STALIN'S GREATEST MISTAKES!?!

     In the radical era of the late 1960s in the US, I had a very radical friend.  On one occasion he said to me, "Stalin's greatest mistake was that he did not incorporate all of the eastern European nations [then under Soviet domination] into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  He elaborated that those nations would be represented in the Soviet system, as was the Ukraine, or Estonia, so they could easily make room for Hungarian S.S.R, and a Bulgarian S.S.R, etc..  I just looked rather blank at my friend.  I suspect his idea would not have been a popular proposition in most of eastern Europe.  But then, Stalin's policies were not known for their popularity.
     On another occasion, the same friend asserted, "Stalin's greatest mistake was that he did not break up the family."  My jaw dropped.  I had never heard anyone level that criticism against Stalin.  As far as I knew, in the late 1960s the family was intact in the old USSR.
     Of course, in the late 1960s, the family was intact in the USA.  But by then, the ramifications of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were beginning to work themselves out and expand.  In 1965 the illegitimacy rate for whites was 4% of births; for blacks 24%.  According to NBC (reporting a story from AP by Jesse Washington, Nov. 7, 2010) - by 2008 the illegitimacy rate for whites was up to 29%, for Hispanics 53%, for Amerindians 66%, and for Blacks 72%.  Only Asians in the US had a lower rate than whites, but still four times the white rate of 1965.  In 2008 the Asian illegitimacy race was 17%.  The rate for America as a whole in 2008 was 41%.  It is undoubtedly higher today.  I think that in Harlem today, the illegitimacy rate is about 90%.  In 1965 liberal sociologist Daniel Moynihan spotlighted the high illegitimacy rate among Blacks (then, 24%) as a part of the tangle of pathologies in the Black communities.
     In 1969 my radical friend moaned that Stalin had failed to destroy the family.  Stalin may have failed, but Lyndon Johnson succeeded!  Johnson and his Great Society altered society.  Thereafter, the Federal Government performed most of the functions of husbands and fathers to young, unmarried women, culminating to the point that women no longer needed husbands.  They could have children, and free Huggies, free formula, free housing, - all they had to do was keep having babies.  For millennia, Roman Catholic nuns had been married to the church.  But the nuns had no children.  Under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, young women were to be married to the Federal Government's social work agencies.  And they were to have children.  The more they had, the more the benefits.  However, at a certain age, the young mothers discovered, they could no longer control their growing boys.  Many of the boys joined gangs, engaged in crime, and made the inner cities the center of a violent culture that most civilized people seek to avoid.
     Stalin failed to destroy the Soviet family.  Lyndon Johnson destroyed the American family.
     Perhaps President Nixon was not as liberal as President Lyndon Johnson after all!
     Perhaps on some issues President Johnson was more radical than Stalin!----Hugh Murray