Potemkin

Speaking as the guy who started the 'Sleek Dragon' ball rolling by cobbling together a GDM theme out of someone else's picture and someone else's GDM theme (both of which are in the public domain, and both of which I credited btw), I have to say I'm cool with this. It would have been nice if he'd provided a link to my GDM theme, but that's okay. After all, this is the world of open source - everyone begs, steals and borrows from everyone else. It's all good. :D - Mar 19 2007

Extract the .tar.gz file, and you'll find the wallpaper in the unpacked folder. Alternatively, you can download it from http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/6216452/, as I mentioned in the description. The wallpaper is by Masonic. - Mar 05 2007

It's a GDM theme. GDM is part of Gnome. QED. - Mar 05 2007

"I'd like to see the emblem a bit higher. Why are the edges so rough? Can you make a plain red logo with sharp edges? Could you please make one of a swastika, too? blah blah blah blah...."

I'm a Commie. We only ever make one brand of anything. Every Soviet citizen wore the same kind of shoes, drove the same kind of car, lived in the same kind of apartment, and used the same kind of GDM theme. You'll use this GDM theme as it is and like it, comrade. ;-)

And no, I won't make one of a swastika. - Feb 20 2006

You shouldn't believe the lies the ruling class have been spreading for decades about Communism. How many millions are dying right now across the world as a result of 'globalisation' and capitalist exploitation? How many children are starving because their government has to replay the usurous rates of interest on loans they took from obscenely wealthy banks in the developed world? If we were to add up the total number of victims of global capitalism, how many tens of millions would it be? - Sep 14 2005

You mean brainwashed into capitalism? If so, I agree with you. - Aug 19 2005

I have read many of those different sources, including Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'. As I recall, another of those dissident sources was Alexander Zinoviev, who was once one of the leading dissident writers and defectors in the 1980s. But his eyes were opened by what happened to Russia after the fall of Communism in 1991, and he now regards Stalin as "the greatest political genius of all time". He has seen the error of his ways, and is now pro-Soviet. And this is a man who, unlike Solzhenitsyn, actually plotted to assassinate Stalin in the 1930s, and who spent the next half century protesting against the Soviet government. Zinoviev has seen the error of his opposition to the Soviet system, and has accepted the essential truth of Marxism-Leninism. You can read about him at http://www.zinoviev.ru/eng/wrong.html and http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node91.html. - Jul 28 2005

And all this just because I submitted a GDM theme to gnome-look.org! 8-0

I don't think this is the right place to begin a politico-historical debate about Communism, and I don't feel like continuing it by email either; we are clearly never going to persuade each other, so let's just agree to disagree, okay?

And to lighten the mood, here's a Lenin joke I heard once:


Lenin headed directly to Paradise after he died. He thought he had done a lot of good for the oppressed, so he deserved retirement in Paradise. He knocked on Heaven's door:
"Knock, knock!"
God shouted from his cosmically gigantic and perfectly spherical office:
"Who's there?"
"Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."
"Okay, okay! The last one in be sure to close the door. It's kind of cold in here..."
God studied carefully Lenin's dossier and decided to send him to the most suitable place: Hell.

A short time passed after Lenin's resettlement to Hell. Satan stormed into God's office one day.
"Almighty, pray hear my complaint! Hell is no longer functional. Lenin and his party nationalized the boilers, the furnaces... the whole of Hell. Sinners and devils spend time in interminable Party meetings. In whatever time is left, they all gather in a huge choir. Women are always in front, men in the back rows. Everything must be absolutely politically correct. They rehearse The Internationale and other revolutionary songs, every day and every night. The electricity bill alone, Almighty God, will bankrupt You. Right now, Your Law is not observed: Nobody suffers, nobody is tortured. Pray, Almighty God, take Lenin back to Paradise!"

Lenin was sent back to Paradise.

A short time passed after Lenin's transfer to Paradise. Satan stormed into God's office one day.
"God Almighty, pray hear my complaint! Hell is no longer functional. The sinners and devils want Lenin back. The sinners and devils together declared a general strike. They threaten to have a Revolution. Pray, God, deport Lenin to Hell!"

