Raymond Arsenault, "Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice" (Oxford University Press, 2007).
In the past ten years or so we've witnessed staged "revolutions" - Orange, Green, Rose, etc. - funded around the globe by Western NGOs, toppling the chosen tyrant and installing the pro-Western liberal reformer of the moment. When it came to democratic movements within the USA, of course, the enthusiasm at home was markedly lacking. Thus, before the age of NED or Freedom House, those who challenged entrenched tyranny in America faced real risk to life and limb, with only scattered support from the media and none from either the State Department or NGO clones. Such were the Freedom Riders, who were armed with naught but the courage of their ideals, as they embarked cross-country for the lion's den to stick their heads in his jaws.
That they ultimately prevailed is a commendation of the "American Way"; but they did so only after considerable risk, repression, and one-sided bloodshed. The "flowering of democracy" in the American South was fertilized not by the blood of tyrants but those seeking freedom. Would that such cheap imitators in Serbia, Ukraine or Lebanon - basking in Western funding and media cheerleading - have had to endure a tenth of what these brave people had to risk in the US itself.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Return to Diversity in Eastern Europe
Joseph Rothschild, "Return to Diversity: A Political History of East-Central Europe Since WW II."
It's all here: perfidious Communists, the scheming Stalin, noble-but-doomed anti-Communists, a morally confused West doing too little too late. It's all familiar ground, and leaves questions begged as much as answered.
I do not disrespect Professor Rothschild's scholarship. He is a worthy successor to Hugh Seton-Watson, his mentor. Professor Rothschild's work added new information on the course of Communist East Europe, especially in its latter phases. What is lacking is an appreciation of why the USSR moved into this region as it did, insisting on Soviet control by any means necessary.
Cold war Western historians largely slight the trauma suffered by Russia and the constituent Soviet republics during World War II, but it's hard to overstate the wanton brutality and devastation the Nazis dealt to the Eastern Front, with the help of East European Axis satellites and collaborators. It is quite understandable why Moscow would seek to ensure this never happened again, by closing off these border nations to any future aggressor. This fact, untidy as it is, receives scant attention in Professor Rothschild's work. But it is not a slight of his alone, but of the whole school of cold war historiography of which this is, admittedly, one of the better products.
Also left hanging is the question of why the Soviet Bloc is singled out as an example of cold war aggression, as opposed to U.S. manipulation of French and Italian elections, U.S. and U.K. provocation of the Greek civil war, the U.S. and U.K. creation of West Germany, and the rehabilitation of ex-Nazis and Franco's Spain. The left half of postwar Western Europe was buried as thoroughly as the right half in the East, but one process is considered necessary, the other reprehensible when done by the enemy.
As to his charges of the West's evading "its responsibility" in the East, one wonders what more could have been done than what was done. Demanding that the "captive nations go free," and saber-rattling at Moscow, only played into post-war Soviet trauma and ensured the Iron Curtain's survival for two generations.
It's all here: perfidious Communists, the scheming Stalin, noble-but-doomed anti-Communists, a morally confused West doing too little too late. It's all familiar ground, and leaves questions begged as much as answered.
I do not disrespect Professor Rothschild's scholarship. He is a worthy successor to Hugh Seton-Watson, his mentor. Professor Rothschild's work added new information on the course of Communist East Europe, especially in its latter phases. What is lacking is an appreciation of why the USSR moved into this region as it did, insisting on Soviet control by any means necessary.
Cold war Western historians largely slight the trauma suffered by Russia and the constituent Soviet republics during World War II, but it's hard to overstate the wanton brutality and devastation the Nazis dealt to the Eastern Front, with the help of East European Axis satellites and collaborators. It is quite understandable why Moscow would seek to ensure this never happened again, by closing off these border nations to any future aggressor. This fact, untidy as it is, receives scant attention in Professor Rothschild's work. But it is not a slight of his alone, but of the whole school of cold war historiography of which this is, admittedly, one of the better products.
Also left hanging is the question of why the Soviet Bloc is singled out as an example of cold war aggression, as opposed to U.S. manipulation of French and Italian elections, U.S. and U.K. provocation of the Greek civil war, the U.S. and U.K. creation of West Germany, and the rehabilitation of ex-Nazis and Franco's Spain. The left half of postwar Western Europe was buried as thoroughly as the right half in the East, but one process is considered necessary, the other reprehensible when done by the enemy.
As to his charges of the West's evading "its responsibility" in the East, one wonders what more could have been done than what was done. Demanding that the "captive nations go free," and saber-rattling at Moscow, only played into post-war Soviet trauma and ensured the Iron Curtain's survival for two generations.
Tails Do Not Wag Dogs
Paul Hockenos, "Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars" (Cornell, 2003).
Berlin-based Paul Hockenos offers an insightful review of the powerful pull of diaspora communities in North America. Loaded with cash from successful "Free World" businesses, anti-Communist nationalists with often-outdated mindsets funneled the long green into post-Tito movements that revived their long-suppressed agendas. As such they came to play - as in much of former Soviet Europe - a role out of all proportion to their numbers. In this follow-up to his excellent "Free to Hate" of a decade ago, Hockenos follows the trail - often slimy - of cash and opportunism across the Balkans.
The Berlin-based Hockenos is however not without an apparent agenda of his own. In line with German journalism as a whole Hockenos is staunchly anti-Serb, taking to task those US politicians who came under the thumb of the Serb lobby, ascribing their nuanced view of Balkan realities to this lobby. Although he is critical of Croat and Kosovar lobbying activities, these swipes are largely absent in his account of their efforts in North America.
After all is said, however, it must be remembered that tails do not wag dogs. Studies of more powerful "national" lobbyists - such as AIPAC or the Cuban-American National Foundation - show that funneling money into the right pockets does work. But at the end of the day none of these lobbies has any more power than Washington wants them to. American "equivocating" in Bosnia is demonstrable proof that Hockenos laments, though it's still hard to see how a NATO ground war in Bosnia could have "done anything" but produce a proto-Iraq.
In general, however, this is still an interesting look at the blinkered complacency of emigre communities and their oft-disastrous input into devastating, rather than liberating, their ancestral homelands.
Berlin-based Paul Hockenos offers an insightful review of the powerful pull of diaspora communities in North America. Loaded with cash from successful "Free World" businesses, anti-Communist nationalists with often-outdated mindsets funneled the long green into post-Tito movements that revived their long-suppressed agendas. As such they came to play - as in much of former Soviet Europe - a role out of all proportion to their numbers. In this follow-up to his excellent "Free to Hate" of a decade ago, Hockenos follows the trail - often slimy - of cash and opportunism across the Balkans.
The Berlin-based Hockenos is however not without an apparent agenda of his own. In line with German journalism as a whole Hockenos is staunchly anti-Serb, taking to task those US politicians who came under the thumb of the Serb lobby, ascribing their nuanced view of Balkan realities to this lobby. Although he is critical of Croat and Kosovar lobbying activities, these swipes are largely absent in his account of their efforts in North America.
After all is said, however, it must be remembered that tails do not wag dogs. Studies of more powerful "national" lobbyists - such as AIPAC or the Cuban-American National Foundation - show that funneling money into the right pockets does work. But at the end of the day none of these lobbies has any more power than Washington wants them to. American "equivocating" in Bosnia is demonstrable proof that Hockenos laments, though it's still hard to see how a NATO ground war in Bosnia could have "done anything" but produce a proto-Iraq.
In general, however, this is still an interesting look at the blinkered complacency of emigre communities and their oft-disastrous input into devastating, rather than liberating, their ancestral homelands.
Friday, March 7, 2008
iHugo!
Bart Jones, "!Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution" (Steerforth Press, 2007).
In this biography of the controversial Bolivarian president, Bart Jones gives us a sympathetic yet critical assessment of the man and the movement. Jones describes Chavez' ascent from the frontier margins of Venezuela, through his rise in the army - virtually the only route of social mobility for poor country boys like Chavez - and his political career as charismatic spokesman for the poor majority of the nation.
Jones also takes to task US policy toward Venezuela, its reflexive hostility toward Chavez and automatic suppport for his wealthy opponents. As a source of US petroleum, Venezuela's "political correctness" has been vital to Washington, and its alliance with the private property (and white) upper classes a cornerstone of "democratic partnership." In upsetting this class rule Comandante Hugo has likewise tipped the canoe of US relations. The media campaign in the US has followed this policy mandate.
Jones offers few original insights, and the material here - though full of detail - is also covered in other biographies of Chavez. Jones' contribution is at its best in highlighting the frustraton of the old ruling classes and Washington's desperate efforts to pump them up in a "color-coded revolution" that failed, and then slyly facilitating a failed coup.
Jones' book does not embrace newer developments in the Bolivarian story: definitive announcements of socialism, and Chavez' attempt to extend his presidential term beyond constitutional limits. The US press has been quick to play up this defeat, as well as his put-down by the King of Spain at the Ibero-American summit. The US media is already hoping these presage his downfall, but like the failed coup Jones outlines in great detail, never count Chavez down for the count.
In this biography of the controversial Bolivarian president, Bart Jones gives us a sympathetic yet critical assessment of the man and the movement. Jones describes Chavez' ascent from the frontier margins of Venezuela, through his rise in the army - virtually the only route of social mobility for poor country boys like Chavez - and his political career as charismatic spokesman for the poor majority of the nation.
Jones also takes to task US policy toward Venezuela, its reflexive hostility toward Chavez and automatic suppport for his wealthy opponents. As a source of US petroleum, Venezuela's "political correctness" has been vital to Washington, and its alliance with the private property (and white) upper classes a cornerstone of "democratic partnership." In upsetting this class rule Comandante Hugo has likewise tipped the canoe of US relations. The media campaign in the US has followed this policy mandate.
Jones offers few original insights, and the material here - though full of detail - is also covered in other biographies of Chavez. Jones' contribution is at its best in highlighting the frustraton of the old ruling classes and Washington's desperate efforts to pump them up in a "color-coded revolution" that failed, and then slyly facilitating a failed coup.
Jones' book does not embrace newer developments in the Bolivarian story: definitive announcements of socialism, and Chavez' attempt to extend his presidential term beyond constitutional limits. The US press has been quick to play up this defeat, as well as his put-down by the King of Spain at the Ibero-American summit. The US media is already hoping these presage his downfall, but like the failed coup Jones outlines in great detail, never count Chavez down for the count.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Pros and Contras
Timothy C. Brown, "The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua" (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001); "When the AK-47s Fall Silent: Revolutionaries, Guerrillas, and the Dangers of Peace" (Hoover Institution Press, 2000).
Timothy C. Brown was the Reagan/Bush liaison with the Contra army, and in the aftermath of this proxy war brought out these two books. The first is an historical reconstruction and analysis of the Contra war in the highlands of northern Niocaragua; the second is composed of interviews with former contras.
In "The Real Contra War" Mr. Brown has done a good job bringing forth the peasant base of the Nicaraguan Contra movement, and comparing it to previous "contra" movements - the Cristeros of Mexico, the Escambritos of Cuba. I would even add my own comparison, the Antonov "green guerrillas" of Tambov, Russia, in 1920-21. Yet these movements did not grow like the Contras, nor last ten years, and the reason is obvious, although discounted in Mr. Brown's book. And that is because the original hypothesis - of being financed and controlled by the CIA and rich exiles - is still valid. Without the Somocista command structure, the money coming in from Miami and Washington, these Segovian highlanders would have been flattened like their historical predecessors and reduced to mere academic footnotes.
In "When the AK's Fall Silent", Timothy Brown lets these former contras speak in their own words. As editor/translator Brown demonstrates the dangers of taking oral history at face value. Brown waxes enthusiastically at the "revelations" of these men concerning Castro's finances in 1950's Mexico, Soviet missiles still secretly in place in Cuba after 1962, abuses by Sandinista cadres who beat peasants and question God, etc. While these citations above sound authentic, I've caught Mr. Brown's witnesses in one inaccuracy after another. To begin, claiming the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front financed the Sandinistas by the millions in the late '70s, when the FMLN was not founded until 1980 as a coalition of several groups. Another witness avers that Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro's personal secretary, committed suicide in 1972 upon learning details of her brother's death in La Cabana prison in 1959. Celia Sanchez in fact died of cancer in 1980. Another has President Arevalo of Guatemala being overthrown by the CIA in the 1950s, when it was President Arbenz who was so "honored." This same witness also states he spent four months in Cuba in 1960, beginning in April, where he helped his father found the Committees in Defense of the Revolution - which were not established until a speech by Castro decreeing their formation in September, 1960, five months after April.
In this work, Brown clearly if unintentionally demonstrates the dangers of uncorroborated oral testimony. As such this book can be useful as a presentation of how these men think of themselves, or wish others to see them. But their testimonies are so chock full of lapses here and varnishings there that they cannot be accepted as factual reconstructions.
Timothy C. Brown was the Reagan/Bush liaison with the Contra army, and in the aftermath of this proxy war brought out these two books. The first is an historical reconstruction and analysis of the Contra war in the highlands of northern Niocaragua; the second is composed of interviews with former contras.
In "The Real Contra War" Mr. Brown has done a good job bringing forth the peasant base of the Nicaraguan Contra movement, and comparing it to previous "contra" movements - the Cristeros of Mexico, the Escambritos of Cuba. I would even add my own comparison, the Antonov "green guerrillas" of Tambov, Russia, in 1920-21. Yet these movements did not grow like the Contras, nor last ten years, and the reason is obvious, although discounted in Mr. Brown's book. And that is because the original hypothesis - of being financed and controlled by the CIA and rich exiles - is still valid. Without the Somocista command structure, the money coming in from Miami and Washington, these Segovian highlanders would have been flattened like their historical predecessors and reduced to mere academic footnotes.
In "When the AK's Fall Silent", Timothy Brown lets these former contras speak in their own words. As editor/translator Brown demonstrates the dangers of taking oral history at face value. Brown waxes enthusiastically at the "revelations" of these men concerning Castro's finances in 1950's Mexico, Soviet missiles still secretly in place in Cuba after 1962, abuses by Sandinista cadres who beat peasants and question God, etc. While these citations above sound authentic, I've caught Mr. Brown's witnesses in one inaccuracy after another. To begin, claiming the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front financed the Sandinistas by the millions in the late '70s, when the FMLN was not founded until 1980 as a coalition of several groups. Another witness avers that Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro's personal secretary, committed suicide in 1972 upon learning details of her brother's death in La Cabana prison in 1959. Celia Sanchez in fact died of cancer in 1980. Another has President Arevalo of Guatemala being overthrown by the CIA in the 1950s, when it was President Arbenz who was so "honored." This same witness also states he spent four months in Cuba in 1960, beginning in April, where he helped his father found the Committees in Defense of the Revolution - which were not established until a speech by Castro decreeing their formation in September, 1960, five months after April.
In this work, Brown clearly if unintentionally demonstrates the dangers of uncorroborated oral testimony. As such this book can be useful as a presentation of how these men think of themselves, or wish others to see them. But their testimonies are so chock full of lapses here and varnishings there that they cannot be accepted as factual reconstructions.
Colombia: the Living Graveyard
Steven Dudley, "Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia" (Routledge, 2003).
Overall, author Dudley has done right in laying open the running sores of the Colombian civil war to public view, a generally engrossing - and gross - account of chicanery, cynicism, and atrocity.
That said, I do criticise his flawed - in my view - insistence on blaming the left for its own destruction in Colombia. At one point he writes of the "startling number of dead" the UP "put in the morgue." Yet the Union Patriotica did not torture, kill, or "disappear" these people, nor force the death squads to do so, and therein lays the book's mistaken premise.
By his own admission, Colombia has engaged in political violence against dissidents for decades, and its 1980s death squads were willing to kill virtually anyone they disliked. The UP, then, did not have to be cynically betrayed or manipulated by the FARC to earn this lethal attention - it would have come anyway, regardless of any guerrilla politics behind the scenes. The paramilitaries were out to destroy the left, and the center; the guerrilla politics upon which Dudley lavishes so much scrutiny were a secondary factor at best, and in no way confirm the Colombian military's "analysis" or strategy.
Overall, author Dudley has done right in laying open the running sores of the Colombian civil war to public view, a generally engrossing - and gross - account of chicanery, cynicism, and atrocity.
That said, I do criticise his flawed - in my view - insistence on blaming the left for its own destruction in Colombia. At one point he writes of the "startling number of dead" the UP "put in the morgue." Yet the Union Patriotica did not torture, kill, or "disappear" these people, nor force the death squads to do so, and therein lays the book's mistaken premise.
By his own admission, Colombia has engaged in political violence against dissidents for decades, and its 1980s death squads were willing to kill virtually anyone they disliked. The UP, then, did not have to be cynically betrayed or manipulated by the FARC to earn this lethal attention - it would have come anyway, regardless of any guerrilla politics behind the scenes. The paramilitaries were out to destroy the left, and the center; the guerrilla politics upon which Dudley lavishes so much scrutiny were a secondary factor at best, and in no way confirm the Colombian military's "analysis" or strategy.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
"Blowing Up Russia": Hear the Axes Grind Between the Lines
Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, "Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror." (Encounter, 2007.)
For those die-hard cold warriors who miss the good old days and a Beast in the East for projecting self-righteous paranoia, this book is right up their alley.
Interesting that a man who denounces the Russian FSB as a nest of intriguers and liars asks us - as a career KGB/FSB officer - to accept his words in this book at face value. After all, if FSB officers are such masters of deceit, why should anyone believe him now?
I don't doubt that much of the book may well be true, especially the blowing up of Russian apartment blocks in 1999 to kick off the second Chechen War. It's not just Russian intelligence agencies capable of such black operations, as the "P2 conspiracy" in Italy back in the 70s attests. The problem lies with the clandestine nature of Litvinenko's sources, which come across like mere shop gossip. Reader/listener beware.
There are inconsistencies galore. Yeltsin is painted a great democrat, even though he sent tanks to blow holes in the Russian Parliament building. The adoration of General Pinochet is attributed to Putin, though anyone who knew Russia in the '90s well remembers the love for Pinochet's Chile evinced by Yeltsin's staff. It was also Yeltsin who created the authoritarian Russian presidency after his destruction of Parliament in October, 1993 - not Putin.
