This Day in History: The Mad Gasser of Mattoon struck for the first time on this day in 1944.
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (also known as the "Anesthetic Prowler," the "Phantom Anesthetist," or simply the "Mad Gasser") was the name given to the person or people believed to be responsible for a series of apparent gas attacks that occurred in Mattoon, Illinois, during the mid-1940s. More than two dozen separate cases of gassings were reported to police over the span of two weeks, in addition to many more reported sightings of the suspected assailant. The gasser's supposed victims reported smelling strange odors in their homes which were soon followed by symptoms such as paralysis of the legs, coughing, nausea and vomiting. No one died or had serious medical consequences.
There are three primary theories about the Mattoon Mad Gasser incident: mass hysteria, industrial pollution, or an actual physical assailant. The events have also been written about by authors on the paranormal.
"While the phenomenon of mass hysteria is most likely in this case, some researchers disagree with this theory and instead assert that an actual assailant was responsible for the attacks. One writer/researcher who is a resident of Mattoon has gone as far as naming a suspect. The lack of concrete evidence may make discovering the truth of this incident impossible. However, regardless of the exact cause of the event, it remains an exciting chapter of history in the small town of Mattoon, Illinois." Source
This Day in History: Mary Shelley was born on this day in 1797. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction.
She wrote Frankenstein while still a teenager.
National Frankenstein Day is celebrated on this day every year.
Helen Moore wrote the following in 1886:
Mrs. Shelley herself, in the preface of the last London edition of “Frankenstein," published during her life, has told how she tried day after day to think of a plot; to invent something uncanny or horribly fantastic, and how each morning, to the question, “Have you thought of a story?" she was obliged to answer "No," until a train of thought supplied by conversation of a metaphysical tone which she had listened to between Shelley and Byron, entered into her state of reverie in semi-sleep, and suggested the essential outlines of the plot of "Frankenstein."
What was thus suggested was probably nothing more than the central figures of the weird conception. Nothing could be simpler than the plot, nothing more horrible than the situations and the details. Frankenstein is a student who, by the study of occult sciences, acquires the power of imparting life to a figure which he had made. Graves and charnel-house had furnished the needed material from which he had constructed this colossal human form. To the thing thus prepared he is able to impart life. It lives and possesses human attributes. The rest of the tale is occupied in depicting the nameless horrors which visited Frankenstein as the result of his creation. The thing becomes the bane of his life. He tries to fly from it, but there is no final escape. One by one, the monster that he had created slays the brother, friend, sister, and bride of the luckless student, who himself finally falls a victim to his own wretched and unto-ward creation. The monster, upon its part, strives to adapt itself to life, but fails; finds no possibility of companionship, no admission into any human fellowship.
Such in brief outline is the plot, if it can be so called, of the tale which, with eager hands, the youthful romancer penned before the first horror of the idea had faded from her brain. At Shelley's suggestion the story was amplified. The introductory letters were inserted and the pastoral episode and other incidents were added to the later part of the narrative. As originally written the story began with the words, "It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils." In the work as published these words introduce Chapter IV.
Regarded as a mere tale, it is difficult to account for the hold this story has always had upon the minds of the reading world. As a story it does not justify its own success. To say that it is remarkable as a work of imagination does not meet the difficulty. By a work of the imagination, as used in the current criticism of "Frankenstein," is simply meant that it is a fantastic romance, such as we find in the "Arabian Nights," or in the prose tales of Poe. But a position utterly different from these is accorded to "Frankenstein."
We have intimated that there was a dual quality in it, to which it owed its singular power and place in literature. One element is doubtless the horror of the tale and the weird fancy of the author's imagination in the ordinary acceptation of the word. But it is to an entirely different department of mental conception that we must look for the secret of its peculiar influence. The faculty of imagination is something more than the recalling and rearrangements of past impressions. Profoundly considered, it is that function of the mind which formulates, as though real, a state of things which if present would so appear. It is the power of projecting the mind into unhappened realities. It is the faculty of picturing unseen verities. There is thus in it a prophetic element, not at all miraculous, but dependent upon subtile laws of association and suggestion. It is to this element that "Frankenstein" owes its power over thoughtful minds. It is by virtue of the allegorical element in it that it holds its high position as a work of the imagination. Yet so unobtrusively is the allegory woven through the thread of the romance, that, while always felt, it can scarcely be said to have been detected. Certain it is that no one has directed attention to this phase, or carefully attempted an analysis of the work, with the view of deducing the meaning thus legible between the lines.
That Mrs. Shelley herself was conscious of this element is certain, by the double title she gave it,— "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus." Furthermore, that she should thus embody, under the apparent guise of a weird story, suggestions of moral truths, developments of mental traits,—normal and abnormal,—and hints at, and solutions of, social questions, was in strict accord both with her own intellectual state and with the circumstances under which "Frankenstein" was produced. And yet nothing is more improbable than that it was written with such design, or that the youthful author was fully aware or even conscious of the extent to which the allegorical overlies largely the narrative in her work. This very unconsciousness of result, this obliviousness to hidden truths, is a distinguishing mark of genius. To take daily account of stock proclaims the small trader, not the merchant prince. Placed in a congenial atmosphere, genius in breathing the breath of life will exhale truths. The very gist of genius is embodied in this hidden relation to truth. That mind has genius which, detecting germs of truth under forms where the common eye sees them not, affords in itself the place and pabulum for their growth.
