Word: communisme
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some Soviet dissidents still argue that their country's Marxist-Leninist system can be reformed from within. Not Alexander Solzhenitsyn: he has never swerved from his belief in the inherent evil of Communism. Last week, the Nobel-prizewinning novelist composed this essay for TIME in response to the crisis in East-West relations created by the Soviet conquest of Afghanistan. Solzhenitsyn argues that Afghanistan is merely the latest demonstration of the U.S.S.R.s insatiable desire for world conquest. As in his grim 1978 Harvard commencement address, he chides the West for weakness. But the West may yet prevail, he says...
...West began its perilous miscalculation of Communism in 1918: from the very beginning the Western powers failed to see the deadly threat that it represented. In Russia at that time, all previously warring factions-from the government forces to the Constitutional Democrats and the right-wing Socialists-united against Communism. Though the peasants and workers were not formally allied with these groups, and were not coordinated, thousands of peasant revolts and dozens of worker uprisings reflected the masses' opposition to Communism. A Red Army was mobilized by executing tens of thousands of men who tried to evade Bolshevik conscription...
...asking a malignant tumor what makes it grow. It simply cannot behave otherwise. The same is true of Communism; driven by a malevolent and irrational instinct for world domination, it cannot help seizing ever more lands. Communism is something new, unprecedented in world history; it is fruitless to seek analogies. All warnings to the West about the pitiless and insatiable nature of Communist regimes have proved to be in vain because the acceptance of such a view would be too terrifying. (Did not the Afghan tragedy in fact take place two years ago? But the West shut its eyes...
...Communism can implement its "ideals" only by destroying the core and foundation of a nation's life. He who understands this will not for a minute believe that Chinese Communism is more peace-loving than the Soviet variety (it is simply that its teeth have not yet grown), or that Marshal Tito's brand is kindly by nature. The latter was also leavened with blood, and it too consolidated its power by mass killings, but the weak-hearted West preferred not to take any notice in 1943-45. He who understands the nature of Communism will...
...Communism needs the whole charade of detente for only one purpose: to gain additional strength with the help of Western financing (those loans will not be repaid) and Western technology before it launches its next large-scale offensive. Communism is stronger and more durable than Nazism, it is far more sophisticated in its propaganda and excels at such charades...