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Breaking With Moscow

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Breaking With Moscow” by Arkady N. Shevchenko, published in 1985. In this wordy volume, whose language is slightly awkward in spots, the author recounted his life and what he did when his cognitive dissonance (which everyone experienced in the former USSR) reached the breaking point.

Born in 1930, the author did his doctoral thesis on disarmament, a trendy topic in the mid-1950’s. He began working at the Soviet Foreign Ministry in October 1956. There, office resources were in short supply. He had to wait more than six months (!) to get his own desk.

In 1958, in order to have a career, he was forced to join the Communist Party; in order to move up the political ladder, he was forced to spend countless hours in Party organization, and self-criticism meetings. Prior to getting an overseas assignment, he had to be vetted backwards and forwards.

Soviet Premier Khrushchev thought president JFK was weak after he witnessed the JFK administration’s failure to: oust Castro in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and stop the construction of the Berlin Wall. So Khrushchev thought he could secretly assemble ready-to-launch missiles in Cuba and the US would do nothing once they were discovered. But he was impressed when JFK finally got tough and ordered the missiles removed in October 1962.

Beginning in 1973, Shevchenko became the UN Under Secretary General for Political and Security Council Affairs. His employer-provided housing was cramped, as he and his wife had to share a three-bedroom suite with two other tenants on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Thirteen of the twenty comrades (whom he didn’t hire and over which he had no control) he supervised were either members of the GRU or the KGB.

The USSR’s government in Moscow required that every Soviet employee pay a kickback to it; it was also the ultimate authority on approving all of Shevchenko’s communications with UN ambassadors. Messages therefore got garbled through misunderstandings in a game of “telephone.”

Spring 1977 saw the Politburo cracking down on its diplomats’ palling around with Westerners. The Politburo imposed draconian rules on its foreign-policy employees in trying to keep them from becoming influenced by bourgeois values. For the umpteenth time, it proceeded to hysterically propagandize that foreigners were national-security risks (similar to the way American media company Fox has been doing for the past ten years!).

The bloated staff of Soviet bureaucrats at the UN consisted of overpaid noisemakers doing make-work, desperately clinging to their jobs, trying to feel important; skilled in ideological propagandizing. They knew nothing about worldwide affairs and troubles, or history. Their job was to further the USSR’s goal of world conquest, but their power was limited to the role of ceremonial messengers at social events. Sounds familiar.

In 1981, Premier Brezhnev theorized that all countries of the world would inevitably practice socialism. It is unclear at this point how much further the US government will go in taking financial control of its healthcare, education and housing services.

Since the mid-twentieth century, numerous American men and a few women and their families have received government-subsidized (socialist!) education, healthcare and some housing, because they have served in the military. But as there has been no military draft in the last fifty years, that number has dropped dramatically.

The Soviet bureaucrats dismissed as cliche, the kinds of crimes America’s president Richard Nixon committed. On a daily basis, they hushed up their own routine behaviors of ruling by fear and force, spying and corruption.

Andropov and Chernenko maintained the charade of allowing the old, sick Brezhnev to continue to serve as top leader of the USSR because they needed time to consolidate their power bases to win their respective power struggles.

Read the book to learn a whole lot more about Shevchenko’s adventures stumping for the USSR.

With My Rise Only – BONUS POST

“His method was to deliver at every opportunity a barrage of repetitious slogans and vilifications against all who were suspected of the slightest deviation from orthodoxy.”

-written by Arkady N. Shevchenko about Mikhail Suslov, Communist Information Bureau operative into the 1980’s

Apparently, the above quote can also apply to the current American president, Donald Trump, whose handlers’ AI software is singing the following on his behalf; ironically, through Fox’s opinion shows!

WITH MY RISE ONLY

sung to the tune of “For Your Eyes Only” with apologies to Sheena Easton, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

With my rise only, I make world peace.

With my rise only, the Dems’ fraud will cease.

I’ve SAVED the future, everything I’ve done is NEW.

