Communism: 'The God that Failed'. Totalitarianism and an Economy that Imploded

On April 11th 1985 Gorbachev addressed a Politburo meeting on the topic of the state of Soviet farming which was in dire straits. There were warehouses for only 26% of the fruit and vegetables. Only a third of them had refrigeration facilities. He, according to a diary entry of a member, threatened the politburo with a very simple threat. Gorbachev the General Secretary of the Communist Party of United Soviet Socialist Republic, a super power, threatened members of the politburo with revocation of privileged access to eatery and special food store this forcing the Politiburo members to face the privations of the common soviet citizen at common grocery stores. THAT was the true accomplishment of Karl Marx’s Communism that Lenin and Stalin inflicted on humanity. 

This is only a blog and as such I’m only giving a sampling of the scale of horror and plain stupidity that Communism inflicted on humanity. For ease of reading I’ve omitted citing the actual sources of each incident or quote. Given that this is a blog and not an academic paper I’ve cited the sources individually at the end. Every information here is sourced and mostly verified as to whether the author used primary sources or other corroborative material.

Communists and Orwell’s Pigs

“All animals are equal! But some animals are more equal than others” said the pigs in Orwell’s timeless classic “Animal Farm”. Communism produced such pigs. Orwell’s pigs embodied communism. 

“When Brezhnev came to the Azerbaijan capital Baku in 1978, Aliyev gave him a gold ring with a huge solitaire diamond, a hand woven carpet so large it took up the train’s dining salon, and a portrait of the general secretary onto which rare gems had been pasted as ‘decoration”. When politburo members went fishing swimmers would go underwater to fix fishes on the baits and when they went hunting choice animals would be herded within point blank range. 

Communist party leaders lived in luxury in dachas and escaped the pain their policies created for their own citizens. “In the Soviet Union no economic transaction was untainted”. “No one could afford to avoid at least a certain degree of complicity. That was one of the most degrading facts of Soviet life: it was impossible to be honest. And all the baksheesh, eventually, ended up enriching the Communist Party”. 

Lenin’s Bloodlust

When Revolution came to Russia Lenin was in Switzerland and Trotsky in New York and Stalin was in exile. They were not the revolutionaries they’re made out to be. They usurped power and turned a peasant uprising into a bloody coup to seize power as the provisional government teetered. How did Lenin arrive in that train station in Finland?

Lenin's Statue being toppled in Ukraine (2008) - Courtesy the Week

Lenin, accompanied by his wife and mistress, a sort of menage-a-trois, arrived in a ‘sealed train’ transported by the courtesy of Germans. Churchill memorably said that Germany, then at war with Russia, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia.”

Lenin, who was anti-war, was sent by Germany to undermine the provisional government from making peace with Britain and France and continuing the war with Germany. The extent of German help was assiduously hid by Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the myth of the ‘sealed train’ was born to promote the idea that the bacillus arrived untainted. Lenin “had accepted the kaiser’s money — “German gold” — to help finance Bolshevik propaganda and amplify his strident appeals against the provisional government and anyone, Bolshevik or otherwise, who thought of cooperating with it”

Louis Fisher, a onetime Communist sympathizer and later admirer of Gandhi, paints a stark picture of Lenin in his biography, “Lenin”. “He considered violence a levitate, indeed a preferred method, and advocated is coldly and openly. The end hallowed all means”. “There are moments when the interests of the proletariat demand the merciless annihilation of the enemy in open armed battles”. “Theere has not been a single revolution, or era of civil war, without executions” said Lenin. Duly, the first institution that the Bolsheviks created was the Cheka, the precursor of later day NKVD and finally the KGB. 

Stalin, Pulitzer winning author David Remnick wrote, was a lamb compared to Lenin. Here’s Lenin on August 11th:

1. Hang (hang without fail so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names.
3. Take from them all the grain
4. Designate hostages

"Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks."

Recovering from an assassination attempt Lenin wrote, “it is necessary secretly-and urgently to prepare the terror”. Thus started a period that is now referred to as ‘Red Terror’. “Lenin personally signed the execution lists, thereby inventing another tradition that was carried on under Stalin”. Maxim Gorky supported Lenin and said “if the enemy does not surrender, he must be destroyed”. 

Historian and biographer Stephen Kotkin writes, “Stalin and many other Marxists avowed, the capitalists would never allow themselves to be buried. Rather, they would fight to the death against socialism, using every means-lies, espionage, murder-because this was a war in which only one class could emerge victorious. Socialism therefore, would also have to use mass violence and deceit. The most terrible crimes became morally imperative acts in the name of creating paradise on earth”.

Stalin’s terror by quota. Reign of Yezhov. Khrushchev’s massacre

Stalin was Lenin’s protege, especially, when it came to bloodlust and monstrosity. Unlike Lenin, Stalin, unfortunately, lived too long. 

On 30th July 1937 Nikholai Yezhov, head of NKVD, after Genrik Yagoda the previous head and his wife were executed under Stalin’s orders, proposed Order No. 00447 to the politburo. “The regions were to receive quotas for two categories: Category one- to be shot. Category two - to be deported. They suggested that 72,950 should be shot and 259,450 arrested”. “The regions could submit further lists. The families of these people should be deported too. The politburo confirmed the order the next day”. Nearly “1.5 million were arrested in these operations and about 70,000 shot”. “Yezhov even specified what bushes should be planted to cover mass graves”. 

“On 5th July 1937, the Politburo ordered the NKVD to ‘confine all wives of condemned traitors…in camps for 5-8 years’ and to take under State protection children under fifteen: 18,000 wives and 25,000 children were taken away. “On 15th August Yezhov decreed that Children between one and three were to be confined in orphanages but ‘socially dangerous children between three and fifteen’ could be imprisoned ‘depending on degree of danger’. Almost a million of these children were raised in Orphanages and often did not see their mother for twenty years”. Following the execution of Bukharin his wife Larina was sent to the Gulags for twenty years and she saw her son, an infant when she was sent away, only after her release.

Too often apologists for Stalin paint his terror as par for the course for that era. No it was not. No leader of any civilized country treated children of their own citizenry as Yezhov did with Stalin’s blessing. This is naked barbarism.

Zinoviev trying to curry favor with Lenin signed on for terrorizing the populace saying “to overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us ninety million out of the one hundred million of Soviet Russia’s population. As for the test, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated”.

That Zinoviev, when he faced his executioner in the Lubyanka prison during the Stalinist purges, wailed “Please, comrade, for God’s sake, call Joseph Vissarionovich! Joseph Vissarionovich (Stalin’s real name) promised to save our lives!”. Kamenev, fellow accused and about to be executed, reportedly said “we deserve this because of our unworthy attitude at the trial”. Yagoda, then chief of NKVD, dug out the bullets from the skulls and kept them as souvenirs labeled ‘Zinoviev’ and ‘Kamenev’. Zinoviev and Kamenev, along with Trotsky and Bukharin were once fellow revolutionaries rubbing shoulders with Lenin. 

How Stalin’s one time compatriots fell is a tragic story. Initially everyone wanted to isolate and exterminate Trotsky by aligning with Stalin. Then one by one they exterminated their political enemies by cooperating with Stalin until they themselves faced the executioner. One by one they fell pitilessly for the sin of having underestimated Stalin and for wanting to see their enemies crushed, literally. Even the NKVD chiefs were not immune. Yagoda was killed by YEzhov, Yezhov was killed by Beria and Beria was executed by Krushchev. Khrushchev executed Beria to hide his own complicity in the Stalinist era as he was busy denouncing Stalin after his death.

Soviet Russia paid a very grim price in World War II compared to the Western allies. True, Hitler had flung the greatest war machine in human history against Soviet Russia but that was not the only reason for how close Russia came to being defeated by the Nazi warlord. 

The Stalinist purges completely devastated the army and left it almost leaderless. Tukachevsky, a Marshal, was tortured for confession before being executed. By the time the purges subsided “three of five marshals, fifteen of the sixteen commanders, sixty of the sixty seven corps commanders, and all the seventeen commissars were shot”. No military in history can survive the loss of almost its entire leadership. 

Beria and Yagoda were fond of pornography and sex. Beria was a complete pervert. “In his office Beria kept blackjack clubs for torturing people and the array of female underwear, sex toys and pornography that seemed to be obligatory for secret-police chiefs. He was found to be keeping eleven pairs of silk stockings, eleven silk bodices, seven silk nighties” and “large quantity of items of male debauchery”. 

Nikita Kruschev raised the prices of meat and butter on June 1st 1961 and on the same day, as per economic plans, productions quotas of workers in factories was increased thus effectively delivering a double whammy to the worker. Riots broke out in Novocherkassk. The riot, of course, was quelled by the army. Blood was washed off the road, new asphalt laid and bodies cremated anonymously. It took 20 years for USSR to even acknowledge the heinous act. 

Secrecy, treachery and outright lies characterized the regime throughout its existence. After signing a pact with US to abolish research and production of biological weapons the USSR continued to invest and produce biological weapons in anthrax farms. In 1979 an anthrax leak occurred in Sverdlovsk and “throughout the decade of 1980s, the Soviets fabricated details about the outbreak”. Then it was repeated during the Chernobyl cataclysm in the initial stages of the disaster. 

