Looking for someone to blame for the recent spate of alarming news? Consider the Soviet Union. As far as targets of anger and resentment go, it’s as convenient as they come. Because it no longer exists, perhaps one can assail it without being accused of engaging in hate speech. But in the likely event that some reactionary soul will stumble across this article and read only enough to make them fire off an email full of vitriol, let me state something up front so you careless readers out there do not labor under any mistaken assumptions.
I do not hate the Russian people. I do not hate the average citizens of any country that was once part of the Soviet Union. The things you are about to read are not directed at you, dear reader. Nor are they directed at Bill Maher, Pat Robertson, Phil Donahue, insipid college students, or anyone who was not a Soviet, commie pig. Got it? Good.
Whether you worry about environmental catastrophes, the rise of an Islamic holy war, biological and nuclear terrorism, or an invasion of Russian disco music, chances are your worries are greater because of something that was done by those damn, dirty Soviets. Though 10 years have passed since the Evil Empire collapsed, the spoiled fruits of its wickedness threaten us to this day.
Listening to the increasing anti-American rhetoric over the last decade it is easy to assume that much of the world blames America for everything bad. Meanwhile, in the land that was the Soviet Union, once pristine areas near the Artic Circle are now oilier than Peter Jennings.
North of Usinsk, Soviet environmental policy created lakes of oil two feet deep, yet it is the US and the Bush administration that are chastised for even considering drilling in Anwar. Russian rivers that once teemed with fish now glow at night, but it is America’s refusal to accept Kyoto that summons the anger of so-called environmentalists.
The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, until reckless Soviet irrigation policies squandered at least 60% of its water. Yet somehow the farmers of Klamath Falls have become environmental enemy number one.
While Soviet scientists tested their biological weapons on monkeys, PETA lashed out at American scientists who used monkeys to find cures for human disease.
While the American left combats any energy plan that includes the responsible use of nuclear power, tons of atomic waste and crumbling nuclear-power plants in the former Soviet Union are a time bomb they choose to ignore.
The attacks of 9-11 are America’s fault because the CIA is responsible for training and arming Osama bin Laden, so the latest mantra goes. But without the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Osama would be dealing with his troubled childhood on the couch of Joyce Brothers, not as the ringleader of the world’s largest terror network. How fortunate for the Soviet Union that its collapse spares it from blame.
For years the Soviets conducted a top-secret offensive biological warfare program in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which banned the development, production, stockpiling, and transfer of such weapons of mass destruction. Some of the Soviet microbiological research centers (under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defense) may still be maintaining the capability to produce biological weapons.
The Soviet obsession with biological weapons can be traced back to Lenin, and while American children learned to duck and cover, the damn, dirty Soviets were secretly amassing the largest biological weapons program in history. It employed as many as 50,000 scientists who spent decades converting lethal diseases like anthrax and smallpox into weapons of mass destruction. According the Center for Disease Control, the Soviets produced hundreds of tons of biological weapons agents, including plague, tularemia, glanders, anthrax, smallpox, and Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis. And by 1985, intercontinental ballistic missiles with warheads containing plague were available for launch against the US.
The most frightening aspect of the Soviet obsession with creating biological weapons is that they were good at it. They couldn’t design a car that ran for more than 10,000 miles, but when it came to producing missiles carrying the plague they were as proficient as Dr. Porsche or Henry Ford.
Christopher Davis, of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, wrote: “By addressing every aspect of weapon production, from selection of new strains of organisms to the behavior of biological aerosols under every possible condition of climate and topography, through the genetic engineering of antibiotic resistance and the design of optimum dissemination and delivery systems, the former Soviet Union was able to envisage the achievement of a miniaturized mobile production and weapon-making capability invulnerable to clandestine monitoring, invasive arms inspection, or attack in the event of war (because it was beyond identification); agents precisely matched to particular scenarios and human targets and incapable of being treated; a variety of dissemination systems, including cruise missiles; agents resistant to degradation by heat, light, cold, UV radiation, ionizing radiation, and various antibiotics; and dry formulations of agents capable of remaining viable in long-term storage.”
And it gets even more frightening. “What happened to the thousands of personnel involved in the Biopreparat [Soviet biological weapons] program?” Davis asks. “What happened to the R&D centered on anticrop, antiplant, and antilivestock biological weapons? What happened to the stocks of seed cultures of biological weapons agents designed to be used to fuel the mobilized production of weapons?”
Perhaps, like some of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, it ended up in the hands of Osama bin Laden. It has been reported that bin Laden obtained and purchased Soviet suitcase nuclear weapons from multiple sources and is recruiting former Soviet special forces to teach him how to operate the bombs.
Even the UN has stated its alarm that declines in the Russian economy have “severely affected the economic well-being of many Russian government officials, nuclear specialists, workers and guard forces who have access or could arrange access to direct-use material and that the level of economic deprivation has increased the likelihood of attempted thefts or diversions of such material from Russian facilities.”
Even the UN is aware of the “destructive powers of nuclear weapons and the tragedies that can occur if nuclear weapons or nuclear material are possessed by terrorist groups or rogue nations.”
And even the UN has expressed “deep concern that the economic situation in the states of the former Soviet Bloc facilitates and encourages rogue nation attempts to recruit nuclear scientists and technicians from the former Soviet Bloc.”
As Ronald Reagan taught us, it was the Soviet Union that ran against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. So complete was the control of Soviet Communists over their citizens that even underwear was issued by the government. And like most things the Soviets made, their standard issue underwear was poorly constructed, unattractive, and a pain in the ass. They wouldn’t have had it any other way.
In a land of vast resources, the Soviets managed to rape, pillage, and plunder their way to obsolescence in only 74 years of rule.
“The dimensions of this failure are astounding,” said Ronald Reagan in his infamous “Evil Empire” speech. “A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine.”
He continued: “Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resources into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people.”
A strain that would prove too great to endure. But long after the Soviet Union has perished, the legacy of its instruments of destruction are poised to accomplish that which it failed to achieve prior to its demise; the destruction of freedom.
So on behalf of all the free peoples of the world, I say thanks a lot, you damn, dirty Soviets. Thanks for being an eternal testament to what life would really be like in a world without the United States of America.
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