One book I have and which I hope to read for pleasure in coming days is Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer-prize winning tome: "Gulag : A History."

According to a blurb, The book presents a "first fully documented history of the gulag . . . describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor-unprecedented in scope-gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution killing up to 30 million people."

Meantime, Baburam and others in Nepal swear by the Stalinist model for everything -- from how to run their party meetings to how to run the economy.

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue230/fromthenepalipress.htm

oohi
ashu

**********
Baburam writes
Letter from Baburam Bhattarai in Samaya, a Nepali newsweekly, 7 January

LETTER FROM BABURAM: In the short time that Samaya took to establish itself, one of its pieces, ?Gadari ko Lahar? (Trail of betrayal) caught my attention. I am not in a position to state how far the facts in the article are true or false.

Since Lenin?s time, communist parties have followed the tradition of forbidding comrades from making internal discussions public. Until the 10th Convention of Russian Communist Party in 1921 Lenin allowed party factions to disseminate information on their own. But after that the party only put out an agreed line. Under Stalin, a strong tradition developed in which no cadre was in a position to air party differences in public. That tradition has carried on to this day in communist parties.

As a party member, I am not in a position to express any opinion in public. But it gives every right and responsibility to defend in public false things written about me. The Samay piece says: ?Most senior (Maoist) activists who surrendered were those on Bhattarai?s side.? I don?t think anyone who has known me closely during my 27 years of political life and 24 years in the Communist Party would characterise me as a leader of surrenderees.

Noone except those who join a revolutionary movement out of rage or emotion ever quit. Those who deeply understand the meaning of revolution and translate those values into their purpose in life will ever be lured away. Such individuals will be communists all their lives. It makes no sense associating me with those who have quit the party. It has become a routine task for the royal army to assassinate my character.

The royalists have been especially hard on me since my writeup about the palace massacre. I know the royalists were unable to digest my presence during the last peace talks. But what I don?t understand is how eminent journalists are unable to report facts. I urge journalists not to deal such serious issues with frivolity but to employ their pens on the behalf of truth.

***************
Yubaraj Ghimire responds in Samay, 13 January

In Baburam Bhattarai?s letter, one can see original thinking on the differences between principle and practical matters, the existence of minority and defeated factions in the present conditions and the practice of Janabaad within the CPN Maoist.

What is important is the fact that Prachanda, the party?s chairman allowed the letter to be published. Bhattarai, right now is not a thinker, he has become Comrade Laldhoj because of his commitment to communist philosophy and tradition. That is why he is not a leader now but a follower.

After his line was defeated or fell into the minority during the plenum four months ago, he gave himself up to the majority?s decision?the campaign for military offensives and a strategic offensive. So what is Bhattarai?s line and how is it different from Comrade Badal?s line? Logically, Bhattarai would have been for ending the conflict through effective talks. If the Maoists? present majority line does not produce desired results by March, the party may go back to the minority line. But this presupposes that hardliners in the party leadership show the same patience and character that Bhattarai has since the plenum.


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Poor fellow.

He writes that King G did not like seeing BRB on the peace talk show.
I think it otherwise, Prachanda and Badal who are poor in writing and public
communication outside their cadre bases, did not prefer BRB on the Peace
talk committee. It will not be long BRB will announce the end of his affliation
with Prachanda Path. If his followers are leaving the Prachanda Path, then
he is surely under the pressure to live or stay. Its only matter of time.

Time will show.
GP

I remember the day when I was conducting an experiment on
strength check on concrete beam. My professor came to us
and asked us to use lense, not to use bare eye. There are
micro cracks thats the important things you have to see and
the bare eyes only let you know the wide cracks and which is
too late to be of any useful ness.

That experiment might be on Reinforced concrete beam, but
the idea can carried over to real world problem. Tension cracks
can not be easily solved ............... The only solution is to
unload the beam, but Maoists have to be unloaded and time
is waiting for them.

GP

yesko samadhan cha hai.

1. baburam lai santi barta ma lyayara tundhikhel ko bicchhama jhunda.
2. prachanda lai panee baburam sangai tundhikhel ko bicchhama jhunda.
3. tyo badal lai chahee plane bata badal ma jhar m00j! lai.

Tthat's the one i am going to read next week! Just got it today. Read great reviews about Gulag. I hope its as good as Khrushev. There seems to be a great book out on Stalin, The Court of Red Tsar.

k garne, paperback version bharkharai release bhayo Gulag:A History Ko. Hardcover kinda haddi bhachine. I am aiting for that Stalin book to come out in paperback. Also Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot is coming out this year.

Read great reviews about Gulag.= Read good reviews of Gulag.

yeso herda, ashu ta maobadi ko goon gan gaula jasto cha nee. tapai lai chahee bichar garnoo parla jasto cha...

la ta Namaskar ;)

I think Baburam should not work with Prachanda and Badal. He should form his own party. He is not free in so called maoists party.

Prachanda ra Badal lai Tudikhelma nango banayera jhundaunu parchha. death of maoists.

While Anne Applebaum's Gulag is an extensivebook, and in fact also quite engrossing, I do have some problems I would like to talk about. Sure, the communists were very intolerant and despised freedom of speech, and sent political dissidents to the Gulag system at the drop of a hat. Nobody denies that. But to compare the Soviet Union's Gulag system to the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in their concentration camp is unfair and does injustice to the millions of victims--Jews, gypsies, slavs, etc--who were murdered, maimed and tortured merely because of their ethnicity and nothing more. Such comparison should never ever be made. PERIOD. It is quite obvious that Anne Applebaum is towing the Republican party line by this inane comparison. They have this bad habit of asserting that the pinkos were as bad as the Nazis. These were NAZI policies and people died(killed most often than not) because of these policies. As for the Gulag, predominantly speaking it wasn't the Soviet Union's policies to treat the prisoners this way. Many of them were there because they actively denounced Stalinist communist policies. Of course, during Stalin's times this hysteria hit the ceiling and people were locked up for petty reasons. At its peak the Gulag camps held hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and Stalin viewed, wrongly mind you, prison labor as a source of productivity. So, enough prisoners were needed just to meet the unreachable demands set by the administrators. Thus the vicious cycle was initiated and the Soviet Union saw the need for more prisoners for increased productivity.
Having said all this, most prisoners who died in the Gulag camps died due to neglect by the authorities. Of course, there WERE indeed cases where prisoners were shot and treated inhumanely, but in no way SHOULD this ever be compared to the crimes committed by the Nazi authorities. While one killed people because it was the policy of the administration, the other killed people due to neglect. The Soviet Union was in no shape or form a affluent like the United States, so what I find in Anne Applebaum's --in many ways--ethnocentric book is her constant comparison to what she considers to be standards for treating prisoners. I can bet my bottom dollar that Indian prisoners don't make life easy for prisoners either. What about Nepal's prison system? Beating up prisoners in Nepal is also not unheard of.

So, all in all, the book is well researched, but many of her opinions are flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt. Having said all this, it is a great book, and the indisputable facts regarding the Gulag are indeed the reason why this book should be on your shelf.

well put, agree wholeheartedly