You can enrich your understanding of the past and present by reading Nikolay Starikov’s engaging and insightful book, Rouble Nationalization (2012).
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“Since [1694], the Anglo-Saxons have been following one rule in politics, and this rule is that there are no rules.”—Nikolay Starikov
About a month ago, I stumbled upon a well-hidden treasure of unorthodox historical insights: Nikolay Starikov’s Rouble Nationalization: The Way to Russia’s Freedom (St. Petersburg, Piter, 2012). The book provides a readable introduction to world history (1694-present) and to the fractional reserve banking scam. [1]
Free digital copies are available here.
In the UK branch, the book enjoys a bestseller ranking of 3,324,261. No, this is not an error: In England, 3,324,260 books are more popular than Rouble Nationalization.
To my knowledge, the lines you are reading now constitute the first English-language review of Starikov’s 2012 book.
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George Orwell famously observed: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” The few bankers who lord over the Western world (Starikov calls them “the owners of the printing machine”) understand the importance of molding the past.
For instance, you can read any mainstream history textbook—kindergarten to graduate school—with nary a squeak about the false-flag nature of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor or the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania. You can read thousands of American and English newspapers, cover to cover, for years, and still be grossly misinformed about such things as unemployment, national debt, or national gold holdings.
In the first few years following the colonization of Iraq in this century, I asked 100s of my students: “How many people died in Iraq as a result of American actions?” Almost invariably, they would come up with a number like 4,000. It never occurred to a single one of them that many more Americans paid for that imperial war with their lives, limbs, or sanity. It certainly didn’t occur to my students—since no one bothered to remind them—that Iraqis were people too, and that they were killed, poisoned, or displaced by the millions.
As a result of the lies our teachers, professors, politicians, and presstitutes told us, average Westerners—including college graduates and Ph.D.’s in history and economics—have a vague understanding of history, banking, and the vital connection between them. They thus subscribe to the silly notion that they live in a democracy [2]. They “remember” the Alamo and believe that it was the West—not Russia and China—which paid the highest human toll during War World II and which actually won it. Despite its decisive role in the last 300 years, the majority of historians write as if banking plays little or no role in shaping world events. In short, the bankers’ project of controlling the past has been an astounding success.
A few of us sense, somewhere along the line, that something is rotten with semi-official histories and try to reach out to the truth. But this is no easy task, because the Controllers have by now managed to get hold of just about all of our conventional sources of information—including most so-called dissident writings.
One way of escaping the provincialism and myths of your own culture is learning another language, living in a foreign country for a while, and immersing yourself in the local life. Elsewhere, I referred to this as “outsider’s perspective.” Likewise, one way of getting closer to historical truths is to read what foreigners have to say about your country’s past. Undeniably, Herodotus saw some aspects of Persia a bit more clearly than most Persians did.
Starikov’s book provides this much-needed outsider’s perspective. This is not to deny that Russians—like all human beings on this tragicomedy we call the world today—are victims of brainwashing too. The point is that their propaganda has a different slant than ours. A truth-digger must practice eclecticism—taking the best from several conflicting traditions of historical scholarship.
Besides providing this much-needed outsider’s perspective, Starikov’s book enjoys other distinct advantages.
Russians personally remember the Western bankers and politicians and the homegrown opportunists who stabbed Russia in the back in the 1990s. They bitterly remember how these plunderers have almost succeeded in turning this remarkable nation—the birthplace, of, e.g., Mendeleev, Tchaikovsky, and Chekhov—into a failed state.
Also, apart from personal memories, Russian intellectuals like Starikov can readily access Russian-language histories and official records of both the Russian Federation and the USSR—records that are not readily available to most Western scholars.
Unlike most Western historians and economists, Starikov calls a spade a spade, and he has, besides, the rare knack of writing in an engaging manner (even in translation, which by the way is excellent) and of presenting complex problems in an intelligible, fascinating, and readable way.
