Dear Jüngerites: Two books that might clarify the issues in the Rossi-Haggman dispute are DROPSHOT: THE UNITED STATES PLAN FOR WAR WITH THE SOVIET UNION IN 1957, edited by Anthony Cave Brown (NY: Dial Press, 1978), and WE WILL BURY YOU: THE SOVIET PLAN FOR THE SUBVERSION OF THE WEST BY THE HIGHEST RANKING COMMUNIST EVER TO DEFECT by Jan Sejna (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982). In the first, Brown reviews a whole series of USA plans for nuclear war with the USSR from a leftist, anti-anti-Communist position. Despite his intention to condemn the US military industrial complex, he acknowledges that all the plans were reactive to a first strike or European takeover by the Soviets. The second book reconstructs the guiding plan for the ultimate conquest of Bolshevism in the world, as outlined by directives from Moscow to the Warsaw Pact countries. Sejna had to translate and coordinate the plan before he decided to defect. Despite the sensational title (a quote from Khrushchev) and the misleading blurb (nearly every defector was tauted as the highest ranking), the book is solid and responsible and gives an idea of the guiding Soviet ideology, even if the reality was so far from its realization. Mr. Rossi accepts that perhaps the Soviet side wanted to conquer and the Western side wanted to defend, but goes on to argue that this makes the former only "a little bit" worse. This position is so clearly unsupportable that no examples of rapist/raped, burglar/homeowner, pillagers/villagers, etc. need to be expounded. It is possible, of course, for a people on the defensive to become hardened and commit greater atrocities than a people on the offensive, but McCarthy does not equal Vyshinsky and Chile does not equal Czechoslovakia. It astonishes me that there is still a desire to push a moral and political equivalency argument in regard to the Cold War. The following link reports the discovery of a new mass grave in Russia, one of thousands. Thousands more remain to be discovered. Do we need to argue that the Soviet Union had its Gulag, but America has its prison system? http://www.spb.su/times/current/massive.html Perhaps we might say that the 20th century has tried out various political ideas on the bodies of millions of human guinea pigs, and Fascism and Bolshevism proved deadly. Whether post-Soviet democracy will do the same is worthy of debate. We might relate this question to Jünger's views, though I for one do not mind if the newsletter strays from the master from time to time. He's there to inspire discussion too, not just adulation or criticism. GK
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