famine known as the Great Leap Forward, yet more in the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution. Even the less bloodthirsty regimes of Eastern Europe killed and imprisoned their citizens on a shocking scale. In the Soviet Union, 2.75 million people were in the Gulag at Stalin’s death. The numbers were greatly reduced thereafter, but until the very end of the Soviet system its inhabitants lived in the knowledge that there was nothing but their own guile to protect them from an arbitrary and corrupt state. Other communist regimes around the world, including the very durable dictatorships in North Korea and Cuba, were strikingly similar in the miseries they inflicted on their own citizens.
The various socialist regimes could not even justify their murderous behavior by providing those they spared with higher living standards than their counterparts living under capitalism. On the contrary, they were economically disastrous. The collectivization of agriculture invariably reduced farming productivity. A substantial proportion of the victims of communism lost their lives because of the famines that resulted from collectivization in the Soviet Union and China. North Korea had a similarly disastrous experience. Central planning was a miserable failure for reasons long ago identified by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Janos Kornai, amongst others. Indeed, the economic performance of strictly socialist countries got worse over time because of rigidities and perverse incentives institutionalized by planning.
Moreover, the evidence is clear that, as countries moved away from socialist policies of state ownership and toward a greater reliance on market forces, they did better economically. The most striking example — but one of many — is that of China, which achieved a true great leap forward in economic output after beginning to dismantle restrictions on private initiative in 1978. After the collapse of “real existing socialism” in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was widespread recognition (the “Washington consensus”) that all countries would benefit from reducing state ownership of the economy through privatization and from lowering marginal tax rates. […] the highest marginal personal income tax rate was reduced in nearly all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s.
Niall Ferguson, “Capitalism, Socialism and Nationalism: Lessons from History”, 2020-02.
October 5, 2026
September 27, 2026
Harsher than Versailles: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918
The Great War
Published 24 Apr 2026On March 3, 1918 the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) and Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the First World War on the Eastern Front. The terms were harsher than those the Germans offered in December, and much harsher than the later Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was only in force until November 1918, when the Central Powers’ defeat nullified it. But it had a major impact inside and outside Russia.
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September 25, 2026
How True was Lord of War? Surplus from the Warsaw Pact (w/ Val Forgett)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 May 2026When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a gold rush for the surplus guns held by all the various newly independent republics, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations. Lord of War is not far off … and Val Forgett was there, bringing guns into the US for Navy Arms.
September 20, 2026
September 17, 2026
You don’t hate the relic media nearly as much as they deserve
The relic media in Canada has — thanks to generous government subsidies — become a maple-flavoured version of the North Korean news media, but even in the United States where there’s still a somewhat competitive market, most media outlets are delighted to act as unpaid propagandists … and have been that way for generations:
Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for lying about Stalin’s Ukraine famine while millions starved. His employer, the New York Times, never returned that prize. The institutional rot ran deeper than one reporter.
In 1936, Times Moscow correspondent Harold Denny watched the first of Stalin’s Great Purge trials and reported the proceedings as credible. The defendants, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev among them, confessed to plotting murder and sabotage. Denny saw no obvious coercion and wrote accordingly. The NKVD had spent weeks breaking these men through sleep deprivation, threats against their families, and relentless psychological torture until they would say anything in open court.
Every confession was fabricated. Every defendant was executed anyway. Stalin murdered roughly 750,000 people during the Great Purge between 1936 and 1938, and the Times gave the operation a veneer of legitimacy at its most critical moment.
Central planners require a monopoly on information to survive. When the newspaper of record in the most powerful capitalist country on earth launders your show trials as fair proceedings, you buy yourself years of Western political goodwill. Stalin purchased that goodwill with useful idiots who confused proximity to power with insight.
You pay for this dynamic today every time an institution that failed catastrophically keeps its credentials, its prizes, and its authority to declare what counts as credible journalism.
Duranty would have been proud of Time magazine had he been alive today.
September 14, 2026
QotD: “We have Homo Sovieticus in America”
The last numbers from Los Angeles County as a whole were for 2024, when 2,208 homeless people died on the streets. County officials celebrated, because that number was a sharp reduction, and a reflection of the success of programs like overdose intervention teams stationed around public parks.
Remember those numbers, and let’s talk about something else for a moment before we come back to them.