In what follows, I shall present Starikov’s views on a wide range of topics, relying mostly on quotations. I used American spelling and, now and then, slightly modified the translation. At the end, I highlight two points of disagreements between Starikov and myself.
Starikov on the Urgent Need to Discard Ubiquitous Propaganda and Understand Politics and Finance
“Establishing a prosperous state while not understanding the principles of the modern world order is impossible. . . . The rules are set, the game has been on for a while. But no one announces the rules. . . . Imagine the following situation: a tennis player has arrived at a competition. He is holding a racket, wearing a baseball cap and he has tennis balls in his pockets. And only when he is already on what should be a tennis court, he realizes that it is not a lawn but ice, as at an ice rink. And his opponent looks a bit strange: he is wearing new skates and a helmet and is holding a stick. How long can the tennis player withstand the hockey player if they are actually playing hockey? The conclusion is easy to make: one must understand what game one is playing, who the opponents are and what the rules are. Otherwise, one is bound to be defeated. Otherwise, at a national level one can easily play Gorbachev’s part. He became the best German of all times and ruined his own country at the same time. He helped Germany reunite and a year later tore his motherland apart.”
Banking
One cannot perhaps overstate the importance of banking to the well-being and independence of a nation [1]: Who controls the issuing of money? Is the Central Bank in private hands, or is it controlled by the country itself? Starikov fully grasps this critical point:
“Finances today have brought politics to heel, have replaced politics with themselves. Not understanding this sphere may destroy peoples and countries. Today’s world is based on finances, it lives among finances and is controlled by them.”
Takeover of the USA by the Bankers
The book provides a fascinating account of the takeover of the USA by the banking cabal, confirming and complementing such banking classics as Brown’s Web of Debt, Still’s The Money Masters, and Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island.
“Bankers just had to try and restore the former control over the US financial system. The military way did not work out and England lost the War of Independence. There was only one way left — through intrigues and conspiracies. A new intervention was not required to restore control over the US financial system. It was enough to create a copy of the Bank of England in America. The new money-printing machine was to belong to the same bankers as the old one. Gaining control over the issuing of money in the US would inevitably lead to gaining control over the country itself. The history of ‘conquering’ Great Britain was to be repeated by the bankers overseas. The only difference was that in England they needed to negotiate (and keep the arrangement) with one monarch and in the Republic of the US they had to find a common means of getting on with Presidents and Congressmen who changed every [two or] four years. It simultaneously made the task more and less difficult. The ‘turnover’ did not let them put the right man at the helm once and for all, but it helped solve the problem in case of mistakes. Bribing, blackmail, murder — the methods of forcing necessary decisions have always been the same. A lot of mysteries of American history will become quite clear if one looks at the events considering the constant attempts of the bankers to establish the same system of issuing money in the USA as they had established in Great Britain. The task was difficult — they wanted to conquer the country which had just become free.”
Starikov goes on to point out to the European bankers’ complicity in the assassinations of presidents Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy.
Here, for example, are a few details about the assassination of Lincoln:
“Commanding General of the Army of the north, General Ulysses S. Grant, had been invited to see the Tom Taylor’s comedy “Our American Cousin,” together with the head of the White House (in the President’s box), but for ‘personal reasons’ he could not make it.”
“The box where Lincoln was sitting was only guarded by one (!) person — his bodyguard Joe Parker. He did not leave the president once during the play. But when the assassin entered Lincoln’s box he was… away. Before the beginning of the third act Parker, allegedly, asked for permission to go to the theatre café. And left.”
After providing more circumstantial evidence suggesting that Lincoln’s death involved a conspiracy, Starikov remarks:
“This whole story is very similar to September 11, is it not? When the airplanes crashed into the towers, nothing was left of the people, nothing was left of the luggage. And yet one of the hijackers’ passports remained intact and was found in the ruins.”
The Dollar and the Federal Reserve Syndicate
“The keystone of the modern financial world is the dominant part of the dollar—and yet this enormous power is held in private hands. . . . The main money for trading and main money for saving on the global scale is issued by an organization owned by an unknown group of private bankers.”