The crushing of Eastern Europe

The US, after the end of World War II, vowed not to repeat the mistakes of Versailles treaty of punitively punishing the defeated belligerents and to lure countries into their orbit it came up with the Marshal Plan that pumped American taxpayer money into Western Europe, especially West Germany. Germany and Japan were literally resurrected and reincarnated as liberal democracies with their own versions of free market by the US and the countries remain economic power houses even today.

On the other hand Stalin and his successors treated Eastern Europe that was under their jackboot as vassal states. “From Stettin, in the Baltic”, said Churchill presciently, “to Trieste, in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent”. 

Eastern Europe under Soviet Russia (from Wikipedia)

A museum in Berlin dedicated to showcasing life in East Germany and the STASI museum in Leipzig show in startling detail the cruel police state that existed in the Eastern bloc right up to the moment the Wall fell. Privacy, more than private property, was completely absent. When STASI files were opened to the public couples were stunned to discover that husbands had spied on wives, wives had informed on husbands, lovers informing about each other and children encouraged to inform on parents. No relationship was too sacred for the tentacles of the surveillance state. School children were given toy grenades to play with in order to prepare them when imperialist armies invade. Then there’s Khrushchev’s Berlin wall. The communists had to construct a wall and point guns towards their citizenry to keep them from leaving the paradise on earth. 

When Soviet tanks entered the city of Warsaw, on 201 August 1968, to halt the meager reforms initiated by Alexander Dubcek the Czechs rose in futile revolt. Think about it. Czechoslovakia was supposed to be an ally, not an enemy state. Dubcek was deported, literally taken hostage to Moscow and compelled to address his people to not resist Soviet forces. 

Per wikipedia, “Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy (plunder policy) of roughly $14 billion, an amount comparable to the net transfer from the United States to western Europe in the Marshall Plan.” 

When Communism and the Soviet empire crumbled Eastern Europe was at last liberated. No country under Soviet domination had escaped deprivation whereas no country in US domain of influence in Western Europe had not progressed. Poland’s GDP growth since the liberation has been significant and underscores a sad question of what might have been if only Western Allies had foiled the plans of Comrade Stalin at Potsdam.

Meteoric rise of Poland's economy after liberation from Soviet era colonial rule (Wikipedia)

Persecution of intellectuals and apostates

No ideology in human history was more eagerly sold by intellectuals to unsuspecting public as Communism was and is. Ironically, no ideology persecuted intellectuals more cruelly and without fail as Communism did and does. 

Pol Pot did not come up with the idea of expelling the educated and the intelligentsia, it was Lenin. IN 1922 the Soviet Regime under Lenin expelled 160 Russian intellectuals and their families aboard what came to be called “philosopher’s ships”. Of course, as in everything connected to terror, Stalin outdid Lenin. 

Poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezhda were arrested and sent to labor camps by Stalin. Osip Mandelstam died in a transit camp. Nadezhda later wrote a two volume memoir and in 1976 gave her archives to Princeton University. Trotsky’s archives are in the Hoover institution in Stanford University. Mikhail Bulgakov’s makes for a grim reading of how he led a fearful existence during the Stalinist era. Victor Serge barely escaped death thanks to the intervention of Andre Gide and others. 

In Post Stalin era Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman and Boris Pasternak, amongst many others were persecuted. Solzhenitsyn who was exiled and later emigrated to US literally became the rallying icon of the many against Soviet totalitarianism. Nikita Krushchev, a peasant and a complete unsophisticated boor, happily hectored intellectuals and writers and chilled them with fear for their lives. Pasternak contemplated double suicide with his wife.

Raymond Aron famously labeled Communism ‘the opium of the intellectuals’. American philosopher Robert Nozick diagnosed the penchant intellectuals have for communism as based on their desire to occupy a predestined pedestal that they thought communism accorded them and helped them avoid the toss and tumble of free market. Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz in his ‘Captive mind’ compared the bromides of Communism to a pill that promised utopia. 

Arthur Koestler, a one-time card carrying communist, wrote in ‘The God that failed’, a collection of essays by notable apostates of Communism including Koestler, Louis Fisher, Andre Gide and Stephen Spender, “a special feature of Party life at that period was the cult of the proletarian and the abuse of the intelligentsia”. “The correct way was never to write, say and above all never to think, anything which could not be understood by the dustman. 

Louis Fisher wrote, “My years of pro-Sovietism have taught me that no one who loves people and peace should favor a dictatorship”. “Bolshevism”, he added, “was the world’s biggest agglomeration of power over man”. Fisher, a native of Pennsylvania, was disgusted by the company towns operated by Steel conglomerates but he saw even in those towns people could escape to a life of their choosing unlike the Soviet Union which was “one gigantic company town in which the government controls all the jobs, owns all the homes, and runs the stores, schools, newspapers etc and from which there is no escape”. 

Andre Gide, who visited the Soviet Union, was more critical. Commenting on regiment uniformity of thought he said, “each time you speak with one Russian it is as if you had spoken with all”. “The disappearance of Capitalism has not brought freedom to the Soviet workers”,”they are exploited, and in so devious, subtle and twisted a manner that they don't know anymore whom to blame”. 

What was the fountainhead of all the above? Were all or part of the above mere aberrations? Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was the fountainhead of all the above and no none of it was an aberration, as a principle. Marx had decreed the abolition of private property, prophesied the demise of capitalism and Communism was to be the global phenomenon to unite the proletariat, cutting across ethnic and national divisions, in a class war against the bourgeoisie. And Marxism became a religion, Lenin its prophet and Soviet Russia the promised land. 

‘The Exhibit of Poor Quality Goods’. ‘Encircled by superior economies’.

It was not American military might that defeated what Ronald Reagan aptly called the ‘Evil Empire’, rather it was the futile and ultimately self-defeating attempt of USSR to catch up to the American economy. Gorbachev said, “we are encircled not by invincible armies but by superior economies”. To drive home the point the Gorbachev administration organized, as reported by David Remnick in Washington Post and later incorporated in his book ‘Lenin’s Tomb’, an exhibition in Moscow titled “The Exhibit of Poor Quality Goods”. 

“Sponsored by the new U.S.S.R. Consumer Society and the weekly tabloid Nedelya, the exhibit features oblong volleyballs, cross-eyed teddy bears, rusted samovars, chipped stew pots, putrid lettuce, unraveled shuttlecocks, crushed cans of fish and, perhaps the show-stopper, a bottle of mineral water with a tiny dead mouse floating inside. "We're all glad about foreign affairs, but what you see is real life," said Marina Nitchkina, a government bureaucrat who specializes in quality control. In order to assemble the exhibit, Nitchkina said, "we didn't have to go to much effort. We just went into a few stores picked at random and that was that."

Libraries are filled with arcana about Marx’s economic philosophy and yet this is all there was to it. This is the inescapable ugly truth of Communist planned economy. While American workers go on strike for pension benefits, job protections, anti-trade, etc Siberian miners went on a strike, a new possibility under Gorbachev, for ‘soap’. Yes, miners went on strike for a bar of soap because that was the least they could ask for to keep themselves clean and hygienic. 

Seeing Americans raising alarm at Soviet military sophistication, particularly citing the test facility at a Sary Shagan, it was suggested to Gorbachev that it might be in their own interest to open the facility to American inspection to assuage fears. Alas, the idea was scuttled not because USSR had anything sinister to hide but because the laser equipment at the facility were nothing but experimental samples from the 1970s. “The only thing to hide at Sary Shagan was the painful truth: Soviet technology was way behind”.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated the then US Secretary of State James Baker visited one of their fabled nuclear laboratories on February 14th 1992. Chelyabinsk-70 which had been the Soviet answer to Los Alamos and boasted of fine scientific talent had become a intellectual drab house. At Los Alamos supercomputing had arrived by at Chelyabinsk-70 “there were no computer monitors in sight”. “The salaries for top scientists were no more than fifteen hundred rubles per month, or $15 at the official exchange rate”. Gorbachev was shown an Apple computer as the next revolution by an official during a tour. The emperor was stark naked.

How did a country that initiated the space race and gave the US a run for its money once get reduced to such intellectual impoverishment? Simple answer. Totalitarianism and planned economy can do to you what even your worst enemy cannot inflict upon you.

Scientists were forbidden to travel abroad, visas were rare and when given the families were held hostage back home. Biological weapons researchers when they traveled abroad, undercover, realized the backwardness of scientific progress in genetics and biology in USSR. Well, Stalin’s pet biology Lysenko had almost killed the very discipline of genetics. The Royal Society was formed for free traffic of ideas and had Francis Bacon as its patron saint. A totalitarian society is the anti-thesis of such an intellectual freedom.

 At the heart of all this was the need to establish a command economy and its sprit was was animated by the biblical decree to abolish private property.

Red Plenty

Kruschev had vowed to America, ‘we will bury you’ and in his era it appeared, thanks to the space race, that that just might happen. Francis Spufford, not a professional economist, wrote a genre bending critically acclaimed book ‘Red Plenty’ that gives a factual account of the working of the Soviet economy sprinkled with fictional characters. It is the most accessible and compelling read for anyone interested in tracing the road to utopia that communism took on the basis of planned economy.

Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich ) , awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1975, worked for the Soviet government at a plywood factory where he was tasked with optimizing productivity. Kantorovich thought, in Spufford’s colorful narration, “if you could maximize, minimize, optimize the collection of machines at the Plywood Trust, why couldn’t you optimize a collection of factories, treating each of them one level further up, as an equation? You could tune a factory, then tune a group of factories, till they hummed, till they purred”. “He could see that this would not be possible under capitalism, where all the factories had separate owners, locked in wasteful competition”.

Vasily Sergeevich Nemchinov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Sergeevich_Nemchinov ) is credited with creating the mathematical basis of central planning in Khrushchev era. “Mathematical models were being built for supply, demand, production, transportation, factory location, short term planning, long-term planning, sectoral and regional and national and international planning”. “Every year, every enterprise in the Soviet Union had to agree a tekhpromfinplan”, which, “covered finance for the enterprise, and the technology it would be using over the next twelve months, but most importantly it set targets for production. It specified what the eenterprise must produce, and in what quantity and in what quality”.

In such interlocked and rigid system any disruption to any input anywhere rippled across the economy delivering a shock to the system. This system assumed that automatons, not human beings, governed by central programming are the citizenry that form the cogs in the wheel of economic activity. It was classically Marxist.

Stakhanovites and Henry Ford’s gift to workers

Ayn Rand noted that it was America which made it fashionable to say “make money” and nobody symbolized it better than Henry Ford. True, Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line but he did invent consumerism. 

Ford, in 1914, offered his workers $5 per day and profit sharing and top it off he created the 5 day week at the rate of 8 hours per week. Essentially, Ford created conditions for his workers that workers in Communist countries, even into the 90s, rarely saw. Sure, paying his workers meant that they could buy the cars Ford produced, at affordable prices. Cars were no longer a luxury. 

On the other hand in Soviet Union the Stakhanovite movement, named after Aleksei Stakhanov, was taking root. Aleksei Stakanov reportedly “mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours”. In East Germany Adolf Hennecke, who reportedly produced 287% of his production quota became a publicity mascot. In Hunagary it was Ignac Pioker, who ‘achieved 1470% of his production quota (and completed his personal five-year plan four years ahead of schedule)”. Such feats were extolled and presented as models for other workers. The difference cannot be stark. Workers have better protections and rights and means of livelihood in liberal democracies that followed free market rather than socialism or communist totalitarianism. 

Iconic picture of Adolf Hennecke used in propaganda.

Richard Thaler’s Nobel, Silicon Valley and American Colossus

2017 Nobel prize for economics was awarded to American behavioral economist, a discipline that Marx and Stalin would despise if they were alive and opining, for the theory that people make irrational choices in economics. This comes close on the heels on the Nobel for economics awarded to, Daniel Kahneman for similar theories in behavioral economics. 

No planned economy can mimic the effectiveness of a free market for transmission of information. Walmart learned, and profited from the knowledge, that before hurricanes it is not only flashlights that sell but also pop-tarts (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/business/yourmoney/what-walmart-knows-about-customers-habits.html ). 

Soviet military did conduct a lot of research and so did the US military establishment. Key difference was that the latter collaborated with academia and private sector and unleashed creativity at a scale that the Soviet regime or Communism never could. American capitalism is unique in its characteristics. 

When FDR declared war on Japan the US military was under equipped worse than Netherlands. Limping out of the Great Depression FDR and the country had kept Big Business chafing under controls but at this moment of national crises the country turned to Bechtel and Henry Ford. Arthur Herman’s “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business produced victory in World War II” is a racy read that gives a good and easy understanding of why the Capitalist machinery still hums while the Communist machinery sputtered.

What do Amazon, Apple, HP and Microsoft have in common? They were all started in car garages by very young men. Facebook originated in a college dormitory. Sure, there’s a Steve Jobs in France or Germany or Uganda but only in America does that incognito become an icon of innovation. Only in America can a founder of a trailblazing company be fired, go out, make a mark elsewhere, be brought back in CEO again and finally invent three products that essentially remakes how the world lives. This is an eco-system that is not easily replicated elsewhere as the Soviets learned to their chagrin when they tried to create their own Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley cannot exist in a totalitarian system because Silicon Valley needs more than just a few intelligent men and money. 

Jon Gertner’s ‘Idea factory: Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation’ gives a good idea of how government, private initiative and educational institutions form a symphony in the American economic system. NASA defeated USSR and today it appears a private individual, Elon Musk, is the hope of future for NASA. This is America.

The End of History

Stephen Kotkin in a blistering essay titled “Communism’s Bloody Century” wrote, “Marx’s demand to “abolish private property” was a clarion call to action—and an inexorable path to the creation of an oppressive, unchecked state.”

It is not an accident that all communist countries are dictatorships. Only dictatorship can achieve  or strive to achieve a Marxist economy and no communist country that does not aspire to be a Marxist economy can call itself communist. 

The trajectory of totalitarianism and command economy leading to ruins is not exceptional but the rule. What can reduce an oil rich state like Venezuela to ruins and beggary? Only Marxism could and it did. What can keep a state like Cuba in pathetic penury where its citizens brave an ocean to escape to plenty? Only Marxism. Is it any wonder that in Venezuela and Cuba there’s no democracy to speak of.

It is beyond silliness to see Marxists prattle that Capitalism is exploitative. 14 million illegal immigrants live, mostly Mexicans, in US and several million legal immigrants from all corners of the world, mostly socialist or communist countries like India. What draws them to the shores of the US? They see, as I did and still do, that the US has ladders of opportunities. Certainly the US is not paradise. In fact I don't want it to be a paradise because what I think of as paradise maybe Hades to another and vice-versa. 

An exploitative system cannot produced a $19 Trillion economy, be a magnet to immigrants, dominate academic rankings, lead the world in research and literary and artistic output. What was the intellectual output, artistic and scientific, from Communist hellholes? If anything the intellect and its tap root, individualism, were crushed by the inexorable wheels of Communism. It is not for nothing that Ayn Rand located the individual as the Fountainhead of free market. 

Marxists often scoff at the notion of characterizing American economic structure as ‘free market’ and they justifiably point to how government help, tax code help corporations receive. The beauty of free market is nations have created their own versions of it that mirror local culture. Germany, Canada, England and US have all created their own versions of free market and of course the US is indeed the most free of all. The charm of free market is that it is not, like Marxism, a religious orthodoxy. 

Statue of Lenin being removed in Lithuania on August 23rd  1991

The collapse of Soviet Union and Marxist economics resolved the debate about the kind of political structure a peaceful society desirous of prosperity should adopt - Liberal democracy and Free Market. They both reinforce each other and though one can exist without another it is the combination that creates the best result.

References: 

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the-train-catherine-merridale.html 
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophers%27_ships 
3. Soviet Exhibition Reported by David Remnick https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/12/04/meanwhile-soviets-view-a-hit-parade-of-shoddy-goods/90668fa0-298f-40c3-b916-161832ddec67/?utm_term=.11197834337a
4. Polish People's Republic (Poland under Soviet Occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic#Economy 
5. Red Plenty -- Essay by Francis Spufford in Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/07/red-plenty-francis-spufford-ussr
6. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire — David Remnick (Pulitzer)
7. Dead Hand: The untold story of the Cold war arms race and its dangerous legacy - David Hoffman (Pulitzer)
8. Lenin - Louis Fischer (National Book Award)
9. The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s ghosts after communism — Tina Rosenberg (Pulitzer and National Book Award)
10. Iron Curtain: The crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 — Anne Applebaum (National Book Award finalist)
11. Red Plenty - Francis Spufford
12. Lenin’s private war: The voyage of the philosophy steamer and the exile of the intelligentsia - Lesley Chamberlain
13. Krushchev: The Man and his era — William Tubman (Pulitzer)
14. Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The age of social catastrophe - Robert Gellately
15. The Cheka: Lenin’s political police — Leggett
16. The God that failed — Edited by Richard Crossman
17. The Captive mind - Czeslaw Milosz

For Further Reading:

1. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion — Gareth Stedman
2. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth century life — Jonathan Sperber
3. The Opium of the intellectuals — Raymond Aron
4. A peoples tragedy - Orlando Figes
5. Stalin (Volume 1 & 2) - Stephen Kotkin
6. The Fellow Traveler - David Caute
7. A Memoir - Andre Sakharov.
8. Untimely thoughts - Maxim Gorky
9. Harvest of Sorrow - Robert Conquest
10. Gulag - Anne Applebaum
11. Voices from Chernobyl: The oral history of a nuclear disaster —Svetlana Alexeivich
12. Kolyma Tales -- Varlam Shalamov

Fiction

1. Darkness at noon- Arthur Koestler
2. Animal Farm - George Orwell
3. 1984 - George Orwell
4. Unbearable lightness of being - Milan Kundera

48 hours With Jeyamohan

Rabbi Ben Akiva told his favorite disciple Simeon Ben Yochai "Son, more than the calf wishes to suck does the cow wish to suckle". Those words were written by my father, as a sort of dedication, when he gifted his young boys a book of questions and answers that he had bought in order to wean them away from the smutty Tamil weeklies and puerile Amar Chitra Katha comics. Those words kept flashing in my mind the 2 days that Jeyamohan spent with me in New Jersey. Jeyamohan is often mockingly, and sometimes lovingly too, referred to as ஆசான். He has fully earned that moniker.