The fact is, that Yeltsin created the FSB, as he did the oligarchs. Putin did not get where he is by being part of the anti-Yeltsin opposition. After Yeltsin it seems there was a power struggle for Russia between the FSB and the oligarchs, and the former won. But they could not have done so without Yeltsin's patronage. Yeltsin needed immunity from prosecution by the Russian Duma when he stepped down; a strong FSB guaranteeed this protection. Perhaps also he was afraid of the oligarchs whom he created in 1996, and wanted a counterforce to keep them in check.
The real grind of Western axes against Putin's - now Medvedev's - regime echoes in the fact that Westerners have lost their strategic political input into "reforming" Russia along lines complementery to Western strategic interests. But it's merely spoilsport naivite to believe the leadership of Russia would forever play second fiddle to the West, and not wish to again assert its own independent status in the world. Putin and his successor have, for all their faults, widespread support for exactly this reason. Western fulminations over "neo-Stalinism" only underscore the Russian critique of Western peevishness.
At any rate, this book comes off like some internet conspiracy theory. While the core of its argument of FSB black operations may well be true, keep in mind that it was commissioned by Boris Berezovsky - another darling of the West but no angel himself, and possibly responsible for assassinations in his own right.
For those die-hard cold warriors who miss the good old days and a Beast in the East for projecting self-righteous paranoia, this book is right up their alley.
Interesting that a man who denounces the Russian FSB as a nest of intriguers and liars asks us - as a career KGB/FSB officer - to accept his words in this book at face value. After all, if FSB officers are such masters of deceit, why should anyone believe him now?
I don't doubt that much of the book may well be true, especially the blowing up of Russian apartment blocks in 1999 to kick off the second Chechen War. It's not just Russian intelligence agencies capable of such black operations, as the "P2 conspiracy" in Italy back in the 70s attests. The problem lies with the clandestine nature of Litvinenko's sources, which come across like mere shop gossip. Reader/listener beware.
There are inconsistencies galore. Yeltsin is painted a great democrat, even though he sent tanks to blow holes in the Russian Parliament building. The adoration of General Pinochet is attributed to Putin, though anyone who knew Russia in the '90s well remembers the love for Pinochet's Chile evinced by Yeltsin's staff. It was also Yeltsin who created the authoritarian Russian presidency after his destruction of Parliament in October, 1993 - not Putin.
The fact is, that Yeltsin created the FSB, as he did the oligarchs. Putin did not get where he is by being part of the anti-Yeltsin opposition. After Yeltsin it seems there was a power struggle for Russia between the FSB and the oligarchs, and the former won. But they could not have done so without Yeltsin's patronage. Yeltsin needed immunity from prosecution by the Russian Duma when he stepped down; a strong FSB guaranteeed this protection. Perhaps also he was afraid of the oligarchs whom he created in 1996, and wanted a counterforce to keep them in check.
The real grind of Western axes against Putin's - now Medvedev's - regime echoes in the fact that Westerners have lost their strategic political input into "reforming" Russia along lines complementery to Western strategic interests. But it's merely spoilsport naivite to believe the leadership of Russia would forever play second fiddle to the West, and not wish to again assert its own independent status in the world. Putin and his successor have, for all their faults, widespread support for exactly this reason. Western fulminations over "neo-Stalinism" only underscore the Russian critique of Western peevishness.
At any rate, this book comes off like some internet conspiracy theory. While the core of its argument of FSB black operations may well be true, keep in mind that it was commissioned by Boris Berezovsky - another darling of the West but no angel himself, and possibly responsible for assassinations in his own right.
Reagan's War on the USSR Was Better Timed Than Hitler's
Peter Schweizer: "Reagan's War" and "Victory"
Reagan succeeded where Hitler failed in slaying the Red Beat of the East, reminding one of Woody Guthrie's verse: "As through this world you ramble, you'll see lots of funny men; some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen."
Both of Peter Schweizer's works are typical Reaganaut triumphalism, but at least they're among the better attempts. Schweizer's central thesis, that Reagan had an agenda to "tear down that wall," is essentially correct. But missing here is a sense of what "Communism" meant in Ronald Reagan's world: not just the USSR or Marxism-Leninism, but anything to the left of the white good-old-boy cocktail and country-club crowd, from unions to feminism to affirmative action, with real Communism as the handy lever to pry at them all. "Constructive engagement" with South Africa and Nicaragua's Somoza as "friends of the Free World" says much about the limitations of his agenda, and that of his worshippers.
Also in question is the author's thesis that Reagan the warrior slew the Red dragon with his own lone sword. Communism did "work," in its sphere - despite the author's sweeping statement to the contrary - but globalization increasingly left its model in the dust. No doubt Reagan's specific policies - economic embargoes and guerrilla proxy wars - helped, but could not have without the larger systemic isolation of the USSR already underway throughout the global market. This led to privileged "second-generation Communists" - the children of the nomenklatura elite - feeling increasingly isolated and frustrated in their relative deprivation compared to the West. Unlike their elders, they had no childhood of poverty in village or factory and had not gone through cataclysmic wars to defend their "Soviet motherland." They saw only the big cars, tall glass buildings, full shopping centers, and cable-fed porn which they seethingly lacked even in the richest Soviet cities. These cravings by the aspiring Soviet bourgeoisie were the ultimate killers of Communism; without the frustrations of the Soviet baby-boomers, the USSR would have withstood American onslaughts in the 1980s as it had after WW II, and Reagan would have been no more successful than Hitler.
Schweizer offers interesting tidbits of info culled from Soviet files. But the contention that the USSR funded the Peace Movement echoes the overhype of Reagan's original accusation, while the greater dependency of Solidarity, Charter 77 and other East European dissidents on Reagan's largesse is of course seen as totally praiseworthy. The betrayal of Solidarity's working class roots after 1989, in favor of free-market neoliberalism, doubtless comes from the NED funding of the Reagan years. There is of course scant attention paid to the ugly side of Reagan's crusade: the apologetics for Israeli warmongering, the death squads that bled Central America dry, the terrorist jihadism that eruoted out of Afghanistan.
Schweitzer's books are a good attempt at lauding Reagan as the victorious cold warrior. Yet in the end Reagan still comes across as a blinkered ideologue in perfect counterpoint to nemeses like Fidel Castro or Ayatollah Khomeini.
Reagan succeeded where Hitler failed in slaying the Red Beat of the East, reminding one of Woody Guthrie's verse: "As through this world you ramble, you'll see lots of funny men; some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen."
Both of Peter Schweizer's works are typical Reaganaut triumphalism, but at least they're among the better attempts. Schweizer's central thesis, that Reagan had an agenda to "tear down that wall," is essentially correct. But missing here is a sense of what "Communism" meant in Ronald Reagan's world: not just the USSR or Marxism-Leninism, but anything to the left of the white good-old-boy cocktail and country-club crowd, from unions to feminism to affirmative action, with real Communism as the handy lever to pry at them all. "Constructive engagement" with South Africa and Nicaragua's Somoza as "friends of the Free World" says much about the limitations of his agenda, and that of his worshippers.
Also in question is the author's thesis that Reagan the warrior slew the Red dragon with his own lone sword. Communism did "work," in its sphere - despite the author's sweeping statement to the contrary - but globalization increasingly left its model in the dust. No doubt Reagan's specific policies - economic embargoes and guerrilla proxy wars - helped, but could not have without the larger systemic isolation of the USSR already underway throughout the global market. This led to privileged "second-generation Communists" - the children of the nomenklatura elite - feeling increasingly isolated and frustrated in their relative deprivation compared to the West. Unlike their elders, they had no childhood of poverty in village or factory and had not gone through cataclysmic wars to defend their "Soviet motherland." They saw only the big cars, tall glass buildings, full shopping centers, and cable-fed porn which they seethingly lacked even in the richest Soviet cities. These cravings by the aspiring Soviet bourgeoisie were the ultimate killers of Communism; without the frustrations of the Soviet baby-boomers, the USSR would have withstood American onslaughts in the 1980s as it had after WW II, and Reagan would have been no more successful than Hitler.
Schweizer offers interesting tidbits of info culled from Soviet files. But the contention that the USSR funded the Peace Movement echoes the overhype of Reagan's original accusation, while the greater dependency of Solidarity, Charter 77 and other East European dissidents on Reagan's largesse is of course seen as totally praiseworthy. The betrayal of Solidarity's working class roots after 1989, in favor of free-market neoliberalism, doubtless comes from the NED funding of the Reagan years. There is of course scant attention paid to the ugly side of Reagan's crusade: the apologetics for Israeli warmongering, the death squads that bled Central America dry, the terrorist jihadism that eruoted out of Afghanistan.
Schweitzer's books are a good attempt at lauding Reagan as the victorious cold warrior. Yet in the end Reagan still comes across as a blinkered ideologue in perfect counterpoint to nemeses like Fidel Castro or Ayatollah Khomeini.
Cuba: Coca-Cola Colony of the Caribbean
Louis A. Perez, Jr., "On Becoming Cuban." Harper Perennial, 2001; new ed. 2007.