We know the circumstance under which the book was written; the stories which suggested it were all weird in form and allegorical in type; the minds of those by whom Mrs. Shelley was at that time surrounded were minds to whom the mystical was the natural mode of thought and speech. Her own inherited and acquired mental traits were markedly of this same character. Furthermore, at this time the influence of Shelley was strongest upon her. Not that of one nature mastering and overpowering a weaker, but that yet stronger bond of one mind fitted by nature and oneness of motive to gain insight into, and be in unison with, the other.
Such, in a remarkable degree, was her relation at this time to Shelley; to her his nature was revealed. They had spoken and dwelt upon his past until it was an open book to her. His aims and his failures, his aspirations and fears, his nature and philosophy were familiar and ever present to her mind. Moreover, from him she had learned much about the great world of men and things, broadening her nature and conceptions beyond the ordinary limit of feminine knowledge; indeed, with the result of attaching her own peculiar insight to the facts and ideas thus included within her extending horizon. In both of their minds the tendency to dwell on social and ethical problems was strong, and to such natures union means cubic strength. What wonder that, if, underlying her story thus produced, should lie partly concealed or vaguely hinted, social and moral ideas, awaiting but recognition, to become in turn the suggestors of their own redevelopment in the minds of us who read.
That some, nay, many, of these have an almost direct bearing upon Shelley himself, either as proceeding from him or pointing to him, is to be expected; to say that they all thus have would be perhaps straining a theory otherwise tenable. What we can safely affirm is that he who, with this idea of the allegorical substratum, will reread the story, will be richly repaid in the suggestions the mind cannot fail to receive, and which, according to the mind of each, will attach to the nature of Shelley himself, or, more widely taken, will stand as general truths, applicable alike to all.
Such a general truth is that pictured in the character and pursuit of the student Frankenstein himself. He exhibits to us the man of one idea, absorbed in but one department of science, not only abandoning other studies, but rejecting the ordinary avocations of life. Family, frie nd, even the voice of her who loved fails to recall him to action or to a sense of the proper proportion of things. We see the result not only in the loss of symmetry and balance in his character, but find it having its legitimate effect in making him the slave of his own too concentrated studies. So that finally he becomes possessed by the ruling idea he had so dearly cherished, and the reward of his infatuation is the delusion that he can accomplish that which a healthful mind would have avoided,—a delusion which had grown up in the very seclusion and isolation of life that the unhappy student had adopted; to which the fitting antidote would have been the diversion of the commonplace interests which he had carefully excluded. The power to produce the horrible creature, as the fruit of this delusion, is but the poetic justice of his sentence. The terrible result of his creation furnishes the morale and teaching of the allegory. Into this part of the story is interposed the train of thought which is suggested by the construction of the human form by Frankenstein. In its preparation the student selects the most beautiful models for each limb and feature. He spares no pains, and each separate anatomical part is, taken by itself, perfect in symmetry and adaptation. But when once the breath of life is breathed into the creation, and life quickens its being and gleams from its eyes, and function succeeds in the hitherto inanimate parts, all beauty disappears; the separate excellence of each several part is lost in the general incongruity and lack of harmony of the whole.
Can art see no suggestiveness in this? Can society, in its attempt to manufacture conglomerate masses out of dissimilar elements, learn nothing from the teaching here inculcated?
Once become a living being, Frankenstein and this monster that he had made bear to one another the sustained relation of creator and creature. Throughout the entire narrative this relationship is one long allegory with phases as diverse as a prism. Most prominent is the total failure to create that which should find place in life only by growth. In the sad, lone, utter incompatibility which environed the creature,—in the inability of others to accept or tolerate it,—in its own desperate, heart-sickening attempts to educate and train itself into harmony and communion with those who should have been its fellow-beings, and in its final despair and terrible outlawry and revenge, is shown the futility of the attempt to regulate human beings or their concerns, except under the laws of growth and development. And "Frankenstein" contains no deeper teaching than that we cannot legislate happiness into this world; that such attempt at last, after affording a maximum of
misery, returns to plague the inventor.
Another phase of this relationship between the creator and his creature is so strongly suggestive of a certain period of Shelley’s religious life that the mind hesitates before denying the likeness. The creature of Frankenstein, finding itself in a world in which all happiness is denied it; to which its powers of strengthfulness, however exercised, bring it no good, but serve only to increase its misery and sense of loneliness, turns to its creator and, with alternate curses and prayers, beseeches him to either slay it or fit the world for its companionship. In this dilemma the creator does neither. He merely admits either his unwillingness or his inability to do that which simple justice to his creature, to say nothing of his love and duty, would prompt. Thus the creator is made to figure as lacking either justice or omnipotence.
How Shelleyan this idea, the closest student of him will best judge.
But the chief allegorical interest in the narrative concerns itself about that tendency in the human being to discard the established order of things and to create for itself a new and independent existence. In the simple story, Frankenstein made a being responsible to him alone for its creation,—-a being not produced by the ordinary course of life, not amenable or even adaptable to the existing world of men. Right or wrong, better or worse, the creature may be, but different certainly, and this irreconcilable disparity points back ever to its origin, which had been anomalous and strange.
