Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I've read it twice before, but, each time, I am blown away.
Reading it, for the third time, provoked new emotions, shame and horror, nausea and an anxiety that verged on panic. My blood pressure reflected this when I finally had my vitals taken. It was heightened because of what I see happening with the misguided, called "The Wall Street Protesters."
100 years ago, my family were in those demonstrations, half a world away. Eventually, their determination helped to crush an Empire. Indeed, my mother's uncle is given credit, along with Lenin, for crushing it and killing the last Cesar, launching what is the end of freedom for mankind, not the opposite they were willing to die to achieve. They died all right, but, not the way they were willing to die. Their ultimate fate was crueler than the Nazis' mistreatment, as unlikely as it seems.
I believe the Holy Spirit helped me to see the truth of the misery caused by my mother's family, and their comrades, the original Bolsheviks.
The book begins on a terrifying journey to the early stages of Stalinist oppression. At first, the originals were protected, but, if you belonged to an offshoot revolutionary group, like the Mensheviks, or other moderate socialist organization, you were eliminated. First, they sent you from your regional affiliations, never again to be with family and friends, and finally, they killed them. They were vaporized, like the Orwellian vision of 1984, where even the memory of their existence was erased.
Finally, the original Bolsheviks, including most of my mother's family, who built the machinery of oppression, were picked to die like the aristocracy they despised and persecuted.
Most disturbing and nauseating, for me, was their fanatical crusade to eliminate every vestige of Christianity. Even speaking of Christ to your child was a capital offense. If you were caught in any association with the church, you were ultimately eliminated, after deportation and exile, then, starvation, torture and murder.
My mother's namesake, her aunt named Sofie, had an 11 year old grandson, who wrote to her in prison, and described the desolate misery of his life in a way that would be echoed by the poor souls in Concentration Camps:
"Dear Nana, I did not die again today."
That's all they could hope for, another day to breathe. And when you remember that these words were written by the nephew of the revolutionary that lived with Stalin for years, and served with him to create the USSR, it is even more illuminating. Stalin's loyalty was perverse and paradoxical, turning on his closest allies and resources along with indiscriminate genocide of the masses.
Alexandr makes a chilling comparison of the severity of these unchristian, Antichristian forces in Russia, with the Nazis watching their moves. Whatever the Nazis did, was first done by Stalin's iron legions of death. However cruel Hitler was, the cruelty of the Stalinist regime's Marshall Law State, made Hitler , the Gestapo and the SS, look democratic and sane. This is not a hyperbole. Solzhenitsyn gives hard facts that are incontrovertible and documented.
The profound shame I experience is heightened by my love of Christ and freedom.
In 1925, my grandfather was an American citizen, after immigrating in 1917. This is when the winds changed in the Soviet Union. Lenin was gone. Yakov Sverdlov was dead. Trotsky was marginalized and criminalized.
Stalin, the last of the Bolshevik triad in power, seized the reigns and indiscriminately began a campaign of misery, suffering, subjugation and torture such as has not been witnessed in the world, because, unlike dictators who victimize their enemies, he wiped out anyone who was a threat, inclusive of his most "inner circle,."
It is still a mystery to me why my mother's biological dad abandoned six young children, following their young mother's poisoning at 40 years old. He never looked back. For all he cared, they could starve, and nearly did. He returned to the USSR to serve as one of Stalin's henchmen. To comprehend the scope of his personal crimes against humanity makes me want to slit my own throat, and I feel guilty for even being alive, when up to 100 million souls were eliminated, never to produce progeny for the future. I feel guilt and shame for being alive.
Ultimately, at risk, were 2/3rds of the Russian people, who were fair game for massacre and elimination. No matter what you did, you never had any security, whether you pledged your heart and soul to Stalin, or renounced him.
You can't compare the murderous rampage of Stalin to Hitler.The truth is that Stalin killed more than Hitler's 12 million, by at least six times that amount!
