Logo of "Christian" Communism.

All of the following Bible references are from The New King James Version of the Bible. To what extent does the Bible support Christian Socialism and Christian Communism? What is the role of wealth in the Bible and in Christianity? According to Mark 10:26-27, Matthew 19:25-26, and Luke 18:26-27, Jesus said to His disciples that what is impossible with man is not so with God, for nothing is impossible with God. God's grace can save a rich person who follows the Ten Commandments, even though on his or her own without God's grace it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter heaven, as Jesus is recorded as saying in Mark 10:23-25, Matthew 19:23-24, and Luke 18:24-25. God's grace can save a rich person who earns their money legally, invests their money legally, does not evade their taxes, and who gives generously to charitable causes (Galatians 2:10), because from God's freely given gift of grace which all are free to choose or reject (II Corinthians 5:15, Jeremiah 18:1-10 and Romans 9-11), good works or good deeds flow (Ephesians 2:8-10 and Romans 2:5-11). With taxation, the rich as well as middle class and working class taxpayers fund government provided social welfare benefits to the needy, as well as government provided foreign aid. Free will is mentioned many times in the Bible, however much our free will is influenced by our genes and environment (Matthew 26:41 and Romans 7:18-25). Free will in the Bible can be found in I Timothy 2:1-7, II Peter 3:9, I John 4:8, Ezekiel 18:23, Ezekiel 18:32, Ezekiel 33:11, Deuteronomy 30:19, Joshua 24:15, Jeremiah 18:7-10, II Corinthians 5:15, Revelation 2:5, 2:16, 2:21, 3:3, and 3:19. Jesus is said to have loved the rich man who had followed all of the Ten Commandments from his youth (Mark 10:21). Jesus did however tell the rich man that if he wanted to be perfect, he should sell all that he had and give the proceeds to the poor, and then become a disciple of Jesus (Matthew 19:21). Perfection is not obligatory for all Christians, since not all Christians can be friars, monks, nuns, hermits, missionaries, and social welfare workers (Matthew 10:5-15, Mark 6:6-13, Luke 9:1-11, Luke 10:1-12, The Acts of the Apostles 2:44-47, Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:1-13, Luke 4:1-13, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:15-16, Luke 24:46-49, The Acts of the Apostles 1:6-8, and Romans 10:9-17). Jesus is recorded to have said however that many, but not all, who are first in this world will be last in the afterlife, and that many, but not all, who are last in this world will be first in the life after physical death, according to Matthew 19:30 and Mark 10:31 in the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament part of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Ecclesiastes 10:5-7 bemoans that the rich sometimes sit in a lowly place, servants ride on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants. Proverbs 19:10 says that it is not fitting for a fool to enjoy luxury, and even less for a servant to rule over princes. According to Proverbs 28:3 a poor man who oppresses the poor is like a driving rain which leaves no food. Under the Communist rule of Joseph Stalin (the Soviet Union), Mao Zedong (China), Pol Pot (Cambodia/Kampuchea), and the Kim dynasty of North Korea, millions of people starved to death because of the enforced collectivization of agriculture. The Communist system of economics, because it ignored the free enterprise laws of supply and demand, meant that its agriculture and industry regularly produced shortages and surpluses (1). The shortages led to inflation in real terms via a black market, and the surpluses led to Communist run farms and factories running at a loss and ultimately having to be subsidized by taxpayers. The Communist Soviet Union was rarely self-sufficient in food production, and was dependent on such nations as The United States of America, Canada, Argentina, and Australia for wheat imports (2). The higher-ranking members of the Communist Party, military, bureaucracy and state-run business management lived lives of comfort and privelege unknown by their more humble subjects. God, who is all wise or omniscient, would not endorse a stupid, failed politico-economic system such as Communism. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 because of the economic inefficiency of Communism, and China since the 1980's has moved its economy towards a free-market based mixed economy, the kind that exists in the Scandinavian nations of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, although politically China remains for the time being a one-party state Communist dictatorship. However, generations from now, the Chinese middle class might grow large enough to permit a multi-party democracy to run successfully in China. For the time being the modified free enterprise nation of Japan has a per capita or per head GNP which is larger than that possessed by China, although the gap is gradually narrowing with each passing year.

Usury in the Old Testament was the sin of an Israelite lending money on interest to a fellow Jew who lived in poverty according to Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-37, Ezekiel 18:16-17, Proverbs 19:17, Proverbs 22:7, Proverbs 22:26-27, and Proverbs 28:8. Does this mean that a Jew was allowed to lend money to a fellow Jew who was not poor for business expansion purposes, and who could be expected to repay back the loan with interest? A Jew in Old Testament times was allowed to lend money on interest to a non-Jew under Deuteronomy 23:20-21.

Proverbs 30:7-9 says that both wealth and poverty can lead to temptation and sin, for a rich man might feel that he has no need for God, and a poor man might be tempted to steal. The middle class and skilled manual working class are those safest from falling into temptation and sin.

The Eye of the Needle was an ancient Jewish aphorism. A Midrash (Hebrew Bible commentary) on the Song of Songs uses the phrase to speak of God's willingness and ability beyond comparison, to accomplish the salvation of a sinner:

The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?].

Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union: 1917-1991, Final Edition. Fontana Press, An Imprint of Haper Collins Publishers, London, The United Kingdom, 1992. Page 86:

"Now, ruling parties inevitably have many members who, whatever their social origin, become umistakably middle-class in their lifestyle."

"Levels of pay were low, and differentials between skilled and unskilled workers increased, following a deliberate policy decision: Stalin dubbed 'equalization of pay...a petty bourgeois prejudice.' Qualified engineers received four to eight times the pay of an unskilled worker, while administrators and managers earned anything between eight and thirty times that level, not counting the extensive non-monetary priveleges they also received."

"In December 1932 the introduction of internal passports and dwelling permits (propiska) meant that anyone who lived in a town was registered with the police, and could not move to a new town without their permission. Since passports were witheld from peasants, the authorities were now able to get more of a grip on migration from the villages into the towns."

"By contrast, the officials of the Soviet Communist Party, the GPU (the secret police), and the Commissariat (Ministry) of Agriculture lived apart from the village community, usually in houses commandeered from kulaks (yeomen farmers), and eating specially delivered rations. Kravchenko describes them as 'a caste apart, living in an intimate clique, supporting each other, banded together against the community.' " Page 538. V. Kravchenko, I Choose Freedom: the personal and political life of a Soviet official, London, The United Kingdom: Robert Hale, 1947.

"It is little wonder that the peasants themselves regarded collective work as a reimposition of barschina (corvée). Their feeling of having been reduced to serf (bonded farm tenant) status was intensified by the state's refusal to issue passports to them when these became compulsory in 1932: by that means they were, indeed, more or less fixed to the land at the pleasure of the kolkhoz (collective farm) chairman." "Corvée (Barschina) 1. noun. unpaid or partly unpaid labor imposed by authorities on the residents of a district, for example on roads. 2. Historical. unpaid work done by a peasant for his feudal lord." [Old French corvee, corovee, Late Latin corrogāta contribution; its collection Latin corrogāre; com - together + rogāre ask]. Page 468, The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Incorporated, The Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart. 1986.

"Stalin also disbanded the Society of Old Bolsheviks (former name of the Russian Communists) and the Society of Political Prisoners (of the pre-Russian Revolution of November 1917 regime), which up to 1935 had continued to serve as centers for Lenin's comrades and for the former revolutionaries of tsarist days. Stalin in fact succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of any tsarist police chief in destroying the Russian revolutionary movement."

"Why did it all happen? (i.e. the Stalinist Great Purge of 1936-1938). To start with, no doubt, Stalin wished to destroy and humiliate all those who had ever opposed him or might conceivably oppose him (this probably accounts for the carnage in the NKVD (the secret police) and the officer corps of the Soviet military, the only bodies able by any stretch of the imagination to mount a challenge to him). He could not bear the presence of those who had merely been Lenin's comrades, those who might have known about Lenin's Last Will and Testament (in which Lenin denounced Stalin)."

The Soviet gulags (penal labor camps). "No slave-owner of the past would have squandered his capital in this wastrel fashion, but then the NKVD (secret police) did not have to pay for their slaves, and if they died could easily replace them by arresting more. There is every justification for the term Alexander Solzhenitsyn applied to the camps: 'exterminatory labour camps.' The only way to avoid the vicious circle of undernourishment, exhaustion, disease, and slow death was to land a 'cushy' job that did not entail manual labour. The best ones were in the administration, the infirmary, the kitchens, or the KVCh - The Cultural-Educational Section, a curious appendage to many camps, which combined political propaganda work with attempts to mount dramatic productions or concerts." Page 946: "Gulag, a concentration camp for political prisoners in a totalitarian country; labor camp. [G(lavnoye)U(pravleniye)Lag(erei)Chief Administrator of Camps]. The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Incorporated, The Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart. 1986.

"Those who rose well up the nomenklatura (nomenclature) network enjoyed priveleges which most of the population of the Soviet Union could only dream of: spacious housing, special health care, access through special stores and distributors to good food supplies and to consumer goods at cheap prices. There were free or subsidized holidays, and indeed, for the very top people, weekend dachas (country villas) in secluded places and chauffered motor transport. One could extend the list, without even mentioning levels of pay, which were no longer even nominally bound by 'petty bourgeois' notions of equalization. On the other hand, in other ways the lives of these new appointees were strikingly insecure. They did not own any of the benefits mentioned above: they enjoyed them by virtue of their official positions, and hence at the pleasure of Stalin, the NKVD secret police, and the Cadres Department of the Communist Party Central Committee. The nomenklatura system, which was finally perfected now, determined the distribution of these official positions, and the benefits which went with them. The word nomenklatura designates two separate lists: a list of posts, and a list of personnel available to fill them. At Central Committee level this list of posts probably included party secretaries at republic and oblast level: All-Union commissars (ministers) and republican prime ministers; senior diplomatic officials; senior members of the judicial system and the procuracy (district attorneys, prosecutors); senior members of the armed forces; leading officials in the NKVD secret police (these were probably in practice appointed by Stalin himself); editors of All-Union newspapers; heads of trade unions, creative unions, youth and women's organizations; rectors of universities and heads of major research institutes; directors of factories of All-Union significance. At republican (province, duchy, earldom) , oblast (county, shire), and raion/town (borough, municipality, hundred, canton) levels, the local party committee had at its disposal a list of similar posts at a correspondingly lower level, together with lists of individuals who might fill them. All personnel lists were kept up to date by the NKVD and the Cadres Department at the appropriate level, and no one would receive an official appointment who had displeased a superior or strayed from the current line of the Soviet Communist Party. Taken together, the nomenklatura lists constituted by now a formidable machinery of patronage extending to every influential professional or political function in the entire country. Those whom Stalin (reigned 1924-1953) had made he could always unmake. And he frequently did. When an official was dismissed or arrested, furthermore, he and his family lost all priveleges to which they had been accustomed. In case of arrest, in fact, they might lose all property rights: that is one reason why so many wives divorced their recently convicted husbands."

"The family as an economic unit was also strengthened. After the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the inheritance of property had been abolished, except insofar as was necessary to ensure the subsistence of dependents. Now it was progressively restored, until in 1945 the upper limit on the amount of property that could be bequeathed was abolished. This was far from being a restoration of bourgeois property rights, since in Soviet circumstances property is very limited, and plays a far smaller role in determining an individual's or a family's status than in the West. However, it certainly increased the power of the head of the family: an urban apartment could now sometimes be passed on, also perhaps a dacha (country villa) with a small plot of land - by no means negligible benefits in a country desperately short of living space. Since, moreover, children of unregistered marriages were excluded from these arrangements, in practice the legal concept of 'illegitimacy' was restored."

"Fees were reintroduced in the late 1930's for the three upper forms of the secondary school: since they were forms which prepared children for higher education, the effect was to segregate academic from vocational training, leaving the former for the more priveleged strata."

"During World War Two (1939-1945), military service was made into an attractive lifetime professional career: ranks were reintroduced in 1941, more or less as before 1917, with regular promotion procedures, based partly on seniority, partly on merit. Commanders were alloted superior housing, while a separate network of shops, voentorg, assured them of high quality goods and services. Saluting between commanders and men was restored for the first time since 1917, and discipline was generally tightened up." Page 947: G.U.M, a state-operated department store in the Soviet Union: "G.U.M. is Moscow's answer to America's Macy's, Gimbel's, Sears Roebuck, Woolworth, and A.&.P., all rolled into one." (Time). [Russian G(lavnji)U(niversalnyj)M(agazin)Main Department Store]. The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Incorporated, The Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart, 1986.

"Those Red Army commanders who were not captured and who survived World War Two found themselves enjoying a much higher standing in society than had been the case before June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Communist Soviet Union. They were no longer called 'commanders', but 'officers', in accordance with the tsarist usage. Not only were their ranks restored (that had largely happened before the war), but so also were their full dress uniforms and insignia."......"To train officers for their elite status, special Suvorov Military Schools were set up, named after the famous eighteenth-century (1700's) Russian general, on the model of the tsarist (Russian imperial era, 1547-1917) Cadet Corps. They took their entrants exclusively from the sons of serving officers or of other ranks who had died at the hands of the Germans. The schools provided a general secondary education along with military training which fitted its graduates for junior officer status, or for entry to a Military Academy. Symptomatically, one item on its curriculum was ballroom dancing, for social graces were now considerted de rigeur for fledgling members of the new elite. As intended, the Suvorov schools have been much patronized by the sons of officers, so that military dynasties have begun to form since the end of World War Two in 1945. In some ways most important of all, edinonachalie (or single command) was finally restored in the autumn (northern hemisphere, September-November) of 1942. The political commissars were downgraded to become 'assistant political officers' (zampolity), responsible for political education and the maintenance of morale in their units, but having no further right, even theoretically, to interfere in the officers' operational dispositions."

"The famous film director Sergei Eisenstein was condemned for an insufficiently heroic portrayal of Tsar Ivan the Fourth the Terrible (reigned 1547-1584) in his 1944 film called Ivan the Terrible and his security police-cum-private army, the Oprichnina: the parallel with Stalin and the Soviet secret police known as the NKVD was all too clear, though unexpressed, as was the message that Russian tsars, especially the cruel, commanding ones, were now considered as 'good'."

Once when Joseph Stalin as ruler of the Soviet Union visited his aged mother in his birthplace in Georgia, he was asked by his mother what he was doing these days. He replied "do you remember the Russian Tsar (i.e. Nicholas II, reigned 1894-1917), I am now a bit like him." His mother replied, "you would have done better to have become a priest." As a young man, before Stalin joined the then illegal and underground Russian Bolshevik/Communist Party, he had trained for a while in a Georgian Eastern Orthodox Seminary to become a priest, before dropping out.

