p. 1060-1071

Did corruption in the Arab world stem directly from Western influences (via colonialism)? Many Egyptian critics felt that the government was moving away from traditional family values and Islamic morals and that that was the reason for its moral bankruptcy and ineffectualness. The West had poisoned them with ideas brought through centuries of contact and dominance in the region, when colonial powers dictated the use of resources and the political situation in the country. In an effort to return the Middle East to a position of power, hard-liners rejected the idea of a secular government, seeing Islamic traditions as fundamental to running a good government. The most out-spoken critic in Egypt was Sayyid Qutb, whose experience in Egypt and America convinced him of the danger of Western influences on a Muslim state. As this Guardian article notes, his ideas of jihad, even against other, "westernized" Muslim leaders, lives on today in the ideology of Al Qaida. The author makes a point at the end of the article which illustrates the influence Qutb has today: though America was attacked by bin Laden and seems the primary target for Middle Eastern terrorist groups, they are rather seeking to expose and get rid of the corrupting influence in their own countries; their main goal is to bring Saudia Arabic, for instance, back into the strictly Islamic fold.

Gellner

I found Gellner's article fascinating and thought he made some very interesting claims. For instance, he baldly states, "Marxism, because it unites the political, ideological, and economic hierarchies, inevitably leads to totalitarianism." Perhaps because of my capitalist bias, I find myself agreeing with him. Communism demands total unification of society under the direction of the proletariat, and in complex societies, that means unification of political, ideological, and economic concerns. If everything is unified, what else can we get but a totalitarian state? I guess the question is, then, whether a totalitarian state is so bad if you're after the Marxist ideal. Marxism is portrayed in the article almost like a religion ("secular salvation"). The "rightness" of Marxism would mean that it necessarily controlled all aspects of society rigidly according to that standard. Gellner dismisses the method of salvation along with the fall of the Soviet Union with the argument that the USSR was diverse (culturally, politically, etc.), yet the salvation method stuck nowhere.
On another note, it's interesting that he predicted the invasion of Iraq almost 10 years before it happened.

Duma Session with Gorbachev

As we discussed in class, the most remarkable bit about this document is the fact that it exists. But a few years earlier, it is unthinkable that the president of the USSR would be defending communism and the Russian Communist Party to the Russian people. It also reveals a split in the country, that not all supported democracy when the USSR fell. Gorbachev's wording in his responses suggest that he believes in, or at least wants others to think he believes in, Lenin's version of communism, the Marxist homeland for the worker and peasant that has ideals for men and women to put their faith in, a place that is not a utopia but tries its best through collaboration. The animosity towards the Communist Party reminds me in a way of the debate happening today over Islam. Grouping extremists and fundamentalists in with the moderates or peaceful believers and punishing them all only serves to antagonize further. Gorbachev is trying to remind his interrogators that there is still a kind of socialism that is widely accepted and does not involve mass murder but simply the support of common people. Though the USSR performed terrible deeds in the name of communism, he is making the distinction that communism is not the USSR and the USSR is not communism. They are separate things, one an ideal of society and one an attempt to carry it out.
Documentary excerpt on Gorbachev's policies

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the hallmarks of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Iron Curtain began to lift in certain parts of the Soviet bloc. East and West Germany had been separated physically since 1961, isolating Eastern Germans from German cultural reconstruction. With the opening of Hungary's and Czechoslovakia's borders in 1989, however, a mass exodus of East Germans began; in an attempt to prevent the state from collapsing, the government (weakened by movements abroad such as Solidarity) announced the opening up of travel between West and East Germany. When the an East German spokesman announced that travel between the states could begin directly, a jubilant crowd overwhelmed the checkpoints and was soon climbing and destroying the wall, bringing down the most potent symbol of Soviet control and uniting Germany once again. Although the allowance of travel was meant to stop-gap the decline of East Germany, the small crack instead opened the floodgates, and the government collapsed soon after. East and West were free to mingle once again, to bring together Western culture and Eastern communist isolation to create a uniquely postwar German mindset and identity. Two very different experiences came together to form a new Germany.
BBC Article
ABC Report

p. 1029-1037

The crushing of the Prague rebellion as a sign of the Soviet Union's collapse is an interesting one, as it demonstrates the threat to tyrants everywhere. You will always be threatened by insurrection: if you deal with them gently, they will take advantage of you; if you deal with them harshly, they will internalize their resentment until it bursts forth with even greater force. The Soviet Union could not tolerate Prague because it might lead to the further destabilization of the Warsaw Pact. While the Brezhev Doctrine states that socialist nations cannot endanger international socialism, it was ultimately the USSR that decided what was best for international socialism, which turned out to be directly correlated (in their eyes) to the strength of the USSR. But the widespread, fast-growing nature of dissent proved too irrepressible for the Soviets, and the threat from within combined with the threat from without was doubly dangerous. The harsh response to Prague's liberalism was a symbol to the Soviet bloc and the world of the limited tolerance of the USSR for opposition to socialism within, but it also furthered the exposure of the state as a tyrant and contributed to the allegations of protestors.
The Prague conflict is discussed in Rock 'n Roll, a play by Tom Stoppard. He mentions frequently The Plastic People of the Universe, whose music became a symbol of resistance in Prague.

