Communism – Page 10 – artdiamondblog.com

Castro First Fired, and Then Jailed, Economist Chepe, Who Defended Capitalism

“Oscar Espinosa Chepe in 2010.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. B15) Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a high-ranking Cuban economist and diplomat who became a vocal critic of Fidel Castro in the 1990s but chose to remain in Cuba, despite enduring harassment and imprisonment, died on Monday [September 23, 2013] . . .
. . .
Mr. Espinosa Chepe (pronounced CHEH-pay) lost his job as an official of the National Bank of Cuba in 1996 after advocating the limited restoration of capitalist principles like the right to buy and sell one’s home or start a business.
He then became a journalist, writing articles for American and Spanish-language Web sites in which he used statistical data to analyze Cuba’s economic problems. In March 2003 he was one of 75 activists arrested as part of a government crackdown on dissent known as the Black Spring.
. . .
Mr. Espinosa Chepe, who joined Castro’s revolutionary government in the early 1960s and was once head of the powerful Office of Agrarian Reform, had frequently clashed with fellow economic planners over policies he considered overly dogmatic.
His internal critique became increasingly adamant after 1991, when the loss of the Soviet Union’s financial support began taking a devastating toll on the country’s economy. But his proposals for change, many of which had already been adopted in former Soviet bloc states, were labeled counterrevolutionary, said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a professor emeritus of economics and Latin American studies at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on Cuban economic policies.

For the full obituary, see:
PAUL VITELLO. “Oscar Espinosa Chepe, Cuban Economist and Castro Critic, Dies at 72.” The New York Times (Fri., September 27, 2013): B15.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date September 25, 2013.)

Under Humble Austerity Policy China Builds $11.4 Million Giant Brass Puffer Fish

“A puffer fish statue in Yangzhong has raised ire in view of a government pledge to end spending on vanity projects.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) HONG KONG — Chinese Communist Party leaders’ vows of a new era of humble austerity in government may have met their most exotic adversary yet: an $11 million, 2,300-ton, 295-foot-long puffer fish.

The brass-clad statue, which shimmers golden in the sunlight and switches into a garish light show at night, was built by the city of Yangzhong, in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, . . .
. . .
Chinese news outlets said the brass and steel for the fish cost about $1.7 million, raising questions about where the rest of the money went. Construction of the fish tower began on a previously isolated and undeveloped river island in March, four months after Mr. Xi was appointed party leader.
. . .
. . . China is speckled with outlandish works of official art that vie with even a giant, glow-in-the-dark puffer fish for attention and outrage.
Critics berated a county in Guizhou Province for building “the world’s biggest teapot,” a 243-foot-high teapot-shaped tower, complete with spout, that was part of a $13 million project.
In Henan Province, in central China, a government-backed charity has been accused of corruption in spending about $19.6 million on a vast, unsightly sculpture of Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, a revered founder of modern China. Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, is also home to a sculpture of two pigs in a frolicking embrace. From certain angles, the pigs might appear to be mating.

For the full story, see:
CHRIS BUCKLEY. “As China Vows Austerity, Giant Brass Fish Devours $11 Million.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., October 13, 2013): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 12, 2013.)

“A sculpture of Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, a founder of modern China.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

“Burning Bush” Depicts Communists’ Diabolical Harassment of Jan Palach’s Family

“BURNING BUSH; Tatiana Pauhofova in Agnieszka Holland’s story of Prague under Communism.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. C6) The Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s magnificent docudrama, “Burning Bush,” is a three-part mini-series made for HBO Europe that remembers the Soviet crackdown in Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring. It begins with the death in 1969 of Jan Palach, a Czech student who set himself on fire as a political protest, and follows the diabolical attempts of the Soviet occupiers to blacken his name by portraying him as a fraud and right-wing tool. The film’s depiction of the Communist regime’s relentless harassment of his family and its sowing of paranoia within the student resistance recalls the 2007 film “The Lives of Others,” about the Stasi’s operations in East Berlin. In the sophisticated worldview of “Burning Bush,” oppression may win in the short term, but the spark that ignites freedom movements, once lighted, can’t be extinguished.

For the full review, see:
STEPHEN HOLDEN. “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; Still Meaty, Film Festival Lightens Up.” The New York Times (Mon., September 30, 2013): C1 & C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date September 29, 2013.)

Discrete Caution Is Not Always Prudent in Corrupt China

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) When economic reform and the seductive breeze of political liberalization come to China in the 1980s, the author’s cautious father tells his children that if they want to succeed they should be discreet. He urges his son, who is at Shanghai’s Fudan University, not to waste his time on useless foreign books. When the son first reads Shakespeare, he thinks that the expression “to be or not to be” is taken from Confucius. His father tells him that asking for too much freedom can land you in jail. “If you are not careful the government could crush you like a bug.” Not long after this warning, the student democracy movement was smashed apart at Tiananmen Square, though Mr. Huang’s father did not live to see it.

