A quote by Salisbury

"Whatever happens will be for the worst and therefore it is in our interests that as little should happen as possible" 

Salisbury 1887 re: British foreign policy

I just wanted to share this beautiful piece of pessimism by a very interesting figure in British foreign and imperial policy.

On the meaning of control in Stalinist Russia

Here is an essay I wrote a year ago on the nature of control and power in Stalinist Russia. I booked at George Orwell's famous novel 1984 as a basis for establishing the meaning of control in the political climate.

The essay is a few thousand words long, so I will probably shorten it in the near future to provide a more concise, blog-friendly version of my argument. I also haven't looked at it in a year, so please be forgiving; as a 16 year old this was my first lengthy essay and the first essay whereby I conducted independent research and wrote the whole thing on my own. Since I wrote it in the space of a week and a half my research wasn't extensive, so some of the opinions are simplified.

The meaning and level of control in Stalinist Russia

To look into control in Stalinist Russia, the meaning of total and complete control must first be established. The political novel 1984 by George Orwell depicts a society in which controlling the ideas and thoughts of the people is more important than a physical repression of the opposition. Following this theory, if the thoughts of an entire population are controlled completely, then absolute control exists. If we take this as the definition of ultimate authority then it cannot exist, even in a repressive regime such as that of Stalin. However 1984 very effectively portrays a realistic society in which the people accept everything without doubt or question. 1984 suggests that it is more important for the ideas of a regime to be maintained than a single individual’s power. Therefore the question the political novel raises is about the possibility of complete control over a population, not in the hands of an individual but an ideology, as Party member O’Brien reveals whilst torturing Winston:

A quote by Disraeli, from Robert Blake's biography

"We were absent nearly a fortnight and I find a great difference in the colour of the trees - the limes all golden, the beeches ruddy brown, while the oaks and elms and pines are still dark and green, and contrast well with the brighter tints. But not a leaf has fallen; they want the first whisper of the frost and then they will go out like lamps when the dawn breaks on a long festival..."

Disraeli in one of his letters to Mrs. Brydges Willyams, as quoted in Disraeli by Robert Blake.
I posted this quotation for the last sentence alone, just because I love the simile at the end with its comparison of autumn leaves to bright lamps.

A quote by Bismarck as recalled by Disraeli

"There never will be socialism in England. You are a happy country. You are safe as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without twenty persons saying to themselves or each other, ’Why has that fellow a horse, and I have not one?’ In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.”

Disraeli  recalling a conversation with Bismarck, in one of his letters to Queen Victoria.
The letter is discussed in this interview with Jonathan Steinberg about Bismarck.
This quote is a little unusual, but I just love the idea that socialism can be avoided through horse-racing.

A quote from "Regeneration" by Pat Barker

"Rivers had often been touched by the way in which young men...spoke about feeling like fathers to their men. Though when you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters, food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of their. Rivers had only ever seen that look in one other place: in the public ward of hospitals, on the faces of women who were bringing up large families on very low incomes...it was the look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.
One of the paradoxes of war - one of the many- was that this most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers and men that was...domestic. Caring."

From Regeneration by Pat Barker.

Quite a long one today, but I didn't have the heart to cut it down any more. Here Rivers, an army psychologist treating patients at Craiglockhart hospital during WW1 , reflects on the odd similarities between officers in WW1 and mothers at home, and the domesticity the static nature of warfare created for the men.

I urge you to read this novel; it examines so many paradoxical aspects of the war as well as questioning the relationship between doctors and patients.