Lenin and Russia

[seashale76]

Your point is? Communism was better? Stalin?

Talk about reading things into a post that wasn't even hinted at! Are you okay?

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Talk about reading things into a post that wasn't even hinted at! Are you okay?

I am asking what you meant...that seemed to be a logical assumption

 

[seashale76]

I am asking what you meant...that seemed to be a logical assumption

What I said was quite clear. I don't hint at things. I will outright state them if that is what I truly think. The only time I will tread carefully and watch what I post is out of respect for this board as I am no longer Orthodox. I will have to strongly disagree about how what you posted was a 'logical assumption' of any sort though.

 

[rusmeister]

It is so easy for us to offend each other! Let’s try not to do that!

My mother was an inquirer into Orthodoxy when she apostatized to Islam several years before her death. The kindness of her Muslim chiropractor was a more powerful witness than the worldly Orthodox Christians who had the Truth, and had found the Church. His behavior toward her and the invalid child she had adopted proved a stronger witness than what she found among those who profess our Faith. Apostasy makes me sad. But we have to leave it all to God.

Whatever you think of him, Tsar Nicholas ended well, and the Church recognizes his ultimate sainthood in spite of his failures. While we’re talking about what a bad ruler he was, let us ask him to pray for us.

 

[gzt]

I am asking what you meant...that seemed to be a logical assumption

Forgive me for inserting myself here, but you might consider that one problem with weak leaders is that what comes after one might be worse.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Forgive me for inserting myself here, but you might consider that one problem with weak leaders is that what comes after one might be worse.

Meaning?

 

[gzt]

Meaning?

1. seashale and I note that St Nicholas II was a poor (my contention) or weak leader (seashale's contention)
2. You ask if that means Stalin was better.
3. I point out that one problem with weak leaders is that what comes after a weak leader is often worse than that leader. That is, they enable a collapse into an even worse state.
4. I don't know if you want a more drawn out connection of the dots here.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

2. You ask if that means Stalin was better.
3. I point out that one problem with weak leaders is that what comes after a weak leader is often worse than that leader. That is, they enable a collapse into an even worse state.

Oh OK, thanks for the clarification! I read it as communism was better.

 

[Dorothea]

Agreed. But it didn’t HAVE to be this way. I watched, from the inside, over the 1990’s and 2000’s, as the USSR fell,the Russians were so eager to be our friends and allies, though their civilization was falling down around their ears. If we had Marshall-planned them, like we did with Germany and Japan after WW2, they would have willingly become flat-out Western. But our foreign policy was run by scumbags who needed constant war and military conflict, who could NOT let their Cold War cash cow turn into a Peace Dividend, and when it became clear that conducting a war against an emotion (“Terror”) could not be sustained, they needed a credible geopolitical threat, and North Korea and Iran simply did not fit the bill. Only Russia or China could excite the necessary fear to justify massive continuous spending, but we had mega-billion dollar trade with China, and next to nothing with Russia, so for them, it wasn’t a hard choice as to which should be chosen as our perma-enemy. And so, everything was done to deny Russia as an ally, and provoke her as an enemy. Again and again and again. From 1995-2014, we - our foreign policy - encouraged them to hate and mistrust us. And so, the Communist Party and the cult of Stalin, as dead as doornails, had life blown back into them as the alternative when membership in the EU and G-(7, or other number) were consistently denied them, and NATO continually pushed eastward, despite assurances that we would not do that.
WE, our political leadership, helped resurrect this Frankenstein. And we ought to admit that.

Agree. I think the nostalgia of the USSR was more about the power it had and couldn't be pushed around by the West. Since the fall of the USSR, as you pointed out, the West has treated Russia like crap and a continued enemy when they were weak and having to rebuild and regrow, etc.

btw, I found this article that seems to echo what you have been saying: ROCOR Synod warns against revival of Soviet-era ideology