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“আমার কেউ নয় ওরা যারা দেশ ছেড়ে চলে যায় আমার কেউ নয় ওরা যারা দেশ ছেড়ে চলে যায় শত্রু আর লুটেরার হাতে যায় দেশটাকে ছেড়ে । ওদের প্রথাগত প্রশংসায় আমি কান দিই না খকনও । ওরা সব গাইবে বলে আমার কোনো গান নেই । দেশত্যাগীদের জন্য আমি কষ্ট পাবো চিরকাল। কয়েদির মতো কিংবা যেন আধমরা, যে পথে তোমরা ঘোরো অন্ধকারে, ভবঘুরে দল, তোমার বিদেশি অন্নে তেতোপাতা ভরা। এখানে স্বদেশে রোজ অগ্নিকাণ্ড ঘটেই চলেছে খেয়ে ফেলছে বাকি যৌবন, আমরা এগোই আমাদের থ্যাঁতলানো দেহ কোনো পরোয়া করেনি একটি আঘাতকেও দেয়নি থামিয়ে । জানি পরে কোনোদিন চেতনার আগমন হবে প্রতিটি মুহূর্তের ব্যথাকে তা ন্যায্যতা দেবে। আমরা সবাই এ-জগতের কান্নাহীন লোক । গর্বে বুক ভরে যায় আমাদের । আমরা সাধারণ ।”

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Book:Anna Ahmatova Versei
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“An imaginary friend once asked me why Americans can't stand Russia. The answer was cold, deadly, silent, and, well expected. It’s because in Soviet Russia nothing happens anymore, because it doesn’t exist anymore. And Americans are all about happenings. If there isn’t one – they don’t go where it isn’t, because there isn’t anything to happen to them there.”

AmericaDeathImaginationAnswersSilenceColdHappeningsExpectationsSilentExpectedRussiaImaginaryFriendSoviet UnionQuestionsNothingQuestionNsaExpectationAnswerSoviet RussiaUssrKgbDeadlyHappeningImagined
Book:Nothing is here...
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“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions... Ideology—that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”

EvilHuman NatureIdeologyCommunismSoviet RussiaGroup Think
Book:The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
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“The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka. And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all.”

HappinessFoodRevolutionDepressionWinterHungerRussiaSoviet Russia
Book:Doctor Zhivago
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“The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Among intelligent Communists there is an underground legend to the effect that although the Russian government is obliged now to deal in lying propaganda, frame-up trials, and so forth, it is secretly recording the true facts and will publish them at some future time. We can, I believe, be quite certain that this is not the case, because the mentality implied by such an action is that of a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course. From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist.”

TruthLyingPoliticsHistoryPsychologyCommunismPropagandaTotalitarianismSoviet Russia
Book:The Prevention of Literature
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“[The Soviet State Security Service] is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries.”

