From A Brief History of the Cold War. John Hughes. 2019. Kindle online sample. Section 4.
The recruiting of spies and informers was deeply entrenched in Russian thinking and had been part of the fabric of Russian life since the days of Ivan the Terrible, whose black-cowled Oprichniki (secret police) had terrorized Russia in a way not seen since the Inquisition had terrorized Spain.
The ‘Special Office of the Czar’, SECRET POLICE, INFORMERS, SPIES AND FEAR OF ALL THINGS FOREIGN HAD ALL BEEN DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN RUSSIAN CULTURE LONG BEFORE STALIN took over the Communist Party on Lenin’s death in 1924.
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This national xenophobia reinforced Stalin’s own personality and colored his thinking.
It is no exaggeration to say Stalin’s suspicions of foreigners shaped the foreign policy of the USSR from the 1920s until his legacy at last faded in the 1970s.
Russia’s Cold War against the west can even be simplistically described as Stalin’s Cold War, so closely did it mirror the dictator’s own view and fear of the world around him.
STALIN’S RUTHLESS EXTERMINATION OF ANY RIVALS meant all Russian policies were rooted in the office and the personality of this new Red Czar.
As a result, his reign as communist dictator effectively determined all relations between east and west for a quarter of a century.
His personality is one of the prime keys to understanding east-west relations in the twentieth century and especially during the Cold War.
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Stalin was born Josef Dzhugashvili, in 1879, to a poor cobbler’s family in Georgia.
Expelled from an Orthodox seminary, he soon turned to the more secular faith of the Bolsheviks.
HE BECAME AN UNDERGROUND ORGANIZER FOR THE PARTY and soon figured on the Okhrana’s, the Czar’s secret police, wanted list as a Revolutionary suspect.
Arrested at least seven seven times, he was exiled to Siberia.
He seems to have escaped, possibly to emerge, astonishingly, as secret agent ‘Josef Georgi’ on the Okhrana’s books.
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Stalin (‘Man of Steel’) was contemptuous of the ‘toothless’ handling of dissidents by the Czar’s jailers.
‘Our prison is little more than a revolutionary training camp and university,’ he said scornfully in Siberia, similar to what was said of the British government’s handling of the Provisional IRA sixty years later.
Being imprisoned actually ‘helped the movement’.
When he came to power many years later Stalin would make it his business to ensure that anti-Soviet dissidents, guilty or not, did not share his own comfortable experiences of incarceration under the Czar.
STALIN’S “REFUSENIK” POLITICAL PRISONERS WERE EITHER WORKED TO DEATH OR SHOT.
Escapees were to be, in his own words, ‘hunted down like wolves’.
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Before 1914, Stalin visited London to attend the Party Congress, possibly spying as a double agent or as an enemy of revolutionary splinter groups opposed to the Bolsheviks.
London was where Stalin first met Lenin and in 1912 the cobbler’s son from the Caucasus was appointed to the Bolsheviks’ Central Committee.
Although he did very little during the 1917 Revolution, Stalin’s administrative skills, long access to Party records and extraordinary memory made him the classic indispensable bureaucrat.
In 1922 Lenin appointed his éminence grise General Secretary of the Communist Party.
It was a serious mistake, as LENIN REALIZED ON HIS DEATHBED, WHEN HE TRIED VAINLY TO WARN HIS COLLEAGUES OF STALIN’S TRUE NATURE.
But by then it was too late.
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From 1925 Stalin, the ‘First Secretary,’ moved to take over the Party machine, removed his arch-rival Trotsky, and effectively became dictator of Soviet Russia.
Although Stalin did not invent the Communist Party’s repressive apparatus – once the Communists had seized control in 1917 the Bolsheviks’ fanatical secret policeman Dzerzhinsky had moved swiftly to exterminate any enemies of the Revolution – the NEW PARTY LEADER STALIN TRANSFORMED THE CHEKA AND THE OGPU INTO AN EVEN MORE BRUTAL ENFORCER OF HIS OWN PERSONAL POWER.
The midnight knock of the secret police became a very real terror for millions of Russians.
(end of section 4)
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(own comments)
Section 1 230619
“The Cold War did not only deform lives, it deformed whole societies, as well as costing a fortune.”
Substantially lowering taxes and allowing imports to freely come into the U.S., as with among U.S. states, would enrich Americans so much other countries would soon follow our model.
THAT Libertarian Real Republican dominance would force less federal dependence and power and more state independence and power.
THAT independence would induce All countries to follow and join in the U.S.A.-led All countries reformation into the U.S. of World.
Since All countries would be like post-HATrs’ turn round squares reformed U.S. states there would be no more felt need to spend a fortune on militaries.
Certainty having defeated doubt, general interests having defeated special interests, instability of justice having defeated stability of injustice, positive happy having defeated negative misery, with reformed lives and societies We’ll All go together to becoming in-there millionaires and billionaires, and will have plenty of money to spread tHAT verse throughout universe.
(Byrds song Wild Mountain Thyme)
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Section 2 230622
“The Russian Communists’ war against the bourgeoisie and the rest of the world really began on that first day of their revolution.”
“It was the Cheka secret police who set up the first camps of what became known as the Gulag on Solovetsky Island as early as 1922.
The Russian revolution was consummated by communists in name only, but rather actually by the 5% shapeless-form mafia and supporting 47.5% negative misery-wuvvers (we’re united victims and victimizers).
The 47.5% positive happy-lovers are the third of three sections present in all populations of Russia, U.S. and all countries, past, present, and future.
When the positives dominate happy increases, when the negatives dominate misery increases.
….
Section 3 230626
“Lenin believed he was fully authorized by his own secular faith – Marxism – to use any means possible to bring about a socialist Utopia. Individual freedom, free trade, open markets and self-determination were the last things Lenin and his Party wanted to see.”
“The left in the west was a very soft target for communist Russia’s message.”
As increasing leftism/socialism in U.S. and western countries weakens, Xi-China strengthens.
Then Communism actual goal of worldwide total misery-wuv dystopia under control of zeir Xi-politburo to become reality, welcomed by half of people here and everywhere.
…
Section 4 230628
“Stalin’s ‘refusenik’ political prisoners were either worked to death or shot.”
“The midnight knock of the secret police became a very real terror for millions of Russians.”
Zat (opposite of HAT) be wut half of people, the negatives, actually finally want: pure misery.
Otherwise zat could never happen.
Zat has happened in North Korea, is now happening in stages in China, Cuba, Russia, and Nicaragua, and could easily happen to We in the U.S who stand in the way of institution of worldwide final stage pure misery.
But, fortunately our positive HATrs have begun to turn round squares and now wHAT’s Happening.
(Byrd’s song What’s Happening?!?!)
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