America was hell, till I was elected by you.

With my rise only, only for you,

I do what no one else will do. America will stay free.

With my rise only, only for you.

My love of fighting for you is key.

Dems cause America’s bankruptcy.

Only by them. Only by them.

With my rise only, I meet all my goals.

You really know me. I root out all moles.

My second term’s still an open book.

There’ll be more great times.

Under the Democrats, there would be breadlines.

With my rise only, only for you,

I do what no one else will do. America will stay free.

With my rise only, only for you.

The bad guys who collide with me,

see the super hero side of me. Only for you.

With my rise only, only for you,

I do what no one else will do. America will stay free.

With my rise only, only for you.

***

Who’s the Commie, whose government owns the means of production, suppresses free speech and voting, and keeps his friends close and his enemies closer??

Further Readings – posts in this blog:

Shadows and Whispers, The Six Days of Yad-Mordecai, The Last Idealist [see ENDNOTE on the post’s bottom], Patriot Number One [see bullet points only], Ask a North Korean, Memoirs, Against the Grain

If you have the time to read tens of books, all of the books in the following categories are recommended: “History – Currently and Formerly Communist Countries” and “Politics – Systems”

The Fifties

The Book of the Week is “The Fifties” by David Halberstam, published in 1993. This slightly sloppily edited hodgepodge of a volume consisted of a compilation of the author’s journalism entries. As usual, there is nothing new under the sun. The decade was characterized by alpha males with hubris syndrome, egos pushing and shoving, in all areas of American life.

“He delighted in control of the political apparatus, and he started each day by meeting with a trusted aide from the secret police, who brought him up to date on gossip gathered from wiretaps.”

Actually, the above was written about Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista. For most of the 1950’s, he was the CIA’s friend. Until he wasn’t.

In connection with the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur exhibited “arrogance, foolishness, and vainglory… taking a small war that was already winding down and expanding it” to fight against Communist superpower China, so the war dragged on for two additional years; “he was to damage profoundly America’s relations with China…”

Matthew Ridgway helped save a few American soldiers’ lives by personally visiting all of them in South Korea to boost their morale, while MacArthur stayed in Tokyo, thinking of himself as king of the world. MacArthur thought it was Truman who was irrational. As is well known, about twenty years later, president Richard Nixon repaired America’s relationship with China, but prolonged the Vietnam War.

By the mid-1950’s, the evolution of the American labor movement had taken an ironic, hypocritical turn: Unions allowed Wall Street to invest their pension funds in the securities markets on their behalf.

In December 1955, the arrest of Rosa Parks was the last straw– prompting the Montgomery bus boycott. A bunch of factors came together, one thing led to another, spurring great political changes. Just a few included:

Parks was so emotionally tired of the oppression she and her fellow dark-skinned people suffered, she felt she had nothing to lose by rebelling.
Parks had friends in high places in the Civil Rights Movement.
Approximately three-quarters of Montgomery, Alabama public-bus riders were black, and of those, most were women who took buses across town to get to their jobs as servants in the white community.
The white community refused to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling.
The articulate Martin Luther King, Jr. became the public-relations leader of the Movement, which was nonviolent, and his religious crowd had more money than other groups in the black community.

The blacks outsmarted the whites in an end-run around taking public buses, by carpooling. Donations allowed the purchasing of new vehicles. White Montgomery officials had no clue about how fed up the blacks were with the conditions of apartheid, voter suppression, etc., so they didn’t know what to do when dissatisfaction reached critical mass.

In January 1956, police began arresting carpool drivers. The blacks shed their fears that they themselves would suffer retaliation for protesting, and owned their fighting-back as a point of pride. The Montgomery Advertiser newspaper was used as the local white politicians’ disinformation outlet. Nevertheless, after a while, the whole world was watching, as the boycott story spread like wildfire among hundreds of media outlets– mostly newspapers and TV stations.

