The Simplest Methods Which Break The Will: 31 Methods Of Torture Used By Stalin's Atheist Executioners
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From Solzhenitsyn's Gulag: The Simplest Methods which Break the Will
An excerpt on interrogation methods from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag
Archipelago
Citation: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
(New York, NY: Perennial, 2002), pp. 44-55.
Excerpted by Calgacus
06/22/05 "ICH" - - In The Gulag Solzhenitsyn writes:
Let us try to list some of the simplest methods which break the will
and the character of the prisoner without leaving marks on his body
Let us begin with psychological methods.....
1. First of all: night. Why is it that all the main work of breaking
down human souls went on at night? Why, from their very earliest
years, did the Organs select the night? Because at night, the
prisoner, torn from sleep, even though he has not yet been tortured by
sleepless-ness, lacks his normal daytime equanimity and common sense.
He is more vulnerable.
2. Persuasion in a sincere tone is the very simplest method. Why play
at cat and mouse, so to speak? After all, having spent some time among
others undergoing interrogation, the prisoner has come to see what the
situation is. And so the interrogator says to him in a lazily friendly
way: "Look, you're going to get a prison term whatever happens. But if
you resist, you'll croak right here in prison, you'll lose your
health. But if you go to camp, you'll have fresh air and sunlight. So
why not sign right now?" Very logical. And those who agree and sign
are smart, if _ if the matter concerns only themselves! But that's
rarely so. A struggle is inevitable....
3. Foul language is not a clever method, but it can have a powerful
impact on people who are well brought up, refined, delicate. I know of
two cases involving priests, who capitulated to foul language alone.
One of them, in the Butyrki in 1944, was being interrogated by a
woman. At first when he'd come back to our cell he couldn't say often
enough how polite she was. But once he came back very despondent, and
for a long time he refused to tell us how, with her legs crossed high,
she had begun to curse. (I regret that I cannot cite one of her little
phrases here.)
4. Psychological contrast was sometimes effective: sudden reversals of
tone, for example. For a whole or part of the interrogation period,
the interrogator would be extremely friendly, addressing the prisoner
formally by first name and patronymic, and promising everything.
Suddenly he would brandish a paperweight and shout: "Foo, you rat!
I'll put nine grams of lead in your skull!" And he would advance on
the accused, clutching hands outstretched as if to grab him by the
hair, fingernails like needles. (This worked very, very well with
women prisoners.)
Or as a variation on this: two interrogators would take turns. One
would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle.
Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble-which would
it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of
his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to
things that had never happened.
5. Preliminary humiliation was another approach. In the famous cellars
of the Rostov-on-the-Don GPU (House 33), which were lit by lenslike
insets of thick glass in the sidewalk above the former storage
basement, prisoners awaiting interrogation were made to lie face down
for several hours in the main corridor and forbidden to raise their
heads or make a sound. They lay this way, like Moslems at prayer,
until the guard touched a shoulder and took them off to interrogation.
Another ease: At the Lubyanka, Aleksandra O_-va refused to give the
testimony demanded of her. She was transferred to Lefortovo. In the
admitting office, a woman jailer ordered her to undress, allegedly for
a medical examination, took away her clothes, and locked her in a
"box" naked. At that point the men jailers began to peer through the
peephole and to appraise her female attributes with loud laughs. If
one were systematically to question former prisoners, many more such
examples would certainly emerge. They all had but a single purpose: to
dishearten and humiliate.
6. Any method of inducing extreme confusion in the accused might be
employed. Here is how F. I. V. from Krasnogorsk, Moscow Province, was
interrogated. {This was reported by I. A. P__ev.} During the
interrogation, the interrogator, a woman, undressed in front of him by
stages (a striptease!), all the time continuing the interrogation as
if nothing were going on. She walked about the room and came close to
him and tried to get him to give in. Perhaps this satisfied some
personal quirk in her, but it may also have been cold-blooded
calculation, an attempt to get the accused so muddled that he would
sign. And she was in no danger. She had her pistol, and she had her
alarm bell.
7. Intimidation was very widely used and very varied. It was often
accompanied by enticement and by promises which were, of course,
false. In 1924: "If you don't confess, you'll go to the Solovetsky
Islands. Anybody who confesses is turned loose." In 1944: "Which camp
you'll be sent to depends on us. Camps are different. We've got hard-
labor camps now. If you confess, you'll go to an easy camp. If you're
stubborn, you'll get twenty-five years in handcuffs in the mines!"
Another form of intimidation was threatening a prisoner with a prison
worse than the one he was in. "If you keep on being stubborn, we'll
send you to Lefortovo" (if you are in the Lubyanka), "to
Sukhanovka" (if you are at Lefortovo). "They'll find another way to
talk to you there." You have already gotten used to things where you
are; the regimen seems to be not so bad; and what kind of torments
await you elsewhere? Yes, and you also have to be transported
there. . . . Should you give in?
Intimidation worked beautifully on those who had not yet been arrested
but had simply received an official summons to the Bolshoi Dom-the Big
House. He (or she) still had a lot to lose. He (or she) was frightened
of everything-that they wouldn't let him (or her) out today, that they
would confiscate his (or her) belongings or apartment. He would be
ready to give all kinds of testimony and make all kinds of concessions
in order to avoid these dangers. She, of course, would be ignorant of
the Criminal Code, and, at the very least, at the start of the
questioning they would push a sheet of paper in front of her with a
fake citation from the Code: "I have been warned that for giving false
testimony _ five years of imprisonment." (In actual fact, under
Article 95, it is two years.) "For refusal to give testimony-five
years . . ." (In actual fact, under Article 92, it is up to three
months.) Here, then, one more of the interrogator's basic methods has
entered the picture and will continue to re-enter it.
8. The lie. We lambs were forbidden to lie, but the interrogator could
tell all the lies he felt like. Those articles of the law did not
apply to him. We had even lost the yardstick with which to gauge: what
does he get for lying? He could confront us with as many documents as
he chose, bearing the forged signatures of our kinfolk and friends-and
it would be just a skillful interrogation technique.
Intimidation through enticement and lies was the fundamental method
for bringing pressure on the relatives of the arrested person when
they were called in to give testimony. "If you don't tell us such and
such" (whatever was being asked), "it's going to be the worse for
him_. You'll be destroying him completely." (How hard for a mother to
hear that!) "Signing this paper" (pushed in front of the relatives)
"is the only way you can save him" (destroy him).
9. Playing on one's affection for those one loved was a game that
worked beautifully on the accused as well. It was the most effective
of all methods of intimidation. One could break even a totally
fearless person through his concern for those he loved. (Oh, how
foresighted was the saying: "A man's family are his enemies.")
Remember the Tatar who bore his sufferings-his own and those of his
wife-but could not endure his daughter's! In 1930, Rimalis, a woman
interrogator, used to threaten: "We'll arrest your daughter and lock
her in a cell with syphilitics!" And that was a woman!
They would threaten to arrest everyone you loved. Sometimes this would
be done with sound effects: Your wife has already been arrested, but
her further fate depends on you. They are questioning her in the next
room just listen! And through the wall you can actually hear a woman
weeping and screaming. (After all, they all sound alike; you're
hearing it through a wall; and you're under terrific strain and not in
a state to play the expert on voice identification. Sometimes they
simply play a recording of the voice of a "typical wife"-soprano or
contralto -a labor-saving device suggested by some inventive genius.)
And then, without fakery, they actually show her to you through a
glass door, as she walks along in silence, her head bent in grief.
Yes! Your own wife in the corridors of State Security! You have
destroyed her by your stubbornness! She has already been arrested! (In
actual fact, she has simply been summoned in connection with some
insignificant procedural question and sent into the corridor at just
the right moment, after being told: "Don't raise your head, or you'll
be kept here!") Or they give you a letter to read, and the handwriting
is exactly like hers: "I renounce you! After the filth they have told
me about you, I don't need you any more!" (And since such wives do
exist in our country, and such letters as well, you are left to ponder
in your heart: Is that the kind of wife she really is?)
Just as there is no classification in nature with rigid boundaries, it
is impossible rigidly to separate psychological methods from physical
ones. Where, for example, should we classify the following amusement?