Professor Perez has done another outstanding job of exploring the complexities of U.S.-Cuban relations. Again he has shown that the Revolution of 1959 didn't happen just because Castro read Marxist books while in college. Professor Perez explains why Castro's generation were reading the Marxist books in the first place.
There are some things in the critique of U.S. culture which are disturbing, to a North American, not so much in Professor Perez' presentation as in the chauvinistic attitude of some Cubans quoted here, expecially regarding language. All languages borrow from each other. English is full of loan words, from French, Latin, etc., and are considered normal parts of speech. This can be accepted without a sense of victimization. The "I Love Lucy" episodes referred to were not as bad as portrayed; Ricky Ricardo was emphatically not a buffoon and corrected Lucy's miscomprehensions about Cuba (and herself) more than once.
One of the most revealing passages on US-Cuban relations details the betrayal of liberal-democratic Cubans, not so much by Fidel Castro as by the US. If Castro ultimately had no use for "bourgeois-democratic liberals," the US had less. Castro originally hoped that liberal-progressive elements in the US and Europe would help stabilize his regime and looked to them long before allying with the Cuban Communists or the USSR. But rather than maintain links with the first revolutionary government through Cuban liberals - often US-educated - the Eisenhower administration brushed them off as too liberal, in the same manner as Che helped squeeze them out for being "reactionary." To quote Perez:
............................
What is perhaps most remarkable about the growing [US-Cuban] dispute in 1959 was that so many reforms were devised and implemented not by radicals, but by liberals, Protestants, and graduates of U.S. schools, who, in fact, carried the moral of North American value systems to their logical conclusion. The ranks of the insurrection had been filled with Protestants of all denominations . . . [who] proceeded to fill numerous positions in the new government. . . .
Liberals of all types joined the new administration, many of whom were educated in North American schools. Almost all of them would resign by the end of the first eighteen months, as radicals took over the government. But the point here is that the U.S. dispute with Cuba in 1959 was, ironically, largely with the policies and programs enacted by men and women most closely identified with North American practices. . . .
U.S. opposition to the reforms of 1959 contributed to the undermining of the internal position of liberals. Men and women trained in North American methods of problem solving, and imbued with many of the same expectations, brought those experiences to bear in behalf of a better Cuba. They had been prominent participants in the formulation of reforms, thereby lending credibility and providing momentum to the proposed changes. In the end, they added legitimacy and respectability to Cuban demands as an expression of national sentiment. They gave their considerable expertise and prestige to the cause of national renovation and fully expected U.S. acquiescence to reforms that, within the logic of Cuban reality, were not only reasonable but also necessary. They justified the changes, and indeed made appeals on their behalf, in terms calculated to resonate within a U.S. frame of reference. . . .
Even from exile in 1961, former [Cuban National Bank President] Felipe Pazos continued to insist on the importance of precisely the reforms that the United States had opposed. “Cuba needed to break up large land holdings and to create a substantially larger number of land owners who cultivate their land,” Pazos insisted; “to establish new industries to occupy the unemployed (seasonal, cyclical, and structural); to step up its rate of economic growth; to tax more heavily high incomes and to collect taxes effectively; . . . to improve services for the people, especially education, health and housing.”
Liberals understood the nature of the market forces confronting Cuba; they also appreciated the limitations of market mechanisms in an export economy. What was especially striking about many of the reforms of 1959 was the degree to which the liberals chose to engage the North American presence in Cuba on its own terms, with its own rhetoric and rationale. They could not have known in advance that the United States would oppose their efforts, placing them in a position of extreme vulnerability, between U.S. opposition to reform and Cuban demand for revolution.
For those schooled in U.S. ways who participated in or were otherwise party to the reform project of 1959, the opposition of the United States was as incomprehensible as it was indefensible. They were dedicated to North American methods; indeed, they often defended reforms with reasoning derived explicitly from North American paradigms. They understood, too, that the ground was giving way under them and that the definition of “Cuban” was in transition. U.S. opposition and veiled threats against Cuba contributed to discrediting these representatives of North American ways. Cubans could not counter North American opposition without also calling into question some of the most fundamental assumptions on which their daily life had been based.
The result of U.S. opposition was to contribute to a profound crisis that transformed the proposition of revolution. The United States assumed the role of adversary, and henceforth the conventions that had insinuated themselves into almost every facet of Cuban life were subject to repudiation. It thus became increasingly difficult to hold on to North American affiliations without inviting scorn and arousing suspicion. (pp. 487-489.)
.........................
Lessons to remember, as a post-Castro Cuba looms one step nearer. Yanquis (including Yanquified Miami "Cubans") should read it before they attempt to reconquer Cuba in the next decade.
Professor Perez has done another outstanding job of exploring the complexities of U.S.-Cuban relations. Again he has shown that the Revolution of 1959 didn't happen just because Castro read Marxist books while in college. Professor Perez explains why Castro's generation were reading the Marxist books in the first place.
There are some things in the critique of U.S. culture which are disturbing, to a North American, not so much in Professor Perez' presentation as in the chauvinistic attitude of some Cubans quoted here, expecially regarding language. All languages borrow from each other. English is full of loan words, from French, Latin, etc., and are considered normal parts of speech. This can be accepted without a sense of victimization. The "I Love Lucy" episodes referred to were not as bad as portrayed; Ricky Ricardo was emphatically not a buffoon and corrected Lucy's miscomprehensions about Cuba (and herself) more than once.
One of the most revealing passages on US-Cuban relations details the betrayal of liberal-democratic Cubans, not so much by Fidel Castro as by the US. If Castro ultimately had no use for "bourgeois-democratic liberals," the US had less. Castro originally hoped that liberal-progressive elements in the US and Europe would help stabilize his regime and looked to them long before allying with the Cuban Communists or the USSR. But rather than maintain links with the first revolutionary government through Cuban liberals - often US-educated - the Eisenhower administration brushed them off as too liberal, in the same manner as Che helped squeeze them out for being "reactionary." To quote Perez:
............................
What is perhaps most remarkable about the growing [US-Cuban] dispute in 1959 was that so many reforms were devised and implemented not by radicals, but by liberals, Protestants, and graduates of U.S. schools, who, in fact, carried the moral of North American value systems to their logical conclusion. The ranks of the insurrection had been filled with Protestants of all denominations . . . [who] proceeded to fill numerous positions in the new government. . . .
Liberals of all types joined the new administration, many of whom were educated in North American schools. Almost all of them would resign by the end of the first eighteen months, as radicals took over the government. But the point here is that the U.S. dispute with Cuba in 1959 was, ironically, largely with the policies and programs enacted by men and women most closely identified with North American practices. . . .
U.S. opposition to the reforms of 1959 contributed to the undermining of the internal position of liberals. Men and women trained in North American methods of problem solving, and imbued with many of the same expectations, brought those experiences to bear in behalf of a better Cuba. They had been prominent participants in the formulation of reforms, thereby lending credibility and providing momentum to the proposed changes. In the end, they added legitimacy and respectability to Cuban demands as an expression of national sentiment. They gave their considerable expertise and prestige to the cause of national renovation and fully expected U.S. acquiescence to reforms that, within the logic of Cuban reality, were not only reasonable but also necessary. They justified the changes, and indeed made appeals on their behalf, in terms calculated to resonate within a U.S. frame of reference. . . .
Even from exile in 1961, former [Cuban National Bank President] Felipe Pazos continued to insist on the importance of precisely the reforms that the United States had opposed. “Cuba needed to break up large land holdings and to create a substantially larger number of land owners who cultivate their land,” Pazos insisted; “to establish new industries to occupy the unemployed (seasonal, cyclical, and structural); to step up its rate of economic growth; to tax more heavily high incomes and to collect taxes effectively; . . . to improve services for the people, especially education, health and housing.”
Liberals understood the nature of the market forces confronting Cuba; they also appreciated the limitations of market mechanisms in an export economy. What was especially striking about many of the reforms of 1959 was the degree to which the liberals chose to engage the North American presence in Cuba on its own terms, with its own rhetoric and rationale. They could not have known in advance that the United States would oppose their efforts, placing them in a position of extreme vulnerability, between U.S. opposition to reform and Cuban demand for revolution.
For those schooled in U.S. ways who participated in or were otherwise party to the reform project of 1959, the opposition of the United States was as incomprehensible as it was indefensible. They were dedicated to North American methods; indeed, they often defended reforms with reasoning derived explicitly from North American paradigms. They understood, too, that the ground was giving way under them and that the definition of “Cuban” was in transition. U.S. opposition and veiled threats against Cuba contributed to discrediting these representatives of North American ways. Cubans could not counter North American opposition without also calling into question some of the most fundamental assumptions on which their daily life had been based.
The result of U.S. opposition was to contribute to a profound crisis that transformed the proposition of revolution. The United States assumed the role of adversary, and henceforth the conventions that had insinuated themselves into almost every facet of Cuban life were subject to repudiation. It thus became increasingly difficult to hold on to North American affiliations without inviting scorn and arousing suspicion. (pp. 487-489.)
.........................