The whole story is but the elaboration of the embarrassment and dangers which flow from departure from the ordinary course of nature; this forced attempt to invade society from within. What strong existence in real life of this same tendency Mary Shelley had seen in those nearest and dearest to her! She has not failed to learn the lesson of her mother's history; time analyzes rather than destroys. And the life of Mary Wollstonecraft was doubtless seen by the clear-minded daughter in stronger contrast of light and shade than it had been by its contemporaries. Who knew so well the glories of that life? Its successes as well as its miseries had sprung from the self-same causes as those of Frankenstein,—from the breach of the conventional; from overstepping the limits ; from creating an individuality and a sphere of existence denied it by Nomos, and consequently sure of the hostility of society.
To this same cause Shelley himself attributed justly the events and moral struggle of his own life. From earliest childhood revolt against convention, and rebellion against authority, had characterized him. His perpetual tendency, like that of Mary Wollstonecraft, like that typified in "Frankenstein," was ever to create for himself an existence not conforming to the ways of the world.
As we read the story of the modern Prometheus, and page by page trace the evolution of this idea, the ethical aspect is oppressive in its prophetic truth. Each must do this for himself. One thing, however, we may note. The visitation of judgment, the terrible results of the exercise of the power of creation, do not begin, do not recoil upon Frankenstein, until he has actually launched his creature into the world of so long as he kept the scheme within himself so long as the influence of the thought and work was confined to him alone, no evil came; on the contrary, after a certain point the struggle after this ideal was a stimulation and an incentive of the highest order. It was only when the overt act of introducing his new existence into the world was accomplished, that misery began to flow from it to all concerned, and even to those apparently not concerned in it. This is the saving clause in the prophetic allegory. Without this it would fail to square with the truth.
See how far-reaching are the ideas which this allegory evokes, how subtile its suggestions are. Mind after mind has felt the power of this story, so simple in its apparent construction, and has again and again returned to it, not asking itself why; feeling a power it did not recognize, much less analyze; hovering, in fact, around it as birds do when charmed, because of an attraction which was persistent and real, although unknown, even unsuspected. All attraction implies some sort of a magnet. Nothing attracts so powerfully as the true.
The world, by its acknowledgment of the coercive quality of “Frankenstein," has given silent acceptance of its genius. The other works, novels, critiques, biographies, while they have had literary merit, feeling, even power, have not shown genius. "Frankenstein" alone was personal, it alone reflected Mrs. Shelley's true self. Her other books contain simply what she wrote in them: this alone contains what was written in her. Being, as she was, stronger in her personality than as a literary artist, the book that alone partook of that personality would alone partake of her peculiar genius. This, considered in its fullest light, "Frankenstein" does.
This Day In History: All activities of the Soviet Communist Party was suspended on this day in 1991. Paul Craig Roberts once said: "We should all be thankful to the Soviets, because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."
Twenty-five years ago, on August 22, 1991, I stood amid a vast cheering crowd of tens of thousands of people outside the Russian parliament building in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. They were celebrating the failure by diehard Soviet leaders to undertake a political and military coup d’état meant to maintain dictatorial communist rule in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Some were simply shot; others were tortured to death or sent to die as slave labor in the concentration and labor camps.The Soviet regime had ruled Russia and the other 14 component republics of the U.S.S.R. for nearly 75 years, since the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 led by Vladimir Lenin and his communist cadre of Marxist followers. During that almost three-quarters of a century, first under Lenin and especially Josef Stalin and then their successors, historians have estimated that upwards of 64 million people – innocent, unarmed men, women and children – died at the hands of the Soviet regime in the name of building the “bright, beautiful future” of socialism.
Millions Dead
The forced collectivization of the land under Stalin in the early 1930s, alone, is calculated to have cost the lives of nine to twelve million Russian and Ukrainian peasants and their families who resisted the loss of their private farms and being forced into state collective farms that replaced them.
Some were simply shot; others were tortured to death or sent to die as slave labor in the concentration and labor camps in Siberia or Soviet Central Asia known as the GULAG. Millions were slowly starved to death by a government-created famine designed to force submission to the central planning dictates of Stalin and his henchmen.
Millions of others were rounded up and sent off to those prison and labor camps as part of the central plan for forced industrial and mineral mining development of the far reaches of the Soviet Union. In the 1930s and 1940s, Stalin’s central plans would include quotas for how many of the “enemies of the people” were to be arrested and executed in every city, town and district in the Soviet Union. In addition, there were quotas for how many were to be rounded up as replacements for those who had already died in the GULAG working in the vast wastelands of Siberia, northern European Russia and Central Asia.
By the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s the Soviet system had become increasingly corrupt, stagnant, and decrepit under a succession of aging Communist Party leaders whose only purpose was to hold on to power and their special privileges. In 1986 a much younger man, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had worked his way up in the Party hierarchy was appointed to the leading position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.
Gorbachev's Attempt to Save Socialism
Gorbachev had introduced to two reform agendas.
Gorbachev believed that the Soviet Union had taken several serious wrong turns in the past. But he was not an opponent of socialism or its Marxist-Leninist foundations. He wanted a new “socialism-with-a-human-face.” His goal was a “kinder and gentler” communist ideology, so to speak. He truly believed that the Soviet Union could be saved, and with it a more humane collectivist alternative to Western capitalism.
To achieve this end, Gorbachev had introduced to two reform agendas: First, perestroika, a series of economic changes meant to admit the mistakes of heavy-handed central planning. State enterprise managers were to be more accountable, small private businesses would be permitted and fostered, and Soviet companies would be allowed to form joint ventures with selected Western corporations. Flexibility and adaptability would create a new and better socialist economy.
