Col. Ripper Blathers About the Russkies The other day at a company function I blundered into a brief discussion about the Soviet Union with a newer co-worker, a manager who I don't know well yet. It came about because someone had posted flyers in the men's room for some lectures about American Empire, with endorsements from Chomsky and Ramsay Clarke. At any rate, this lead to a mention of Castro. After I mentioned that I hoped the old monster would die soon, my co-worker said something along the lines of that he agreed, and that hopefully Reagan and Castro would die almost simultaneously. I suppose this was to be taken as a centrist comment, but it lead to a brief, and extremely dumbed-down, discussion of the Soviet Union.

I always feel a bit embarrassed when talking about the old Soviet Union to people I don't know well, because they usually don't have strong feelings about that late, unlamented empire, and I do. The main reason for my embarrassment is that, even though I know it makes me look faintly ridiculous in their eyes, I still insist upon approaching the subject in an anachronistic, and I suppose, quaint way. The idea that I am probably viewed by these people as Col. Jack T. Ripper is never far from my mind. But forge ahead I do, because I have made some peace with the fact that I come across as more blowhard than thinker, and I also think that my view is true, even if it is unpopular. So, after the Reagan crack, I said what I always say, which is that, whatever you think of the man, he hastened the end of the Cold War (won it) through communicating and enforcing our resolve to confront and contain them. This remark drew a, for me, now-predictable, eye-roll, and the liberal counter-argument that they were doomed economically and that it was only a matter of time until Soviet collapse anyway. At this point I just kind of made statements, since I knew the discussion wouldn't last long, and for some strange reason I wanted to communicate my views of this in the shortest order possible. So, even though he hadn't been brought up, I said that Gorbachev was not a nice guy or a democrat, and that glasnost and perestroika were just ploys to keep the Soviet Empire (a term I insist upon using, though it feeds into the embarrassment) together. And--and here's more grandiose/anachronistic language--I said that the Soviet Empire was a monstrous evil which had to be defeated.

Mind you, the guy I was talking with was the soul of dispassion, and he made his contrary points with absolutely no malice or anger that I could see (but maybe a tad of irritation). That being said, I'm sure he thinks I'm a reactionary freak. Anyway, after I made the "monstrous evil" remark, he looked at me mildly and said that it hadn't been worth the cost. I incredulously asked whether he really meant that defeating an Empire which crushed all under its boot heel (yeah, I know) wasn't worth spending some money (I know it cost blood and lives as well, but we had just touched on SDI, and the notion that it alone caused the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion to try and counter it) towards its defeat. His expression remained unchanged, and just said "no". Of course, I erred when saying this. The first, bigger problem was that they were a threat to the West, and then that they crushed their own.

[Sorry to digress briefly, but I read an opinon piece by E.L. Doctorow in Playboy a couple of months ago, where he said that the whole unpleasant Cold War could've been avoided if only Truman had listened to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and given the Soviets the Bomb right after WWII, so they would've felt less paranoid and embattled, and so wouldn't have gotten into an arms race with us. I was going to make a joke about Playboy being a dubious op-ed forum, but I could see the same piece running in the NYT, so I'll back off of that. Does anyone else think that this idea is flat-out insane? And I gather from his piece that it was, and is, assumed to be a good idea by doves.]

At that point the discussion ended amicably, but I've been thinking about it. Earlier in our brief discussion he obliquely refuted my characterization of the Soviet Union as an (Evil) Empire, because "I know a lot of people who've been and worked there". This person is the second person I've talked to about this subject at my company who's said a variant of this. The other co-worker said that he knew Russian people in the waning days of the Cold War, and that our perception of the Soviet State as brutal and authoritarian was "based on misunderstandings". In both of these discussions there has also been the subtly promulgated idea that Stalin was the big bad apple, and therefore an aberration, with the other premieres being essentially mirror-images of our Presidents.

So either I'm a sucker for believing what I've read and seen about the old Soviet system, or my view is anachronistic but accurate. I hope it's the latter, because I don't mind looking like a dork if I'm right, but there's just no good in it if I'm wrong. The world does not need *two* Paul Begalas.  ¶ 19:04