Reading Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History has me thinking about a few of the lessons in political economy I’ve picked up in the last two years.
1. One of the frequent ideas put forth in comparisons between Soviet totalitarianism and Nazi totalitarianism is that the Nazi regime was inherently evil and cruel, and could not have been run more humanely, while the Soviet regime was not inherently (as) evil and went awry without necessarily implicating the ideology behind it. The first part of the statement is pretty much true. To the extent that National Socialism means what Adolf Hitler wanted it to mean?i.e. not what modern-day Russian Hitler devotees want it to mean?the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe were going to be enslaved and killed off eventually even if all of the Jews in the affected areas had somehow managed to escape.
The second part of the statement is more…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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