Russia’s Central Bank
The Central Bank of Russia (pictured) is owned by Russia’s enemies, the UK/US bankers. Unless this bank is nationalized, Russia will continue to be a bankers’ colony.
Brandon Smith and James Corbett, among others, feel that the apparent Russo-American conflict is meaningless,in part because both countries are ultimately controlled by the same group of international bankers. The bankers profit from this conflict, and feel that they are sure to win, regardless of its actual outcome. Starikov appreciates this contradiction, and is strongly in favor of government takeover of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation:
“Unrestrained issuing of money backed by nothing has been the dream of bankers and moneylenders for centuries. This is the shortest way to world domination. Today this dream has become reality. All the world’s money stocks are tied to the dollar, which can be issued without restrictions. As a result of defeat in the Cold War Russia was deprived of a significant part of its sovereignty. The Russian rouble does not belong to the people anymore. The only way out of the dead end is to change the current form of the system of money-issuing.”
I shall cover this critical subject in great detail in a subsequent article. At the moment, let me say this: Starikov provides the most convincing proof known to me that the bank of Russia is owned by foreigners—the handful of people, in fact, who owns the central banks of the UK, France, Germany, Japan . . .
The World Bank
“The main purpose of the World Bank was and remains giving out of loans to those who then will be unable to pay them back. Convincing and forcing them to take out a loan is what its employees are paid to do. The result is always the same—a catastrophic growth of debt of undeveloped countries which can pay for their debts only through taking out new loans. And that means further enslavement to the bankers. . . . As a result of cooperation with the World Bank, the poor become even poorer and their money flows into the rich countries.”
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
“The IMF is not a place for discussion but an instrument of world hegemony.”
World Trade Organization
A “country gets completely deprived of freedom — under the flag of unlimited freedom.”
How Commodity Prices (like oil) are Manipulated
“Prices are formed not via actual supply and demand, but through a system of futures and forwards. Roughly speaking, it is not goods or oil which are sold on the commodity exchange nowadays, but the oil delivery contracts. The amount of futures sold is ten times larger than that of actual black gold. This means that if the futures are sold at a lower price today, the price of real oil subsequently will also go down. Today the price is defined not by demand, but by commodity exchanges. . . . The one with the ‘printing machine’ can do whatever he wants with global economics. . . . The entire horde of gamblers and blood-suckers, referred to as ‘investors’ to be politically correct, like monkeys start buying or selling on the commodity exchange whatever the organizers of the climb or fall wish.”
Assassinations
Since 1694, the owners of the English “printing machine” routinely resorted to murder to achieve their goals. Besides American presidents and countless other opponents, their victims probably include Napoleon, William of Orange, and most living descendants of Louis XIV. [3]
The Curious Case of Winston Churchill
Winston is a descendant of John Churchill, a man who was probably bribed by the bankers to betray his king and country and side with the bankers’ agent, William of Orange.
At the end of World War II, says Starikov, the bankers dismissed Churchill because he failed them:
“Churchill’s victory was very similar to a defeat. He did not win it the way it was needed to establish the hegemony of the dollar and pound sterling over the entire planet. If we also realize that it is not the electorate that chooses the Prime Minister in Great Britain but that he is appointed by completely different people who had been controlling the global financial affairs since 1694, what happened to Sir Winston becomes absolutely clear.”
They offered him a consolation prize—a knighthood—which he refused to accept. The bankers later gave him a second chance as a prime minister (1951-5) and a specific mission. This time he justified their trust.
“Joseph Stalin died (was killed) on 5 March, 1953. And when did Churchill receive his award? In April 1953 Winston Churchill was knighted and awarded the Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry in England, by Queen Elizabeth II.”
