Herman Gorter Quotes
There is an enormous difference between Russia and Western Europe.
Gorter, Herman. Open Letter to Comrade Lenin. Wildcat, 1989.
The issue of unilateral or multilateral foreign policy efforts faced America after WWII.
Leval was an appeaser and a collaborator with the Nazi’s. He led the government in name but the Germans really controlled the country. His actions killed tens of thousands of French men and women by turning them over to the Germans. After the Germans were defeated in WWII, Leval was shot as a traitor by the Free French forces.
At the time, the major European countries were in a competitive scramble for colonies in Africa—so much so that there were very few independent territories left. The maps and borders of Africa were really decided by the Europeans.
They were both children of Queen Victoria of England.
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.
During the Cold War and afterwards many Americans attributed the problems we were having with the Soviet Union emenated from the fact that they were Communists, and our focus was anti-communism. Kennen, however argued that it was not Communism that was the cause of the Aggression of the Soviet Union. It was an extension of the Russian Culture. After the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communism was rejected by the Russians, we still had a great deal of Russian aggression and Foreign Policy problems with Russia. Kennan was right. It was the Russian culture, history, values and traditions that were the primary cause of most of the problems with Russia.
Herman Gorter was a Dutch poet and socialist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers, a highly influential group of Dutch writers who worked together in Amsterdam in the 1880s, centered on De Nieuwe Gids (The New Guide).
