Front Page: “Anna Louise Strong, the American who spent most of her life writing books and articles extolling the virtues of Communism, died today of a heart attack in Peking, where she had lived for the last 12 years,” the New York Times reported on March 30, 1970. Fifty years later, with Communist China much in the news, Strong’s career deserves a second look.
She was born in Friend, Nebraska, in 1885 and after graduation from Oberlin College in 1905, Strong earned a PhD from the University of Chicago, with a thesis titled “A Study of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology.” Strong’s father was a Congregationalist minister but Anna became an eager evangelist in the First Church of Christ Socialist, whose basic belief is that Christianity finds ultimate fulfillment in the communist faith.
Strong made her way to the Soviet Union, where she worked on the English language Moscow News, pitched to American readers. In her 1935 autohagiography I Change Worlds, Strong profiled Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. “One must not make a god of Stalin,” Strong wrote, “he was too valuable for that.” Stalin was then busy collectivizing agriculture in the USSR, and the independent farmers known as kulaks stood in the way.
Stalin decreed it was time to abolish the kulaks “as a class.” To that end, he planned a famine in Ukraine that claimed millions of lives. For Anna, “Stalin had merely authorized what farmhands were already instinctively doing.” As Stalin reportedly said, “If one man dies of hunger that is a tragedy. If millions die that is only statistics.” Strong’s Stalinist colleague Walter Duranty of the New York Times conveniently denied that any famine took place. read more
“graduation from Oberlin College in 1905”. Enough said. That’s all anyone needs to know. Can’t say how embarrassed I am that that horrible college is in my home state. Glad I moved away.
Another useless commie stooge long dead, I will not shed a tear for this commie fool who believed more in communism than she did in God. And what kind of godless church is the First Church of Christ Socialist? It’s too bad and a shame that she didn’t have an epiphany like Malcom Muggeridge did when he realized that communism/socialism/Fabianism was a huge lie and became a Christian in his later life. A lot of the best Christian writers were atheists initially including CS Lewis, TS Eliot, GK Chesterton, Whittaker Chambers and others who renounced their unbelief in God as they grew to realize that atheism was hollow and a lie. And one of the ultimate skeptics initially who is my ultimate hero Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I am currently rereading The Soul and Barbed Wire from the second volume of the Gulag Archipelago and Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl.
Why does it seem impossible to name and remove/destroy those who carry on the work of this woman? Are we a Republic or aren’t we!? We laugh at the PC culture that allows Covid19 to run rampant in certain countries around the world, but Communist ideology is just as destructive. It’s one and the same.
You’ll never read this story in a World History book in American gov’t skools. And that’s exactly my point.
I hope it hurt.
Anna and all other social justice warriors (the current red guard) can rot in hell.
“Strong earned a PhD from the University of Chicago, with a thesis titled “A Study of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology.”
ELCA Lutheran. 🙄
“ULCA,” in those days…
“Anna became an eager evangelist in the First Church of Christ Socialist, whose basic belief is that Christianity finds ultimate fulfillment in the communist faith.”
CLOSE enough… 🙄
People like this are currently, and have been, filthy in our educational system. Somebody should do something about that.
“To that end, he planned a famine in Ukraine that claimed millions of lives.”
Sort of like the Chinese coronavirus?
There is a new movie that will open soon in this country about the English journalist, Gareth Jones, who exposed Stalin’s deliberate murder by famine of the Kulaks in the Ukraine during the forced collectivization of farmlands. “Mr. Jones” sounds like it exposes the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty as the communist’s stooge that he was finally revealed to be by real journalists after Stalin’s death. He was killed by an NKVD agent in Mongolia after being thrown out of the Soviet Union.
“died today of a heart attack…”
At least there was a happy ending.
It’s pelosi and clinton’s turns. It’s also AG Barr-Sessions’ turn, so we can get justice back in our country.
She finally was given Justice! Likely now complaining about it.
@Milla March 31, 2020 at 4:50 pm
> and divorce for sex
Godd gravy, “woman”! I divorced for peace and quiet!
“The Gulag Archipelago” audiobook:
https://youtu.be/ouhmg9WH8DA
Listen to it or read the Book. The younger the better.
Bezmenov claimed his comrades spread the “liberation theology” propaganda down in South America.
Berrie the Balkinizing Belligerent introduced his fellow commie, Dr. Prof. Derek Bell to the college victims in the quad.