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1
The
Truth Is
Out
There
American History
Since 1877
The Dark Carnival
The Dark Carnival
1962: Something
Wicked This Way
Comes
2004: Ray
Bradbury (1920-
2012) was awarded
the National Medal
of Arts
The Dark CarnivalCooger and Dark’s
Pandemonium Shadow
Show
– … What if someone discovers your secret dream … And what if that person suddenly makes your dream come true – before you learn the price you have to pay? …
The Dark CarnivalDealt with an issue which had largely disappeared from the American conversation by 1939
Dorothy and mind cure (Frank Baum)
The irony and/or contradiction at the heart of the twentieth-century (violence and utopianism)
A “war to end war”; the League of Nations; the “small world”; the “Star Trek”Federation; world brotherhood
The Dark CarnivalBut … the conversation about “dark things” was still there
Steven King (b1947), Salem’s Lot (1973); the Stand (1978); you can see the problem in the film version of the Shining (book 1977; movie 1980)
Ok in church but not in public
The Dark CarnivalPeter Straub (b1943), Julia (1975): Ghost Story (1979); Shadowland (1980)– … Tom left the chair
and walked down the aisle toward the empty stage. What was it Collins had said about wizards, in the story about the sparrows? They gave you what you asked for, but they made you pay for it …
The Dark CarnivalSuddenly (in 1982) these concerns reappeared in American politics
1982 (June 8): President Ronald Reagan gave a speech to the House of Commons
The Dark Carnival
We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention -- totalitarianism …
If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.
…What then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?
The Dark CarnivalThe 1980 election was a
referendum on Jimmy Carter
– Gas lines
– Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
(part of a general extension of
Soviet power after 1974)
– Iranian hostage crisis
– Abolished the Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board
The Dark CarnivalStagflation: 1978-80; Economic growth –4.8 to 2.5 to .5; Inflation – 7.5% to 11.3% to 13.5%; unemployment 9%
The misery index: 13% satisfied
Elite opinion thought this decline could not be reversed (the Japanese)
Carter referred to Vietnam as a war of “moral poverty”; pardoned all draft evaders; and lectured about the “inordinate fear of communism”
The Dark CarnivalAmong the elites, a general sense of “malaise”1980: Reagan elected with 50.75% of the vote (Carter held only 5 states and DC)– Attracted by his
optimism
The Dark CarnivalIn domestic policy: Reagan suggested “economic bill of rights”:
– Contrast with FDR in 1944 (health care, housing, food); for Reagan it wasn’t what government could take from other people but limits on government claims against fellow citizens
– Proposed a balanced budget; a line item veto; a two-thirds Congressional majority for tax increases; a constitutional spending limit; prohibition on wage and price controls
– Got nowhere with the Democratic Congress
The Dark CarnivalThese policy ideas were based on Reagan’s sense that the Federal Government was showing “signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed”; it was now about Constitutional principles; the government was now exercising powers not found in the Constitution
“It is no coincidence that our present troubles … result from the unnecessary and excessive growth of government.”
The Dark CarnivalIn economic policy he kept Paul Volker as
head of the Federal Reserve; pursued a
hard money policy to combat inflation,
and set the stage for the economic
prosperity inherited by President Clinton.
Pursued a hard money policy. Raised
interest rates to 20%.
The Federal Debt was stable by 1983 and
inflation decreased from 14.8% (1980) to
3% in 1983.
The Dark CarnivalThere was also a tax cut (Kemp-
Roth) in 1981 to bring the middle-
class tax rate from 37 to 23%. The
top rate was also lowered from 70 to
50%.
Kemp-Roth was modeled after the
tax cut proposed by John Kennedy
in 1962 and enacted after his death.
By 1984, the economy had changed.
The Dark CarnivalThe economy grew: 7.8% in 1983 and averaged 4.5% for the rest of Reagan’s Presidency.
Sixteen million jobs were created; a 17.7% gain. (Only Clinton did a bit better.) Income inequality decreased. The bottom fifth increased 50% and those in the middle fifth increased 36%. Designed on the historical precedent of Kennedy’s tax cut in 1962 (enacted after his death).
Deficits did increase because of defense spending (peace through strength) and payments on the national debt.
By the time Reagan left office his approval was 59% (up from the 13% for Carter).