The major influencers of the initial incident– Rosa Parks, MLK, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy– continued to behave in a mature manner, so the media sympathized with them. MLK Jr., remained a thorn in the side of the white community because he took a licking and kept on ticking. He was the recipient of a ton of hate mail, doxxing, death threats, fire-bombing of his residence, etc.

Anyway, another pivotal historical event occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Governor Orval Faubus refused to allow segregation of a high school there in order to ensure his reelection. The orgy of hatred he unleashed, taught Southern politicians– George Wallace especially, “how to manipulate the anger with the South, how to divide a state by class and race, and how to make the enemy seem to be the media.”

Just as legislation is a tool that can be used to spread hatred, technology is a tool that can be used for nefarious purposes, too.

“Do you get the funny sort of sense that, so far, at least, there are no human candidates in this campaign?”

The above was written by Dean Acheson, addressing Harry Truman, about the 1960 presidential race, packaged by consultants. JFK won because he had the nicer-looking TV image. Nowadays, the candidates can be replaced by AI software, created by consultants.

Read the book to learn much more about both disturbing and progressive, seminal historical events, and the people who made them happen.

I’ve Got Your Back – BONUS POST

Currently, this is what president Donald Trump’s handlers are singing on his behalf.

I’VE GOT YOUR BACK

sung to the tune of “I Want You Back” with apologies to the Estate of Michael Jackson, the Jackson Five, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

[whining]

Let me protect you now.

I have the White House to myself.

My messaging’s turning around.

Fox’s smears and lies always helped me, stand out in my crowd.

I gave my enemies the knockout punch when that was all it took.

Now’s the right time for me, to massage the history books.

Ooh, believe me, forget all my rants. I’ll show you I’m good.

Won’t you please help me stay, king of the world.

America, I must try, to let you know, let-you-know, believe me.

I’m still in-no-cent of everything.

I’ve got your back. I do now. I’ve got your back. Ooh believe me. I’ve got your back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve got your back. Don’t you worry.

Trying to win my base’s love was one long reckless fight.

I need to show the world, that I know wrong from right.

Only cream and SOB’s, rise to the top.

In my conquest for the world, I never, ever stop.

Let me protect-you now.

Ooh, believe me, forget all my rants. I’ll show you I’m good.

Won’t you please help me stay, king of the world.

America, I must try, to let you know, let-you-know, believe me.

I’m still in-no-cent of everything.

You-you-you-you, you-you-you-you,

I-give you a lot, you-you-you-you, all you need, you-you-you-you, all you want. You-you-you-you, all you need.

Forget all my rants.

I’ll show you I’m good.

Ooh, believe me, believe me, believe me, forget all my rants. I’ll show you I’m good.

America, I must try, to let you know.

I’m still in-no-cent of everything.

Let me protect you. Forget all my rants. Ooh, I’ll protect you…

Red Carpet

The Book of the Week is “Red Carpet, Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy” by Erich Schwartzel, published in 2022. In this hodgepodge of a volume, the author described the interactions between the United States and China in connection with their movie and television industries, beginning in the 1990’s.

America seeks to profit in everything it does.

The Chinese government’s number one goal is to boost its national pride when selling video entertainment to end-users. The government therefore keeps a tight rein on the optics of its products– limits the stories of its public-private partnership’s shows to:

glorifying itself and its Communist Party history;
recounting its victimization at the hands of evil, Western powers and Japan with regard to militarism and trade in the 19th century;
glorifying superheroes who convey Communist ideology.

The Chinese government gets very offended when even one movie-line or one tweet implies that Tibet or Taiwan are not part of China. It censors story-characters who challenge authority, buck established order, or shake things up. It censors disparagement of China, adult themes of vice, religion, gruesome violence, ghosts and gays. China financially punishes the perpetrators– the entertainment companies. Because it can.

Another aspect of China’s video culture is rampant pirating of Western entertainment. Further, deals made with foreign countries to screen shows in China, are always financially superior for China. Contrarily, in various ways, China will curtail revenues for all parties if it sees that the foreign entities’ shows are too influential with Chinese viewers.