10. Sound effects. The accused is made to stand twenty to twentyfive
feet away and is then forced to speak more and more loudly and to
repeat everything. This is not easy for someone already weakened to
the point of exhaustion. Or two megaphones are constructed of rolledup
cardboard, and two interrogators, coming close to the prisoner, bellow
in both ears: "Confess, you rat!" The prisoner is deafened; sometimes
he actually loses his sense of hearing. But this method is
uneconomical. The fact is that the interrogators like some diversion
in their monotonous work, and so they vie in thinking up new ideas.
11. Tickling. This is also a diversion. The prisoner's arms and legs
are bound or held down, and then the inside of his nose is tickled
with a feather. The prisoner writhes; it feels as though someone were
drilling into his brain.
12. A cigarette is put out on the accused's skin (already mentioned
above).
13. Light effects involve the use of an extremely bright electric
light in the small, white-walled cell or "box" in which the accused is
being held-a light which is never extinguished. (The electricity saved
by the economies of schoolchildren and housewives!) Your eyelids
become inflamed, which is very painful. And then in the interrogation
room searchlights are again directed into your eyes.
14. Here is another imaginative trick: On the eve of May 1, 1933, in
the Khabarovsk GPU, for twelve hours-all night-Ghebotaryev was not
interrogated, no, but was simply kept in a continual state of being
led to interrogation. "Hey, you-hands behind your back!" They led him
out of the cell, up the stairs quickly, into the interrogator's
office. The guard left. But the interrogator, without asking one
single question, and sometimes without even allowing Chebotaryev to
sit down, would pick up the telephone: "`Take away the prisoner from
107!" And so they came to get him and took him back to his cell. No
sooner had he lain down on his board bunk than the lock rattled:
"Chebotaryev! To interrogation. Hands behind your back!" And when he
got there: "Take away the prisoner from 107!"
For that matter, the methods of bringing pressure to bear can begin a
long time before the interrogator's office.
15. Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a
closet or packing case. The human being who has just been taken from
freedom, still in a state of inner turmoil, ready to explain, to
argue, to struggle, is, when he first sets foot in prison, clapped
into a "box," which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit
down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that
he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door. And
he is held there for several hours, or for half a day, or a day.
During those hours he knows absolutely nothing! Will he perhaps be
confined there all his life? He has never in his life encountered
anything like this, and he cannot guess at the outcome. Those first
hours are passing when everything inside him is still ablaze from the
unstilled storm in his heart. Some become despondent-and that's the
time to subject them to their first interrogation. Others become
angry-
and that, too, is all to the good, for they may insult the
interrogator right at the start or make a slip, and it will be all the
easier to cook up their case.
16. When boxes were in short supply, they used to have another method.
In the Novocherkassk NKVD, Yelena Strutinskaya was forced to remain
seated on a stool in the corridor for six days in such a way that she
did not lean against anything, did not sleep, did not fall off, and
did not get up from it. Six days! Just try to sit that way for six
hours!
Then again, as a variation, the prisoner can be forced to sit on a
tall chair, of the kind used in laboratories, so that his feet do not
reach the floor. They become very numb in this position. He is left
sitting that way from eight to ten hours.
Or else, during the interrogation itself, when the prisoner is out in
plain view, he can be forced to sit in this way: as far forward as
possible on the front edge ("Move further forward! Further still!") of
the chair so that he is under painful pressure during the entire
interrogation. He is not allowed to stir for several hours. Is that
all? Yes, that's all. Just try it yourself!
17. Depending on local conditions, a divisional pit can be substituted
for the box, as was done in the Gorokhovets army camps during World
War II, The prisoner was pushed into such a pit, ten feet in depth,
six and a half feet in diameter; and beneath the open sky, rain or
shine, this pit was for several days both his cell and his latrine.
And ten and a half ounces of bread, and water, were lowered to him on
a cord. Imagine yourself in this situation just after you've been
arrested, when you're all in a boil.
Either identical orders to all Special Branches of the Red Army or
else the similarities of their situations in the field led to broad
use of this method. Thus, in the 36th Motorized Infantry Division, a
unit which took part in the battle of Khalkhin-Gol, and which was
encamped in the Mongolian desert in 1941, a newly arrested prisoner
was, without explanation, given a spade by Chief of the Special Branch
Samulyev and ordered to dig a pit the exact dimensions of a grave.
(Here is a hybridization of physical and psychological methods.) When
the prisoner had dug deeper than his own waist, they ordered him to
stop and sit down on the bottom: his head was no longer visible. One
guard kept watch over several such pits and it was as though he were
surrounded by empty space. They kept the accused in this desert with
no protection from the Mongolian sun and with no warm clothing against
the cold of the night, but no tortures-why waste effort on tortures?
The ration they gave was three and a half ounces of bread per day and
one glass of water. Lieutenant Chulpenyev, a giant, a boxer, twenty-
one years old, spent a month imprisoned this way. Within ten days he
was swarming with lice. After fifteen days he was summoned to
interrogation for the first time.
18. The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees-not in some
figurative sense, but literally: on his knees, without sitting back on
his heels, and with his back upright. People could be compelled to
kneel in the interrogator's office or the corridor for twelve, or even
twenty-four or forty-eight hours. (The interrogator himself could go
home, sleep, amuse himself in one way or another-this was an organized
system; watch was kept over the kneeling prisoner, and the guards
worked in shifts.) What kind of prisoner was most vulnerable to such
treatment? One already broken, already inclined to surrender. It was
also a good method to use with women. Ivanov-Razumnik reports a
variation of it: Having set young Lordkipanidze on his knees, the
interrogator urinated in his face! And what happened? Unbroken by
anything else, Lordkipanidze was broken by this. Which shows that the
method also worked well on proud people_.
19. Then there is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand
there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while
being interrogated-because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person
down. It can be set up in another way-so that the prisoner sits down
during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations.
(A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn't
lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is
given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing
is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to
testify to anything at all.
20. During all these tortures which involved standing for three, four,
and five days, they ordinarily deprived a person of water.
The most natural thing of all is to combine the psychological and
physical methods. It is also natural to combine all the preceding
methods with:
21. Sleeplessness, which they quite failed to appreciate in medieval
times. They did not understand how narrow are the limits within which
a human being can preserve his personality intact. Sleeplessness (yes,
combined with standing, thirst, bright light, terror, and the unknown
-
what other tortures are needed!?) befogs the reason, undermines the
will, and the human being ceases to be himself, to be his own "L" (As
in Chekhov's "I Want to Sleep," but there it was much easier, for
there the girl could lie down and slip into lapses of consciousness,
which even in just a minute would revive and refresh the brain.) A
person deprived of sleep acts half-unconsciously or altogether
unconsciously, so that his testimony cannot be held against him.
They used to say: "You are not truthful in your testimony, and
therefore you will not be allowed to sleep:"" Sometimes, as a
refinement, instead of making the prisoner stand up, they made him sit
down on a soft sofa, which made him want to sleep all the more. (The
jailer on duty sat next to him on the same sofa and kicked him every
time his eyes began to shut.) Here is how one victim-who had just sat
out days in a box infested with `bedbugs-describes his feelings after
this torture: "Chill from great loss of blood. Irises of the eyes
dried out as if someone were holding a red-hot iron in from of them.
Tongue swollen from thirst and prickling as from a hedgehog at the
slightest movement. Throat racked by spasms of' swallowing."
Sleeplessness was a great form of torture: it left no visible marks
and could not provide grounds for complaint even if an inspection-
something unheard of anyway-were to strike on the morrow.
"They didn't let you sleep? Well, after all, this is not supposed to
be a vacation resort. The Security officials were awake too!" (They
would catch up on their sleep during the day. j One can say that
sleeplessness became the universal method in the Organs. From being
one among many tortures, it became an integral part of the system of
State Security; it was the cheapest possible method and did not
require the posting of sentries. In all the interrogation prisons the
prisoners were forbidden to sleep even one minute from reveille till
taps. (In Sukhanovka and several other prisons used specifically for
interrogation, the cot was folded into the wall during the day; in
others, the prisoners were simply forbidden to lie down, and even to
close their eyes while seated.) Since the major interrogations were
all conducted at night, it was automatic: whoever was undergoing
interrogation got no sleep for at least five days and nights.
