. . . 100 million dead.
ARMED BOLSHEVIKS seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd -- now St. Petersburg -- 100 years ago this week . . . . They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict near-fatal wounds on . . .
. . . Western civilization.
. . . .
Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist-Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state.
The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism held sway, it hollowed out society's moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.
But the Bolsheviks' influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society's understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.
In a 1920 speech to the Komsomol, Lenin said that communists subordinate morality to the class struggle. Good was anything that destroyed "the old exploiting society" and helped to build a "new communist society."
This approach separated guilt from responsibility. [An official of Lenin's secret police wrote:] "Do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be to what class does he belong. . . . It is this that should determine his fate."
Such convictions set the stage for decades of murder on an industrial scale. In total, no fewer than 20 million Soviet citizens were put to death by the regime or died as a direct result of its repressive policies. This does not include the millions who died in wars, epidemics and famines that were the predictable consequences of Bolshevik policies . . . .
[Omitted here: paragraphs listing other deaths that resulted from communism.]
If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported -- including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia -- the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. This makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.
The effect of murder on this scale was to create a "new man" supposedly influenced by nothing but the good of the Soviet cause. . . . .
. . . .
While the Soviet Union redefined human nature, it also spread intellectual chaos. The term "political correctness" has its origin in the assumption that socialism, a system of collective ownership, was virtuous in itself, with need to evaluate its operations in light of transcendent moral criteria.
When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, Western intellectuals, influenced by the lack of an ethical point of reference that led to Bolshevism in the first place, closed their eyes to the atrocities. When the killing became too obvious to deny, sympathizers excused what was happening because of the Soviets' supposed good intentions.
Many in the West were simply indifferent. They used Russia to settle their own quarrels. Their reasoning . . . was simple: Capitalism was unjust; socialism would end this injustice; so socialism had to be supported unconditionally, notwithstanding any amount of its own injustice.
Today the Soviet Union and the international communism system that once ruled a third of the world's territory are things of the past. But the need to keep higher moral values pre-eminent is an important now as it was in the early 19th century when they first began to be seriously challenged.
In 1909, the Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that "our educated youth cannot admit the independent significance of scholarship, philosophy, enlightenment and universities. To this day, they subordinate them to the interests of politics, parties, movements and circles."
If there is one lesson that the communist century should have taught, it is that the independent authority of universal moral principles cannot be an afterthought, since it is the conviction on which all of civilization depends.
(David Satter, "100 Years of Communism -- and 100 Million Dead," The Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2017 (emphasis added))
Some quick points by Unca D:
The reason Mr. Satter says "100 years ago this week" in early November for the October Revolution is that Russia later changed calendars. What was October back then was November according to the new calendar.
Mr. Satter speaks abstractly about "a higher power over and above society and the state" and "the independent authority of universal moral principles."
Let's be precise. Though he does not name them and may or may not believe in them, he is in practical effect talking about God the Father, standing over and above society and the state and about principles derived from God, expressed by the person of Jesus, the Christ, and preserved and transmitted (however imperfectly) through the Holy Spirit by the body of Christian believers known as the Christian church.
These are the foundation of Western Civilization. The Bolsheviks, as atheists, attacked this foundation directly. They substituted human reason for God's principles. Mr. Satter does a masterful job of describing the cost.
The communists are gone, mostly, but their spiritual and intellectual progeny live on in intellectual circles that mock God and religion, pursue absolutist ideologies that brook no dissent, use political correctness to silence critics, and invent crimes to punish adversaries for being members of disfavored classes -- at various times men, straights, whites, married men and women, political conservatives, apologists for Western civilization, and (always) Christians.
The culture war set in motion by the Bolsheviks continues. It will never end . . . until it does.
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