Cold WarPutinCiaSoviet RussiaKgb1963
Book:Craft of Intelligence: America's Legendary Spy Master On The Fundamentals Of Intelligence Gathering For A Free World
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“Florence, listen to me carefully. He squeezed her hand. Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Our communists aren’t like your communists. In New York they’re always on the street demonstrating, but their demands are absurd. Slash rents! Free groceries and electricity for the poor! They demand that landlords open up their vacant apartments to house the unemployed. They even demand that the Communist Party distribute unemployment relief instead of the Labor Department. They might as well demand cake and champagne!”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaPolitical ThrillerDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks have been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“The Bolshevik leaders perched atop the Mausoleum were no easier to tell apart than chess pawns. But Florence too was certain that she could recognise the twinkling eyes of Joseph Stalin, which looked down at her each workday from the oil painting above Timofeyev’s desk”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaStalinDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Sunset was just then settling over Red Square. There seemed some hidden vision to be gleaned. A message about man’s chaotic spirit and his sombre dignity. His dignity and his power. His power and his purpose. She was sure that there was some thread there, but the burden of decoding it made her feel too tired”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Who is she, after all? Not a member of the Party. Not even a Russian...What can she do, really, but watch the ginger-haired sacrificial lamb get slaughtered? One wrong move and Florence herself might be on the chopping block herself”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“The immediate difficulty, Florence realised while riding the high rail back to Brooklyn, was how to break the news to her parents, even if she could convince them that being a chaperone to six foreign men was a legitimate occupation for a twenty-three-year-old girl. What choice did she have? A paycheck could not win a girl’s independence”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Sergey described the mighty furnaces and plants rising up from the steppes. “How far we’ve come. How much work there is still to do!” She would have to see it herself one day, with her own eyes. Florence reread the last line with a turbulent flip in her stomach. Was this an invitation?”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“From the moment Julian entered the world, Florence had begun to conceive of life as separate from the aspects of its outward circumstances. Over and over, life renewed itself. Over and over, it made itself blind to the death and destruction of the past”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“My mother had been in the Soviet whirlpool for eleven years by this point. Enough time, I imagine, to unlearn the bourgeois habits of her native Brooklyn, to accustom herself to the farting and shouting of her neighbours, to doing her washing by hand in the collective tub, to keeping her dry food locked up in her wardrobe”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Was it an instinct towards their future life together that she was already sensing, which made her pull back? For what she was seeing suddenly, in her mind’s eye, was an image of the two of them dancing on the edge of the world, not realising that they were about to fall off”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Only then, as she prepared to cross the avenue, did she again spot the man in the fedora hat. He was at the opposite side of the street from where he’d stood before, but the caramel color of his coat was unmistakable. He was loitering in front of what looked like a Ford V8 parked nose-up on the sidewalk. Florence adjusted her shawl over her shoulders and crossed to the opposite corner of the plaza. When she turned back to look again, he was gone”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever she was walking into would affect no one but herself. Now the truth was catching up with her at the speed of her galloping heartbeat…Now they had summoned her. And they knew everything”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Florence, listen to me carefully.... Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place”

LoveAmericaFictionMotherhoodCommunismSoviet UnionBrooklynFiction NovelSoviet RussiaRussian LiteratureRussian RevolutionBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century Russia
Book:The Patriots
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“Now there is a modern-day anthropology* for the criminal type: a great number of so-called 'born criminals' have pale faces, large cheekbones, a coarse lower jaw, and deeply shining eyes. How can one not recall this when one thinks of Lenin and thousands like him? How many pale faces, high cheekbones and strikingly asymmetric features mark the soldiers of the Red Army and, generally speaking, also of the common Russian people - how many of them, these savage types, have Mongolian atavism directly in their blood! They are all from Murom, the white-eyed Chud. And it is precisely these individuals, these very Russichi, who gave us so many 'daring pirates', so many vagabonds, escapees, scoundrels and tramps - it is precisely these people whom we have recruited for the glory, pride and hope of the Russian social revolution. So why should we feign surprise at the results?”

CriminalsRussiaSoviet UnionAnthropologySoviet RussiaLeninRed ArmyAnti Communism
Book:Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution
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“What a relief, Nadya thought; in that light he would not be able to tell that she had been crying. "You mean if it weren't for the blackout you wouldn't have come?" Dasha took up Shchagov's tone, flirting unconsciously, as she did with every unmarried man she met. "By no means, never. In bright light women's faces are deprived of all their charm; it reveals their spiteful expressions, their envious glances, their premature wrinkles, their heavy cosmetics." Nadya shuddered at the words "envious glances"—it was as if he had overheard their argument. Shchagov went on:" If I were a woman, I would make it a law that lights be kept low. Then everyone would soon have a husband." Dasha looked disapprovingly at Shchagov. He always talked that way, and she didn't like it. All his phrases seemed memorized, insincere.”

SexismSoviet Russia1968Dorm RoomCaptain ShchagovCasual MisogynyDormitory Life
Book:The First Circle
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“Why don't we like them?" Katalin asked. "Because they don't treat us right." After Zoltán said it, he marveled at the realization that in trying to clarify years of abuses and lists of grievances, that in trying to make oppression understandable for a child, he had reduced the horror of Soviet domination to one simple, honest statement of fact: The Russians didn't treat the Hungarians right.”

