mentalblog.com comments:
Dear Tzemach,
The Internationale is certainly a rousing anthem, and one that many deluded Yidden have sung with gusto -- and not only on Simches Teireh.
However, although it was used in lieu of a strictly national anthem in the Workers' Paradise (until 1943, as you note), it was intended as the anthem of the internationalist world communist movement, hence its immediate translation into many languages. (I am certain that you are well aware of that, but some of your readers, at least in America, may not be.)
The original text is of course in French, in which the horrific promise of its haunting refrain is abundantly clear:
First, the evocation of history's apocalyptic climax: C'est la lutte finale -- this is the final struggle.
Then the order to action - Groupons nous, et demain -- let us organize so that tomorrow --
And the final result - l'Internationale sera le genre humain - the "International" will be the human race.
Id est, a call to arms in the service of a totalitarianism which announces its intention of destroying and then replacing every human institution everywhere in the world with its own dystopian bureaucracy. (cf. Igor Shafarevich on "the Socialist Phenomenon.")
The apocalypticism, the messianism without messiah, the eschatological drive towards utopia without any transcendent moral underpinning whatsoever -- these features of leftist ideology are very clearly delineated in the lyrics of the Internationale. The awful results of the implementation of uninhibited socialism in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia should have surprised no one.
All the best,
Gandalin, I am yet to get the Shafarevich book from my cousin. I have to read it! Yes you are right the words say "Withour G-d, without Tzar we will do it ourselves"...
Gandalin, what's on your mind?
Dear Tzemach,
What's on my mind?
I've been enjoying your blog.
I have been observing world events.
It is disappointing that the same mistakes have to be made over and over and over again.
All the best,
Gandalin
Old comrades from the old country?
Sorry, just could'nt help it. :)
Timmy,
No, but I grew up among comrades in this country.
And I did join in the chorus of the Internationale on May Day, in the streets of Paris, a few decades ago.
I do not claim that mine are not "les mains sales," but I have no personal experience of life in the CCCP.
All the best,
Gandalin
Gandalin,
Your honesty becomes you.
People make mistakes. The decent ones,learn from them, pick themselves up and go on.
Thanks for the information about the International.
May G-d bless you,
Mary
"Dirty hands" for the non french educated.
What does the Internationale stand for outside the Motherland?
Timmy,
"Stand for"? I don't know. I'd wager that for most people who sing it, it "stands for" a warm, fuzzy, kumbaya sort of boy-scout (young-pioneer) sense of doing-the-right-thing and being-part-of-the-struggle. I'm sure that 90% of the Bundists &c who sing it have never pondered the lyrics at all.
All the best,
Gandalin
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