The Devious Origins of the English Bill of Rights: William of Orange and the Bankers
“The story of William’s way to the English throne is rather dubious. He was helped by money and the betrayal he bought with it. Who could give him the required amount? Back then kings borrowed money from people who these days we would call bankers. So, once in power, the King signed the Bill of Rights, a legislative act designed primarily not to grant universal and equal voting rights but to restrict the King’s authority. It was not about freedom and democracy for everyone. British bankers and slave owners thought about no one but themselves. This was their protection against the King potentially changing his mind. Since, if we go deeper we can find information on the number of bankers who took part in the project called ‘The Bank of England’. ‘In 1694 forty merchants found the Bank of England’. The number of partners is minimal and the temptation is great. Throughout the course of English history, people were executed frequently and in big numbers. Forty merchants together with their relatives would not be a big problem. A plot is discovered, people are beheaded and their property is confiscated. And if there is no plot, it is just an insignificant detail. Three hundred years later historians would say that those were difficult times. There are conspiracies everywhere.”
English Imperial Rise, Beginning in the 18th Century, Can be Traced to the Creation of the Private Bank of England in 1694 and the Adoption of the Fraudulent Fractional Reserve System
“The exhausted English economy ‘all of a sudden’ found the enormous amounts of money required to build a fleet. Where from? It is the money derived from issuing paper money and using the secret bankers’ know-how that was engaged to obtain military supremacy for the country where the printing machine took roots. . . Since then the Anglo-Saxons have been following one rule in politics, and this rule is that there are no rules.”
The Lafayette Myth
“The fight between France and England did not stop for a single day. When the USA started the War of Independence, a squadron of ‘volunteers’ led by Marquis de Lafayette immediately set off for America. These were military advisers and not awestruck youths or admirers of liberty. The French actively helped the rebellious Northern colonies to fight against their own archenemy.”
Why did Hitler Attack Russia in 1941?
An intriguing hypothesis: To safeguard the power of the Anglo-Saxon printing machine (either dollars or pounds—controlled by the same bankers), Hitler had to be convinced that Russia was too weak to resist an invasion. The head of his intelligence service—a man executed by Hitler in 1945 as an English spy—deliberately kept Hitler in the dark about Russian strength.
World War II (a few scattered observations)
- “Adolf Hitler was put in charge of Germany by London and Washington: in other words, by the owners of the ‘printing machine’. His task was to start a war against the USSR and to conquer vast territories and vast treasuries full of natural resources as well as to eliminate a dangerous alternative plan of economic development. For this Germany was promised to be made an equal partner of the Anglo-Saxons at the global table. To enable Hitler to fulfill this task, enormous amounts of money were invested in Germany and she was supplied with the latest industrial equipment.”
- “The English knew perfectly well that Hitler was going to attack Poland. And they were not trying to prevent this attack. The idea was different: having defeated the Polish, the German army would have turned up at the Soviet borders.”
- American history books often portray the lend-lease program as a gift. But, according to Starikov: “Lend-lease supplies, the so-called ‘aid’, were not free. Everything that the States sent us [the USSR] was paid for with gold.”
- “The real dollar era, the period of its incredible supremacy, would actually start 46 years later than planned, that is after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The USSR resisted this cancerous growth of money appearing from nowhere for over four decades, having created an alternative form of economy and a completely new civilization, having created an alternative system of relations between people.”
How Russia was Saved from Nuclear Destruction, 1945-1949
“The USA was truly considering the possibility of a nuclear strike on the USSR. A certain number of nuclear devices was necessary to destroy the economic potential of our country. The USA did not have enough devices, so the USSR got some time to create its own bomb. The bomb was made, and thus nuclear war was averted.”
“The USA had more devices, but in 1950 Stalin managed to distract and immobilize Washington, having involved it in the Korean War. They had no time for us any longer. American generals started seriously considering a nuclear strike not on the USSR, but on China.”
Origins of the Term “Iron Curtain”
“The famous words about the ‘iron curtain’ were rather boldly borrowed from . . . Goebbels.”