"Workers in the nationalized industries of the Soviet Union were put on piece-rate wages, at low rates, while their trade unions were centralized and brought under political control. Provision was made for broad social security, but the benefits of it went primarily to those employees who stayed in the same job and accepted the labour discipline."

"Only after 1974 were collective farmers issued with passports and in that sense the 'second serfdom' was brought to an end."

"The term 'ruling class', applied to a Western society, implies ownership of the means of production and the ability to bequeath it to one's heirs. In the strict sense the Soviet elite could not claim such ownership. Nevertheless, through the central planning system, the nomenklatura appointees certainly controlled the means of production throughout the country. And although they did not directly pass on this control to their heirs, they used personal connections, and the educational system, to ensure that their offspring were well-placed in the struggle for similar nomenklatura posts in the future."

"After compulsory mobilization of workers was abolished in 1956, in fact, coercion of the workforce was replaced by a kind of tacit (unspoken) bargain with them. In return for low pay and a de facto prohibition of strikes, the workers were permitted quite low standards of work discipline." "A popular joke summed up the situation. A political instructor asks a worker: 'What is the basis of the Soviet economic system? Answer: 'You pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.' "

"From September 1930 the Soviet worker had a 'wage book' at his place of employment, and 'arbitrary termination of employment' was recorded in it. In 1938 this became a 'work book', which a worker had to carry with him all his working life: any infringement of discipline was entered in it. Absenteeism, defined in 1932 as one day of absence from work without good reason, was deemed to be sufficient grounds for dismissal - and dismissal at that time usually entailed eviction from home, loss of ration card and loss of access to the Workers' Cooperative (known as the artel in Tsarist Russia, 1547-1917). In 1939 absenteeism was redefined as being twenty minutes late for work without good reason, and in 1940 it was actually made a criminal offence, for which one could be sentenced to six months' 'corrective labour': this usually meant continuing in one's normal job, but with a 25 per cent cut in pay. 'Arbitrary termination of employment' also became a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment. The existence of these draconian provisions does not necessarily imply that they were invariably applied. Employers were short of labour and anxious to retain workers, especially those with skills or good work records. But the very existence of such legislation speaks volumes about the Russian Communist Party's attitude towards the class in whose name it claimed to rule. On the other hand, workers who stayed on the job, took extra training and observed labour discipline, could do very well in these years. Workers were encouraged to take part-time courses in apprenticeship schools (FZU), to increase their qualifications. As a result they would receive higher pay and possibly better housing or social security benefits. Outstanding (udarny) workers, who overfulfilled their norms, received decorations and honours which put them into a kind of workers' aristocracy (the word znat, a colloquial term for 'nobility' (known ones, notables), was officially applied to them): they received higher pay, better conditions and the promise of a better pension, as well as being celebrated on notice boards and in newspapers. Many of them were selected for special technical education and eventual promotion out of the working class to become administrators and Communist Party officials."

"The combination of emergency procedures with the concern for old-fashioned bourgeois standards of dress is characeristic of the new Soviet Communist elite. Perhaps because they were mostly of working-class and peasant origin, these 'new men' were unduly impressed with the outward symbols of bourgeois (middle-class) and aristocratic life, often in their most old-fashioned and least tasteful manifestations."

"In a remarkable book a few years ago, Vera Dunham used novels of the late Stalin era to show how the 'new class' surrounded itself with chintz curtains and polka-dotted teacups at home, and with thick pile carpets and red-plushed hangings at work."

Page 542: Vera Dunham, In Stalin's Time: middle class values in Soviet fiction, Cambridge University Press, 1976.

"It was also becoming more difficult to gain access to higher education: by the late 1970s university admissions were only two thirds (66%) of the late 1960s. In practice, because of the advantages enjoyed by the children of professional families, this meant the avenues of upward social mobility were being closed off for Soviet workers and peasants. The social hierarchy was becoming more rigid."

Robert O. Paxton, University of Columbia, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Second Editon, Updated Printing, 1991, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, The United States of America. Page 551:

"The great Soviet film maker Sergei Eisenstein, whose Alexander Nevsky had helped kindle Russian patriotism after 1938, ran into trouble with his striking depiction of a despot's moral decay, Ivan the Terrible (1944)."

"The discontents clearly overlapped in many respects, however. Having begun to taste abundance in the 1960s, Eastern Europeans wanted more. The routine of labor in state factories was not very much different in its fragmentation, boredom, dependence, long hours, and low wages from work for a capitalist owner."

"The questions of alienated labor, social hierarchy, and control over the planners' use of resources bridged the Iron Curtain."

"Three generations of Soviet citizens (i.e. 1917-1991, 74 years) had sacrificed liberty in exchange for the promise of equitably distributed abundance. When they realized that they could expect shoddy and scarce goods for the rest of their lives, cynicism and corruption spread widely under a facade of communist conformity."

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume L, Number 12, 1987, Chicago, The United States of America, Labor Movement. Page 17:

"In Russia and the other Communist countries of Eastern Europe, the role of labor unions differs from that of unions elsewhere. Unions exist mainly to support the aims of government planners and to help meet production goals. Labor groups also sponsor social and cultural activities and administer such worker benefits as social insurance and vacations. But the power of unions to bargain on behalf of their members is severely limited. The government determines wages and hours, and strikes are forbidden."

Walter Lacquer, Europe in Our Time. A History: 1945-1992, Penguin Books, 1993, U.S.A., New York. Page 56:

"Great changes had taken place in the Soviet economy. Whole industries had been transferred to the east of the Ural Mountain ranges after the invasion by Nazi Germany of the Communist Soviet Union from June 22, 1941, but only half of them returned after the end of The Second World War (1939-1945), consequent upon the decision to industrialize Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. Russians had to work even harder than before the war; the forty-hour work week introduced in certain branches of industry in 1937 had long been abolished. Food rations were pitifully small. Workers were not permitted to move from one job to another; they were tied to their place of work like serfs in feudal Europe."

"Stalin's lieutenants, the members of the Politburo (Political Bureau) and the Secretariat of the Central Committee, obeyed the Boss (as they called him) unquestioningly. Any deviation, however slight, would not just have cost them their jobs; their very lives would have been in danger. The Old Bolsheviks, who had made the Russian Communist Revolution of 7 to 15 of November 1917, had disappeared in the show trials/inquistion and purges of the 1930s. (The Acts of the Apostles 25:16). Only a handful now remained."

"Far more powerful in the immediate aftermath of the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 were the younger members of the Politburo - Beria, Zhdanov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev. Lavrentiy Beria, like Stalin a Georgian by birth, was head of the secret police, a state within the state, with a standing army of several hundred thousand. Beria's empire embraced not only all the normal secret-police functions, but also activities as diverse as irrigation and agricultural projects (on which the inmates of the labor camps were employed), the state archives, nuclear research, etc. In theory, the secret police were subject to the instructions of both the federal government of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. In practice, they were omnipotent (all-powerful), and even the highest functionaries of party and state trembled when they had to face Beria's acolytes. Beria was subsequently made responsible for all the evils of the Stalinist "cult of personality" after the death of Stalin."

"As in medieval Europe (476-1348 A.D.), everyone in the Soviet Communist Party hierarchy owed his position to someone else - nul homme sans seigneur. When the seigneur fell from grace his protégé, too, was in grave danger, unless of course he managed in good time to transfer his loyalties to a new master."

"Originally the Russian Communist Party had been a group of like-minded intellectuals and professional revolutionaries with a sprinkling of working-class members. As a state party (the Soviet Union), it became more and more "white-collar" in character; everybody in a leading position in society had to belong to the party, whose vast army of professional organizers constituted its backbone. The position of the party was not undisputed: the political commissars had to give way to professional officers in the army and to a new breed of technocrats in industry and agriculture."

"Mention has been made of the unlimited powers enjoyed by the secret police, in theory an instrument of party and state, but in practice totally independent, an authority against which there was no appeal."

"The Soviet Union was run by a huge, centralized state apparatus, a giant bureaucracy which to all intents and purposes constituted a new class."

"By 1968 the Soviet GNP (Gross National Product) was still only half that of America. When, many years later, in the late 1980s, some more or less truthful statistics were published for the first time under glasnost (openess), it appeared that the Soviet GNP was considerably less than half that of the United States. In other words, Soviet economic achievements had been grossly exaggerated since the 1930s, and it is even difficult now (i.e. in 1993) to differentiate between propaganda, fantasies, and real achievements."

One of the reasons why the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev (reigned 1985-1991) introduced glasnost (openess) and perestroika (restructuring) to The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was because its declining communist economy was making it harder and harder for Russia to maintain its huge military spending, let alone to modernize and expand its military and outer space program in the arms and related space race against the modified free enterprise economy of The United States of America. By the 1980's, the Soviet Union was technologically behind the United States in many areas of its industry by a considerable margin.

"As far as quantity was concerned, Soviet economic achievements in the 1960s were still impressive; according to the official statistics, the Soviet Union had a higher GNP per capita (per head) then Italy and Japan. But hardly anyone familiar with conditions in these countries would maintain that the standard of living of the average Soviet citizen was equal (let alone superior) to that of the average Italian or Japanese during the 1960s. By 1990 it was probably lower than in Portugal - and declining."

"For in reality, though everyone was equal in the Soviet Union, some were more equal than others, with an income-tax maximum of 13 per cent, virtually no death duty, and growing emphasis on rank, insignia, hierarchy, and social differentiation. Political power is in the hands of a small ruling elite consisting of high party, government, and military officials; in the selection of these officials and in the shaping of the policies they pursue, the average Soviet citizen has little if any say. Under Stalin (reigned 1924-1953) the trend toward social stratification was particularly marked; the old tsarist system of uniforms and ranks returned with a vengeance. After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev (reigned 1953-1964) tried to do away with the extremes of inequality. At this point, as far as the goal of social equality is concerned, the Soviet Union ranks somewhere in the middle of the European scale; differences in income and status are clearly more pronounced there than in the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway), while the welfare services are less developed. On the other hand, Soviet society is obviously more egalitarian than the societies of Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Andorra, southern Mediterranean France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, the Vatican or Holy See, Malta, and Greece) with their extremes of incomes and property. Some observers have argued that with growing prosperity the distortions of the communist ideal would gradually disappear and the ruling elite would fade away. But these predictions were not borne out by events."

"More than any other European country, the Soviet Union seems to be subject to Roberto Michels' "iron law of oligarchy"; instead of "withering away" (as Karl Marx had predicted) the state has become omnipresent (all-everywhere) and omnipotent (all-powerful). This is very much in contrast to Vladimir Lenin's expectations (reigned 1917-1924): he wrote that, so long as the state existed, a Marxist had no right to speak of freedom."

"Leonid Brezhnev, the secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party (reigned 1964-1982), collected expensive cars - a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, a Cadillac - but he also liked to see others enjoy themselves."

"The politburos of the various East European communist parties were as much a male preserve as the traditional London clubs. The social emancipation of women had made more progress in Scandinavia than in any other part of Europe, and it was these countries that were also the pioneers of the new sexual freedom."

"In the Soviet Union the repressive effects of the Stalin era (1924-1953) were all-pervasive. Social services were far less comprehensive than in any other developed capitalist country; the principle of free education was no longer adhered to as tuition fees were reintroduced in the universities and the upper grades of secondary schools. Divorce was made difficult, and abortion was virtually abolished. Although the Soviet Union enjoyed the reputation among Western progressives as the country with the most highly developed social services, and Western conservatives were convinced that sexual license in communist society was without precedent or parallel, the real situation was very different indeed. After 1956 more liberal attitudes prevailed; old-age pensions and other benefits were increased, school and university fees were abolished; and the restrictions on divorce and abortion partly rescinded. But this liberalism had narrow limits: the manifestations of the new sexual freedom in the capitalist world were emphatically rejected prior to glasnost, and Soviet literature, cinema, and plays remained the cleanest (in the Protestant puritanical, Victorian England, 1837-1901 sense) on the European continent; the official attitude toward (Freudian) psychoanalysis was no more lenient than that of the Roman Catholic Vatican."

I personally believe that abortion can only be justified when the mother's life is in danger, because of rape, because of incest, and when the unborn child is going to be born in severe chronic physical and/or mental pain because of severe congenital physical and/or mental handicap. Any other reason used to justify abortion is to use the word abortion as a dishonest word for baby killing. The aborted baby should be given a decent burial, and preferably cremated, a clean and dignified way of dealing with a dead body. The soul enters the body when the male sperm fertilizes the female egg (ovum), and it is for this reason that I do not object to artificial contraception or birth control, especially when used to combat and control a population explosion.

"In the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen and Italians belonged to communist social clubs and trade unions, read communist newspapers and literature, watched communist films; even their social life proceeded often within the framework of a closed system. Their dreams of a better social order did not conflict with the harsh realities of communism in practice, as was the case in Eastern Europe. By the end of the 1950s, there were no doubt more genuine believers in communism left in Western than in Eastern Europe."

"The great confrontation among European intellectuals living outside Eastern Europe in the late 1940's and 1950's was between communism and its critics. It is not easy in retrospect (i.e. in 1993) to understand its intensity or the passion that went into it. The popularity of communism was mainly due, as Georges Bernanos said, to the shortcomings of Western societies and the moral default of those who should have stood for spiritual values; young intellectuals became communists in the same way that young priests and young nobles in the eighteenth century (1700's) had been enraptured by the Social Contract and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They were disturbed by the injustices of Western society; the direct impact of the Soviet Union (of which hardly anyone had firsthand knowledge) was relatively slight. In France and Italy communism appeared as the legitimate heir of the anti-Axis resistance movement of World War Two, the one most likely to realize its dreams and aspirations. Guilt feelings played an important role: among those in Italy who had been fascist fellow travelers as young men, or those in France who refrained from active involvement in the resistance, many now became zealous converts to communism."

