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Originally Posted by Mike
I don't know who really viewed the Soviet Union as divine from the exterior ...
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Margaret Thatcher (ohh, maggie...) attacked some of the people who did this. Let me grab the book and i'll throw in some quotes.
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Originally Posted by Margaret Thatcher
AT the height of the famine in 1932, the worst in Russia's history, the visiting biologist Julian Huxley found 'a level of physique and general health rather above that to be seen in England'. Similarly, George Bernard Shaw wrote that 'Stalin has delivered the goods to an extent that seemed impossible ten years ago, and I take my hat off to him.' H.G. Wells was equally impressed, reporting that he had 'never met a man more candid, fair, and honest... no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him'.
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Sidney and Beatrice Webb were similarly overwhelmed by the glories of the soviet experiment. Their 1200-page book, which faithfully parroted any Soviet propaganda they could pick up, was originally entitled Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?: but the question mark was removed from the second edition, which appeared in 1937 -- the height of the terror.
The capacity of the left to believe the best of communism and the worst of anti-communists has something almost awe-inspiring about it.
the economist J.K. Galbraith wrote of his visit in 1984: "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene... One sees it in the apearance of well-being of the people on the streets... Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."
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One large problem with this theory was that those who held it had constantly to be trying to find advantages in a soviet system which had none that were apparent to Soviet citizens. As the former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky once remarked - referring to the Russian proverb to the effect that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs - he had seen plenty of broken eggs, but never tasted any omelette.
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I'm not commenting on the analogies or anything else, just thought it was worth posting. Ohhh, maggie....