Tag Archives: Gorbachev

Old Soldiers Never Die

“The XXI century will be a сentury either of total all-embracing crisis or of moral and spiritual healing that will reinvigorate humankind. It is my conviction that all of us – all reasonable political leaders, all spiritual and ideological movements, all  faiths – must help in this transition to a triumph of humanism and justice, in making the XXI century a century of a new human renaissance.”

He won’t go away.  Still, he tries to help.  He has no political power. And he will fade away.

Those who fail to learn from history, will repeat it.

Slow ideas take longer to work, than fast ideas.

Counterfactuals are hard to do, but we know these atheistic Communists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung were responsible for well over a hundred million deaths in the 20th century. Current history is also difficult: how many deaths can we lay at the feet of Putin.

So how many lives did this atheistic Communist SAVE?  — Probably millions. We will never know. And he now is virtually ignored by his own countries, and the international community gives him accolades, but more likely they need a famous speaker for their get together.

“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”
– Gen. George C. Patton

Mikhail Gorbachev was key in the relatively peaceful break up of the Soviet Union.  He, had been in effect, the Tzar of Russia.

He had the Idealistic Idea that the world, and the Soviet Union, could be a better place.

Continue reading Old Soldiers Never Die

A Child's Memory

“On the back of the slip was written ‘Read 5.25.34’ and the signature of my father. The file — indeed the whole ‘case’ — gave me a heavy sinking feeling. I kept leafing through the documents trying to understand. Shouldn’t there have been some kind of logic to these stories? Did the Chekists’ machinery really so senselessly gobble up people? Perhaps my life would have taken a different turn if been able to see my father’s file earlier. If I could have been convinced without a doubt of what ordinary, banal horror our industry, our powerful Soviet reality was steeped in.”

“My father never spoke about any of this with me. He blanked this piece of his life out of his memory as if it had never existed. It is forbidden to speak of this subject in our family.”

“I was only three years old at the time of my father’s arrest, but I remember to this day all the horror and fear. One night people came into our barracks room. I remember my mother shouting and crying. I woke up and also began to cry. I was crying not because my father was going away (I was still too young to “understand” what was happening to him). I was crying because I saw my mother and saw how frightened she was. Her fear and her tears were transferred to me. My father was taken away, and my mother threw herself at me, hugging me until I calmed down and fell asleep.”  Continue reading A Child's Memory