An heir to Dostoevsky's underground man, the protagonist of Roger Scruton's latest novel is an anti-hero, downtrodden and broken
by communism in 1980s Prague.
No communist state has ever existed, so by one interpretation, the number of deaths
caused by communism is 0.
Old cultural traditions have been
obliterated by communism; Christianity provides a compelling and compassionate alternative to the hollowness of the regime's materialism; and unlike Europe, which has largely rejected its Christian heritage in a decades - long spasm of anti-clericalism, «Christianity» in China rings up «modern» and «humane,» rather than «pre-modern» and «inhumane.»
But even among the nonbelievers, there was a conspicuous sympathy and solidarity» a joy in recognizing that «everything was now different,» that another of the things
demonized by communism was now available for them.
If the Eastern Orthodox culture of the Far East was nearly
destroyed by communism and Islam, and Catholic and Protestant Europe were nearly destroyed by secularism, then what model exists for us to follow?
Three years later in an interview to an Italian journal, Pope John Paul II said, «The proponents of extreme capitalism in any form tend to overlook the good things
achieved by communism, the struggle against unemployment and the concern for the poor».
This is especially remarkable because church life here was even more
devastated by communism than it was in central Russia.
The demonstration is made by fitting the imperialism, universalism and utopianism of communism — the overriding historic phenomenon of the age — into a pattern of empire that was not
established by communism but of which communism is but the latest manifestation.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the existential threat
posed by communism pressured the West to maintain consolidated political and cultural loyalties.
Part historical re-creation and part fiction, the novel gives us a series of colorful sketches of the USSR after Stalin's death, when millions still believed in the ideal of economic plenty
promised by communism.
Russian art was
confined by communism, locked in figurative, unadventurous conservatism, but American art?
Rauch uses characters and images of life of pre-communist civil society that was
oppressed by communism in the GDR.
The societies today are not controlled by climate alarmism in the same totalitarian way as the Soviet bloc was
controlled by communism; but the universities surely are.
The full force of the law was used to deport, imprison and monitor persons who were deemed
influenced by communism in the 1930s to 50s.
As you might expect, social media is awash with morons who still live in Mom and Dad's basement and whose frontal lobes haven't yet formed, explaining why the tens of millions of deaths
caused by communism had nothing whatsoever to do with cuddly misunderstood Karl.
The rejection of aristocracy, whether by a democracy,
by communism, or by some other collectivist system, does not, however, entail opposition to manners as such, but only to aristocratic manners.