reddest-flower

[reddest-flower]

Among them was a company of international fighters, who had enlisted in the early days in Barcelona, before the forming of the International Brigades. One of them was an older man, a German. “I came because I know what fascism is,” he said. “I have lived three years in emigration. Spain took me in and gave me work, so I fight to protect my Spanish comrades from fascism. I should not wish these friends to know the bitterness of exile that I have known.” Two Italians sat on the edge of a trench moving bits of stone about on the soil. “We are planning a counter-offensive against Mussolini,” they said. All of this group was well informed and angry on the subject of foreign nations, and their knowledge and wrath was passed on to their simpler Catalan friends. It was not Germany and Italy alone that drew their wrath: they expected fascist nations to be foes. But the attitude of England and France was to them like a knife in the back from an expected friend. “It is a mock to democracy and to international law, what they have done,” a French boy from Barcelona said to me. “Yet Blum calls himself a Socialist. What he does is the death of socialism and of democracy! Can they not see that on this Madrid front we also defend France?” “The reactionaries know it well enough,” said a Belgian, “and the democrats don’t care. If it were not for the indirect help the democratic governments thus give the fascists, we could long ago have finished them. But these big countries do it with impunity, disregarding the lives of thousands of men. Now there will be a long hard war and heavy cost to all of us before we finish.” Never once did they doubt that they would finish, however long the war and hard the cost. “What message do you want me to take to America?” I asked them. “Tell them,” said a youth with the red-tasseled militia cap of Catalonia, “that if they don’t fight their oppressors they’ll be all their lives exploited. Tell them”—here he sent a grin at Carlos and the brigade commander who was with us—”that if they want good things to eat at Christmas such as we have, they also must fight as we do.” “Did you have good things to eat at Christmas?” I asked them, puzzled at his meaning. The youth puffed out his chest and made a grandiloquent ges- ture. “Magnífico!” he said. Then he laughed and hit his commander on the back, saying: “I think I must give her a good impression, what!”

Spain in Arms, 1937, Anna Louise Strong (1937)

[reddest-flower]

What were the chief manifestations, survivals, remnants of serfdom in Russia up to 1917? The monarchy, the system of social estates, landed proprietorship and land tenure, the status of women, religion, and national oppression. Take any one of these Augean stables, which, incidentally, were left largely uncleansed by all the more advanced states when they accomplished their bourgeois-democratic revolutions one hundred and twenty-five, two hundred and fifty and more years ago (1649 in England); take any of these Augean stables, and you will see that we have cleansed them thoroughly. In a matter of ten weeks, from October 25 (November 7), 1917 to January 5, 1918, when the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, we accomplished a thousand times more in this respect than was accomplished by the bourgeois democrats and liberals (the Cadets) and by the petty-bourgeois democrats (the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) during the eight months they were in power.

Those poltroons, gas-bags, vainglorious Narcissuses and petty Hamlets brandished their wooden swords—but did not even destroy the monarchy! We cleansed out all that monarchist muck as nobody had ever done before. We left not a stone, not a brick of that ancient edifice, the social-estate system even the most advanced countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, have not completely eliminated the survivals of that system to this day!), standing. We tore out the deep-seated roots of the social-estate system, namely, the remnants of feudalism and serfdom in the system of landownership, to the last. “One may argue” (there are plenty of quill-drivers, Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries abroad to indulge in such arguments) as to what “in the long run” will be the outcome of the agrarian reform effected by the Great October Revolution. We have no desire at the moment to waste time on such controversies, for we are deciding this, as well as the mass of accompanying controversies, by struggle. But the fact cannot be denied that the petty-bourgeois democrats “compromised” with the landowners, the custodians of the traditions of serfdom, for eight months, while we completely swept the landowners and all their traditions from Russian soil in a few weeks.