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume Q.R., Number 16, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Russia. Page 488: "Four of the contributors of this article are members of the staff of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan. They are Deming Brown, Professor of Russian Literature; Zvi Gitelman, Professor of Political Science; Arthur P. Mendel, Professor of Russian History; and Roman Szporluk, Professor of History. A fifth contributor, Alice C. Gorlin, is Associate Professor of Economics at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan." The World Book Encyclopedia, 1987, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago. Page XXIII (23), Deming Brown, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Page XXXIII (33), Alice C. Gorlin, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Page XXXIII (33), Zvi Gitelman, A.B., M.A., Ph.D., Page XLV (45), Arthur P. Mendel., B.A., Ph.D., Page LVII (57), Roman Szporluk, B.Litt., L.L.M., Ph.D. Page 518:

"Ivan the Terrible (reigned 1547-1584). After the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, its grand prince came to be called czar (tsar, caesar, kaiser). In 1547, Ivan IV (the Terrible) became the first ruler to be crowned czar. Ivan made the power of the czar over all Russia complete. Ivan was brutal, extremely suspicious, and perhaps, at times, insane. He formed a special police force (oprichnina), and began a reign of terror in which he ordered the arrest and murder of hundreds of aristocrats (princes and boyars, the latter high-ranking landowners). Ivan gave his victims' estates as payment to the service gentry (landowners serving in the army and government). He also established strict rules concerning the number of warriors and horses each landowner had to supply to the army. Ivan burned many towns and villages, and killed church leaders who opposed him. In a fit of rage, Ivan even struck and killed his oldest son. The number of service gentry increased rapidly. But their estates had no value unless the peasants remained on the land and farmed it. Ivan and later czars passed a series of laws that bound the peasants to the land as serfs. Serfdom became the economic basis of Russian power. The development of Russian serfdom differed sharply from changes occuring in Western Europe. There, during the Renaissance (1348-1600), the growth of trade led to the use of money as royal payment. It also led to the disappearance of serfdom in Western Europe. Ivan fought Tatars (Mongols) at Astrakhan and Kazan to the southeast, and won their lands. Russian forces crossed the Ural Mountains and conquered western Siberia. Ivan also tried to win lands northwest to the Baltic Sea, but he was defeated by Lithuanian, Polish, and Swedish armies."

"About two-thirds (66%) of the farmland in the U.S.S.R. (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) consists of about 22,000 sovkhozy (state farms). These farms average about 42,000 acres (17,000 hectares) in size. The average size of farms in the U.S.A. (The United States of America) is about 440 acres (178 hectares). The Soviet Union's state farms are operated like government factories, and the farm workers receive wages. About a third (33%) of the nation's farmland consists of about 26,000 kolkhozy (collective farms), which are controlled by the government. These farms average about 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) in size. In general, about 500 families live on a collective farm. The farmers are paid lower wages and a share of the production and profits. Families on state or collective farms may farm small land plots for themselves. They grow crops and raise animals and can sell their products privately."

"The U.S.S.R. has more than twice as much farmland as the United States of America, but U.S. farmland is generally more fertile. In addition, much of the farmland in the Soviet Union lies near the Arctic Circle, where the growing seasons are short, or in regions of light rainfall. American farmers receive higher prices for their products, have better equipment, and use more fertilizers. Many Soviet government farm production plans are impractical and interfere with the farm managers' job of making the best use of land and workers." (i.e. lower productivity, food shortages).

"The Soviet government has widespread control over the operation of individual factories. Government agencies tell factory managers which products to make, how many items of each to produce, and where to sell them. Almost all prices and wage rates are set by government agencies. The government takes about three-fifths (60%) of the factories' profits in taxes. The factories use the remaining profits for investment projects to improve production and for bonuses to managers and workers."

"Foreign trade plays only a small part in the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union's enormous natural resources provide almost all the important raw materials that the nation needs. Also, the government does not want to become dependent on foreign markets or suppliers."

"Soviet cities are crowded, and millions of families live in small, plain apartments that have only one or two rooms. Housing shortages force some families to share apartments with other families. A Soviet family may have to wait several years before it gets an apartment of its own."

"Homemakers in the Soviet Union have a special problem shopping for food and clothing. The country has a shortage of meat, and meat is expensive. Clothing is plain and lacks variety. Shoppers often go from store to store looking for what they want, much of the time without finding it. For imported goods, they may have to stand in line for several hours to be waited on."

"Every year, about a million Soviet citizens leave the villages and move to the cities. Jobs are easier to find in the rural areas, but living conditions there are much worse than in the cities. In the villages, many of the people live in small log huts or in community barracks. Many of the families have no gas, plumbing, or running water, and some do not have electricity. There are fewer stores in the villages than in the cities, and they carry a smaller variety of goods. The quality of education that is provided in the villages is far below that of the cities.

Most people in rural areas of the Soviet Union work on huge government-controlled farms. A Soviet farmer is allowed to cultivate a small plot of land for private use and to keep a few animals on it. The farmer can sell any dairy products, meat, and vegetables produced on this land for private income." (incentive or profit motive to be more productive on private plots of farmland rather than on government-controlled farms).

In 1987, the estimated population of the Soviet Union was 283,620,000 persons, with 65% of them living in urban areas, and 35% of them living in rural areas.

"Soviet citizens work an average of about 40 hours a week (i.e. in 1987). Their salaries are set by the government and vary among different jobs and industries. For example, coal miners earn nearly twice as much as most factory workers. Since the mid-1950's, Soviet workers have been free to quit their jobs. But a housing shortage discourages them from looking for work in other cities."

"During the 1920's, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was mainly a farming nation. Today (i.e. in 1987), it is an industrial giant. Only the United States outranks the Soviet Union in the value of manufactured products."

"In 1928, the Soviet Communist leaders led by by Joseph Stalin began the first of a series of five-year plans to promote industry. Each plan set up investment programs and production goals for a five-year period. At first, the government chiefly developed factories that produced heavy-industry products, including chemicals, construction materials, machine tools, and steel, i.e. capital goods. Heavy industry, especially steelmaking, expanded rapidly. But housing construction and the production of consumer goods, such as clothing, food, and household articles, lagged seriously. During the mid-1950's, the Soviet government began to increase somewhat the production of consumer goods. But the increase still fell far short of the people's needs." (as of 1987).

"Livestock production is the weakest part of Soviet agriculture. During the late 1920's and early 1930's, millions of Soviet farmers were forced to join collective farms. In protest, they killed great numbers of farm animals. Livestock production did not reach its earlier levels until the mid-1950's, and its growth since then has been slow. Today (i.e. in 1987), the Soviet people eat about half as much meat as Americans do."

Page 499:

"The early Soviet Communists hoped to achieve a classless society - a society with neither rich nor poor people. The government took over all privately owned factories, farms, and other means of production. The Communist slogan coined by Karl Marx was: "From Each According to His Ability, to Each According to His Needs." Everyone would serve society in the best way possible, and no one would have any special rights. The Soviet Communists have failed to achieve their goal of a classless society. The old classes that had special rights based on inherited rank and wealth have disappeared. However, new groups with special rights have appeared under the Soviet system. These groups include top officials of the Communist Party and the government and some professional persons, including artists, engineers, and scientists. They have automobiles, comfortable apartments and dachas (country homes), and other luxuries that most Soviet citizens do not have. The great majority of the people live much more simply."

"The Soviet federal government restricts the people's contacts with non-Communist nations. It allows few citizens to travel outside the country. A person even needs official permission to move into a city or from one apartment to another."

Pages 490-491:

"The U.S.S.R. has a long constitution that gives all political power to the people and to their elected representatives. However, the country is completely controlled by the Communists. The people who run the Communist Party run the U.S.S.R. The government is like a glove and the party is like a hand inside the glove. The glove moves only the way the hand does. The government simply accepts all Communist Party decisions, puts them into laws and orders, and sees that they are obeyed. When a Soviet citizen votes, he or she has only one choice - the person selected by the party. A voter may cross out the name of the party's choice, but almost no one does.

The Soviet Union is made up of 15 union republics. Each republic, like the entire nation, is governed by a soviet (council). This political structure gives the nation its official name, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union permits no other political party to oppose it. About 17 million men and women, or only about 6 per cent of the total population of the Soviet Union, are members of the Communist Party.

A Soviet citizen who wants to join the Communist Party must be at least 18 years old. The candidate must be recommended by three members of the primary party organization (the lowest party unit) that he or she wishes to join. The recommending members must have been party members for at least 5 years, and must have known the candidate for at least 1 year. Both the primary party organization and the party organization on the next higher level must approve the candidate. The candidate then must wait a year before being approved as a full member. This whole process permits only those who are most loyal to Communism to join the party.

The Communist Party structure is like a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are about 400,000 primary party organizations. They operate throughout the Soviet Union, wherever there are at least three Communists. These groups are set up in such places as factories, farms, government offices, and schools. They have great influence over local political and economic life. To a Soviet citizen, the individual who heads the local party group is a person to be respected - and sometimes feared. Many Soviet leaders worked their way to the top from positions in local party organizations.

Most primary party organizations have many members. If an organization has more than 15 members, it elects a bureau to conduct its work. If an organization has more than 150 members, its bureau elects a full-time secretary to head the organization. The secretary and the staff make up the secretariat of the organization.

Just above the primary party organizations are the rayon (district) party organizations. The primary groups in each district elect representatives to a district conference, held every 2 years. This conference elects a committee, which, in turn, elects a bureau and a secretariat. The committee, bureau, and secretariat direct the district party between district conferences. The district organizations operate under the oblast (region) party organizations. The district groups in each region elect representatives to a regional conference, which is also held every 2 years. The regional conferences also elects a committee, which then chooses a bureau and a secretariat.

On the next party level, in 14 of the 15 union republics, is the republic party organization. Each republic organization is made up of representatives from lower party groups in the republic. The representatives meet in a congress at least every 4 years. The congress elects a central committee, which also elects a bureau and a secretariat. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (R.S.F.R.), the largest republic, has no separate party organization. Its party activities are managed by bodies of the national party organization.

The main organization at the top of the nationwide Communist Party pyramid is the All-Union Party Congress. Under party rules, the congress must meet at least every 5 years. But it does not meet that regularly. The All-Union Party Congress consists of about 5,000 delegates from lower party organizations throughout the U.S.S.R. It elects a Central Committee to handle its work between congresses. The Central Committee, which has about 560 full and candidate (nonvoting) members, meets at least every 6 months. It elects a Politburo (Political Bureau) and a Secretariat to direct its work between meetings. In actual practice, the party congress does not really "elect" the Central Committee, nor does the Central Committee really "elect" the Politburo and the Secretariat. The Politburo and the Secretariat select their own members and those of the Central Committee. The Central Committee and the All-Union Party Congress simply approve these selections.

The Politburo of the Central Committee is the most powerful body in the Soviet Union. It establishes all important policies. It includes full and candidate members. The number of full members usually ranges from 12 to 15, and the candidates from 7 to 10. They meet in secret and never reveal details of their discussions or how they voted. Only their decisions are announced.

The Secretariat of the Central Committee manages the daily work of the Communist Party. The Secretariat has 11 members, several of whom are also members of the Politburo. The general secretary of the Central Committee heads both the Secretariat and the Politburo, and is the most powerful person in the Soviet Union.

The Secretariat is aided by a staff of about 1,500 professional party secretaries known as apparatchiki (apparatuses). The secretaries manage the work of all party organizations, and have wide control over Soviet life.

The structure of the Soviet federal government resembles a pyramid. Each government body is responsible to the one above it. At the top, the main body is the two-house federal parliament, the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.. Almost all its members are Communists. The members are elected to 5-year terms, and meet twice a year for a week or less. They pass without question all proposed laws, which come from the Communist Party's leaders."

Page 492:

"In elections to the Supreme Soviet, there is only one candidate for each position. Several candidates are nominated in the voting districts, but Communist Party officials make the final choice. Voters in the Soviet Union must be at least 18 years old."

"The Supreme Soviet selects two important bodies, but their members are actually selected by the Communist Party's leaders. These bodies are the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers (the Commissariat). The Presidium handles legislative matters between sessions of the Supreme Soviet. Its chairman is considered the nation's head of state and is often called the president of the Soviet Union. The chairman is assisted by a first vice chairman, 15 vice chairmen (one from each union republic), a secretary, and 21 other members. Traditionally, the chairman has little power. But General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (reigned 1964-1982), was chairman from 1977 unil his death in 1982. The next two General Secretaries - Yuri Andropov (reigned 1982-1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (reigned 1984-1985) - also became chairman of the Presidium.

The powerful Council of Ministers, or cabinet, is the highest executive body of the government. Its members are among the highest-ranking Communist Party leaders. The council chairman, often called premier or prime minister, is the chief administrator of the Soviet government. Joseph Stalin (reigned 1924-1953) and Nikita Khrushchev (reigned 1953-1964) held this position while they headed the federal Soviet Communist Party as General Secretary. The council also includes a first vice chairman, 13 vice chairmen, about 60 department ministers (commissars), and about 40 chairmen of state committees.

Each of the 15 union republics and the 20 autonomous republics of the Soviet Union has a constitution. Each also has a supreme soviet with a presidium, and a council of ministers. Members of the supreme soviets are elected to five-year terms."

Page 492:

"The Soviet Communist Party Control Committee sees that the rules of the Communist Party are followed on all government and party levels. This Committee is appointed by the national party's Central Committee. The Committee on State Security (the K.G.B.), an agency of the Council of Ministers, is the government's political police system. It has offices and agents throughout the Soviet Union."

"Required military service in the Soviet Union begins at age 18 and lasts at least two years."

"Courts in the Soviet Union differ from those in Western democracies. Western courts operate according to general ideas of justice. Court rulings in the Soviet Union, on the other hand, are based on policies of the Communist Party. Soviet courts are under the procurator-general, the nation's chief legal officer. The procurator-general is selected by Communist Party leaders and appointed to a five-year term by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. The highest Soviet court is the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Each union republic also has a supreme court. All supreme court judges are elected by the union republic supreme soviets to five-year terms."

Page 493:

"The Constitution of the Soviet Union provides that representatives elected by all the people shall run the government. However, there is only one candidate for each political office. In addition, the all-powerful Communist Party selects each candidate. Thus, the Communist Party has complete control over the government. The government simply passes all laws proposed by the party's leaders. The Communist Party allows no other political party in the U.S.S.R. Its power reaches to all levels of Soviet life."

Page 493:

"The policymaking body of the Soviet Communist Party is the Politburo of the Central Committee. It establishes economic programs, determines Soviet relations with other countries, and sets other important policies."

Page 503:

"The government operates all communication activities in the Soviet Union, including broadcasting, motion-picture production, and publishing. They are controlled by various ministries and committees of the Council of Ministers (Commissariat). The Communist Party checks all broadcasts and publications to make sure that they follow party policies (censorship and political correctness). The party also publishes many books, magazines, and newspapers (agitprop, i.e. agitation-propaganda). Moscow is the communication center of the Soviet Union."