But, with all of that there was something that most people did not notice at the time.
The Dark Carnival… I believe we live now at a turning point … We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism- Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history …
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November 9, 1989
(about 7 pm)
–Gunter Schabowski
»A press conference
»“A small mistake”
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❖Reply to an Italian journalist about a draft for procedures to obtain visas to visit the West
»No restrictions
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–In one night East Germany
was swept away (built wall
in 1961)
–The “cold war” ended with
a party
–The “Party is basically
kaput”
The Dark CarnivalSo where did this change come
from? Was Reagan simply lucky?
The CIA never figured out that the
command economy of the Soviet
Union didn’t work; as late as 1989,
thought the Soviet GNP was 2.8
trillion and growing – larger than
Japan and the two Germanys
combined; didn’t realize their
numbers were literally nonsense
The Dark CarnivalMost “experts” and the foreign policy
community thought he was crazy
Reagan came to the Presidency with a
very different idea and set of instincts –
did not accept the divided world
established at Yalta
So, where did this unexpected change
come from?
The answer comes in three parts
The Dark Carnival
The Great Terror
The Gulag
The Dark CarnivalRobert Conquest (1917-215)– 1968: The Great Terror; 1991
Stalin – The first open window into
Stalin’s state; In 1937 Stalin and Molotov had signed 3,167 death warrants and then gone to the movies
– 1986: Harvest of Sorrow; Holdomor – the terror famine in the Ukraine in the winter 1932-33; About 20 human beings were lost not for every word, but for every letter in this book (2.5-7.5 million were murdered)
A revised edition of the Great Terror in 1990; the publisher wanted a new title and Conquest’s friend (Kingsley Amis) suggested – I told you so, you F … fools
The Dark CarnivalConquest’s work demolished the idea that the Soviet regime was simply a variant of the European experience and would eventually converge toward Western norms (Kennan’s warning)
The regime was based upon the morals founded by Lenin and that produced the secret police and the gulag.
The Dark Carnival1974: A book was
published in the West
(Paris). Its author had
been expelled from the
Soviet Union
1974-77: The Gulag
Archipelago (three
volumes)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(1918-2008)
The Dark CarnivalKept off the Voice of America and President Ford’s “schedule” was to busy to see him in the White House; did not want to offend the Soviets
1978 (June 8): Commencement Address at Harvard; “A World Split Apart”“The Western World has lost its civil courage”Opened another window
The Dark Carnival
John Paul The Great
The Dark CarnivalNear the end of 1980, the Soviets
were getting nervous about
Poland; worried about a labor
union called Solidarity and the
attitude of the Polish Government;
massed 15 divisions along the
border and prepared to invade
The Pope sent Brezhnev a sharply
worded letter and the Soviets
backed away
The Dark CarnivalStalin had asked “how many divisions does the Pope have”; in 1980 the Soviets found out
1978 (16 Oct): Karol Josef Wojtyla becomes Pope (John Paul II); had been Archbishop of Krakow (1963); the first non-Italian since the 16th century
1942: Underground seminary –opposed the Nazis and the Communists; Hans Frank, the German Governor (1939) – “There will never again be Poland”
The Dark CarnivalFrank set up his residence in the old royal residence of Wawel Castle and told his subordinates:– “I openly admit that some
thousands of so-called important Poles will have to pay with their lives, but … every vestige of Polish culture is to be eliminated”
Thousands were killed –Priests, college professors and ordinary people
1940: Katyn Forest; 25,000
The Dark Carnival1979 (June 2): First trip to Poland
which lasted 8 days; 13 million
people saw him; the Soviets
realized the danger – the Central
Committee adopted a plan to
oppose the Vatican
1981 (May 13): Attempted
assassination; organized by the
KGB through the Bulgarian Secret
Service
The Dark Carnival
The Dark Carnival1980: the Founding of Solidarity in the Gdansk shipyards; Lech Walesa; wanted a free trade union
1980-88: Becomes an underground movement; helped by the new American President and Pope John Paul II
1982: Time’s Man of the Year
The Dark Carnival1988: Strikes across the country
August 1989: Would support a coalition government; The first non-Communist government in eastern Europe since 1945
By Christmas: the Republic of Poland had risen from the grave
