Stalin’s Hagiography
Born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in Gori, Georgia, in 1878, Stalin spent his early years in a deeply religious setting, first in an Orthodox setting, then in a Communist setting. Influenced by his mother, a devout Georgian Orthodox Christian, young Stalin received a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1894. Here, he was trained in the tenets, traditions, and rituals of the Eastern Orthodox Church but also broader fields of study.
The Seminary functioned like a secular university in that all fields were taught. During this time, he was exposed to the Marxist politics that consumed the student body, although condemned by the leaders of the seminary. In his malleable years, he rejected metaphysics and adopted what Freud called “Darkly Hegelian Metaphysics”. He took on the pseudonym "Koba," inspired by a fictional Robin Hood-like Georgian character. As Koba, he engaged in various underground activities, including propagandist initiatives and organizing strikes. The modern-day version of this might be Anti-Fa; Stalin, one of the greatest Fascist dictators in history, melodramatically saw himself as an anti-fascist since his youth. During this period, Stalin's veneration for Marx grew. Apart from Lenin, Stalin was also influenced by other leftist thinkers and revolutionaries of the time, such as Georgi Plekhanov, the "father of Russian Marxism."
Stalin describes when the student at the Seminary were suddenly consumed by Marxism in his 1901 essay "Russian Social Democratic Party and its Immediate Task:
At this time the spontaneous movement especially rose among the workers. Who among you does not remember the year when almost the whole of Tiflis was engulfed by this spontaneous movement?
In his youthful school essays, he passionately advocated for Democratic Socialism that was fully submissive to the will of the people. By the time he took power, he advocated for a completely planned economy with absolute government control. in 1901 he writes:
Only the working class is the reliable pillar of genuine democracy. Only it cannot come to an agreement with the autocracy over some concession and will not let itself be put to sleep when it begins to sing sweetly to the sound of the constitutional lute.
Eventually, he decides to abandon Orthodoxy for the religion of Anti-Capitalism. By the time he left the seminary in 1899 (without completing his studies), Stalin had become deeply immersed in the revolutionary socialist movement. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, later becoming a member of its Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin.
Throughout his works on Democratic Socialism, there is no mention of the genocides and ethnic cleansing he was ordering. His works speak of equity, justice, equality and the evils of Capitalism. They are filled with Mythologized language- those who criticize Socialism are “demons” and those who advocate for free and open societies are “enemies of progress”. The accusation that those who support democracy are “fascists” is found throughout his works, and to this day remains a favorite word by those who are part of actual Fascist regimes towards those who want free societies.
The Cult of Progress
Reading Stalin Chronologically is a heartbreaking intellectual exercise. In his youthful poems, you see a human, struggling with his faith, questions of beauty and life, But by the end of his life in his last work, "The Economic Problems with Socialism in the USSR", his humanity is impossible to see. All that remains is a socio-political ideology in full possession of his soul. By his 30’s he had walked away from his Georgian Orthodox faith and joined the religion of Marxism but was living under the impression that he was dogma-less, free of religion. By the 1940’s, he had personally ordered over a dozen ethnic cleansings, orchestrated the deaths of millions of political dissidents in the Gulags, and order multiple Genocides, all in the name of equality and equity. The deaths his Anti-Capitalism policies brought to bear range somewhere in the hundreds of millions, an inestimable number the Nazis never dream of. Stalin began his life as an Orthodox Christian, became an agnostic anti-capitalist, and ended his life as one of the deadliest mass-murders to ever live.
But this corruption of his soul happened slowly. Incrementally the dialectal materialism of the progressive worldview replaced the phenomenological categories of Judeo-Christian metaphysics of his youth. The crypto-religious ideologies of Marx replaced “Capitalists” with demons, “Capitalism” as the spiritual forces of evil and religion itself as an enemy of Progress. Bit-by-bit his soul was replaced with his Anti-Capitalist ideology, it's materialistic and crypto-Hegelian ethos eating out his connection to any transcendent source of morality.
