Modern day Bolsheviks
How the radical left may become the architects of the next Gulag Archipelago
I've recently come across the Gulag Archipelago which is a quasi-history of the Russian gulag (prison) system throughout the duration of the Soviet Union. Prior to starting the book I was completely ignorant of the history of the gulag and the history of Russia in general. Although I'm only about part way through Solzhenitsyn's manifesto I've noticed some striking similarities between the Soviet Bolsheviks and the modern day radical left.
For those like myself who are ignorant of Russian history here's a quick rundown of who the Bolshevik were. Before the Bolshevik Russia was governed by a feudal type of government headed by a Tsar. This created tension amongst the Russian people because by this time mostly everywhere else in Europe had abandoned their feudal governments in favor of democracies or constitutional republics. World war one proved to be the straw that broke the feudal Russians back. An already strained and starved nation had now found itself at war with a inexperienced Tsar at the helm. To make matters worse this inexperienced Tsar decided to take direct command of Russia's Imperial Army during the war which proved to be a challenge far beyond his capabilities. This left his wife who happened to be German (the country Russia was currently at war with) to rule, not a good look for sure. Outside of his poor military leadership and his German wife leading the charge against her home country a controversial mystic with close ties to the Tsar was left wandering the halls of power. The mystic, German wife and significant military losses caused high ranking generals and military leaders to stage a type of coup and convinced the Tsar to abdicate, effectively relinquishing his power.
After the Tsar stepped down the already formed Duma (parliament) from a 1905 revolution came to power. However the Duma proved to serve the interests of established capitalists and autocrats. In response, the working class or proletariat formed factions called Soviets. This created a kind of company union relationship of political power. The Soviets would allow the Duma to rule and govern but they still maintained significant power and influence themselves nonetheless this delicate balance of power didn't last long. Many factions including the Bolsheviks vied for political influence amoung the Soviets. The Bolshevik came out on top promising an end to Russia's war with Germany that the current parliament was continuing to engage in as well as land for the former peasants and an end to the famine caused by small wartime food rations currently being alloted to Russian citizens. Under the Bolshevik the Soviets organized into armed units called Red Guards and overthrew the Duma.
The Bolsheviks were lead by Vladimir Lenin who had previously fallen in love with Karl Marx's manifesto and was a devout communist. The term Bolshevik in Russian means "One of the majority" however just because they called themselves that didn't necessarily make it true, think of it as self identifying as the majority. So what does a political party who now holds power but doesn't actually represent most of their citizens interests do? Set up the Cheka of course a unit of secret police who's mission it was to arrest, torture, imprison or kill any pesky counter revolutionary who even thought of opposing or criticizing the Bolsheviks political ideology or methods of obtaining the socialist utopia.
The term counter revolutionary was used as an intentionally wide net to catch any and all potential "enemies of the people". How wide was the Bolsheviks net? Who were these "counter revolutionaries"? Well they included *deep breath* people who prioritized their faith over the government, taught religion to their kids, engineers that acknowledged practical limits to their designed infrastructure or missed targets because of inadequate funding, kulaks or affluent farmers who had hired employees, free speaking journalists and other public figures who could be doing nothing else but committing espionage with their message, nationalists who even hinted at their allegiance being to their country of origin such as Ukraine and not the perfect utopia of the Soviet Union, wives of foreigners, university teachers who didn't cite Lenin or praise the communist ideology to the sufficient degree, Russians of German decent during wartime and so on. The terms net was cast so wide that even undercover cops the government themselves employed to spy on nationalists in the unions countries were thrown in the gulag upon their return because how could they NOT have been influenced by exposure to those dirty counter revolutionaries.
The radical left of today makes use of these umbrella terms except they fancy different words than counter revolutionary and instead employ terms like racist, transphobe or white supremacist for the job and much like counter revolutionary their definitions have been stretched as thin as possible in order cast the net ever wider to catch anyone and everyone who maybe in opposition. Like the undercover cop who diligently reported the information he received back to the motherland was deemed a counter revolutionary nowadays just as ridiculously even black conservatives can find themselves under the shade cast by the white supremacist umbrella.