Page 501:

"Soviet students know that education is the surest road to success in their country. Students who earn high marks and win the approval of the Communist Party can look forward to important, highly paid careers. In addition to schoolwork, students are graded on behavior and leadership in group activities both in class and after school. Students who receive low marks in behavior may not not be allowed to continue their education." (i.e. sycophants, servile flatterers, fawners, and toadies, lickspittles, yes-men or yes-persons, actors/liars, collaborators/quislings, and slavish "sheep" flourish by telling their superiors what they want to hear, rather than what they should hear. When the superiors decide wittingly or unwittingly to jump into hell, their followers and dependents are expected to do the same).

"The same basic courses are given throughout the Soviet Union. The Communist Party approves all educational programs and policies. Lower education is supervised by the federal Ministry of Education. Higher education is directed by the federal Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education. Both ministries operate through offices in the union republics. All schools stress Communist beliefs. Communism is presented as the best form of society." (Systematic brainwashing).

Pages 501-502:

"Secondary Grades in the Soviet Union are the ninth and tenth grades. About 60 per cent of the secondary program consists of mathematics, science, and work skills of various trades. These courses are designed to help meet the government's need for specialists in science and industry. The secondary schools in the Soviet Union also teach history, language, literature, physical education, and social studies. Graduates with high marks receive gold or silver medals. They are freed from required military service so they can continue their education."

Page 504:

"Soviet artists must present the ideas of Communism in their works. Artists' unions and the Communist Party carefully control all artistic production. The Soviet government accepts only a simple art style that it calls socialist realism (proletcult or proletarian culture). This style stresses the goals and benefits of Soviet life. Works difficult to understand are officially discouraged, and artists who criticize Communism may be disciplined. Some have been sent to prison labor camps. Many artists who work within the official restrictions receive large incomes." (i.e. buying peoples' support, although avant-garde and academic literary, dramatic, artistic, and philosophical works are rarely blockbusters and bestsellers, especially during the lifetimes of their authors and artists in general).

Page 524:

"The Great Purge. Many Soviet citizens opposed Stalin's policies during the mid-1930's. To crush this opposition, Stalin began a program of terror called the Great Purge. His secret police arrested millions of people. Neighbors and even family members spied on one another. Fear spread throughout the country. Stalin eliminated all real or suspected threats to his power by having the prisoners shot or sent to labor camps. The victims included thousands of Communists. Some were party members Stalin had defeated during his rise to power (1924-1929). Many were old Bolsheviks who had been associated with Lenin. Others were officers of the Red Army.

Stalin staged so-called "trials" at which arrested Communist leaders were forced to confess to usually fictitious "crimes against the people." (The Acts of the Apostles 25:16). Most of these purge trials took place from 1936 to 1938. Stalin replaced the party leaders he eliminated with young Stalinists he could trust. The secret police enforced loyalty to Stalin's policies on all levels of life. Stalin controlled everything that was published, taught, or publicly spoken."

Page 497:

"The population of the Soviet Union is distributed unevenly. About two-thirds (66%) of the people live in the European part of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R)., located west of the Ural Mountain ranges and the Emba or Ural Rivers, and which covers about a fourth (25%) of the land."

"Most nationality (i.e. lingistic groups) in the Soviet Union belong to the European geographical race. Others belong to the Asian geographical race, or are mixtures of the two races."

"Slavic Nationality Groups make up about three-fourths (75%) of the total Soviet population. They speak different, but closely related, Indo-European Slavic languages. The ancestors of the Slavs established the original Russian state in the 900's A.D."

"The Russians are the largest Slavic group in the Soviet Union. This group, once known as Great Russians, makes up about 52% of the population of the Soviet Union. The Russians live throughout the country, and hold positions of leadership in the government and Communist Party. Russian is the official language of the nation, and is taught in all Soviet schools. Most Soviet citizens speak Russian as a first or second language. The Ukrainians (i.e. Border Russians, Frontier Russians, Little Russians), the second largest Slavic Soviet group, live in the southern European part of the U.S.S.R. The Byelorussians or Belarussians, sometimes called White Russians, are the third largest Soviet Slavic group. Most of them live in the Western European part of the U.S.S.R. Closely related to the three major Soviet Slavic gropus are the Poles."

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume J.K, Number 11, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. KGB. Page 239: "KGB" is a government agency of the Soviet Union that operates a secret police force and gathers political and military information about other countries. This information, called intelligence, often involves a country's national security, and much of it is secret.

Inside the Soviet Union, the KGB's main function is to put down any opposition to the Communist system of government. It also provides bodyguards for officials and patrols the borders. In other countries, in addition to gathering information, the KGB conducts various secret operations to aid governments or political organizations friendly to the Soviet Union. It also aids opponents of governments that Soviet leaders dislike. The size of the KGB is secret, but it is believed to be the largest organization of its kind.

The KGB developed from the Cheka, a secret police force established in 1917. In 1954, the force became known as the KGB, which stands for the Russian words meaning Committee for State Security."

By Robert H. MacNeal.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XLV (45) - Robert H. MacNeal, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Professor of History, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. KGB; Russian Political Leaders Biographies. The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Inc, Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart. Page 1152: "K.G.B, the official secret police agency of the Soviet Union, in charge of state security. [K(omissija)G(osudarstvennoj)B(ezopastnosti) Commission of State Security]."

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume I, Number 10, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A., Page: 412,

"Ivan IV, The Terrible (1530-1584, reigned 1547-1584), the first czar (tsar, caesar, kaiser, emperor) of Russia, ranks next to Peter the Great as the most outstanding Russian czar. Russia expanded into Siberia under his rule, and conquered the region along the Volga River. He laid the basis for Russia's growth and present-day policies. He made Moscow the capital. Ivan was crafty and cruel, and even killed his oldest son with his own hands. He continued the policies of his grandfather, Ivan III, Grand Duke of Muscovy, (1440-1505, reigned 1462-1505), of reducing nobles, ministers, merchants, and farmers to servants of the czar. Ivan published a new law code and introduced an administrative system called Oprichnina, which was subject to the czar alone. His secret police spread terror throughout the country. He invited experts from other countries to improve the quality of Russian craftwork and military techniques. He began diplomatic relations and trade with western powers."

By W. Kirchner.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A., page XL (40): W. Kirchner., M.A., Ph.D. H. Rodney Sharp Professor of History Emeritus, University of Delaware. Russian History Biographies.

Pages 285-286:

"Peter I, the Great, (1672-1725, reigned 1682-1689-1725), a Russian ruler, is famous for having gained access to the sea for Russia and for "westernizing" Russian customs and institutions. He made Russia a great world power."

"Early Life. Peter was born in Moscow. He came to the throne at the age of 10 (1682), together with his weak-minded half brother Ivan V (1666-1696). His half sister Sophia seized the regency, but Peter's followers deposed her in 1689 and he assumed supreme power. Through contacts with foreign artisans, soldiers, and merchants who lived in Moscow, Peter acquired an interest in western civilization. In 1697, he decided to extend his knowledge of the West, and sent a delegation on a tour through Germany, The Netherlands, England, and Austria. He included himself as a member. He used this famous trip not only for political negotiations, but also for studying military techniques, shipbuilding, and other western crafts, and for learning western habits. A revolt of his royal guards forced Peter to return to Russia in 1698. He brutally suppressed the revolt and crushed all opposition, especially that of the nobility. This victory made Peter the unchallenged master of Russia. He then begun his vast reform work."

"Foreign Policy. Peter's first aims were to secure for Russia the rank of a great power and to gain access to the sea. To achieve the second purpose, he declared war on Turkey. He conquered the Turkish port of Azov on the Black Sea but later was forced to return it. Next, Peter engaged in a 21-year war with Sweden (The Great Northern War of 1700-1721). After a bitter defeat at Narva in 1700 and a great victory at Poltava in 1709, he gained possession of most of Livonia (Latvia) and part of Finland, including the great ports of Riga, Reval, and Viborg on the Baltic Sea. Finally, he turned his attention eastward and made war on Persia (Iran), from which he acquired two ports on the Caspian Sea. He also ordered that trips of discovery be made along the northern coast of Siberia, and he concluded trade negotiations with China."

"Policies Within Russia. Peter strengthened his absolute power as czar, and forcibly introduced western habits. He demanded state service from all his nobility and abolished the old council of the nobility. He replaced it with a senate and various colleges, or ministries. He chose people of ability for high military and administrative offices, rather than merely hereditary nobles. Peter extended peasant serfdom, forced the serfs into industrial work, and harshly suppressed their rebellions. He abolished the highest church office of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, the patriarchate, and introduced a system called the Holy Synod in 1721 to control the church. He took land away from the monasteries and extended toleration to religious dissenters. Peter paid careful attention to improving the Russian army and he also built a Russian navy. He introduced new industries, modernized mining in the Ural Mountains, built roads and canals, and improved the status of Russian merchants. He invited experts from other countries to direct new enterprises. To finance his reforms, he imposed high taxes and reserved profitable business monopolies for himself. Peter founded schools and laid the basis for the Russian Academy of Sciences. He ordered children of the nobility to study abroad, encouraged the adoption of European manners, and called in foreign professors and scientists. He urged Russian women to take part in social life. He ordered the men to shave (the church favored beards) and to shorten their customary long coats. He founded the capital city of Saint Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad) on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, an inlet of the Baltic Sea, as his "window to the West." "

"Lasting Achievements. Peter truly transformed Russia, giving it a vigorous start on the path of modernization. But the haste with which he pushed reforms sometimes hindered progress. He brutally overrode all opposition. When his son Alexis opposed his reform work, Peter had him executed. He also drove his first wife from him when she opposed his reforms. Nevertheless, his work had lasting influence."

By W. Kirchner.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume Ci-Cz, Number 4, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Communism.

Page 725:

"In most Communist countries, less than 10 per cent of the people belong to the Communist Party. The party seeks to sign up as members all those who hold important positions in such fields as education, government, and the military. In this way, the party can have some control over these fields. Communism teaches that Communists form a select group that is better trained and more responsible and reliable than any other. But for many persons, membership in the party is largely a way to get - and keep - a job."

"Communist states are dictatorships whose rulers permit little public or organized criticism. Communist leaders seek the support of the people, but they do not depend on it to stay in power as officials in democracies do. Communism permits little of a person's life to remain outside the control of the party and the state. Such a form of government is sometimes called totalitarian."

Page 726:

"Labor unions in Communist countries exist mainly to help meet production goals. Unions also administer social insurance and operate vacation facilities. They have some influence on safety, job classifications, and employee complaints, but not on hiring workers or on wages. Unions in communist countries are forbidden to strike or picket the employer - the state."

Unions in Communist nations can only try to take on one employer, i.e. the national government, and cannot pick and choose between a multitude of employers as is the case in modified free enterprise nations ruled by multi-party democracies.

Pages 726-726a:

"The standard of living in the Soviet Union and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe is lower than that of The United States of America and Canada. But the differences were even greater before the Communists took over. Families spend a much smaller part of their budget on housing than American families do. Clothing is more expensive than in the United States. But education and medical services are free. Toys, household gadgets, bicycles, and cameras are scarcer and more expensive. Few families can afford a car. Some persons in Communist countries make much more money than the rest. They include high party and government officials; scientists, writers, and actors and other performers. However, the differences in income between the highest and lowest paid persons are much less than in the United States, and no one may - legally - accumulate a great fortune."

Page 726:

"In a Communist nation, major economic decisions are made by government planners and must agree with the policies of the Communist Party. The planners decide what and how much should be produced, and what prices should be charged for goods and services. In the United States, such decisions are usually made by individuals or corporations. The government planners must determine (a) what raw materials will be produced, (b) when and where they will be produced, (c) to whom and at what prices they will be sold, (d) what products they will be used for, and (e) how the finished products will be distributed. The planners must be sure that the right kinds of resources and skilled labor are at the right place at the right time."

Page 726a:

"Marxism. Karl Marx's (1818-1883) basic ideas were first expressed in the Communist Manifesto (1848), which he wrote with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), a German economist. Marx believed the only way to ensure a happy, harmonious society was to have the workers in control. His ideas were partly a reaction against hardships suffered during the 1800's (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the harsh unemployment poor laws in the form of work houses, alms houses, and poor houses) by workers in France, England, and Germany. Most factory and mine workers were poorly paid, and had to work long hours under unhealthful conditions. Marx was convinced that the triumph of Communism is inevitable. He taught that history follows certain unchangeable laws (economic determinism, dialectical materialism, Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis) as it advances from one stage to the next. Each stage is marked by struggles that lead to a higher stage of development. Communism, Marx declared, is the highest and final stage of development."

"According to Marx, the key to understanding the stages of historical development is knowing the relationship between different classes of people in producing goods. He claimed that the owners of wealth are the ruling class because they use their economic power to force their will on the people. He held that class struggle is the means by which history moves from one stage to the next. Marx assumed that the ruling class would never willingly give up its power (by reducing the franchise or property qualification entitling a person to vote), and that struggle and violence were therefore inevitable.

Marx called for the abolition of capitalism, an economic system in which the chief means of production are privately owned. Under capitalism, Marx believed, a struggle takes place between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are the middle class, such as the owners of factories and other means of production, and the proletariat are the workers. Marx argued that workers do not receive full value for their labor under capitalism, because the owners keep the profits. He believed that someday wealth would be in the hands of only a few persons, and the worker's living standards would continually grow worse. Finally, the workers would revolt and seize control of industry and the government.

According to Marx, the workers would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat that would ultimately set up a classless Communist society. Ultimately, everyone would live in peace, prosperity, and freedom. There would be no need for governments, police, or armies, and all these would gradually wither away (anarchy).

