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communism

Karl Marx on the American Civil War and the Slaves

by Ben Atlas on 07.29.2010.9:37pm · 0 comments

1861 papers on the American Civil War by Karl Marx. He followed every minute detail of the war with the incredible detail. There is a total lack on any moralistic rhetoric about slavery (heck, he was hatching in his head the greatest salve civilization in history). He dissects every political and economic detail of the conflict and he is exasperatingly thorough. Here is a quote that caught my eye:

“The cultivation of the southern export articles, cotton, tobacco, sugar , etc., carried on by slaves, is only remunerative as long as it is conducted with large gangs of slaves, on a mass scale and on wide expanses of a naturally fertile soil, which requires only simple labour. Intensive cultivation, which depends less on fertility of the soil than on investment of capital, intelligence and energy of labour, is contrary to the nature of slavery. Hence the rapid transformation of states like Maryland and Virginia, which formerly employed slaves on the production of export articles, into states which raise slaves to export them into the deep South. Even in South Carolina, where the slaves form four-sevenths of the population, the cultivation of cotton has been almost completely stationary for years due to the exhaustion of the soil. Indeed, by force of circumstances South Carolina has already been transformed in part into a slave-raising state, since it already sells slaves to the sum of four million dollars yearly to the states of the extreme South and South-west. As soon as this point is reached, the acquisition of new Territories becomes necessary, so that one section of the slaveholders with their slaves may occupy new fertile lands and that a new market for slave-raising, therefore for the sale of slaves, may be created for the remaining section. It is, for example, indubitable that without the acquisition of Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas by the United States, slavery in Virginia and Maryland would have been wiped out long ago. In the Secessionist Congress at Montgomery, Senator Toombs, one of the spokesmen of the South, strikingly formulated the economic law that commands the constant expansion of the territory of slavery. “In fifteen years,” said he, “without a great increase in slave territory, either the slaves must be permitted to flee from the whites, or the whites must flee from the slaves.”

So Marx recognized that there are slave producing states and states where the slaves could be used (Mexico and Arizona?). And when a territory is saturated “either the slaves must be permitted to flee from the whites, or the whites must flee from the slaves.”

Schneur on the Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

by Ben Atlas on 07.26.2010.4:41pm · 6 comments

A Guest Post by Zalman Alpert

A review of the new book by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman - The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Although the subtitle of the book is “The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” in fact a more accurate would be a partial life of Menachem M. Schneerson. In as far as they go, I found the book to be a fairly objective accounting of the life and activities of Menachem Schneersohn. In specific the chapters on Schneerson’s years in Western Europe from 1927-1942 are commendable, although there are any number of factual errors there. In general the book is marked by a serious number of factual errors, this has already been remarked upon by my good friend Rabbi Chaim Rapoport in his detailed reviews on the Seforim Blog. I was going to post some of there mistakes about facts, but Rabbi Rapoport has enumerated many of these and I see no point in adding to the list. If anyone is interested, I can be contacted and I can cite page and line in over twenty places. It seems that to the authors of this book, Schneerson’s years as Rebbe from 1951-1994 were marked only by Messianic activity, outreach activities and an interest in Israeli political life which the authors nicely relate to the Messianic and outreach campaigns.

What the book fails to capture and even deal with in the slightest is how Schneerson functioned as the Lubavitcher Rebbe in his day to day work as a traditional Chassidic Rebbe and as head of the community in Crown Heights and the international Chabad-Lubavitch community. What was the source of loyalty to Schneerson by his followers, especially the younger generation who grew up under Schneerson’s leadership or joined the movement under his tutelage, there is really no attempt at explaining the source of Schneerson’s remarkable charisma and leadership traits. There is no attempt made at describing or analyzing the yechidus experience under Schneerson’s leadership. After all it was this experience which bonded an individual chassid to his Rebbe and from 1950-1977, these unique sessions took up a great deal of Schneerson’s time. Little if any space is spent discussing this experience.

Next the farbrengun experience where Schneersohn bonded with his community as a whole, is almost ignored except in passing. No description of these remarkable events is attempted. No discussion of the various topics discussed at these communal gatherings. The Rebbe spoke of politics, talmudic discourses, his famous Chumash and rashi lessons, his Hadranim, and above all his chassidic Maamorim. One would expect some sort of evaluation of the nature and quality of the Chassidic discourses delivered by the Rebbe over the course of forty years. May I add at this point little time is spent in this volume analyzing Schneerson’a ability as a talmudic scholar and scholar of Jewish mysticism. Clearly there are people out there who have what to say on these matters.

