Today is Robert Mugabe's 82nd birthday, and the government-controlled Zimbabwe press is celebrating. As LibertyScott says, "May he never reach 83."
Today is also the day in 1956 that Nikita Kruschev came out against Stalin and his still thriving personality cult. Scott has a short summary of Kruschev's speech and of Stalin's bloodthirsty career -- one which cost between twenty- and thirty-million Russian lives.
Kruschev was somewhat self-serving in his denouncement -- it allowed him, he hoped, to publicly divorce himself from blame for the murderous shambles of the country and regime he was leading, and to lay the blame for all iniquities at the feet of his predecessor. As Ayn Rand once pointed out, Soviet Premiers were always self-serving and manipulative: their new Five-Year Plans for example were always announced to great fanfare and with the firm commitment that, although the last Five-Year Plan was a failure, this latest one would be a glorious success. Five years later of course, the same stament was made, the past was once again repudiated, and the lies and nonsense recycled again.
There is the less-than-artful deception of a conjurer in this, just as there is in Krushev's Stalinist repudiation.
LINKS: Mugabe's last birthday (please) - LibertyScott
Kruschev & Stalin - LibertyScott
TAGS: History-Twentieth_Century, Politics-World
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