(Saturday and Sunday nights, the interrogators themselves tried to get
some rest.)
22. The above method was further implemented by an assembly line of
interrogators. Not only were you not allowed to sleep, but for three
or four days shifts of interrogators kept up a continuous
interrogation.
23. The bedbug-infested box has already been mentioned. In the dark
closet made of wooden planks, there were hundreds, maybe even
thousands, of bedbugs, which had been allowed to multiply. The guards
removed the prisoner's jacket or field shirt, and immediately the
hungry bedbugs assaulted him, crawling onto him from the walls or
falling off the ceiling. At first he waged war with them strenuously,
crushing them on his body and on the walls, suffocated by their stink.
But after several hours he weakened and let them drink his blood
without a murmur.
24. Punishment cells. No matter how hard it was in the ordinary cell,
the punishment cells were always worse. And on return from there the
ordinary cell always seemed like paradise. In the punishment cell a
human being was systematically worn down by starvation and also,
usually, by cold. (In Sukhanovka Prison there were also hot punishment
cells.) For example, the Lefortovo punishment cells were entirely
unheated. There were radiators in the corridor only, and in this
"heated" corridor the guards on duty walked in felt boots and padded
jackets. The prisoner was forced to undress down to his underwear, and
sometimes to his undershorts, and he was forced to spend from three to
five days in the punishment cell without moving (since it was so
confining). He received hot gruel on the third day only. For the first
few minutes you were convinced you'd not be able to last an hour. But,
by some miracle, a human being would indeed sit out his five days,
perhaps acquiring in the course of it an illness that would last him
the rest of his life.
There were various aspects to punishment cells-as, for instance,
dampness and water. In the Chernovtsy Prison after the war, Masha G.
was kept barefooted for two hours and up to her ankles in icy water -
confess! (She was eighteen years old, and how she feared for her feet!
She was going to have to live with them a long time.)
25. Should one consider it a variation of the punishment cell when a
prisoner was locked in an alcove? As long ago as 1933 this was one of
the ways they tortured S. A. Chebotaryev in the Khabarovsk GPU. They
locked him naked in a concrete alcove in such a way that he could
neither bend his knees, nor straighten up and change the position of
his arms, nor turn his head. And that was not all! They began to drip
cold water onto his scalp-a classic torture-which then ran down his
body in rivulets. They did not inform him, of course, that this would
go on for only twenty-four hours. It was awful enough at any rate for
him to lose consciousness, and he was discovered the next day
apparently dead. He came to on a hospital cot. They had brought him
out of his faint with spirits of ammonia, caffeine, and body massage.
At first he had no recollection of where he had been, or what had
happened. For a whole month he was useless even for interrogation.
26. Starvation has already been mentioned in combination with other
methods. Nor was it an unusual method: to starve the prisoner into
confession. Actually, the starvation technique, like interrogation at
night, was an integral element in the entire system of coercion. The
miserly prison bread ration, amounting to ten and a half ounces in the
peacetime year of 1933, and to one pound in 1945 in the Lubyanka, and
permitting or prohibiting food parcels from one's family and access to
the commissary, were universally applied to everyone. But there was
also the technique of intensified hunger: for example, Chulpenyev was
kept for a month on three and a half ounces of bread, after which-when
he had just been brought in from the pit-the interrogator Sokol placed
in front of him a pot of thick borscht, and half a loaf of white bread
sliced diagonally. (What does it matter, one might ask, how it was
sliced? But Chulpenyev even today will insist that it was really
sliced very attractively.) However, he was not given a thing to eat.
How ancient it all is, how medieval, how primitive! The only thing new
about it was that it was applied in a socialist society! Others, too,
tell about such tricks. They were often tried. But we are going to
cite another case involving Chebotaryev because it combined so many
methods. They put him in the interrogator's office for seventy-two
hours, and the only thing he was allowed was to be taken to the
toilet. For the rest, they allowed him neither food nor drink even
though there was water in a carafe right next to him. Nor was he
permitted to sleep. Throughout there were three interrogators in the
office, working in shifts. One kept writing something-silently,
without disturbing the prisoner. The second slept on the sofa, and the
third walked around the room, and as soon as Chebotaryev fell asleep,
beat him instantly. Then they switched roles. (Maybe they themselves
were being punished for failure to deliver.) And then, all of a
sudden, they brought Chebotaryev a meal: fat Ukrainian borscht, a
chop, fried potatoes, and red wine in a crystal carafe. But because
Chebotaryev had had an aversion to alcohol all his life, he refused to
drink the wine, and the interrogator couldn't go too far in forcing
him to, because that would have spoiled the whole game. After he had
eaten, they said to him: "Now here's what you have testified to in the
presence of two witnesses. Sign here." In other words, he was to sign
what had been silently composed by one interrogator in the presence of
another, who had been asleep, and a third, who had been actively
working. On the very first page Chebotaryev learned he had been on
intimate terms with all the leading Japanese generals and that he had
received espionage assignments from all of them. He began to cross out
whole pages. They beat him up and threw him out. Blaginin, another
Chinese Eastern Railroad man, arrested with him, was put through the
same thing; but he drank the wine and, in a state of pleasant
intoxication, signed the confession-and was shot. (Even one tiny glass
can have an enormous effect on a famished man-and that was a whole
carafe.)
27. Beatings-of a kind that leave no marks. They use rubber
truncheons, and they use wooden mallets and small sandbags. It is
very, very painful when they hit a bone-for example, an interrogator's
jackboot on the shin, where the bone lies just beneath the skin. They
beat Brigade Commander Karpunich-Braven for twenty-one days in a row.
And today he says: "Even after thirty years all my bones ache and my
head too." In recollecting his own experience and the stories of
others, he counts up to fifty-two methods of torture. Here is one:
They grip the hand in a special vise so that the prisoner's palm lies
flat on the desk-and then they hit the joints with the thin edge of a
ruler. And one screams! Should we single out particularly the
technique by which teeth are knocked out? They knocked out eight of
Karpunich's.
As everyone knows, a blow of the fist in the solar plexus, catching
the victim in the middle of a breath, leaves no mark whatever. The
Lefortovo Colonel Sidorov, in the postwar period, used to take a
"penalty kick" with his overshoes at the dangling genitals of male
prisoners. Soccer players who at one time or another have been hit in
the groin by a ball know what that kind of blow is like. There is no
pain comparable to it, and ordinarily the recipient loses
consciousness.
28. In the Novorossisk NKVD they invented a machine for squeezing
fingernails. As a result it could be observed later at transit prisons
that many of those from Novorossisk had lost their fingernails.
29. And what about the strait jacket?
30. And breaking the prisoner's back? (As in that same Khabarovsk GPU
in 1933.)
31. Or bridling (also known as "the swan dive")? This was a Sukhanovka
method-also used in Archangel, where the interrogator Ivkov applied it
in 1940. A long piece of rough toweling was inserted between the
prisoner's jaws like a bridle; the ends were then pulled back over his
shoulders and tied to his heels. Just try lying on your stomach like a
wheel, with your spine breaking-and without water and food for two
days!
Is it necessary to go on with the list? Is there much left to
enumerate? What won't idle, well-fed, unfeeling people invent?
Marginally edited by Calgacus, who has been employed as a researcher
in the national security field for 20 years.
Citation: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
(New York, NY: Perennial, 2002), pp. 44-55. Buy this book:
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060007761
Pombolo
Jon Schild
> Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
That would be redundant. They were all the same methods. But in SoT's
world of fantasy, the fact that Stalin was anti-religion made his
methods bad, while the inquisitors, being Christian at least in name,
were employing virtuous questioning techniques.
Bill Snyder
<int...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
Of course not. The Inquisition just sat them down in the comfy
chair, gave them milk and cookies, and they confessed voluntarily.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Robibnikoff
"Pombolo" <int...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:fede5107-a0b4-49df...@m38g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo & Belly Dancer Supreme
BAAWA Knight
#1557
Terry Cross
> Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
Desperate for a change of subject, are "we?"