The political prisoners destined for a sentence in the gulag were charged under article 58 of the criminal code, think of them as Russia's "community standards". Similar to the social media user who finds themselves all of sudden banned because of a violation of these arbitrary standards the political prisoners in the gulag were ignorant of what specifically they had been charged with and left only with the knowledge that they had been crushed under the jack boots of article 58 and that that law was used as justification for their term in the gulag. Solzhenitsyn dedicates a few pages in his book documenting his quest to find the syntax of article 58 both during and after his time in the gulag. His quest is unsuccessful and neither him nor his fellow prisoners had ever actually seen the words of article 58 in print. Eventually after the criminal code was reformed and article 58 became outdated Solzhenitsyn is able to obtain a copy of the law that took seventeen years from his life. Unfortunately like the community standards of our technological overlords article 58 which contained 12 sections was written so vaguely and was so all encompassing that it would take little bending or molding of either interpretation of the laws syntax or the alleged motives of the accused to be able to charge anybody under one of the twelve sections of that law.
Now getting banned from shitposting for a week is incalculably less severe than being thrown in the gulag. This is a comparison of methods between the Bolshevik and the modern radical left. Both use umbrella terms to encapsulate anyone and everyone who opposes their political agenda and both use incredibly vague laws or standards to strip rights away from their ideological opponents. Similarly to the Bolshevik, here in Canada anyways they both represent only a fraction of the citizenery they govern yet claim they act in the interest of the people. The Bolsheviks referred to their opposition as the Mensheviks or minority while our supreme leader calls his political opponents "the small fringe minority". The Bolshevik formed the Cheka to crush their opposition, ours form unelected coalitions with similar minded politicians to force themselves collectively upon their opponents. The Bolsheviks pumped out propaganda and arrested journalists with opposing points of view the radical left forms disinformation governance boards and apprehends financial assets from "radical news outlets"1
Are we the Soviet Union? No....but we're at a point where we need to tread lightly into the future. Right now political heretics lose their freedom of speech by being cut from the communication utilities of social media or again in Canada we've seen these same heretics and their supporters have their bank accounts frozen, opposing viewpoints and criticism to their ideology have lost their livelihoods because of "mysogistic" comments2
So again are we the Soviet Union? In method we seem to be becoming more and more similar the main difference now is degree; so far the gulags haven't been erected on our "home and native land" but how many more steps away are we from stripping a citizens right to speech and freezing their bank accounts to throwing these "homophobes" in a bed bug infested alcove so small that one can only stand while simultaneously depriving them of sleep and food until they eventually break and finally sign a confession of their crimes that we already determined they're guilty of.
The current actions of the radical left censorship, asset freezing, career destruction and public shaming are predicated on two core beliefs. One is that their enemies are responsible for all the evil in the world and two their ideology is superior to anyone else's perspective. If only we could get rid of those racist misogynistic white supremacists everything would be better! Those bastards are standing in the way of spreading our superior ideology and bringing forth the perfect utopia! Bulldoze them immediately!
However in Solzhenitsyn's words a man who was engulfed in the nightmare of his countries utopian dream it just isn't that cut and dry. "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Furthermore Solzhenitsyn concludes that communist ideology was the driving force behind the executioners hand. "Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed."
This is what the radical left fails to understand that through their current methodology they are emulating the colonizers and oppressors that they condemn so violently, it is in this ignorance that they are fated to become the architects of the next Gulag Archipelago.
Footnotes
Matt Taibbi, "PayPal's IndyMedia Wipeout", TK News, May 3rd 2022, https://taibbi.substack.com/p/paypals-indymedia-wipeout/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MzI2MzM0OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTMyNTcwNTgsIl8iOiJvRUlydiIsImlhdCI6MTY1MzQ5NjQzNCwiZXhwIjoxNjUzNTAwMDM0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTA0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.mu0yxXpfJgdb4Fvu_qh2PPRzMkAbJgfiT1Qc5ZIJL0A&s=r
Aja Romano, "Google has fired the engineer whose anti-diversity memo reflects a divided tech culture", Vox News, August 8th 2017, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/identities/2017/8/8/16106728/google-fired-engineer-anti-diversity-memo
*As a side note the Vox article cited as footnote number two perfectly illustrates the point I'm trying to make in this piece. Vox is a left leaning news outlet which inherently there is nothing wrong with however in the article about Mr. Damore's memo they refer to his speech and method of thinking as "dangerous", and they do this more than once. This article was published in 2017 and it's plain to see that Vox and other media had already begun illustrating people who didn't align with their political views as "dangerous". Framing them as Solzhenitsyn puts it as "the evil people insidiously committing evil deeds". Fast forward five years later to 2022 and we can see that the seeds they sowed with language like this have grown into action against those same political heretics. I know at times I may sound like a tin foil hat wearing lunatic screaming about the end of times in the town square but in just five short years we've gone from calling these political opponents "dangerous" to censoring them, freezing their financial assets and trampling them with horses in Ottawa. It worries me to think about what degree we'll have reached five years from now if we remain on the same trajectory.