Lessons to remember, as a post-Castro Cuba looms one step nearer. Yanquis (including Yanquified Miami "Cubans") should read it before they attempt to reconquer Cuba in the next decade.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Iraq With Snow
Mart Laar's "War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival, 1944-1956." (The Compass Press, 1992. Translated by Tiina Ets.)
As the history of Soviet Europe is being reviewed, it is often “revised” into new channels of anti-Communist political correctness. This standard allows great tolerance for pre-WWII myths and attitudes, and Cold War rationalizations, as long as they’re sufficiently anti-Soviet, anti-Moscow, and present the former “captive nation” as a paragon of injured innocence and virtue. The troubled twentieth-century history of the Baltic States is a good case of this political rugby.
“War in the Woods: Estonia’s Struggle for Survival 1944-1956,” was written by Estonian publicist Mart Laar in 1992. Under the auspices of the Estonian Heritage Society, Laar and his associates fanned out across Soviet Estonia in the first days of perestroika, gathering recollections of the postwar period, and of the remembered struggles of the anti-Soviet guerrillas popularly known as “the Forest Brothers.” Although the KGB harassed and often disrupted the bicycle journeys of these young anthropologists, with criminal proceedings initiated against Laar, their work nevertheless continued as perestroika unfolded. The dissolution of the USSR removed the last fetters from the group’s research and finally Laar could openly publish his findings in a memorial volume. Its success catapulted Laar, already in the center of Estonian nationalist politics, into two terms as Prime Minister of post-Soviet Estonia.
While Laar makes reference to Soviet archives as a source, these are hardly quoted. Instead the book is a rambling, often poorly organized, sometimes incoherent account based on those personal narratives collected by his group in the 1980s. Yet the anecdotes are often compelling as they put flesh on the story of the postwar anti-Soviet underground in Estonia; and are frequently more honest than Laar himself on the origins of the Forest Brothers.
The brutality of the Soviet occupations of 1940 and post-1944 are given as the “primary” recruiting source of the Forest Brothers. Desperate young men whose families were suffering deportation by the thousands in cattle cars bound for Siberia often had no place to go but the woods, forming bands whose goal was basic survival far from the occupation centers. However, as even Laar concedes, there was no real Forest Brother “movement” until the final days of the German occupation, and with good reason. Veterans of the Estonian SS Legion were instructed to stay behind as a rearguard for the retreating Wehrmacht, acting as a spoiler and sabotage guerrilla force to harass the Red enemy from behind the lines. Caches of German weaponry by the ton were left behind for them to do so. Thus, without German organization and arms, there could have been no Forest Brother armies in Estonia or the other Baltic States. The Germans had not conceded defeat at this point, and hoped that guerrilla movements in the Baltic and the Carpathians would bog down the Red Army’s western advance while Germany could negotiate an “honorable” cease-fire with the Western Allies.
Alas for both the Germans and their Baltic allies, such was not to be the case. As the Soviet Army enveloped the region, and Germany’s fortunes plummeted, the Forest Brothers were cut off from their supply sources. They maintained radio contact, and were still instrumental in smuggling out the collaborators of the Estonian National Committee who faced Soviet wrath, but as a German “contra” movement their purpose was served and done by 1945. Or so it seemed.
The tons of German weaponry, and the desperation of men who faced only life (or death) as Soviet prisoners of war, ensured a bitter-end struggle throughout the eastern zones of German/Soviet occupation. Estonia’s was no different in its brutality, although thanks to émigré publicists and perestroika researchers like Laar it is better known to English readers than other such formations.
Throughout the book we are treated to superficial analyses of occupation and Soviet-era politics, but there is in-depth accounting of Forest Brother attacks on stores, trains, Soviet authorities and collaborators; of pitched battles with the KGB and the Soviet-organized Peoples’ Defense Committees; on the Soviet authorities who led the KGB’s partisan-repression squads; on how to build and stock an underground bunker; on the support given by the surrounding population in the classic “fish-sea” model. Laar denies any systematic brutality on the part of the Forest Brothers, while offering grisly anecdotes of Soviet treatment of forest partisans and their civilian supporters in the villages of Estonia.
Laar maintains that while Estonian bodies may have worn German uniforms, their hearts were not in them. He also makes the sweeping statement that no Estonian Forest Brothers are, despite their service to Germany in WW II, known to have committed war crimes against Jews or any innocent civilians. Yet he concedes that Latvian Forest Brothers often took refuge over the border in Estonia, and in such areas intermingled feely with Estonian partisans - these neighboring guerrillas being direct offshoots of the Latvian SS, which were indeed complicit in the extermination of Baltic Jews and war crimes on the eastern front. He also portrays the Estonian National Committee as a resurrected civic group of leaders from the First Republic, revived in the waning days of German occupation, who hoped to fill the void of the Third Reich but were knocked out of power in three days by the Red Army. The Armed Resistance League formed by the ENC was to act as the coordinating body for the scattered partisans.
Here Laar is being his most disingenuous, for the ENC was formed from the ranks of civilian German collaborators, as the ARL was composed of former soldiers of the SS Legion. It is true that Estonian collaborators were much more pragmatic than other such groups: few of them were ideological fascists, and anti-Semitism played a negligible role, if only because Jews were nearly invisible outside Tallinn, with a total Estonian population of 5000. Yet there is no evidence presented for Laar’s claim that that the ENC and the ARL were formed from an “anti-German resistance,” just as there is no evidence for any such resistance itself. These nationalists may have had their own agenda, yet they saw nothing wrong in donning the uniforms of a foreign occupier or serving as its civil administrators; an attitude now regarded as treason as the Second Republic seeks prosecution of those who served the USSR.
Laar also touches on the role of the Forest Brothers in the early cold war. As hopes from Germany waned, the rising power of the US and Britain in Europe gave new inspiration from the West. The ENC and the ARL served as a conduit for anti-Soviet refugees who did their best to propagate and magnify the “ongoing struggle behind the Iron Curtain.” It was sincerely believed by many (and not just in Baltic forests) that there would soon be a Third World War between the US and USSR. It was on this “hope” that the Forest Brothers pegged their ultimate deliverance, looking to scattered accounts of the Korean War as the first sign of an apocalyptic anti-Soviet liberation struggle which would sweep in and rescue them - as the Germans had done in 1941. The Western Allies, on their part, also saw the Baltic forest partisans as an asset, and took much time and trouble in supporting émigré groups, sending in agents and radio operators and money to fan the anti-Soviet resistance. The German war service of these veterans was overlooked in the name of “saving the West,” as the ENC knew it would be. But here, too, it was to be disappointed, for thanks to famous KGB moles like Philby and Burgess the Baltic operations were riddled with KGB double agents and wrecked from within.
Laar’s descriptions of the Estonian domestic scene are as superficial as his rendition of the region’s high politics. In reference to the Soviet-organized Peoples’ Defense Committees he dismisses their members as “failures” under the old system who now saw their chance to achieve social prominence under the Soviet occupation. Aside from the fact that the same could be said of a number of those serving the Germans, the question is yet begged as to how such intrinsic “losers” could rise to prominence under anyone’s regime. Thanks to such myopia, which sees only the Forest Brothers as “true Estonians” and their opponents as “criminals,” we may never know the full story of the social issues and struggles that framed the postwar years. Laar’s own prejudices here, as usual, take the place of analysis and help render the entire book into a flawed and biased – though often gruesomely entertaining – account of the Sovietization of Estonia.
In summation, this willful blindness - from his disingenuous admission-cum-dismissal of the German role in organizing the Forest Brothers, to the Estonian domestic scene – not only plagues much of Laar’s book but the nationalist cause it serves,. His chief defense is that wearing German uniforms in the context of 1940 was no shame, and was done reluctantly, having no real portion in the struggle for Estonian survival. Yet this contention is undermined by the very testimony he presents. It is undeniable that the Soviet invasion of the Baltic and Finland was an illegal, opportunistic move to reverse the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and grab Russian “losses” at a convenient moment in history; that the wishes of the population, who had enjoyed twenty years of self-government, were not considered; and that the first Soviet regime was ruthless in its quick elimination of perceived “class enemies.” Without the Soviet brutalities of 1940-41 there would have been much less German collaboration from the Balts, much fewer willing executioners putting on SS uniforms and seeking scapegoats among their fellow citizens. Yet Balts did so, and the atrocious deeds done in the name of "freedom" in a conqueror's uniform yet taint the memory of these nations to this day. Baltic refusal to honestly face these issues – by angry denial, by books such as Laar’s extolling the anti-Soviet “national resistance”, or by post-Soviet discrimination against ethnic Russians or those who served the USSR – will not otherwise erase this still-indelible stain.
As the history of Soviet Europe is being reviewed, it is often “revised” into new channels of anti-Communist political correctness. This standard allows great tolerance for pre-WWII myths and attitudes, and Cold War rationalizations, as long as they’re sufficiently anti-Soviet, anti-Moscow, and present the former “captive nation” as a paragon of injured innocence and virtue. The troubled twentieth-century history of the Baltic States is a good case of this political rugby.