Second, glasnost, political “openness,” under which the political follies of the past would be admitted and the formerly “blank pages” of Soviet history – especially about the “crimes of Stalin” – would be filled in. Greater historical and political honesty, it was said, would revive the moribund Soviet ideology and renew the Soviet people’s enthusiastic support for the reformed and redesigned bright socialist future.
However, over time the more hardline and “conservative” members of the Soviet leadership considered all such reforms as opening a Pandora’s Box of uncontrollable forces that would undermine the Soviet system. They had already seen this happen in the outer ring of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe.
The Beginning of the End in Eastern Europe
In 1989 Gorbachev had stood by as the Berlin Wall, the symbol of Soviet imperial power in the heart of Europe, had come tumbling down, and the Soviet “captive nations” of Eastern Europe – East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria – that Stalin had claimed as conquered booty at the end of the Second World War, began to free themselves from communist control and Soviet domination. (See my article, “The Berlin Wall and the Spirit of Freedom.”)
The Soviet hardliners were now convinced that a new political treaty that Gorbachev was planning to sign with Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Federation Republic and Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, would mean the end of the Soviet Union, itself.
Already, the small Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were reasserting the national independence they had lost in 1939-1940, as a result of Stalin and Hitler’s division of Eastern Europe. Violent, and murderous Soviet military crackdowns in Lithuania and in Latvia in January 1991 had failed to crush the budding democratic movements in those countries. Military methods had also been employed, to no avail, to keep in line the Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. (See my article, “How Lithuania Helped Take Down the Soviet Union.”)
Communist Conspirators for Soviet Power
People all around the world saw Yeltsin stand atop an army tank outside the parliament building asking Muscovites to resist this attempt to return to the dark days of communist rule.
On August 18, 1991, the hardline conspirators tried to persuade Gorbachev to reverse his planned political arrangements with the Russian Federation and Soviet Kazakhstan. When he refused he was held by force in a summer home he was vacationing at in the Crimea on the Black Sea.
Early on the morning of August 19, the conspirators issued a declaration announcing their takeover of the Soviet government. A plan to capture and possibly kill Boris Yeltsin failed. Yeltsin eluded the kidnappers and made his way to the Russian parliament building from his home outside Moscow. Military units loyal to the conspirators ringed the city with tanks on every bridge leading into the city and along every main thoroughfare in the center of Moscow. Tank units had surrounded the Russian parliament, as well.
But Yeltsin soon was rallying the people of Moscow and the Russian population in general to defend Russia’s own emerging democracy. People all around the world saw Yeltsin stand atop an army tank outside the parliament building asking Muscovites to resist this attempt to return to the dark days of communist rule.
The Western media made much at the time of the apparent poor planning during the seventy-two hour coup attempt during August 19 to the 21. The world press focused on and mocked the nervousness and confusion shown by some of the coup leaders during a press conference. The conspirators were ridiculed for their Keystone Cop-like behavior in missing their chance to kidnap Yeltsin or delaying their seizure of the Russian parliament building; or leaving international telephone lines open and not even jamming foreign news broadcasts that were reporting the events as they happened to the entire Soviet Union.
The Dangers If the Hardliners had Won
Regardless of the poor planning on the part of the coup leaders, however, the fact remains that if they had succeeded the consequences might have been catastrophic. I have a photocopy of the arrest warrant form that had been prepared for the Moscow region and signed by the Moscow military commander, Marshal Kalinin.
It gave the military and the KGB, the Soviet secret police, the authority to arrest anyone. It had a “fill-in-the-blank,” where the victim’s name would be written in. Almost 500,000 of these arrest warrant forms had been prepared. In other words, upwards of a half-million people might have been imprisoned in Moscow, alone.
The day before the coup began, the KGB had received a consignment of 250,000 pairs of handcuffs. And the Russian press later reported that some of the prison camps in Siberia had been clandestinely reopened. If the coup had succeeded possibly as many as three to fourmillionpeople in the Soviet Union would have been sent to the GULAG, the notorious Soviet labor camp system.
During the coup attempt Moscow had a surrealistic quality, as I walked through various parts of the center of the city
Another document published in the Russian press after the coup failed had the instructions for the military authorities in various regions around the country. They were to begin tighter surveillance of the people in the areas under their jurisdiction. They were to keep watch on the words and actions of everyone. Foreigners were to be even more carefully followed and watched. And their reports to the coup leaders in Moscow were to be filed every four hours. Indeed, when the coup was in progress, the KGB began to close down commercial joint ventures with Western companies in Moscow, accusing them of being “nests of spies,” and arrested some of the Russian participants in these enterprises.
Fear Underneath a Surreal Calm
During the coup attempt Moscow had a surrealistic quality, as I walked through various parts of the center of the city. On the streets around the city it seemed as if nothing were happening – except for the clusters of Soviet tank units strategically positioned at central intersections and at the bridges crossing the Moscow River. Taxi cabs patrolled the avenues looking for passengers; the population seemed to go about its business walking to and from work, or waiting in long lines for the meager supplies of everyday essentials at the government retail stores; and motorists were as usual also lined up at the government owned gasoline stations. Even with the clearly marked foreign license plates on my rented car, I was never stopped as I drove around the center of Moscow.
The only signs that these were extraordinary days were the grimmer than usual looks on the faces of many; and that in the food stores many people would silently huddle around radios after completing their purchases. However, the appearance of near normality could not hide the fact that the future of the country was hanging in the balance.
Russians Run the Risk for Freedom
Russians of various walks of life had to ask themselves what price they put on freedom.