The Soviet writer Aleksandr Zinoviev told a joke that speaks fluent Californian: “In some institution a routine meeting was in progress. There were two points on the agenda: 1) the construction of a barn; 2) the creation of an abundance of consumer goods under communism. As they didn’t have enough planks to build the barn, they moved on at once to the second question.”
Maybe that joke doesn’t land if you don’t live in Los Angeles or Seattle, but from here it’s flawless. Take a quick look at the campaign page for María Elena Durazo, a state senator who just won a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Infrastructure and fire departments are in bad shape in the place where elected officials think that government exists to provide “economic justice” that restructures communities. When government exists to pay your rent, 911 response times soar.
They can’t fix a street, so they move on at once to managing all of society.
Here’s what Senator Durazo boasts about on her “Meet Maria” page: “Arrested over 13 times for leading non-violent Civil Rights and Worker Rights protests”. It’s the line that appears below “State Senator” on her list of accomplishments. Gentry socialists have high-status-marker arrest credentials, without the burden of low-status prosecution and jail terms.
Zinoviev gave us the term “Homo Sovieticus”, describing the human creature that shaped itself around the postures and predilections of Soviet culture. Humorless, a sanctimonious scold, a deeply selfish schemer while professing adoration for collectivism, comfortable reciting official slogans without feeling the need to believe them or examine them, reflexively conformist, not worried about truth. (X) has been advanced as party doctrine, so (X) is correct, and anyone suggesting (Not-X) is highly suspect. The official account is always correct.
We live among these people. We have Homo Sovieticus in America.
Chris Bray, “Homo Cosmopolitus Won’t Count the Costs”, Tell Me How This Ends, 2026-06-10.
September 13, 2026
Velvet Glove and Sparrow II missiles: A Guide To Early Cold War Bomber Interception Tactics
Polyus
Published 6 Apr 2026The Velvet Glove was a semi-active guided missile system developed by the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment. Its successor, the Sparrow II was developed by Canadair in association with the US Air Force. This is the story of the development of the missiles in the context of their contemporary weapons systems.
0:00 Introduction
1:00 NORAD and continental defense
3:21 Gun approach
5:32 Rocket pod approach
7:54 Nuclear option
8:35 Interception Tactics
11:56 Guided missile approach
14:38 Velvet Glove missile development
19:30 Sparrow missile development
22:03 Arming Canada’s future fighters
25:08 Conclusion
September 8, 2026
Why The Soviet Union Lost In Afghanistan
Real Time History
Published 3 Apr 2026In February 1989, the last Soviet combat troops leave Afghanistan after almost a decade of war. Despite military superiority, the superpower was not able to establish a stable Moscow-friendly regime in the country. Yet, the mujahedeen are also deeply divided and influenced by outside forces such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden.
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September 7, 2026
The Backbone of the Nazi Panzer War – Panzer III
World War Two
Published 5 Sep 2026The Panzer III was intended to become the backbone of Nazi Germany’s panzer divisions. Emerging from clandestine Weimar-era experimentation and formally developed from 1934, it combined mobility, a five-man crew, a three-man turret, and comprehensive radio communication in one highly effective prewar design.
In this episode, Spartacus follows the Panzerkampfwagen III from secret German-Soviet tank trials at Kama through its production and deployment in Poland, France, North Africa, and Operation Barbarossa. We examine its evolution from the 3.7 cm gun to increasingly powerful 5 cm weapons, the advantages provided by crew specialization and radio-coordinated warfare, and why the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 exposed its diminishing margins in armor and firepower.
By 1943, the Panzer III had been displaced as Germany’s principal gun tank by the more adaptable Panzer IV. Its chassis, however, found an extraordinarily productive second life beneath the Sturmgeschütz III. The Panzer III was not a failed tank. It was an effective prewar design overtaken by an armored arms race it lacked the capacity to survive. Its fate also reflected Nazi Germany’s wider strategic failure: it had built weapons for short campaigns, then unleashed a coalition war whose demands exceeded Germany’s resources.
Watch our episode on the Sd.Kfz. 251: • The Halftrack That Made Blitzkrieg Possibl…
Watch Ten Days in Sedan: • Ten Days in Sedan
September 6, 2026
Scientific American used to be a respected science publication
A few years ago, it became clear that Scientific American had been captured by the woke gender warriors, but as ESR points out, the publication had been somewhat in the hands of propagandists for much longer than that:
I was once a Scientific American subscriber. I loved that magazine; reading it was one of the highlights of my month. I canceled, and wept for what the magazine was becoming, when they published a theme issue that was a transparent political hit job.