“War in the Woods: Estonia’s Struggle for Survival 1944-1956,” was written by Estonian publicist Mart Laar in 1992. Under the auspices of the Estonian Heritage Society, Laar and his associates fanned out across Soviet Estonia in the first days of perestroika, gathering recollections of the postwar period, and of the remembered struggles of the anti-Soviet guerrillas popularly known as “the Forest Brothers.” Although the KGB harassed and often disrupted the bicycle journeys of these young anthropologists, with criminal proceedings initiated against Laar, their work nevertheless continued as perestroika unfolded. The dissolution of the USSR removed the last fetters from the group’s research and finally Laar could openly publish his findings in a memorial volume. Its success catapulted Laar, already in the center of Estonian nationalist politics, into two terms as Prime Minister of post-Soviet Estonia.
While Laar makes reference to Soviet archives as a source, these are hardly quoted. Instead the book is a rambling, often poorly organized, sometimes incoherent account based on those personal narratives collected by his group in the 1980s. Yet the anecdotes are often compelling as they put flesh on the story of the postwar anti-Soviet underground in Estonia; and are frequently more honest than Laar himself on the origins of the Forest Brothers.
The brutality of the Soviet occupations of 1940 and post-1944 are given as the “primary” recruiting source of the Forest Brothers. Desperate young men whose families were suffering deportation by the thousands in cattle cars bound for Siberia often had no place to go but the woods, forming bands whose goal was basic survival far from the occupation centers. However, as even Laar concedes, there was no real Forest Brother “movement” until the final days of the German occupation, and with good reason. Veterans of the Estonian SS Legion were instructed to stay behind as a rearguard for the retreating Wehrmacht, acting as a spoiler and sabotage guerrilla force to harass the Red enemy from behind the lines. Caches of German weaponry by the ton were left behind for them to do so. Thus, without German organization and arms, there could have been no Forest Brother armies in Estonia or the other Baltic States. The Germans had not conceded defeat at this point, and hoped that guerrilla movements in the Baltic and the Carpathians would bog down the Red Army’s western advance while Germany could negotiate an “honorable” cease-fire with the Western Allies.
Alas for both the Germans and their Baltic allies, such was not to be the case. As the Soviet Army enveloped the region, and Germany’s fortunes plummeted, the Forest Brothers were cut off from their supply sources. They maintained radio contact, and were still instrumental in smuggling out the collaborators of the Estonian National Committee who faced Soviet wrath, but as a German “contra” movement their purpose was served and done by 1945. Or so it seemed.
The tons of German weaponry, and the desperation of men who faced only life (or death) as Soviet prisoners of war, ensured a bitter-end struggle throughout the eastern zones of German/Soviet occupation. Estonia’s was no different in its brutality, although thanks to émigré publicists and perestroika researchers like Laar it is better known to English readers than other such formations.
Throughout the book we are treated to superficial analyses of occupation and Soviet-era politics, but there is in-depth accounting of Forest Brother attacks on stores, trains, Soviet authorities and collaborators; of pitched battles with the KGB and the Soviet-organized Peoples’ Defense Committees; on the Soviet authorities who led the KGB’s partisan-repression squads; on how to build and stock an underground bunker; on the support given by the surrounding population in the classic “fish-sea” model. Laar denies any systematic brutality on the part of the Forest Brothers, while offering grisly anecdotes of Soviet treatment of forest partisans and their civilian supporters in the villages of Estonia.
Laar maintains that while Estonian bodies may have worn German uniforms, their hearts were not in them. He also makes the sweeping statement that no Estonian Forest Brothers are, despite their service to Germany in WW II, known to have committed war crimes against Jews or any innocent civilians. Yet he concedes that Latvian Forest Brothers often took refuge over the border in Estonia, and in such areas intermingled feely with Estonian partisans - these neighboring guerrillas being direct offshoots of the Latvian SS, which were indeed complicit in the extermination of Baltic Jews and war crimes on the eastern front. He also portrays the Estonian National Committee as a resurrected civic group of leaders from the First Republic, revived in the waning days of German occupation, who hoped to fill the void of the Third Reich but were knocked out of power in three days by the Red Army. The Armed Resistance League formed by the ENC was to act as the coordinating body for the scattered partisans.
Here Laar is being his most disingenuous, for the ENC was formed from the ranks of civilian German collaborators, as the ARL was composed of former soldiers of the SS Legion. It is true that Estonian collaborators were much more pragmatic than other such groups: few of them were ideological fascists, and anti-Semitism played a negligible role, if only because Jews were nearly invisible outside Tallinn, with a total Estonian population of 5000. Yet there is no evidence presented for Laar’s claim that that the ENC and the ARL were formed from an “anti-German resistance,” just as there is no evidence for any such resistance itself. These nationalists may have had their own agenda, yet they saw nothing wrong in donning the uniforms of a foreign occupier or serving as its civil administrators; an attitude now regarded as treason as the Second Republic seeks prosecution of those who served the USSR.
Laar also touches on the role of the Forest Brothers in the early cold war. As hopes from Germany waned, the rising power of the US and Britain in Europe gave new inspiration from the West. The ENC and the ARL served as a conduit for anti-Soviet refugees who did their best to propagate and magnify the “ongoing struggle behind the Iron Curtain.” It was sincerely believed by many (and not just in Baltic forests) that there would soon be a Third World War between the US and USSR. It was on this “hope” that the Forest Brothers pegged their ultimate deliverance, looking to scattered accounts of the Korean War as the first sign of an apocalyptic anti-Soviet liberation struggle which would sweep in and rescue them - as the Germans had done in 1941. The Western Allies, on their part, also saw the Baltic forest partisans as an asset, and took much time and trouble in supporting émigré groups, sending in agents and radio operators and money to fan the anti-Soviet resistance. The German war service of these veterans was overlooked in the name of “saving the West,” as the ENC knew it would be. But here, too, it was to be disappointed, for thanks to famous KGB moles like Philby and Burgess the Baltic operations were riddled with KGB double agents and wrecked from within.
Laar’s descriptions of the Estonian domestic scene are as superficial as his rendition of the region’s high politics. In reference to the Soviet-organized Peoples’ Defense Committees he dismisses their members as “failures” under the old system who now saw their chance to achieve social prominence under the Soviet occupation. Aside from the fact that the same could be said of a number of those serving the Germans, the question is yet begged as to how such intrinsic “losers” could rise to prominence under anyone’s regime. Thanks to such myopia, which sees only the Forest Brothers as “true Estonians” and their opponents as “criminals,” we may never know the full story of the social issues and struggles that framed the postwar years. Laar’s own prejudices here, as usual, take the place of analysis and help render the entire book into a flawed and biased – though often gruesomely entertaining – account of the Sovietization of Estonia.
In summation, this willful blindness - from his disingenuous admission-cum-dismissal of the German role in organizing the Forest Brothers, to the Estonian domestic scene – not only plagues much of Laar’s book but the nationalist cause it serves,. His chief defense is that wearing German uniforms in the context of 1940 was no shame, and was done reluctantly, having no real portion in the struggle for Estonian survival. Yet this contention is undermined by the very testimony he presents. It is undeniable that the Soviet invasion of the Baltic and Finland was an illegal, opportunistic move to reverse the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and grab Russian “losses” at a convenient moment in history; that the wishes of the population, who had enjoyed twenty years of self-government, were not considered; and that the first Soviet regime was ruthless in its quick elimination of perceived “class enemies.” Without the Soviet brutalities of 1940-41 there would have been much less German collaboration from the Balts, much fewer willing executioners putting on SS uniforms and seeking scapegoats among their fellow citizens. Yet Balts did so, and the atrocious deeds done in the name of "freedom" in a conqueror's uniform yet taint the memory of these nations to this day. Baltic refusal to honestly face these issues – by angry denial, by books such as Laar’s extolling the anti-Soviet “national resistance”, or by post-Soviet discrimination against ethnic Russians or those who served the USSR – will not otherwise erase this still-indelible stain.
The Specter That Still Haunts Eastern Europe
"Neighbors," by Jan T. Gross
This slim volume, and Professor Gross' fuller, follow-up book, "Fear," are a graphic portrayal of the specter that still haunts eastern Europe - not Marx, not Stalin, but its own heart of human darkness.
Though I dissent somewhat with Prof. Gross' historiography, his little book delivers out of all proportion to its size. Professor Gross has done his country a great service in unflinchingly exposing the soulless criminality of both Jedwabne and, in "Fear," of Kielce; but of course he is a prophet without honor at home, at least for the current generation, which prefers to wrap itself in comforting myths of Poland as "the Christ of Nations" - not the crucifier of others.
My divergence with his analysis, however, doesn't single Poland as an especially barbarous or cruel nation. Poland is certainly not alone in eastern Europe's history of violent racism. Every one of its nations has given its own bloody form of expression to this sickness, against Jews or other convenient scapegoats. What makes it particularly disturbing in Poland, however, is its coincidence with Poland's own myth of martyrdom, and the devastating reality of Nazi occupation and mass murder on Polish soil. How could Poles inflict such suffering, given their own great suffering, and turn a blind eye to it? The answer is in the blind eye that Poles have turned to much of their real history.
While bemoaning Poland's partition at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, its partisans have nicely ignored Poland's own partitioning of the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania in 1920 - also in league with the USSR. It was at this time that the myth of "Zydokomuna" was fully galvanized, leading to the same kinds of atrocities which erupted during and after WW II. The events of "Neighbors" were not special to the 1939-1947 period, but were endemic in the unsettled era after WW I, as the Goodhart mission to Poland fully documented.
