Socialism Sucks_Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World by Robert A. Lawson & Benjamin Powell

Author:Robert A. Lawson & Benjamin Powell [Lawson, Robert A. & Powell, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History
ISBN: 9781621579458
Goodreads: 42101694
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2019-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

That was enough commie tourism for us. We moved along to the Hotel Metropol. The hotel, which opened in 1907, is a grand structure with beautifully ornate granite carvings, tiled images of princesses on its exterior, fine marble columns, and a stained glass skylight above the chandeliers in the lobby. Of course, the Bolsheviks nationalized it in 1918 and turned it into offices and living quarters for bureaucrats, but by the 1930s, they had converted it back to a hotel.

The Hotel Metropol was a big part of Moscow’s Soviet history. S. J. Taylor, author of Stalin’s Apologist, a scathing biography of New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, noted that “The New York Times man in Moscow could usually be found among the throngs at the bar of the Metropol Hotel.”7 In the early 1930s, the bar was the “focal point of a glittering bourgeois society in a dull setting of Proletarianism. It was little more than an alcove off the main dining room, yet sooner or later, practically every American who visited the Soviet Union made his way there.”8

Not surprisingly, Bob and I found our way there too. It was still just a small rectangular bar in an alcove, but it was well stocked with vodka. We had a few and talked about how the Times, in its year-long series of columns on “The Red Century,” never once mentioned how its own notorious Moscow correspondent in the 1920s and 1930s was a mere mouthpiece for Soviet propaganda.

Walter Duranty lived a privileged life in Moscow. He had a nice apartment, a car with a driver, a secretary, and could afford to eat and drink well and take frequent trips to Berlin, Paris, and St. Tropez. He was regarded as the leading foreign correspondent in Moscow, but far from being an honest, unbiased reporter, he saw his role as promoting the Communist regime.

Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, with the prize committee praising him for his “scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment, and exceptional clarity. . . .”9 In his acceptance speech, Duranty stated that, “I discovered that the Bolsheviks were sincere enthusiasts, trying to regenerate a people that had been shockingly misgoverned, and I decided to try to give them their fair break. I still believe they are doing the best for the Russian masses and I believe in Bolshevism—for Russia.” S. J. Taylor quotes Duranty’s approval of the “planned system of economy” and his “respect” for “the Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, whom I consider to have grown into a really great statesman.”10

A year later, his admiration for Stalin and the Bolsheviks would lead him to cover up what was, perhaps, the greatest atrocity Stalin committed. After repealing the NEP, Stalin redoubled efforts to collectivize farmland. Peasant farmers understandably resisted, stashing grain and eating their own farm animals before they could be confiscated. S. J. Taylor noted that “by far the most common method of resistance had been the peasants’ slaughter of their own livestock in order to prevent collectivization by the State.

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