Capitalism has not collapsed as Marx expected it to. Wealth has become more widely distributed, and in most countries the poor have not become poorer nor a larger part of the population. No Communist country has been able to abolish social classes. Just as in non-Communist countries, some people have more wealth and power than others. Conflicts and crime have not vanished in Communist society (economic hardship and/or genetically predisposed sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, and megalomaniacs). Contrary to Marx's expectations, all workers do not show affection and loyalty to one another. Instead, national and racial hatred have often proved stronger than class ties." (Genetically predisposed tribalism, ethnocentrism, and racism as the result of human evolution from and divergence from chimpanzee apes through the course of millions of years, beginning in the prehistoric Stone Age with bands of ape-men, hominid, hunter-gatherers living on the savannas of Africa. Eugenics, Social Darwinism, Geopolitical Determinism, placental mammalian territoriality, dominance, hierarchy, and pecking order; Economic Determinism, The Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics. The Universe or Cosmos plays a game of Craps with loaded dice. Only the former archangel, heavenly prosecutor, accuser, tempter, and tester Satan/Lucifer, and his army of fallen, rebel angels or demons mentioned in Revelation Chapter 12, rebelled against the God Yahweh out of their own pure free will. Possible eventual universal salvation via an extremely long hellish purgatory for all fallen, sinful, intelligent, physically capable human beings, as taught by the early Christian theologian and Church father Origen Adamantius, 184/185-253/254 A.D., in his theory known by the name of Apokatastasis. See the New Testament Bible passages of I Peter 3:18-22, I Peter 4:6, John 12:32, I Corinthians 15:28, I Timothy 4:10, Ephesians 1:9-10, Titus 2:11, and Luke 3:6. Satan and his following of fallen, rebel angels or demons would presumably be eventually annihilated into oblivion after an extremely long existence in Hell, i.e. the Lake of Fire at the end of the world). Karl Marx once wrote that the then (i.e. 1800's) exploited workers of the world have no country, and he thundered "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"

By Alexander Dallin, Professor of History and Political Science at Stanford University, and editor of Diversity in International Communism, and Soviet Conduct in World Affairs. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XXVII (27), Ph.D.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume C-Ch, Number 3, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Capitalism. Pages 157-158:

How Other Economic Systems Differ from Capitalism.

"There are three main types of economic systems today - capitalism, communism, and the mixed economy. Each system has some government control and some private choice. But capitalism relies more on private decisions and less on government planning than the other two systems do."

"In a Communist Economy, the government controls nearly all the resources used in production. It also controls trade and operates the major communication and transportation systems. Individuals and businesses make no major economic decisions. Instead, government planners decide which goods and services and how much of them should be produced. They also establish wage and price scales and determine the desired rate of economic growth. Communism produces most goods and services less efficiently than capitalism does. Shortages (inflation, black markets) and surpluses (bankruptcies, tax-payer funded bailouts) occur frequently because supply and demand have little influence on decisions. Consumers may spend their money largely as they wish, but they can choose only among the goods and services that the government makes available. Workers cannot change jobs freely. China and the Soviet Union are the largest Communist nations." (i.e. in 1987).

"In a Mixed Economy, the government might own such important industries as coal mines, railroads, steel mills, and oil wells and refineries. But it allows private firms to own most other industries. Many countries with mixed economies tax citizens heavily but also provide extensive welfare benefits. Most nations of the world have mixed economies. Some countries with mixed economies are democracies, including Great Britain and Sweden. In these nations, the people can vote to increase or reduce government control over the economy. The economic system of such countries with mixed economies is called democratic socialism. Other countries with mixed economies are dictatorships."

Page 156d:

"Individuals influence the capitalist economy as consumers, workers, and investors. For eample, if consumers show by their purchases that they prefer small cars to large cars, dealers will order more small cars and fewer large ones. Manufacturers, in turn, will step up production of small cars and cut production of large cars."

"The driving force of a capitalist economy is the desire for profits. Profits are a firm's earnings after it has paid all its expenses. The desire for profits, called the profit motive, ensures that companies produce the goods and services that consumers are willing and able to buy. To succeed, businesses must sell enough of their products at a price high enough to yield a profit. A firm may lose money instead of earn a profit if sales fall too low or costs run too high. The profit motive also encourages firms to operate efficiently. By saving time, energy, and materials, a company can reduce its production costs. Lower production costs can lead to greater sales and profits."

Pages 156d-157:

"The Market is a term used by economists for places and situations in which people buy and sell goods and services. In a capitalist economy, the prices of goods and services are determined mainly by such market conditions as supply and demand and competition. Supply is the amount of a good or service offered for sale. Demand is the amount that people are willing and able to buy. Prices tend to change whenever supply and demand are unequal. Generally, the market forces prices to fall when supply exceeds demand and to rise when demand exceeds supply. Competition exists when many producers try to sell the same kinds of products to the same buyers. Capitalist economies depend on competition to discourage companies from charging unreasonable prices. A company that charges lower prices or improves the quality of its products can take customers away from its competitors. Without competition, a monopoly or cartel may develop. A firm has a monopoly when it supplies the total output in a market. A monoploy can limit output and raise prices because it has no fear of competition. A cartel is a group of companies that band together to control output and raise prices. Many countries have laws that prohibit monopolies and cartels. Despite antimonopoly laws, giant corporations form near monopolies in some industries. Such firms can temporarily afford to reduce prices and accept losses. Smaller firms that cannot afford losses cannot compete. In many capitalist nations, public utilities, such as electric, gas, and telephone companies, are allowed to operate as monopolies under government regulation."

By William G. Dewald. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, Chicago, U.S.A., 1987, Page XXVIII (28), William G. Dewald., Ph.D., Economist, U.S. Department of State. Finance Articles.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume E, Number 6, Chicago, U.S.A., 1987, Economics, by Henry J. Aaron.

Page 40a:

"The Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) first stated the principles of the capitalist system in the 1700's. Smith believed that governments should not interfere in most business affairs. He said the desire of business people to earn a profit, when regulated by competition, would work almost like an "invisible hand" to produce what consumers want (human genetic predisposition determines the economic laws of supply and demand, and competition). Smith's philosophy is known as laissez faire (non-interference). Adam Smith's emphasis on individual economic freedom still forms the basis of capitalism. But the growth and complexity of modern businesses, cities, and technologies have led the American people to give the government more economic duties than Smith gave it. In fact, many economists call the American system of economics modified free enterprise because the government plays such an important part in it."

Pages 40d-40e:

"Public Utilities are companies that provide services essential to the public. These services include electric power, water, gas, sewage and local telephone services. In many public utility businesses, competition would be wasteful. Suppose, for example, that a city had several electric power companies. Such firms might have to buy the same type of costly equipment. The government grants legal monopolies to public utility companies so that they may operate without competition. But federal and state agencies regulate the prices and standards of service of most public utilities. For example, the American Federal Communications Commission supervises telephone companies. The American Department of Energy has authority over electric power and natural gas companies. Federal, state, and local governments own and operate some public utilities themselves."

Page 40e:

"Public Services. U.S. governments on all levels (i.e. local, state, and federal) provide many services that could not be furnished by private companies. These services include police and fire protection, public health programs, schools, national defense, postal services, and roads and streets. U.S. governments at federal, state, and local levels also offer welfare programs. These government programs, which are often called public assistance, offer medical services, public housing, and other economic aid to needy people. Some people in The United States of America receive financial aid from the government-administered social insurance, or social security, programs. These programs are financed by special taxes on workers and employers. They replace income lost because of retirement, unemployment, disability, or death of provider. They also help some elderly and disabled people pay for medical care."

Page 40e:

"Economic Stability. Sometimes the American federal government may use its own economic power to help check inflation (spiraling prices) and depression (mass unemployment). During a depression, the government may spend more money on goods and services. It may build new public buildings or improve major highways. This additional government spending aims to create new jobs for unemployed people. Government spending also attempts to increase the general demand for goods and services. Increased demand encourages business activity. The government may also try to increase demand by cutting taxes so that people have more money to spend. Inflation generally occurs during an economic boom. The government may try to curb inflation by spending less money and, thus, reducing total demand. Or the government may try to reduce demand by raising taxes. Then people would have less money to spend on goods and services. Reduced demand pushes prices down. The government also may work for economic stability through the Federal Reserve System (FRS), the central banking organization of the United States. All national banks and some state banks belong to the system. The FRS manages the nation's supply of money and credit. If inflation threatens the economy, the FRS may adopt policies that decrease the amount of money that banks have available to loan. To fight depression, the FRS may pursue policies that give banks more money to loan and thus encourage borrowing and spending."

By Henry J. Aaron.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XIX (19), Henry J. Aaron, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Professor of Economics, University of Maryland.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume So-Sz, Number 18, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Socialism. Pages 456-457:

"Socialism and Communism. The words socialism and communism once meant about the same thing - a society based on public ownership of the means of production. Today, people draw sharp distinctions between the two terms.

Members of Communist parties consider socialism as a stage in the development of Communist societies. During this stage, a Communist party is in power in a country, most private property has been eliminated, and the economy is run on the basis of a national production plan. However, the nation is not yet rich enough to give its citizens all the material benefits they need, and the government must coerce (force) people to work hard for little reward. In a later stage, the nation will be wealthy enough to satisfy everyone's economic wants. That stage is Communism. Communists claim that coercion by the government will disappear under Communism.

Democratic socialists - that is, socialists in non-Communist countries - do not accept the Communist definition of socialism. Most of them believe that some government coercion is necessary because some people must be forced to be good citizens. Democratic socialists reject most of the methods used by Communist parties, such as revolution and other forms of violence as means of gaining power. Democratic socialists also oppose dictatorial methods of running the state after they are in power. Unlike Communists, democratic socialists believe in democratic processes and do not wish to get rid of all opposition parties. They care more about the fair distribution of goods and services than about rapid economic growth. Democratic socialists also favor democratic methods for determining what goods are to be produced.

Many socialists favor a mixed economy - government ownership of basic industries and private ownership of many other businesses. The private businesses, however, would be regulated by the government.

Socialists believe that a country's resources should be used according to an overall economic plan formulated by manufacturers, farmers, workers, and government officials working together. By such planning, socialists hope to adjust production to the needs of the people. Although the forces of supply and demand may influence production and prices under the socialist economic plan, many decisions regarding how much to produce and what to charge will be made by political authorities.

Socialists disagree over how much wealth should be left in private hands and how to deprive the rich of their excess property. Many socialists call for redistribution of wealth through taxation. They favor laws to help the aged, the unemployed, the disabled and handicapped, widows, dependent children, and other people in need. Many socialists believe that the government should also provide free education and medical service to everyone and should help all citizens obtain safe and sanitary housing at rents they can afford."

Page 458:

"The United States of America has basically a free enterprise system, though it has adopted many ideas and methods that have been part of socialist programs. For example, the government regulates and controls many private businesses. It also has set up many social welfare programs to aid the needy, and a few public services are free to everyone. The government strives to maintain employment at a high a level as possible. The government also uses its strong taxing, spending, and credit powers to achieve maximum employment, production, and incomes without large increases in prices. But the United States has far fewer socialist features than most other industrialized countries."

By Alfred G. Meyer.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XLV (45), Alfred G. Meyer. A.M., Ph.D. Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan. SOCIALISM and Related Articles.

John Robertson, Russia in Revolution, Oxford University Press, England, 1982, 1986 Reprint. Page 10:

"The Bureaucracy. The modern Russian bureaucracy or civil service was created by Speransky, the chief minister of Tsar Alexander I (reigned 1801-1825) between 1809 and 1811. Under successive Tsars it had grown steadily in size and influence and was graded into fourteen different ranks. By 1900 the system was heavily over-centralized and generated an excessive amount of paperwork. The higher ranks of the civil service had, over the years, included many brilliant conscientious men who had done much to modernize Russia but it also contained many extreme reactionaries and men of doubtful character. Laziness and corruption were found at all levels; even many of the highest officials took bribes and stole enormous sums from public funds. For the small official, who was overworked and miserably underpaid, bribery was normal practice."

Page 10:

"The Okhrana. Those Russians who opposed the Tsar and his government were liable to attract the attention of the State Police Department, in particular its secret section usually known as the Okhrana. 'Like a gigantic spider this institution spread its web all over the country'. Anyone might arouse the curiosity of the Police Director and his undercover agents. Members of the Cabinet and even the Tsar's mother were under police supervision and had their mail intercepted.

Undercover agents were everywhere. Some made their way into the secret revolutionary societies, sometimes even organized them, and took part in political acts of violence. Indeed two Ministers of the Interior, Plehve and Stolypin, who were nominally in charge of the Police, were assassinated by undercover agents of the Okhrana posing as revolutionaries."

Page 10:

"The Russian Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Christian Church. After 1721, the Orthodox Church had been turned into a government department by Tsar Peter I the Great called the Holy Synod, and was run by a lay official appointed by the Tsar, called the Chief Procurator (Byzantine or Greek East "Roman" Caesaropapism. The Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan the III the Great (1440-1505), reigned 1462-1505, and paternal grandfather of Czar Ivan the IV the Terrible (1530-1584), the latter of whom reigned from 1547-1584, had married Sophia, the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus, reigned 1449-1453). The priesthood however had considerable influence over the devout Russian masses and politically this was expressed in favour of the Tsar and autocracy (The Divine Right of the Authorities mentioned in The New Testament Bible passages of Romans 13:1-7, I Peter 2:13-25, John 19:10-11, Matthew 5:38-48, I Corinthians 7:18-24, Genesis 9:18-29, Galatians 4, Luke 3:12-14, I Corinthians 6:1-11, Ephesians 6:5-9, I Timothy 1:9-11, I Timothy 2:1-4, and Hebrews 13:7-17), of Greater Russian nationalism (The Acts of the Apostles 17:26 and The Acts of the Apostles Chapters 21-28) and in hostility towards members of other churches or racial groups. The Russian Eastern Orthodox Church played a leading part in the Russification campaigns waged by the Tsarist imperial government against the Latin West Roman Catholic Christian (395-476 A.D.), but Slavic Poles (Revelation Chapters 11-13, 17-18, and II Thessalonians 2) and the Jews (Matthew 3:7-12, Matthew 21:33-36, Mark 16:15-18, John 18:28-40, John 19:1-16, I Thessalonians 2:14-16, The Acts of the Apostles Chapters 14 and 19, Matthew 23:37-39, Luke 13:34-35, The Acts of the Apostles 1:6-8, Romans Chapters 9-11, Zechariah Chapters 12-14, Zechariah 12:10, Revelation 1:7, John 19:31-37, Revelation 2:9, Revelation 3:9, I John 2:22-23, I John 4:1-3, Matthew 27:15-26, and Luke 23:34)."

Page 11:

"The Russian Eastern Orthodox parish priest, in the words of one historian: 'was hardly, if at all better than the peasants around him. Not, as a rule, paid a salary by the State, he depended for his living on whatever his parishioners agreed to pay him, after some haggling, for weddings, funerals and christenings...The upper and middle classes looked down on him because of his inferior status, his poverty, his low educational standard...the intelligentsia...treated him with contempt and saw in him nothing but a government agent and a hypocritical tool of the possessing classes; the peasants, so often at loggerheads with him over church dues, suspected him of being mean and grasping...'

Pages 8-9:

"Tsar Nicholas II (reigned 1894-1917) had the right to nominate the ten members of his ministerial council whose function was to run the government. Each minister was individually responsible to the Tsar. There was no collective responsibility. Nicholas had the right to dismiss ministers at will but he seldom had the courage to do so to their face. The Tsar also had the right to nominate the sixty members of the Council of State, whom he could consult regarding the introduction of certain laws. He preferred brainless, loyal mediocrities who would not threaten his authority."

