TWO MEN, BOTH WITH IDEAS, ONE HAD IDEALS
While doing some research on the great motivational persons of the last century, the lives of two men amongst eight or so stood out to me at the time. Both moved and motivated hoards of their countrymen, at a time of need and while both were engaged in war.
Yet they contrasted differently because of circumstance and had the ability to move the masses by two different opposed methodologies, this fascinated me. Mahatma Ghandi and Joseph Stalin. Two styles, two backgrounds, two destinations and both successful. One to be remembered as the patriarch of personal dignity and freedom and the other as both a hero and a despicably cruel tyrant.
MAHATMA GHANDI
October 21, 1946. Preston Grover of the Associated Press of America asked Gandhi, during an interview in New Delhi, if he had any message for America. This was 1946. He described the financial situation today.
Gandhiji (Indian spelling of reverence) replied, " Dislodge the money God called "Mammon" from the throne and find a corner for a poor God. I think America has a very big future but in spite of what is said to the contrary, it has a dismal future if it swears by "Mammon". "Mammon" has never been known to be a friend of any of us to the last. He is always a false friend".
Mohandas K. Gandhi also said: " I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers". Today he would be dealing with not only the opposition but soothsayers, talking heads, blogsters, TV personalities, Hollywood, spin, lies and anyone today that qualifies for Rupert Murdock's payroll. And now add phone hacking, eves dropping and sabotage, fake news, and going soft on nuts and allies.
He wrote many of my favorite passages. I am a fan of Gandhi, his ability to see truth clearly, and express it, is a gift few others have ever had. He was a gift to the world.
It is when he asks: "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy". He also said: "One of the most dangerous thoughts spiritually perilous to humanity is Politics without Principle". Wow, what a clear vision of today.
In another story I quoted Gandhiji. I find so many answers in the words of Mohandas Gandhi. Again, he seemed to address all the questions that are posed by minds that see and question and converts them into simple truth, obviously something Washington hasn't a clue about.
Our system is like the oil in your car, each day the oil gets a little dirtier. Not as noticeable as you might think, just a little dirtier. One day is it goes on long enough the engine will seize, already it seems we are down a quart. He understood the oil theory but spoke of the ocean in a positive term.
He said, "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty". If that’s true, possibly all of the Congressional elected officials are not corrupt. But that oil slick sure looks like bunker fuel number three these days and the name Exxon Valdez is painted on the rear wall of Congress.
Known: Mahatma Gandhi
Born: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Dates: (2 Oct 1869 – 30 Jan 1948)
He was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
The honorific Mahatma in Sanskrit means "high-souled," “venerable” was first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, and is is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu which is Gujarati: endearment for "father, "papa." in India.
Born and raised in a Hindu, merchant caste, family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights.
After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km 250 mi. Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942.
He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same.
He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.
Gandhi's vision of a free India based on religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a smaller Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan.
As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony.
The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 at age 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating.
Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest at point-blank range.
Gandhi is commonly, though not officially, considered the Father of the Nation in India. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-wide as the International Day of Non-Violence.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE "MAN OF STEEL"
THE MAN OF STEEL
POLITICAL NOM: Joseph Stalin
Born; Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin
Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин
Born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili, Georgian
18 December 1878– 5 March 1953
De facto leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953.
Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party’s Central Committee in 1922.
He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through suppressing Lenin's criticisms (in the postscript of his testament) and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition.
By the late 1920s, he was the unchallenged leader of the Soviet Union. He remained general secretary until the post was abolished it in 1952, concurrently serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 onward.
Under Joseph Stalin's rule, the concept of "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of Soviet society. He replaced the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power.
However, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Soviet correctional labour camps (GULUGS) and the deportation of many others to remote areas. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor in Ukraine.
Later, in a period that lasted from 1936–39, Stalin instituted a campaign against alleged enemies of his regime called the Great Purge, in which hundreds of thousands were executed. Major figures in the Communist Party, such as the old Bolsheviks, Leon Trotsky, and several Red Army leaders, were killed after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the government and Stalin.Joseph Stalin also had a few things to say.
But first let me say, I am not a fan of Stalin; his one compelling virtue to me was he hated Hitler as much as I and as most of the world did. Otherwise, he was no different and had as much blood on his hands as Hitler. But, if it wasn't for Hitlers egotistical stupidity in opening the second front and Stalin's tenacity, many in Europe today would be speaking German as a first language.
