Comrade Bernie and 20^th Century Russian Socialism

Bolshevism destroyed everything in Russia

Does Bernie Sanders know Dmitri Volkogonov? Has he read any of his books? It seems not.

Volkogonov was once Commanding General of the Soviet’s Army’s Propaganda Department, the Director of the Institute for Military History, and, eventually, Defense Adviser to President Yeltsin from 1991 until Volkogonov died in 1995. After Mikhail Gorbachev was deposed, Volkogonov was given free access to the Soviet military archives, Communist Party documents, and classified presidential files. And he read, he learned, and he wrote.

Which means he forgot more about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics than Bernie Sanders—a longtime admirer of the USSR—ever knew, or likely imagined.

Should you or a friend admire Bernie’s political philosophy, you might contemplate a sampling of Volkogonov’s conclusions, from his four main books, about the political system to which he dedicated his adult life.

LENIN: “Lenin, A New Biography,” ©1994, The Free Press, Chapter 6: The One-Dimensional Society, p. 326.

“Bolshevism destroyed everything in Russia, starting with the weak and ineffective Provisional government, followed by private property, the peasant commune and the Church. Everything connected with Lenin was anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-reformist, anti-human and anti-Christian. There can scarcely have been another man in history who managed so profoundly to change so large a society on such a scale.

Marxism in Russia developed in three stages: Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism

Perhaps the single most characteristic feature of the new society was its one-dimensionality, its uniformity. The infinite variety of social and intellectual life, culture, historical tradition and the creative potential of millions of people was reduced to the harsh, uniform, uncompromising ideological paradigm of Leninism. Dogmatic thinking, totalitarian bureaucracy, authoritarian and irrational fear became the characteristic features of the new society.”  

TROTSKY: “Trotsky, The Eternal Revolutionary,” ©1996, The Free Press

Netflix is hyping an upcoming series on Leon Trotsky with this promo: “Banishment didn’t silence him. Neither did his assassination. Loathed and revered, he has become an icon.” Obviously, a statement drafted by someone who hasn’t a clue as to who and what Leon was, nor how speech for him was impossible after his head was cleaved with a small ax in Mexico, on Stalin’s orders. But Dimitri Volkogonov knew all about Leon the Icon. 

“Thanks to decades of brainwashing, most people in the Soviet Union are not even aware that Marxism in Russia developed in three stages: Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism, all of them deriving from the same root.  Despite some major differences, what all three men shared was reliance on social violence, a belief in the absolute certainty of only one ideology, and the conviction that they had the right to dispose of the destinies of nations.”  p. xxxv. 

Trotsky, among the founders of Soviet Russia, most matches Bernie Sanders

Trotsky, among the founders of Soviet Russia, most matches Bernie Sanders.

“All his [Trotsky’s] strivings were aimed towards revolution, and while such dedication implied great mental strength, is also denoted a great weakness: strength because such people are capable of influencing human life, and weakness because they are prisoners of the Idea. They do not have the capacity to change or adapt to new circumstances. For such people this kind of Marxism is a revolutionary religion. Their values, however, are not the universal human values of the world’s great religions, but are embodied in the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class struggle, and the unlimited predominance of a single party.” p. 484

STALIN: “Stalin, Triumph & Tragedy – The First Glasnost Biography,” ©1988, Dmitri Volkogonov/Novosti,

Chapter 19, Dictatorship and Democracy: “In the early 1930’s it was plain to those with eyes to see that Lenin’s words, ‘The apparatus does not belong to us, we belong to it,’ had become a reality. The dictatorship of the bureaucracy, the collective bureaucracy, was born. And the bureaucracy gradually spawned an elite, and entire hierarchy of bosses. Rule by decree became virtually the chief means of social intercourse. Everything was decided inside offices. Meetings, sessions, congresses and plenums merely ‘approved’ or ‘supported’. People’s power was nothing but a hollow phrase. The wheels of the bureaucratic machine did not turn fast, but they were irreversible. Stalin sat at the main control panel, watching his brainchild through the windows of the Kremlin. The transfer to socialism had become deformed into the transfer to Stalinism.” p. 185.

Whatever the problem or short coming, the solution was to create a new agency, a new organization

Chapter 57, Absolute Bureaucracy: “Total bureaucracy was independent of economic expediency. It worshipped at the shrine of the omnipotent apparat. Whatever the problem or short coming, the solution was to create a new agency, a new organization, with the result that, despite the flow of instructions to curtail the administrative system, it grew all the faster, for an administrative system cannot be combatted with administrative methods. Only economic, social and political means could have rid society of the bureaucracy, especially as it was so multi-faceted, with its endless titles, degrees, ranks and offices rising to the mysterious heights of the top echelons, where it was—and remains—impossible to find a ‘responsible’ official.” p. 560.

AUTOPSY FOR AN EMPIRE: “The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime,” © 1998, Novosti Publishers, p. 393.

Great triumph of socialism: it succeeds in demolishing the notion of truth, it cannot be accused of lying

“As the Polish thinker Leszek Kolakowski has written, in totalitarian societies, the lie fulfils a special function: ‘Versions are released for the people from above and can be altered the very next day. There is no reliable criterion of truth apart from what is the declared truth at any moment. Thus, the lie in fact becomes the truth, or at any rate the distinction between truth and lies, in the ordinary sense of these words, disappears. This is the great triumph of socialism in the sphere of knowledge: to the extent that it succeeds in demolishing the notion of truth, it cannot be accused of lying’.”

Shortly after completing this, his last book, Dmitri Volkogonov died, having fully faced the realization that his life, largely devoted to propagating the virtues of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had been the living of one, long, lie.

But in the end, he made up for it, with the truth.