Robert Strupp’s Reviews > Workers Paradise Lost. The 50 Year failure of Soviet Communism > Status Update

"Whither Russia? ...universal censorship of reading matter makes a mockery of universal literacy. Isn't there anything good you can say about communism in practice? The truthful answer is NO. Let's have the gist of the 50 Soviet years made clear: Never before have so many paid so much for so little. The communist world...is ringed with walls and mined zones and electrified barbed-wire to imprison its inhabitants..."

"The costs in life. D.G. Stewart-Smith...attempted an estimate. International communism from 1917 to 1964...was directly responsible for eighty-three million deaths--more than the deaths in the two World Wars. At Yalta, Winston Churchill was voicing sympathy" for Russian WWII deaths. "Stalin shrugged. 'Collectivization,' [turning country communist] he told his guest, 'had cost the USSR more lives than the war.' "

21. "In theory, fully industrialized and technically advanced nations like England or the United States could undertake full socialization and retain basic political freedoms. That is the hope which sustains sincere socialists and communists in such countries . . . But, in practice, as Czechoslovakia for one has demonstrated, political freedoms cannot survive under economic dictatorship."

19. Science. "The myth that Soviet communism has fostered progress in science. Pravda ~ "The greatest scientist of our epoch, Comrade Stalin." Sounds like North Korean crap, eh? "Any sign of interest in the culture or science of other nations became prima facie [on its face] evidence of treason. There can be no genuine science without freedom of thought and inquiry, without autonomy for the searching mind."

17. War & Peace. "Yet from the end of its civil war period to date, the Soviet Union has been attacked only once, in June 1941...And on that occasion the 'imperialist West'...rallied at once to its defense, unreservedly and without seeking any quid pro quo...Not once in these 50 years has a Soviet leader conceded the possibility of a permanent settlement short of total communist victory."

16. Imperialism. "No supremely strong nation in history has rejected the temptation of territorial aggrandizement as resolutely as the U.S....the communist insistence that the U.S....engaged in building empires is a blatant propaganda hoax, among the biggest of the Big Lies in our lie-soaked age...In Rumania there was 1 communist for every 21,000 in the population--fewer percentually than in the U.S. today [1967]."

15 De-Stalinization. "Stalin has been out-Stalined by his successors. Millions of young people in a variety of vigilante formations have been invested with quasi-police and quasi-judicial rights, as a civic duty, to spy on their neighbors...As before, the contrast is drastic between the luxuries enjoyed by the ruling elite and the exceedingly low wages of the great majority of workers, employees, and farm laborers."

14 Living Standards. "The high costs of growth, 'are borne primarily by the lower income groups, in contrast with an elite that lives comfortably and free from progressive taxes.'" So much for Bernie Sander's claim of Tax the Rich! "Average earnings for factory and office workers in 1965-1966 have been estimated at 95 rubles a month, about $26 a week ($170 2016)...prices: a small stereo radio, $247.50 ($1,635 2016)."

Chap Collectivization (USSR) "From Eastern Europe to Asia and the Caribbean, the hallmarks of communist rule have been rationing, food queues, acute shortage, occasional food riots, and in both Russia and China, hideous famine." Mao Tse-tung's China suffered a 1960's famine in which maybe 25,000,000 died. In Cuba, rice harvests in 1957 were 760,000 tons. After Castro's communism they dropped to 112,500 tons or 85%!