The poor and disenfranchised, the spirit of the Wall Streeter, believed they were fighting for liberty, but, instead got a regime that was infinitely more oppressive than a rigid potentate like the Tsar, or unfair like the disposition of the rich to poor in our society.
I was reminded of this spirit today while watching the spectacle of the idealistic proletariat democrats marching in NYC, and carrying on their odd mission, truly believing that redistribution of wealth, from rich to poor, is possible. How deceived they are.
There is a saying that is profound and true, by George Santayana, that "those who do not know history's mistakes are DOOMED to repeat them."
The full quote is even more applicable to our current age:
- Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
- Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
- This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
He was paranoid, even of his own family, and had true contempt for other people's lives, even those who supported the revolution, were less than having no meaning to him. They were rounded up, like the Jews would be in the next decade, dispatched to doom, either in prisons that were pre-medieval, or exile in Siberia, where hunger and abuse reduced the quality of life to subhuman.
While many Socialists idealize the young Yakov Sverdlov, Lenin and Trotsky, the reality is that one day, the benefactor reigns, and the next, the devil is their overlord.
I confess that I idealized Sverdlov, and my grandfather, his young brother, because, it is quixotic and exciting to know people in your own family played a role in shaping the 20th Century. Most of my cousins and brother have collections of Soviet memorabilia. Right now, I'm looking at an original Soviet flag, in my room, the one with the hammer and sickle on a sea of red. It has nostalgia for us because my mother's uncle designed it.
Now, I look at it with a burning knot in my gut. I think of the millions and millions of souls who were crushed and erased from life. I envision all the pious religious leaders and devout Christians being given the opportunity to renounce Christ, or die. I put myself in their shoes, for a second, and feel the tribulation of not being allowed to share any mention of God or Christ, not in my home, not in church, not anywhere. I think of the martyrs who were tortured and murdered, not in Nero's Roman Colosseum, but, less than 100 years ago, at the dawn of a technological renaissance of machine and philosophies on the flip side of barbaric genocide.
Solzhenitsyn, like Maxim Gorky, was a bitter man, and it reads all through his works, but, why shouldn't it? Should he sugar-coat it, or not hold them accountable, lest Communism spreads like the cancer it is? Look at Obama-nation's masses, spinning their wheels, and chanting the same proletariat mantras that their predecessor in the USSR perfected.
Don't they understand that the final end of their devotion to a false messiah and failed system will only get them what it got the revolutionaries 100 years ago, which was eventual persecution and death?
In fact, Stalin seemed to lean harder on his former compatriots than other infidels and peasants. He eradicated each group of professionals, fearing their intellect would devise a way to overthrow his plans. I believe he was possessed by a demonic entity, and could be considered the first modern incarnation of the Beast, although, Satan has always been there in kings and queens.
I can't think of a more grim fate than to consider the lives of Stalin's era of citizenship. When the Bible speaks of Daniel's "Abomination of Desolation", which Christ used as a metaphor to wake up future believers, it establishes the breadth and scope of such spiritual bankruptcy.
We see it's beginnings now, particularly in some big cities like NYC and LA. In California, there is a push to legalize a prohibition on circumcision. WHY IS IT NECESSARY? If you don't want your kid circumcised, FINE! But, that's not good enough for the neo-Stalinists resurrecting Big Brother. They want to decide for you. The fact that it forces Jews to abandon a six thousand year heritage is not even relevant because it is really the point....
In NYC, a billionaire mayor, would like to reign as Cesar, or Stalin, and regulate every breath you take, every bite of food you eat, and the decision to make "Ground Zero" a "pastoral free zone" is evidence of his heart and soul.
These things are happening all over the world. In the antichristian stronghold of the UK, they have now abandoned the designation A.D. or "Anno Domini" - after Christ for the secular replacement, CE. Not a huge thing, in and of itself, but, every day, subtle changes are made to further remove the legitimacy of having legal choice to worship Christ.