You Can't Handle the Truth

The Battle of Algiers is a fascinating film that I have wanted to see for quite some time, but somehow never got around to viewing. The clip we watched in class today shows a universality about questions of morality in conflict, in the 20th and 21st centuries at least. It reminds me of that famous speech from A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson explodes at Tom Cruise, laying out the line between civilians and the military. The military men portrayed here see torture and violence as routine, very necessary parts of their operation. We don't want to dirty our hands with this work, but it has to be done. They want leave to do their jobs, to defend and protect, by any means that is both possible and effective. So do we let the military commanders define their own moral code, if we have no comprehension of their true situation or what life-or-death decisions they are making? If you want to stay in Algeria, the colonel says, you must accept the consequences. If you want a secure America, he says, you must be prepared to give up some notion of freedom. Legality is not a top priority in a war zone, especially when the other side is using similar or worse methods. They are doing their duty as they see fit, unpleasant as it is to the rest of us. Watching these videos, I can't help but feel that this is still wrong, completely unjustifiable, but what do I really know about it? How would I act in the same situation? Morality becomes gray when survival and duty are on the line.

Berlin School of Electronic Music

A significant part of 20th Century German electronica seems to stem from this Berlin School of Electronic Music, a specific sound characterized by extremely long, flowing songs that sound "spacey" and alien started in the 1970s, emerging from the Krautrock movement of the 1960s. Krautrock signified a shift in the notion of German identity, as musicians soaked up what they learned from rock and roll and sought to create a distinctly German, post WWII sound. It was for the most part contained to West Germany. The Berlin School was the result of more bands experimenting with melodic lines and sequencers. Tangerine Dream is a popular and influential band that falls into this category. It contributed to the sound of the New Age and ambient genres. Notably, the band is well-known for touring with the then newly developed Moog modular synthesizer, which allowed it to have direct control over its sound by modifying the sound waves through modules, meaning a much larger variety of sounds and notes were possible. Though fiddly and difficult (check out these pictures), the Moog was among many synthesizers that revolutionized sound for electronic musicians. This was particularly true in Berlin, where the developing electronic music scene demanded new ways of synthesizing music for unique sounds.

What I Learned in the Gulag

This reading intrigued me greatly because of its combination of casual, brutal violence with a lofty philosophical discussion. I find Solzhenitsyn's conclusions about human nature astonishing for the mere fact that he came to them at what must have been the lowest point of his life, facing starvation or a cut throat in a wretched prison cell in Siberia. Yet he sees that there is good inside every human being, just as there is evil. The point of life and religion is the struggle to control that evil, but all human hearts have the potential. It seems that oftentimes desperate circumstances bring out the worst in people: starvation means stealing bread from another, cold means taking another person's shoes. Self-preservation trumps any moral code. Solzhenitsyn, however, only sees the universality of good and evil because of his desperate circumstances. Clarity came to him through intense suffering, a remarkable achievement. In a hospital where his companion is beaten to death, he believes that "even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained." The greatness of humanity, he seems to be saying, lies in its capacity for good even in the most awful of situations and perhaps the ability to believe in that capacity.
The Gulag Archipelago

Why didn't they nuke each other?

Mutually assured destruction.
The threat of total annihilation was too great. Even if one of the superpowers struck first, there was still a very good chance that the other side would not be so totally incapacitated that they could not inflict a potentially devastating retaliation. While in our simulation, there was a lot of angry noise being made, I think that in the actual Cold War, high tensions did not necessarily mean an unwillingness to talk. The concept of MAD entails the exposure on both sides of their weaknesses to nuclear attack, and neither the USSR nor the USA could afford to be entirely gung-ho with their nukes so long as they were vulnerable. Bluffing and rabble-rousing talk might have led them to the brink of nuclear war, as in the case of the Cuban missile crisis, but in the end, the Russians and the Americans backed down. The stakes were too great, and the crazed ideology not strong enough, for either side to sacrifice civilians, cities, and the stability and well-being of their country for the destruction of the other.