Martin Amis. Koba the Dread - Laughter and the 20 millions. Alfred A. Knopf, Canada. ISBN 0- 676-97517-8 ($36.75 hardcover)
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A reader may think that everything is known about Communism and Stalinism - that it is all passé, none of a concern in our present world. True to a point - but with “Koba the Dread” we have a book with which to reflect, to learn and to enjoy (in a literary sense). With Martin Amis’ verbal eloquence, succinct and satirical thought along with impressive reference material, a philosophical picture is painted of the value of human life, totally disregarded by Communism, and it’s main practitioner, Stalin. Further, this work is a valuable addition to relatively meagre writings and reportings about the crimes of Communism, in comparison to much more extensive coverage of Nazi crimes. It attempts to bring in some welcome balance, even including rare comparative discussion of those crimes. Related World War II crimes are also discussed. It is a compendium for the political neophyte, and a valuable historical recording of hardships suffered by victims. The book is easy reading due to its literary style.

An integral part of Amis’ writing is the inclusion of personal concerns and passions about his family’s losses, even a letter to his dead father Kingsley Amis ( who used to be a Communist until 1956), and a letter to his friend Christopher Hitchens ( author of “Why Orwell Matters”). Both refer to British poet and author Robert Conquest ( author of a study of Stalinist oppression, “The Great Terror”, which put forward 20 million victims).

Throughout the book, the guiding theme is the value of life, illustrated by plentiful documented descriptions of victims’ sufferings, eloquently transmitted to the reader, even in a subliminal way.

A few selected observations about the intriguing contents: Part I, “The Collapse of the Value of Human Life”, starts with a quotation from Conquest’s “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine.” An excerpt:“... We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the action here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but letter, in this book.” The entire quotation represents 340 letters. The book is 411 pages long... (How more poignant can one get?)

Part I describes the initial early development of Communism, enriched with interesting anecdotes of Lenin, Trotsky, Nabokov, Gorky, the Bolsheviks, etc. While Communism grew in Russia, Lenin was contemptuous of this - in his view, Communism was to be international, to be “exportable”. There is a description of Lenin’s famine of 1921-25 (c. 5 million dead), famine “belonging to the Communist tetrarchy: the other three elements being terror, slavery, and of course, failure, monotonous and incorrigible failure”. There are episodes from Kolyma and other slavecamps, with some of Solzhenitzyn’s references, and a note of Stalin’s saying: “Death solves all problems”. Martin Amis observes that “after the death there would be no man, and no problem, but there would be the indisputable coprse”, and elaborates on that.

Then Amis notes: “Bolshevism was exportable, and produced nearly identical results elsewhere. Nazism could not be duplicated. Compared to it, the other fascist states were simply amateurish.”

Part II, “Iosif the Terrible: Short Course”, opens with a census note from 1937, which had shown an actual population in the Soviet Union of 147 million. Stalin had said that he expected a new total of 170 million. The census Board reported a figure of 163 million. So Stalin had the Census Board arrested and shot... There was another dispute in 1939. From the total population figures Stalin subtracted the membership of the Census Board... (One wonders, what would Census Canada think?)

Before that, after the internal power-struggle, fascinatingly described, which ended in Stalin’s favour, the Collectivization (1929-1931) was the opening and defining phase of Stalin’s untrammelled power. “It was the first thing he did the moment his hands were free. To enforce it, Party activists fanned out from the cities. Not all Soviet villages contained kulaks, but all villages had to be terrorized, so kulaks had to be found in all Soviet villages... about [a]12 million quota was set.” Exceeding the quota was rewarded. Then followed the 1933 terror-famine in Ukraine (5 million dead), and in the Don and Volga regions ( 2 million dead).

This part contains also a through description of Stalin’s youth ( he selected the nickname “Koba” for himself), his family life, political show-trials and military purges with associated executions (and punishment even of their family members).

On the ironic side, there is a story during the Terror Years, of a Party Conference, Stalin being absent. Proceedings wound up with a tribute to Stalin. Everyone started applauding, and no one dared to stop.” After 10 minutes, with make-believe entusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers. The first man to stop clapping was arrested and given 10 years on another charge.

Part III, “When We Dead Awake”, is a philosophical, freedom oriented section, basically in the form of a letter to Christopher Hitchens, and a “Letter to My Father’s Ghost”, with associated descriptions of life of political prisoners in Butyrski prison and Kengir Special Camp.

Summary:

This is a poignant, well researched and melancholy book, within a framework of a philosphical discourse - a source and a reminder to the reader on life and its blessings, which are not always acknowledged nor appreciated. That life is put into a perspective. In particular, hopefully it should enlighten the aupporters and apologists of Communism, exposing their fallacies. Amis shows that the horror matters - a fact not always accepted by the West. This is his rebuttal to Stalin’s statement that the “...death of one person is tragic, the death of a million a mere statistic”.

It should be added here that according to reports by the BBC (Sept. 25th) and the Globe and Mail (Sept. 28th), this harvest of sorrow has reached even the present time. Namely, the Russian human-rights organization “Memorial” believes that they have discovered a mass-grave in the woods near St. Petersburg, containing the bodies of approximately 30,000 victims, murdered in the late 1930’s. Excavations are proceeding. However, this action has not received any support from the Russian government. There is a “stony silence from the Kremlin” regarding these skeletons in the cupboard, literally speaking. There is a fear that Stalin’s terror is being further whitewashed. The 50th anniversry of Stalin’s death is approaching in 2003.

So far, a set of coins have been issued, commemorating Stalin; the old Soviet national anthem has been restored, a plaque at the Kremlin has been unveiled in Stalin’s honour. History is in the making.

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