This ought to piss off Tricord.....
Lenin and the New York Times
Communism killed around 100 million people. On the other hand...
A sculpture of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, next to an emblem of the communist dictatorship at Muzeon Park of Arts in Moscow in July. PHOTO: MLADEN ANTONOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
James Freeman
Aug. 8, 2017 3:42 p.m. ET
690 COMMENTS
Writing in the New York Times this week, environmentalist Fred Strebeigh describes gazing over an icy stretch of Siberian wilderness that has been largely closed to human visitors for an entire century. It’s not clear which humans wanted to visit, but Mr. Strebeigh does explain which human deserves the credit for what is “the first in the world’s largest system of most protected nature reserves.”
The conservation area is called Barguzinsky Zapovednik. Writes Mr. Strebeigh:
Barguzinsky began a chain of 103 zapovedniks, or nature reserves, that protect 68 million acres of Russia. Most zapovedniks date from the Soviet era and provide the world’s highest level of protection to the most land within any nation, under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s designation of “strict nature reserves.”How did Russia — hardly considered a cradle of environmentalism, given Joseph Stalin’s crash program of industrialization — become a global pioneer in conservation?Much of the answer begins with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In 1919, a young agronomist named Nikolai Podyapolski traveled north from the Volga River delta, where hunting had almost eliminated many species, to Moscow, where he met Lenin. Arriving at the Bolshevik leader’s office to seek approval for a new zapovednik, Podyapolski felt “worried,” he said, “as before an exam in high school.”
The exams in young Podyapolski’s high school must have been real killers. This column can only imagine how worried one would be to meet Lenin, who founded the Soviet empire and didn’t even express regret when one of his murderous purges resulted in the execution of his own cousin.
As luck would have it, at the conclusion of the meeting Podyapolski was neither shot nor beaten to death, but instead allowed to implement his conservation plan. Mr. Strebeigh writes that “Lenin, a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping, agreed that protecting nature had ‘urgent value.’”
Outdoorsy as he was, Lenin did not see such value in humans. While he may not have murdered as many people as his successor Stalin, Lenin created the infrastructure to impose misery on a massive scale. According to historian Robert Service:
Lenin’s ideas on violence, dictatorship, terror, centralism, hierarchy and leadership were integral to Stalin’s thinking. Furthermore, Lenin had bequeathed the terroristic instrumentalities to his successor. The Cheka, the forced-labour camps, the one-party state, the mono-ideological mass media, the legalized administrative arbitrariness, the prohibition of free and popular elections, the ban on internal party dissent: not one of these had to be invented by Stalin.
In short, the results of Podyapolski’s meeting with Lenin definitely could have been worse. And following the meeting, things really started looking up for the green preservation project. “Two years later, Lenin signed legislation ordering that ‘significant areas of nature’ across the continent be protected,” writes Mr. Strebeigh.
If the dictator had been a student on a contemporary U.S. college campus, he might have expressed his approach this way: Live local, think global, stay hopeful—and kill people.
Regardless, Mr. Strebeigh concludes: “For now, at least, Lenin’s legacy is preserved and Russia remains the world leader, ahead of Brazil and Australia, in protecting the most land at the highest level.”
Looking beyond Lenin’s love of hiking, thank goodness his legacy has been largely destroyed. In a 1999 review of “The Black Book of Communism” for Foreign Affairs, Robert Legvold wrote that seeing “the grisly total is staggering. In its many enthroned variations, from Lenin’s 1917 revolution to the recent Marxist-Leninist regimes of Africa, communism has killed upwards of 100 million people.”
Lenin and the New York Times
Communism killed around 100 million people. On the other hand...
A sculpture of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, next to an emblem of the communist dictatorship at Muzeon Park of Arts in Moscow in July. PHOTO: MLADEN ANTONOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
James Freeman
Aug. 8, 2017 3:42 p.m. ET
690 COMMENTS
Writing in the New York Times this week, environmentalist Fred Strebeigh describes gazing over an icy stretch of Siberian wilderness that has been largely closed to human visitors for an entire century. It’s not clear which humans wanted to visit, but Mr. Strebeigh does explain which human deserves the credit for what is “the first in the world’s largest system of most protected nature reserves.”
The conservation area is called Barguzinsky Zapovednik. Writes Mr. Strebeigh:
Barguzinsky began a chain of 103 zapovedniks, or nature reserves, that protect 68 million acres of Russia. Most zapovedniks date from the Soviet era and provide the world’s highest level of protection to the most land within any nation, under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s designation of “strict nature reserves.”How did Russia — hardly considered a cradle of environmentalism, given Joseph Stalin’s crash program of industrialization — become a global pioneer in conservation?Much of the answer begins with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In 1919, a young agronomist named Nikolai Podyapolski traveled north from the Volga River delta, where hunting had almost eliminated many species, to Moscow, where he met Lenin. Arriving at the Bolshevik leader’s office to seek approval for a new zapovednik, Podyapolski felt “worried,” he said, “as before an exam in high school.”
The exams in young Podyapolski’s high school must have been real killers. This column can only imagine how worried one would be to meet Lenin, who founded the Soviet empire and didn’t even express regret when one of his murderous purges resulted in the execution of his own cousin.
As luck would have it, at the conclusion of the meeting Podyapolski was neither shot nor beaten to death, but instead allowed to implement his conservation plan. Mr. Strebeigh writes that “Lenin, a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping, agreed that protecting nature had ‘urgent value.’”
Outdoorsy as he was, Lenin did not see such value in humans. While he may not have murdered as many people as his successor Stalin, Lenin created the infrastructure to impose misery on a massive scale. According to historian Robert Service:
Lenin’s ideas on violence, dictatorship, terror, centralism, hierarchy and leadership were integral to Stalin’s thinking. Furthermore, Lenin had bequeathed the terroristic instrumentalities to his successor. The Cheka, the forced-labour camps, the one-party state, the mono-ideological mass media, the legalized administrative arbitrariness, the prohibition of free and popular elections, the ban on internal party dissent: not one of these had to be invented by Stalin.
In short, the results of Podyapolski’s meeting with Lenin definitely could have been worse. And following the meeting, things really started looking up for the green preservation project. “Two years later, Lenin signed legislation ordering that ‘significant areas of nature’ across the continent be protected,” writes Mr. Strebeigh.
If the dictator had been a student on a contemporary U.S. college campus, he might have expressed his approach this way: Live local, think global, stay hopeful—and kill people.
Regardless, Mr. Strebeigh concludes: “For now, at least, Lenin’s legacy is preserved and Russia remains the world leader, ahead of Brazil and Australia, in protecting the most land at the highest level.”
Looking beyond Lenin’s love of hiking, thank goodness his legacy has been largely destroyed. In a 1999 review of “The Black Book of Communism” for Foreign Affairs, Robert Legvold wrote that seeing “the grisly total is staggering. In its many enthroned variations, from Lenin’s 1917 revolution to the recent Marxist-Leninist regimes of Africa, communism has killed upwards of 100 million people.”
