Τα media όπως τα ήθελε ο Λένιν

«But when he declared that the newspapers were full of counter-revolutionary propaganda, and a delegate called out, ‘You’ve shut them all down,’ Lenin reacted fiercely, drawing applause from part of the audience: ‘Not all of them, yet, unfortunately, but we will.’»
Dmitri Volkogonov: «Lenin»

The Value of Violence

«Violence is the driving force of politics. The importance of violence derives from the dominance it usually manifests over other forms of political action, from its destructive and politically transformative power and from the capacity of violence to serve as an instrument of political mobilization. These three factors explain why Chairman Mao was correct in his assertion that political power emanated from the gun barrel.

      In using violence, states generally have a number of advantages vis-à-vis other actors. One advantage is bureaucracy. Anyone can be violent, but serious violence generally requires the support of a bureaucratic organization to overcome the natural, human, and moral limits of violence. Bureaucracy is one of the mechanisms through which states sometimes achieve the monopoly of force to which Max Weber famously referred.

      Most states do not rely upon naked violence as an instrument of governance but seek to refine violence and make it a more effective tool. Domestically, states employ various forms of legitimation as well as the rule of law to refine their use of violence. In the international realm, refined violence is sometimes called soft power. Legitimation, law, and soft power are not substitutes for force but instead are, in military parlance, “force multipliers” that increase the effectiveness of a given quantity of force, allowing the same result to be achieved with less effort.

      Another instrument that reduces the state’s need to rely upon overt violence is public welfare. Welfare is more a substitute for force than a force multiplier. It is the carrot rather than the stick, reward rather than punishment. The U.S., slow to build a welfare state, has chosen to rely more upon punishment than reward internally, which is why America has an enormous prison system. This internal reliance upon force has had consequences for America’s external relations, as well. In fact, the weakness of its welfare state helps to explain why the U.S. is among the most overtly violent states on the face of the earth. This might be seen as the dark side of American exceptionalism.

      Governments, even liberal democracies, use violence against their citizens every day. But when, if ever, is it appropriate for citizens to use violence against the state?

      Violence is terrible, but it is the great engine of political change. The next generation, perceiving itself to have been the beneficiary, is often grateful for the violent acts of the previous generation. Mechanisms designed to discourage popular violence, including political reform and peaceful modes of political participation, are generally tactics designed to delimit change».

«The Value of Violence»

A Greek Actor and one Charles Marx

«When the SS City of Boulogne sailed into Dover on 27 August 1849 its captain notified the Home Office of ‘all Aliens who are now on board my said ship’, as required by law: they included a Greek actor, a French gentleman, a Polish professor and one Charles Marx, who gave his profession as ‘Dr’.»

Francis Wheen: «Karl Marx»

«The First Duty of the Press»

«I prefer to follow the great events of the world, to analyse the course of history, than to occupy myself with local bosses, with the police and prosecuting magistrates. However great these gentlemen may imagine themselves in their own fancy, they are nothing, absolutely nothing, in the gigantic battles of the present time. I consider we are making a real sacrifice when we decide to break a lance with these opponents. But, firstly, it is the duty of the press to come forward on behalf of the oppressed in its immediate neighbourhood … The first duty of the press now is to undermine all the foundations of the existing political state of affairs.»

Αναφέρεται στο «Karl Marx» του Francis Wheen

Ο Μαρξ και τα καυσόξυλα

«His first venture into this unexplored territory (Economy) was a long critique of the new law dealing with thefts of wood from private forests. By ancient custom, peasants had been allowed to gather fallen branches for fuel, but now anyone who picked up the merest twig could expect a prison sentence. More outrageously still, the offender would have to pay the forest-owner the value of the wood, such value to be assessed by the forester himself. This legalised larceny forced Marx to think, for the first time, about the questions of class, private property and the state. It also allowed him to exercise his talent for demolishing a thoughtless argument with its own logic. Reporting a comment by one of the knightly halfwits in the provincial assembly – ‘It is precisely because the pilfering of wood is not regarded as theft that it occurs so often – he let rip with a characteristic reductio ad absurdum: ‘By analogy with this, the legislator would have to draw the conclusion: It is because a box on the ear is not regarded as a murder that it has become so frequent. It should be decreed therefore that a box on the ear is murder.»