In the end, it is the father who suffers as his world collapses. Toward the end of his life he was told by the Party that he was to be rewarded for devising a money-saving program at his state factory with promotion and a better wage. Instead the promotion went to the girlfriend of the local Party secretary, and the firm’s bosses split his wage rise among themselves. Embittered and exhausted, he died of a heart attack in 1988, ahead of his mother.

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL FATHERS. “BOOKSHELF; Coming of Age In Mao’s China; Death cannot be controlled by the party, but disposing of a body can. So the author’s father built a coffin in secret at his mother’s request..” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., April 30, 2012): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date April 29, 2012.)

The book under review, is:
Huang, Wenguang. The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012..

Behind the Iron Curtain, Those Who Opposed “Were to Be Destroyed by “Cutting Them Off Like Slices of Salami””

Source of book image: http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/iron-curtain-20882-20130113-95.jpg

(p. 16) That Soviet tanks carried Moscow-trained agents into Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany was known in the West at the time and has been well documented since. When those agents set out to produce not only a friendly sphere of Soviet influence but also a cordon of dictatorships reliably responsive to Russian orders, Winston Churchill was moved to warn, just days after the Nazis’ surrender in 1945, that an Iron Curtain was being drawn through the heart of Europe. (He coined the metaphor in a message to President Truman a full year before he used it in public in Fulton, Mo.) And Matyas Rakosi, the “little Stalin” of Hungary, was well known for another apt metaphor, describing how the region’s political, economic, cultural and social oppositions were to be destroyed by “cutting them off like slices of salami.”

Applebaum tracks the salami slicing as typically practiced in Poland, Hungary and Germany, and serves up not only the beef but also the fat, vinegar and garlic in exhausting detail. She shows how the knives were sharpened before the war’s end in Soviet training camps for East European Communists, so that trusted agents could create and control secret police forces in each of the “liberated” nations. She shows how reliable operatives then took charge of all radio broadcasting, the era’s most powerful mass medium. And she demonstrates how the Soviet stooges could then, with surprising speed, harass, persecute and finally ban all independent institutions, from youth groups and welfare agencies to schools, churches and rival political parties.
Along the way, millions of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians were ruthlessly driven from their historic homes to satisfy Soviet territorial ambitions. Millions more were deemed opponents and beaten, imprisoned or hauled off to hard labor in Siberia. In Stalin’s paranoid sphere, not even total control of economic and cultural life was sufficient. To complete the terror, he purged even the Communist leaders of each satellite regime, accusing them of treason and parading them as they made humiliating confessions.
It is good to be reminded of these sordid events, now that more archives are accessible and some witnesses remain alive to recall the horror.

For the full review, see:
MAX FRANKEL. “Stalin’s Shadow.” The New York Times (Sun., November 25, 2012): 16.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 21, 2012.)

The book under review, is:
Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. New York: Doubleday, 2012.

Cuban Government Employees “Are Known for Surly Service, Inefficiency, Absenteeism and Pilfering”

(p. A10) However small, . . . , the private sector is changing the work culture on an island where state employees earn meager salaries and are known for surly service, inefficiency, absenteeism and pilfering.
Sergio Alba Marín, who for years managed the restaurants of a state-owned hotel and now owns a popular fast-food restaurant, said he was very strict with his employees and would not employ workers trained by the state.
“They have too many vices — stealing, for one,” said Mr. Alba, who was marching with his 25 employees and two large banners emblazoned with the name of his restaurant, La Pachanga. “You can’t change that mentality.”
“Even if you could, I don’t have time,” he added. “I have a business to run.”

For the full story, see:
VICTORIA BURNETT. “HAVANA JOURNAL; Amid Fealty to Socialism, a Nod to Capitalism.” The New York Times (Thurs., May 2, 2013): A6 & A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 1, 2013.)

Today Is 13th Anniversary of Democrats’ Infamous Betrayal of Elián González

“In this April 22, 2000 file photo, Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, right, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez, early Saturday morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami. Armed federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn Saturday, firing tear gas into an angry crowd as they left the scene with the weeping 6-year-old boy.” Source of caption and photo: online version of JENNIFER KAY and MATT SEDENSKY. “10 years later, few stirred by Elian Gonzalez saga.” Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., April 22, 2010): 7A. (Note: the online version of the article is dated April 21, 2010 and has the title “10 years after Elian, US players mum or moving on.”)