The Dark Carnival
The Battle of Burbank
The Dark CarnivalAfter the war ended, Reagan said
he was “blindly and busily joining
every organization I could find that
would guarantee to save the
world”; he was a New Deal liberal
(his father) and thought the
communists were simply liberals
Involved with the Screen Actors
Guild (President 1946-47)
The Dark Carnival1945 (Oct): Became involved in what appeared to be only a labor dispute between the AFL and the CSU (Conference of Studio Unions); the CSU however was openly affiliated with communist organizations and pressed a strike against Warner Brothers with very little support; provoked violence (the Battle of Burbank)
The Dark CarnivalReagan’s ideas and instincts
about the Soviet Union were
clarified during this period; he
had experience of their
methods and ideas up close;
understood them from the
inside – determined they
would not prevail
The Dark CarnivalIn the first term:
– Got the economy
straightened out; Paul
Volker and hard
money; tax cuts;
emphasis not on
regulation and control
but focused on the
market and incentives
for success
The Dark CarnivalHe pursued a measured and careful strategy to modernize conventional forces; opposed “pseudo-arms control”; and began a resource competition
He spoke softly because there was a recognition that the Cold War had entered a dangerous phase
Yuri Andropov came to power; he was a hardened Stalinist and deeply ignorant of the West
The Dark CarnivalAndropov was haunted by
apocalyptic visions (died in Feb
1984); 1983 – a Soviet Satellite
went defective (the most
dangerous moment)
Reagan also waged economic
warfare against the Soviet Union;
realized the Soviets were financing
through loans from the West;
becomes a national security issue
The Dark Carnival1981: Realized that the declaration of martial law in Poland would allow an embargo of Western money and technology; tasked William Clark (NSC until 1983) to set a course which would lead to Soviet economic collapse
1981: The French discovered Line X (“Farewell”); briefed Reagan; two hundred Soviet spies and officials; dealing with a “pirate”state
The Dark CarnivalSimilar to “Super Lend-Lease” (1940s); the CIA denied this was going on; allowed Reagan to understand exactly where the Soviets were behind
William Casey (CIA) set up the Technology Transfer Intelligence Center; in 1982 (Jan), Weiss was instructed to begin a “sting” transfer of “bad” product
The Dark Carnival1983 (March): Announced SDI
1984: Announced some conciliatory gestures and defined a way out for the Soviets a year before Gorbachev came to power– Gorbachev was determined to prevail;
kept the spending levels and increased the germ warfare program but slowly the Politburo came to realize that they could not compete (military, agriculture, economic production and R&D)
The Dark CarnivalThe CIA and the elites never
understood any of this – the Soviet
economy was a wreck; an “irrational”economy
Second term:
– 1986 (April): Chernobyl
– 1986: Reykjavik Summit; Soviet strategy
was to kill SDI; Reagan walked away from a
“deal” – the beginning of the end
The Dark CarnivalThere were a (very) few people who recognized what was happening.
One of those was Herb Meyer, who was special assistant to the Director of the CIA and Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. (Another “Long Telegram”?)
1983 (Nov 30): Meyer wrote a classified memo for Casey and John McMahon (Deputy Director, CIA) titled Why Is The World So Dangerous?
The Dark CarnivalMeyer thought the Cold War had
entered a new stage. There were
signs that America was gaining
and the Soviet Union was
declining.
– After 66 years the Soviet State
had failed to become a country.
Could only survive with
favorable economics and
demographics. This would not
happen.
The Dark Carnival– The Soviet economy was
headed for “calamity”.
– Eastern Europe would be more
difficult to control
– Time was not on the side of the
Soviet Union
Meyer made two predictions:
– “if present trends continue,
we’re going to win the Cold
War”
The Dark CarnivalAnother person who also
understood what was happening
was Daniel Patrick Moynihan – “It
was clear the Soviet Union was
coming apart”; It would happen as
the US kept applying pressure; he
argued there should be no
“honorable accommodation” – no
bargaining as the foreign policy
“experts” and professors were
suggesting
The Dark Carnival1987 (June): Reagan went to West
Berlin. He had been there in 1978.
His speechwriter was Peter
Robinson. In Berlin, he met a
woman (Ingeborg Elz) who told
him that if Gorbachev was
committed to “glasnost” he could
prove it by tearing down the wall
(1961). Robinson put the phrase in
the speech.
