Empire of the Absurd: A Brief History of the Absurdities of the Soviet Union

Summary

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ABSURDITIES OF THE SOVIET UNION Translated from the Estonian by Tarmo Heyduck Executive editor: Markus Hess Cover: Silver Vahtre FOREWORD THE BIG FAILURE In May 1991 a Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyev was sent into space. At the end of the year he was still circling around the Earth waiting for a spaceship to bring him back. He had left a Soviet Union that was still a superpower but would return to a world where there was no Soviet Union any more. The Soviet empire had just ceased to exist and had dissolved itself. One of the biggest experiments of the 20th century had ended in failure. How many human lives were lost during this experiment, nobody knows. It is stated in the „Black Book of Communism” that in the Soviet Union alone the death toll of communist terror was at least 20 million people. Recent Russian studies put the count of lost lives and unborn children as high as 170 million people. Communism has been not only the biggest but also the most expensive experiment in the history of mankind. For a moment it looked like communism and communist ways of thinking were dead and gone for ever. Unfortunately, this was not the case. While nazism and its crimes were condemned after World War II, making the return of this form of totalitarianism impossible, this has not happened with communism. It still seems almost respectful to wear Che Guevara T-shirts, demonstrate on the streets with red flags and the Soviet Star and present slogans such as „CCCP 4 ever”. This is the main reason why we still see so much communism in the world around us. Another reason for this is that the people from the other side of the Iron Curtain have not realized what the Soviet system actually looked like. They have long held Hitler as the biggest criminal and murderer of the 20th century. It is hard to believe that, actually, Stalin murdered significantly more. Not only are the crimes of communism not condemned, but they are by and large not known. Because the Sovie...