Sounds like current news? No. That was 40 years ago. The hit job was on the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan was in the White House.
And I … I couldn’t figure out why nobody was saying the obvious in public. That SciAm had been sock-puppeted by a Soviet influence operation desperate to keep the US from exploiting its technological advantage.
Ideological capture of the scientific establishment is not a new problem. As much as I hate the Communists behind it, I’m even angrier with all the scientists who averted their eyes and never pushed back while the capture was going on. Our civilization gave them a position of high status, privilege, and trust. A priori I don’t think we were wrong to do that — until they failed in the duty that went with that trust.
It’s difficult for me to express how personally painful I found this. I revered research scientists as a child and young man — I could not imagine any higher calling than to be one myself. Until they betrayed civilization, and in the process betrayed me.
So, this isn’t a new problem. What’s new is that the post-2014 woke insanity has made it too obvious to miss.
It’s time for a dissolution of the monasteries. The culture of science, to the extent it is transmitted forward, must learn a harsh and terrible lesson about the consequences of allowing scientific neutrality to be abandoned for a mess of politics.
September 1, 2026
“Under Communism, everyone has a job”
Sandy Petersen responds to the “Under Communism, everyone has a job” claim that has been circulating recently thanks to the rising popularity of useful idiots:
“Under Communism, everyone has a job”. This is absolutely true.
Here’s what else was true.
1) You were ASSIGNED your job AND the region for that job by the state (i.e., a bureaucrat). You were required to stay in your job at least 3 years.
2) After 3 years, if you wanted to switch jobs, you needed the approval of both your labor board AND your employer. If you switched too often (for example: every 3 years), there were legal penalties, up to imprisonment.
3) Promotions were based on party membership, loyalty, and sucking up. I’ve talked to a lot of former Soviet citizens, and zero of them thought merit was of use. Also many nice jobs were only for party members.
4) Wages were pretty even across the board. A factory worker, engineer, and factory manager had similar salaries, so it was indeed egalitarian, but didn’t have a lot of incentive. The higher-rank workers did get perks to make up for it. They might get a vacation dacha on the Black Sea. Or a “company” car with a chauffeur. That sort of thing. The higher-ups had better stuff.
5) You needed a passport to travel inside your own country. You couldn’t just move to Leningrad and look for work. Or even go on vacation without permission.
6) You had a union. It was state-controlled. You could not go on strike. If you criticized your factory manager, you would be arrested. Yay unions.
If you look at the above, they are an evil capitalist’s wet dream. Think of a movie with a foul imaginary super-corporation so beloved of science fiction movies — they would support every one of those initiatives.
Because that’s what the Soviet Union was — the biggest, most evil corporation that ever existed.
August 26, 2026
The Korean War Week 114 – Stalin’s Secret Plan – August 25, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Aug 2026Heavy rains prevent action in the field in Korea this week, so the big story worldwide is talks in Moscow between Josef Stalin and Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. They talk about Five Year Defense Plans, artillery production, Soviet aid for the Chinese, and exactly how they see the war in Korea and what they think of the American forces.
00:00 Intro
01:09 Bunker Hill
01:51 South Korean Prisoners of War
02:44 Chinese Soviet Talks
05:06 Five Year Defense Plan
07:26 Artillery Production
11:23 Stalin and the USA …
12:52 Eisenhower and the War
16:05 Summary
16:18 Conclusion
18:29 Sign Up
August 24, 2026
“Communism is an ideology designed to liquidate nations”
I nearly skipped this post by Celina, as it started off appearing to be pretty much of interest only to Australians, but that was just the opening sections:
The Bolsheviks were the first governing power of the modern era to write the suppression of “national enmity” into a systematic criminal code. The RSFSR Criminal Code of 1922 penalised agitation and propaganda arousing national enmity or dissension, its successor, the 1926 Code, carried the provision forward as Article 59-7, under the chapter dealing with especially dangerous crimes against the order of administration, punishing “propaganda or agitation directed towards arousing national or religious enmity or discord”, with sharply escalated penalties, up to and including death, where the offence occurred in wartime or amid mass disturbances. From the earliest years of the Soviet state, in other words, speech about nationality was not a civil-society problem to be argued out, but a category of state crime sometimes punishable by death.