November 1994 saw the first American movies (made by Warner Brothers) shown in China. Even though in the next quarter century, foreign videos shown in China became China-fied, only Chinese people watch movies made in China. Americans aren’t watching movies made in China.

Beginning around 2014, China’s dictator Xi began to punish Chinse entertainment-industry dissidents. Between 2017 and 2020, America had 17 of the fifty highest-grossing movies of all time. China had 27.

China has begun to export its movies and TV shows to Kenya at a deep discount in order to push its ideology. But viewers enjoy American shows better. The younger generation yearns for the consumer goods they see on TV. Interestingly, Disney was one of the few American content-providers that didn’t portray Africa as a “lawless land of disease and despots.”

Read the book to learn many more details of how Hollywood became experienced at dealing with China in seeking to make money, while China played Hollywood, and how China is spreading its gospel to the African continent with the goal of world domination.

Totally Unofficial

The Book of the Week is “Totally Unofficial, the Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin” edited by Donna-Lee Frieze, published in 2013.

Born in 1900 in territory that was alternately Lithuania and eastern Poland, Lemkin was raised among four peasant-farming families who grew clover and rye, and herded sheep and goats. He enjoyed an idyllic early childhood of nature and horseback-riding.

After earning a law degree, he worked for the government in Poland, obtaining higher and higher fancy titles. Even so, he was strangely obedient when, in early September, 1939, the (German occupied) government ordered all able-bodied men to leave Warsaw immediately. He got on a train, which was bombed. He walked to the forest in the countryside.

Later on, Lemkin did use his connections, however, to emigrate to a less dangerous place. In Vilnius in Lithuania, in autumn 1939, he spoke with a Russian soldier whose mentality was: The Western (Britain and France) Allies would fight the German military until they destroyed one another. Then the Russians would come and take over. Americans would sell arms to the Allies so that the Allies would have more resources than the Germans.

The German mentality was: Only the land of any territory Germany occupied, not the people, could be Germanized. So in October 1939, it (along with Russia) proceeded to deport all the Poles from Poland. This plan was written in Hitler’s 1924 book, Mein Kampf. The reason it took so long for the civil Europeans and Americans with sufficient power to head off the danger, was that they didn’t believe anyone could be so barbaric.

Earlier international agreements set out rules of engagement with regard to war. In general, destroying enemies’ military and fighting-infrastructure was believed to be justified. Nevertheless, the documents failed to mention persecuting and killing of civilians of a specific group. Lemkin felt this instance which he called genocide, needed to be codified, because early in the war, he had witnessed it in his native land. In summer 1942, he was unable to convince FDR of the urgency of making genocide an international crime.

Finally, in November 1946, Lemkin spoke with all kinds of diplomats when the world was ready to sit down at the bargaining table and form the United Nations. Panama, Cuba, India and global women’s organizations initially agreed to sign his resolution, by then called the Genocide Convention.

Still, there were years of arguments over every word, resistance and the usual political shenanigans. For, postwar, some arrogant government officials (such as French intellectuals and the British attorney general) were angry that their country had been taken down a notch in world status, so they argued that a Genocide Convention wasn’t necessary. The Nuremberg judgment had already outlawed war crimes, during times of war.

Lemkin explained that even in peacetime, human nature would dictate that a handful of evil people would acquire significant power to hate on others; thus, the need for a reminder in writing that the international community should put the kibosh on such behavior.

Read the book to learn much more about the trials and tribulations Lemkin experienced in trying to get the world to understand and commit to his ideology.

The Tricks – BONUS POST

BREAKING NEWS: The media are distributing a reality-show franchise, Reaganomics on Steroids, a GOP Production. Here’s the theme song.

THE TRICKS

sung to the tunes of “The Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again” with apologies to the Estate of Chubby Checker and to whomever else the rights may concern.