TCross
T Guy
and pasted:
> 06/22/05 "ICH" - - In The Gulag Solzhenitsyn writes:
>
> Let us try to list some of the simplest methods which break the will
> and the character of the prisoner without leaving marks on his body
> Let us begin with psychological methods.....
>
> 2. Persuasion in a sincere tone is the very simplest method.
> 4. Psychological contrast was sometimes effective: sudden reversals of
> tone, for example...
> Or as a variation on this: two interrogators would take turns. One
> would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle.
> Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble-which would
> it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of
> his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to
> things that had never happened.
> 7. Intimidation was very widely used and very varied. ...In 1944: "Which camp
> you'll be sent to depends on us. Camps are different. We've got hard-
> labor camps now. If you confess, you'll go to an easy camp. If you're
> stubborn, you'll get twenty-five years in handcuffs in the mines!"
> Another form of intimidation was threatening a prisoner with a prison
> worse than the one he was in.
(T Guy):
Hmmm... haven't I seen this on _Law and Order:SUV_, among others?
T Guy
Michael Grosberg
Never mind that, does this idiot believe we approve of Stalin and have
to be persuaded that he was evil? What does Stalin have to do with
anything? It's not like he killed and tortured in the name of
atheism... He did it in the name of communism. And to be honest, even
communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a paranoid sociopath.
Mike Schilling
Mike Schilling
Let's see. Most likely none of us here are Stalinists, while several
are Christians. Whom is it that the truth accuses?
Terry Cross
wrote:
Let he who is with sin cast the first stone.
TCross
Eris
No, all Russians of that era were educated in Seminaries, where they
were full of the clergy seminal fluids. So where did they learn these
31 tortures? Sister Mary Beth I would imagine.
Eris
wrote:
>
> read more »
There still isn't a God and religious extremist are still assholes.
Quadibloc
wrote:
> And to be honest, even
> communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a paranoid sociopath.
If that were true, after Khruschev succeeded Stalin, the crimes of
Stalin would have been made *public*, not simply discussed in a secret
speech, and the political system of Russia would have been reformed to
have free multi-party elections and a free press, to make sure that no
one like Stalin could ever gain power again.
Instead, under Communism, but after Stalin, people who frankly
condemned Stalin, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were persecuted.
Plus, while things were certainly worse under Stalin, even under Lenin
there were secret police and labor camps. Stalinism is not an
aberration from Communism, simply an extreme of what Communism, or any
other form of dictatorship, makes possible - and, indeed, over time,
inevitable.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> Hmmm... haven't I seen this on _Law and Order:SUV_, among others?
The old "good guy, bad guy" trick is common enough. It got the Iran
hostages released before President-elect Ronald Reagan even took
office.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> Hmmm... haven't I seen this on _Law and Order:SUV_, among others?
You're thinking of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, not Law and
Order: Sports Utility Vehicle.
John Savard
Terry Cross
As we learn now, Stalin was an Atheist from age 13. Do allege Stalin
had the same education and influences as Mother Theresa?
TCross
Eris
Precisely
William Smith
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9236.htm
>
> From Solzhenitsyn's Gulag: The Simplest Methods which Break the Will
>
>
A method not listed here is waterboarding. It was invented by Spanish
Inquisition and was later described in a book by Juan Antonio Llorente.
Terry Cross
Then why do you attribute Stalin's character to his schooling?
TCross
Eris
The brutality that he was subjected to. Spare the rod spoil the child
Terry Cross
Heh -- what do you know of Stalin's schooling? What are your sources?
TCross
Michael Grosberg
No argument there, but I do believe Stalin was a paranoid sociopath,
taking what was a "normal" dictatorship (that is, one that kills or
incarcerates dissidents in their thousands) and turning it into a
death machine that killed millions. That a paranoid sociopath was able
to rise to power within the communist party just shows the inherent
problems in any non-democratic system, never mind what the supposed
state ideology is.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
> On Nov 21, 12:02 pm, Michael Grosberg <grosberg.mich...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > And to be honest, even
> > communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a paranoid sociopath.
>
> If that were true, after Khruschev succeeded Stalin, the crimes of
> Stalin would have been made *public*, not simply discussed in a secret
> speech, and the political system of Russia would have been reformed to
> have free multi-party elections and a free press, to make sure that no
> one like Stalin could ever gain power again.
>
> Instead, under Communism, but after Stalin, people who frankly
> condemned Stalin, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were persecuted.
>
OK, I 'll bite. So, you chose Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as your example
of the Soviet post-Stalinist "persecutions". So, what exactly was done
to him? Oh, he was expelled from the USSR to the West, where he
immediately became a multi-millionaire and retired to his huge estate
in Vermont.
>
> Plus, while things were certainly worse under Stalin, even under Lenin
> there were secret police and labor camps. Stalinism is not an
> aberration from Communism, simply an extreme of what Communism, or any
> other form of dictatorship, makes possible - and, indeed, over time,
> inevitable.
>
So what? How does democracy guarantee human rights. The American
Founding Fathers, who wrote The Bill of Rights and that "all men are
created equal" owned Black slaves and had no problems with
exterminating Indians and stealing their land.
And democratic Britain was committing atrocities in its colonies all
over the World.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
> On Nov 21, 4:23 pm, Eris <vith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 21, 1:29 pm, Terry Cross <tcros...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 21, 7:10 am, Pombolo <int...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
>
> > > Desperate for a change of subject, are "we?"
>
> > > TCross
>
> > No, all Russians of that era were educated in Seminaries, where they
> > were full of the clergy seminal fluids. So where did they learn these
> > 31 tortures? Sister Mary Beth I would imagine.
>
> As we learn now, Stalin was an Atheist from age 13.
>
Going to a seminary at the age of 16 is surely a weird way to express
atheism...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
At ten, he began attending church school... At sixteen, he received a
scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary
http://www.visualstatistics.net/Catastrophe/Stalin%20Biography/Stalin's%20Biography.htm.
In 1893, Stalin won a scholarship which allowed him to attend the
Tiflis Theological Seminary. He enrolled in the seminary because his
mother was deeply religious and wanted him to be a priest in the
Orthodox Church. The seminary placed harsh restrictions on what
students were and were not allowed to do. Some students compared the
life in the Tiflis Theological Seminary to a life in prison or in the
army barracks. They were forbidden to read newspapers and most non-
religious books. The punishment for doing so was typically a prolonged
solitary detention. Stalin was repeatedly caught and punished for
reading banned books. To protest this censorship, Stalin joined a
Marxist study group which provided him with access to the reading
material banned in the seminary.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Don't touch waterboarding! Waterboarding is the sacred way of
protecting the REAL American democracy from Bin Laden's terrorists
like Saddam Hussein, Slobo Milosevic, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez,
Vladimir Putin, Barak Obama and Bill Maher! Not necessarily in that
order.
Louann Miller
cab655...@b36g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>
> As we learn now, Stalin was an Atheist from age 13. Do allege Stalin
> had the same education and influences as Mother Theresa?
>
> TCross
>
So that's a 'no' on trying to be a Christian instead of argue for it, then?
Eris
The internet, try google.
Vladimir Makarenko
> On Nov 21, 4:32 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Nov 21, 12:02 pm, Michael Grosberg <grosberg.mich...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> And to be honest, even
>>> communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a paranoid sociopath.
>> If that were true, after Khruschev succeeded Stalin, the crimes of
>> Stalin would have been made *public*, not simply discussed in a secret
>> speech, and the political system of Russia would have been reformed to
>> have free multi-party elections and a free press, to make sure that no
>> one like Stalin could ever gain power again.
>>
>> Instead, under Communism, but after Stalin, people who frankly
>> condemned Stalin, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were persecuted.
>>
>
> OK, I 'll bite. So, you chose Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as your example
> of the Soviet post-Stalinist "persecutions". So, what exactly was done
> to him? Oh, he was expelled from the USSR to the West, where he
> immediately became a multi-millionaire and retired to his huge estate
> in Vermont.
It is where and when I go "Baltic": you seems do not understand what it
means to be thrown out of your country - let me emphasize - to be thrown
like a dirty napkin to a garbage bin.