"Listen up, comrade Satan! First of all, God does not exist..." - Jul 23 2005

From the moment of its birth, the Soviet Union was encircled by enemies who wanted nothing more than to strangle it in its cradle. The Western imperialists invaded the Soviet Union in 1918 (the 'Intervention') and started a Civil War in which millions of workers and peasants were killed. It was those same imperialists who had started the First World War, a completely unnecessary conflict in which countless millions were killed and which reduced Europe to ruin, caused by nothing more than the imperialist Powers of Europe trying to divvy up the spoils of imperialism. It is true that Lenin, and after him Stalin, set up a system of corrective-labour camps, in which thousands and eventually millions of people were imprisoned. However, this was entirely necessary - there were elements within Soviet society who longed for the return of the capitalist-imperialists, who were eager to sell their country to its enemies. Indeed, in 1991, they did precisely this - Russia was literally sold off to the highest bidder. Not since the time of the fall of ancient Rome has such cynical treason been seen. These traitors and enemies of the working people existed in Lenin's time and in Stalin's time; they formed a vast Fifth Column inside Soviet society. Without the Gulag, these elements would have thrown open the gates of the nation to Hitler's Wehrmacht, thereby handing victory in WWII to the Nazis. By preventing this, Stalin saved the world from the nightmare of a Nazi takeover.

And most of the ruling classes of the Eastern European nations had eagerly collaborated with the Nazis during the War; their oppressed peoples were liberated from the Nazi yoke by the Soviet Red Army. The threat of a renewed attack from the imperialists remained after 1945, doubly so since the West had the Bomb and the Soviet Union had only its conventional forces to protect itself. To draw Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere of influence was therefore an absolute stategic necessity - there could be no repetition of Hitler's surprise Blitzkrieg of 1941. And the policy worked - the West did not invade again for another four decades.

You talk of the millions who suffered and died in the camps; what of the millions who suffered and died in the wars of imperialism, in the slums and ghettos of capitalist societies, and in the Nazi death camps? The Soviet Union, and its armed forces, saved the world from that. Слава! - Jul 17 2005

This is not the place to get into a polemical discussion about the relative merits of capitalism and communism. But if you talk about comparing the level of life in different systems, how about comparing the level of life in Russia under Communism and under capitalism. Russia is now a devastated, looted wasteland, a shadow of its former self. The army which crushed Hitler's Wehrmacht has been humiliated and ruined. The people have been reduced to beggary and prostitution. Every corruption and decadence created by the Western bourgeoisie has been introduced into Russian society, corrupting the young and polluting the nation's moral fibre. The Soviet Union was a great superpower; now Russia is a looted shell of its former self. Lenin found a backward, agrarian society and he created an industrialised world superpower. He must have been doing something right. - Jul 08 2005

I think your first number was more realistic. :-)

But I have only one thing to say in reply to your little rant:

When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: colonialism, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the Opium Wars, the massacre of the Paris Commune, slavery, the Boer War, Apartheid, anti-union laws, the First World War, trench warfare, mustard gas, fascism, the Great Depression, asbestosis, the Mafia, DDT, McCarthyism, the electric chair, environmental degradation, the military suppression of Greece, Malaya, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Turkey, the Gulf War, trade in human body parts, Exxon Valdez, deforestation, the destruction of the ozone layer, exploitation of labour and the deaths of 50,000,000 communists and trade unionists in the 20th century alone, then - and only then - will I consider apologising for the errors of socialism.

Pwned. :D - Jul 06 2005

...which is why I called it 'Communist Victory' rather than 'Red Army Victory'. And by then it was officially called the 'Soviet Army' anyway. ;) - Jun 29 2005

Just fixed it. It took me a year to get around to it, but hey, better late than never, right? ;) - Mar 04 2007

I put the link in the Description at the top of the page. The wallpaper is by Dragonkahn at http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/528791/. The man's a genius. :-) - Jun 30 2006

Have you installed the 'tar' and/or 'untar' packages? If you're using a Debian-based Linux, try 'apt-get install tar' in a console. - Aug 21 2005

Thanks for sending me the splash screens. I've installed one of them, and it looks great! :D

If you haven't already done so, feel free to post it in the 'Splash Screens' section of gnome-look.org. - Jul 14 2005

Sounds good, kunsel. I'd certainly like to see your work. :-) - Jul 13 2005

Probably not, but feel free to make one yourself. - Jul 06 2005

Thanks for the praise, golaprofonda. But really all I did was to cobble together the CleanLinux GDM theme and the fantastic wallpaper by Dragonkahn. If anyone deserves the credit, it's him.

But I'm glad you like it. :) - Jun 23 2005

Good work, thunderduck3141. I see that my campaign of brainwashing the youth of America with my sinister Communist propaganda is already bearing fruit.... muhahahahah!! :D - Jun 30 2006