1. In previous OPs, I've offered Dunn's theory of 'convergence,' meaning that FDR fervently believed that the United States was moving away from a free, capitalist economy, and toward a social welfare economy, while the USSR was moving away from a totalitarian central command economy toward a freer one....and therefore any accommodation with the Russians was....'progressive.'
There was, of course, no reason to believe that. And plenty of evidence of the opposite.
But FDR believed such a movement for the United States was a good thing.
Such an argument could be made.....
2. And I've pointed out that there were numbers of scholarly experts who concluded that there was no military necessity to bow to the wishes of Stalin, as FDR did, right up to allowing the penetration of his government by Stalin's spies, and to actually treat Moscow's agents as his closest advisers.
There were military experts who concluded that the USSR was not necessary for the West's victory over Nazi Germany.
Alas, to no avail. The acolytes continue to slobber all over FDR's boots...
3. But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asks the question, and uses mathematics, and I wonder if this argument will make any headway with the eyes-tightly-shut sycophants.....let's give it a shot....
In 1975, Solzhenitsyn set up the question by comparing America's historic aversion to alliance with czarist Russia to Roosevelt's rush to recognize a far more repressive and infinitely more violent Bolshevik Russia in 1933.
a. "On December 6, 1917, the U.S. Government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia, shortly after the Bolshevik Party seized power from the Tsarist regime after the October Revolution.
Office of the Historian - Milestones - 1921-1936 - Recognition of the Soviet Union, 1933
b. "Four Presidents and their six Secretaries of State for over a decade and a half held to this resolve," i.e., refusal to recognize the Soviet government.
That was written by Herbert Hoover, one of those four Presidents. He wrote it in his "Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath," edited by George H. Nash, published posthumously, obviously, in 2011, pg 24-29.
7. Before the Russian Revolution, the number of executions by the czarist government came to seventeen (17) per year, according to Solzhenitsyn.
He pointed out that, in comparison, the Spanish Inquisition, at its height, destroyed 10 people per month.
a. But, during the revolutionary years 1918-1919, Lenin's Cheka executed, without trial, more than one thousand (1,000) people a month.
b. I realize that the folks to whom this is dedicated will point out that FDR couldn't see the future, but as a further indication of the government that FDR put us in bed with, in 1937-1938, at the height of his pal, 'Uncle Joe' Stalin's terror, tens of thousands were shot per month. Oh, well.
We're talking of some 40,000 a month.
8. From Solzhenitsyn's "Warning To The West,"...
"Here are the figures: 17 a year, 10 a month, more than 1 ,000 a month, more than 40,000 a month! Thus, that which had made it difficult for the democratic West to form an alliance with pre-revolutionary Russia had, by 1941, grown to such an extent and still did not prevent the entire united democracy of the world England, France, the United States, Canada, and other small countries from entering into a military alliance with the Soviet Union, How is this to be explained? How can we understand it? " Full text of "Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom"
9. But this is hardly a question of FDR, alone. Historian Robert Conquest writes, in "The Great Terror," that the conscience of the world coalesced around the false condemnation and imprisonment of Captain Dreyfus, in France....but couldn't be aroused by that of thousands in Bolshevik Russia.
FDR's..., and the West's recognition and acceptance of the bestiality of the Soviets is what changed all of us.
It is the subject, in fact, of Diana West's best-seller, "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character."
She describes the willful ignorance of Soviet brutality as "part Faustian bargain, part moral lobotomy."
And who was at the center of the loss of moral objectivity, the end of reality-based judgment?
That's right.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
There was, of course, no reason to believe that. And plenty of evidence of the opposite.
But FDR believed such a movement for the United States was a good thing.
Such an argument could be made.....
2. And I've pointed out that there were numbers of scholarly experts who concluded that there was no military necessity to bow to the wishes of Stalin, as FDR did, right up to allowing the penetration of his government by Stalin's spies, and to actually treat Moscow's agents as his closest advisers.
There were military experts who concluded that the USSR was not necessary for the West's victory over Nazi Germany.
Alas, to no avail. The acolytes continue to slobber all over FDR's boots...
3. But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asks the question, and uses mathematics, and I wonder if this argument will make any headway with the eyes-tightly-shut sycophants.....let's give it a shot....
In 1975, Solzhenitsyn set up the question by comparing America's historic aversion to alliance with czarist Russia to Roosevelt's rush to recognize a far more repressive and infinitely more violent Bolshevik Russia in 1933.
a. "On December 6, 1917, the U.S. Government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia, shortly after the Bolshevik Party seized power from the Tsarist regime after the October Revolution.
Office of the Historian - Milestones - 1921-1936 - Recognition of the Soviet Union, 1933
b. "Four Presidents and their six Secretaries of State for over a decade and a half held to this resolve," i.e., refusal to recognize the Soviet government.
That was written by Herbert Hoover, one of those four Presidents. He wrote it in his "Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath," edited by George H. Nash, published posthumously, obviously, in 2011, pg 24-29.
7. Before the Russian Revolution, the number of executions by the czarist government came to seventeen (17) per year, according to Solzhenitsyn.
He pointed out that, in comparison, the Spanish Inquisition, at its height, destroyed 10 people per month.
a. But, during the revolutionary years 1918-1919, Lenin's Cheka executed, without trial, more than one thousand (1,000) people a month.
b. I realize that the folks to whom this is dedicated will point out that FDR couldn't see the future, but as a further indication of the government that FDR put us in bed with, in 1937-1938, at the height of his pal, 'Uncle Joe' Stalin's terror, tens of thousands were shot per month. Oh, well.
We're talking of some 40,000 a month.
8. From Solzhenitsyn's "Warning To The West,"...
"Here are the figures: 17 a year, 10 a month, more than 1 ,000 a month, more than 40,000 a month! Thus, that which had made it difficult for the democratic West to form an alliance with pre-revolutionary Russia had, by 1941, grown to such an extent and still did not prevent the entire united democracy of the world England, France, the United States, Canada, and other small countries from entering into a military alliance with the Soviet Union, How is this to be explained? How can we understand it? " Full text of "Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom"
9. But this is hardly a question of FDR, alone. Historian Robert Conquest writes, in "The Great Terror," that the conscience of the world coalesced around the false condemnation and imprisonment of Captain Dreyfus, in France....but couldn't be aroused by that of thousands in Bolshevik Russia.
FDR's..., and the West's recognition and acceptance of the bestiality of the Soviets is what changed all of us.
It is the subject, in fact, of Diana West's best-seller, "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character."
She describes the willful ignorance of Soviet brutality as "part Faustian bargain, part moral lobotomy."
And who was at the center of the loss of moral objectivity, the end of reality-based judgment?
That's right.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