That is why you do not understand the pain and anger. You are an
American, not an immigrant.
An immigrant has to compose himself at expense of great effort to
remember who you really are, in some sense you feel naked among wolves.
This country US of A made its best to make me feel as/at HOME, it is the
immigrant very friendly, I am grateful, but I still sometimes switch
unconsciously language and cliches and I still boil at Russia for been
thrown out.
So don't count $$$ in Solzhenitsyn account, count how many Russian lives
he saved by his days fighting in Soviet Army facing Nazis. Money is
important to live on but not in the end of the day. Id on't agree with
what he thought is right for Russia but that is irrelevant - I respect
him for speaking out loudly while just out of Gulag with a clear view of
coming back there.
VM.
Terry Cross
<ostap_bender_1...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 21, 5:12 pm, Terry Cross <tcros...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 21, 4:23 pm, Eris <vith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 21, 1:29 pm, Terry Cross <tcros...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 21, 7:10 am, Pombolo <int...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
>
> > > > Desperate for a change of subject, are "we?"
>
> > > > TCross
>
> > > No, all Russians of that era were educated in Seminaries, where they
> > > were full of the clergy seminal fluids. So where did they learn these
> > > 31 tortures? Sister Mary Beth I would imagine.
>
> > As we learn now, Stalin was an Atheist from age 13.
>
> Going to a seminary at the age of 16 is surely a weird way to express
> atheism...
The life of a person age 16 is often an "expression" of the parent,
not of the child. Such was the case in Stalin's schooling.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
> At ten, he began attending church school... At sixteen, he received a
> scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary
>
> http://www.visualstatistics.net/Catastrophe/Stalin%20Biography/Stalin....
Eris
You speak with such authority, were you one of Stalin's. All of the
this atheist bullshit seems to come from the Chick ministries and
others like them. Any credible sources from Mother Russian? Any quotes
from Khrushchev or his other communist detractors.
Whether or not Stalin was an atheist, or did all of these horrible
things solely because he was an atheist is immaterial, there still is
no God and never was. There were plenty of Christians in leadership
positions that were assholes.
Do you have any basis for trying to paint all atheist with the same
brush, the last throes of someone who is watching their religion
decline 96 percent in the 1990's to 85 percent today. Looks like
science and society are making religion obsolete, relegating it to the
waste bin of history.
Are you pleased with Sturmbannführer Ratzingers as pope?
Next time you see him give him a snappy salute and shout Blut und Ehre!
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
wrote:
> Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 21, 4:32 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> >> On Nov 21, 12:02 pm, Michael Grosberg <grosberg.mich...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >>> And to be honest, even
> >>> communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a paranoid sociopath.
> >> If that were true, after Khruschev succeeded Stalin, the crimes of
> >> Stalin would have been made *public*, not simply discussed in a secret
> >> speech, and the political system of Russia would have been reformed to
> >> have free multi-party elections and a free press, to make sure that no
> >> one like Stalin could ever gain power again.
>
> >> Instead, under Communism, but after Stalin, people who frankly
> >> condemned Stalin, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were persecuted.
>
> > OK, I 'll bite. So, you chose Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as your example
> > of the Soviet post-Stalinist "persecutions". So, what exactly was done
> > to him? Oh, he was expelled from the USSR to the West, where he
> > immediately became a multi-millionaire and retired to his huge estate
> > in Vermont.
>
> It is where and when I go "Baltic": you seems do not understand what it
> means to be thrown out of your country - let me emphasize - to be thrown
> like a dirty napkin to a garbage bin.
> That is why you do not understand the pain and anger. You are an
> American, not an immigrant.
>
Vlad, what are you talking about? It's me, Ostap aka Vkarlamov. You
and I have been talking to each other for 5 years now on a daily
basis. You know very well that I **am** an emigrant. In fact, my best
friend was a close relative of Solzhenitsyn's wife and I had read
Archipelag GULAG before it was published. My parents were dissidents.
So I know very well what it feels like to lose one's homeland. I don't
see why my own longing for the Moscow that I had lost was any less
painful than Solzhenitsyn's.
When Solzhenitsyn was exiled, my parents and I and all our friends
were outraged and horrified. But looking at it from the point of view
of a big picture, his exile was hardly comparable in its
"horribleness" to the deaths and "labour campness" of millions of
innocent civilians under Stalin. Solzhenitsyn himself spent many years
in Stalin's camps. So, this exile is peanuts compared to that.
As I said, Solzhenitsyn immediately became a millionaire. In fact,
just a few years later, he was the main invited speaker at my college
graduation. We were all excited: this was the beginning our adult
lives! Our parents were there and all proud of us. Then came
Solzhenitsyn to the podium. He barely greeted us. He didn't look at
us. He didn't even look up. He just took out a piece of paper and,
like Brezhnev, stated reading it out loud. He simply told us that the
Communist system is militarily superior to the democratic system,
because it can mobilize resources better. Thus, he told us htat in a
few years we all will be living under the totalitarian Communist rule.
The only solution, in his view, was for the West to immediately turn
to the totalitarian system a la Middle Ages. In fact, he exalted the
pre-renaissance Middle Ages as the ideal height of human development,
and said that ever since Renaissance, Europe has been decaying. You
know, the stuff similar to what BM is saying these days in our group.
He then finished and left without saying goodbye or even looking at us
once. It didn't didn't even for a second occur to him that there was
an important event in the lives of thousands of young people going on.
All he cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his
speech would become the front page news all over the World:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
A World Split Apart
Text of Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day
Afternoon Exercises
>
> An immigrant has to compose himself at expense of great effort to
> remember who you really are, in some sense you feel naked among wolves.
> This country US of A made its best to make me feel as/at HOME, it is the
> immigrant very friendly, I am grateful, but I still sometimes switch
> unconsciously language and cliches and I still boil at Russia for been
> thrown out.
>
So did I. But I don't see myself as a martyr.
>
> So don't count $$$ in Solzhenitsyn account, count how many Russian lives
> he saved by his days fighting in Soviet Army facing Nazis. Money is
> important to live on but not in the end of the day. Id on't agree with
> what he thought is right for Russia but that is irrelevant - I respect
> him for speaking out loudly while just out of Gulag with a clear view of
> coming back there.
>
I respect him too, but when I think of him being persecuted, i think
of his GULAG days, not of his Vermont estate days.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
> On Nov 22, 2:26 am, "Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr."
>
>
>
> <ostap_bender_1...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > On Nov 21, 5:12 pm, Terry Cross <tcros...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 21, 4:23 pm, Eris <vith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 21, 1:29 pm, Terry Cross <tcros...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Nov 21, 7:10 am, Pombolo <int...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > Can we now expect 31 torture methods used by the Christian Inquisition?
>
> > > > > Desperate for a change of subject, are "we?"
>
> > > > > TCross
>
> > > > No, all Russians of that era were educated in Seminaries, where they
> > > > were full of the clergy seminal fluids. So where did they learn these
> > > > 31 tortures? Sister Mary Beth I would imagine.
>
> > > As we learn now, Stalin was an Atheist from age 13.
>
> > Going to a seminary at the age of 16 is surely a weird way to express
> > atheism...
>
> The life of a person age 16 is often an "expression" of the parent,
> not of the child. Such was the case in Stalin's schooling.
>
That's true. But it is also pretty clear that his becoming a
revolutionary was at least partially due to his rebellion against the
totalitarianism of the religious schools that his mother made him
attend.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Here is another thought, Vlad. When a normal person is exiled, he does
miss his home a lot. What does he miss? His friends. The ability to
talk in his native tongue. The warmth of being with people from the
same culture. That's why Russian emigrants formed friendship circles
among themselves. In my parents' circle in Boston, there were also
some major dissidents like Korzhavin, Esenin-Volpin. Later, when I was
at Stanford, our circle included dissidents like Bukovskiy, Yarym-
Agaev, Gudava, etc. But Solzhenitsyn stayed away from everybody. Not
once did he even acknowledge the existence of any other exilees and
refugees from Russia. He didn't need Russian friends. He was a recluse
and viewed all others with disdain and a sense of superiority. So, how
was the fact that he was not living in Russia any longer affect him?
he was a recluse there, he was a recluse here. He certainly didn't
miss the Russian human angle. So what exactly did he miss about living
in Russia? How was his life in Vermont any different from his life in
Moscow? What did he have in Moscow that he didn't have in Vermont?
