Tuesday, February 28, 2006

My ode to Brezhnev. Leonid Brezhnev, I must confess that I miss you. While I was growing up, I sympathized with the Soviet side during the Cold War. And then I discovered Kronstadt and the Anarchist criticisms of Soviet communism (and Marcuse's critique), and I became disillusioned with the Soviet Union too. And you read about Stalin, but then you could say (at least back then) that the Soviet Union has changed. But I still never could really like the Soviet Union: did not like the rhetoric, and particularly resented the special supermarket that was reserved for members of the Politburo. I agree with the early Anarchist criticisms of the Soviet Union: that we can trace Stalin in Lenin (and some say and trace Lenin in Marx--of the latter I am less certain these days, perhaps because of ideological nostalgia in the Age of Bush--and Clinton). And I never liked Soviet foreign policy: how they pushed for Arab regonition of Israel, how they gave Arabs their worse weapons, how they misled the Arabs, but they also aided Arab countries, although those regimes sqandered aid, or utilized them for lousy policies (the Ba`th for example). And I look now: you see the UN: how it became a mere tool for US. There was a UN during the Cold War: neither the US nor the Soviet Union could get their way back then. And there was no Kofi Annan back then, and Hariri cult did not exist. If I only can bring back the Cold War, and I would if I can revive Brezhnev. Would that be insensitive to Russian people? Not really. I was reading the approval ratings of STALIN: that muse be due to their disillusionment with "democracy" and "capitalism". During the Cold War, Harvard economists could not exploit Russian economy for their own benefit and profit.