A few days before he embarked on his visit to US Jeyamohan (or his webmaster) had re-published his review of T.J.S. George's biography of M.S. Subbulakshmi. When first published it stirred a hornet's nest with the usual wailing questions of "do we need to know her antecedents", "why should a biography wash dirty linen" etc. Of course Jemo had answered all of them with gusto. The re-publication invited a torrent of the same questions from the same usual suspects and Jemo answered them, again, unflaggingly. I told a friend, the man is indefatigable in his quest to educate the Tamil society that is still intellectually feeble.

Despite the fact that I had written so much against Jeyamohan in blogs and Facebook somehow my email id had landed in the list of recipients in an email chain discussing travel arrangements for him. Boston Bala was co-ordinating the North East portion of Jemo's travel. It was decided that Jemo would spend nearly 5 days in New Jersey. A good hearted host agreed to take Jemo and his wife Arunmozhi to New York City for 2 days. Question was what to do for the remaining days? A curious thought struck me. After all I've spent a lot of time reading, discussing, debating and disagreeing with Jeyamohan I felt I owed him something for all the intellectual fodder that he provided. I always love to share my adoration of my adopted motherland and I thought why not take Jemo to Philadelphia, the cradle of America's constitution and to Lancaster, to visit the Amish, a very curious set of people.

Meantime Bala tried to get New Jersey Tamil Sangam (NJTS) organize a meeting. An NJTS functionary, a self declared regular reader and friend of Jeyamohan, was irked that NJTS is being asked to host an event during weekday and that NJTS was not properly looped in on the arrangements. To be fair, he had a point. It was at this juncture I decided to write to Jeyamohan directly offering my hospitality and home. I wrote to him that I'd like to host him and that he'd be treated very honorably, our disagreements notwithstanding. Jemo responded warmly that he holds me in regard and that our disagreements, while they may continue, are not personal in nature and that he'd be happy to stay with me.

One of the pleasant surprises of Jemo's trip to US this year was readers getting to see a doting and romantic man who luxuriates in the love of his adoring wife Arunmozhi. The photos that he published showed an intimate couple having the time of their life. Remo had written that Arunmozhi too loves to visit museums and historic places. I had come to know of a very unique exhibition in NYC organized by author William Dalrymple about Delhi Sultans. I immediately informed Jemo's host and he, with great effort, worked it into their schedule.

Meantime as it always happens with our wonderful Tamil brethren and even more wonderful Tamil Sangams a whole set of shenanigans unfolded. When I saw the happy couple picture of Jemo I so wished that the couple just have a fun time enjoying this country that I love dearly and not get dragged into the usual dog and pony show that usually happens around such visitors. However, I also decided that just because he is staying with me that I should in no way be an obstacle for what he may choose to do or who he wants to meet with. He gets to choose, not me.

Jeyamohan has written incessantly over the decades and especially over the past 5 years he has written copiously on the web about any number of topics. In fact one has to wonder if there is anything he has not written about. I wished we could spend some time in and around Philadelphia soaking in the American experience. Anyway I decided to be a spectator to the unfolding spectacle.

Our wonderful people have no respect for a person's time or privacy. Jeyamohan had announced nearly a month ahead about his travel and now at the very last minute a person hounded, literally hounded me, to get a time slot with him for an interview. This despite the fact the person had read, literally, nothing by Jeyamohan. Though a friend I found the request to be very unseemly. Anyway I just conveyed the request to Jeyamohan who politely turned it down. He was in US to show his wife around. He turned down another request too.

Finding a suitable venue for an evening meeting was a challenge. Pazhani Jothi, another devoted reader, found a venue and booked it with post-haste. Now that somebody else had taken the pains to arrange the venue NJTS happily stepped in to take credit and take over the meeting. தமிழர்கள் அல்லவா.  One of my persistent criticisms of Jeyamohan is that he steps into areas that are not his forte (right now P.A. Krishnan has a thread going on in Facebook about Jemo's remarks on Raja Ravi Verma). A few days before Jemo's NJ arrival I had sparred with two others about Gandhi's place in history. I thought it'd be a good idea to suggest a topic to Jemo that he could do justice to. I suggested, in the email chain, that he speak on Gandhi. Unbeknownst to me now NJTS and some other fringe organizations had taken control of the meeting. By the way I had also suggested that I could introduce both Jemo and the topic thus giving the evening a structure that it then seemed to lack. An NJTS functionary bristled at the suggestion and in an impolitic email he brushed it all aside. I just chuckled and put my faith in Jemo's ability to deliver despite the innate abilities that the Tamil Sangams have to screw up. And, trust me, my faith was prophetic.

"Welcome to the city of Ayn Rand". With those words I welcomed Jemo on a breezy and warm summer evening in NYC. We were near the NYSE building. Thus began a very pleasant 48 hours.

Jeyamohan did share some tit-bits concerning movies that he was working and the movie industry in general over the 2 days. To be fair to him never once did he say, regarding anything, 'this is off the record'. However I'd much rather leave the particulars aside, except where absolutely necessary, because it'd be fodder for gossip and unnecessary controversy.

We hit it off straight away by talking about Gandhi and Nehru. When we visited the 9/11 memorial I told him how the names were arranged in a unique manner, not alphabetically, but clustering names of colleagues and friends who died together that day thus giving a sense of the life the victims lived.

Pazhani had very kindly consented to drive us around for the next two days in his very spacious mini-van. Jemo and I occupied the second row and chatted away to glory thanks to Pazhani.

Jemo narrated how he maintains his self-worth, intellectually and economically, in the movie industry. Details aside, suffice it to say, the man knows his worth and even more important he knows how protect his 'brand value'. I told him that he has an Ayn Rand in him. விதி சமைப்பவரல்லவா. Intellectuals in an attempt to establish their uniqueness often decry and deny those that they resemble most. Incidentally Ayn Rand too enjoyed being in the movie industry.

The discussion turned towards education and how pathetic Indian education is. I then narrated about why the supremacy and uniqueness of American Universities is a much less spoken of dominance compared to the dominance of US in finance and military strength. I was quoting from Jonathan Cole's 'The Great American University' and Fareed Zakaria's recent column on the importance of liberal arts in education. As I was speaking I could see that he started staring out of the window. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he thought I was didactic. I guess it takes one to recognize another. Over the 2 days I figured out one thing he's on this trip entirely to show his wife around. Jeyamohan's curiosity about what he saw was cursory and passing. The stress of writing Venmurasu totally occupied his mind. And then there were the weighing concerns of how the new movie was being received, his deliverable to other directors etc. Don't get me wrong, he was an animated conversationalist most of the time, just not too much in a listening mode.

I think he mentioned something about his visit to Paris and then topics shifted to western art versus Indian conception of art. He quoted extensively from A.K. Ramanujan to establish that Indian art must be appreciated within its own paradigms and not through Western prism. Modern ideas on diversity and political correctness completely resonate with his views that each culture and civilization must be studied on its own plane for appreciation and one cannot be held as superior or inferior to another in comparison. However, I could not help remembering Allan Bloom's book 'Closing of the American mind' wherein Bloom had argued that one should not indiscriminately accept all as equals.

As we neared the Constitution Center in Philadelphia I went into the framing of the constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Ratification, the Federalist Papers, the anti-federalists etc. At the Constitution Center it was a glorious July 2nd and in view of July 4th there was no visitors fee. The whole place swarmed with hundreds of school children who had come to learn how this great nation was formed. I was telling Jeyamohan that this is what we miss in India. Even today there are not many good books written about Indian constitution. We had lunch at Farmicia, off Market Street. Delicious food. Jemo wanted to know if after 250+ years are there any current problems that can be traced to the US constitution and if there is any part of the constitution that is still hotly debated. I readily cited the hot debate that rages over the 2nd Amendment (the right to bear arms). Then I cited few key Supreme Court decisions starting with Marbury v Madison.  When we later toured the center I pointed out the exhibits that illustrated all that I had just listed. The short presentation on US constitution, from what I inferred from his body language, did not impress him much. He, however, noted how the presentation, made by an African-American, did not flinch in discussing the less than glorious chapters of US history like slavery, Vietnam, segregation etc. Of course I emphasized that school children watch this less than idolatrous version of the country's history.

