Monthly Archives: November 2013

The “Nature” of Communism

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A key aspect of the Soviet Union’s quest for true Communism was becoming waste-free and efficient. Every single resource was utilized for the common good of the state; this included people, materials, machines, and even nature. Unused land was waste, and waste had no place in the Party’s strategy.

Looking back, particularly with today’s heightened emphasis on preserving the environment, it is easy to see the ways in which these policies of brutal extraction from the land would lead to future consequences. The desiccation of the Aral Sea has not only caused serious environmental repercussions, but has also been linked to an increase in medical problems, such as cancer.

I was reading the excerpt on the Aral Sea thinking, “whew, so glad we know better now,” when I realized that thought was dead-wrong. We don’t really know any better. And the biggest environmental offender today? China, the other communist powerhouse from the 20th Century. Chinese cities have some of the worst air and water pollution ratings in the entire world, yet when it was approached with the Kyoto Protocol, which would require it to curb its actions that are so detrimental to the environment, it refused. China’s reasoning was that it was still a “developing nation” and shouldn’t be subjected to such environmental restraints—restraints that other, now-developed nations did not have to adhere to on their path to modernity. Russia would be one such example.

When using this China-parallel it would be easy to conclude that destroying the environment to the states’ benefit is a common facet among Communist states. I’m not sure I can soundly make that assertion, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that the two largest Communist (or near-Communist) countries have committed some of the worst atrocities towards the environment.

Fleeing Franco

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Hywell Davies Fleeing Franco delivers an interesting perspective on the Spanish Civil War, showing the tight relationship between Wales and the Basques. Davies does an excellent job communicating the children’s viewpoint in addition to that of the Welsh, but due to his background, it is possible that there is a bias. Davies was born and raised in Wales and teaches there. In addition, Fleeing Franco was published by the University of Wales Press. He relies on interviews and newspapers to get a sizable amount of information and uses his secondary sources to frame that information and create a narrative. His book, although credible, does not criticize the Welsh nearly enough to make it seem as if he is “unbiased”.

The interesting part I took away from Davies was the differences in responses to the plight of the Basques versus the plight of the Jews then shortly thereafter. Davies describes how unemployed workers would spare anything they had in order to support the Basques and Republicans versus the support for the Jews. Davies briefly mentions this, but he does not compare or contrast it enough for the reader to understand the differences in the support for the two groups. I felt as if not only religion, but working class had an important part to play in this decision. But why? Why do the people of Wales take in 4,000 Basque children yet they ignore the plight of the Jewish children shortly thereafter?

A Lesson in Charity

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Hywel Davies’s book Fleeing Franco is a touching account of the lives of the Basque refugee children who were displaced from their homes during the Spanish Civil War and taken in by various humanitarian groups in Wales.  Although Davies does present pithy summaries of the political and social events surrounding the period, the text is primarily composed of several detailed vignettes that follow the lives of individual refugee children and the characteristics of the Welsh communities that came to their aid.  Consequently, Freeing Franco presents a moving portrait of Welsh charity across national and party lines, solidifying their endearing inclination “to be on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor.” (Davies, 19)

The most universally significant point that Davies makes in this book can be found early on in his response to the idea that Welsh charity during the Spanish Civil War has been exaggerated due to sentimentality and the use of a narrow historical lens: “Incredulity is not the same as insight. Scepticism is not converted into truth by nature of its novelty alone.” (Davies, 27)  This statement provides an important caveat to readers of any genre of criticism.  It is important to be able to discern the validity of any author’s thesis based on their synthesis and analysis of supporting evidence rather than their ability to create a facile and contradictory series of allegations against a popularly held belief.

Do you feel that Davies himself reveals any particular biases in Fleeing Franco?  If so, what are they?

Bias in Fleeing Franco

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Hywel Davies’ Fleeing Franco is a study of Spanish refugee children who were sheltered in Wales during the Spanish Civil War.  Davies examines how the cultural and geographic similarities between the Welsh and Basque people led to a connection that resulted in the Welsh providing more effort toward supporting the Republican army than the rest of Britain.  He also shows how the Welsh peoples’ more left leaning politics played a role in their willingness to provide aid.

While the stories of the children who the Welsh refugee programs saved from the atrocities of the war could be heartwarming, Davies’ book is not without bias.  Davies has lived in Wales his entire life, and the book was published by the University of Wales press.  When describing the characteristics of the Welsh  that led to their emphasizing with the Basque children, Davies uses words such as “us” and “our,” aligning himself with the Welsh and implying his great pride in his people.  Details such as these lead one to believe that his arguments hold a bias in favor of the Welsh by slightly exaggerating their contributions.