The Inevitability of Saint Veneration
The reverence of human beings deemed to be the most good is inevitable. Stalin, although he became an iconoclast, never stopped the veneration of Saints, he merely substituted out the Christian Saints for the Marxist Saints. Joseph Stalin's inverted hero journey from the precincts of a theological seminary to the helm of an atheistic state can be seen through the concept of “possession” from Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons”, which was published in Stalin’s childhood. Dogmas are inevitable, we only need to chose between self-aware dogma and self-deceptive dogma.
As Protestants who criticize the apostolic practice of saint veneration, but they themselves always venerate their own versions of the saints (The Reformed Calvin and Zwingli, the Evangelicals Billy Graham or the like, Lutherans Luther etc), so secular thinkers likewise always have their own venerated saints. Stalin’s was Marx, the author and perfector of his faith, and his forebearer Lenin.
Orthodox Saint Veneration is bound by the dogmas of the church- worship of the dead is considered heresy; only respect (veneration) which actively leads one to living a more holy life is allowed. Any veneration which does not has this Telos at heart is heretical. Crossing the line from veneration to worship is blasphemous and dealt with by Excommunication. But in Protestantism and Secularism, the veneration of Saints goes unrestricted and unnoticed. Protestants move past veneration and worship their “favorite” theologians or pastors without fail. The same people who cry when a celebrity pastor shakes their hand will condemn a Roman or Eastern Catholic’s veneration of the great Saints and Martyrs that came before them. With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they remember him with great reverence, great veneration, and revere his works and hallow his last words. He is venerated by Protestants as a Saint (or as they say “a man of God”), yet they refuse to understand him as such. There is a categorical refusal to understand they have a Hagiography and Ecclesiological Necrology, exactly like the Orthodox do. The dogma is that all Christians are Saints, but this is never the Psychological reality. The only difference is that the Orthodox are self-aware of their veneration; Protestants and Secularists have their heads stuck in the sand like an Ostrich, as a matter of doctrine. The same people who speak with warm, religious veneration for their denomination’s “greatest” preacher will be shocked when the Orthodox do the exact same thing, but with self-awareness. Likewise, Post-Modern adherents “possessed” by Socio-Political dogmas that have turned pathological due to the lack of religious metaphysics venerate the “great” Progressive figures to the point of worship. Mao, Lenin and Marx are all worshiped as the new gods. In both cases, low-church Christians and Atheists live in self-deception of their inevitable religious instinct. Hagiography is inevitable.
All Leftism is Crypto-Hegelianism
Stalin expertly originates Marxism in the inverted Feuerbachian dialectic, or in other words, the de-mythologized Hegelian triads. In his 1906 essay “Anarchism or Socialism” he notes:
If the dialectical method originates from Hegel, then the materialist theory is a development of the materialism of Feuerbach. This is well known to anarchists, and they try to use the shortcomings of Hegel and Feuerbach in order to denigrate the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels. …Marx and Engels were the first to reveal Feuerbach's [metaphysical] mistakes.
Needless to say, Hegel's philosophical system , based on an unchanging idea, is metaphysical from beginning to end . But it is also clear that Hegel’s dialectical method, which denies any unchanging idea, is scientific and revolutionary from beginning to end .
That is why Karl Marx, who subjected Hegel’s metaphysical system to devastating criticism, at the same time spoke with praise of his dialectical method, which, according to Marx, “bows before nothing and is critical and revolutionary in its very essence” (see “Capital” ”, vol. I. Afterword).
Dialectical materialismcombines German idealist philosophy's dialectics (specifically, Feuerbach’s interpretation of Hegelian dialectics) with a materialist view of history and society. This philosophy still forms the foundation of modern Liberal politics. It posits that history's progress and societal changes emerge from the contradiction and conflict between opposing forces, class struggles being the most prominent example.
To this end, a worship of the concept of “Progress” develops, and all reality is interpreted through this tribalistic mythologization of that which is deemed “progressive” and a demonization of any “other” category deemed to be counter-productive to this never-ending Telos of Progress. It is, fundamentally, a religious Eschatology. Inverted compassion still the default Socio-Political ideology that post-religious individuals instantly adopt.