This is the EXACT way the Soviet Union began. There was a diabolical machine at work, and it's tentacles were seemingly infinite and without seam, making people feel unconcerned about each change, until the day that their day comes, or their loved one is erased, or they become an unperson.
Every time I behold Obama-nation, and the body of supporters who prop him up, it is chilling to my very bone marrow, because, I know history better than some.
Now, I confess, that I started my young teen years, being dazzled by Socialism. I read "The Communist Manifesto" and everything about it seemed right. But, then, as I grew up, and read more, especially about my own family, the more ashamed and revolted I became.
What's chillingly ironic to me is the outcome of my own grandfather's dedication to this revolutionary organization, and service as Commissar under Stalin.
Stalin ordered his execution, even though he forsook his young orphaned family to return to serve him. Whether Stalin used this a fake device, or someone else freed him, he wasn't killed, and came back home to the USA in 1940, ran a business, and sung in Synagogue, as a cantor. Everything that wouldn't be available or possible in the USSR, which he and his family helped to construct, he learned were valuable. Freedom to make a living from a trade you excel at, and freedom to worship the God of your choice, not to mention "FREEDOM OF SPEECH."
Mensheviks, were co-conspirators and fought with the Bolsheviks. The revolution was impossible without their support. Under Stalin, the Mensheviks became despised enemies, considered to be under the auspices of Trotsky, who was a rival. Not only was Trotsky eventually murdered, but, nearly everyone who could be a possible Trotskyite, and their entire families, were murdered. So much for unity.
Even a national treasure, as well as a SIGNIFICANT Socialist propagandist, Maxim Gorky, was terrorized in the end, and many believe murdered, because, he had an affinity for Trotsky, and they had been friends, even though Stalin was also once friends with him. In a pathetic attempt to preserve his life, Gorky ended his days renouncing Trotsky, a man he trusted and loved. That didn't defer his fate, however. There was no right move. It was all whim and chance.
Like the WallStreeter of today, their revolution was also provoked and powered by the rich. While it may seem like another paradox, it fits together when you behold someone modern, like Michael Moore, wealthy beyond belief, who has the hubris to demand rich financiers be forced to hand over their fortunes.
In the early 1900s, celebrities like John Steinbeck and other important prominent individuals advocated this change for our own culture. Mark Twain sponsored my own grandfather and his family, which included Maxim Gorky and my great-uncle, his protegee adopted son. Millionaire Industrialists, like Jacob Schiff, (An antique in-law of false prophet, Al Gore), contributed hard funds to finance the plot. They fomented unrest in propaganda form to Americans as well. While they had the liberty to express themselves in any way they desired, they were helping to construct the vice that would forever squeeze out freedom of speech for future generations.
There are true parallels to today, transferring Jacob Schiff to
Obama's spiritual guide, Warren Buffet. Why does it benefit these men to eliminate competition and capitalism? Maybe because then they believe they can attain much more power than economic privilege, but, domination with Satan, over the minds and souls of those allowed to live on Planet Earth. I know that may sound like paranoid Christian piffle, but, yet, there is a truth that is hard not to see.
I have a love-hate association with my own family history, still, even knowing the truth. It's still fascinating to me, to know this family history. That said, I can't justify a thing that they did, even knowing why they did it.
In trying to achieve a level playing field for all, in a place where 1% of the population held 100% of the wealth, they created a version of Hell on Earth, where all were reduced to live in hunger, terror, disloyalty to kin and neighbor, abandonment of spiritual consolation and by the time they died, they probably looked forward to the release. This is the fate of Obama-nation citizens of the one-world global government to come.
If I could, I'd buy thousands of Solzhenitsyn's books and hand one to each misguided protester today. If only they knew history, modern history. If only they knew. Alas, it's a Twitter world, where if it's not on the brainless social media sites, it's not important to learn.
The Soviet Union is back, in a big way. I feel like my ancestors were like the Bin Ladens of the 20th Century, and their dream for the USA is being activated now, using the dreams of equality and hope to lure the naive, no different than a piece of cheese in a mousetrap.
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