During the three days of that fateful week, Russians of various walks of life had to ask themselves what price they put on freedom. And thousands concluded that risking their lives to prevent a return to communist despotism was price they were willing to pay. Those thousands appeared at the Russian parliament in response to Boris Yeltsin’s appeal to the people. They built makeshift barricades, and prepared to offer themselves as unarmed human shields against Soviet tanks and troops, if they had attacked. My future wife, Anna, and I were among those friends of freedom who stood vigil during most of those three days facing the barrels of Soviet tanks.
Among those thousands, three groups were most noticeable in having chosen to fight for freedom: First, young people in their teens and twenties who had been living in a freer environment during the previous six years since Gorbachev had come to power, and who did not want to live under the terror and tyranny their parents had known in the past. Second, new Russian businessmen, who realized that without a free political order the emerging economic liberties would be crushed that were enabling them to establish private enterprises. And, third, veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, who had been conscripted into the service of Soviet imperialism and were now determined to prevent its return.
The bankruptcy of the Soviet system was demonstrated not only by the courage of those thousands defending the Russian parliament, but also by the unwillingness of the Soviet military to obey the orders of the coup leaders. It is true that only a handful of military units actually went over immediately to Yeltsin’s side in Moscow.
But hundreds of Russian babushkas – grandmothers – went up to the young soldiers and officers manning the Soviet tanks, and asked them, “Are you going to shoot their mother, your father, your grandmother? We are your own people.” The final act of the coup came when these military units refused to obey orders and seize the Russian parliament building, at the possible cost of hundreds or thousands of lives.
Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
Again the people chanted: “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
On that clear, warm Thursday of August 22, that huge mass of humanity that had assembled in a large plaza behind the Russian parliament stood and listened as Boris Yeltsin told them that that area would now be known as the Square of Russian Freedom. The multitude replied in unison: Svaboda! Svaboda! Svaboda! – “Freedom! Freedom, Freedom!”
A huge flag of pre-communist Russia, with its colors of white, blue and red, draped the entire length of the parliament building. The crowd looked up and watched as the Soviet red flag, with its yellow hammer and sickle in the upper left corner, was lowered from the flagpole atop the parliament, and the Russian colors were raised for the first time in its place. And again the people chanted: “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
Not too far away from the parliament building in Moscow, that same day, a large crowd had formed at Lubyanka Square at the headquarters of the KGB. With the help of a crane, these Muscovites pulled down a large statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police that stood near the entrance to the KGB building. In a small park across from the KGB headquarters, in a corner of which rests a small monument to the victims of the Soviet prison and labor camps, an anti-communist rally was held. A young man in an old Czarist Russian military uniform burned a Soviet flag, while the crowd cheered him on.
The seventy-five-year nightmare of communist tyranny and terror was coming to an end. The people of Russia were hoping for freedom, and they were basking in the imagined joy of it.
Freedom’s Hope and Post-Communist Reality
The demise of the Communist Party and the Soviet system was one of the momentous events in modern history. That it came about with a relatively small amount of bloodshed during those seventy-two hours of the hardline coup attempt was nothing short of miraculous – only a handful of people lost their lives.
The last twenty-five years have not turned out the way that many of the friends of freedom in Russia had hoped.
Indeed, post-communist Russia saw a contradictory, poorly organized, and corrupted privatization of Soviet industry, plus a high and damaging inflation in 1992-1994; a severe financial crisis in 1998; a return to authoritarian political rule following Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 1999; two bloody and destructive wars in the attempted breakaway region of Chechnya; widespread and pervasive corruption at all levels of government; state controlled and manipulated markets, investment, commerce, and the news media; assassinations and imprisonments of political opponents of the regime; and significant nostalgia among too many in the country for a return to “great power” status and the “firm hand” of the infamous Stalinist era. Plus, Putin’s recent military adventures in Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria.
Nonetheless, for those of us who were fortunate enough to be in Moscow in August 1991, it remains in our minds as an unforgettable historical moment when the first and longest-lived of the twentieth century’s totalitarian states was brought to the doorstep of its end. The Soviet Union, finally, disappeared off the political map of the world on December 24, 1991 with the formal breakup and independence of the 15 Soviet republics that had made up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Soviet nightmare of “socialism-in-practice” was over.
Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
This Day In History: Print editions of the New American Standard Bible 2020 edition were released on this day in 2020. The NASB is a revision of the American Standard Version Bible (ASV), though the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was also a revision of the ASV. The NASB is often praised in certain circles as the most literal and accurate Bible there is, yet it is largely ignored by Bible scholars.
There is no reference to it in the BAGD and BDAG Lexicons, Aland's _Text of the New Testament_ or my edition of the UBS Greek text and it's companion piece, the Textual Commentary of the Greek NT. It is not mentioned in Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible under "Bible Translations" and the same goes for Oxford's Companion to the Bible. F.F. Bruce does not reference it in his Commentary. James Dunn does not use it, Hurtado doesn't either. Metzger gives it a brief mention in his book _The Bible in Translation_ and even makes use of Laurence Vance's _Double Jeopardy_ in the review. This is an interesting move since Vance states in his Epilogue that "it would be double jeopardy to accept the NASBU [New American Standard Bible Update] as the word of God."
Metzger's _Recent Translations: A Survey and Exploration_ in the 1992 Southwestern Journal of Theology [34.2: 5-12] completely ignores the NASB. James Barr in his _Modern English Bibles as a Problem for the Church_ [Quarterly Review/Fall 1994] stated that "Bibles are being written in English which have as one of their aims the pleasing of the sort of Bible readers who will buy them and like them, and it is especially on the side of the more evangelical readership that this is at present happening."