Origins of the European Union
“Only the global and unconditional surrender of Gorbachev at all points, starting with ceasing support of Nelson Mandela in the RSA and finishing with the one-sided dissolution of the Warsaw block, led to the European Union with its unique currency.”
“Democratic” Elections
What is miscalled today “democracy” in the West is merely a “strict system of selection of politicians who follow the will of the owners of the ‘printing machine.’”
Benito Mussolini
Mussolini was a pet of the English Secret Services. Through bribes and promises of promotion, they coaxed him into betraying his countrymen. Thanks to clever, well-financed propaganda campaign and an early prototype of a violent color revolution, Mussolini forced the Italian ruling class to join the war on the side of the UK. At the end of World War II, those same Secret Services killed him for the simple reason that he knew too much.
Russian Revolution (1917)
“Funded by UK intelligence services (just as Russian opposition groups now are funded by the bankers’ agents in London and DC.) . . . Litvinov [the British-appointed treasurer of the Bolshevik party] was the [Bolsheviks’] connection with the British special services. It is through him that the money was supplied. He purchased the weapons and could provide transport.”
The Iraqi Genocide
“The USA and Britain invaded Iraq, supposedly having been informed that Saddam Hussein acquired the ABC weapon. What was that? It was pure aggression, which was not too far removed from the actions of Adolf Hitler. The Führer said that the Poles had attacked Germany, so to protect his country he ordered the crossing of the Polish border on 1 September, 1939. To protect itself from Saddam Hussein, the USA attacked Iraq. Most curiously, no chemical, bacteriological, or nuclear weapons were found in Iraq. Where is the global response? Why do those praising Sakharov’s principles remain silent?”
How Useful Dissidents of Targeted Countries Become Famous
“Sakharov . . . started to be promoted to give an ideological blow to the USSR. . . Awarding him with the Nobel Peace Prize made Sakharov even more powerful. “
Before Gorbachev, Russia Surpassed China in Economic and Military Power. What Caused the Curious Reversal of the 1990s?
“China has evolved so dramatically because it saw what trouble was stirred by Gorbachev; it became terrified and with a steady hand prevented the ‘democratization’ of the country. The result is obvious. In our country the ‘genie’ was let out of a bottle. And he threw the state decades backwards. In China he was left in the bottle.”
“The Chinese have not sewn their newest submarines, have not betrayed all their allies, have not spat on their own history. . . To have 100 types of sausage in shops it is not necessary to throw mud at one’s native country and destroy its armed forces.”
Western Imperial Hypocrisy
“When they criticize Russia for ‘not letting go’ of Chechnya or Tatarstan, they usually say that Russia is the last empire. . . . There are lots of empires on the map of the modern world. The largest of them is the USA–military bases all over the world, the world’s biggest army, a military budget equal to the sum of all other countries’ military budgets combined.”
British “Democracy”
“The present queen has no fewer rights than the autocratic tsar of another imperial state — the Russian Empire. . . . [The British political] system dates back to the years of the Bank of England’s creation, when the bankers and the English crown came to an agreement and decided to continue their historical development together, forming parliaments, buying politicians individually and wholesale. Then, in buying the media, they acquired the means of convincing their people and other peoples to believe whatever they wanted them to believe.”
Colored Revolutions
“No doubt, we underestimate snipers. These guys may well turn the course of world history. We just hardly notice the role they play, since it is perfectly masked. . . . They change regimes, make revolutions, cause chaos and economic defaults. . . . What would you do if you needed to create disorder and war, but the people did not want to kill each other? You’d help them start doing it.”
One example of this is Kyrgyzstan, 2010. A new government was formed which was not as friendly to the USA, and not as well-disposed towards its air base in the country (“the largest point of drug transfer to Russia and Europe”), nor to the American terrorist training center directed at China. The USA sent a regime change specialist. Within hours, mass riots begin. Someone starts giving money and weapons to people in the streets. It takes a mere $150 a day to bribe an unemployed person, or a member of a minority group, to join the “protest movement.”
