From: gene@cs.bu.edu (Gene Itkis)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Re: Who are the Occupiers?
Date: 11 Sep 92 01:58:09 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.mideast
Organization: Computer Science Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Originator: gene@cs

Let's take politics first. Btw, I cross-post this to t.p.soviet. I am sorry I
did not save the original article of Phill's on the absolute necessity of
charisma in communist regimes. Perhaps somebody (Phill?) has it...

In article <1992Sep10.214702.18842@dscomsf.desy.de> Hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
>In article <95618@bu.edu>, gene@cs.bu.edu (Gene Itkis) writes:
>
>|>First Phill puts his foot in his mouth ascribing charisma to Brezhnev (well,
>|>to
>|>be fair, he did not say that - he simply made a more sweeping statement that
>|>a
>|>comunist dictatorship cannot survive without a charismatic leader). 
>
>Err excuse me Einstein but exactly where is the USSR these days eh?

No excuse, Mach - it took a relatively "charismatic" (well, certainly active)
Gorby a few years of trying fairly hard to start the reforms that lead to the
dissipation of USSR (somewhat to his surprize and dissatisfaction). Let me
assure you that the country could have rot and starved for quite a few more
years if Brezhnev (or any of the following corpses) lived that long. Besides
anyone with charisma has left (or to be more precize, was purged from) the
leadership positions long ago, when Stalin got to the reins of power.  Of
course, charisma of Stalin or even the fool Khruchev (and no one in USSR
thought of him differently) is a lot more debatable than that of Brezhnev. But
it would be a mistake to attribute the results of despotism and ruthlessness to
charisma. It would also be a mistake to ignore the great power of the
beurocracy.

>I do not recall saying that a communist dictatorship would fall apart
>overnight the minute that the person at the helm was a zero.

Well, considering that no comunist regime survived more than ~70 years, you are
in a good shape - after all around 20 years of Brezhnev's rule is "overnight"
for you. Wake up Phill. You had a rather long night. And what a minute...

>In any case the leadership of Breshnev was in a sense predicted by George
>Orwell, remember that Big Brother was the all pervading figure that appeared 
>on every street, his speeches in every paper etc, yet the man himself was
>"probably" long dead. The man was dead but the icon continued. 

Don't call on Orwell, he did not say that a communist regime must have a
charismatic leader to survive - you did.

>Breshnev was in fact clinicaly dead for the last four years of his office.

Btw, it is BreZhnev if you want the proper transciption of the sound. And let
me assure you - Brezhnev was a zero from the time he came to power. His
predecessors were not much more.

> It was this period that the rot really set in,

Take it from Phill... He can really tell the difference between the real and
not so real rot.

> the path that the Soviet Union had to tak was set
>long before Gorbachev came to power, however dismantling such a state takes an
>immense amount of time.

Would you say about 72 years?

[I skip the Socrates discussion for, hopefully, another post -Gene]

>|>Phill, I suggest you stick to the merkier topics (abundant in this group)
>|>where
>|>it is not quite as glaringly obvious where your foot resides most of the
>|>time.
>
>One of the great lessons of USEnet, never call someone stupid or ignorant unless
>they stoop to using insults, otherwise you are likely to find yourself either
>making a retraction or looking stupid.

We could expect Phill to retract his statements on the necessity of charisma
for the survival of a communist regime, but I suspect he has another option in
mind.
-- 
 ---
	Gene Itkis		(gene@cs.bu.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast