World History

Conor Cruise O'Brien lets the mask drop on of his deplorable new book.

"We Russians are doomed to teach mankind," wrote philosopher Grigory Chaadayev in 1848, "some awful lesson." The lesson turns out to be more than proving socialism's brutality and futility. It is also about the unlikelihood that elections alone will resolve a deep social and economic crisis.

When a people rebels and declares its independence, a central state can let them go or beat them into submission. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, we've seen some of both. In Chechnya, and adjacent Ingushetia, however, the Yeltsin government chose mass murder to maintain its evil empire.

Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia has engendered more than the usual amount of scaremongering. The author, we are told, is a Pan-Slavic nationalistic and religious fanatic whose views are outdated and irrelevant. Yet Solzhenitsyn used his first speech and press conference in Russia to promote two economic ideas that can actually move Russia forward: private property and free enterprise.

The belief in over-population is an ancient one. The leaders of the French Revolution were convinced that there were too many Frenchmen, and that an ideal France necessitated the elimination of many people. The myth of over-population did not originate with them. It is an ancient belief of statist man

Under the surface, Poland is seething with anti-government ferment. And the works of Ludwig von Mises and his students are part of the reason—testimony once again to the potency of truth.

Friedrich A. Hayek interviewed by John O’Sullivan.