Pages 16-17:

"The Middle Classes. Tsarist Russia did not possess a unified middle class or bourgeoisie in the fashion of Britain or western Europe. There were three distinct groups who had little in common: the civil servants or bureaucrats, the merchants or businessmen; and the group referred to as the intelligentsia.

Each group possessed a different outlook towards society and towards the Tsar. As for the civil servants: 'the standards of the bureaucrats were still derived from the service gentry: the state was placed before the individual, military values above civil values and the good opinion of [their] superior was preferred to the approval of public opinion'.

The businessmen came into prominence in the late nineteenth century (1861 onwards) and were mostly from peasant stock. As a rule they accepted the autocracy and were indifferent to political rights and liberties, being concerned mainly with their profits.

The intelligentsia was largely made up from the ranks of doctors, lawyers, and writers. This group tended to reject the autocracy and the existing order of Russian society and provided most of the political leadership of the early twentieth century (1900-1917). They were closely associated with the growth of the zemstva.

The Zemstva (Land) Act of 1864 had granted a limited form of self-government to rural areas. The right to vote was extremely limited but a form of county council was set up, followed in 1870 by a Municipal Act which granted the same rights to the towns."

Page 12:

"The Nobility. At the beginning of the reign of Tsar Nicholas II (reigned 1894-1917) there were about 1.8 million members of the nobility in the Russian Empire, of whom two-thirds (66%) possessed hereditary titles. Not all of these were land-owners or even particularly wealthy. Titles of nobility were granted to men who achieved certain ranks in the armed forces or the civil service, or to professional men who received decorations for their services to the crown. Vladimir Lenin, for example, was born a 'noble' for his father had achieved the rank of Chief School Inspector of Simbirsk Province and received the order of Saint Vladimir which permitted him an hereditary title." (Lenin's mother traced her ancestry to German and Swedish Lutheran gentry landowners, while Lenin's father had been born to Russian Slavic, Siberian peasant settlers of the Eastern Orthodox denomination of Christianity).

"The lesser gentry often had employment in the city and kept a family estate in the countryside which they occasionally visited."

Pages 12-13:

"The Russian nobility enjoyed certain priveleges. The office of Land Captain, responsible for supervising the peasant commune, was reserved for the gentry as were certain other local government functions. Certain schools were reserved for the children of the higher grades of nobility, as were commissions for officers in the more fashionable regiments of the Russian imperial army."

Page 13:

"The Peasantry. Russia was largely a country of peasants. In 1914, the year in which Russia entered The First World War (1914-1918), some 85 per cent of the population lived in the countryside, and most of them earned their living from agriculture - 'Completely cut off from the general business and cultural trends of the world.' Until 1861, when they were freed by Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855-1881), the Russian peasants had been serfs, owned by a land-owner and obliged to work three days per week on his land (corvée or barschina labor). In return, they received a plot of land for the family for which they paid in rents and services. While the Emancipation Acts of 1861 granted the Russian serfs their legal freedom (serfdom abolished in the mainstream Protestant Lutheran and Roman Catholic German kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1813), they did not create conditions in which the peasant farmers could support themselves."

"Peasant Allotments. At the Emancipation the peasants lost a large proportion of the land that they had farmed as serfs; 25 per cent on average, but in some provinces more than 40 per cent. Most of the good land was retained by the gentry. At the same time the peasants lost their customary rights to cut timber and hay from the landlord's forests and meadows, and were no longer permitted to graze their cattle on common pasture. A Peasants Bank was set up in 1883 to help the peasants borrow money to buy or lease more land."

Page 14:

"Redemption Payments. The peasants were not given the land on Emancipation but were obliged to pay a form of compensation to their former owners. Since most of the peasants could not afford this, the government bought the land from the nobles then resold it to the peasants at 6 per cent interest over forty-nine years (1861-1910). The figure set for repayment was too high and the method of calculation penalized the peasants with a small plot. Repayments were constantly in arrears and redemption dues were eventually abolished in 1907."

Page 14:

"The Village Commune. Although the peasants gained personal freedom by Emancipation much of this new-found liberty was lost to the village commune or Mir (Peace/Security). This institution isolated the peasants from the rest of the population and subjected them to special laws administered, after 1889, by Land Captains from the gentry. The Mir had existed in many areas before 1861 but, because the government wished to deal with the peasants as a whole rather than individually, its powers were reinforced and extended to other districts. The commune was given the land granted to the peasants after Emancipation, and was made responsible for the payment of redemption dues and taxes. At regular intervals the commune redistributed the land in accordance with the nature of the soil and the numbers in each peasant household, in a system of communal strip farming."

Page 14:

"The Peasant Household. The right to a share of the village land belonged not to an individual but to a peasant household headed by a house elder. He was responsible for the payment of taxes and redemption dues to the commune and had wide powers over the earnings and property of the other members of the household."

Pages 14-15:

"Taxation. The Russian peasant laboured under an enormous financial burden. Until early in the century (i.e. the 1900's) he had to pay a poll-tax as well as his redemption dues. His land was taxed at seven times the rate of that held by the gentry. On top of this the government steadily increased taxes on alcoholic spirits, tobacco, matches, sugar and kerosene. The peasant was obliged to sell most of his produce for export, to earn foreign currency to service the government's foreign loans, thus further depressing a standard of living which was already the lowest in Europe."

Page 15-16:

"The Life of the Peasant. The Russian peasants were a class apart. They were uneducated, usually illiterate, ignorant and prejudiced, isolated and backward. They believed in the Orthodox Church and the Tsar. He was their 'little father' and, like Nicholas the Second himself, they believed in an almost mystical union between the throne and the peasant masses: 'The Tsar took the serfs away from the landlords, therefore the Tsar alone must be lord over all the peasants....' These 'dark people' lived in villages stretched out on either side of an unmade road."

The Russian serfs had been freed by Tsar Alexander II of Russia (reigned 1855-1881) in 1861 because of Russia's disastrous performance in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 against Great Britain, France, the Italian Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, and Ottoman Turkey, where the conscripted Russian serfs fought very half heartedly. The same reason led the Kaiser Frederick William III (reigned 1797-1840) of the German Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia to end serfdom in 1813, as a result of the conquest of his kingdom by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I (reigned 1799-1814/1815) of France in 1806, and after Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, which the German fascist dictator Adolf Hitler (reigned 1933-1945) was to repeat from 1941-1944. Napoleone Buonaparte was born an ethnic regional Italian from the island of Corsica in 1769, an island which had been annexed by France in 1768 from the oligarchic Italian republic of Genoa-Liguria in 1768. Napoleon had once been a Jacobin in his youth, as Benito Mussolini had once been an anarcho-syndicalist socialist in his youth. Mussolini was born in 1883 in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, and Hitler was born in 1889 in the Austrian town of Braunau-am(on)-Inn, a town separated from the German Kingdom of Bavaria by the Inn River.

Pages 17-18:

"Industry and Workers. The Growth of Industry. The extremely low standard of living of most of the Russian people had held back the growth of industry for many years, but with Emancipation in 1861 came an increase in the size of towns. However, it was not until 1890 that any rapid increase in industrial production took place. Much of the credit for this must go to Sergei Witte who held the posts of Minister of Transport and Minister of Finance from 1892 onwards. One of the features that marked out the growth of industry in Russia was the great extent of government financial involvement: the state owned railways, factories and mines and lent huge sums to private business."

Pages 19-20:

"Conditions of Work. The Russian worker was subject to unhealthy and insanitary working conditions and to a harsh factory discipline. The withdrawal of rent allowances and bonuses, the imposition of fines and the use of corporal punishment were all employed to keep the workers in line. Accidents were common and it was not until 1897 that a maximum working day of 11 and a half hours was established. A Factory Inspectorate was set up to enforce the laws relating to child labour and the employment of women, and did much good work despite the hostility of employers and the suppression of many of its reports by the government.

Trade Unions were illegal as were the strikes which rapidly became a feature of Russian industrial life. The strikes tended to be short-lived but were most common in the large enterprises. The government, which regarded 'the hiring of factory labour [as] not merely a civil contract but a matter of public interest irretrievably connected with public order and peace', moved police permanently into the factories (one policeman per 250 workers, one inspector per 3,000 workers) and frequently called on the Army to deal with strikes. This often led to bloodshed."

The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Inc, Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart. 1986. Page 468: Corvée (Barschina). noun. 1. unpaid or partly unpaid labor imposed by authorities on the residents of a district, for example on roads. 2. Historical. unpaid work done by a peasant for his feudal lord. [Old French corvee, corovee, Late Latin corrogāta, contribution; its collection Latin corrogāre, com - together + rogāre ask].

Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Second Editon, Updated Printing, 1991, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, The United States of America.

Page 106:

"Tsarist Imperial Russia, a genuine Great Power under the conditions of 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, Blücher, Wellington, and Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Tsar Alexander the First's Russia in 1812), was soon overwhelmed by the demands of twentieth-century (1900's) total, industrialized war that was World War One (1914-1918). Such a war quickly revealed the disadvantages of being both backward and autocratic. Faced with crippling shortages of matériel from the beginning, the only possible Russian strategy was to swamp the enemy with sheer numbers. But only one soldier in four even had a rifle; the others were told to pick one up from the dead (Nicholas V. Riasonovsky, A History of Russia (Oxford, 1963), page 464.) The shortage of Russian artillery shells was largely responsible for German advances in 1915, and for General Brusilov's failure to hold the gains of his offensive into Austrian Galicia in the northern hemisphere summer of June-August 1916. Under these embittering conditions, to mobilize masses of men meant to radicalize them."

Pages 127-128:

"Tsarist Russia (1547-1917) was particularly vulnerable to worker unrest. As a new-comer to industrialization, its workers were peasant stock undergoing their first generation of factory discipline, the stage of greatest turbulence in every experience of industrialization. That turbulence, moreover, had unusual leverage, for Russian industry, stepping directly into the most advanced technological level, was highly concentrated in a few major cities. And the dark memories of the frustrated Russian Revolution of 1905 poisoned Russian efforts at patriotic union." The failed Russian Revolution of 1905 arose out of the defeat by Tsarist Russia at the hands of Imperial Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

"Russia went to World War One (1914-1918) superior to its enemies in only one resource: sheer masses of men. The tsar threw the peasant mass of his people at German steel. Ill-equipped and poorly led, the Russian soldiers underwent the most wasting campaigns of any army in the first years of the war. By the northern hemisphere spring of March-May 1917, Russia is estimated to have lost 6 to 8 million dead, wounded, or captured (William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, Volume 1, (New York, 1935), page 65). The tsar mobilized the mass of his subjects into uniform only to see them radicalized. Under such conditions, what needs explaining is how the regime of the Russian Tsarist Romanov dynasty (1613-1917) survived as long as it did."

Page 26:

"The Tsarist Russian Empire seemed to be taking steps backward concerning democracy in the decade before the outbreak of World War One in 1914. The electoral law that permitted nearly all adult males to vote for the first and second Dumas (imperial parliaments) in the national elections of 1905 and 1906 was drastically curtailed for the elections of the third and fourth Dumas in 1907 and 1912." Page 107:

"The Duma (parliament) had been elected on a narrower and narrower property franchise since its beginnings in 1905, and only 9500 of Moscow's 1.5 million residents could vote for their city council by 1914."

John Robertson, Russia in Revolution, Oxford University Press, England, 1982, 1986 Reprint. Page 55:

"The Russian Army in World War One was poorly organized, badly armed and equipped, and directed by commanders who mingled ignorance with incompetence. The rank and file peasant Russian soldier of World War One was little better than those set above them. The uneducated Russian peasant population never understood why it fought. It fought well under competent leadership and in favourable circumstances, but, in the opinion of Knox, a British General at the time, 'A higher type of human animal was required to persevere to victory through the monotony of disaster.' "

The German state and Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia, the state with the largest population, economy, and geographic size in The Second German Reich of 1871-1918 (area 65%, population 62%), had a an adult male, three-class tax-paying electoral law for its franchise concerning elections for its state parliament from 1850 to 1918, where those who were wealthy enough to pay the top third of the taxes elected a third of the deputies. The members of the German upper house for the federal parliament of the Second Reich, known as the Reichsrat, was elected by the parliaments of the 25 federal states, 4 kingdoms, 6 grand duchies, 5 duchies, 7 principalities, and 3 free cities, that made up the federal Second Reich. The Reichsrat could veto laws passed by the lower federal house called the Reichstag, elected by German adult male citizens over the age of 25 years on a universal suffrage franchise. The Prussian three-class electoral law was abolished in Germany after the end of World War One on November 11, 1918. See Robert O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Second Editon, Updated Printing, 1991, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, The United States of America, Pages 26, 105, and 146 and The Penguin Atlas of World History: From the French Revolution to the Present, Volume Two, Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann, Translated by Ernest A. Menze with maps designed by Harald and Ruth Bukor, Penguin Books, London, The United Kingdom, translation first published 1978, Pages 76-77 and Pages 60-61. Only the German state of Baden adopted universal adult male suffrage in 1904, followed by Bavaria and Württemberg (Swabia) in 1906. See David Thomson, Europe Since Napoleon, Penguin Books, London, The United Kingdom, Revised Edition published in Pelican Books 1966, Reprinted in Penguin Books, 1990, Page 352. Northern and eastern Germany in World War One was mainly Lutheran mainstream Protestant in faith, while southern and western Germany, and German-speaking Austria, was mainly Roman Catholic in faith.

Robert O. Paxton, Page 27:

"There were other subtler but no less important expansions of European popular control over legislatures, such as the spread of the secret ballot and salaried parliament seats. The Australian, or secret, ballot provided envelopes and private voting booths for voters. Its introduction in France in 1913 (1872 for Great Britain) reduced the pervasive influence of local "notables" over their lesser neighbors in political matters. The provision of a salary of £ 400 pounds sterling per year for all members of the British House of Commons or lower house in 1911 made it possible for men without private incomes to serve in that body, long one of the most gentry-dominated of European parliaments."

The members of the French Senate or national upper house were popularly elected after life senators were abolished in 1884, and after 1909 the hereditarily appointed British House of Lords or upper house lost its "absolute veto over bills passed by the Commons" or lower house. (Robert O. Paxton, Page 27). The four main systems of vote counting in democracies today are first-past-the-post, the Australian preferential or alternative voting, the Australian optional preferential voting, proportional representation, and the American Presidential Electoral College, either under the Westminster parliamentary system or the American Republican/Presidential Congressional System.