WarSoviet RussiaHungary
Book:The Wild Rose
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“Public opinion! I don't know how sociologists define it, but it seems obvious to me that it can only consist of interacting individual opinions, freely expressed and independent of government or party opinion. So long as there is no independent public opinion in our country, there is no guarantee that the extermination of millions and millions for no good reason will not happen again, that it will not begin any night—perhaps this very night.”

Public OpinionSoviet RussiaFree Expression1977KatorgaWhy Did We Stand For It
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
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“That's how the world is arranged: they can take anyone's freedom from him, without a qualm. If we want to take back the freedom which is our birthright—they make us pay with our lives and the lives of all whom we meet on the way. They can do anything, but we cannot. That's why they are stronger than we.”

TotalitarianismAuthoritarianismSoviet RussiaStalinism19771951
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
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“There is no way of sidestepping this comparison [between Nazism and Stalinism]: both the years and the methods coincide too closely. And the comparison occurred eve more naturally to those who had passed through the hands of both the Gestapo and the MGB. One of these was Yevgeny Ivanovich Divnich, and émigré and preacher of Orthodox Christianity. The Gestapo accused him of Communist activities among Russian workers in Germany, and the MGB charged him with having ties to the international bourgeoisie. Divnic's verdict was unfavorable to the MGB. He was tortured by both, but the Gestapo was nonetheless trying to get at the truth, and when the accusation did not hold up, Divnich was released. The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested.”

Soviet Russia1973Prison IndustryThe Bluecaps
Book:The Gulag Archipelago
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“For many months there day and night, at the morning and the evening checks, innumerable execution orders were read out. In a temperature of fifty below zero [Fahrenheit] the musicians from among the non-political offenders played a flourish before and after each order was read. The smoking gasoline torches ripped apart the darkness…. The thin sheet on which the order was written was covered with hoarfrost, and some chief or other who was reading the order would brush the snowflakes from it with his sleeve so as to decipher and shout out the name of the next man on the list of those shot.”

Soviet RussiaGulag19731938Kolyma
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“A committed escaper! One who never for a minute doubts that a man cannot live behind bars—not even as the most comfortable of trusties, in the accounts office, in the Culture and Education Section, or in charge of the bread ration. One who once he lands in prison spends every waking hour thinking about escape and dreams of escape at night. One who has vowed never to resign himself, and subordinates every action to his need to escape. One for whom a day in prison can never be just another day; there are only days of preparation for escape, days on the run, and days in the punishment cells after recapture and a beating. A committed escaper! This means one who knows what he is undertaking. One who has seen the bullet-riddled bodies of other escapers on display along the central tract. He has also seen those brought back alive—like the man who was taken from hut to hut, black and blue and coughing blood, and made o shout: "Prisoners! Look at what happened to me! It can happen to you, too!" He knows that a runaway's body is usually too heavy to be delivered to camp. And that therefore the head alone is brought back in a duffel bag, sometimes (this is more reliable proof, according to the rulebook) together with the right arm, chopped off at the elbow, so that the Special Section can check the fingerprints and write the man off. A committed escaper! It is for his benefit that window bars are set in cement, that the camp area is encircled with dozens of strands of barbed wire, towers, fences, reinforced barriers, that ambushes and booby traps are set, that red meat is fed to gray dogs.”

Soviet RussiaGulagPrison BreakPrison Camps1977KatorgaThe Committed Escaper
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
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“It should be said that all these years, in all the Special Camps, orthodox Soviet citizens, without even consulting each other, unanimously condemned the massacre of the stoolies, or any attempt by prisoners to fight for their rights. We need not put this down to sordid motives (though quite a few of the orthodox were compromised by their work for the godfather) since we can fully explain it by their theoretical views. They accepted all forms of repression and extermination, even wholesale, provided they came from above—as a manifestation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even impulsive and uncoordinated actions of the same kind but from below were regarded as banditry, and what is more, in its "Banderist" form (among the loyalists you would never get one to admit the right of the Ukraine to secede, because to do so was bourgeois nationalism). The refusal of the katorzhane to be slave laborers, their indignation about window bars and shootings, depressed and frightened the docile camp Communists.”