An example of this bias in effect is when Davies is describing the routines of the children when they first arrived at the shelters.  He goes into great detail about the sports teams, dances, and magazine fundraisers that distracted the children from the horrors in their home country while at the same time, winning the hearts and support of the Welsh people.  Davies portrays their experience through rose-colored glasses.  While the traumatizing effects of the war on the children is briefly touched upon, it is overshadowed by these stories about the welcoming nature of the shelters and their staff.  This is in part due to the nature in which the shelters reported on the state of the children, however the emotional struggles the children faced could have been elaborated upon more.

 

Basque and Wales during the Spanish Civil War

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Wales and the Basque region of Spain have many similarities. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, bringing violence to the Basque lands, the Welsh felt a heighten sense of solidarity with the Basque people. In “Fleeing Franco” Hywel Davis examines how the Welsh showed their support for the Basque by sheltering Basque children during the war. He argues that many factors led to the Welsh taking in these children and that it was a result of the overall Welsh response to the Spanish Civil War.

Once the war began, children could no longer attend school and resources, like food and medicine, became scarce. Parents did not want to send their children away, but it was better than keeping them in a dangerous and possibly deadly environment. The Welsh welcomed these children as members of a fellow “ancient and honoured community” (p.9). When the Basque children arrived in Wales, it gave the Welsh a chance to “transform passive sympathy into a real opportunity to do something”(p.27). Also, there were already Spanish speaking communities in Wales, which made the transition somewhat easier for the children. These people had come as a result of trade between Wales and Basque, another factor that strengthened the feelings of camaraderie between the two communities.

The children were inspected upon arrival, and then shipped to different places. Once they settled in, they were always busy with school and other activities. They became healthier, putting on weight and becoming fit. “Little by little the sobbing died down and the daily rhythms of life were restored, but a dreadful numbness remained”(p.49). Even though the children were treated well, most were still in shock and could not easily recover.

To tell the story of the Basque children in Wales, Davies uses individuals’ stories. For example, he focuses on the stories a few children, such as Alvaro Velasco and Paula Felipe Gomez to explain what occurred (p.37).  His sources include primary sources, such as articles and speeches, as well as secondary sources, which are mainly books. His writing is clear and easy to understand. My only criticism is that the stories of the Basque children, the main focus of the book, do not begin until chapter five, on page 37. I understand the necessity of background information, but there seemed to be a little too much.

Even though Wales and Basque are in similar situations, their cultures are very different. So why was there such a sense of solidarity between them?

Fleeing Franco

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Fleeing Franco is a book written by Welsh historian Hywel Davies in 2011. It deals with the Welsh repatriation of Basque children during the Spanish Civil War. While the book is well researched, and presents an uplifting thesis about the largely uniform acceptance of the Spanish children in an already poverty-stricken nation, Davies does seem to present a slightly biased view on the matter. For example, he makes a point of vilifying the leading Welsh politicians, by stating their pro-Fascist attitudes, in favor of returning the children to Spain after the War, while stressing his opinion that those working with the children were following a humanitarian call rather than a political opportunity. However, Davies’ hero Maria Fernandez, an extraordinary warden at a childrens home, quotes that her political support of the Spanish Republic played a large role in her decision to join the cause (140). While this does not mean that she would have turned her back on the orphans had the Spanish government not been socialist, Davies’ lack of analysis and research into this statement raises questions about his own objectiveness.

Additionally, in my opinion Davies’ structure is not very good. He starts coherently with a description of the similarities of Wales and the Basque region, but seemingly continues neither thematically nor chronologically. He describes the good sentiment of the Welsh, a few examples of bad behavior by the Spanish children, then continues with the good sentiment of the Welsh. All the while his chronology floats between before and after the fall of Bilbao. While his thesis is fairly clear, I found his structure to be slightly confusing.

Perestroika and 100 wilted flowers

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Perestroika and glasnost  were terms Gorbachev used to embody his cultural reforms and openness to Western influence. The Chinese, too, had a period of openness. In 1956 Mao said that,  “The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science.” This “100 Flowers Movement” was ended in 1957 with political persecutions. Both Communist powers handled political dissonance in the second half of the 20th century differently, with the USSR embracing and the Chinese silencing controversy.  Though, to look at it all now, the USSR has been disbanded and China is still heavily controlled by a limited ruling class.

In 2009, Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov with a button that said “Peregruzka — Reset.” The word peregruzka, presented in the Latin and not the Cyrillic alphabet, would translate as “overload” instead of “reset”. Lavrov noticed the error immediately. Given this anecdote, should the United States continue to remain closed to foreign influences and cultures? Russia had a period of openness and voluntary consumption of foreign goods, whereas China had tried to limit all culture through administrative measures. Can the United States thrive on their genetically modified single-crop harvests, or will they eventually need to open themselves up to the world’s hundred flowers?

