Golda Meir Quotes
How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia?.. the America I've known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I've known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.
Meir, Golda. My Life. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975, p. 30.
She was a brilliant woman who was well ahead of her time in many respects. But her rigid adherence to socialism and communism distorted her view of a number of things. This was one. Pogroms were occasions where the Czarist Russian Cossacks or other gangs of hooligans were “allowed” and often encouraged to attack Jewish farms, villages and stores. They looted the property, raped and murdered many of the people, and often ethnically cleansed areas. Rosa was thrilled by the Russian Revolution and assumed that something as uncivilized as Pogroms and anti-Semitism would never take place in the coming communist society of Russia. As a German Jew, although there was a terrible history from the Dark and Middle Ages of German Pogroms and ant-Semitism, Germany of 1917 was too civilized and modern to ever have attacks on Jews. She completely underestimated what the politicians of Russia and Germany would do to control their societies and pander to some while scapegoating and murdering Jews and other minorities. She herself was murdered by a German fascist anti-Semite 2 years after this statement.
This memo was written a few days before his death and it was the last document he wrote. The communists tended to use the word “socialist” so they could make it seem that the Soviet Bloc was allied or part of the same grouping as the Scandinavian countries, India and other countries that were neither ideological communists nor controlled by the Russian or any other Communist Party. Those nations, in contrast tended to use the word, “socialist” to distinguish themselves from the Communist countries. This mostly confused many Americans. Some conflated the socialist countries and the communist countries making no distinctions. Others, like most European politicians kept the distinction in mind. Most Americans were confused as the Red Scare perpetrators tended to conflate, and the liberals tended to distinguish.
The Italian Communists were culturally and ideologically very different from the Russian Communists. The Italian view was a more nationalistic one and was closer to a Socialist Democracy than a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Much more tolerant of diversity and not as ideological. See {637829} as a big example of the difference. Yet this was still in the midst of the Red Scare in America and some other areas of the West. After WWII, the CIA had secretly spent millions to get Italians to vote for the non-Communist candidates and helped organize Italian anti-Communist politicians who didn’t want the Communists to alter the Italian government to reflect any Communist or Socialist ideas. Meanwhile, the Italian party was under great pressure from Russia and some of the other Communist satellite countries to adopt a hardline revolutionary communist programs. Berlinquer and other Italian Communist leaders had many misgivings about Russian style Communism and they had to play off one side against the other for years.
Many people, especially conservatives, tend to think of socialism as monolithic. However, this quotation illustrates that the conceptualization and aims of English Socialists and the Continental Socialists were quite different. And different still were the Russian socialists who after the Russian Revolution became almost all Bolsheviks.
The President was spending all day and most of the evening with Japanese and Russian negotiators. He was trying to mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Despite all the difficulties, Roosevelt found a new skill of personal international diplomacy. The war seemed intractable, but Roosevelt was able to get a peace treaty signed for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It is doubtful that any modern president could spend so much concentrated time on an issue that was really not in the national interest of the United States. However, Roosevelt’s time and effort investment paid off in that by settling that dispute and getting nothing out of it for America or American business, the United States was in world opinion, elevated to a new status of fair, impartial and non-selfish international activity—a model that despite some lapses in later years, the United States has been unique.
Nazi Germany was overrunning Europe and WWII was well under way in Europe.
Golda Meir was an Israeli stateswoman, politician, teacher, and kibbutznik who served as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel.
