Subject: Re: XX century history, etc.

From: [email-masked] (dmitry pruss)
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 1994 14:57:50 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Zak May) writes:
>Michael Kagalenko <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> I identify with executed...
>
>I know - you always take the easy side.

That's too much for me already - I appreciate Zak's original flamebait, it
caused a lot of traffic with all its stupidity, yet some baits look better
if not perused too often.

So - what did you say about your gr/dad? "A Jew who had little carrier
opportunities under the Old regime, and who had a family to feed - wasn't
it justified for him to make an excellent carrier in NKVD?"

It's funny to pretend that the only job to win his bread was there; it's
less funny to realize that he should have felt fine at his position, if he
indeed consciously picked that crooked way out of many others.

I guess you're gonna explain that he took his job early in the Revolution
and he had no chance to quit without endangering his life, or something
similarly terrifying. Abducted by the Gang of the Hillbillies, yeh?

Please don't. People did quit. My step-grandad (a Russian with some Greek
roots, for that matter) was with infamous Odessa ChK. It was really a gang of
the sadist maniacs, and the guy felt his doom lies there. Yet he found a
chance to quit - ujti na dno - and he finally resurfaced in Moscow after
getting an egineer's education, and fed his family and worked and lived.
Speaking about the risk of quitting ... his former NKVDist colleagues
didn't live long. Mostly were liquidated later in 30ies.

I'd go further to claim that even humble honest functionaries of NKVD were
all too often taking crooked way - because they had a taste of wealth and
power on their lips, while the country around them was agonizing in poverty
and slavery. Almost necessarily this lead the "honest crooks" to the depth
of immoral.

An examply from my family history, if you wish: my grandad spent all the
War as a field artillerist, while his young wife, 1-year old daughter and
widow mom were left w kommunalke na Gor'kogo (his father perished in the
purge). On October 16th they rushed with a handful of clothes and managed
to board a train East (for those who forget, that was when the Nzis broke
the front lineat Vyaz'ma and Moscow was slated for evacuation - in fact a
madhouse dusted with ash of burnt archives) - the chemical lab where my
grandma worked was ordered to relocate to Ufa, "go there and try to find us
if you can"). In Ufa though, the local authorities wouldn't let them stay
in the city: 2 dependents per 1 female employee was considered too great
burden for the city. Too many dependents? Go away, fast! They were ordered
to a barge and shipped down the Belaya. Soon the river froze, and the
women, kids and elders were unloaded to spent next two winters in a village
of Dyurtyuli - no job, no nothing, lost in space.

Meanwhile grandad was pulling his fucking 45-mm thing out of the same
Vyaz'ma encirclement - he broke the lines and returned, but his vanished
former unit couldn't forward any mail, of course. So he and his family lost
each other. As an officer, he was entitled to send some food to his wife -
and he asked his cousine, a senior NKVD employee in Khakassia, to help to
find her. "No problemo" - that guy answered, we sure can find her. Meanwile
send it all to us - and when we find her, she'll have it all. Soon his family 
began receiving (and eating) all the stuff they were supposed to resend to my
grandma. They explained later that it was difficult and inconvinient to
forward it. No need to explain that my grandma was 41 kg when her husband
was back (and that he punched his cousin's facial surface ). 

To finish with out, I think that a combination of power, lie and
surrounding poverty *inevitable* corrupts morality beyond repair, even if
no killings and tortures are involved.

Just my c2.

		D