The Bloodlands for Snyder include Poland and Ukraine, much of eastern Europe between Berlin and Moscow. In any case all of our forefathers come directly out of that area, and it is pure chance or providence that our parents and grandparents were not part of that 14 million statistic. An excerpt from the book is here. (I won't buy the book. Too many other books waiting to be read.)
Missing from the excerpt, but very much a part of the interview are two trains of thought I found very interesting. The one has to do with both Hitler and Stalin. Snyder tries to understand, not only why Hitler and Stalin would order the execution of millions of people, but also why ordinary soldiers could repeatedly shoot prisoners in the back of the head, or day after day watch people in their care starve to death. You may recall that it was my asking a similar question that got this blog going in the first place. I'm not sure Snyder is right, but his answer is worth considering.
The other train of thought I got out of this was:
Marxism, as the Bolsheviks understood it, was a scientific theory about the future – a way to understand history that allowed you to predict the future [Marx said a progression from subsistence to capitalism to socialism was inevitable]. The future was glorious, the future was socialist, the future was prosperous and just for everyone. And the future was much better than the past and the present. That was a very attractive vision, and many peole very strongly believed in it for a very long time [We encountered such believers in Ethiopia, but that is another story].It made the point for me, again, how terribly important democracy is. Germany was democratic, and somehow it was allowed to become tyrannical under Hitler. Russia, of course never was. I thank God that we have leaders on both, the Right and the Left, who are more committed to democracy than their particular political ideology. Once the critical mass on either of the extremes is such that belief in their ideology is more important than democracy, heaven help us.
Lenin’s innovation then was that if you know what history is going to bring anyway, why wait for it. Why should backward, agrarian Russia wait for capitalism, and then much later have socialism? Why can we not push history forward? Since we scientists of history know what’s coming, why not just press “fast forward?”
Stalin then says 1) there is a science of history that we Marxists understand, and 2) we Leninists believe that we can make history go faster, and 3) I Stalin am now in the tyrannical position, that I alone decide, what serves the future and what does not serve the future. Then you can say “these deaths were sacrifices. These people didn’t belong in history, they were in the way. They represented some kind of reactionary backward past. They had to be removed. And their very removing is a sign that we are on our way to this great and glorious future.”
I saw this book a few weeks back and was tempted to buy it. So many places to take this post, I need to battle the temptation to go on many tangents.
ReplyDeleteAsk 90% of people under 60 today (ideally non-Mennonites given they understand the horrors of communism better than most) who killed more people, christian, muslim or atheist/secular regimes. I think with little doubt (at least in my experience) most would think atheist/secular regimes have done the least harm, and if we would simply rid the world of religion, we would eliminate most wars. Yet, in the 20th century, communism and nazism (two atheist regimes) killed order of magnitude more people than the rest combined throughout the history of the world.
Coincidence? I think not. There is no secular reason that human life is precious (judeo christian value system clearly teaches we are created in God's image). The God to Nazism and Communism is progress, and if people get in the way, they need to be disposed of. If there is no God, who is to say they are wrong? In fact, that is what the Nazis argued at the Nurenburg trials, that killing civilians in their system was not considered wrong. If there is no God, something above us, then its all just opinion, and I think their defense was totally logical.
A question I now ask everyone I interview (have for the past 6 months), is if your dog or a stranger were drowning, who would you save? About 50% say they would save their dog! These are university educated people that clearly do not value human life above animal life (yet ironically, most are not vegetarian).
This is why I fear that if we lose God, soon (either a few years or generations)we will see many more mass killings. Godless regimes can more easily shoot masses of innocent people, as there is no higher authority telling them its wrong.
So I largely agree with U.Eric's post, but I am less hopeful of the type of society a democracy will be, if we lose the judeo-christian God.
Not sure if this made the headlines in Canada or Germany, but i thought the following decision was chilling and relevant in light of your important comment that "we need leaders more committed to democracy than their ideology". The February 23 story is:
ReplyDelete"President Barack Obama has ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and woman, according to a statement Wednesday from Attorney General Eric Holder."
This act is unprecedented for a president to simply say an existing law is unconstitutional, and hence he will no longer uphold it. Yet, it was barely a headline story for more than a day which is frightening that we enable this kind of non-democratic action.
I read the excerpt + and most interesting book. I have the same problem stacks of book to read and many on the list. One to consider.
ReplyDeleteas you know nothing gets me more emotional than the subject of Stalin and Hitler and I am glad that new books are coming out for I fear many have no idea about Stalin and few really understand Nazi Germany, I too am still learning. I am beginning to think we do only b/c it is our story.
One book I started this year, and struggling to grasp, whew glad I did not attempt it in German is Ethics by Bonhoeffer. I want to share a quote by him that fits into the points that I agree with last paragraph U. Eric and Karl's comments.
"The new unity which the French Revolution brought to Europe -and what we are experiencing today is the crisis of this unity- is therefore western godlessness. It is totally different from the atheism of certain individual Greek, Indian, Chinese and western thinkers. It is not the theoretical denial of the existence of a God. It is itself a religion, a religion of hostility to God. ...It cannot be religious in essence. That is why to the human eye it is so hopelessly godless. Western godlessness ranges from the religion of Bolshevism to the midst of the Christian churches. In Germany especially, but also in the Anglo-Saxon countries it is a markedly Christian godlessness. In the form of all the possible Christianities, whether they are nationalist, socialist, rationalist or mystical,it turns against the living God of the Bible, against Christ. Its god is the New Man..
Since the French Revolution the west has come to be essentially hostile to the Church...
.. The American Revolution was almost contemporary with the French one, and politically the two were not connected, yet were profoundly different in character. The American democracy is founded upon the emancipated man but, quite on the contrary, upon the kingdom of God and the limitation of all earthly powers by the sovereignty of God. It is indeed significant when, in contrast to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, American historians can say that the federal constitution was written by men who were conscious of original sin and of the wickedness of the human heart. Earthly wielders of authority, and also the people, are directed into their proper bounds, and in due consideration of man's innate longing for power and of the fact that the power pertains only to God.
With these ideas, which derive from Calvinism, there is combined the essentially contrary idea which comes from the spiritualism of the Dissenters who took refuge in America, the idea that the kingdom of God on earth cannot be built by the authority of the state but only by the congregation of the faithful. The Church proclaims the principles of the social and political order, and the state makes available teh techinical means for putting them into effect. These two quite alien lines of thought converge in the demand for democracy, and it is enthusiastic spiritualism that becomes the determining factor in American thought.
This explains the remarkable fact that on the European continent is has never been possible to find a Christian basis for democracy, while in the Anglo-Saxon countries democracy and democracy alone is regarded as the Christian form of the state..." Bonhoeffer.
hmmm.. did not see anything on marriage act but will check if anything was written... we were consumed with Guttenberg here.. though this week keeping Gitmo open was mentioned on tv news.