While we were in Philadelphia an anxious NJTS functionary kept nagging Pazhani about our whereabouts. Apparently he was worried that given how he stymied me from introducing Jemo in the meeting that I might play spoilsport by somehow detaining Jemo on some trumped up excuse from attending the evening meeting. I told Pazhani that such things are beneath me and I'd respect Jemo's independence and his choice of speaking at any venue or meeting anybody. In this context Jemo recounted how his books were once published by a group in New Jersey. The publisher, run like a mom and pop operation, eventually folded and Jemo had to hunt for a publisher. Curiously the NJ based publishers that included an acquaintance of mine were not too happy and sought to influence Jemo's decision including advising him to choose an indie publisher though it may not be financially rewarding. I chuckled and told him that the person who advised him thus was a high priced independent consultant who would not sacrifice a dollar in his rates.

The issue of what Jemo was to speak on came up. The nagging NJTS representative too had been wanting to know the title so he could prepare his remarks. Fair enough, I'd do the same. Jemo said that while I asked him to speak on Gandhi the others wanted him to choose some topic that was literature oriented. I told him it's entirely his liberty to choose and that he can gladly discard my suggestion. Frankly I had no interest simply because there are no topics that I could think of that he had not written about or expounded in detail, including Gandhi. Actually I'd have preferred if we could've spent the evening going around the city of Brotherly Love and soaking in the experience instead of yet another evening of a speech followed by very predictable inane questions. Anyway it was his choice. We headed back to New Jersey with all of us dozing off and Pazhani being Parthasarathy.

Arunmozhi instructed Jemo to freshen up and wear a new shirt for the evening. It is fun to watch them interact. En-route to the venue Jemo recounted the  places Gandhi visited in Tamil Nadu, with dates, and how many of those places, now memorials, are in a dilapidated condition. Jemo was very warmly received by NJTS organizers and the function started without much ado and an excellent rendition of the song of benediction to Tamil by a very fine singer who looked fine too. Her name slips my memory. I heard from another friend that she's quiet the rebel.

Thankfully I did not get to speak at the function else the person who read out an interminably long essay, he thought he was speaking, would've been eclipsed and I hate nothing more than shining by contrast that too compared to one like that. I'd have preferred water boarding. I dozed off until Jeyamohan started speaking. Jeyamohan, as he himself  often says, is no flashy speaker. He lacks a stage presence, does not speak in a commanding tone and his speech itself does not have rhetorical flourishes. Put simply, he is not Jeyakanthan. What he lacks Jeyamohan more than compensates with insights and substance. A listener has to be patient and wait to be subsumed by the torrent of ideas. Speaking on the title இலக்கியத்தின் நாற்றங்கால் Jeyamohan composed his speech like a symphony put together by a composer with the pieces falling in one after another to culminate on a high note. The speech was easily a shining example of everything a fine speech should be. Jeyamohan was in a league of his own and did not merely shine by contrast.

Starting with Begali writer's of note like Bhibuthi Bhushan Bannerjee he went on to Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Marathi listing highly acclaimed authors and select works that are critically acclaimed and have stood the test of time. He relished being the quintessential teacher. ஆசான். Rabboni. He listed India's writers from each state and in my mind I could picture the names as they dotted the Indian peninsula like a garland. And the connecting dot amongst all of them was Gandhi. At this moment of realization he appeared like a master composer who draws in the listener and then reveals in all sublimity the unifying theme of a symphony. When a topic and the speaker do each other proud the finest moment of a wonderfully delivered speech occurs. Jeyamohan artfully and succinctly illustrated how Gandhi and the Gandhian movement inspired a nascent renaissance of Indian literature. What impressed me most in the speech, apart from how he wove the tale, was how he picked out the authors and works and offered very sharp summaries of key works. It is a great loss to Tamil Nadu's academia that people like Jeyamohan, Nanjil Nadan, P.A. Krishnan and Ambai are not engaged to teach literature courses like how American universities used to engage William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. I later told Jemo that speaking on Gandhi brings out the best in him and that's why I had suggested that as topic. I am in no way taking any credit here. Jemo had not explicitly prepared anything and he probably took my suggestion and the desire of NJTS and struck an inspired compromise to deliver what even he himself considered a new outlook on Gandhi. That said I'd not think it was totally extemporaneous. As a one time avid practitioner of the art of extempore I could realize that in an inspirational moment the thoughts fell into a place in Jemo's mind where they were  previously a jumble of facts, often repeated in other contexts and in different articulations.

The Q&A session was predictably drab with very predictable questions that he had answered umpteen times in his blogs. "Why do you write Venmurasu", "why do you answer every reader's email" and few other very forgettable questions. Yesterday in an altercation on Facebook an NJTS functionary in a not too subtle jab at me had listed a few names as avid readers of Jemo (by implication I was not) and one of them asked a question which was nakedly provocative. "நீங்கள் காந்தி இலக்கியவாதிகளுக்கு ஒரு உந்துதலாக இருந்தார் என்று சொன்னதெல்லாம் சரி, அவர் ஏன் கேவலமானவர்களை தன் அரசியல் வாரிசுகளாக உருவாக்கினார்?". இதைக் கேட்டுவிட்டு ஒரு எக்காளமான எகத்தாள சிரிப்பினை சிரித்துவிட்டு (ஒரு ஆபாசமான சிரிப்பென்றே சொல்லலாம்) தன் பக்கத்திலிருந்தவர்களை நோக்கி இன்னும் எகத்தாளமானப் பார்வை ஒன்றை வீசிவிட்டு சந்தோஷமாக அமர்ந்தார் அந்த இந்துத்துவர். Jemo bristled at the implication of particularly Nehru he gave a stinging reply and concluded that such questions reflect a sick mind. I know the questioner by acquaintance and as we chanced to be together I told him "Pardon me but your tone was purely to irritate him and to put it bluntly you meant it in the vein of 'வக்காளி கேட்டேன் பாத்தியா'". he chuckled and persisted with "you know Nehru was a dictator". I replied "sorry I know there is no point in arguing with you so I'll desist".

Dinner was hosted at an NJTS functionary's residence. More q&a. Jemo was given a nice red color upholstered chair and like any Indian get-together the seating was gender segregated with men on one side and women on another side. More predictable questions. The questions from the women's section were embarrassingly pedestrian. I almost winced thinking "well no wonder Jemo thinks there are only 4 or 5 women in all of India to talk intellectually" (I disagree with that but the evening kind of proved him rather sadly). One lady even shocked by congratulating Arunmozhi for looking after the home and nourishing Jeyamohan thus giving Jemo to literature. Another lady wondered if Jemo watched TV with his kids. Luckily no one asked if Jemo knew how to change diapers. But to be fair to the ladies the men folk had their own variety of tiresome questions including some that were answered just a few minutes ago in the meeting. Jemo was patient with all questions and answered even the most trivial with all sincerity.

A brief moment of intellectual discussion was when Jemo spoke about Milan Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness of Being' and 'பின் தொடரும் நிழலின் குரல்'.  His distrust of intellectual reasoning in his novel led to a discussion on his views on the role of inspiration in creativity. It was the only moment when I openly disagreed with him in the trip. When I decided to host him I decided not to dredge up every topic that I disagreed with him because I invited him only as an avid reader, however much I disagree with him, and to show him a good time in places that I love. I said I disagreed with his blog 'கம்பன் நிகழாத களம்' where he had opined that the poems of Kamban where Kamban's genius falters are those where Kamban, an instrument of an unnamed destiny (I am paraphrasing here), did not occur. I asked him "if a writer is nothing but an instrument of manifest destiny then why should we credit him or her? Sure, a writer reworks material from existing sources or is inspired by some idea but the 'act of creation' is entirely a volitional one and by making it look like it all 'just happened' we actually detract value from the creation". Jemo disagreed saying that he owes a debt to many predecessors for Venmurasu. I still don't buy the explanation but left it with the comment that as a person respecting guru  parampara this was his way of paying his respect to his predecessors.

On our way back Jemo circled to the topic of Nehru as dictator. He said, quoting an RSS member, "after Gandhi's murder there was an overwhelming hatred of RSS. It was the moment in all of RSS history when it was at its weakest. If Nehru had even executed all of RSS public opinion was on his side. RSS pleaded with him to let the law run its course and if proven innocent to be accepted. Nehru, a democrat, conceded and RSS still lives". The two days that he was with me Jemo kept returning to what a great leader Nehru was.

Given Jemo's interest in Gandhian life style I thought he might find it curious to see the Amish life in Lancaster PA. Lancaster is a good 2-3 hours drive from my home. Yet again Pazhani came to the rescue. This time his wife joined us too.

The chronology of discussions is a blurry now after a fortnight. Sometime in one of those long drives Arunmozhi raised the topic of intolerance amongst Tamil Pentecostal Christians and Christians in general. When we met in NYC I had recounted, over dinner, how my dad raised us in a very liberal outlook compared to many other Christian families including relatives. My brother is married to a Hindu in the  Hindu custom. The bride is the daughter of a person well known to Jeyamohan.

