{"id":142623,"date":"2021-12-30T18:27:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T02:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=142623"},"modified":"2022-07-02T09:48:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-02T17:48:25","slug":"142623","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=142623","title":{"rendered":"Stalingrad"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Vassily Grossman novel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* When he spoke about the predicament of science in Czechoslovakia, his voice began to quaver. Then he shouted, \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to describe, you have to see it with your own eyes! Scientific thought is in fetters. People are afraid of their own shadows. They\u2019re afraid of their fellow workers. Professors are afraid of their students. People\u2019s thoughts, their inner lives, their families and friendships\u2014everything is under fascist control. A man I once studied with\u2014we sat at the same table and worked through eighteen organic chemistry syntheses together, we\u2019ve known each other for thirty years\u2014this friend of mine begged me not to ask him any questions whatsoever. He\u2019s the head of an important faculty, but he behaves like some petty criminal, afraid the police might collar him at any moment. \u2018Don\u2019t ask me anything at all,\u2019 he said. \u2018It\u2019s not only my colleagues I\u2019m afraid of. I\u2019m afraid of my own voice. I\u2019m afraid of my own thoughts.\u2019 He was petrified I might quote something he\u2019d said and that even if I didn\u2019t mention his name\u2014or his university or even his city\u2014the Gestapo would be able to trace this back to him. You can learn more from simple people\u2014from chambermaids and porters, from drivers and footmen. They think they\u2019re anonymous and so they have less to fear from talking to a foreigner. But intellectuals and scientists have lost all capacity for freedom of thought\u2014they\u2019ve lost the right to call themselves human beings. In science, fascism now rules. Its theories are terrifying, and tomorrow these theories will become practice. They already have become practice. People talk seriously about sterilization and eugenics. One doctor told me that the mentally ill and the tubercular are being murdered. People\u2019s hearts and minds are going dark. Words like freedom , conscience and compassion are being persecuted. People are being forbidden to speak them to children or to write them in private letters. That\u2019s fascism for you\u2014and may it be damned!\u201d<\/p>\n

* [At the Moscow zoo:] Just then a fox cub emerged from the bushes. He looked anxious and troubled; his face looked baleful and his tail was sweeping from side to side. His eyes shone, and his thin, moulting flanks were rising and falling very rapidly. He was longing to take part in the game; he would steal forward a few steps and then, overcome by fear, flatten himself against the ground and freeze. All of a sudden he leaped forward and threw himself into the fray with an odd little squeal, playful yet somehow pitiful. The dingo pups knocked him off his feet, and he lay there on one side. His eyes still shone and he was trustfully exposing his belly. Then he let out a piercing cry of reproach\u2014one of the dingo pups must have bitten him too hard. This was the end of him: the dingo pups went for his throat, and the game on the grass turned into a murder. A keeper ran up, plucked the dead creature out of the melee and carried it away; hanging down from the keeper\u2019s hand were a skinny dead tail and a dead snout, with one open eye. The red dingo pups responsible for this murder followed the keeper, their curled tails quivering with intense excitement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Vassily Grossman novel: * When he spoke about the predicament of science in Czechoslovakia, his voice began to quaver. Then he shouted, \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to describe, you have to see it with your own eyes! Scientific thought is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[592],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143790,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142623\/revisions\/143790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}