“But it takes more than just money to provoke a massacre. You need something to fuel the passions. And this is when snipers come into play. What snipers? Unknown snipers. This is how we call this mysterious world economic factor: unknown snipers. They shoot at both parties of the oncoming conflict. A shot — and a Kyrgyz is killed. The sniper must be Uzbek. Another shot — and an Uzbek lies dead. What sniper shot him? That’s right, he is a Kyrgyz. Their goal is to warm the crowd. That is why they shoot at children, women and young men, who are not likely to become a target of military and police snipers. Anyone who sees the snipers’ atrocities becomes filled with anger: the Kyrgyzs start hating the Uzbeks, and vice versa. The bloody merry-go-round has started.”
“All this is not mere conjecture: Many snipers were caught, and their ranks included many foreigners.”
The same vicious story repeats itself in Iran, 2009; Thailand, 2010; Romania, 1989; Moscow, 1993, France, 1965-1970.
We might add in passing that the bankers have been following the same vicious script, with variations, to the present day (most notably in Ukraine).
The Inevitable Result of Colored Revolutions
Colored revolutions are organized for the specific purpose of subjugating a country to foreign bankers. The result, always, is a national tragedy. Take Romania as just one example:
“Today Romania is a dumping ground for foreign goods. In the last 20 years national industry has completely disappeared, and strategic sectors have been sold to foreign companies. Salaries have been cut back, unemployment is rising, drugs and prostitution are spreading. Today Romanians consider December 1989 not as a victory of democracy over dictatorship but as a tragedy and a mistake.”
CIA Drug Running
The CIA smuggles drugs into Russia, the USA, and elsewhere to obtain black funds and as part of its strategy of tension. Shown here is Gary Webb, one of the first American journalists to document massive CIA involvement in converting the USA into an addiction nation. Webb’s search for truth and justice cost him his livelihood, reputation, peace of mind, and, eventually, his life. Threatening the bankers’ rule is a recipe for assassination.
“Russia has its own interests in Kyrgyzstan: Manas Air Base — the landing site of American planes coming from Afghanistan — is the largest point of drug transfer to Russia and Europe. And it is the freighters of the Unites States Air Force which perform the delivery: no customs, no problems.”
Immigration Crisis (presciently explained in 2012)
“Who benefits from the influx of emigrants to Europe? Hardly the Europeans . . . Are the heads of European states naïve and ignorant youngsters? No, surely not. However, these countries are not sovereign, so they have to act in a manner that harms their citizens. They have to support the Anglo-Saxons even if they are flooded with refugees and become unstable afterwards.”
Additional Reflections
How can we ascertain that the disclosures above—and many more not touched upon in this review—are accurate?
Whenever Starikov touches on a field, historical figure, or occurrence that I’m familiar with, I’ve independently reached similar or identical conclusions, convincing me that we are dealing here with serious scholarship. But you need not take his word, or mine (or anyone else’s) uncritically. You merely need to open-mindedly read his book and treat it as an invitation to check competing historical narratives. Is the key to England’s dominance in world affair the “printing machine” or is it something else? Is the Bank of Russia American or Russian? Did an autopsy of Napoleon’s remains reveal enough arsenic to kill a hippopotamus or did it not?
I disagree with Starikov on two points.
The first involves his disdain for people like Andrei Sakharov. Such people, according to Starikov, fail to understand that the political world obeys a single rule: anything goes. Starikov has every right to scorn Andrei Sakharov’s naïve constitution—but only if that constitution was meant to apply, unilaterally, to the USSR. In that case, any astute historian, or any expert in psychopathology, could readily predict the disastrous outcome of adopting it.
But people like Sakharov, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King know something that Starikov ignores. That is, if humanity continues on the present Machiavellian path, its most probable future is slavery, vast inequalities, perpetual wars, and—finally—extinction [4].
Here is a plea of two “naïve” scientists, written at the time Sakharov was still busy building hydrogen bombs:
“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.” (The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 1953)
The Realpolitik that Starikov takes for granted has just about reached its limits. Humanity, collectively, must change—or perish.