The Dark CarnivalOn November 4, 1989 two years
after the speech a million people
took to the streets of East Berlin.
The protests spread to the rest of
the country by November 8-9 and
the wall came down.
Caught everyone by surprise. The
question of the reintegration of
Germany (Herbert Kohl).
The Dark CarnivalReagan was interviewed by ABC (Sam Donaldson). Did you think it would happen so soon?
I didn’t now when it would come, but I am an eternal optimist, and I believed with all my heart that it was in the future.
Some of the street banners read: 1789-1989. Meaning that the era of utopian revolutionary politics had ended (the storming of the Bastille).
Timothy Garton Ash: Nineteen Eighty-Nine also caused, throughout the world, a profound crisis of identity on what had been known since the French Revolution of 1780 as “the left”.
The Dark Carnival
Postscripts
Colonel Carter Clarke
–Chief: U.S. Army’s Special
Branch of G2 (Army
Intelligence)
»1943 rumors of secret German-
Soviet peace negotiations
The Dark Carnival–Elite code breakers
–Arlington Hall (before the NSA)
–Broken by 1946
–Showed not diplomatic traffic but cables from professional intelligence case officers
The Dark Carnival
»Between 1943 and 1949: about
2900 cables
»Read diplomatic, commercial,
NKVD/KGB and military/naval
traffic
»At least 349 American citizens,
immigrants and residents (can
only identify 108 for sure)
The Dark Carnival
Serious damage: spying and
policy
–Harry Dexter White (second at US
Treasury); Worked on the
creation of the IMF and the
World Bank; used the Division of
Monetary Resources to recruit
spies ( 5-7 that we know of)
The Dark Carnival
Treasury also advocated a plan to transform Germany after the war into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character. This was one of Stalin’s major objectives. The plan was drafted by those now identified as Soviet agents.
Lauchlin Currie (trusted Roosevelt personal assistant)
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–Maurice Halperin (head of research section OSS)
–William Perl (scientist, tests of advanced airplanes, jet fighter technology)
»Mig-15 in Korea
The Dark Carnival
The atomic spiesKlaus Fuchs
The Rosenbergs (Julius)
David Greenglass
Theodore Hall
»The “early” bomb and the Korean War
The Dark Carnival
Venona–“No such agency” until 11
July 1995 (Moynihan); 1997 Report by the Commission on Government Secrecy
–Truman told only a part
»General Omar Bradley (Oct 18, 1949)
The Dark Carnival
McCarthy’s tactics
and the substance
–Spies (not a fantasy)
–An honest discussion of
Stalinism ? (The context)
–The criticism of dissent
The Dark CarnivalThe Party (honest opposition ?): finances and policy direction
The use of “front” groups and ideas (Orwell)
Was Arthur Miller the best guide to the era? The Crucible (witches)
The Dark Carnival
A better guide to what was happening in the late 1940s and early 1950s ?
On The Waterfront (1954)
The Dark Carnival1992: Maria Schmidt (a
researcher) was working in
the Hungarian Archives;
She came across the
debriefing notes for Field
from 1954; Contained an
extensive discussion of the
espionage activity of Alger
Hiss; Confirmed by the
Venona intercepts
The Dark Carnival
1984: Chamber’s family received
the Presidential Medal of Freedom
1988 (June 7): his farm was listed
as a National Historical Landmark
By 1998: A clear vindication (thirty
seven years after his death) for
Whittaker Chambers – he had been
telling the truth
The Dark CarnivalReagan was reviled by his political opponents
They thought he was just an “actor” who slept through the job; a decade of “greed”Never liked by the Republican elites
1988: John Kerry, the Reagan Administration was a period of “moral darkness”Surprised by the outpouring of affection after his death.
The Dark Carnival
Ronald Reagan died of Alzheimer's on
June 5, 2004; one of those who came to sit
by his coffin and think about the events of
the 1980s was Lech Walesa
The Dark Carnival21 November 2011: A statue of Ronald Reagan was unveiled in Warsaw.
Lech Walesa: Let us bow before Ronald Reagan for the fact that our generation was able to bring an end to the great divisions and conflicts of the world… What happened seemed impossible or unthinkable.
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The
Truth Is
Out
There