by A few weeks ago I published a piece on benevolent authoritarianism as a possible alternative to the prevalent preferred future of a direct democratic approach, which is my preference as well. I’m no fan of authoritarian approaches. One of my side interests has been reading about how authoritarianism and its most often horrific results come about (I know, I need a new hobby). I read a bunch on Hitler and the Third Reich, the Chinese Communist Revolution, and most on the Russian Revolution.
I read Solzenitsyn’s 3 volume Gulag Archipelago as an undergrad and it remains one of the most impactful works on me. And I just love the style of Russian literature. Anyhow, I just finished Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Before getting to that work, one of the things I’ve been trying to understand is how a civilized society can effectively go mad and allow unbelievably horrible things to happen. Is it because they are truly evil and barbaric at the core? No, I don’t think so. Did they set out to do evil from the beginning? No, I do think so. My sense of both the Chinese and Russian communist revolutions is that they started out with good intentions. And both eventually went bad. Whether that’s inevitable is an interesting question, but we’ll save that for another day.
What the Court of the Red Tsar adds to the “how did it go bad” conversation is a fascinating focus on Stalin and his “courtiers” if you will. He makes the point that Stalin was not a mad individual working alone and in isolation but working his madness in a very political fashion along with a willing cadre who knew what was going on and carried it out. The author works to give us a snapshot of how one can go to a child’s birthday party and then order the execution of thousands. It helps us to see that this emergence is not a lone evil genius aberration, but can evolve gradually and even out of initial good intentions. Frankly, I see some troubling parallels in the world today and I am often more afraid of those with “good” intentions and a less-good approach to carrying them out, than of an obviously evil nutcase. – Andy Hines
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