I replied to Arunmozhi that yes a culture of intolerance and a sense of siege mentality pervades Tamil Christians. Desirous of severing their Hindu heritage silly practices like frowning upon bindi, reading Mahabharata,even watching a Sivaji Ganesan starring movie about a Mahabharata character (Karnan), stepping foot in a temple etc are all commonly frowned upon by Christians. One of my relatives shocked and violated my sense of decency when she said Christians should no longer donate and support 'Udavum Karangal' Vidyagar, a Christian, because he is very Hindu friendly. Vidyagar provides yeoman service to orphan children and to say a Christian should not donate money is the most un-Christian act. Ever since Modi took up the yoga issue a message that went viral on a whatsapp group of Tamil Christians was about how evil yoga was and how its a pagan religion etc. I was appalled and disagreed with another relative on Facebook about that. My dad used to prescribe pranayama exercise to his patients who had breathing issues. While all that is deplorable one has to also see this intolerance contextually within how minority groups zealously try to protect their identity and even more zealously try to differentiate themselves from the majority. I told her that I equally know Christians who are liberal in outlook and then there are equally bigoted Hindutva proponents. We laughed about a famous group in California that is quite notorious on social media for their rabid Hindutva outlook. I know an Iyengar woman who would not eat at her daughter's home because she married, lo and behold, an Iyer boy. Intolerance is a disease that pervades Indian body politic cutting across religions.

Angered by the comments against yogas by Christians I decided to buy a book that was on my wish list for a while. Princeton University is publishing a series of books called "Lives of great religious books". I had reviewed "The Bhagwad Gita: A biography" by Richard Davis last year. Now I bought David Gordon White's acclaimed "The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A biography". Though I started reading it I felt like I should gift it to Jeyamohan. I asked him if he would be interested in reading it (not wanting to impose it on him and also mindful of the fact that many were gifting him books and he must be running out of space in his luggage). He said 'gladly, please sign and give'.

I almost forgot to mention how Jeyamohan is adept in mimicking accents and narrating hilariously comic incidents (many about the Church and clergy in Kerala) with panache. We had a rip roaring time enjoying those narrations.

We had booked a nice 3 hour Amish tour experience which took us to 3 Amish homes. As an Ayn Rand person the Amish life style and its inconsistencies, I'd even say hypocrisies, are contemptuous to me. What is the use of saying we will not use electricity but then we'll use propane gas to power equipments? The curious aspect of their life style aside it did not impress Jeyamohan either. He summed it up as "they are a religious group adhering  to a set of rules that's all". In Gandhi's negation of technology there's philosophy and a certain ideological edge unlike the Amish whose motivations are driven more by religion.

We went to 'Olive Garden' for dinner. Pazhani ran out and got some fruits for Jeyamohan who eats only fruits for dinner. Pazhani really pulled out all the stops in taking care of Jeyamohan and his wife. I am sure Jemo's stay with Pazhani's family must have been very enjoyable and something to remember. Dinner time chat turned to 'பின் தொடரும் நிழலின் குரல்'. I read that book, Koestler's 'Darkness at noon' (2nd reading) and Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness of Being' all almost back to back. In addition I read 'Stalin' by Isaac Deutscher and 'The Red Tsar' by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Two days earlier I was telling Jemo how I wrote a blog on the incongruity of Trotsky writing in his diary that killing the Tsar's family was justified unmindful of the fact that at that very moment he was himself fleeing for his life from Stalin. Jemo's novel, which I read later, features the same wonderment about Trotsky.

Writer P.A. Krishnan's fondness for Stalin featured prominently in our discussion. Neither of us had any rational explanation for a very erudite person like P.A.K adoring a monster like Stalin. I cited how Kundera's Tomas writes an article decrying the intellectuals for pulling the wool over people's eyes by concealing the grotesque nature of Communism. Having warmed up to the topic I posed a couple of questions to Jemo on his novel. First, why did he consider that if the Soviet Revolution had been led by women it'd have seen less bloodshed ('புரட்சிப் பெண்களால் நடத்தப் பட்டிருந்தால் இவ்வளவு ரத்த வாடை வீசியிருக்காது').  He demurred that that's only a view point expressed by a character. If I remember correctly Jemo has used that phrase as his own opinion in some blogs of his thats why I posed the question to him. A fiction writer can easily dissociate himself from what a character says in the pretext that it is the character speaking. I shall write a detailed review of the novel as to why I still consider it his own view. Though he veered away from communist circles he still retains a fondness for Marxism which, like P.A.K's love of Stalin, is inexplicable to me. I did tell Jemo that his research on Stalin was spot on and how he was correct about communists actively trying to cover  up Marx's affair with Helen Demuth. Written in pre-wikipedia times that too sitting in India it was difficult to research that topic. One curious thing I observed is that he often cites Malayalam or Tamil translations of many western authors including Deutscher (I think). Probably he feels more comfortable reading them and probably they were more readily available too. I pointed out that his characterization of Bukharin's wife as innocent and naive was not however true in real life. I had always wanted to tell Jeyamohan that he handles portrayal of sex scenes better than Charu Nivedita. தமிழ் எழுத்தாளர்களில் சிறந்த செக்ஸ் எழுத்தாளரென்று ஜெயமோகனை தாராளமாக சொல்லலாம். When I had a private moment with him I did tell him that (had to be safe because a lady I had not seen before was there with us. I am not referring to Arunmozhi). Jemo smiled and said "don't spoil my name".

We briefly discussed his writing of Venmurasu. I am not sure how the topic cropped up. He has answered a hundred times as to 'why' he writes it. I did not want to insult him by asking again "why are you putting so much effort into it? how many are reading?' etc. Earlier while discussing about Derrida he said Nitya used to say "when approaching a writer like Derrida who has written copiously we now have the luxury of just going directly to a summary of his corpus, a 'readers edition', because the sum total of his efforts is to reach that pinnacle. Every book is an incremental effort in that direction". I cited how many multi-volume books have gone out of print. He quickly pointed out that the books I cited are non-fiction and that Venmurasu, a re-creation of an epic that is close to the Indian psyche, will not lose relevance or reader interest. He expressed the hope that many 'reader editions', smaller novellas, would come out of each volume. May his hope be rewarded.

In the course of that discussion Will Durant again came up as a topic. He had once written that Durant was a typical colonial outlook writer who looked down upon Eastern philosophy. I had then written to him that that was not at all true and to the contrary Durant highly respected Eastern philosophy. I quoted Durant himself and then pointed out how he wrote his first volume on "Story of Civilization' dedicated to India and China. Durant had visited India to gather material for that and even met Gandhi. Now Jeyamohan brought it up and said "No, Aravindan I was about to reply you back but I forgot. I collected evidence about a protest letter signed by several Indian authors scolding Durant for his omission of India in the first edition of Story of Civilization". I told him that that simply could not be true and that probably some mistake happened either in the local translations or local editions. Only later I remembered that Durant wrote another book called 'The case for India" arguing for India's independence.

Finally as the evening was drawing to a close I asked him one question that had been nagging me for a long time. How could he, a person who considers Nithya Chaitanya Yathi and Sundara Ramasamy as his mentors, consider Ilayaraja a mentor. I omitted mentioning prostrating at Raja's feet. Jemo did not flinch or demur but he gave a lengthy answer cheerfully. I'll omit the answer here for the same reason that I said I'd rather not divulge any of the cinema related discussions. Suffice it to say it was an interesting and at least a part convincing answer. I left it at that.

So what are my impressions in summary? This was just a friendly hosting for a person with whom I had corresponded and one who I read avidly. I saw a very warm and funny side of Jeyamohan. I hope he has pleasant memories too. Other than that neither expected any revision of opinions of the other. He had charmingly written "I'll be happy to accept your hospitality and you can continue disagreeing with my opinions". I was indeed surprised that he had not read Sinclair Lewis. One thing I've observed about those who write in Tamil is that while they are very well read in the fiction area, especially of the Russian and Latin-American writers, their exposure to American writers beyond Faulkner, Bellow and a few others is not that much. Possibly a paucity of translations could be a reason. Jeyamohan, thanks primarily to his tutelage under Nitya and Su.Ra, has quite a breadth in World history, philosophy, art, sociology and anthropology. However, many of the authors he cites are pretty long gone. Sure, many of the books though dated are still gems but newer scholarship in recent years has added to the knowledge. Also once he arrives at a conclusion based on some author I don't think he relishes revising his opinion. For instance his recent talk on Ravi Varma was based on his readings of A.K. Ramanujan.

Tagore's chief bone of contention with Gandhi was the latter's nationalism. Tagore feared that strident nationalism would breed a certain parochialism. That's why Tagore probably saw a more kindred spirit in the more cosmopolitan Nehru. Jeyamohan loves India and Indian heritage very, very deeply and it completely colors his worldview. Anything Western raises suspicion in his eyes.

