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Krawtchouk's Mind
A reader writes: "Central Europe Review is running an article on a gulag-condemned Soviet scientist whose contribution to the first computer is virtually unknown because of the Cold War mentality that infected much of society on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
The story tells of how in 1937, American digital computer pioneer John Atanasoff came across a Myhailo Krawtchouk paper on a new method for finding approximate solutions to differential equations. Atanasoff tried sending a letter to him, but received no response. Krawtchouk had been attainted for giving a favorable review of the work of "enemies of the people" and shipped to Siberia for 20 years of gold mining, where he died four years later. Krawtchouk's biography gives a more detailed account of how Krawtchouk was labeled a "Polish spy" and "Ukrainian nationalist," stripped of his Academy of Sciences membership, and forced to sign a confession -- that he later retracted -- under torture and threats upon his family.
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the Cold War mentality that infected much of society on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The story tells of how in 1937...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Cold War and the Iron Curtain didn't begin until after WWII, in the late 1940's.
And while I'm on the subject, what the hell does the original poster mean "both sides"? As far as I am aware, the US and UK never sent anyone to a forced labour camp for daring to criticize the state. In fact, Communist parties both existed back then and still exist today all throughout the West. Just this lunchtime I walked past someone selling Socialist Worker, as anti-capitalist, anti-democratic magazine as you can imagine, and he was perfectly free to do that. No-one was ever sent to a gulag for opposing the government, hell we didn't even have gulags in the first place! It was the Soviets who were guilty of intolerance, persecution and oppression, not the West.
Time to call a spade a fucking shovel. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, they lost, end of story.
As others have pointed out, recent historical analysis is proving that McCarthy has been something of a liberal boogy man. Nobody actually went to prison as part of any McCarthy investigation, but there is increasingly strong evidence that there was, in fact, Soviet penetration of US Government agencies at many levels.
Compare this to Stalin's purges going on about the same time where many thousands died and others languished in Gulags for merely associating with someone who was suspected of disloyalty. I'll take McCarthy era blacklisting over the abject terror of the Cold War Soviet Union any time.
Oh really? Exactly what Hoover-era FBI technique could compare to what the KGB was doing? I've never heard of any technique that the FBI ever used that wasn't abused far worse by the KGB. While the Hoover-era FBI was far from blameless, I find the comparison obscene.
The case of Krawtchouk is instructive. Karwtchouk died in a prison for merely writing a letter to Western colleague. The Western Scientist, as far as we know, was never even investigated and certainly suffered no deprivations.
Claiming that others are seeing things in "black and white" is a convenient dodge against taking a stand against real tyranny. No government in the history of Man has ever been completely clear of all wrongdoing, but some are so dark that it serves us well to highlight the contrast.