The best description of Solzhenitsyn, his philosophy and his life in
Vermont can be found in the famous novel "Moscow 2042" by the great
Vladimir Voinovich (also an exilee):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_2042
Moscow 2042 is a 1986 novel (translated from Russian 1987) by Vladimir
Voinovich [1]. In this book, the alter ego of the author travels to
the future, where he sees how communism has been built up in Moscow:
at first, it seems the government has actually been successful in
doing so. But slowly it becomes clear that it is not really a utopia
after all. The Russian author Kartsev, living in Munich in 1982 (just
like Voinovich himself), time travels to the Moscow of 2042. After the
"Great August Revolution", the new leader referred to as
"Genialissimus" has changed the Soviet Union... up to a certain
point.... The situation finally gets so desperate that people throw
themselves in the arms of the "liberator", a fellow dissident writer
and (kind of) friend of Kartsev, the extreme Slavophile Sim Karnavalov
(apparently inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), who enters Moscow on
a white horse and proclaims himself Tsar Serafim the First. Thus,
communism is regressed back into feudal autocracy. This novel is
considered[1] to be a masterpiece of anti-utopian satire.
William December Starr
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> said:
> Michael Grosberg <grosberg.mich...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And to be honest, even communism isn't to blame, Stalin was a
>> paranoid sociopath.
>
> If that were true, after Khruschev succeeded Stalin, the crimes of
> Stalin would have been made *public*, not simply discussed in a
> secret speech, and the political system of Russia would have been
> reformed to have free multi-party elections and a free press, to
> make sure that no one like Stalin could ever gain power again.
Why?
A system of government can be both (a) pretty damn awful and (b)
perpetuated for the most part by the people who inherit it from its
creator<1> without being communist, after all.
*1: Yes, I know, Stalin didn't actually _create_ the hell; he
just turned it up to eleven.
-- wds
T Guy
> http://www.visualstatistics.net/Catastrophe/Stalin%20Biography/Stalin....
> In 1893, Stalin won a scholarship which allowed him to attend the
> Tiflis Theological Seminary. He enrolled in the seminary because his
> mother was deeply religious and wanted him to be a priest in the
> Orthodox Church. The seminary placed harsh restrictions on what
> students were and were not allowed to do. Some students compared the
> life in the Tiflis Theological Seminary to a life in prison or in the
> army barracks. They were forbidden to read newspapers and most non-
> religious books. The punishment for doing so was typically a prolonged
> solitary detention. Stalin was repeatedly caught and punished for
> reading banned books. To protest this censorship, Stalin joined a
> Marxist study group which provided him with access to the reading
> material banned in the seminary.
(T Guy):
In summary: Stalin became disillusioned with one religion so switched
to another.
It has just occurred to me that under his regime and its successors,
many made the reverse journey.
Which is the same journey if you call the religions 'A' and 'B.'
T Guy
The Black Monk
Okay, the picture is becoming clearer. You were personally offended
that the guy dared to ignore you and barely greeted you.
> He just took out a piece of paper and, like Brezhnev, stated reading it out loud.
Comparing Solzhenitsyn to Brezhnev?
It was a nice speech. It's too bad your injured sense of narcissism
prevented you from understanding that.
> He simply told us that the
> Communist system is militarily superior to the democratic system,
> because it can mobilize resources better. Thus, he told us htat in a
> few years we all will be living under the totalitarian Communist rule.
> The only solution, in his view, was for the West to immediately turn
> to the totalitarian system a la Middle Ages. In fact, he exalted the
> pre-renaissance Middle Ages as the ideal height of human development,
> and said that ever since Renaissance, Europe has been decaying. You
> know, the stuff similar to what BM is saying these days in our group.
> He then finished and left without saying goodbye or even looking at us
> once.
Poor offended Ostap.
Okay, now we know where your obsessions are coming from. You were
horribly offended 31 years go when Solzhenitsin dared to ignore a
person as important as yourself and your family. So horribly offended
that when 31 years later someone else presents arguments similar to
those of the one who hurt your ego so much 31 years ago, you lose all
sense of logic and start obsessing over analogies etc.
I guess the last week I've just been collatoral damage to the effects
of your enormous bruised ego. After all, the FIRST critical thing
your wrote about Solzhenitsyn's speech was "He barely greeted us. He
didn't look at us. He didn't even look up." And then you compared this
to a speech by Brezhnev (did you become an exile during his rule?).
BM
> It didn't didn't even for a second occur to him that there was
> an important event in the lives of thousands of young people going on.
> All he cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his
> speech would become the front page news all over the World:
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
What a horrible thing. He must have the been the first person ever to
use a college graduation speech to present a significant speech not
directly linked to the graduation.
> > > over the World.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Vladimir Makarenko
You are an immigrant but frankly - it reminds me how Cedrins got
offended when I called him an American. In doing so I express the simple
perception of mine - the result of subconscious pattern recognition. You
may say/think whatever but you ARE an American as an apple pie. If told
to shut up you will still at your own horror continue to talk. Not that
there is anything wrong with that (TM - Seinfeld).
I do not really understand how it is relevant? OK, let's assume he was a
nasty, etc person etc.
He didn't go to the West to make a buck, he never was after money.
Frankly I do think that he is overrated - as a writer and as a reporter
on Gulag. But you cannot take from him that he broke the wall at expense
of his own safety.
If the West wouldn't gave a penny he would still continue to do what he
was doing - fighting Soviets.
Let me repeat - I am not his fan, rather opposite, but he cannot be
accused of compromising his believes in pursuit of money.
VM.
William Smith
This has nothing to do with Stalin. He was an organizer of mass murder
but developing torture techniques was not among his deeds. The methods
used by NKVD were basically the same as used by Gestapo, there was even
collaboration between them. The Nazi regime was anything but atheist
though religionists want to declare it as such.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
> > few years we all will be living under the totalitarian Communist rule.
> > The only solution, in his view, was for the West to immediately turn
> > to the totalitarian system a la Middle Ages. In fact, he exalted the
> > pre-renaissance Middle Ages as the ideal height of human development,
> > and said that ever since Renaissance, Europe has been decaying. You
> > know, the stuff similar to what BM is saying these days in our group.
> > He then finished and left without saying goodbye or even looking at us
> > once.
>
> Poor offended Ostap.
>
> Okay, now we know where your obsessions are coming from. You were
> horribly offended 31 years go when Solzhenitsin dared to ignore a
> person as important as yourself and your family. So horribly offended
> that when 31 years later someone else presents arguments similar to
> those of the one who hurt your ego so much 31 years ago, you lose all
> sense of logic and start obsessing over analogies etc.
>
> I guess the last week I've just been collatoral damage to the effects
> of your enormous bruised ego.
>
A wonderful job of playing a shrink without a license, BM. I assure
you that of all my psychological hangups, Solzhenitsyn is not in the
top 10 000. In fact, I was one of the very few in the audience that
day who actually kinda enjoyed his speech. Right after it, we went to
see Amarcord for the first time and then had a great party. So, it was
a very nice day. In fact, I hardly ever recalled that speech until
now.
And as far as your drivel that the deaths of 95% of Indians were fully
justified by the Spanish introduction of the Baroque architecture to
the Americas goes - well, it is not in the top 1 000 000 of my hang-
ups.
The point I was making (which you couldn't understand) is that the
worst thing about exile/emigration is losing the human touch with
people from your culture. But Solzhenitsyn and his wife Svetlova were
people who didn't need any human contact (except maybe with their
children). His entire life was devoted to his writing (as he and his
wife thought that he alone knew what was good for Humankind).
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Yes, but don't forget that the apple pie is Eurasian. It is a
national dish in France, Russia and many other countries. The first
apple pie was baked in Kazakhstan: the birthplace of apples. People
also say "as American as motherhood". But that is also not quite
valid, because motherhood had been successfully practiced for millenia
in quite a few places outside of USA.