Francis Wheen: «Karl Marx.»

Lenin vs Koran

«The intellectual diet of Leninism was as compulsory for every Soviet citizen as the Koran is for an observing Muslim. On 1 January 1990 in the Soviet Union there were more than 653 million copies of Lenin’s writings in 125 languages—perhaps the only area of abundance achieved by Communist effort».

Dmitri Volkogonov: «Lenin»

KGB Friends

«The most important special action being planned at the beginning of the Andropov era was in Greece, where a group of army colonels seized power in April 1967, suspended parliamentary government and declared martial law. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) was driven underground and its leaders temporarily lost touch with Moscow. In July 1967 the KGB was formally instructed by the CPSU Central Committee to renew contact with the underground Party (a task it had doubtless already begun) and to give it “political and material assistance.”⁵ The “material assistance” included both financial subsidies, usually handed over to Party representatives in Budapest,⁶ and help in preparing for guerrilla warfare. 

The Centre decreed that Department V’s main priority for 1968 should be to set up sabotage and intelligence groups (DRGs) on Greek territory to prepare for an uprising against the military regime.⁷ Department V also made preparations for possible guerrilla operations in Italy. The leaders of the PCI were seriously afraid of an Italian military putsch on the Greek model and had requested Soviet assistance in preparing the Party for the possibility that, like the KKE, it would have to transform itself into an illegal underground movement.⁸

In 1968, all KGB residencies were sent operational letters headed “Recommendations for Creating the Necessary Conditions on the Territory of a Potential Adversary for Special Group [DRG] Operations in an Emergency.” The letter to the resident in Athens, Ivan Petrovich Kislyak (codenamed MAYSKY), added: “It is not possible that the course of events will in practice require us to assist local progressive forces in the near future, and we must therefore make preparations for this in advance.”⁹ The Centre issued instructions that all locally recruited DRGs operating in Greece were to be headed by KGB agents, but that this was to be concealed from other members of the groups.¹⁰ In 1968 the illegal PAUL was sent to Greece with orders to select “runways” (doroshki) for the landing of airborne Soviet DRGs and bases—“beehives” (ulya)—from which to operate, as well as to check the suitability of those sites identified earlier. “Runway ALFA,” reconnoitered by PAUL, was located in the southern part of the Thessalia plain, about forty kilometers north-west of the town of Lamia. “Runway BETA” was on the north-west of the Thessalia plain, four or five kilometers south of the Kalambaka settlement. The wooded hilly districts of Belasitsa, Piri and Sengal were chosen as areas suitable for smuggling agents and equipment across the Bugarian—Greek border.¹¹

In August 1968 the Bulgarian DS confidently informed the Centre that it was capable of overthrowing the Greek junta with the assistance of one of its agents, whom it identified as the former head of a Greek intelligence agency. The Bulgarian Central Committee had approved the proposed coup d’état in Athens and instructed the leadership of its intelligence service to coordinate plans for it with the KGB and the CPSU Central Committee.¹² The KGB files seen by Mitrokhin do not explain why the Bulgarian proposal was turned down. There were, however, at least three probable reasons. The Centre may well have assessed the risks of failure more highly than the Bulgarians. The Politburo, which at almost the moment the Bulgarian proposal reached it was deciding on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, was doubtless disinclined to give its simultaneous approval to a risky coup attempt in Greece. Further complications were caused by the split in the Greek Communist Party which, after the suppression of the Prague Spring, divided into the pro-Soviet KKE and the Eurocommunist KKE-es. Brillakis (codenamed SEMYON), who had hitherto been one of the KGB’s chief contacts in the underground Greek Party, refused further meetings with the Athens residency in protest at the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.¹³

Though the KGB continued to channel large amounts of money into the KKE,¹⁴ it seems to have made little progress in setting up DRGs (Soviet sabotage and intelligence groups) on Greek soil. The main material successfully smuggled across the Greek—Bulgarian border was not sabotage equipment into Greece but the archives of the KKE which were taken in the opposite direction. Weighing 14 tons, filling 1,598 packages and four crates, guarded by thirty Greek Communists, they were transported from Bulgaria to Romania and thence to the Soviet Union, where they were deposited for safekeeping in the town of Ivanovo.^15″.

«The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of KGB»