I've stumbled upon an excellent book by Aleksandras Shtromas "Totalitarianism and the prospects for world order" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandras_%C5%A0tromas).
Some items have come up in the usenet (soc.culture.baltics), and the answers - already known by most of us - are provided quite eloquently in the book.
There is an excellent article p. 21 "The Jewish and Gentile Experience of the Holocaust: A personal perspective" - where prof. Shtromas provides his take on the events in Lithuania during WWII (his father was killed in Lietukis garage).
Communism is also discussed at length:
p. 90
"For him it is self-evident that Communists everywhere are exclusively concerned with bringing justice and prosperity tothe backward national societies over which they rule <...> whereas I am bluntly stating that exactly the opposite is true and that communism is by definition global and oppressive of all the peoples it rules"
p. 91
1. "No communist regime has been established by means of free elections"
2. "Every communist regime has initially exercised its rule - aimed at the "socialist transformation" of the society it has taken over - by the means of relentless and indiscriminate mass terror directed against all sections of the country's population (for example, in Lithuania alone, about one third of the population was exterminated by the communists for the sake of "socialism" during the years 1940-1953"
3. "Every communist regime is permanently founded on the principle of the "leading role of the party" which invests total political, social and economic power in the hands of an a priori defined political apparatus to the exclusion of everybody else in society <...>"
If you are into this stuff - this is a great book - lots of great thoughts and insights by one of the leading Lithuanian dissidents.
No comments:
Post a Comment