Another observation is about his fascination about the movie industry. I do not share his enthusiasm about the movie industry much less the Tamil movie industry. That said I'll gladly concede that it is his personal prerogative how he earns his money. Even if he stops writing literature today he has a body of work that'll speak his name for several decades. I don't expect him to serve Tamil society by writing literature and living in penury. Thats a silly and feudalistic expectation that does not behoove an Ayn Rand reader. But I'll be fair in probably saying that Jeyamohan the Atlas has decided to shrug literature and move on to movie industry. Let me be careful in saying categorically that I'll not characterize that kind of a move as sell out or Faustian bargain. A life can be lived at many levels in many phases. If he chooses to become a movie industry person that should in no way affect how his other works are judged. However, I doubt if another விஷ்ணுபுரம் or பின் தொடரும் நிழலின் குரல் or கொற்றாவை would happen anytime soon. Venmurasu has been a lifelong preparation for him so he could write that along side writing dialogues for Shankar and Kamal Hassan. The intellectual climate that he inhabited while writing those novels is different from what he inhabits today.

I am sure Jeyamohan will continue stir the hornet's nest every now and then. Just a day or two after we parted he re-published his blog "Am I a Hindu". It was a lengthy reply to a reader on what it means to be a Hindu. As usual it contained shockers in it like there being no place for 'doubt' in Christianity and how Buddhism was a very peaceful religion that never conflicted violently with other religions but engaged only in civil and high minded philosophical debate. I need to write a lengthy rebuttal to all that.

The natural question that arises at this point is what do I see in him? Whether I agree or disagree with him I owe him a debt because without those provocative blogs I'd not have gone in search of some answers and gained better wisdom.  While I disagree entirely with his view of the Christianization of South Korea I need to concede that if he had not raised it as an issue I may never have gone in search of details about that and that would've deprived me of a certain knowledge. Oh I almost forgot that he jokingly ribbed me that my blogs rebutting him have become staple diet for those who oppose him tooth and nail. And he also needled me on my blog against Abhilash's uncouth attack on Ambai. I later wrote to him that I don't write blogs instigated by somebody or to appease somebody. My blogs are in English and as such have limited readership. While I am happy to note that I now do have some decent readership I still plough my lonely furrow according to the dictates of my conscience. My choice of topic remains only what interests me that day and if I think I've a valid perspective to add. When a lady at the NJTS dinner asked if I'd write about Jeyamohan's speech that evening, which I told her I had liked, Jemo laughingly added "well, since he named his blog contrarian he tries not to write anything that is not contrarian or is complimentary of anything". Actually no. I've indeed written many that are about what I liked.

When all is said and done here are what I think will be Jeyamohan's contributions to the Tamil society outside of his novels. First, he incessantly and persistently teaches how to be a discerning reader. In a society where establishing standards and measuring against them is almost non-existent he is doing this at great personal cost because he mires himself in endless controversies. Sure other writers before him have done the same but thanks to the internet today Jeyamohan probably reaches more readers than others did before him and thanks to social media every time he kicks up a controversy there is discussion around it. Even if the discussions are mostly lumpen in nature it is still an incremental advance for the society. Second, in a state where political culture had completely decimated any healthy appraisal of India's heritage and its founding fathers Jeyamohan is almost the only sane voice stridently arguing for them. Third, in a feudal society that still asks "do we need to know M.S. Subbulakshmi's antecedents" he has patiently explained, time and again, why we need to tell inconvenient truths. Fourth, and this is most important, even when I disagree and say he is wrong on some issue I owe him the debt for at least having started a discussion.

Jeyamohan and controversies are inseparable. Even him being awarded the Iyal award became fodder for controversy. I had an exchange regarding that on Facebook. I've reproduced the transcript at the end of this blog (pardon the Tamil grammar mistakes).

ஜெயமோகனும் இயல் விருதும்: (http://arunmozhivarman.com/2015/07/08/இயல்-விருது-விழா-2015/) . அந்தப் பதிவை மறுத்து நான் எழுதியக் குறிப்பு:

ஜெயமோகனை அதிகம் மறுத்து எழுதிய என்னால் சற்றும் ஏற்க முடியாதப் பதிவு இது. தனி மனித காழ்ப்பே இப்பதிவில் தெரிகிறது. இயல் விருது மட்டுமல்ல ஞானபீடத்திற்கு முற்றிலும் தகுதியானவர் ஜெயமோகன் என்றுக் கூறுவேன். அவருடைய சமீபத்திய 'நான் இந்துவா" என்றப் பதிவிற்கு நீண்டதொரு மறுப்பை எழுத உத்தேசித்துள்ளேன். அப்பதிவில் உள்ள என் பார்வையில் தவறான முடிவுகள் மற்றும் கருத்துகளை தக்கத் தரவுகளோடு எழுத உள்ளேன். ஆயினும் அவர் மீது மதிப்புண்டு. தமிழ் இலக்கியம் மற்றும் கருத்தியல் சூழளில் ஜெயமோகனுக்கென்று ஒரு பீடம் இருக்கிறது.

"ஜோர்ஜ்.எல் ஹார்ட்டும், லணமி ஹோம்ஸ்ரோமும் தமிழின் பெரும் பங்களிப்பாளர்களாக எப்படிப் படுகிறார்கள் இவ்விருதுக் குழுவின் கண்களுக்கு?" என்று அவர் கேட்டதில் என்ன தவறு? அப்படி இந்தப் பதிவர் அது தவறானக் கருத்தென்றால் அதைத் தரவுகளோடு மறுத்துவிட்டுப் போகட்டுமே. ஈழத்திலிருந்து காத்திரமான இலக்கியம் வரவில்லை என்று ஜெயமோகன் பதிவிட்டதாக ஞாபகம். நான் படித்த வரையில் வேறெவரும் ஈழ எழுத்தாளர்கள் என்று யாரையும் கொண்டாடிப் பார்த்ததில்லை. அப்படியிருக்க ஜெயமோகன் ஈழ எழுத்தாளரைக் குறிப்பிடவில்லையென்று அவரை மட்டும் குற்றம் சாட்டுவது சரியல்ல. நாஞ்சில் நாடனும், எஸ்.ராவும் இயல் விருதுப் பெற்றப் போது அதைப் பாரட்டி சரியானத் தேர்வு என்று கொண்டாடியதும் ஜெயமோகனே.

உலக இலக்கிய வரலாற்றில் இலக்கியவாதிகள் விருதுகள் பற்றி இகழ்ந்துரைப்பது, விமர்சிப்பது பின் அந்த விருதைப் பெறுவது என்பதெல்லாம் ஒரு விஷயமேயில்லை. சரி அவர் விமர்சனமெல்லாம் தவறு என்றே வைத்துக் கொண்டாலும் அந்த விருதுக்கு அவர் முற்றிலும் தகுதியானவரே என்பதில் யாரும் ஐயம் கொள்ள முடியாது.
ஈழப் போரட்டத்தை எதிர்த்தற்காக ஜெயகாந்தனின் ஞானபீடத்தைப் பிடுங்கிக் கொள்வதா அழகு? நாஜிக்களுக்குப் பிரசாரம் செய்தார் என்பதற்காக பி.ஜி.வோடவுஸ் நூல்களைக் குப்பைஎன்றா சொல்ல முடியும்? வாக்னர் யூத வெறுப்பாளன் என்பதற்காக அவன் இசையைப் புறந்தள்ள முடியுமா? மொஸார்த் ஒருப் பொறுக்கி என்பதற்காக அவன் மேதமையை மறூக்க முடியுமா? 

ஜெயகாந்தன் பெண் படைப்பாளிகளையும்,பெண்ணிய வாதத்தையும் தூக்கிப் பிடித்தவர்ல்லர் அதற்காக அவர் எழுதியது குப்பையா? இது என்ன பத்தாம் பசலித்தனம்? நாய்பாலும், பிலிப் ராத்தும் பெண் வெறுப்பாளர்களென்றே அறியப் பட்டவர்கள் அவர்களுக்கு கிடைக்காத பெயரும் புகழுமா?

கவனிக்கவும், நான் ஜெயமோகனை மறுத்து அந்தப் பெண் எழுத்தாளர்கள் விவகாரத்தில் மிகவும் காட்டமான பதிவுகளை எழுதியுள்ளேன். 

இது ஏதோ அவர் மேல் நான் கொண்ட திடீர் அன்போ, மதிப்போ அல்ல. அவரை, முன்பேக் கூறியதுப் போல் நான் இன்றும் விமர்சிப்பவனே, ஆனால் அவரின் மதிப்பை சாரமில்லாமல் காழ்ப்புணர்ச்சியோடு வசைப் பாடுவது ஏற்க முடியாதது மட்டுமல்ல அதை மறுப்பதும் ஒரு அறமே.

என்னைப் பலர் “அவரிடம் ரசிக்கவோ சிலாகிக்கவோ உணக்கு எதுவுமில்லையா” எனக் கேட்டிருக்கிறார்கள். “நான் ரசிக்கும் ஜெயமோகன்” என்றுக் கூட எழுத நினைத்தக் கட்டங்களுண்டு. அவர் நியூ ஜெர்சியில் ஆற்றிய உரையைப் போல் வேறு யார் பேசியிருக்க முடியும் என்று எனக்குத் தெரியவில்லை.

