Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough

This is probably the only sentence I agree with wholeheartedly in this article by Seumas Milne, the Guardian's (not very) closet Stalinist.

There is something very strange about this article. In fact it is just a part of a string of articles on the same subject - trying to embellish one of the most tyrannical and bloody regimes ever gracing the planet - the Stalin's Soviet Union. Even the outright lies and half-truths are the same, carefully copy/pasted from one article to another. As, for example, the pathetic attempt to falsify the total number of victims of the regime - but it is an old hat. What really takes the cake is:

For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment, captured even by critical films and books of the post-Stalin era such as Wajda's Man of Marble and Rybakov's Children of the Arbat.

Gosh, what an idiot!

• Rapid industrialisation - accompanied by the greatest ecological disasters in history and the destruction of agriculture that once fed half of the world.
• Mass education - producing yearly up to 6 million engineers who were not able to design and build a car to speak of.
• Job security - that most of the Soviet people called "official unemployment" and shameful bare existence on potatoes and cucumbers for people outside the big cities
• Social equality - aw, heck, the man must be mad as Hatter - but so he is, most probably. Nah, just a turkey.

Even for the Guardian, the man is too much. Why do they keep that dinosaur, is beyond my understanding. But I have an advice for the poor jerk:













Get a life, Seumas, in short.


Hat tip: Harry's place