Russia’s Summer of Idealism

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/opinion/russias-summer-of-idealism.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 7:05 AM
Subject: re: Russia’s Summer of Idealism
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Marx  and Engels dreamed of a world in which the People were empowered and enlightened and the State would shrivel into irrelevancy. Lenin and Stalin took many of Marx's words, but elevated the State to center of a destructive cult in which the citizen was infantilized.  Modern Russians are heirs to all their legacies.  No one can see today whether this is the beginning of a revolution or just a blip. But it affirms that Lysenko was wrong. The grandchildren of the Russians whom Stalin pounded flat are standing upright, helping their fellows without appeal to the State. That's a long way from a triumph for Marx's vision, but it is a repudiation of Stalin's, and Putin's.

Barry Haskell Levine