They conclude that having forcibly changed the economic way humans live they will achieve their goals. As Dostoevsky wrote in his notebook for 1863-1864: ‘The socialists want to regenerate humans, to liberate them, to present them without God and the family. Dismissing the essential spiritual nature of human beings, the socialists can concern themselves only with man’s material needs. Dostoevsky’s critique of socialism, then, begins with its atheism. The enmity-largely theoretical-between Christianity and the socialism of the late Belinsky and his circle, had now become a reality, and this revolutionary and atheistic doctrine the major rival of Christianity for the hearts and minds of the new generation. His remarks about it in both fiction and journalism over the next two decades are almost uniformly hostile. Returning from ten years in Siberia Dostoevsky encountered a socialism that had taken on a much more revolutionary cast. The unrepentant brawlers, thieves, and murderers with whom he spent four years were not merely innocent victims who would happily live in brotherhood and harmony once freed from repressive institutions. The theoretical notion of the fundamental goodness of human beings was now tested against the reality of human nature in the raw. The Rousseauistic view of human nature on which utopian socialism rested was severely challenged by Dostoevsky’s experience of prison in Siberia. I found this bit last night online, describing Dostoevsky’s view on socialism: One of my Orthodox professor friends here at the conference said that Dostoevsky, no aristocrat, understood this. The thing is, socialism is not only about political economy. Many of you weren’t keen on me framing this as a recrudescent socialism, because I am talking mostly about culture, not political economy. ![]() As you regular readers know, I plan to write about the warnings people living here who grew up under Soviet and Eastern European communism are now sounding about the emerging totalitarianism in our own increasingly post-liberal culture. At dinner last night with some conference-goers, I was talking about my ideas for my upcoming book. Teenage Red Guards beat teachers to death for being “counter-revolutionaries” and family members denounced one another while factions clashed bitterly for control across the country.Hello from snowy and not-un-Siberia-like upstate New York, where I’m attending a conference at the Russian Orthodox monastery and seminary. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos. In the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. ![]() He told AFP: "Because the government has never permitted a deep examination of history, it's impossible to say that lessons have been learned." The suppression of knowledge and discussion worries author Zheng, who is now a dissident living in the United States. "The more you talk about such things, the more current CCP leaders are worried," he said. No official commemorations of the anniversary are expected.Īcademic Ding said the Communist Party fears recalling the officially-sanctioned chaos and violence could undermine its legitimacy. Nowadays government control over the media and public opinion is tightening, said the cadre: "It's absolutely clear, that to establish their own authority, they control public opinion." "Before I retired I didn't dare say 'no' to the Party," he said. In recent months he took a manuscript to a publisher, but refused to cut some passages. "They said I was anti-party, anti-socialist, anti-Mao Zedong Thought," he said.
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