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.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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.
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