Reply #90: "Read some history" [View All]

[rinsd]

Which should be "read all of history" not just the alternative histories vogue in the 20th century.

"Communism is great in theory, great in practice"

How can it be? You just claimed its never existed.

"Orwell was a crotchety old man when he wrote both 1984 (which I've read) and Animal Farm.

Crotchety? Well I can certainly see Orwell as a cynic. And while he wrote Animal Farm and 1984 towards the end of his life he died at the young age of 47.

"He was a socialist, by the way."

Yes he was and he detested power grabs by cults of personality and was what could be charitably described as anti-Stalin.

Which reminds me of a funny bit from the movie Enemy at the Gates about Stalingrad. In the extras on the DVD you have a cut scene with Bob Hoskins playing Nikita Khrushchev drunk on vodka ranting against Stalin. Well at least it was funny to a history buff like me familiar with Khrushchev and his efforts at destalinization of the Soviet Union.