He told you so, you fucking fools. RIP Conquest
Historian Robert Conquest has died, age 98. Oddly I'm not seeing any echoes of his famous self-defined epitaph on the web. Figured I'd better do it just in case nobody else has said it.

Maybe the absence isn't odd, though. At the time when Conquest was writing, the Soviet system was still in Russia and the fucking fools were refusing to recognize Stalin's crimes. Conquest was trying to tell the rest of us, but the crimes weren't getting mentioned. Hitler's crimes were, and still are, mentioned 999999999 gigatimes per picosecond.

In the early stages of the switchover the Western soviets were going through a painful withdrawal after their steady fix of money and ideology from Moscow had dried up. In their disoriented condition they briefly acknowledged that Stalin might have been slightly problematic. Soon they figured out how to synthesize their drug of choice, which had never** been the same drug as internal Soviet policy. The new Gramscian crystal meth gathered potency. Now we're back in the land of silence about Stalin, but this time because Stalin is no longer admired by Western soviets. Stalin was so dreadfully cis. Borrrrring.

So: Conquest told us the truth as it existed when he was actively writing. The truth has switched sides and again nobody (in any position of intellectual authority) is telling the fucking fools about the current problem. Plenty of unauthorized commentators, including me, are trying to tell the truth. Undoubtedly failing most of the time.

Thanks, Conquest. You opened the door. We owe you an infinite debt!

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** Footnote on 'never the same drug'.... If you doubt it, skim the Venona Papers. You'll see KGB handlers constantly tearing their hair out as New York agents constantly try to implement New York attitudes and policies instead of following their carefully limited assignments.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, STRONG!, switchover, Гром победы

  ¶ 3:30 PM