Take religion, or the denial of rights to women, or the oppression and inequality of the non-Russian nationalities. These are all problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The vulgar petty-bourgeois democrats talked about them for eight months. In not a single one of the most advanced countries in the world have these questions been completely settled on bourgeois-democratic lines. In our country they have been settled completely by the legislation of the October Revolution. We have fought and are fighting religion in earnest. We have granted all the non-Russian nationalities their own republics or autonomous regions. We in Russia no longer have the base, mean and infamous denial of rights to women or inequality of the sexes, that disgusting survival of feudalism and medievalism, which is being renovated by the avaricious bourgeoisie and the dull-witted and frightened petty bourgeoisie in every other country in the world without exception.

All this goes to make up the content of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. A hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty years ago the progressive leaders of that revolution (or of those revolutions, if we consider each national variety of the one general type) promised to rid mankind of medieval privileges, of sex inequality, of state privileges for one religion or another (or “religious ideas ”, “the church” in general), and of national inequality. They promised, but did not keep their promises. They could not keep them, for they were hindered by their “respect”— for the “sacred right of private property”. Our proletarian revolution was not afflicted with this accursed “respect” for this thrice-accursed medievalism and for the “sacred right of private property”.

Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, V. I. Lenin (1921)

[reddest-flower]

Comrades, the elections to the Moscow Soviet show that the Party of the Communists is gaining strength among the working class.

It is essential that women workers take a greater part in the elections. The Soviet government was the first and only government in the world to abolish completely all the old, bourgeois, infamous laws which placed women in an inferior position compared with men and which granted privileges to men, as, for instance, in the sphere of marriage laws or in the sphere of the legal attitude to children. The Soviet government was the first and only government in the world which, as a government of the toilers, abolished all the privileges connected with property, which men retained in the family laws of all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic.

Where there are landlords, capitalists and merchants, there can be no equality between women and men even in law.

Where there are no landlords, capitalists and merchants, where the government of the toilers is building a new life without these exploiters, there equality between women and men exists in law.

But that is not enough.

It is a far cry from equality in law to equality in life.

We want women workers to achieve equality with men workers not only in law, but in life as well. For this, it is essential that women workers take an ever increasing part in the administration of public enterprises and in the administration of the state.

By engaging in the work of administration women will learn quickly and they will catch up with the men.

Therefore, elect more women workers, both Communist and non-Party, to the Soviet. If she is only an honest woman worker who is capable of managing work sensibly and conscientiously, it makes no difference if she is not a member of the Party--elect her to the Moscow Soviet.

Let there be more women workers in the Moscow Soviet! Let the Moscow proletariat show that it is prepared to do and is doing everything for the fight to victory, for the fight against the old inequality, against the old, bourgeois, humiliation of women!

The proletariat cannot achieve complete freedom, unless it achieves complete freedom for women.

To the Working Women, V. I. Lenin (1920)

[reddest-flower]

Sick of hunger, exploitation and terror, the workers have flung themselves to battle looking through struggle for bread, land and freedom. In many places, especially Asturias and Vizcaya, the red banner of revolution and soviet power has waved in the wind as a symbol of a new Spain free of misery. The heroicism of the workers in the fight has culminated in the glorious feat of red Asturias, where the socialist republic of workers and peasants has been proclaimed

Notice by the Communist Party of Spain regarding the Asturias revolution, 27th of October, 1934

[reddest-flower]

Every "democracy" consists of proclaiming and exercising "rights" that have very little chances of being exercised and are very conditional under capitalism, while socialism is impossible without proclaiming these rights, without struggling for the concession of these rights immediately, instantly, and without educating the masses in the spirit of this struggle

On the caricature of marxism and "imperialist economism", V. I. Lenin (1916), published 1924 in Zvezdá magazine, numbers 1 and 2

[reddest-flower]

This is the radical difference that distinguishes the psychology of the peasant, handicraftsman, intellectual, the petty bourgeois in general, from that of the proletarian. The petty bourgeois sees and feels that he is heading for ruin, that life is becoming more difficult, that the struggle for existence is ever more ruthless, and that his position and that of his family are becoming more and more hopeless. It is an indisputable fact, and the petty bourgeois protests against it.

But how does he protest?