The atheistic and anti-capitalist Soviet and Russian Communists disliked religious and capitalistic Jews. The atheist Karl Marx himself strongly wrote against capitalistic Jews. Karl Marx's father Herschel or Heinrich Marx was a German Jew who converted to the Prussian State Evangelical Lutheran Church, although Heinrich was largely a non-religious man of the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment, who was interested in the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire, while Marx himself was interested in the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach. See Economic Antisemitism and Karl Marx.

Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, written in the northern hemisphere autumn/fall of September-November 1843. In The Marx-Engels Reader, Edited by Robert C. Tucker, Princeton University, Published by W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, New York, U.S.A., 1972. On the Jewish Question, reprinted from Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated and edited by T.B. Bottomore, 1963, McGraw-Hill Book Company and C.A. Watts & Company Limited. Page 46:

"Let us consider the real Jew: not the sabbath Jew, whom Bruno Bauer considers, but the everyday Jew. Let us not seek the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us seek the secret of the religion in the real Jew. What is the profane basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldy god? Money. Very well then: in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself. An organization of society which would abolish the pre-conditions and thus the very possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible."

Pages 47-48:

"In North America (The United States of America, Canada), indeed, the effective domination of the Christian world by Judaism has come to be manifested in a common and unambiguous form; the preaching of the Gospel itself, Christian preaching, has become an article of commerce, and the bankrupt trader in the church behaves like the prosperous clergyman in business. This man whom you see at the head of a respectable congregation began as a trader; his business having failed he has become a minister. This other began as a priest, but as soon as he had accumulated some money he abandoned the priesthood for trade. In the eyes of many people the religious ministry is a veritable industrial career."

Page 48:

"Judaism has maintained itself alongside Christianity, not only because it constituted the religious criticism of Christianity and embodied the doubt concerning the religious origins of Christianity, but equally because the practical Jewish spirit - Judaism or commerce (note 6) - has perpetuated itself in Christian society and has even attained its highest development there." (Note 6: The German word Judentum had, in the language of the time (1843), the secondary meaning of "commerce,' and in this and other passages Marx exploits the two senses of the word).

"What was, in itself, the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. The monotheism of the Jews is, therefore, in reality, a polytheism (paganism) of the numerous needs of man, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory (toilet) an object of divine regulation. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and is revealed as such in its pure form as soon as civil society has fully engendered the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. Money is the universal and self-sufficient value of all things. It has, therefore, deprived the whole world, both the human world and nature, of their own proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man's work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it."

Page 49:

"The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of this world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange."

The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the trader, and above all of the financier. The law, without basis or reason, of the Jew, is only the religious caricature of morality and right in general, without basis or reason; the purely formal rites with which the world of self-interest encircles itself."

"Jewish Jesuitism, the same practical Jesuitism which Bruno Bauer discovers in the Talmud, is the relationship of the world of self-interest to the laws which govern the world, laws which the world devotes its principal arts to circumventing."

"Judaism could not develop further as a religion, in a theoretical form, because the world view of practical need is, by its very nature, circumscribed, and the delineation of its characteristics soon completed. The religion of practical need could not, by its very nature, find its consummation in theory, but only in practice, just because practice is its truth."

Pages 49-50:

"Judaism could not create a new world. It could only bring the new creations and conditions of the world within its own sphere of activity, because practical need, the spirit of which is self-interest, is always passive, cannot expand at will, but finds itself extended as a result of the continued development of society."

Page 50:

"Christianity issued from Judaism. It has now been re-absorbed into Judaism. (Islam continued from the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Christianity in the Islamic holy books of the Koran or Quran, Sunna or Hadith, and the Sira, and Persian-Iranian Zoroastrianism influenced the Jewish religion when Palestine was a province of the Persian Empire from 539-332 B.C. The sacred book of Zoroastrianism is called the Zend-Avesta.) From the beginning, the Christian was the theorizing Jew; consequently, the Jew is the practical Christian. And the practical Christian has become a Jew again. It was only in appearance that Christianity overcame real Judaism. It was too refined, too spiritual to eliminate the crudeness of practical need except by raising it into the ethereal realm. Christianity is the sublime thought of Judaism; Judaism is the vulgar application of Christianity. But this practical application could only become universal when Christianity as perfected religion had accomplished, in a theoretical fashion, the alienation of man from himself and from nature. It was only then that Judaism could attain universal domination and could turn alienated man and alienated nature into alienable, saleable objects, in thrall (slavery) to egoistic need and huckstering."

"In its perfected practice the spiritual egoism of Christianity necessarily becomes the material egoism of the Jew, celestial need is transmuted into terrestrial need, subjectivism into self-interest. The tenacity of the Jew is to be explained, not by his religion, but rather by the human basis of his relgion - practical need and egoism."

Pages 50-51:

"It is because the essence of the Jew was universally realized and secularized in civil society, that civil society could not convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious essence, which is precisely the ideal representation of practical need. It is not only, therefore, in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Jewish Old Testament Bible, also known as the Torah and the Law of Moses) and the Talmud (Jewish civil and religious law based on the teachings of the Old Testament), but also in contemporary society, that we find the essence of the present-day Jew; not as an abstract essence, but as one which is supremely empirical, not only as a limitation of the Jew, but as the Jewish narrowness of society. As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism - huckstering and its conditions - the Jew becomes impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object. The subjective basis of Judaism - practical need - assumes a human form, and the conflict between the individual, sensuous existence of man and his species-existence, is abolished. The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."

The World Book Dictionary, Volume A-K, Number 1, World Book Inc, Publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart. 1986. Page 1028: Huckster. 1. a peddler; hawker. 2. a person who sells small articles. 3. Figurative. a person willing to profit in a small, mean way. 4. Slang. a person in the advertising business. 5. to peddle or sell, especially in a petty way or in small quantities. [Middle English hokester. Compare Middle Dutch hokester and Middle English hukken to haggle, bargain.] Page 1028: Hucksterism. Especially U.S.A. high-pressure selling and advertising: Women...are exposed to more hucksterism [then men] on television and at the front door (Newsweek).

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume M, Number 13, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Marx, Karl. Page 190b:

"Karl Marx (1818-1883) discussed capitalism within a broad historical perspective that covered the history of the human race. He believed that the individual, not God, is the highest being. People have made themselves what they are by their own labor. They use their intelligence and creative talent to dominate the world by a process called production. Through production, people make the goods they need to live. The means of production include natural resources, factories, machinery, and labor."

Karl Marx believed that private ownership of the chief means of production was the heart of the class system. For people to be truly free, he declared, the means of production must be publicly owned - by the community as a whole. With the resulting general economic and social equality, all people would have an opportunity to follow their own desires and to use their leisure time creatively. Unfair institutions and customs would disappear. All these events, said Marx, will take place when the proletariat (working class) revolts against the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production)."

By Alfred G. Meyer, The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XLV (45), Alfred G. Meyer. A.M., Ph.D. Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan. SOCIALISM and Related Articles. Marx wrote that "religion is the opium of the masses/people" in the introduction to his book called A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, written by him in manuscript form in 1843, and published after his death. Marx published the introduction of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in 1844 when he included it in his journal called German-French Annals, written by Marx in collaboration with Arnold Ruge, and published in Paris, France. See Opium of the People in Wikipedia.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume Ci-Cz, Number 4, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Communism. Page: 726a:

"Communists try to discourage religious worship because they consider religion a hostile force. Membership of a Christian Church may make it difficult for a person to advance in his or her job in a Communist country, and impossible to join the Communist Party. In several countries - and especially in the Soviet Union (i.e. the Communist Russian Empire of 1917-1991, successor to the Slavic version of the East Roman/Greek/Byzantine Empire (395-1453), i.e. the Eastern Orthodox Christian Empire of Tsarist Russia, 1547-1917) - there has been much discrimination against Jews, even members of the Communist Party who have Jewish ancestry. However, government officials deny it."

By Alexander Dallin. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XXVII (27), Ph.D.

During the Cold War years of 1945-1991, the atheist, anti-capitalist Soviet Union was often allied to the more or less secular socialist Ba'ath Party dictatorships of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Southern Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and Afghanistan in the petroleum and natural gas rich Muslim Middle East and North Africa, while the United States was allied with Israel, Turkey, Jordan (ruled by the Hashemite monarchy since the end of World War One in 1918, originally from Mecca in Saudi Arabia, who also ruled Iraq until overthrown there in 1958), Iran when ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from 1941-1979, and Saudi Arabia. After the Iranian Muslim fundamentalist or Islamist Revolution of 1979, the Shiite Muslim, Persian-Iranian, clerical Islamo-fascist, authoritarian theocracy founded by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (reigned 1979-1989), frightened the Sunni Muslim, Arabic, absolutist monarchy of Saudi Arabia led by the royal house of Al-Saud. Saudi Arabia was allied with Iraq when it fought a war with Iran from 1980-1988. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, launched to find non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the ruling minority Sunni Muslim Arab Iraqis were overthrown by the majority Shiite Muslim Arab Iraqis, the latter of whom who have received a great deal of not so secret assistance from neighbouring Iran. Israel has six top secret American war reserve stock depots for the use of American military forces stationed in the largely Muslim and usually Arabic Middle Eastern nations of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and The United Arab Emirates. Russia under the rule of President Vladimir Putin has expanded the Russian military presence in Syria and Libya since 2015 and 2019 onwards respectively. The British established a Jewish Homeland in Palestine in 1917 during The First World War (1914-1918) for a number of reasons. The first reason was in order to protect the nearby Suez Canal located in the then British protectorate of Egypt, opened in 1869, and which shortened considerably the sea voyage between The United Kingdom and the British colonies and dominions located in South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Ocean. The second reason was to form a land bridge between Egypt and the oil-rich British Persian Gulf Protectorates of Kuwait, southern Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, The United Arab Emirates, and Oman after the British conquered the Turkish occupied Arab imperial provinces of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq during World War One. British troops stationed along the Mediterranean Sea shores of Egypt and Cyprus could travel to the Persian Gulf ports via the Middle Eastern land bridge, and from the Persian Gulf they could travel by naval troop transports to then British-ruled India. See Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 by Ken Stein, 2007, CIE (Center for Israel Education). The third reason was the use of the Kirkuk (Iraq) to Haifa (Palestine) oil pipeline via Jordan from 1935-1948, and this pipeline supplied petroleum to Allied forces fighting during World War Two (1939-1945) in the Mediterranean theaters of North Africa, Lebanon and Syria, Greece, Italy, and southern France. The British during World War Two also had military bases in the Mediterranean lands of Cyprus, Malta, and Gibraltar, as they still have in Gibraltar and the Greek-ruled portion of Cyprus to this day. From 1968 until the Iranian Islamist revolution of 1979, Europe obtained a large part of its petroleum supply from the Shah's Iran, and part of the route of transportation between Iran and Europe ran along the Trans-Israel pipeline, which is also known as the Tipline. The Tipline connects the Israeli Mediterranean ports of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Haifa with the Israeli port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, an inlet of the Red Sea. In 2003, the Russians reached a deal with the Israelis whereby they would supply East Asia with Russian petroleum shipped from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk via the Tipline. In the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur or Ramadan War of October 6 to October 25, 1973, the then socialist Egyptians and Syrians received weapons, ammunition, military advisers, and military intelligence from the Soviet Union, while the Israelis received the same from the Americans. The American military support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War resulted in an oil embargo against the United States from October 17, 1973 to March 17, 1974 by members of the OAPEC cartel (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries), at a time when 12% of the petroleum consumed in The United States came from the Middle East, with the figure being around 10% in 2008. Saudi Arabia, the leader of the OAPEC cartel, ended the embargo in 1974 because it needed American military protection from the then pro-Soviet Iraqis, and since 1979 from the Persian, Shiite Muslim theocracy of Iran. See Why Does the United Sates Support Israel?

The reason why the Jews formed such a disproportionate minority of Russian Communists was because they had been persecuted by the Russian Emperors or Tsars, and occasionally massacred under their rule in campaigns known as pogroms. Communism, at least officially, preached ethnic tolerance and the international solidarity of all workers, even if it did not always follow this in practice. See Jewish Bolshevism. During the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920, the non-Communist White faction often carried out massacres against the Russian Jews, and as a result they drove many of the Jews into the arms of the Russian Red, Bolshevik, or Communist faction. See Why Did Russian Jews Support the Bolshevik Revolution? by Michael Stanislawski, Nathan J. Miller Profesor of Jewish History at Columbia University, posted on October 24, 2017, 9.30 P.M. The atheistic and anti-capitalist Russian Communists however disliked religious and capitalistic Jews. While the German fascists known as the Nazis/National Socialists (i.e. The German Third Reich of 1933-1945, with the second one existing from 1871-1918 and the first one from 800/962-1806) aimed for the genetic and biological genocide of the Jews, the Soviet Communists aimed at the religious, economic, and cultural genocide of religious and capitalistic Jews. During the Cold War of 1945-1991, the Soviet Communists often prevented many Soviet Jews from emigrating to Israel, which had gained independence in 1948 after being ruled as a British colony from 1917-1948. During World War Two (1939-1945, Soviet participation against the Axis (Germany, Japan, Italy) from June 22, 1941 to September 2, 1945), the Jews of the Soviet Union formed an alliance of temporary mutual convenience with the non-Jewish Soviet Communists against Nazi Germany, which was ended by Joseph Stalin in November 1948 when he ordered the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to be dissolved. Israel gained its independence from Great Britain on May 14, 1948. (3)

Palestine or Canaan in the ancient world lay on an important intersection of trade or caravan routes of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, linking the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Kush with Phoenicia, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumeria, and Persia. The Fertile Crescent of the Middle East comprised the valleys of the Nile, Jordan, Litani, Orontes, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers, as well as the originally forested mountains, hills, and coastal plains of the Levant. The Levant today consists of the modern-day nations of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and the parts of these nations which face the Mediterranean Sea have subtropical dry climates with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, and are covered with such trees as Cedars of Lebanon and Cypresses on the uncleared parts of hills and mountains. See Via Maris (The Way of the Sea), The Ancient King's Highway, and The Fertile Crescent. Palestine forms a land bridge between the continents of Eurasia and Africa (Ezekiel 5:5, Ezekiel 38:12, and Daniel 11:34). The reason why the Jews came to form such a disproportionate minority in finance and lending money on excessive interest (usury) in London and on Wall Street/The United Nations in New York, was because they were forbidden to join guilds and landlordships by Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, because a Jew was never permitted to be a lord over a Christian or a Muslim. See Economic Antisemitism. According to the author of the book titled The Founding Fathers of Hollywood: AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler, originally published in The United States in 1988, there are several reasons why second generation American Jews of Eastern European ancestry came to found and dominate the American motion picture or film industry for more than thirty years. Charles Champlin, the arts editor of the Los Angeles Times, wrote the following in reviewing Gabler's book:

'The extraordinary paradox, Gabler points out, is that through their movies, the Jewish patriarchs painted an idealized portrait of an American society to which they were denied access. For Jews, one of the lures of the industry was simply that it let them in. "There were no social barriers in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of the Twentieth Century," Gabler says. "There were none of the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out."'

