Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: The Origins of the Pod People Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_origins_of_the_pod_people#9537 Post contents: Then basically what you are saying, John, is that Stalin and all his successors right down to the collapse of the USSR considered the establishment of Communism throughout the world to be essential to Russian national interest. Otherwise, why would a Russian care what kind of economic organization or government Spain, let alone Brazil or Cuba had? And, of course, Russia itself maintained a Communist government and economic organization. It thus strikes me that saying Stalin was a Russian nationalist rather than a Communist is a distinction without a difference. Much like American nationalism and liberal democratic internationalism or French nationalism and Jacobinism. The main difference between the US on the one hand and France and Russia on the other is that the US never had any national tradition that wasn't "propositional" - based on the "self-evident" (hence universal) "truths" of the Declaration of Independence. France and Russia on the other hand had many layers of pre-modern and pre-enlightenment tradition that needed to be destroyed by the revolutionaries - whether you term these revolutionaries nationalists or internationalists. It is certainly true that nationalism as an ideology is as much an enemy of national tradition - not to mention local tradition - as internationalism is. Sent at: 2008 11 22