He protests as the representative of a class that is hopelessly perishing, that despairs of its future, that is depressed and cowardly. There is nothing to be done ... if only there were fewer children to suffer our torments and hard toil, our poverty and our humiliation—such is the cry of the petty bourgeois.

The class-conscious worker is far from holding this point of view. He will not allow his consciousness to be dulled by such cries no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be. Yes, we workers and the mass of small proprietors lead a life that is filled with unbearable oppression and suffering. Things are harder for our generation than they were for our fathers. But in one respect we are luckier than our fathers. We have begun to learn and are rapidly learning to fight—and to fight not as individuals, as the best of our fathers fought, not for the slogans of bourgeois speechifiers that are alien to us in spirit, but for our slogans, the slogans of our class. We are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children will fight better than we do, and they will be victorious.

The working class is not perishing, it is growing, becoming stronger, gaining courage, consolidating itself, educating itself and becoming steeled in battle. We are pessimists as far as serfdom, capitalism and petty, production are concerned, but we are ardent optimists in what concerns the working-class movement and its aims. We are already laying the foundation of a new edifice and our children will complete its construction.

The Working Class and NeoMalthusianism, V. I. Lenin (Pravda No. 137, June 16, 1913)

[reddest-flower]

The momentous nature of the war made it imperative to revise Stalin’s Short Biography, published by the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin (IMEL) in 1939. There was also a great deal of interest in his biography internationally. The Stalin cult had gone global. Stalin was Time Man of the Year in both 1939 and 1942. During the war, Stalin was inundated with questions and requests for interviews from foreign journalists. [...]

The need for a biography of Lenin that would teach people Marxism-Leninism was Stalin’s first comment. As to his own biography, it was full of mistakes. ‘I have all kinds of teachings,’ said Stalin sarcastically – about the war, communism, industrialisation, collectivisation, etc. ‘What are people supposed to do after reading this biography? Get down on their knees and pray to me?’ The biography should instil in people a love of the party. It should feature other party cadres. The chapter on the Great Patriotic War wasn’t bad, although it, too, needed to mention other prominent personalities.

Mochalov’s account tallies with that of Pravda editor P. N. Pospelov. ‘There is some idiocy in the biography draft,’ complained Stalin to Pospelov. ‘And it is Alexandrov who is responsible for this idiocy.’ Pospelov took particular note of Stalin’s demand that it should reference leading figures who had worked with him in Baku, name those who had also taken up Lenin’s banner after his death, and mention the members of his Supreme Command during the war. Something should also be added about the role of women, said Stalin. The tone of the biography was ‘SRish’ i.e. too focused on him as a hero. To prove that point, he quoted the line, ‘No one in the world ever led such broad masses.’ And nowhere did the biography state what Stalin had told Emil Ludwig in 1931 – that he considered himself merely a pupil of Lenin’s.

Briefed by Stalin and armed with the boss’s editorial corrections, Alexandrov’s team quickly revised their draft text. The new edition of the biography was published by Pravda in February 1947 and then as a book with an initial print run of a million copies. As was the case with the Short Course, Stalin toned down the adulation of himself. He inserted the names of many co-workers and made changes that emphasised his partnership with Lenin. He cut completely a section extolling his role as the leader of the international communist movement beloved by proletarians throughout the world. A substantial section was added on the role of women in the revolutionary movement and in building socialism. ‘Working women are the most oppressed of all the oppressed,’ Stalin is quoted as saying in one of his speeches.

Stalin's Library - A Dictator and his Books, Geoffrey Roberts (2022)

[reddest-flower]

"I am a woman. I know the old priests' proverb: 'A chicken is not a bird; a woman is not a person.' Four years ago when you elected me, men met me on the road with grins. Even to my face they told me that I could do nothing. That solid man, Peter Zhitov, can't run this village and you, a woman, try! I wept sometimes from the insults and thought of giving up entirely. But I remembered Lenin's word that every kitchen maid must learn to rule the State, That applied to me, for I worked from the age of 12 as cowherd and later as kitchen girl at General Solomon's: And I said: 'Who will ever make over this old life unless we ourselves do it?' "