In his essay "Two Contradictions" and his 1906 "Anarchism or Socialism" Stalin diatribes extensively about the dialectical nature of history, and views all of human existence in this religious framework mascaraing as Progressivism. In every one of his works, Stalin uses deeply religious language. Towards his ideological opponents- an unspeakable religious rage that completely dehumanizes them as merely "the enemy" is used. He nearly sounds like a Zoroastrian in his early 1905 address titled “To All Workers”:
The dark forces that hide in the corners during an uprising will come out of their holes on the next day of the uprising and want to put the government on its feet. This is how defeated governments rise from the dead. The people must certainly curb these dark forces, they must raze them to the ground. And for this it is necessary that the victorious people, on the very next day of the uprising, arm themselves from small to large, turn into a revolutionary army and are always ready to defend their won rights with arms in hand.
In The First Circle, which documents why Hitler turned on Stalin despite being sworn brothers-in-arms practicing mirror ideologies, in Chapter 60, Rubin and Sologdin have a discussion on the application of the Hegelian Dialectical process within the context of anti-mystical Marxist Materialism. In chapter 64 they argue about the ends justifying the means within a Hegelian sense of Progress:
Do you mean that if you kill or betray someone, it's a crime, but if the great Leader and Teacher calmly wipe out five or ten million- this is justified and has to be understood in a progressive sense?
The Soviets and the Nazis both used Hegel’s theory of the state, and that the ends justify the means. Hegel makes this same demented argument that Marx and Stalin do in his Philosophie der Weltgeschichte/ Philosophy of History (1822) where he claims the ends justify the means (he was in the same social circles as Napoleon, who knew his friend Goethe):
A World-Historical individual is not so unwise as to indulge a variety of wishes to divide his regards. He is devoted to the One Aim, regardless of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great, even sacred interests, inconsiderately conduct which is indeed obnoxious to moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower- crush to pieces many an object in its path… moral claims that are irrelevant, must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishment.
Like Nietzsche did, Solzhenitsyn brilliantly refutes the 'inverted Hegelian' Marxist idea that society is nothing but a set of power structures. The materialist idea that economics drives behavior more than ideology he identifies as the source of the Genocides:
Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory that helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills; by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations... Without evildoers, there would have been no Archipelago.
Purges and Ethnic Cleansing under Stalin
Lenin and Stalin did not manipulate or misinterpret Marxist precepts to suit their geopolitical and internal agendas. Rather, they are both the inevitable and clear result of the principles of real Marxism. Marx himself openly admitted that Genocide might be necessary to overcome the “Great Enemy”. Stalin and Lenin displayed academic-level understandings of Marx and its metaphysical foundations, accepting the Eschatology of their religion with open eyes. Stalin himself extensively writes about his ideology being true Marxism, and scorns those who would view genocide as unacceptable to overcoming Capitalism.
In Stalin’s perspective, certain ethnicities were deemed intrinsically counter-revolutionary or susceptible to fascist collaboration. The quintessence of Marxist thought, in Stalin's interpretation, was the preservation of the socialist state at all costs. Consequently, entire ethnic groups were repressed based on ostensible security concerns and broad resistance to Communist philosophy. The Chechens, being Muslim and resistant to Atheism, were a threat to a Communist Utopia. Marx would have agreed; the religiously-minded who would not give up their misguided beliefs must be removed for the good of society. Marx wrote entire books about the incompatibility of Theism of any kind with Communism, and Stalin and Lenin merely implemented this ideology.
The most glaring instances include the brutal repressions of the Chechens and the Crimean Tatars. Both ethnicities were accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany during World War II and, as a retribution of sorts, were subjected to mass deportations to Central Asia in the 1940s. The operations were executed with such punitive rigor that they bore the unmistakable hallmark of ethnic cleansing.