See The Founding Fathers of Hollywood: AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler, September 25, 1988, Charles Champlin, the Los Angeles Times' Arts Editor and An Empire of Their Own. According to Noah Efron, "Jewish excellence in science is a phenomenon that flowered in the decades before and, especially, after the Second World War. The 20th century (1900's) began with massive migrations of Jews, to the United States, to the cities of Russia (and then the Soviet Union), and to Palestine. In each of these new lands, Jews turned to science in great numbers because it promised a way to transcend the old world orders that had for so long exluded most Jews from power, wealth and society. Science, based as it is on values of universality, impartiality and meritocracy, appealed powerfully for Jews seeking to succeed in their new homes. It is not so much that Jews were (smart, bookish) that explains their success in science, as that we wanted to be (equal, accepted, esteemed), and in what sorts of places we wanted to live (liberal and meritocratic societies)." See The Real Reason Why Jews Win So Many Nobel Prizes by Noah Efron, October 21, 2013, 4:32 AM, in Haaretz.com.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume F, Number 7, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Fascism. Page 50:

"Fascism resembles Communism. But unlike Communism, which calls for the government to own all industry, fascism allows industry to remain in private ownership, though under government control."

Page 51:

"After the fascist party takes power, its members replace the men and women in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the government. In most cases, one individual - usually a dictator with great popular appeal - becomes the leader of the government. Sometimes, a committee (military junta) of party members holds the government leadership. Fascists permit no other political party and no opposition to their policies. The fascist desire for national glory leads to an increase in military spirit and a build-up of the armed forces. After the military forces become strong enough, they may invade and occupy other countries." (Impractical and suicidal in the age of nuclear deterrence - tactical atomic bomb since 1945, strategic hydrogen bomb since 1952, as well as being bogged down in endless, unwinable guerrilla wars, for example the Soviets in Afghanistan 1979-1989/1992, and the Americans in South Vietnam 1965-1973/1975, even if a superpower wins most of the battles, but loses/tires of the war).

Page 51:

Economic Life. A fascist government permits and even encourages private enterprise - as long as such activity serves the government's goals. However, the government maintains strict control of industry to make sure it produces what the nation needs. The government discourages imports by putting high tariffs on certain essential products or by banning imports of those products. It does not want to depend on other countries for such vital products as petroleum and steel. The government also forbids strikes so that production will not be interrupted. Fascism outlaws labor unions and replaces them with a network of organizations in the major industries. These organizations, which consist of both workers and employers, are called corporations, but they differ from those in other countries. Fascist corporations supposedly represent both labor and management but actually are controlled by the government. Through the corporations, the government determines wages, hours, and production goals. As a result, a fascist country is sometimes called a corporative state." In Nazi/National Socialist Germany from 1933-1945, the national government had four-year plans for the German economy, especially during the World War Two years of 1939-1945.

Page 52:

"Today (i.e. 1987), the rulers of many developing (Third World) nations are following fascist policies in an effort to promote industrial growth and national unity. But because of the association of fascism with racism - and with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler - these leaders deny any similarity to fascist dictators." (Eugenics, Social Darwinism, Geopolitical Determinism).

By Michael Hurst. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XXXVIII (38), Michael Hurst, Fellow in Modern History and Politics, Saint John's College, Oxford University. The articles FASCISM and TOTALITARIANISM.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume I, Number 10, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Industry. Page 197:

"Fascism is an economic system that combines a dictatorship with private ownership of property. Under fascism, industry remains in private hands, but the government strictly controls industry to ensure that it produces what the government wants. Fascism developed in Italy and Germany before World War Two (1939-1945). Some African and Latin-American countries have elements of fascism today" (i.e. in 1987). By Douglas Needham, Professor of Economics at Western Kentucky University, and the author of Economic Analysis and Industrial Structure and The Economics of Industry Structure, Conduct, and Performance. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Number 1, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A. Page XLVII (47). Douglas Needham., B.S., M.A., Ph.D. Former Professor of Economics, College of Business Administration, Western Kentucky University. The articles INDUSTRY and MONOPOLY AND COMPETITION. During the Cold War years of 1945-1991, especially before 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with his programs of glasnost (openess) and perestroika (restructuring), the American C.I.A. or Central Intelligence Agency foreign espionage agency, especially when the more pro-business minded Republicans controlled the American Presidency, backed the fascistic but not necessarily openly anti-semitic, far-right wing military dictatorships and one-party states of the developing and underdeveloped Third World nations who were battling communist guerrillas and terrorists supported by the Soviet/Russian K.G.B. or the Committee of State Security, the Soviet foreign intelligence agency and political secret police all rolled into one. The Communist Soviet K.G.B. often gave support to many far-left communist and socialist military dictatorships and one-party states in the Third World during the Cold War, many of whom were also both anti-semitic and anti-Zionist, especially those in the Muslim Middle East and North Africa. The Western capitalist, multi-party democracies of Great Britain, The United States of America, and Gaullist Free France had formed an alliance of mutual temporary convenience with the Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union during World War Two against the then greater military threat posed to the free world by the fascist dictatorships of Germany, Japan, and Italy, before resuming their hostility towards each other after the end of World War Two in 1945. During the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920 which grew out of World War One (1914-1918), the anti-Communist Russian White faction, which included Russian anti-Semitic fascists, received half-hearted military assistance from the war weary nations of The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. Many Nazi war criminals after the end of World War Two sought sanctuary in the fascistic dictatorships of Latin America and the Middle East, sometimes helping their host nations and the American Central Intelligence Agency in the fight against Communist guerrillas and terrorists supported by the Soviet K.G.B. or the Committee of State Security. The Israelis themselves during the Cold War often sold weapons and ammunition to fascistic military dictatorships in Latin America and Africa, firstly to please their American ally, and secondly because Israel is not particularly rich in natural resources, and is therefore heavily dependent on armaments for export revenues. Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Second Edition, Updated Printing 1991, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Collge Publishers, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. Page 207: NSDAP - National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, i.e. National-socialist German Workers' Party, or "Nazi" Party for short.

Fascist parties before the end of World War Two in 1945: (a) The Italian National Fascist Party - 1922-1943/1945 - Roman Catholicism. (b) The National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party - 1933-1945 - Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a notorious anti-semite, and a notorious political authoritarian. The armed Waffen-SS martial arts of boxing, wrestling, judo, fencing, and bayonet fighting. (c) The Japanese Imperial Rule Assistance Association - 1940-1945 - State Showa Shinto, Divine Emperor Worship, Mahayana Nicheren Buddhism, Mahayana Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Samurai Bushido, the partly Caucasoid Ainu/Mal'ta/Lake Baikal-samurai invented and/or inspired martial arts of jujitsu, kendo (fencing), ninjitsu (jujitsu and kendo combined), judo (nagewaza, katamewaza, and atemiwaza), a required subject in Japanese schools for males since 1909, jukendo (bayonet fighting), and the banzai bayonet charge when low on water, food, and ammunition. Shogun Hideki Tojo (reigned 1941-1944) and Emperor Hirohito (reigned 1926-1989), bakufu government, Hakko Ichiu, Maitreya, Nirvana. (d) The Magyar-Hungarian Arrow Cross - Roman Catholicism and both Presbyterian/Congregationalist Calvinism. John Calvin (1509-1564) was somewhat less anti-Semitic than Martin Luther. (e) The Romanian (forested, mountainous Dacian Roman gold mines) Iron Guard - Eastern Orthodox. (f) The Slavic "Ukrainian dialect" Bulgarian Orange Guard - Eastern Orthodox. Fascist political parties after 1945: (a) The Peronist Justicialist Liberation Front of Argentina, 1946-1955 and 1972-1976 - Roman Catholic. (b) The Spanish Phalanx, 1939-1976 - Roman Catholic. (c) The Portugese New State, 1933-1974 and the Portuguese Youth of 1936-1974 - Roman Catholic.

Personally, when it comes to economics, I am half way between the center and the center right of the political spectrum, in other words I am what an American would call an Eisenhower Republican or what the British would call an Edward Heath Conservative. Personally, when it comes to democracy, I favour the preferential voting system, a bill of rights, an independent judiciary, multi-party democracy, the Westminster Parliamentary system, written constitutions, four year terms for parliamentarians, and a free, unbiased, impartial, honest, hard working, fact checking media. Unfortunately, knowing genetically predisposed human nature, the big majority of people find it extremely difficult to be impartial, unbiased, and non-tribal on a consistent basis. The shame is not in not knowing, the shame is in not wanting to know, i.e. being willfully ignorant, that is deliberately choosing to remain ignorant. Because of genetically predisposed human nature, people would rather condemn the tribe of the stranger than their own tribe. As the philosopher, historiographer, and archaeologist Robin George Collingwood once wrote:

"I have never been impressed by the argument that, as complete objectivity is impossible in these matters (as, of course, it is), one might as well let one's sentiments run loose. As Robert Solow has remarked, that is like saying that as a perfectly aseptic environment is impossible, one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer." In The Idea of History, by Robin George Collingwood, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Great Britain, 1946, Page 30.

While a very few number of people try their 100 per cent to be as impartial and objective as possible, too many people, especially those who are propagandists and ideologues, give 0 or at best 1 per cent in their efforts to achieve impartiality, fairness, and justice. The human, genetically predisposed instinct or nature to form peer group pressures, echo chambers, group thoughts, and for the blind to follow the blind into the ditch (Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:39), and for lemmings to follow lemmings into the water, should never be underestimated in its power. Concerning political correctness and self-censorship, I favour as much freedom of speech as is safely, and honestly, possible. We should compromise to the bare necessary minimum democratic free speech and the truth when it comes to political correctness. Too often political correctness degenerates into propaganda and artificial, unnatural, forced, self-dishonest ideology. If we took political correctness to its logical conclusion, we would have to edit out many parts of the Bible, the Quran/Koran, Sunna/Hadith, and Sira for promoting violence, intolerance, and hate speech. Both the politically correct and politically uncorrect would like to dictate to each other what to think, feel, believe, and know about, or else. I believe that a healthy democracy needs a a strong social welfare safety net for those who fall through the cracks, as well as confident and strong, but reasonable, labor unions, as well as similar chambers of commerce. Multiculturalism is good in moderation, but anything in excess is bad. Multiculturalism should never be shoved down peoples' throats, and neither should anything else for that matter. Controlled, moderate migration, as opposed to uncontrolled migration, de facto invasion, and history being allowed to repeat itself (see The Acts of the Apostles 17:26), is what is needed, as well as a national birth rate that exceeds the national death rate by a moderate margin. Preferably in the interests of national unity during times of severe economic hardship (for example the mass unemployment of the global Great Depression of 1929-1939, brought to an end by the mass government spending of World War Two, 1939-1945, i.e. Keynesian Capitalism), nations should be as ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and racially homogenous as possible, as are Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China, and Taiwan. Migration policies should be based on a merits and skill criteria, with secure national borders, sovereignty, and genuine independence. The preferential voting system is a sensible compromise between the potentially undemocratic results of first-past-the-post and the often unstable, ungovernable results of proportional representation. The Westminster system of government, where the legislature and executive overlap, avoids the grid lock and lame duck administrations of the American Congressional, Presidential, Republican system of government with its strictly separated executive, legislature, and judiciary, and its notorious gerrymander in the form of the Presidential Electoral College. Unicameral legislatures and unitary national governments are what I believe to be the best form of legislature and government in today's democratic, technologically, and economically advanced world. Upper houses, and provincial and state legislatures, are unnecessary relics of the past, although state and provincial governments are very useful and safe in a global pandemic. The right to enrol one self as a voter, and the right to vote, should be free, not compulsory, and the Speaker of a legislative chamber should not belong to a political party. A President should serve a ceremonial role in a national government, being mainly a last resort referee, with the real power lying with the Prime Minister. Electoral constituencies should vary no more than 5 per cent at most in the number of voters they have. Both the governed and governing differ in their level of intelligence or I.Q., talent or aptitude, knowledge and ignorance, education, experience, interests and attention span, understanding or comprehension, memory retention, imagination, rationality and irrationality, morality and ethicality, skepticism and gullibility, complacency, naivety, biases and prejudices, envy and contentment, diligence and laziness, thrift and waste, and in their fears and hopes. The uninformed and misinformed, be they unwittingly or deliberately so, will nearly always heavily outnumber the informed or those genuinely in the know, according to the genetically predisposed laws underpinning human nature. As the old saying goes, "those who are not communists when 20 years old have no heart, and those who are still communists when 30 years old have no brain." Why wait until 30 years old to have a brain? The sooner one acquires a brain, the better. As my web site has abundantly shown, most communists have really neither a heart nor a brain. There is a world of difference between communism as a movement, and communism as a dictatorial, totalitarian government and economic system. The English writer George Orwell was right in satirizing and parodying Soviet/Russian Communism in his 1945 published novel called (Funny) Animal Farm. Satan, the fallen and rebel archangel, and ruler of this world called the planet Earth and its solar system (John 14:30, John 12:31-33, John 16:7-11, II Corinthians 4:3-4, Luke 10:18, Revelation 12:12, Ephesians 2:1-3, and Ephesians 6:10-13), plays all sides of the fence when it comes to politics, religion, and philosophy, whether it be left-wing, centrist, right-wing, atheist, agnostic, fundamentalist-literalist, and non-fundamentalist/contextualist. Satan finds it the the easiest to play off the far-left (communists) against the far-right (fascists), and the atheists against the religious fundamentalists. Satan and his following of rebel, fallen angels (Revelation Chapters 12 to 13), know how to disguise themselves as angels of light (II Corinthians 11:13-15 and II Thessalonians 2:9-12).

End Notes

(1). William G. Dewald, "Capitalism," page 157, The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume C-ch, No.3, 1987, Chicago, U.S.A.

(2). Robert O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A., Second Edition, Updated Printing, 1991, pages 599 and 642.

(3). Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union: 1917-1991. Final Edition. Fontana Press, An Imprint of Haper Collins Publishers, London, The United Kingdom, 1992, pages 94-96, 102, 105, 209, 245-246, 255-259 276, 308, 401, 424, 435-438, and 509-510.

By Ardent Seeker.