>
> If told
> to shut up you will still at your own horror continue to talk.
>
a) Why "horror"?
b) Why is this an American trait? Try telling Zhirinovsky or
Novodvorskaya to shut up and see what reaction you'll get.
c) I was a loudmouth rebel from childhood and never kept my opinions
to myself.
Correct.
>
> Frankly I do think that he is overrated - as a writer and as a reporter
> on Gulag.
>
>
> But you cannot take from him that he broke the wall at expense
> of his own safety.
>
Correct.
>
> If the West wouldn't gave a penny he would still continue to do what he
> was doing - fighting Soviets.
>
Correct.
>
> Let me repeat - I am not his fan, rather opposite, but he cannot be
> accused of compromising his believes in pursuit of money.
>
Correct, but that was not my point. My point is that his exile was not
as much of a horrible persecution as Stalin's purges and his murder of
millions of innocent civilians. In fact, nothing done in USSR after
Stalin's death can be even compared to Stalin's crimes.
The Black Monk
Your backpedaling and excuses dion't make up for what you wrote,
sorry:
"As I said, Solzhenitsyn immediately became a millionaire. In fact,
just a few years later, he was the main invited speaker at my college
graduation. We were all excited: this was the beginning our adult
lives! Our parents were there and all proud of us. Then came
Solzhenitsyn to the podium. He barely greeted us. He didn't look at
us. He didn't even look up. He just took out a piece of paper and,
like Brezhnev, stated reading it out loud. He simply told us that
the
Communist system is militarily superior to the democratic system,
because it can mobilize resources better. Thus, he told us htat in a
few years we all will be living under the totalitarian Communist
rule.
The only solution, in his view, was for the West to immediately turn
to the totalitarian system a la Middle Ages. In fact, he exalted the
pre-renaissance Middle Ages as the ideal height of human development,
and said that ever since Renaissance, Europe has been decaying. You
know, the stuff similar to what BM is saying these days in our group.
He then finished and left without saying goodbye or even looking at
us
once. It didn't didn't even for a second occur to him that there was
an important event in the lives of thousands of young people going
on.
All he cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his
speech would become the front page news all over the World..."
You were all excited! Your parents were proud of you! And: "Then came
Solzhenitsyn to the podium. He barely greeted us. He didn't look at
us. He didn't even look up. He just took out a piece of paper and,
like Brezhnev, stated reading it out loud...It didn't didn't even for
a second occur to him that there was an important event in the lives
of thousands of young people going on. All he cared about was himself
and the fact that the next day, his speech would become the front page
news all over the World..."
What an awful crime, not paying enough attention to Ostap and instead
giving a significant speech that would become front page news all
around the world. Rather than appreciate the fact that you were
fortunate enough to have been present, you were outraged that he
didn't pay attention to you (reflected in your comparison of him to
Brezhnev, your family's persecutor). Outraged enough that although you
claim not to have thought about it, here it comes out with your
visceral anger, 31 years later.
What sad, bitter little man you present yourself as now.
And I do not doubt that among your "psychological hangups",
"Solzhenitsyn is not in the top 10 000." You are honest there, at
least.
BM
Vladimir Makarenko
I trimmed...
>>>> It is where and when I go "Baltic": you seems do not understand what it
>>>> means to be thrown out of your country - let me emphasize - to be thrown
>>>> like a dirty napkin to a garbage bin.
>>>> That is why you do not understand the pain and anger. You are an
>>>> American, not an immigrant.
>>> Vlad, what are you talking about? It's me, Ostap aka Vkarlamov. You
>>> and I have been talking to each other for 5 years now on a daily
>>> basis. You know very well that I **am** an emigrant.
>> You are an immigrant but frankly - it reminds me how Cedrins got
>> offended when I called him an American. In doing so I express the simple
>> perception of mine - the result of subconscious pattern recognition. You
>> may say/think whatever but you ARE an American as an apple pie.
>>
>
> Yes, but don't forget that the apple pie is Eurasian. It is a
> national dish in France, Russia and many other countries. The first
> apple pie was baked in Kazakhstan: the birthplace of apples. People
> also say "as American as motherhood". But that is also not quite
> valid, because motherhood had been successfully practiced for millenia
> in quite a few places outside of USA.
Here we go: as I said - an American. If put at gun point you will shut
for a second only a second later to demand a lwayer and a phone call.
>
>> If told
>> to shut up you will still at your own horror continue to talk.
>>
>
> a) Why "horror"?
One thing I learned about America - you put a nuke in front of them and
tell them "do not touch". Terrified the first thing they will do - they
will touch it.
Children.
>
> b) Why is this an American trait? Try telling Zhirinovsky or
> Novodvorskaya to shut up and see what reaction you'll get.
These two individuals are mentally disturbed. Therefore not to be counted.
>
> c) I was a loudmouth rebel from childhood and never kept my opinions
> to myself.
Your opinions are welcome.
There is a short sci-fi story which I remember from childhood: "Srok
avansom". I found it and have somewhere on hard drive.
He served for every single word he wrote later.
VM.
Terry Cross
On the contrary, the observation is right on. If Solzhenitsyn had no
interest in the people he was addressing, his speech was a fraud.
Only the most blighted character would be so devoid of manners and
interest in others.
But there is one possible explanation: Maybe the man is shy beyond
reason or frozen with stage fright. Such seemed to be the case with
Mose Allison, who could not face his listeners in the early days of
his performances.
But the content of his speech as recorded here is staggering.
Staggering. And miserably wrong, too.
Interesting that you would attack Ostap for this slice of personal
experience. Is Solzhenitsyn one of your heroes?
TCross
The Black Monk
According to Ostap, who admitted that he greeted them (but barely did
so). Those are the only facts we know. The other stuff is what
Ostap's guesses about what Solzhenytsyn was thinking: "It didn't
didn't even for a second occur to him that there was an important
event in the lives of thousands of young people going on. All he cared
about was himself and the fact that the next day, his speech would
become the front page news all over the World..."
Since Ostap is not a mind reader his speculations about what
Solzhenytsin was thinking before during and after his speech says more
about Ostap than it does about Solzhenitsyn.
> But there is one possible explanation: Maybe the man is shy beyond
> reason or frozen with stage fright. Such seemed to be the case with
> Mose Allison, who could not face his listeners in the early days of
> his performances.
>
> But the content of his speech as recorded here is staggering.
> Staggering. And miserably wrong, too.
Could you explain, please?
> Interesting that you would attack Ostap for this slice of personal
> experience. Is Solzhenitsyn one of your heroes?
Absolutely.
regards,
BM
> TCross- Hide quoted text -
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Have you noticed that you have just composed a long dissertation
psychoanalysing every word of my post about Solzhi? While I appreciate
this excruciating attention, I find it strange. Nor do I have the time
to read it.
>
>
> > > After all, the FIRST critical thing
> > > your wrote about Solzhenitsyn's speech was "He barely greeted us. He
> > > didn't look at us. He didn't even look up." And then you compared this
> > > to a speech by Brezhnev (did you become an exile during his rule?).
>
> > > BM
>
> > > > It didn't didn't even for a second occur to him that there was
> > > > an important event in the lives of thousands of young people going on.
> > > > All he cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his
> > > > speech would become the front page news all over the World:
>
> > > >http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
>
> > > What a horrible thing. He must have the been the first person ever to
> > > use a college graduation speech to present a significant speech not
> > > directly linked to the graduation.
>
> > > > A World Split Apart
> > > > Text of Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day
> > > > Afternoon Exercises
>
> > > > > An immigrant has to compose himself at expense of great effort to
> > > > > remember who you really are, in some sense you feel naked among wolves.
> > > > > This country US of A made its best to make me feel as/at HOME, it is the
> > > > > immigrant very friendly, I am grateful, but I still sometimes switch
> > > > > unconsciously language and cliches and I still boil at Russia for
>
> ...
>
> read more »
The Black Monk
A couple of paragraphs which contain much less writing than your many
posts devoted to your Nazi obsession.
> While I appreciate
> this excruciating attention, I find it strange. Nor do I have the time
> to read it.
Yes, we know what you are busy devoting your energy to, instead.