To understand why, it is necessary to understand something about communism that conservatives and libertarians have largely obscured. If you ask the average conservative what communism is, he will most likely start discussing government ownership, five-year plans, bread queues etc.
Communism, from this point of view, is essentially capitalism with the economic settings reversed. The government “does and owns everything“. This is why so much conservative analysis eventually degenerates into horseshoe theory: fascists liked government intervention and communists liked government intervention, therefore fascism and communism were basically versions of the same thing.
But that completely misses the ideological conflict which defined twentieth-century Europe. Communism was not just some economic theory about who should own what. It was an internationalist theory about who you are.
Communism is an ideology designed to liquidate nations. Literally.
Marxism insisted that the fundamental political division of mankind was class. The worker was not ultimately supposed to understand himself principally as English, German, Italian, French or Russian. He belonged to the proletariat. His historical interests were shared with workers beyond the borders of his own country, while his supposed national solidarity with his own bourgeoisie concealed the class relationship upon which capitalism depended. Hence the language that runs through the entire communist tradition: Workers of the world, unite; The proletariat has no fatherland; No war but class war. You’re not Italian, you’re not German, you’re the proletariat, and all you have to lose is your chains.
The political logic here is blatantly obvious. Nationality competes with class consciousness, patriotism competes with proletarian internationalism. The nation tells a German worker that he shares something profound with another German who happens to own a factory. Marxism tells him that this solidarity is false and his real political brother is the French, Russian or Italian worker standing on the other side of the border.
That is why the nation became one of the great obstacles confronting revolutionary socialism. The theory said workers possessed common international class interests. Yet, history repeatedly demonstrated that workers continued to behave like members of nations.
In 1914, the workers of Europe did not unite against their governments and refuse the coming war. They rallied overwhelmingly to their respective countries. Socialist parties fractured along national lines. Men who Marxists expected to understand themselves as an international proletariat marched into battle as Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Austrians and Britons. And the same problem returned after the Bolshevik Revolution.
That is why the great twentieth-century conflict between communism and nationalism was not accidental. It was ideological. Communism was internationalist not in the banal sense that communists in different countries cooperated with one another, but in its conception of history itself. The nation was something history would ultimately transcend. Lenin said this openly: socialism aimed not simply to bring nations closer together, but eventually to “merge them“. Elsewhere he described the centralised state as a historical step towards the future “socialist unity of the whole world“.
Stalin, grasping this principle, forged civic nationalism as the indispensable stepping-stone toward that communist universalism. Inside the borders of the revolutionary state the old nationalities were to be liquidated into a single Soviet identity: you are not Ukrainian, you are not Russian, you are not Jewish, you are not Georgian, you are a Soviet patriot, loyal only to the revolution. That state, once purged of national loyalties, would then project its universalist ideology outward, seeking global hegemony by liquidating, in turn, every nation that still dared to resist it.
Update, 25 August: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
August 22, 2026
August 20, 2026
QotD: George Bernard Shaw’s role as Stalin’s useful idiot
Shaw toured Ukraine during the height of the Holodomor, when Soviet grain requisitions had stripped peasants of every scrap of food. Conservative estimates put the death toll at 3.5 million Ukrainians. Shaw saw the empty villages, the skeletal survivors, the mass graves. Then he signed a public letter praising Stalin’s “remarkable progress” and told Western journalists that reports of famine were capitalist propaganda.
Why would an intelligent man become Stalin’s useful idiot? Shaw believed in central planning with religious fervor. He thought brilliant intellectuals like himself could design society better than millions of individuals making their own choices. When confronted with central planning’s inevitable result (mass death), he chose to lie rather than admit his ideology killed people. Shaw preferred beautiful theory to ugly facts.
Shaw deliberately used his celebrity status to give Stalin cover while Ukrainian children died of starvation. He returned to Britain and spent years defending Soviet policies, even as refugee testimonies and photographic evidence exposed the genocide. The man who wrote about moral awakening in Pygmalion had abandoned his own moral compass entirely.
Free market economists warned that socialist calculation was impossible, that without prices and property rights, economies would collapse into chaos and death. Shaw dismissed these warnings as bourgeois nonsense while standing ankle-deep in their vindication.
Handre, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2026-05-13.
Update, 21 August: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