But of course the actors in Jedwabne and Kielce are not following a ghost-written script, but engaged in deeds with deeply personal meaning for themselves. While Professor Gross rationally deconstructs the myth of Zydokomunism, he sees these atrocities as a function of guilt complexes. I do not get that feeling from these perpetrators (who are much like other perpetrators with whom I have direct exposure.) These people sincerely believed in that myth, and targeting Jews was a conscious act, so they felt, of getting back at the "Bolshevik regime" foisted on them from the East. Thus, while Professor Gross stresses moral and psychological causes, I see the basis of this social terror as equally political.
Poland was still a society in flux, still in the grip of wartime psychoses and the throes of guerrilla resistance, with all its attendant terrorism. To stike out at Jews was to hit not only a soft human target but the "Judeo-Bolshevik regime's" own underbelly, and as such was consciously encouraged by all those hoping to defeat the new order. That the Communist Party backpedalled from its official humanism, ultimately embracing this anti-Semitism, was actually a victory for these forces. In this sense, Communism was defeated in 1956, not 1989.
But while I may differ with Professor Gross on Polish history, no one with a sense of humanity or justice can dispute the moral power of his works on postwar Poland. They are warnings on the dark side of humanity that stand above time and place, to be heeded by all.
This slim volume, and Professor Gross' fuller, follow-up book, "Fear," are a graphic portrayal of the specter that still haunts eastern Europe - not Marx, not Stalin, but its own heart of human darkness.
Though I dissent somewhat with Prof. Gross' historiography, his little book delivers out of all proportion to its size. Professor Gross has done his country a great service in unflinchingly exposing the soulless criminality of both Jedwabne and, in "Fear," of Kielce; but of course he is a prophet without honor at home, at least for the current generation, which prefers to wrap itself in comforting myths of Poland as "the Christ of Nations" - not the crucifier of others.
My divergence with his analysis, however, doesn't single Poland as an especially barbarous or cruel nation. Poland is certainly not alone in eastern Europe's history of violent racism. Every one of its nations has given its own bloody form of expression to this sickness, against Jews or other convenient scapegoats. What makes it particularly disturbing in Poland, however, is its coincidence with Poland's own myth of martyrdom, and the devastating reality of Nazi occupation and mass murder on Polish soil. How could Poles inflict such suffering, given their own great suffering, and turn a blind eye to it? The answer is in the blind eye that Poles have turned to much of their real history.
While bemoaning Poland's partition at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, its partisans have nicely ignored Poland's own partitioning of the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania in 1920 - also in league with the USSR. It was at this time that the myth of "Zydokomuna" was fully galvanized, leading to the same kinds of atrocities which erupted during and after WW II. The events of "Neighbors" were not special to the 1939-1947 period, but were endemic in the unsettled era after WW I, as the Goodhart mission to Poland fully documented.
But of course the actors in Jedwabne and Kielce are not following a ghost-written script, but engaged in deeds with deeply personal meaning for themselves. While Professor Gross rationally deconstructs the myth of Zydokomunism, he sees these atrocities as a function of guilt complexes. I do not get that feeling from these perpetrators (who are much like other perpetrators with whom I have direct exposure.) These people sincerely believed in that myth, and targeting Jews was a conscious act, so they felt, of getting back at the "Bolshevik regime" foisted on them from the East. Thus, while Professor Gross stresses moral and psychological causes, I see the basis of this social terror as equally political.
Poland was still a society in flux, still in the grip of wartime psychoses and the throes of guerrilla resistance, with all its attendant terrorism. To stike out at Jews was to hit not only a soft human target but the "Judeo-Bolshevik regime's" own underbelly, and as such was consciously encouraged by all those hoping to defeat the new order. That the Communist Party backpedalled from its official humanism, ultimately embracing this anti-Semitism, was actually a victory for these forces. In this sense, Communism was defeated in 1956, not 1989.
But while I may differ with Professor Gross on Polish history, no one with a sense of humanity or justice can dispute the moral power of his works on postwar Poland. They are warnings on the dark side of humanity that stand above time and place, to be heeded by all.
A Work of Courage, Not Fear
Jan T. Gross: "Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz."
It's hard for any author to buck the national consensus when dealing with his country's history, especially the dark corners that have been kept purposely hidden. For a Polish historian like Professor Gross to come forth with this unflinching account of the Kielce pogrom, and the culture of intolerance behind it, is just such an act of courage. Ironically, it compares with modern Israeli historians who have come clean about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the same period.
The anti-Semitic scapegoating of the Polish Catholic Church's highest officials - specifically Cardinal Hlond - are too much on public record to take seriously the spirit of denial found among this book's detractors. When the spiritual leaders of a very religious country begin abusing their position politically, and pandering to the darker side of their people while piously distancing themselves from the results, Kielce is bound to happen.
Surely, Poland suffered greatly during WW II from enemies and allies alike, but that does not justify or excuse the deep-seated bigotry which made Kielce possible. Poland was also well-known during the interwar years for its intolerance of ethnic Germans and Ukrainians. While not carried to the same extremes as anti-Semitism, it is doubtless well for Jews, Germans, and 'Pravoslavs' that population transfers, genocide, voluntary emigration, and territorial concessions have removed them as targets for future patriots.
It's hard for any author to buck the national consensus when dealing with his country's history, especially the dark corners that have been kept purposely hidden. For a Polish historian like Professor Gross to come forth with this unflinching account of the Kielce pogrom, and the culture of intolerance behind it, is just such an act of courage. Ironically, it compares with modern Israeli historians who have come clean about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the same period.
The anti-Semitic scapegoating of the Polish Catholic Church's highest officials - specifically Cardinal Hlond - are too much on public record to take seriously the spirit of denial found among this book's detractors. When the spiritual leaders of a very religious country begin abusing their position politically, and pandering to the darker side of their people while piously distancing themselves from the results, Kielce is bound to happen.
Surely, Poland suffered greatly during WW II from enemies and allies alike, but that does not justify or excuse the deep-seated bigotry which made Kielce possible. Poland was also well-known during the interwar years for its intolerance of ethnic Germans and Ukrainians. While not carried to the same extremes as anti-Semitism, it is doubtless well for Jews, Germans, and 'Pravoslavs' that population transfers, genocide, voluntary emigration, and territorial concessions have removed them as targets for future patriots.
The KGB's Battle for the Third World
Christopher's Andrew "The World Was Going Our Way".
I agree with Robert Kaiser's take on this work in the introductory review, that much of the assembled facts here were already known or surmised at the time of its publication. The rubric of "newly revealed secrets from Soviet archives" was one of the biggest cons of the American publishing industry in the 1990s.
This book underscores another Western shortfall as well - that the success of Communism in the world from 1917 on was directly related to the "Democracies'" unwillingness to put its rhetoric into practice. This extended with a vengeance into the Third World in this book's timeframe. In Cuba, as a prime example, the US refused to intervene against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista's misanthropic reign - with which the US possessed leverage - and instead vainly attempted to thwart the Castro regime, with which it possessed none. This blinkered US policy, based only on the short term interests of American investors in Cuba, laid the groundwork for Castro's defection and the KGB's penetration into the Western Hemisphere.
Similarly, the unquestioning US subsidy of Israel's Mideast grand strategy likewise gave the KGB entry into the Middle East. American unwillingness to come to grips with its own racial problems in the 50s and 60s, and similar ambivalence regarding anti-colonialism in Africa, ensured that black Africa would seek constructive engagement with the Kremlin while Washington pursued it with Pretoria.
The KGB's successes here were all in proportion to Western - specifically American - failure of vision. These successes would have been far greater than even Mitrokhin suggests, were it not for the KGB's own hamstrung bureaucratic mentality.
I agree with Robert Kaiser's take on this work in the introductory review, that much of the assembled facts here were already known or surmised at the time of its publication. The rubric of "newly revealed secrets from Soviet archives" was one of the biggest cons of the American publishing industry in the 1990s.
This book underscores another Western shortfall as well - that the success of Communism in the world from 1917 on was directly related to the "Democracies'" unwillingness to put its rhetoric into practice. This extended with a vengeance into the Third World in this book's timeframe. In Cuba, as a prime example, the US refused to intervene against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista's misanthropic reign - with which the US possessed leverage - and instead vainly attempted to thwart the Castro regime, with which it possessed none. This blinkered US policy, based only on the short term interests of American investors in Cuba, laid the groundwork for Castro's defection and the KGB's penetration into the Western Hemisphere.
Similarly, the unquestioning US subsidy of Israel's Mideast grand strategy likewise gave the KGB entry into the Middle East. American unwillingness to come to grips with its own racial problems in the 50s and 60s, and similar ambivalence regarding anti-colonialism in Africa, ensured that black Africa would seek constructive engagement with the Kremlin while Washington pursued it with Pretoria.
The KGB's successes here were all in proportion to Western - specifically American - failure of vision. These successes would have been far greater than even Mitrokhin suggests, were it not for the KGB's own hamstrung bureaucratic mentality.
Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started A War
The concept of Professor Julie A. Mertus' book is that recent events and, especially, the subjective interpretation of them, fueled the Yugoslav wars much more than "ancient ethnic hatreds." Unarguably this is the case, though said "traditions" provided a convenient stage for new actors to read lines from an old story.
However, while describing the myths that led to war in Yugoslavia, Professor Mertus is not averse to injecting a few of her own, that led the West to war with Yugoslavia. Specifically, the charges on page 143 that Slobodan Milosevic had been transformed overnight from "a good Communist" into "a good nationalist"; and that he was elected by an "uneasy coalition of nationalists and Communists" who would "follow him into war."
As anyone familiar with Yugoslavia knows, "good Communists" in the ideological sense had largely vanished by the 1970s, with nationalism already at the center of public dialogue and policy. Thus no "transformation" was required to be both a good organization/party man and nationalist; otherwise, the whole devolution of Yugoslavia throughout he 1980s would not have been possible. Hence also the coalition of "Communists" and nationalists was not only far from uneasy but quite intimate, and as much so in the other republics. Retaining official party membership (even while renaming the party) was useful to Milosevic as a power platform, but no more so than the Federal Yugoslav Army. One can just as easily state that his "coalition" was based on a military-party-nationalist alliance.
But if Communism as ideology had only symbolic value at this time, ignored in practice by everyone in the Fedration, why was it necessary to drag it into the analysis at all? Precisely, of course, because of its mythical symbolism. Use of the word as adjective and noun helped mobilize Western opinion against Milosevic as a "backward renegade" who "opposed reform," requiring removal to "complete" the Yugoslav "transition process." While Professor Mertus does not explicitly state this, she was a strong pro-interventionist, as her short essays at the back of the book clearly show. Stressing a by-then irrelevant "Communism" and "Communists" in Serbia was part of the mobilization process.
Thus the book is a useful example at a micro level, how artful gossip-cum-propaganda can stimulate grass-roots hysteria and paranoia, leading to war; and at the macro level, on how academic scholarship can rationalize the choices of policy-making elites determined on war.
However, while describing the myths that led to war in Yugoslavia, Professor Mertus is not averse to injecting a few of her own, that led the West to war with Yugoslavia. Specifically, the charges on page 143 that Slobodan Milosevic had been transformed overnight from "a good Communist" into "a good nationalist"; and that he was elected by an "uneasy coalition of nationalists and Communists" who would "follow him into war."
As anyone familiar with Yugoslavia knows, "good Communists" in the ideological sense had largely vanished by the 1970s, with nationalism already at the center of public dialogue and policy. Thus no "transformation" was required to be both a good organization/party man and nationalist; otherwise, the whole devolution of Yugoslavia throughout he 1980s would not have been possible. Hence also the coalition of "Communists" and nationalists was not only far from uneasy but quite intimate, and as much so in the other republics. Retaining official party membership (even while renaming the party) was useful to Milosevic as a power platform, but no more so than the Federal Yugoslav Army. One can just as easily state that his "coalition" was based on a military-party-nationalist alliance.
But if Communism as ideology had only symbolic value at this time, ignored in practice by everyone in the Fedration, why was it necessary to drag it into the analysis at all? Precisely, of course, because of its mythical symbolism. Use of the word as adjective and noun helped mobilize Western opinion against Milosevic as a "backward renegade" who "opposed reform," requiring removal to "complete" the Yugoslav "transition process." While Professor Mertus does not explicitly state this, she was a strong pro-interventionist, as her short essays at the back of the book clearly show. Stressing a by-then irrelevant "Communism" and "Communists" in Serbia was part of the mobilization process.
Thus the book is a useful example at a micro level, how artful gossip-cum-propaganda can stimulate grass-roots hysteria and paranoia, leading to war; and at the macro level, on how academic scholarship can rationalize the choices of policy-making elites determined on war.
McCarthyite Mishmash: Kenneth Timmerman's "Shadow Warriors"
Partisan smears as brazen as this have been long absent from the American scene. Now, journalist Timmerman breaks new wind in this latest attempt at sensation-mongering hysteria. Since the "Iran nuclear program" has now been revealed as more fizzling sensationalism, one wonders how long the Pulitzer Committee will let him keep his prize.
Here we're offered more dubious details and more spin than a carnival whirligig. "The Party of Treason" - a swipe at the Democratic Party not heard for fifty years - and a "conspiracy of traitors" within the U.S. Government have colluded to bring down Our Beloved Leader and his Jihad for America. While reading this put on the theme from "The Twilight Zone" as background music. And he even names names! Wow, maybe he can be the next chairman of a revived Un-American Activites Committee! America needs another good witch hunt, eh? And here's the stake to burn 'em on. Pardon me while I yawn. . . .
Here we're offered more dubious details and more spin than a carnival whirligig. "The Party of Treason" - a swipe at the Democratic Party not heard for fifty years - and a "conspiracy of traitors" within the U.S. Government have colluded to bring down Our Beloved Leader and his Jihad for America. While reading this put on the theme from "The Twilight Zone" as background music. And he even names names! Wow, maybe he can be the next chairman of a revived Un-American Activites Committee! America needs another good witch hunt, eh? And here's the stake to burn 'em on. Pardon me while I yawn. . . .
The Defeat of Solidarity
I strongly recommend this work as one of the finest studies of "the missing link" in democracy-building in post-Communist eastern Europe. The author's thesis is that "little people don't matter" - democracy is "too serious a business" to be left to the herd - echoes the political elitism which has always dominated this region, reinforced by contemporary "money first" free market Western pseudo-democracy.
Which brings me to two relatively mild critiques of Ost's presentation. Precisely because we're dealing with central Europe and aristocratic notions that persisted all through the "Peoples' Republic," Polish intellectuals still carried a residue of class snobbery, no matter how temporarily infatuated with Solidarity in 1980. They were thus primed by class culture to eventually turn away from the workers. Only alluded to in Ost's work, but of equal importance, was the wining and dining of these people on their Western junkets, filling their heads with schemes of personal enrichment, leading them to believe that the privileges pushed on them on these Western visits would continue to be theirs back home if they followed said advisors. A pure case of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," without the redeeming epiphany. The experience of Solidarity's leadership in the halls of the West is quite similar to that of the African National Congress of South Africa, as given in William Gumede's "Thabo Mbeki and the Soul of the ANC." In both cases the "vanguard leadership" of a radical, grass-roots organization was separated from its base in the name of furthering Western interests, to the lasting harm of the people they purported to lead.
Another aspect of Ost's work is his excellent description of how and why the Polish working class turned from the liberals to embrace a nationalist-"family values" platform that has nothing to do with their economic plight. But Ost tends to glide over the fact that the nationalist right could so easily take up this slack precisely because of its deep roots in Poland. Poland is like Ireland, in its wedding of underdog nationalism to Catholicism, and as in Ireland the Church has taken on itself the task of keeping a poor population content with its economic lot while turning anger elsewhere. There is nothing post-Communist in this, as witness Jan Gross' "Fear," describing how violent anti-Semitism wracked Poland across all class lines in the mid-1940s. Because of the deep-seated nature of Catholic nationalism it was poised to take over the social base of Poland, much more so than in Czechoslovakia or Hungary, unless liberals and social democrats could offer a competing ideal. The tragedy in Poland, as Ost so ably describes, was that they could have - but didn't want to.
Which brings me to two relatively mild critiques of Ost's presentation. Precisely because we're dealing with central Europe and aristocratic notions that persisted all through the "Peoples' Republic," Polish intellectuals still carried a residue of class snobbery, no matter how temporarily infatuated with Solidarity in 1980. They were thus primed by class culture to eventually turn away from the workers. Only alluded to in Ost's work, but of equal importance, was the wining and dining of these people on their Western junkets, filling their heads with schemes of personal enrichment, leading them to believe that the privileges pushed on them on these Western visits would continue to be theirs back home if they followed said advisors. A pure case of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," without the redeeming epiphany. The experience of Solidarity's leadership in the halls of the West is quite similar to that of the African National Congress of South Africa, as given in William Gumede's "Thabo Mbeki and the Soul of the ANC." In both cases the "vanguard leadership" of a radical, grass-roots organization was separated from its base in the name of furthering Western interests, to the lasting harm of the people they purported to lead.
Another aspect of Ost's work is his excellent description of how and why the Polish working class turned from the liberals to embrace a nationalist-"family values" platform that has nothing to do with their economic plight. But Ost tends to glide over the fact that the nationalist right could so easily take up this slack precisely because of its deep roots in Poland. Poland is like Ireland, in its wedding of underdog nationalism to Catholicism, and as in Ireland the Church has taken on itself the task of keeping a poor population content with its economic lot while turning anger elsewhere. There is nothing post-Communist in this, as witness Jan Gross' "Fear," describing how violent anti-Semitism wracked Poland across all class lines in the mid-1940s. Because of the deep-seated nature of Catholic nationalism it was poised to take over the social base of Poland, much more so than in Czechoslovakia or Hungary, unless liberals and social democrats could offer a competing ideal. The tragedy in Poland, as Ost so ably describes, was that they could have - but didn't want to.
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