BM
>
>
>
>
> > > > After all, the FIRST critical thing
> > > > your wrote about Solzhenitsyn's speech was "He barely greeted us. He
> > > > didn't look at us. He didn't even look up." And then you compared this
> > > > to a speech by Brezhnev (did you become an exile during his rule?).
>
> > > > BM
>
> > > > > It didn't didn't even for a second occur to him that there was
> > > > > an important event in the lives of thousands of young people going on.
> > > > > All he cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his
> > > > > speech would become the front page news all over the World:
>
> > > > >http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
>
> > > > What a horrible thing. He must have the been the first person ever to
> > > > use a college graduation
>
> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
My "Nazi obsession"? Would you care to explain and substantiate this
accusation?
Who wrote these, if not you, long before I even joined your discussion
on Nazism and atheism:
>
> Napoleon was the early 19th-century protoype of Hitler
>
> The profanation of man hadn't gone far enough yet; unlike
> Hitler he did not rely on Science and draw the conclusions.
>
>
> Good for you. So Hitler was
> the legitimate ruler of Germany, according to your logic
>
>
> It's an atheist website. What next, a Nazi website to get info about
> Jews?
>
>
> While some theists (Stalin, Pol Pot) are comprable to Nazis,
> the nature of the comparison in the case above was
> due to the factt hat
> atheists are anti-religion, just as Nazis are anti-Jewish.
>
> So, relying on an atheistic website for info on the
> Catholic Church and its role in society is like relying
> on a Nazi website for info about Jews and their role in society.
>
>
> Nazis felt that their views were scientific too.
> I believe their term was "applied biology."
>
>
> Apparently you consider the word Nazi to be a Holy Word
> such as Jehovah among Orthodox Jews, never to be
> mentioned.
>
>
> We all have an image in our minds of the role of scientists
> in Nazi Germany:
>
>
> What was also not generally appreciated is that Nazi-ism
> was very attractive to physicians and scientists.
>
>
> The Nazi thing was the least obscure and immediately
> recognizable analogy.
>
The Black Monk
There you go again, I mention the word once and you produce an entire
list.
BM
Terry Cross
I understood that to be Ostap's immediate observations of the man's
manner. Of course he could not know what Solzhenytsyn was thinking
and I did not presume he could, though that is the literal meaning of
the words.
This next part is either true or it is not, and this is the real
substance of the statement for me:
> > > > > > The only solution, in his view, was for the West to immediately turn
> > > > > > to the totalitarian system a la Middle Ages. In fact, he exalted the
> > > > > > pre-renaissance Middle Ages as the ideal height of human development,
> > > > > > and said that ever since Renaissance, Europe has been decaying.
If that is indeed the truth, Solzhenytsyn and I have some genuine
problems.
TCross
The Black Monk
That is Ostap simply being dishonest as usual.
Here is what Solzhenitsyn actually said about that:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the
West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have
there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It
does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with
its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological
progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of
weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of
human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing
Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance
and found its political expression from the period of the
Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science
and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy:
the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force
above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen
as the center of everything that exists.
The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable
historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion,
becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature
in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon
the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and
unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us
its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor
did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth.
It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship
man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and
accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and
characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the
area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did
not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which
in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not
in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a
number of new ones.
However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of
its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is
God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual
conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious
responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years.
Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite
impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless
freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims.
Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere
in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of
Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice.
State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic.
The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even
excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew
dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish
aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final
dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a
political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of
Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the
Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as
late as in the Nineteenth Century.
------------
regards,
BM
>
> TCross
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
This list is of examples of **your** preoccupation with Nazis. And it
is hardly "entire". it is just a sampling.
You remind me of an old Russian joke:
A man comes to a psychiatrist and complains:
- Doctor, I have a problem: everything I see reminds me of sex.
The doctor shows takes out his Rorschach kit and shows him a picture
of a circle.
- What does this remind you of?
- Woman's tit.
- How about this square?
- Four people engaged in oral sex.
The doctor then shows him a picture of two pentagons. The patient
looks at the doctor with a real anger and disgust:
- Doctor, you are a sick pervert!
It's all in your mind, BM. You accuse others of your own perversions
as soon as they pay attention to them.
Terry Cross
OK, thanks.
I understand why Solzhenitsyn became a hero to the Reaganite
conservatives, now. He spoke their language.
I disagree with this statement, but only partially. The "moral
poverty" of the present age is somewhat as he says it is, though it is
not an intoxication with liberty as he implies. The moral wealth of
earlier ages is a total myth.
As depressing as it may be, humankind has never been a sweet sweet
creature, not in any age nor clime. From the crushing feudalism of
the Middle Ages, the internecine wars and colonialist atrocities of
the Renaissance, through the indentured servitude and slavery of the
Industrial Revolution, and into our own terrible tyrannies, wars,
massacres and atrocities of the Twentieth Century, not much changes.
The presence or absence of religion does not much difference make.
The presence or absence of the doctrines of liberty are likewise of
little effect. Atheism, still promoted as the cure-all for
civilization, was proven to be the most terrible of all poisons.
The belief in an eschatology is tempting, but fatuous. We are neither
in descent from a Golden Age into barbarism as Solzhenitsyn says, nor
ascending from barbarism to paradise as others would preach. Both
myths are mere smoke-dreams from an opium pipe. We are merely
barbarians with flush toilets and cell phones.
TCross
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Who promotes atheism as "the cure-all for civilization"? As you said,
atheism's effects on our civilisation's civility are neutral: neither
good nor bad.
But overall: a good article. Thanks.
>
> was proven to be the most terrible of all poisons.
>
> The belief in an eschatology is tempting, but fatuous. We are neither
> in descent from a Golden Age into barbarism as Solzhenitsyn says, nor
> ascending from barbarism to paradise as others would preach. Both
> myths are mere smoke-dreams from an opium pipe. We are merely
> barbarians with flush toilets and cell phones.
>
Well, there is a huge negative correlation between prosperity and
hostility. For example, the Nazi regime came to power because of the
horrible economic conditions in Germany after WWI and the Great
Depressions, and the Bolsheviks came to power because of the
horrible conditions in Russia during WWI .
The Black Monk
Another essay in response to a single sentance involving your magic
word.
BM
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
As much as I enjoy your insults, I have had enough. I am sorry I had
posted my opinion about Solzhintsyn where you could see it and thus
launch your ad hominem attack on me in the first place .
Terry Cross
On Nov 25, 5:41 pm, "Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr."
And the American war on the world now is the result of lack of --?
The Americans used napalm in Viet Nam because of the lack of -- ? The
British bombed German cities because of the lack of -- ?
I don't think so.
TCross
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Come on. "Negative correlation: doesn't mean "always" or "never". It
means that when peoples are well-fed, they are less likely to fight
brutal wars. And the British bombed German cities because the Germans
had previously bombed British cities, which in turn happened because
Germans were hungry and miserable in the 1920s and early 30s.
And won't the American aggressions all over the World become more
brutal and desperate if or when the USA economy becomes horrible? If
USA is willing to destroy entire countries to feed its thirst for oil,
wait til USA's need for cheap oil becomes even more desperate.
William December Starr
The Black Monk <ch....@hotmail.com> said:
> You were all excited! Your parents were proud of you! And: "Then
> came Solzhenitsyn to the podium. He barely greeted us. He didn't
> look at us. He didn't even look up. He just took out a piece of
> paper and, like Brezhnev, stated reading it out loud...It didn't
> didn't even for a second occur to him that there was an important
> event in the lives of thousands of young people going on. All he
> cared about was himself and the fact that the next day, his speech
> would become the front page news all over the World..."
>
> What an awful crime, not paying enough attention to Ostap and
> instead giving a significant speech that would become front page
> news all around the world. Rather than appreciate the fact that
> you were fortunate enough to have been present, you were outraged
> that he didn't pay attention to you (reflected in your comparison
> of him to Brezhnev, your family's persecutor). Outraged enough
> that although you claim not to have thought about it, here it
> comes out with your visceral anger, 31 years later.
>
> What sad, bitter little man you present yourself as now.
I probably shouldn't even ask this, but why are you being such a
jerk?
-- wds