- Feb 12, 2007
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A day late, but a poignant piece on the true meaning behind May Day - and a cautionary tale of what spreading the wealth around really means.
I just watched a documentary on Stalin which showed a old Ukrainian woman telling the story of the horrors her family faced when Stalin pushed them onto the collectives, stole their grain and sold it abroad to fund his industrial dreams.
She said that their house had the only nearby well and neighbors came there to fetch water. No one had any food. Everyone was starving.
Her mother had three children. The youngest was a boy around five. He had taken ill so they had put him in the warmest place, a bunk bed over the stove. The mother had nothing to feed her children save a single turnip. She boiled it up and divided it between the two oldest children. The youngest child, smelling the turnip from his bed over the stove ask for some. The woman refused. The child climbed down from his sick bed, crying, grabbing at her skirts and begging for just a bite of turnip. Seeing this, the neighbors told the woman to give the starving child just a bite of turnip.
“No,” she said, “I have to save the food for my healthy children.”
Hearing this, the boy sagged. He gave up begging and weeping bitterly, struggled back into his bed. He cried until he died the next day.
When a child dies slowly, such as from starvation, they often begin to make a particular rhythmic, low, mewing cry in their final hours. ...
(snip)
I will say but this: Stalin is long dead and communism and fascism are history’s dust, but the evil that birthed it all still haunts us, still pushes in on us in new guises with new rationales.
The killing arrogance of those who believe they have the knowledge to order entire societies, even the entire world, is ultimately what empowered Stalin to do what he did.
That arrogance has not abated. One need only glance at the news to see it. The intellectual descendants of the people who lectured us all about the virtues of Stalin’s regime back then, today lecture us about their own grandiose visions. They are every bit as certain in their intellectual and moral rectitude as were those who defended Stalin. If we risk letting them into power, we risk a Stalin reborn.
We must remain ever vigilant all of our days to fight against this evil that forever lurks in the core of our beings. We must all resist the urge to believe ourselves superior, to believe ourselves possessed of the one true knowledge, to believe ourselves entitled to sacrifice the living here and now for the sake of a utopia generations hence.
Should we fail, we should all pray to fate, physics or all the gods ever named that we quickly meet the peace of the grave rather than find ourselves in that brave woman’s shoes.
Chicago Boyz Blog Archive Happy May Day
I just watched a documentary on Stalin which showed a old Ukrainian woman telling the story of the horrors her family faced when Stalin pushed them onto the collectives, stole their grain and sold it abroad to fund his industrial dreams.
She said that their house had the only nearby well and neighbors came there to fetch water. No one had any food. Everyone was starving.
Her mother had three children. The youngest was a boy around five. He had taken ill so they had put him in the warmest place, a bunk bed over the stove. The mother had nothing to feed her children save a single turnip. She boiled it up and divided it between the two oldest children. The youngest child, smelling the turnip from his bed over the stove ask for some. The woman refused. The child climbed down from his sick bed, crying, grabbing at her skirts and begging for just a bite of turnip. Seeing this, the neighbors told the woman to give the starving child just a bite of turnip.
“No,” she said, “I have to save the food for my healthy children.”
Hearing this, the boy sagged. He gave up begging and weeping bitterly, struggled back into his bed. He cried until he died the next day.
When a child dies slowly, such as from starvation, they often begin to make a particular rhythmic, low, mewing cry in their final hours. ...
(snip)
I will say but this: Stalin is long dead and communism and fascism are history’s dust, but the evil that birthed it all still haunts us, still pushes in on us in new guises with new rationales.
The killing arrogance of those who believe they have the knowledge to order entire societies, even the entire world, is ultimately what empowered Stalin to do what he did.
That arrogance has not abated. One need only glance at the news to see it. The intellectual descendants of the people who lectured us all about the virtues of Stalin’s regime back then, today lecture us about their own grandiose visions. They are every bit as certain in their intellectual and moral rectitude as were those who defended Stalin. If we risk letting them into power, we risk a Stalin reborn.
We must remain ever vigilant all of our days to fight against this evil that forever lurks in the core of our beings. We must all resist the urge to believe ourselves superior, to believe ourselves possessed of the one true knowledge, to believe ourselves entitled to sacrifice the living here and now for the sake of a utopia generations hence.
Should we fail, we should all pray to fate, physics or all the gods ever named that we quickly meet the peace of the grave rather than find ourselves in that brave woman’s shoes.
Chicago Boyz Blog Archive Happy May Day