BUDget gaming, with accounting tricks.

Biden deFAMing, we get our kicks.

Reinforce the Trump brand, even more in ’26.

Ha, ha, tricks, gravy, ACA tricks. (round-and-turn-around)

Yeah, just trust our tricks. (We’re down and out.)

Come on, settle this, our last licks.

While Trump’s sleeping, and payroll’s ground down.

Yeah, profiteering leaping. Enforcers ain’t around.

The Dems we’re gonna nix, nix, nix, until we wear the House down.

Ha, ha, tricks, gravy, ACA tricks. (round-and-turn-around)

Yeah, just trust our tricks. (We’re down and out.)

Come on, settle this, our last licks.

Yeah, we all SEETHE, at the Dems’ wish list. USA NEEDS, a military mix.

We put poor Americans in hock. We don’t tax the rich.

Ha, ha, tricks, gravy, ACA tricks. (round-and-turn-around)

Yeah, just trust our tricks. (We’re down and out.)

Come on, settle this, our last licks.

AND THE SEQUEL:

Can’t resist again, like we did last summer.

Yeah, still we dish it out, like we did last year.

Don’t let foreigners, steal our Hummers.

Yeah, it’s tricks again, fixing time is here.

Defunding and defunding back and forth, we GO again.

Make them know we’re tough you KNOW, and then,

can’t resist again, like we did last summer.

Come on, still we dish it out, like we did last year. (tricks)

Can’t resist again, like we did last summer.

Yeah, still we dish it out like we did last year.

Don’t let foreigners, steal our Hummers.

Come on, it’s tricks again, fixing time is here.

Defunding and defunding back and forth we GO again.

Make them know we’re tough you KNOW, and then,

come on, can’t resist again, like we did last summer.

Yeah, still we dish it out like we did last year.

Come on, can’t resist again, like we did last summer.

Come on, it’s tricks again, fixing time is here.

Putin

WARNING: LONG POST

The Book of the Week is “Putin” by Philip Short, published in 2022.

In this hodgepodge of a slightly sloppily edited volume, the author recounted many of the historical events in which Russian leader Vladimir Putin played a role. The history portion was too broad to be covered in one volume. It could have been detailed better in three or four separate books.

Putin was born in October 1952 in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union. Beginning in his youth, he studied a martial-arts discipline similar to judo, and later on, judo, and read the classic Russian novels. In the mid-1960’s, after Nikita Khrushchev was ousted, the country regressed politically and culturally. The new dictator, Leonid Brezhnev, forced the people to study Marxism and Leninism and cracked down on dissidents, whom he felt were unduly influenced by the evil West. Corruption skyrocketed.

In the USSR, ironically, there were TV shows glorifying the (British, Western) “James Bond” character: “…which related the exploits of Soviet agents in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, depicted intelligence officers as selfless patriots and heroes, defending their homeland at the risk of their lives.” In late summer 1968, such shows made Putin want to join the KGB.

Yuri Andropov happened to have begun actively recruiting new members to the spying agency. Putin’s application had various disadvantages for acceptance: He came from a working-class family, had yet to complete his military service, and hadn’t studied law at university. Other disqualifying conditions included Jewishness of oneself or relatives, having family overseas or having a criminal record.

In autumn 1970, Putin began his legal education. In that time and place, students were rote-learning robots of Stalinist ideology. They were allowed neither critical thinking, nor original thoughts. Still, a few of the rigorous KGB hiring requirements were waived for Putin. It was always possible bribery was a factor in his getting the job, but he did have one special connection. His grandfather had worked as a cook for the Communist Party elite. The KGB officially became Putin’s employer in spring 1975. Putin’s career in a nutshell: He sucked up to father figures in his workplace. That is how he moved up through the ranks quickly, even though his performance was mediocre.