The Voice of the Soviet Village, Anna Louise Strong (1935)

[reddest-flower]

In Gulinka, a village overnight by train from Moscow plus a two-hour walk through the mud, there was no reason for rushing the election. But Maria Kurkina, the village President, thought the holidays on the anniversary of the Revolution offered an excellent chance to hold both an election and an Old Home Week. "We are rather a backward village," she said. "We have only a four-year school and frightful roads and no electricity yet. But we've stirred up in these past four years a lot of public spirit that is ready for great achlevements. Most of us have not seen the world and don't know the many things there are to get. Yet from our backward Gulinka no less than fifty people have gone to honorable tasks in our Soviet country- some engineers, an army commander, a doctor, a surveyor, an assistant editor, the foremen of the marten ovens in Stalingrad, many promislng students and several other notables. Let us invile them to tell us what is this Soviet power and what it offers. Let them tell us the shortcomings of our Gulinka, that we may know how to instruct our Deputies; then we shall be behind nobody in all new blessings there are to acquire."

Every one in the village thought the idea splendid, and as there was no opposing voice President Kurkina went to the township election commission and asked that commissioners be sent to see that Gulinka's election was held properly. "All your grain deliveries in?" asked the township commission. "Potato deliveries too? No village campaigns unfinished? No work which the outgoing Soviet has still to do? Then hold it when you like; it's your affair. Have you made your report yet ?" "Made it and printed it, and every one has discussed it," Kurkina replied proudly, producing a neat little folder, My Report to the Voters. Such reports, though not always printed, are made by all Soviet officials to their constituents. The reports, telling how the instructions given at the previous election have been carried out, must be discussed at least a week before the voting so that the election meeting may confine itself to candidates.

Kurkina's report was homely enough in its detalla. Nowhere in its sixteen printed pages did she brag of her own work; nowhere did she ask for votes. She told of great improvements in the village and described how they were accomplished.

"During your daily work you hardly notice how life is changing," President Kurkina's report began. But when you look back to sum up these four years you note a very great difference in our life, our village and our people. Many new brick houses replace the broken huts, A radio central rereiver gives Moscow conoerto to our homes. Outside the villago great brick structures are rising- the slables, barns and granaries of our collective farms. Cottage windows that formerly frightened one by their blackness are bright with flowers and white curtains People also are changing. The children of former farmhands become doctors , engineers, commanders."

The Voice of the Soviet Village, Anna Louise Strong (1935)

[reddest-flower]

We believe that alliances with social democracy are an opportunistic manifestation of class collaboration and a serious obstacle to revolutionary struggle; the conformation of fronts of that nature will always be a liquidating element of the Communist Party; and the absence of a communist party is the biggest attack on the working class and its immediate and historical objectives.

There are, for example, expressions of those alliances that have no justification, and one of them is support for the Democratic Party of the US Communist Party. And it is that when the perspective of the interests of the working class is set aside and the logic of the “lesser evil” is placed even the imperialist policy of the Democratic Party may seem better to the imperialist policy of the Republican Party. Thus several communist parties justify their support for bourgeois policies under the pretext of struggle against the "ultra-right" and fascism.

We have great respect for the communists' policy against fascism during World War II, but we cannot deny that some elements of that policy are connected to browderism, to the opportunist platform of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, to Eurocommunism, and in some way they form a platform of certain similarities to that of opportunism in the II International.

It is a paradox that those who oppose the elaboration of a unified revolutionary strategy hold a common opportunist strategy on the grounds that the generalization of experience excludes the importance of national struggle, the specificities, the particularities; as a contraband they have a general strategy based on the possibility of a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism - which has already demonstrated its unfeasibility in Chile and in the strongholds of Eurocommunism (Italy and France); in national ways to socialism, all of them with the same components: denial of the dictatorship of the proletariat, alliance with social democracy, pluriclassist political formations, capitalist management of economy, elevation of bourgeois democracy to absolute value, or if to put it roughly, that the communists manage the governments of capitalism.

Communist Party of Mexico (PCM), Our Tribute to the Communist International: Keeping the Flag of Proletarian Internationalism High, 2020

[reddest-flower]

But contempt for a writer, who sinks to shouting about "autocracy" and "subordination," does not relieve us of the duty of disentangling the confusion that such people create in the minds of their readers, and here we can demonstrate to the world the nature of the catchwords like "broad democracy." We are accused of forgetting the committees, of desiring or attempting to drive them into the kingdom of shadows, etc. How can we reply to these charges when, owing to considerations of secrecy, we are not in a position to tell the reader anything about our real relationships with the committees? The people who broadcast slashing accusations which excite the people appear to be ahead of us because of their recklessness and their neglect of the duty of a revolutionist carefully to conceal from the eyes of the world the relationships and contacts he has, which he is establishing or trying to establish. Naturally, we absolutely refuse once for all to compete with such people on the field of "democracy."

What is to be Done? Vladimir Lenin, 1902

[reddest-flower]

[T]he proletariat must take care: 1) that by sharp practices local authorities and government commissioners do not, under any pretext whatsoever, exclude any section of workers; 2) that workers’ candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed.

Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1850

[reddest-flower]

Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the appropriation of a totality of productive forces and in the thus postulated development of a totality of capacities. All earlier revolutionary appropriations were restricted; individuals, whose self-activity was restricted by a crude instrument of production and a limited intercourse, appropriated this crude instrument of production, and hence merely achieved a new state of limitation. Their instrument of production became their property, but they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own instrument of production. In all expropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore, only when controlled by all.

The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1845-46

[reddest-flower]

The object before us, to begin with, material production. Individuals producing in society – hence socially determined individual production – is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rousseau’s contrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small.

Grundrisse, Karl Marx, 1857-61

[reddest-flower]

We must not forget that in the long run the legalisation of the working class movement will be to our advantage, and not to the Zubatovs. On the contrary, our campaign of exposure will help to separate the tares from the wheat. What the tares are, we have already indicated. By the wheat we mean attracting the attention of increasing numbers of the more backward sections of the workers to social and political questions, and to freeing ourselves, the revolutionists, from functions which are essentially legal (the distribution of legal books, mutual aid, etc.), the development of which will inevitably provide us with an increasing quantity of material for agitation. Looked at from this point of view, we may say, and we should say to the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs, "Keep at it, gentlemen, do your best!" We shall expose your efforts to place a trap in the path of the workers (either by way of direct provocation, or by the "honest" corruption of the workers with the aid of Struveism), but we shall be grateful for every real step forward even if it is timid and vacillating; we shall say: Please continue! A real step forward can only result in a real, if small, extension of the workers' field of action. And every such extension must be to our advantage and help to hasten the advent of legal societies, not of the kind in which agent-provacteurs hunt for Socialists, but of the kind in which Socialists will hunt for adherents. In a word, our task is to fight down the tares. It is not our business to grow wheat in flower-pots. By pulling up the tares, we clear the soil for the wheat. And while the old-fashioned folk are tending their flower-pot crops, we must prepare reapers, not only to cut down the tares of to-day, but also to reap the wheat of tomorrow.

What is to be Done? Vladimir Lenin, 1902

[reddest-flower]

When it comes to the so-called ideology of the fascists, we have to say that this is the ideology of robbery and barbarism. It is difficult to find any semblance of “correspondence” between what the fascists do and how they explain their “deeds.” There is a lot of robbery, incredibly more than ideology. Nevertheless, the leaders of the robbers are trying to justify their robbery and invent something like an ideology. This “ideology” is the outlook of people without honor and conscience. Hitler says to his thugs: “I liberate a person from the humiliating chimera called conscience ... Conscience, like education, cripples a person.” Down with conscience, down with honor! Do whatever you like, none of the atrocious acts of the young men from the Hitlerite party are subject to moral condemnation, for conscience is nothing, honor does not exist. Putting together an army of criminals calling itself the National Socialist Party, Hitler, addressing the scum of society, said: “I need people with a strong fist who are not stopped by principles when it is necessary to kill someone. And if they ruin a watch or jewelry on occasion, I don’t give a damn about that.”