CommunismUprisingSoviet Russia19771953KatorgaDouble ThinkPrisoners RightsForty Days Of Kengir
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
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“Two Leningrad women were summoned to the police station. Had they been at a party with some men? Yes. Had sexual intercourse taken place? (This had already been established with the aid of a reliable informer.) Er—yes. Right, then, which is it: did you take part in the sexual act voluntarily or against your will? If voluntarily, we shall have to regard you as prostitutes, you will hand over your passports and get out of Leningrad in forty-eight hours. If it was against your will, you must bring a charge of rape! The women were not a bit anxious to leave Leningrad! So the men got twelve years each.”

Soviet RussiaFraming1977RailroadPolice Misconduct1961Stalin Is No MoreThe Law Today
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
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“If the first thing you see each and every morning is the eyes of your cellmate who has gone insane, how then shall you save yourself during the coming day? Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev, whose brilliant career in astronomy was interrupted by his arrest, saved himself only by thinking of the eternal and infinite: of the order of the Universe - and of its Supreme Spirit; of the stars; of their internal state; and what Time and the passing of Time really are. And in this way he began to discover a new field in physics. And only in this way did he succeed in surviving in the Dmitrovsk Prison. But his line of mental exploration was blocked by forgotten figures. He could not build any further - he had to have a lot of figures. Now just where could he get them in his solitary-confinement cell with its overnight kerosene lamp, a cell into which not even a little bird could enter? And the scientist prayed: "Please, God! I have done everything I could. Please help me! Please help me continue!" At this time he was entitled to receive one book every ten days (by then he was alone in the cell). In the meager prison library were several different editions of Demyan Bedny's Red Concert , which kept coming around to each cell again and again. Half an hour passed after his prayer; they came to exchange his book; and as usual, without asking anything at all, they pushed a book at him. It was entitled A Course in Astrophysics! Where had it come from? He simply could not imagine such a book in the prison library. Aware of the brief duration of this coincidence, Kozyrev threw himself on it and began to memorize everything he needed immediately, and everything he might need later on. In all, just two days had passed, and he had eight days left in which to keep his book, when there was an unscheduled inspection by the chief of the prison. His eagle eye noticed immediately. "But you are an astronomer?" Yes." "Take this book away from him!" But its mystical arrival had opened the way for his further work, which he then continued in the camp in Norilsk.”

CommunismSoviet RussiaTyurzakThe Gulag Archipelago
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“Krushchev himself is 'revealed' not as an honest communist but instead as a political leader seeking personal advantage while hiding behind an official persona of idealism and probity, a type familiar in capitalist countries. Taking into account his murder of Beria and the men executed as 'Beria's gang' in 1953, he seems worse still - a political thug. Krushchev was guilty IN REALITY of the kinds of crimes he DELIBERATELY AND FALSELY accused Stalin of in the 'Secret Speech'.”

Soviet UnionSoviet RussiaStalinSoviet HistoryKrushchev
Book:Khrushchev Lied
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“Events specially staged to demonstrate the reality of that which doesn’t exist stand out in the particular detail in which they are described. No one really knows, for example, whether the harvests reported in Stalin’s or Brezhnev’s Russia were ever actually reaped, but the fact that the number of tilled hectares or tons of milled grain was always reported down to the tenth of a percent gave these simulacra the character of hyperreality. [...] In this sense, the ideology was accurate—it was describing itself. And any reality that differed from the ideology simply ceased to exist—it was replaced by hyperreality, which trumpeted its existence by newspaper and loudspeaker and was much more tangible and reliable than anything else. In the Soviet land, “fairy tale became fact,” as in that American paragon of hyperreality, Disneyland, where reality itself is designed as a “land of imagination.”