The Soviet Union: The “Project of the Century?”

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“The stagnation of BAM propaganda after its initial formulation indicated the ideological staidness that, by the early 1970s, had gripped the corpus of Soviet governance like some form of mental rigor mortis. While official representations of BAM remained stagnant, the real world around these representations did not. Perhaps this helps to explain the events of the Brezhnev era, a time during which the government refused to acknowledge reality to a greater degree than any regime before it in Soviet history.” – Christopher Ward, Brezhnev’s Folly

The excerpts we read from Brezhnev’s Folly demonstrate how the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) construction project, which Brezhnev proclaimed to be the “project of the century,” perfectly mirrored the social and political environment of the Soviet Union at the time. Social unrest and change was abundant both on BAM worksites as well as across the Union. The organization and oversight of BAM was in the hands of the Komsomol, and ultimately the youth group did not prove equal to the task. In fact, many youths who joined the BAM project did so in order to be a part of the next great product of the Soviet Union, and were sorely disappointed and therefore disillusioned.

There were several ideas behind BAM, most notably to build a transportation system that would connect Western Europe to East Asia, making Russia vital to the expanding economic systems on the two continents. A second driving factor was to spark a new “soviet” flame in the Union’s youth. Like so many of the Soviet’s plans, BAM had the near-opposite effect as officials hoped, and much of the failure can be attributed to the Party’s stubborn blindness towards the reality of the situation.

I chose the title of this post because as I repeatedly read the phrase “project of the century,” I kept asking myself: is the author talking about BAM, or about the Soviet Union? And I realized it applied to both. The idea of creating a communist state was certainly a mighty project, and as we know, a project that ultimately failed. But no one can deny that the Communist Party put forth an immense amount of human, financial and material capital in an attempt to attain their goal. Indeed, one could call their dream the “project of the century.”

Einstein’s religious views

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“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” This is one of Einstein’s famous quotes on religion. However, it is important to for me to mention that Einstein was not religious in a way most people would think he was. He shared the views of Baruch Spinoza- the 17th century Dutch philosopher. Spinoza believed that God had no personality. He also believed that God, nature and universe are equivalent, and that each person through his actions can have an effect on the others.

Although Einstein was born and raised in Jewish family for the most of his life he did not believe in the Jewish religion. Sharing similar believes to those of Spinoza, he perceived God and nature as equivalent and believed that the world is ruled by physical laws. For Einstein God, or in other words nature was his inspiration. He admired the world, the universe, and the nature around him, and wanted to explain why and how things happen in the world. That is why in his article Science and Religion he explains that science and religion are interconnected. For him science cannot exist without religion because religion is the driving and inspirational force of science. Einstein’s religion also made him believe that it was important for him to create something for the others because his actions could have had an effect on other people.

God: 1, Humanity: 0

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Smart people succumb to the comfort of dimwitted platitudes like the rest of us. Perhaps it reassures them. In his essay “Science and Religion”, Einstein disappoints by choosing what Freud referred to as “a dull Christian ending” in reference to Dostoevsky’s limp of an epilogue at the end of Crime and Punishment. What a shame that Einstein did not use that beautiful mind of his to come up with an original cosmology! Instead he chooses the safe path, the idea that, in the words of Dostoevsky in the Brothers Karamazov, “without God everything is permitted”. How convenient for our governments and churches, among other self- proclaimed purveyors of the good news. A quick review of human atrocities across the centuries will reveal the opposite. Humanity uses God, or the religious impulse inhabiting humanity like a restless tapeworm, to justify every sort of ignominy, like a premium members card for all manner of atrocities and institutionalized buffoonery. We entered the platinum club about a hundred years ago.

Of course, Einstein tells us “religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.” We also learn that religion uses tradition to inculcate values and brotherly love through tradition and simple narratives. How comforting to know that Einstein paid attention in Sunday school for the rest of us. Rather than use his unique stature as an internationally renowned man of science to criticize human societies for their lack of reason, generosity, and imagination, Einstein chooses to remain firmly ensconced in the mainstream delusions of his time. The dangers of the religious impulse extend far beyond religion itself. It conditions our unquestioning acceptance of hierarchy, our infatuation with meaningless iconography, our prurience, and our unreasonable hatred of our neighbors. It’s no wonder the best Christians abandon the Church. And yet, Einstein persists in repeating this nonsense in the aftermath of two wars made possible by humanity’s willingness to kneel before abstractions and prophets. Nice job, Einstein.