From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Re: Robert Conquest's _The Great Terror_
Date: 25 Jan 93 05:20:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan25.002034.19768
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <C1AL8J.KL@panix.com> 
gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>In article <13987@optilink.COM>
>cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:

>>In article <1993Jan16.012254.19411@husc3.harvard.edu>, 
>>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>>>In article <kosinov.727131357@ceg.uiuc.edu>
>>>kosinov@ceg.uiuc.edu (Greg Kosinovsky) writes:

GK:
>>>>In fact, Nikolai Krylenko, one of the key executors of War Communism (as the 
>>>>Commissar of Interior) stated bluntly that killing the innocent was essential,
>>>>since people aren't scared enough when only the guilty are killed.

MZ:
>>>Essentially the same principle underlies the public support for
>>>capital punishment in the US.  What exactly are you trying to prove,
>>>and why is it relevant to my point?

CC:
>>Huh?  I've never met a person who supported execution of the innocent
>>(except, of course, in rec.arts.books, where intellectuals hang out
>>and justify murder of 1 1/2 year olds by Communists).  I am not 
>>comfortable with capital punishment, but I know better than to make 
>>the claim that Americans support execution of the innocent.

GF:
>But it is certain that mistakes will be made, and the
>innocent sometimes executed, even if not very often.
>This is a well-known fact and the public remains 
>unmoved by it, the beneficial effects of the death
>penalty being considered more important.  Therefore 
>they support the same idea of terror as Krylenko;
>the difference is that Krylenko was explicit.

For once, I have nothing to add to Fitch's statement, except by noting
that the irrevocable nature of the death penalty, together with the
historically proven likelihood of innocents being sent to the gallows,
make the American support of capital punishment an odious equivalent
to advocacy of execution of the innocent.  Governor Altgeld was in no
position to remedy the judicial error by resurrecting Albert Parsons,
as he remedied it in case of his imprisoned co-defendants.

Regarding the murder of a 1 1/2 year old girl by Communists, I see it
as no better or worse than murder of a forty-year old anarchist by the
American bourgeois.  On a personal side, I note that the writing on
the wall of that hovel in Ekaterinbourg of the vindictive lines from
Heine's poem about Nebuchadanezzar exactly parallels the burning of
the anarchist effigies by Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.

Vengeance in the name of the _Raison d'Etat_ is equally ugly, whether
it is exercised by the state of workers and peasants, or a nation of
shopkeepers and insurance salesmen.  And if the children of the latter
wish to wring their hands over the sorry fate of dim-witted royal
bigots Nicholas and Alexandra, they should be prepared for the need to
account for the equally sordid sins of *their* fathers.

>-- 
>
>)*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
>( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:26016 alt.conspiracy:14469