My second point of disagreement involves Stalin. Starikov rightly blames Gorbachev and Yeltsin for their shortsighted policies, while acclaiming Stalin for saving and strengthening the USSR. In my view, however, Stalin’s unspeakable terror was wrong, unnecessary, and counterproductive.
The Moral Argument against Stalinism: For lovers of liberty, human dignity, and a free marketplace of ideas, Stalin’s reign was a tragedy of enormous proportions. Someplace in The Brothers Karamazov, someone asks:
“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature-that child beating its breast with its fist, for instance-in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”
Dostoyevsky’s answer is NO. I’m with Dostoyevsky, not with Starikov. A state can and should defend itself—but not at the price of enslaving its own people. Once you destroy freedom and human dignity, what is left worth saving? To me and many others, the answer is simple: Nothing.
So much for the moral argument, which is perhaps a matter of psychology and personal proclivities. But there are as well two practical arguments against Stalinism (and against the war that Western governments are currently waging on their own peoples).
A Freer Country is a Stronger Country. Stalin’s reign of terror was unnecessary. The historian Herodotus, himself not an Athenian, clearly perceived the causal connection between freedom and military strength:
“Thus did the Athenians increase in strength. And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere, that freedom is an excellent thing since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself. So fared it now with the Athenians.” [5]
Stalinism was the Chief Cause of the Collapse of the USSR. It could also be argued that the self-inflicted collapse of the USSR in the 1990s was not chiefly traceable to the naiveté of Gorbachev (although he was naïve enough), nor to the drunkenness and treachery of Yeltsin (although he was a drunk and a traitor), nor to Russian economic problems or Russia’s efforts to save Afghanistan from backward theocrats and American incursions. Rather, it is Starikov’s hero, Stalin, who is largely responsible for the catastroika.
To see this, we need to ask: What drove patriotic Russians like Gorbachev, Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, or Zinoviev to denounce their own system and help usher the horrors of the Yeltsin regime and Russia’s version of the notorious Chicago Boys? Why were the Nazis greeted at first as saviors by many Ukrainians? Why is fascism still popular in the Ukraine and a few other former republics of the USSR?
“We have been conditioned our entire lives to expect that anything that opposes a demonstrably evil entity must itself be good,” says James Corbett. By creating a “demonstrable evil entity,” Stalin led Gorbachev and others to the mistaken belief that the USA “must be good.” It took the 1990s for the majority of Russians to realize that both the USSR and the USA were “criminal networks that use brutality and violence to enforce their control over given areas and to terrorize others.”
The cure of course, as Starikov notes, was not to dismantle the USSR, destroy a multipolar world, and cause unimaginable sufferings, but to democratize the USSR. In hindsight, it’s easy enough to see how deluded Gorbachev was. The point however is that, besides Anglo-Saxon propaganda, it was the horrors of Stalinism that led patriotic Russians to embrace their country’s assailants.
Thus, Stalin’s cruelty and arbitrary rule were, most likely, the primary cause of the USSR’s tragic collapse in the 1990s. A nationalist like Starikov should revile Stalin on purely pragmatic grounds—instead of repeatedly singing his praises.
Conclusion
No book is free from moral, logical, or strategic misjudgments. Starikov’s book, as we have just seen, is no exception to this sad rule.
That said, I must repeat that Rouble Nationalization is a must-read book, offering insights and interpretations of great interest to anyone struggling to make sense of the present, future, and past. In a better world, this book would be receiving accolades, rebuttals, and considerable attention—not silence.
Notes and References
- For a recent review of this fractional scam see: “People versus the banks.”
- For the superiority of direct democracy to all other political systems, see: “7.4 billions cheers for real democracy.”
- See, for instance: Encyclopedia of Domestic Assassainations.
- The human experiment is probably coming to an end. (backup link)
- For a philosophical defense of the link between freedom and
military strength, see Karl Popper’s The
Open Society and its Enemies.