And family was warranted when in fact the Tsardom was palpably a mess and barely could withstand opposition by a bunch of intellectuals; European and especially British Imperialism was a force of immiseration for people on six continents, and the so-called representatives of Western representative
Gov't, Britain and Germany, with cousins as monarchs, could not figure out how to avoid a war that would kill nearly 8 million people and end by spreading a global flu pandemic. Whatever you want to call European Imperialism pre-WWI (and the US was catching up) it was a real horrorshow
For the so-called margins. No wonder inspired by Russia and Marx, they woke up to their exploitation. Amis' bleeding father's conversion to a rigid anti-communism occurs just when Vietnam really quags into a mire and truly shows just how much BS the domino "theory" was and how naked in its reach
for power "anti-communism" had become. What is sick and wrong about Amis' Stalin pamphlet is just how trivially personal he makes the political. Forces for sure were shaped by people, just like the British East India company enthralled the Raj or British liberalism starved Ireland but
Why Amis a novelist, not a scholar, is attracted to Stalin's USSR is he can make it about Josif and make it into a Story. One he thinks has not been told which is odd since Conquest and others had told the story YEARS before Koba was published in 2002. So why Amis published it is quite personal
But why he gets to publish it is quite impersonal, since he has proved while he is a popular novelist, he can move units in non-fiction especially if it is a bit personal--Kingsley was a Commie, Hitch is a Trot--so Mart's book report on Stalin's Terror gets published and a soft if dismissive
Treatment by the critics rather than the savaging it should have. Because in making it about Stalin and about communism qua ideology, Amis' only really flatters the Blimpie Legacy of Kingsley rather than truly do anything interesting. And I am not sure why he thinks laughter is somehow letting
Stalin off anymore than do people--especially the British--do not love a good joke about Hitler. Last note: anytime a writer or intellectual says laughter or irony is dead because this happened, tell them to pull the other one: It has Bells on It. Peace.