Stalin's repression of religion in the Soviet Union was a continuation of the anti-religious policies initiated by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. However, under Stalin, these policies intensified and became more systematic. The RCP constitution states:
As far as religion is concerned, the RCP will not be satisfied by the decreed separation of Church and State... The Party aims at the complete destruction of links between the exploiting classes and... religious propaganda while assisting the actual liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices and organizing the broadest possible education-enlightening and anti-religious propaganda
Stalin explains why Anti-Capitalism cannot exist with Theism in 1906:
Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral worldview, a philosophical system from which the proletarian socialism of Marx naturally follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism. Therefore, to expound Marxism means to expound dialectical materialism. Why is this system called dialectical materialism? Because its method is dialectical, and its theory is materialistic...the Marxists looked at life dialectically, while the populists reasoned metaphysically.
To prove his theory and actions are in full agreement with Marx, he quotes Marx’s Thesis on Feuerbach, where Marx makes it very clear that only Atheism can exist alongside of Marxism:
"It does not require great wit to discern the connection between the teachings of materialism... and socialism. If a person draws all his knowledge, sensations, etc. from the sensory world... then it is necessary, therefore, to arrange the surrounding world in such a way that a person recognizes what is truly human in it, so that he gets used to cultivating human properties in it... If a person is not free in the materialistic sense, that is, if he is not free due to the negative force to avoid this or that, and due to the positive force to show one’s true individuality, then one should not punish the crimes of individuals, but destroy the antisocial sources of crime... If a person’s character is created by circumstances, then it is necessary, therefore, to make the circumstances humane”
Even the Russian alphabet suffered from Stalin’s implementation of Marx’s philosophy- the letter "ѣ" (yat) was removed due to its resemblance to a cross, and a series of reforms changed the script to streamline adoption and sever any link to the Capitalist past. Communism also literally killed Christmas- the holiday was banned and replaced with a focus on New Year’s, and Santa Clause replaced with the irreligious “Grandfather Frost” (Ded Moroz).
The Great Terror, or the Great Purge, refers to a period of exceptional political repression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. Orchestrated primarily by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet secret police (the NKVD) this campaign targeted perceived enemies of the Communist state, resulting in mass arrests, show trials, executions, and widespread paranoia. The exact number of victims remains a subject of debate among historians, but estimates suggest that between 700,000 to over a million people were executed during the Great Terror, with millions more sent to labor camps.
Bishop Erasmus once told Luther “The Bible, the Gospel… these words are always on your lips, but your lives tell quite another story”, in reference to him re-writing the Bible to include removing entire books, as well as his private support for Polygamy in order to secure politically power. And here with Stalin’s writings the same dichotomy exists- his works are fill with nothing but discussions of equality and selfless progressivism, but the genocides, ethnic cleansing, repression and massacres he was orchestrating tell another story.
The Inevitable Genocides of Planned Economies: Technology can never overcome Scarcity
Marx believed that the state would "wither away" in the advanced stages of communism, giving way to a classless, stateless society. Under Communism, however, the state became a dominant and controlling entity, centralizing power and decision-making. A Fascist, totalitarian state is the inevitable end of all planned economies, by definition, but the religious dogma of Marxism stated otherwise, and this lie was enforced through forced speech implemented by law. In the name of progress, criticism of the state became punishable by death. Ironically, Communism is the only economic system which truly leaves the value produced by works into the hands of the small elite who are planning the economy: only in Capitalism do the workers retain any kind of control over the products of their labor.
The Marxist belief that suffering originates from a flawed system, an idea still alive and well in the modern Leftist Post-Modern religion, is attacked by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.
Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
Tolstoy makes this same observation in his essay “On Socialism” and his article “Thou Shalt Not Kill”: that the door to
Attempts to establish morality apart from religion are like children who, wanting to transplant a plant they like, tear off the root they do not like and seem to them superfluous and stick the plant into the ground without the root. There can be no real, unpretentious morality without a religious foundation, just as there can be no real plant without a root.
We need only one thing: to understand, recognize and implement the idea that we are not called to arrange the lives of others by violence, which inevitably entails murder, and that any murder that we commit, in which we participate, on which we build the benefits of our lives, can be of no benefit to others or to us, but, on the contrary, only increases the evil that we want to correct.
What is a man to do who sees that the crowd, crushing and destroying each other, piles and pushes against the indestructible door, hoping to open it outward, when he knows that the door opens only inward.
Equality by Force: State-Controlled Language
The 1936 Soviet Constitution, known as the “Stalin Constitution” claimed to grant certain freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and then in the same document took them away in the name of Equity. In the Penal Code, it clarified that citizens only had the freedom to say things in line with the state ideology. In the name of limiting hate speech and suppressing disinformation and conspiracy theories, these freedoms were systematically removed and steep punishments were put in place for criticizing the state ideology. For instance, Article 125 states:
"In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
a) freedom of speech;
b) freedom of the press;
c) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights."
Yet in Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code directly addressed issues related to free speech- calling any criticism of the government “Capitalist Propaganda” and a type of hate speech. For example Article 58 states:
58-10: Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, undermining, or weakening of Soviet power or the commission of certain specified crimes against the state.
58-11: Any kind of organizational or support actions related to the preparation or execution of the aforementioned crimes.
Article 70 of the RSFSR Penal Code became one of the primary tool for punishing political dissent. It was framed as:
"Agitation or propaganda carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime or the commission of particular anti-state crimes... or the dissemination of slanderous fabrications that target the Soviet political and social system, or the circulation of materials or literature of such content."
Late, introduced in the late 1960’s, Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Penal Code was added to punish the dissemination of "knowingly false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social system", or in other words, basic facts about the failure of Socialist systems. This is the paradox which Solzhenitsyn called the “beloved axe”- you must profess to love that which kills you.
“Not Real Communism”
Stalin wrote an article for the 50th anniversary of Lenin's birth titled “Stalin on Lenin, where he debunks the idea that the Bolsheviks and Soviet communism “isn’t real communism” or has somehow deviated from the teachings of Marx, citing Western liberal claims that the Menshevists and other socialist groups are the only one practicing real communism. He writes:
[The Bolsheviks] shifts the center of gravity of the question from the external recognition of Marxism to its implementation, to its realization. To outline the ways and means of implementing Marxism that correspond to the situation, and to change these ways and means when the situation changes - this is the main focus of attention of this group. This group draws its directives and instructions not from historical analogies and parallels, but from the study of the surrounding conditions. In its activities it does not rely on quotations and sayings, but on practical experience, testing each step by experience, learning from its mistakes and teaching others how to build a new life. This explains the fact that in the activity of this group the word is not at variance with the deed, and the teachings of Marx retain fully their living revolutionary force. Marx's words, by virtue of which Marxists cannot stop at explaining the world, but must go further in order to change it, are quite suitable for this group. The name of this group is Bolshevism, Communism. The organizer and leader of this group is Lenin.
Still, Western Modernists and Post-Modernists continue to entertain this idea that Stalin wasn’t implementing true Marxism or true Communism, despite Stalin debunking this claim thoroughly and systematically. Stalin was a studied and dedicated adherent of Marxist principles, demonstrating a deep mastery of Marxist anti-metaphysical philosophy and making only nuanced changes to historical Communist thought. Stalin was completely aware of the horrors that were needed to implement and sustain a planned economy. Stalin enforced a codified version of Marxism-Leninism as state doctrine, punishing deviations as "revisionism," "crypto-capitalism," or "counterrevolutionary" activities. He was a pure acolyte of Marx, and his actions the necessary actions of a true Communist.
In his book "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" (1938), Stalin laid out his understanding and the official Soviet interpretation of this doctrine. The differences between Stalin and Marx are slight. Stalin often speaks of the antinomies of the dialectical interpretation of history - he speaks of the world as being in "constant motion," governed by inherent contradictions that result in constant transformation. He suggests that this perpetual conflict and resolution of contradictions is universal and applies not only to society and thought, but also to nature.
Stalin deeply understood anti-metaphysics because he studied theology and then converted to anti-theology. Following Marx and Engels, Stalin asserts the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas. Ideas, in this view, are reflections of material conditions rather than independent entities. Stalin emphasizes this to contrast Marxist materialism with idealism, in which ideas precede and shape the material world.
Central to Stalin's understanding of dialectical materialism is the role of class struggle in social transformation. He posits that social change doesn't happen arbitrarily or through the mere evolution of ideas. Instead, it's driven by the contradictions inherent in material conditions, which manifest themselves primarily in class conflict.
Marx's vision was largely internationalist, envisioning proletarian revolutions as global phenomena occurring simultaneously. Stalin actively promoted the idea of global anti-capitalism, but realized that revolution might be delayed in other countries, so he embraced a form of socialist nationalism with his concept of "socialism in one country," suggesting that the USSR could build socialism even if revolutions didn't occur elsewhere. This was a necessary adaptation of the ideology, since clearly only a few countries were on board with Marxism.
The Inevitable Gulag
The Gulag system was inherited from Lenin, but expanded massively under Stalin. Millions of people, from political prisoners to common criminals, were sent to these camps. Many died due to harsh conditions, forced labor, and lack of medical care.
One Day in the Life described the gulags as they were at the time of publication - it was an act of political resistance. Many "Shukhovs" were suffering in the camps when Solz published this novel. The novel came to the attention of Khrushchev, who lobbied the state censorship bureau to allow it to be published in Russia. Solz met Khrushchev in 1962 - a paradoxical meeting between the number one communist and the number one anti-communist. Khrushchev hailed Solz as "our contemporary Tolstoy", ironic coming from the leader of the Communist Party that had banned Tolstoy's books. Khrushchev used Solz to document Stalin's crimes, especially the Gulags, which he abolished and allowed over 1 million prisoners to return home. He staked his political career on demonising Stalin and blaming him for everything, a lie the West bought for decades. Khrushchev, despite his pseudo-friendship with Solz, only shared his contempt for Stalin (who had personally insulted and belittled Khrushchev over the years). Khrushchev was no fan of Solz's existentialism, opposition to totalitarianism and collectivist thought, and spirituality, which would manifest more fully in his later works. Khrushchev continued the Soviet ban on the expression of any religion other than the official state religion, atheism, and strengthened strict laws punishing any form of religious expression. Under Khrushchev, additional laws were passed that called for arrest for giving money and food to the poor, a subversive religious offence that undermined the state. This end of Christian charity was something Dostoyevsky predicted in The Idiot as the natural end state of socialist thought.
Khrushchev insisted on locating the horrors of the past in the personality of Stalin rather than in communism itself - while Solz located them in the 'possessive' nature of socio-political dogma, collectivist thinking and the metaphysics of Marx and Engels. For all Khrushchev's reforms and criticisms of Stalinism, he still lived in the fundamental noetic errors of demystified dialectical materialism and continued the basic philosophy of Stalin that had driven the Holodomor. Solz was right that communism could not be reformed - Khrushchev was betrayed by his own party and removed from power for his 'betrayal' of the socialist vision. Outside the protection of Khrushchev's strange favoritism, Solzhenitsyn was censored and eventually exiled. One Day was Solzhenitsyn's first swing of the axe at the base of Communism - an axe of persistence and long suffering - which Communism had ironically handed him.
One of the most evil men who ever walked the earth, and his name is often praised or justified by modern mainstream Western liberals. We can publish a book by Stalin, but a book by Hitler is apparently not allowed by any major publisher, even though Hitler killed only 0.5% of the people Stalin slaughtered. The figures are not even close. We learn about the Crusades and every evil committed by the Nazis, but we have never heard of de-Kulakisation, the Katyn massacre, The Great Terror, or the Holodomor which were committed in the same time frame.Solzhenitsyn muses:
These people, who had experienced on their own hides twenty-four years of Communist happiness, knew by 1941 that as yet no one else in the world knew: that nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty... than the Soviet Regime. That no other regime on earth could compare with it either in the number of those it had done to death, in hardiness, in the range of its ambitions, in the thoroughgoing and unmitigated totalitarianism—no, not even the regime of its pupil Hitler, which at that time blinded Western eyes to all else.
The spirit of Raskolnikov is alive and well in the world.