நான் அவரை ஆசான் என்று குறிப்பிட்டது இணைய வழமையைப் பின் பற்றி தான். I'd much rather use the English phrase 'public intellectual'. என்னுடைய வழக்கம் அவர் பெயரைக் குறிப்பிடுவதுதான். ஆசான் என்று நான் குறிப்பிடுவது பெரும்பாலும் ஒரு kidding (நக்கல் என்றோ கிண்டல் என்றோ அர்த்தம் கொள்ள வேண்டாம்) அவ்வளவே. எழுத்தாளர் மீது யார் வேண்டுமானாலும் காட்டம் கொள்ளலாம். அவர் மீது மிகக் காட்டமாக எழுதியவன் என்ற முறையில் அந்த சுதந்திரத்தை நான் எப்படி மற்றவருக்கு மறுக்க முடியும். ஆனால் காட்டமாக எழுதப் பட்டது என்பதை சுட்டிக் காட்டுவதையும் யாரும் செய்யலாம். பொது வாழ்க்கையில் இருக்கும் யாரும் ஒழுக்க சீலர்களாக இருக்க வேண்டும் என்று நான் எதிர்ப்பார்ப்பதில்லை. அவர்களின் தனி வாழ்க்கை மற்றும் முரன்களை மூடி மறைப்பதை நான் விரும்பாத போதிலும் அதைக் கொண்டே அவர்களை எடைப் போடுவதும் எனக்கு ஒப்புமையில்லை. Unless the personal failing has a direct correlation with what they do or affects the public I've no issues. Radhakrishnan and Tolstoy were womanizers. You probably know more examples. I was only disagreeing with the article in as much as it seemed to imply Jemo was undeserving of the prize due to extraneous factors. If the article had established that his literature was no good and THEREFORE he was ineligible for a literary prize then I'd agree with the premise.

Since the topic of how to judge artists and writers is an interesting one I shall add a few remarks here. I don't mean to flog the topic however. 

ஜெயமோகன் யூத படுகொலைகள் வரலாற்றுப் பூர்வமாக ஆராயப்படவில்லையென்று அதிர்ச்சித் தந்தவர் தான். 2009-இல் அமெரிக்கா வந்துவிட்டு அப்படி எழுதினார். வேதனையான வேடிக்கையென்னவெனில் அவருடைய 'பின் தொடரும் நிழலின் குரல்' நாவலில் யூதப் படுகொலைகளை வரலாற்றில் நிகழ்ந்துவிட்டத் துயர் மிகுந்த சம்பவம் என்று எழுதியிருப்பார். 2009-இல் நான் அவருக்கு யூதக் கொலைகள் ஒன்றும் செவி வழி செய்தி அல்ல மாறாக மிகக் கறாரான வரலாற்றாய்வுகளுக்குட்படுத்தப் பட்டதெனெ எழுதினேன். அவர் அதை ஏற்கவில்லை. 2012-இல் அந்தக் கொலைக் களன்களுக்கு நான் நேரில் சென்று வந்தப் பிறகு மிக விரிவான மறுப்புரையை எழுதினேன். அவர் ஏற்பார் என்ற நம்பிக்கையில் எழுதவில்லை. வாசகர்களுக்கு வரலாறு தெரிய வேண்டுமென்று எழுதினேன். வரலாற்றில் ஆழ்ந்து ஆய்வு செய்யப்பட்ட ஒரு துயரத்தையே மறுத்த அவர் அதிகம் ஆவணப்படுத்தப்படாத IPKF வண் புணர்வுகளை மறுத்தது ஆச்சர்யமல்ல. அது சரியுமல்ல. ஜெயமோகன் எனும் எழுத்தாளரைப் பற்றிக் குறிப்பெழுதினால் இந்தக் குற்றச்சாட்டுகள் கட்டாயம் இடம் பெற வேண்டும். அவருடைய 'அறம்' கதைகளைப் பற்றிய மதிப்பீட்டில் கூட 'அறம் எழுதியவரின் தனி மனித அறம் வழுவியது' என்ற அளவில் தான் எழுதலாம். ஆனால் அறம் கதைகளின் இலக்கிய மதிப்பீட்டில் அதற்கு இடமில்லை. 'அண்ண கரணினா'வை டால்ஸ்டாயின் தனி மனித வாழ்க்கையைக் கொண்டு மதிப்பிடக் கூடாது. 

யூத வரலாறும், யூதப் படு கொலைப் பற்றிய வரலாறும் எனக்கு ஆருயிரானவை. ஜெயமோகன் அப்படி எழுதியது என் ரத்தத்தைக் கொதிப்படைய வைத்தது என்றால் மிகையில்லை. நிற்க. இங்கே வேறொரு ஒப்புமையும் தேவை. 

பி.ஏ.கிருஷ்ணன் ஸ்டாலினின் படுகொலைகளை மறுக்க மாட்டார் ஆனால் அவை ஏகாதிபத்திய சக்திகளால் அத்தீதமாக பூதாகரமாக்கப் பட்டன என்றும் புகாரின் போன்றோரின் கொலைகள் அக்காலத்திய நியமங்கள் படி அப்படி ஒன்றும் அநியாயமானவையல்ல என வாதிடுவார். பெர்னார்ட் ஷா கூட ஸ்டாலினை ஆதரித்துள்ளார் ஆனால் அவர் காலக் கட்டத்தில் ஸ்டாலினின் கொடுங்கோல் ஆட்சிப் பற்றி அவ்வளவாக வெளியேத் தெரியவில்லை. இன்றோ ஆதாரங்கள் கொட்டிக் கிடக்கின்றன. அவ்வளவு ஏன் உங்கள் தந்தைக் கூட சமூகத்தை மாற்றி அமைக்க தனக்கு ஸ்டாலின் போல் அதிகாரம் கிடைத்தால் நன்று என்றுக் கூறியதாக ஜெயமோகன் எழுதியிருப்பார் (அது உண்மையா என எனக்குத் தெரியாது). மேற்கத்திய இலக்கியவாதிகள் பலரும் ஸ்டாலினை விதந்தோதி அவர் நிகழ்த்திய ரத்த வெறியாட்டத்தை நியாயப் படுத்தியோ மறுத்தோ எழுதியிருக்கின்றனர். 

ஜெயகாந்தனும், குஷ்வந்த் சிங்கும் இந்திராவின் அவசர நிலைப் பிரகடனத்தை ஆதரித்தனர். 

IPKF-இன் வண்புனர்வுகளுக்கு வானளாவ குதிப்பவர்கள் விடுதலைப் புலிகளின் மனித உரிமை மீறல்கள் பற்றிப் பேசத் தயாரா (உங்களைச் சொல்லவில்லை அந்தப் பதிவர் போன்றவர்களைக் கேட்கின்றேன்). பதின்ம வயது பெண்கள் மற்றும் பெண் குழந்தைகளை அமைதிப் படை சோதிக்கத் தயங்கும் என்றறிந்து அப்பெண்களை போராளிகளாகவும் ஆயுதம் கடத்துபவர்களாகவும் பயன்படுத்தியதை மறுக்க முடியுமா?

ஜெயகாந்தன் ஸமஸ்கிருதத்தை ஆதரித்து சொன்னக் கருத்துக்காக ஒரு சாரார் காறி உமிழ்ந்தது நாமறிந்ததே. அவரும் புலிகளின் பிரிவினைவாதத்தை நிராகரித்து அவர்களை பாஸிஸ்டுகள் என்று சாடியதற்காக எவ்வளவு நிந்தனை செய்யப்பட்டார் சமீபத்தில். ஆனால் அவைகளைக் கொண்டா நாம் அவர் இலக்கியப் பங்களிப்பினை அளப்பது?

தனி மனித சுதந்திரம் பற்றி மாய்ந்து மாய்ந்து எழுதிய ஜெயகாந்தன் அவசர நிலைப் பிரகடனத்தை ஆதரித்தது ஒரு சறுக்கலே. அதைக் கட்டாயம் நாம் பதிவு செய்ய வேண்டும். ஜெயகாந்தன் எனும் இலக்கியவாதிக்கு தான் ஞானபீடம் ஜெயகாந்தன் எனும் அரசியல் விமர்சகருக்கோ தனி மனிதனுக்கோ அல்ல. ஜெயமோகனுக்கோ ஜெயகாந்தனுக்கோ ஏதேனும் 'அமைதி விரும்பி' பரிசளித்தால் இந்த் முகாந்திரங்கள் கொண்டு அவர்கள் அப்பரிசுக்குத் தகுதியானவர்களில்லை எனக் கூறலாம். 

எந்த மானுட அழிவையும், அமைதிப் படைக் கொலைகளோ, புலிகளின் மீறல்களோ, ஸ்டாலினின் வெறியாட்டங்களோ, யூதப் படுகொலைகளோ எதுவாயினும் சித்தாந்தத்தின் பெயரிலோ வேறெதுப் பெயரிலோ அவற்றை மறுப்பதோ, குறைத்துப் பேசுவதோ அறமல்ல. இது அமெரிக்காவிற்கும், இஸ்ரேலுக்கும் கூடப் பொருந்தும். 

I'd heartily recommend Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" to know how Marx, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Russell, Shelley, Rousseau were all practically scumbags. smile emoticon