Stalin was Stalin, his name means Steel in Russian. He was a great motivator. Had he written more, his book could of been called "Caliber Selection in Motivation" He believed a SKS or a Tokorev to the back of the head kept an Army moving forward.
He was right. He was an innovator. In fact it was he who abolished the word “retreat” in he Russian Army and enforced it by taking the most ruthless men of the Gulags and putting them at the back of the advancing troops with orders to shoot any who fell back... the ultimate motivation policy. Go forward and possibly live or backwards and definitely die.
He controlled his Congress well; and he was a frugal conservative. He shot several of them at least once a week. No corruption, no dissidents, no complications, NO adversaries that way. His way or buried under the highway, well the ruble. And you could really call him a "fiscal conservative". He always shot people three or four tied belly to back stacked in a row to conserve bullets. Usually five was the limit.
HIS MOST PERTINENT THOUGHTS - STALIN QUOTES and THOUGHTS
- "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach". Sounds like a situation we are in today. Our armies fighting terrorism are at the end of the reach and it is costing us in men and material and we ask the question..for what? Another book by another General.
- "Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts". He should be selling real estate. Thats explains politics and the economic situation today.
- Sounds like the mantra of a particular political party. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and one day the poor learn to shoot a gun. If you could go back through time and look at the way the other rulers of Russia kept order in their world, you would find them little different from Stalin.
- The Czars were certainly not the keepers of good government. The difference was his thinking was born of a harsh war, in a harsher environment, with a fierce competitor requiring a new set of rules, wasn’t pretty, but war isn't.
- Nevertheless his inhumanity offset anything good he accomplished other than his aid in the destruction of the Third Reich. He was on the winning side of a horrific war but on the losing side of humanity.
- "Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.”
- We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — “true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery.
- If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a “ eace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.
- A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.
- The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognized by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.
- The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party’s sharpest and most powerful weapon.
- If the opposition disarms, all is well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.
- We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.
- Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism.
In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death. - We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us. Ten years later, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
- Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division, and from the antagonism between poor and rich, means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.
- Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
- In the Soviet Army, it takes more courage to retreat than advance.
- I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.
- God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.
- The Jews are not a nation!
- There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.
- I'm finished. I trust no one, not even myself. Do you remember the tsar? Well, I‘m like a tsar.
- “Why did you beat me so hard?” he said to his mother in her later years. her response was “That’s why you turned out so well”.
- Stalin said this often. This seems to have originated with the Spanish military leader Juan Domingo de Monteverde, "four walls are three too many for a prison — you only need one for an execution.”
- The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.
- We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us. "If we were to hang the last capitalist, another would suddenly appear to sell us the rope”.
STALIN - THE GAME CHANGING MOTIVATOR
As you can see Joseph Stalin had a lot to say. I was doing a paper on Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin looking specifically at their styles of motivation they used.
Roosevelt was a party builder, he brings people together for the cause.
Churchill was a slogan maker that rallied people.
Stalins niche was fear motivation. And it was used frequently, he created fear.
He had a problem with part of his lazy congressional team objecting to his ideas and never showing up for work in the Russian Proletariat. That was on Tuesday, so he shot five of them, who showed up late on Wednesday. All of the rest showed up for work on Thursday quite early, since they weren't due till Friday and in a great mood. Stalin solved that problem.
But his country was faced with the German onslaught and annihilation. He knew there was little time for political pandering. He did not tolerate a lot of that, probably surpassing Hitler. His solution to the German Panzer attacks at Stalingrad, he shot deserters or retreaters at will, was feared more by his troops than to be captured by the Germans.
Some said he removed the backup gears on the Russian Tanks (rumor) and his goal was to be more hated for what he could do than the Germans they were confronting. Obviously for his peasant Army it worked. And he had a few good Generals who knew war. Like Zhukov one of the best in tank warfare and turned the battlefield around.
EDITOR: He had a no competition clause, he just shot the competition.
- In August 1939, Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that divided their influence and territory within Eastern Europe, resulting in their invasion of Poland in September of that year, but Germany later violated the agreement and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad.
- After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States. The Yalta and Potsdam conferences established communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc countries as buffer states, which Stalin deemed necessary in case of another invasion. He also fostered close relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea.
- Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War. During this period, the USSR became the second country in the world to successfully develop a nuclear weapon, as well as launching the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature in response to another widespread famine and the Great Construction Projects of Communism.
- In the years following his death, Stalin and his regime have been condemned on numerous occasions, most notably in 1956 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced his legacy and initiated a process of de-Stalinization. He remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant similar to his wartime enemy Adolf Hitler; however, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed.