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From: matthews@harvard.UUCP (Jim Matthews)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Russian quotes: John Birch Society??
Message-ID: <552@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Dec-85 12:48:41 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.552
Posted: Fri Dec 13 12:48:41 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Dec-85 20:11:37 EST
References: <157@vu-vlsi.UUCP> <432@whuts.UUCP>
Reply-To: matthews@harvard.UUCP (Jim matthews)
Organization: Aiken Comp Lab, Harvard
Lines: 50


>>      [nasty quote about Soviet Union crushing the West]
>>
>>                                                      -taw

> Sevener:
>
>So where did you obtain this quote?  The same place Reagan got the
>following quote, supposedly from Lenin,  which he has used repeatedly?:
>
>       [nasty quote by Lenin that in fact came from the John Birch Society]
>
>I suppose it should not be surprising that Reagan has repeatedly
>mouthed fabrications of the John Birch Society as "truth".
>But I am rather surprised that similar fantastic and totally
>unsubstantiated sorts of claims are repeated on the net.

        It is easy to point to the Birch story, or the poor translation
of the "We will bury you" line as evidence that all harsh anti-U.S.
statements must be fabrications -- this is *not* so!  The Lenin quote
is implausible only insofar as it makes such a specific prediction -- in
its attitude it rather mild for Lenin.  As for Krushchev, the Soviet Union
has threatened the West with nuclear annihilation on many occasions.  I
suggest reference to Kennan's "Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin"
or Scott's "The Soviet Art of War" for some candid descriptions of Soviet
attitudes toward the West.  Even better, learn Russian and read any
Soviet treatise on nuclear politics or the future of Marxism-Leninism.
The stupid thing about the John Birch quote is that they didn't have to
make it up -- if someone had done their research they could have had the
real thing.

>It would be pretty stupid for any diplomat from *any* country to
>make statements like the above - their public statements are
>generally marvels of hypocrisy in support of their "peaceful
>intentions" and so forth.
>
>       tim sevener   whuxn!orb

        You'd be amazed.  Kennan quotes one Soviet statement, "typical of
thousands of others," which basically calls for all Communists to fight
to the death with the capitalist system, regardless of any notions of
law or national sovereignity.  Lenin once said (and I can get the reference)
that it was ludicrous for the Soviet Union to advocate disarmament, since
violence was the only refuge of the progressive class.  A 1972 Soviet book
on military strategy dismissed the "bourgeois" notion that nuclear war was
unwinnable, or even unjust, when used for a progressive cause.  I could go
on and on.

Jim Matthews
matthews@harvard