Bolsheviks

Book Review of Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Reviewed by Miguel A. Faria, MD

I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned.— Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler is worth reading and not forgetting. It is …

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Young Stalin — from Georgia Bandit to Red Tsar!

Young Stalin by Simon Montefiore is a well-researched, well-written, absorbing, and authoritative biography of Joseph Stalin’s early years. Following the usual formalities, the book begins with a tantalizing “Prologue,” the audacious robbery and bloody bombing at the festive Yerevan Square in the center of the town of Tiflis (now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia). The …

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Stalin, Communists, and Fatal Statistics

“One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic,” said Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). It is estimated that between 20 to 40 million people, mostly Russians, were killed by Stalin during his dictatorship (1924-1953). Stalin, the Soviet dictator, not only exterminated purported “enemies of the peoples” but also liquidated almost the entire slate of communist …

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Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 by Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov

Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 by Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov is a great addition to the story of Soviet communism, a story that is still unfolding, but has not completely been told. This book will remain the authoritative source of the life and times of Nikolai Yezhov, until the Russian archives …

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The Political Spectrum (Part III) — The Extreme Right: Anarchism

Let us now discuss the more arcane, extreme and revolutionary, right-wing philosophy, namely anarchism. You may ask when and where in recent history have anarchist revolutionaries been successful?  For the answer, we must travel back in time to Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). It was in Barcelona and surrounding districts that idealist anarchism …

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The Political Spectrum (Part I): The Totalitarian Left from Communism to Social Democracy

The “Right” versus “Left” convenient but capricious political arrangement came from the seating position of delegates to the National Assembly during the French Revolution, but it is at times a confusing concept and too often subject to media and academic bias and even misinformation. I have found it easier to have a political spectrum based …

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