As part of the New York Times’ recent celebration of the centennial of the communist takeover of Russia (“The Red Century”) the paper published an August 8 piece by one Fred Strebeigh, a Yale environmental studies and English lecturer, entitled “Lenin’s Eco-Warriors.” The theme of the article is that, yes, the Russian communists tortured and mass murdered tens of millions of their own citizens, enslaved the rest in totalitarian hell, and completely ruined their economy; but on the bright side they were precursors of and role models for the Sierra Club, Earth First!, Rachel Carson, and Al Gore.
The Soviet Union, which spanned eleven time zones, was “the world’s largest system of . . . protected nature preserves,” boasts Strebeigh. No kidding. How else would one define millions of acres in Siberia?
Lenin’s henchmen went on a murderous rampage to eliminate all suspected opponents, especially the clergy. What churches that were allowed to remain were run by KGB agents disguised as priests, according to Yuri Maltsev, who once worked as an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev. Yet Strebeigh writes that priests “sanctified the forests” of the Soviet Union and praises Lenin himself as “a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping.” He would have fit right in at the Yale faculty club and the New York Times lunch room, in other words. Strebeigh sounds almost giddy in his description of a supposed “communist conservation movement” in the Soviet Union.
The Truth vs. the New York Times
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