TruthSocialismCommunismPostmodernismSoviet RussiaPost TruthHyperreality
Book:After the Future
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“Many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally conquered by and absorbed into the empire. While the empire is enjoying its High Noon of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is suddenly revived, and local or provincial movements appear demanding secession or independence. Some day this phenomenon will doubtless appear in the now apparently monolithic and authoritarian Soviet empire. It is amazing for how long such provincial sentiments can survive.”

RussiaImmigrantsOccupationSoviet UnionSoviet RussiaDecline Of CivilizationSoviet OccupationFall Of An Empire
Book:The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
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“ক্লিওপেট্রা ( আমি বাতাস ও আগুন - শেকসপিয়ার ) অ্যান্টনির মরা ঠোঁটে আগেই ও খেয়েছিল চুমো সিজারের পায়ে পড়ে হাঁটু গেঁযে নিয়েছিল কেঁদে চাকরেরা বিশ্বাসঘাতক । মিইয়ে আসা গাঢ় অন্ধকারে ওকে হেরে যেতে দেখে রোমের ইগলপাখি উল্লাসে বাজাচ্ছে ভেঁপুভেরি । ওর কমনীয় রূপে বাঁধা শেষতম লোকটি ঘরে ঢোকে ঋজু ও রাজকীয় । নিজেরি রানির সামনে তোতলায় : “দাসি-গোলামের মতো হাঁটাবে তোমাকে রাজপথে, কেননা বিজয়ী !” শুনেও ও শুয়ে থাকে, হাঁসের মতন গ্রীবা, শান্ত গরিমায় ! ভোর হলে শেকলে বাঁধবে ওর ছেলেমেয়েদের । সামান্য প্রেম পৃথিবীতে রয়ে গেছে ওর : এও লোকটির সাথে রসিকতা । তারপর ছেড়ে দেবে শেষ করুণার মতো বিষধর শ্যামল বুকের মাঝে আলতো হাতে কালো জীবটাকে ।”

CommunismDictatorshipSoviet RussiaCleopatraStaterepression
Book:Antologia Poética
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“What thus emerged from the Russian Revolution was a new model of state capitalism which, in turn, would become attractive to the bourgeoisie of “backward” countries and colonies of the Western colonial powers (like Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, etc.). They could use the State to keep Western multinationals from bleeding the country dry, and try to “develop” independently through state mobilisation of the population. Devoid of real proletarian initiative, this was a flawed model, and even the Communist Party of the Chinese People’s Republic abandoned Stalinism after the death of Mao by setting up Special Economic Zones to attract international capital and build a new Chinese capitalist class (so-called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”). What they have in fact returned to is the type of state capitalism that Lenin advocated in 1918, opposed by the Left Communists of that time. Across the world many workers in the former Eastern European bloc still think it was better than what they have now. But neither “state capitalism” nor “state socialism” are socialism as understood by Marx. Both depend on the exploitation of workers whose surplus value is the basis for capitalist profit and who have no actual political say in the system.”

ChinaSocialismCommunismVietnamMarxismSoviet RussiaThe StateState SocialismLeft CommunismState Capitalism
Book:Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924. A View from the Communist Left
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“Lenin had created the conditions for the rise of Stalin, but like Dr Frankenstein the monster outgrew him. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage on 24 May 1922 and from this time forward his involvement in political affairs was sporadic. Too late he realised, on 25 December 1922, that Stalin represented a real threat to the stability of the Party. He penned a postscript to his famous “Testament”. This called for the removal of Stalin as General Secretary but significantly not from the Politburo. Despite Lenin’s request, the “Testament” was only discussed in the Central Committee, and Stalin’s offer to resign as General Secretary was rejected by Zinoviev and Kamenev. They had now formed a triumvirate with him, and during Lenin’s illness Zinoviev had assumed nominal leadership of the Party. Fearing that any demotion of Stalin would lead to the elevation of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev not only supported him, but hushed up the letters of Lenin.”

SocialismCommunismSoviet RussiaStalinLeninTrotskyLeft CommunismKamenevZinoviev
Book:Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924. A View from the Communist Left
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