What is the language of this “programmatic” position of the “Führer” worth! This is the language of a professional bandit, but not a leader of a political party or a head of state. Boasting that he has no scientific education, Hitler says about himself that he is alien to any moral considerations: “I have the advantage that I am not held back by any considerations of a theoretical or moral order.” This really is an advantage over all the bandits in the world. Psychologists-criminologists find a well-known ethic even among the most inveterate bandits. Professional bandits of the pre-Hitler formation did not consider it ethical to kill defenseless women, old people, children for nothing, for nothing. They considered this business obscene. Unless, as they say, “they will fall under the arm” – to remove unnecessary evidence, – they will kill a defenseless old man or a child. For bandits brought up by the Hitlerite party, the murder of a person, human blood is elevated to a cult. They completely discard all kinds of considerations of humanity and morality.

“Humanism, culture, international law are empty words for us,” says Goebbels, known throughout the world as a rogue, swindler, embezzler, pimp and world liar. “Kill everyone who is against you, kill, kill, you are not responsible for this, but I, so kill!” – shouts the international executioner and murderer Goering. This is the so-called program of the Nazi Party. The program is terrible, wild, barbaric.

Who are the National Socialists? Pavel Yudin, 1942

[reddest-flower]

The German fascist party is the party of the enemies of culture and human progress. Hatred of culture and the desire to destroy it is one of the important principles of the Nazi worldview. Hitler is the leader of all barbarians and enemies of human culture. The Nazi Party believes that culture, even in its simplest expression – the elementary literacy of a person – is unnecessary and harmful to the people. Hitler said that “once and for all we must put an end to what is called universal education. General education is a poison, the most dangerous and most corrupting that liberalism has found to destroy.” “... The lower the cultural level of the working class and the entire people, the more chances we have to retain power.” This is the programmatic position of the modern Huns, clad in armor of tanks and aircraft. To Hitler also belong the following words characterizing the attitude of the fascist party to culture: “We are barbarians, and we want to be barbarians. This is an honorary title ... The modern world is coming to an end. Our only task is to destroy this world ... Culture, civilization, humanity, etc. is an expression of a mixture of stupidity, cowardice and conceit. The people of science will never be able to storm the heavens, they are even unable to ensure our existence on this earth, especially since scientists have no will and they are only cowardly pacifists.”

It is difficult for the modern educated world to imagine that in the twentieth century in Germany, in a country that more than once amazed the world with the rise of the human mind to the great heights of wisdom and nobility, such wild views are expressed and implemented. Only the last waste of humanity, people who have no idea of either culture or science, but who know only one passion – murder and destruction, can think and act like that. Hitler publicly declares that being ignorant is genuine human happiness. “I,” he says, “thank fate for depriving me of my scientific education. I can be free from many prejudices. I feel good. I judge everything dispassionately and coldly,” This is truly an obscurantist, who imagined that ignorance is the happiness of mankind. A bandit, returning from a bloody “case,” always considers himself a lucky person in life and the happiest person. But the psychology of an ordinary bandit, a lone bandit never reaches the dream of everyone becoming bandits. After all, then it will be “difficult” for him to “work.” And here the gangster hatred of culture, elevated to the state worldview, aims to make everyone ignorant and a bandit, in the appearance and likeness of the “Führer” himself.

Goering (so to speak, the first person after the “Führer”) declares: “I affirm that the one who thinks a lot, reads and considers himself especially clever, is the very greatest coward.” Another robber and enemy of culture, Ernst Bergmann, proclaims: “On the ruins of the world, the race that will be the strongest and will turn the entire cultural world into smoke and ashes will plant its victorious banner.” Well, of course, only the “race” of the Nazis can become such a race! Who else can dream of such “happy” times when the entire cultural world will be turned into smoke and ash?

Who are the National Socialists? Pavel Yudin, 1942