None of the above scholars have any problem using the RSV (or NRSV), or the New English Bible, which are contemporary to the NASB.
Barclay N. Newman Jr. wrote in _The Word of God: A Guide to English Versions of the Bible_, "the translators of the NASB have dreamed the impossible dream, only to create a nightmare...if a choice must be made between ASV and NASB, it cannot be doubted that old wine is better. The initial marginal note of NASB is prophetic: 'a waste and an emptiness.'"
One of the Fourfold aims of the NASB was that "They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place, the place which the Word gives Him; therefore, no work will ever be personalized." However, when at one time the translators claimed anonymity, you can know view the list of translators at Lockman's own website.
One interesting change in the 2020 edition of the NASB is at John 1:18.
The 1995 edition had "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
The NASB 2020 now has "No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him."
The oldest Greek texts have monogenes theos (an only-begotten god) and many others have monogenes huios (an only-begotten son). However, there is not one manuscript and Greek text that has both the words "God" (theos) and "Son" (huios) at this one verse. The only reason the two are combined is for theological purposes, and nothing else. John's gospel also has two different readings at John 21:15 where some manuscripts and versions have "Simon, son of Jonah" or "Simon, son of John." However, no one thinks to combine the two to read "Simon, son of John, who is Jonah."
One of the biggest departures away from the ASV Bible was the translation of the Divine Name. The original American Standard Version translated YHWH (JHVH) as Jehovah, a pronunciation consistent with other theophoric names. The NASB translators refused to do this and replaced the name with a title (LORD, GOD). There is something unsettling about a translator who sees a name in the source text, and completely ignores this and replaces it 7000 times with a title, and then claims it is an "incredibly accurate translation from the original languages."
This Day in History: Pope Sixtus V died on this day in 1590. During his term as Pope, Sixtus V took an interest in producing an official version of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
The Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, the work of St Jerome in the fourth century, was the standard Bible of the Catholic Church in the past. However, in time, copyist errors and false readings had crept into the text. By the time of the Reformation, the Protestants had their own versions of the Bible, so it was important for Catholics to have a reliable text of the Latin Bible. At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate as its official Latin Bible although there was no authoritative edition at that time.
Pope Sixtus sought to fix that.
Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590), born Felice Peretti di Montalto, ruled as pope from 24 April 1585 to his death in 1590 and was considered quite the scholar in his time.
Sixtus had appointed scholars to fix the Vulgate, but when present to him in 1588, Sixtus declared that he could do a better job himself. Being an insomniac he set to work on this task almost around the clock.
"In the main, Sixtus kept to the Louvain text which he was familiar with. It was not particularly scholarly. Where it was obscure, he did not mind adding phrases and sentences to clarify. Often he translated according to whim. Another of his idiosyncracies was to alter the references. A system of chapter and verse had been worked out in 1555 by Robert Stephanus. It was not perfect but it was convenient and was universally used. Sixtus discarded it in favour of his own scheme. All previous Bibles became instantly obsolete; all books in the schools, with their armouries of texts, had to be reprinted. Apart from changing the titles of the Psalms which were considered by many to be inspired, he omitted, probably through carelessness, entire verses." ~Peter De Rosa
In the preface he says: “Nostra Nos ipsi manu correximus.” (We have corrected them with our own hands.) The work appeared in 1590 in three volumes. The Pope forbade the collection of further critical materials. He decreed that all readings varying from his edition should be rejected as incorrect and that his edition of the Vulgate should never be altered in the slightest degree under pain of the anger of Almighty God and His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul; and that if any man presumed to transgress that mandate, he was to be placed under the ban of the major excommunication and not to be absolved except by the Pope himself. In the same year and soon afterwards Sixtus died. His work was found to be full of errors. In some places. after the book had been printed hand-stamped printed corrections were made. while in other places corrections were made with a pen and even by means of pasted slips, while the copies as issued did not all present the same corrections. In the end about 6000 errors were acknowledged. of which about 100 were important. Clement VIII. became Pope in 1592. One of his first acts was to recall all the copies of the Sixtine edition. His revision was issued toward the end of 1592. It did not only correct the errors of Sixtus, but had many and important different readings. It returned to the text of the Roman commissioners submitted to Sixtus, not heeding his personal revision. The preface written by Cardinal Bellarmine attributed the errors of the Sixtine Vulgate to the printer and disclaimed perfection for the Clementine edition, stating that it was a purer text than any hitherto known. The Clementine edition of the Vulgate is declared to be the one authorized text of the Sacred Scriptures from which no single variation is permitted on any account. This is the authorized Roman Bible of to-day. Under date of November 9. 1592. in the first year of the pontificate, Clement VIII. issued his brief under the Fisherman’s seal, binding the same on all, and declaring that those who should alter. print or sell or publish any variant edition should lie under the penalty of the greater excommunication and should not be absolved (except in the act of death) by any other than the Pope himself.” ~Henry Barker 1905
It is an embarrassing situation for Catholic Church history. It was a time when the church had a pope who corrected a version of the Bible only to have him insert thousands of errors, and at the same time condemn anyone that questioned or altered that Bible with excommunication. To this day this chapter in the Church's past is used by opponents of the Catholic Church as an argument against papal infallibility. The copies that were retrieved numbered about 10, and I can only think of one that still exists, making it perhaps the rarest book there is.
