Thoughts on reading list; the criminal nature of the Soviet Union; and could we become like that?

George S. writes:

Talk about synchronicity. The day before you posted a link to your reading list, I considered asking you if you could recommend a list of books so I could have a guide to use in the future. I thought it may be an imposition so I decided not to ask.

What are the chances that you would re-post that list the very next day? As a matter of fact, I was thinking about it the night before you posted the list, so it was only a matter of hours between my wishing I had a list and you posting it.

I have read some of the books and poetry you mention, but the ones I haven’t read will keep me busy for a long time. Believe it or not, I read Chaucer in high school (I had an eccentric teacher who loved him), and you’re right about the need for The Canterbury Tales to be teacher-led. [LA replies: with some of its frank sexual material and raw language, I’m surprised to hear that Chaucer is being read in high school, but high school isn’t what it used to be.]

I am currently reading a book called The Sword and the Shield—The Mitrokhin Archive by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. I have only just begun the book, but so far it is a fascinating tale of the the Soviet Union, Lenin and the history of the KGB.

Mitrokhin smuggled thousands of classified documents out of the Soviet Union and, while I’ve only scratched the surface of the book, so far it shows the Soviets and Lenin to be some of the most paranoid and ruthless people ever. I knew this before, of course, but to learn the details of their treachery from a high level Russian source is fascinating. They were a brutal regime from the very beginning. There are revelations in the book that make me think of The Sopranos or Goodfellas. The Soviet Union was a bunch of gangsters—a government run mafia.

The book does another thing almost immediately; it makes the reader believe the West could become something like the early Soviet Union, and more quickly than many think, if we continue on our current path. That is the idea that I got from the descriptions in this book of the Soviet Union in its beginning stages.

Anyway, thanks for the reading list, and thanks for the synchronicity.

LA replies:

“it makes the reader believe the West could become something like the early Soviet Union, and more quickly than many think, if we continue on our current path.”

I no longer think this statement is absurd. I no longer believe that there is some “normal America” which will suddenly wake up and stop the country’s radical course. I think anything is possible.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2012 04:13 PM | Send