Why aren't the media interested in the 'hidden history of evil'...
Saturday, May 15, 2010 at 20:07 Written about in the current number of City Journal by Claire Berlinski? the principal subjects of her essay have hundreds and thousands of documents connected with the collapse of the USSR and its communist regime but Western publishers are evidently not much interested.
... Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.
Perhaps after Mr Obama is retired to private life, those willing to invest the funds in publishing all of the texts Miss Berlinski discusses will come forward.
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