Today (April 22, 2013) is the 13th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history—when the Democratic Clinton Administration seized a six year old child in order to force him back into the slavery that his mother had died trying to escape.

Marx’s Contradictions Due to His Being a Reactive Journalist Instead of a Philosopher

Source of book image: http://s-usih.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/marx.jpg

(p. 14) Plenty of scholars sweated through the 20th century trying to reconcile inconsistencies across the great sweep of Marx’s writing, seeking to shape a coherent Marxism out of Marx. Sperber’s approach is more pragmatic. He accepts that Marx was not a body of ideas, but a human being responding to events. In this context, it’s telling that Marx’s prime vocation was not as an academic but as a campaigning journalist: Sperber suggests Marx’s two stints at the helm of a radical paper in Cologne represented his greatest periods of professional fulfillment. Accordingly, much of what the scholars have tried to brand as Marxist philosophy was instead contemporary commentary, reactive and therefore full of contradiction.

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN FREEDLAND. “A Man of His Time.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., March 31, 2013): 14.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 29, 2013.)

The book under review:
Sperber, Jonathan. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life. New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2013.

Chinese Communists Starved 45 Million in Mao’s Famine

Source of book image: http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/xun.jpg

(p. C5) It is difficult to look dispassionately at some 45 million dead. It was not war that produced this shocking number, nor natural disaster. It was a man. It was politics and one man’s vanity. The cause was famine and violence across rural China, a result of Mao Zedong’s unchecked drive to turn his country rapidly into a communist utopia and a leading industrial nation.
. . .
(p. C6) . . . important pieces of evidence are being covered up . . . : Some originals transcribed in Zhou Xun’s chastening documentary history, “The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962” ( . . . ) have since been reclassified by the Beijing authorities and vanished once more into closed files.
In 2010, Frank Dikötter produced “Mao’s Great Famine,” an authoritative account of the catastrophe, written with a bravura seldom seen in Western writing on modern China. Impassioned and outraged, Mr. Dikötter detailed the destruction, the suffering and the cruelty or hubris of China’s leaders. Sorting through forgotten and hidden documents with great intellectual honesty, Mr. Dikötter ended his journey pointing his finger directly at Mao, who notoriously said, as he called for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine: “It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
. . .
As a teenager in 1959, Mr. Yang watched his father die of starvation. Years later, while working in a senior editorial post at Xinhua, China’s state-controlled news agency, he began his own search for the truth behind the famine. The author spent 20 years tracking down survivors across China and using his authority as a respected Communist cadre to access provincial archives. It was, in part, expiation for his shame in not questioning his father’s death.
. . .
There is no memorial anywhere in China to the victims of the famine, no public monument, no remembrance day. Graves are not marked and mass burial grounds have disappeared into the landscape. The famine’s very existence has been denied. The Communist Party will only admit to “food shortages” and “some difficulties” during the Great Leap Forward. They claim that these setbacks were a result of natural disasters.
Mr. Yang set about writing his book as a tombstone for his father and for every victim who had died from starvation. He was also erecting a tombstone for the system that brought about the Great Famine. First published in Hong Kong in 2008, Mr. Yang’s work is banned in China. The reason is clear: The book challenges the very foundation of the Communist Party’s authority.

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL FATHERS. “BOOKSHELF; A Most Secret Tragedy; The Great Leap Forward aimed to make China an industrial giant–instead it killed 45 million.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 27, 2012): C5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 26, 2012.)

Books under review:
Yang, Jisheng. Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Zhou, Xun, ed. The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962: A Documentary History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.

The Dikötter book mentioned, is:
Dikötter, Frank. Mao’s Great Famine. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Yang Documents How Mao Starved the Proletariat

Source of book image: http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9780374277932_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG

(p. C12) Yang Jisheng’s “Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962” exemplifies E.H. Carr’s famous dictum: “Study the historian before you study the facts.” Mr. Yang is not the first historian to exhume the darkest crime of the political party that still rules China but the first Chinese journalist and longtime Party member to do so. He uses the Party’s own historical records and the perpetrators’ own words to craft his devastatingly detailed indictment.

For the full review essay, see:
Sylvia Nasar (author of passage quoted above, one of 50 contributors to whole article). “Twelve Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends to tell us what books they enjoyed in 2012–from Judd Apatow’s big plans to Bruce Wagner’s addictions. See pages C10 and C11 for the Journal’s own Top Ten lists.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 15, 2012): passim (Nasar’s contribution is on p. C12).
(Note: the online version of the review essay has the date December 14, 2012.)

The book under review, is:
Yang, Jisheng. Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.