SIMPLE FACTS

What you refer to as "cold war rhetoric" I view as the simple facts. -- John Savard

"That's your mistake right there. Judgements derived from false
premises will also be false. -- Karpov apologist David Kane

Phil Innes makes an interesting point about what
occurs today as opposed to Soviet times. One notes,
though, that the Red Square demonstration in August
1968 (if memory serves, at Lobnoye Mesto, but I could
be wrong),against the Soviet attack on Czechoslovakia
was the first known demonstration of the kind in
decades, just as the great coal miner strikes in the
summer of 1989 were the first major labor actions in
over 60 years.

My point re the Czech demonstration is that
virtually no one for more than a half century imagined
that such a gesture could ever have substantive
meaning. The very idea of demonstrating disappeared
for more than a generation.

And then, one day, Pavel Litvinov (the son of
Maxim Litvinov, Stalin's foreign minister during the
phony Collective Security years of the 1930s) Larisa
Bogoraz, poetess Natalya Gorbanevskaya (later to be
tortured brutally in Soviet mental asylums) and three
or four others unfurled banners and sat down, waiting
for what would come.

What would come came within minutes, but it did
not include summary execution of the demonstrators and
their families. Instead a trial, long sentences that
were written beforehand and so on.

But the world took note that if the Soviet state
did not exactly blink and certainly did not wink, it
nodded. Nothing would be the same thereafter. Ut
was the beginning of the celebrated dissident movement.

A Spassky was on the side of those people in Red
Square. A Karpov, whatever his interior convictions,
had no doubt that as a Caissic godyonesh, to employ
Korchnoi's favorite word for the man, he was a
Brezhnev boyo.

A fascinating historical footnote is provided by
Bertram Wolfe re Maxim Litvinov, who probably died
a natural death, though a Jew and likely in bad odor
with Stalin after he was dropped as foreign minister
in favor of Molotov in preparation for signing the
Non-Aggression Pact with Germany on August 23(?),
1937. Years later, Litvinov had a rare private moment
in the Kremlin with CBS news correspondent Richard
Hottelot. Litvinov, who was near the peak of the
Soviet hierarchy, proceeded to beg Hottelot to tell
American leaders that Stalin was intent on conquering
Europe and the world.

For Greg Kennedy's edification, Bertram Wolfe is
the author of "Three Who Made a Revolution" which is
still in print more than a half century after it first
appeared. It is still the best single volume history
of the lives of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. The book
is one of those that I would have Greg read, if he
were of a mind to undertake serious independent study.
Which, alas, he is not and, by this point in his life is
is likely never to be.

Yours, Larry Parr



Chess One wrote:
"David Kane" wrote in message
...

"help bot" wrote in message
...
Mr. Kane's point was that (he says) the Soviets'
*routine practice* was to deny such emigration
requests as those by family members of defector
Victor Kortchnoi. Now, while I don't know about
such things, I do know that Mr. Parr studiously
avoided addressing that issue, instead doing
another of his ad hominem dances, with both feet
flying this way and that. It must be concluded then
that Mr. Kane struck a nerve.


The bigger point really was that no rational person
could expect a chessplayer to influence the
emigration policies of the Soviet government.

No rational person would credit any objective sense whatever to Soviet
Government.

We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.
- Viktor Chernomyrdin,
- Russian prime minister, 1992-1998.

But David Kane might appreciate the particular sensitivity displayed by all
totalitarian regimes to the // appearance // of things, in contradistinction
to the difficulty of reporting what actually goes on in closed societies,
which is to contrast the appearance with the practice. If Mr. Parr's
commentary related to either individual pressure put on chess players, or to
other individuals whose intelligence and ability was valued by the Soviet
State, then his is /not/ an exceptional point of view.

In chess one would only have to read Boris Gulko's testimony to understand
that specifically; not only was the Russian champion duffed-up by KGB but
his wife was also beaten.

It is getting that news out of the country which is the difficult bit - not
just the anecdote, but records establishing its extent and probity.

Therefore while it is unusual to have then found such samizdat in the West,
almost all such records as Gulko's, each made independently of each other,
and necessarily without knowledge of each other; these records all accord
with each other.

I think to perhaps innocently blame the reporter for inventiveness, or some
such thing, is an attitude that is relieved by knowledge after even a little
study.

The Evans and Parrs of this world are simply
not capable of dealing with facts which get
in the way of their simplistic stories.

JUST ANOTHER MASSACRE

The stories are simple. They are often brutal, so brutal that it is hard to
believe that, for example, even in the post-Soviet era one's own head of
state will appear on camera smiling and shaking hands with the perpetrators
of repression, and make 'simplistic' statements expressing their feelings
they could 'do business' with them.

On February 5, 2000, the mass murder of civilians took place during a
passport inspection by sub-units of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry
of the Interior of the Russian Federation in the village of Novye Aldy,
Zavodskoi District, Grozny. This was reported by;

- T. A. Murdalov
- Investigator for Especially Important Matters,
- Office of the North Caucasus Prosecutor General of the Russian
Federation.

Those refer to OMON units. The issue was not further investigated because of
jurisdictional 'problems' of troops from Petersburg and Ryazan, and in 2002
"it came quietly to rest." says Andrew Meier, who continued his report in
Black Earth with...

...Not long after the dead in Aldy were reburied for the final time,
Yuri Dyomin, Russia's chief military prosecutor, told an audience of Western
human rights advocates in Moscow that he regretted "the time I have wasted"
investigating reports of abuses "based on disinformation." He went on to
accuse Chechen refugees of spreading // skazki //, fairy tales.

This ended the affair for catch-phrase Western apologists of the Regime in
the post-Soviet era, since it was just another [unexplained] massacre,
despite contravening Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, on internal
conflicts.

And that Mr. Kane, I suggest to you is emphasis //post// Soviet era.
Those who reported things even earlier gained less attention in the West,
since for many people, such behaviors by a state were literally
'unbelievable.'

Phil Innes