Remember Russia…
Posted in Islamic Scholars, Russia on Aug 12th, 2008
I earnestly call on you, however, not to get trapped, while tearing down the walls of Marxist illusions, in the prison of the West and the shaytan al-Kabir
Imam Khumayni(A)’s Historic Letter to Mr Mikhail Gorbachev
On January7 ,1989 an Iranian delegation met with Mr. Gorbachev in the Kremlin Palace at 11 a.m, and delivered this letter:
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Your Excellency Mr. Gorbachev,(1) Chairman of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
With due wishes for the happiness and prosperity of Your Excellency and the people of the Soviet Union.
Since your assumption of office there has been the impression that Your Excellency, in analyzing world political events, particularly those pertaining to the Soviet Union, have found yourself in a new era of reassessment, change and confrontation; and your boldness and initiative in dealing with the realities of the world is quite likely to bring about changes that would result in upsetting the equations of power dominating the world. I have therefore found it necessary to bring certain matters to your attention.
Even if your new approach and decisions are merely used as a means to overcome the party crisis, and to solve some of the problems confronting your people, your courage in reappraising a school of thought that has for decades enchained the revolutionary youth of the world behind its iron curtain is indeed worthy of praise. If, however, you are considering taking a further step forward, the first thing that will ensure your success is that you reevaluate your predecessors’ policy of obliterating God and religion from society(2), a policy that has no doubt given the heaviest blow to the Soviet people. Rest assured that this is the only way whereby world problems can be dealt with realistically.
Of course it is possible that as a result of wrong economic policies of former communist authorities, the Western world, an illusory heaven, will appear to be fascinating; but the truth lies elsewhere. If you hope, at this juncture, to cut the economic Gordian knots of socialism and communism by appealing to the center of Western capitalism, you will, far from remedying any ill of your society, commit a mistake which those to come will have to erase. For, if Marxism has come to a deadlock in its social and economic policies, capitalism has also bogged down, in this as well as in other respects though in a different form.