Putin’s job was to try to get various expatriates in academic and communications social-circles in Leningrad to defect to the Soviets. He had little, if any success. Nonetheless, he was an ideal spy because his appearance and behavior were forgettable. His activities the next several years will never be known. Anyway, by the late 1980’s, he had a wife and daughter. He had been “kicked upstairs” to Dresden (a city out in “the sticks”). From seeing the capitalist conditions there, Putin began to realize that the competition of free markets (even black markets!) were superior to Communism.

As is well known, the tail end of the 1980’s saw tumultuous world events. The new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, let the people read authors such as Pasternak, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn. There were various power struggles occurring between and among alpha males in the former Soviet satellites and within the USSR’s political bodies. A vast number of Eastern European refugees fleeing their newly discovered crushing oppression, poured into Western Europe.

Ironically, in the 1990’s, it was Soviet satellites that fell like dominoes to Western political, economic, social and cultural influences. Not (as it was propagandized during the Cold War) entire countries whose citizens’ hearts and minds were exposed to Soviet ideology. In 1992, Boris Yeltsin became the newest leader of the people of Russia. He naively followed American consultant Jeffrey Sachs’ financial advice, and crashed its economy with “shock capitalism.”

In the early 1990’s, Putin served as the right-hand man to Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of Leningrad. The latter ingratiated himself with world leaders in order to get himself invited to social events and broker peace deals. He was bored by the monitoring of day-to-day operations of paper-pushing and interactions with citizens he was supposed to be leading. Putin threw a rare temper tantrum when Estonia expressed a desire to become independent. For, his goal was to keep as many territories under the Soviet umbrella as he possibly could.

In spring 1996, Putin bought himself a graduate degree– an academic credential useful for obtaining a high-level political position in Moscow. It proved useful. By the late 1990’s, Russia was dealing with privatization of real property among oligarchs, and then a financial crisis due to plummeting oil and gas prices, and certain natural resources– its biggest exports.

By 2003, Russia was becoming Communist all over again. The author related the propaganda put out by stakeholders in the Ukraine war about why Russia was claiming sovereignty over Ukraine again, but failed to mention that Ukraine’s land contains certain kinds of rare and valuable substances that are used in specific industries; grabbing them can result in blood-for-oil type conflicts.

Anyway, read the book to learn: how, in 2004, when he ran for reelection or was appointed (in fear-and-force oriented and unfair “elections”) again and again and again as a candidate for “president” or “prime minister,” Putin didn’t let pesky provisions in his country’s Constitution prevent him from staying in power; of the staged and scripted political shenanigans including but not limited to those involving Pussy Riot, dissident Aleksei Navalny, the Magnitsky Act, the Ed Snowden affair, unrest in Syria, Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, etc., etc., etc.

American Lion

The Book of the Week is “American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House” by Jon Meacham, published in 2008. This hodgepodge of a volume described the subject’s military and political careers and his times.

Born in March 1767 on the border between North and South Carolina, Andrew Jackson was orphaned by the time he was fourteen. Nevertheless, he got a license to practice law in 1787.

Jackson was elected president of the Union (the United States) in November 1828, and served two four-year terms. Throughout, he increased presidential power over the legislative and judicial government branches. He showed he believed in white supremacy (over the Native Americans and black slaves) while speechifying that he cared about them. He forced the Native Americans to take up residence west of the Mississippi river, claiming he was protecting them, as they would forever be fighting with the white man. His family owned slaves, who took care of his plantation in Nashville, TN.

In November 1830, he made his nephew’s newspaper, his administration’s communications outlet. He was accused of running a military dictatorship.

Read the book to learn much more about several of the kinds of political episodes that have repeated themselves beginning approximately two hundred and ten years ago; including but not limited to:

accusations of a sex scandal involving the wife of president Jackson’s secretary of war;
South Carolina’s threat to secede from the Union due to financial harm done by Jackson’s imposition of a tariff;
Jackson’s persistence in trying to eliminate the hegemony of one man named Nicholas Biddle who owned a monopolistic financial behemoth called the Bank of the United States;
deaths of various family members and friends.