Conversely, the Clementine successor to the Sixtine Vulgate is also said to have myriads of errors and Catholic apologists consider this whole story as overblown. [A Vindication of the Catholic Church in a Series of Letters addressed to the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Vermont by Francis P Kenrick 1855]
The Catholic Church today has moved away from the Latin Vulgate and relied on the Hebrew and Greek and they have produced great translations of the Bible...some of my favorites in fact, such as the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible.
Julio Macías González, 17, from Mexico City, died after a hickey he received from his girlfriend caused a stroke.
"Doctors believe the suction of the hickey—or love bite—resulted in a blood clot, which traveled to Julio Macias Gonzalez’s brain and caused a stroke, the Independent and local Mexican media reported." Source
"...while hickeys are usually only the source of minor embarrassment, this isn't the first time that a hickey has resulted in a medical emergency. In 2010, a 44-year-old woman had a minor stroke after a hickey caused a blood clot that traveled to her heart, the New Zealand Medical Journal reported, according to Newser." Source
This Day In History: Scottish Philosopher David Hume died on this day in 1776. One puzzle that Hume posed is especially pertinent today in the era of mass lockdowns. In his First Principles of Government, Hume wrote, "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers."
200 years prior to Hume, Étienne de La Boétie wrote his "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" wherein he wonders, "how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!" It was however the great H.L. Mencken that figured out how this was done: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
This Day In History: The financial Panic of 1857 started on this day in, of course, 1857.
"During the nineteenth century the free world was on what was called the classical gold standard. It was a century of unprecedented production. More wealth and a greater standard of living was achieved and enjoyed by more people than in all the previous history of the world. The two conditions most responsible for the great increase in wealth during the nineteenth century were competitive capitalism and the gold standard: Capitalism because it provided a social system where men were free to produce and own the results of their labor; the gold standard because it provided a monetary system by which men could more readily exchange and save the results of their labor.
While capitalism afforded men the opportunity to trade in the open market which led to economic prosperity, the gold standard provided a market-originated medium of exchange and means of saving which led to monetary stability.
But because neither competitive capitalism nor the gold standard were ever fully understood or practiced, there existed a paradox during the nineteenth century: a series of disruptive economic and monetary crises in the midst of a century of prosperity.
These crises can all be traced to excessive supplies of money and credit. The U.S. panics of 1814, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907 and the international monetary crises of 1933 and 1971 all have one thing in common: excessive supplies of money and credit. The fact is that no monetary crisis in history has ever resulted from a lack of money and credit. Every monetary crisis can be traced to excessive supplies of money and credit."
Where does this money and credit come from?
"...the world never achieved a pure gold standard. While individuals operated under a classical gold standard with the conviction that production was the only way to gain wealth, they allowed their government to become the exception to this rule.
Government produces nothing. During the nineteenth century it operated mostly on money it taxed from its citizens. As government’s role increased, so did its need for money.
The Policy Makers knew that gold stood in the way of government spending, that direct confiscation of wealth via taxation was unpopular. So Policy Makers advocated a way of indirectly taxing productive men in order to finance both government programs and the increasing government bureaucracy necessary to implement those programs.
The method was to increase the money supply. Since government officials were not about to go out and mine gold, they had to rely on an artificial increase. Although the methods of artificial monetary expansion varied, the net effect remained the same: an increase in the claims to goods in circulation and a general rise in commodity prices. The layman called this phenomenon 'inflation.' This resulted invariably in monetary crises and economic depressions.
Capitalism and gold got the blame for these crises, but the blame was undeserved." Paul Stevens
Front view of the former Kreditbanken building at Norrmalmstorg in 2005
This Day In History: A bank robbery went wrong in Stockholm, Sweden, on this day in 1973, which turned into a hostage crisis. Over the next five days the hostages begin to sympathize with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".
The Norrmalmstorg robbery was a heist that led to 6 days where hostages were kept captive. Famously, the hostages then bonded with their captors and appeared to protect them. The seemingly paradoxical actions of the hostages led to a great deal of academic and public interest in the case, including a 2003 Swedish television film titled Norrmalmstorg, a 2018 Canadian film titled Stockholm and a 2022 Swedish Netflix television series Clark .
"Stockholm Syndrome is a condition in which people develop positive emotions and associations with someone who is keeping them captive....The origin of the term Stockholm Syndrome arose in the aftermath of a well-documented robbery which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1973. Four hostages were kept captive in the bank whilst their captors had a six-day stand-off with the police. After their release, the authorities found that the hostages had developed strong emotional bonds towards their captors, and even refused to separate from them. The hostages reported that their captors treated them kindly and did not harm them. They defended the captors and refused to testify against them in court. After this, criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot who investigated the event named this phenomena Stockholm Syndrome." Source
The Stockholm Syndrome may also explain why people support government tyranny. "A disturbing aspect of a national collapse is how large portions of the population can undergo a form of Stockholm Syndrome to cope with the social and emotional stress of scarcity and deprivation. Stockholm Syndrome can be both a personal and societal phenomenon shared by a group experiencing the same crisis. The primary concern in both cases is survival. In Greece, Stockholm Syndrome appears regularly in the news to describe their responses as a nation held captive by foreign creditors and corrupt political figures. One scholar explains their compromise with the government in this way: 'When you realize there is no end to the crisis, that you can trust the promises of nobody, you seek sanctuary in that which you know. I know how to live in the crisis.' The seemingly irrational choice to remain in a perpetual state of social suffering, decreased living standards, stresses, and anxieties is the epitome of society with Stockholm Syndrome." Source
This Day In History: The penal colony on Devil's Island was permanently closed on this day in 1953. Devil’s Island was originally used as a leper colony, but it was later transformed into a prison for political prisoners. Located in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana, the island was infamous for its harsh treatment of the prisoners. The death rate was 75%.
