Joseph Brodsky Quotes
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
Brodsky, Joseph. Less Than One: Selected Essays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.
Kennan was one of the few people who saw the possibility of Soviet rule of Eastern Europe crumbling as it did almost 50 years later. Most Americans thought that the Soviet Union was so militarily entrenched that they would never be ousted short of war.
Harriman at that time was the United States Ambassador to Russia and one of President Roosevelt’s closest advisers. There were those who claimed that the Roosevelt administration was very naïve about the potential danger of Stalin. This statement as well as others like it, show that the administration was not so naïve and ignorant.
The “rupture and revolution” was Southern secession and the Civil War. This quotation is very important because it so clearly states the cause of the Civil War—the threat of the abolition or change of the institution of slavery. During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, many historical revisionists—in an effort to promote national unity—began stating and teaching that the cause of the rebellion was a philosophical difference over State’s rights and not something so banal as the greed for and immorality of the benefits of slavery. See {621370} for another Southern quotation illustrating this point.
The Spanish Civil War was in retrospect the first battle of WWII. Hitler, contemplating a European takeover, provided the Franco Fascist’s with German Air Support, using aerial bombing, not to destroy military targets but to terrorize civilian population centers. The successful tactic was used by the Germans against Warsaw, Amsterdam, London and many other cities.
He served as a liaison with the Russian military officers after WWII. As a result he developed friendships with some who told him much about Stalin and the Communist party of the Soviet Union.
This was a big factor that made the Red Scare so damaging.
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.
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian-American poet and essayist.