"More than 40% of the prisoners died in the first year on the island. Only 5,000 prisoners survived to see their release date and the closing of the prison. After serving time on Devil’s Island, prisoners were forced to spend the equal time of their sentence living in French Guiana, where it was nearly impossible to find a job." Source
"Around 80,000 of France’s worst criminals who took the grueling 15-day boat trip from Marseilles in below-deck cages passed through Devil’s Island, the vast majority of whom never returned home. Huge numbers died of disease, starvation and absolute brutality and those who completed their sentences were banished from France, forced to stay on the island. Later in the operational timeline prisoners were allowed back to the motherland but it’s estimated that less than 2,000 returned alive.
Spoken of in reverential tones by the French underworld, Devil’s Island was dubbed the ‘green hell’ and in a 1938 book by inmate René Belbenoît who managed to escape to the USA, he called Devil’s Island the ‘dry guillotine’ because prisoners endured a living death.
The French stopped sending prisoners to the islands in 1938 and the ‘toughest penal colony of all time’ closed permanently in 1953." Source
Since the late 20th century, the islands have become tourist destinations with areas of the former prisons open for tours.
Henri Charrière's memoir, Papillon (1969), ostensibly described the extreme brutality of the penal colony. He claimed to be an escaped convict. The book was adapted as an American movie of the same name; released in 1973, it starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. A remake of Papillon was released in 2017, starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek.
This Day In History: The Mona Lisa was stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee, on this day 1911. This event caused weeping and gnashing of teeth in France. Thousands visited the Louvre to stare at the blank wall where the Mona Lisa hung. Many left notes, flowers and other gifts.
The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, was an Italian nationalist who stole the painting to return the work of art to Da Vinci's homeland of Italy. After 2 years, Peruggia was arrested trying to sell the painting to a Florence art dealer.
On the 50th anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa, August 21 1961, Francisco Goya's 1812 Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, was stolen from the National Gallery in London, by a thief named Kempton Bunton who had hidden inside the museum before it closed, then waited for the alarm system to be turned off. The portrait had recently been repurchased from American collector Charles Wrightsman for £140,000 ($392,000). Goya's masterpiece was finally recovered on May 21, 1965, at a luggage locker in the New Street railway station in Birmingham.
While the painting was sold to Charles Wrightsman, the British Government decided to buy the painting, for the same sum, to prevent the painting leaving Britain. This enraged Kempton Bunton who was already angry at the British government for their television licence fee. Apparently you have to buy a license in the UK if you want to watch live TV. This license/tax goes to fund the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).
The police initially assumed that an expert art thief was responsible, however Bunton was an overweight disabled retired bus driver who earned £8 a week pension in 1961. A letter was received by the Reuters news agency requesting a donation of £140,000 to charity to pay for TV licences for poorer people, and demanding an amnesty for the thief, after which the painting would be returned. The request was declined.
In 1965, four years after the theft, Bunton contacted a newspaper, and through a left-luggage office at Birmingham New Street railway station, returned the painting voluntarily. Six weeks later, he also surrendered to the police, who initially discounted him as a suspect, considering it unlikely that a 61-year-old retiree, weighing 240 lb could have carried out the theft.
During his trial, the jury convicted Bunton only of the theft of the frame, which had not been returned. Bunton's defence team, led by Jeremy Hutchinson QC, successfully claimed that Bunton never wanted to keep the painting, which meant he could not be convicted of stealing it. Bunton was sentenced to three months in prison.
The theft entered popular culture, with the 1962 James Bond film, Dr. No, showing the painting displayed in Dr. No's lair.
This Day in History: On this day in 1966, a young boy was flying a kite on Vintém Hill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, when he came upon the bodies of two deceased Brazilian electronic technicians, Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana. When a small team of police and firefighters arrived, they encountered an odd scene: the bodies rested next to each other, partly covered by grass. Each body wore a formal suit, a lead eye mask, and a waterproof coat. There were no signs of major trauma or any evidence of a struggle. Next to the corpses, police found an empty water bottle and a packet containing two wet towels. A small notebook was also identified, on which were written the cryptic instructions, "16:30 estar no local determinado. 18:30 ingerir cápsulas, após efeito proteger metais aguardar sinal mascara" ('16:30 be at the specified location. 18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask').
No obvious injuries were discovered at the scene, nor later at the autopsy. A search for toxic substances did not occur. The coroner's office was very busy at the time and, when the autopsy was finally conducted, the internal organs of the two victims were too badly decomposed for reliable testing.
There are multiple theories that have been proposed to explain this case, ranging from foul play to UFOs. One theory revolves around the testimony of a friend of the two men, who claimed that they were members of a group of "scientific spiritualists". The men were apparently attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirits using psychedelic drugs. Believing that such an encounter would be accompanied by blinding light, the men cut metal masks to shield their eyes and may have died of drug overdoses. This account is corroborated by the esoteric diary entry found at the scene and by mask-making materials and literature concerning spirits found at the men's homes.