As leader of the Crown Heights community, Schneerson also established and ran a school system there. What was the nature of this school system, what was taught, what was the curriculum of this educational system, who were the teachers. Not a word in the book about the Lubavitcher Yeshiva system around the world and especially in Crown Heights. This is troubling given the fact that the Rebbe created a school system known as Ohelei Torah in Crown Heights (today called Ohelei Menachem in his honor) that taught boys from the age of 4 until 18 and had absolutely no secular studies. I am certain that many of my readers will not believe this, but in fact the Berlin and Paris educated Rebbe created and served as spiritual patron of a schools system with no secular studies at all. One would have expected the authors to comment on the general accepted fact that Lubavitch yeshivas failed to produce more than a few talmudic scholars over the course of the forty years of the Rebbe’s leadership and that most of the shluchim are not considered serious rabbinic scholars by the wider orthodox community. This in contra distinction to the Chassidic communites of Belz, Bobov, Kluizenebrg and others who have produced many notable dayanim and rabbinic scholars. At one point in Jewish history Chabad was widely respected for the rabbinic scholarship, yet by the time of his death in 1994, rabbinic scholarship in Chabad was at a all time low. What happened, again silence from our authors.

The book fails to explore the second most powerful organ in the Lubavitch community under the Rebbe’s leadership namely the Rebbe’s secretariat, while referencing the Rebbe’s secretaries we do not learn how this body functioned, what they did, how they dealt with questions of access to the Rebbe and the like. The Rebbe’s chief aide Rabbi Chaim Mordecai Chadakov is mentioned in passing but his role as the second most important man in the Chabad community is ignored. The roles of Rabbis Leibel Groner, Binyomin Klein and others are again shrouded in silence. Even financial scandals involving family members of one of the aides, that upset the Rebbe and forced the secretary’s temporary resignation are ignored in this volume.

Crown Heights like all Jewish communities had a rabbinate that dealt with legal, ritual and other religious issues. The Rebbe was very much involved in selecting or as was the case not selecting this rabbinate. The conflict over chosing Rabbis in Crown Heights continues to this very day and to a great extent the Rebbe insured that no one could claim to be the Rabbi of Crown Heights. Again the book does not even mention this body. It does not mention the Rebbe’s involvement in chosing a Rabbi for Crown Heights after the death of Rabbi Zalman Dworkin and the politics surrounding that choice.

If we are to read this book at face value, we would be led to believe that once the Rebbe assumed control in 1951 all opposition faded. In fact many senior chassidim continued either to oppose the Rebbe (for example Rabbi Yaakov Landau, the chief Rabbi of Bnai Brak and close disciple of the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe) and Rabbi Zalman Schneerson a cousin and close associate of Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn) or to adopt a neutral policy in regards to the Rebbe’s leadership. The book completely ignores various chapters in the forty years of his leadership where opposition was raised. These include the Rebbe’s attempts to integrate the Jerusalem Lubavitch communtiy of the Yishuv hayashen in the general Israeli community and the opposition of the Havlin family, the opposition to the Rebbe’s philosophy expressed by some of the Lubavitchers who arrived from the Soviet Union after the 1967 war and settled in Nachalat Har Chabad, which required the dispatch of several dozen American Lubavitchers to make sure things did not get out of hand, the Dovid Fisher affair in Crown Heights, the Lubavitcher attack against the senior chassid Rabbi Moshe Ber Rivkin of Yeshivath Tora veDaas for failure to obey the Rebbe in a matter connected to Israeli politics. Not a note on these matters. Other notable omissions from the book are the Rebbe’s reaction or in fact lack of reaction to the Crown Heights Riots and murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, not a word about this in the book.

The book also fails to note that after assuming leadership the Rebbe made certain that his former rival Rabbi Shmaryahu Gourary would no longer have any power. Firstly as mentioned he organized a parallel Luabvitch school system in Crown Heights called Ohelei Torah in competition to the United Luabvitcher Yeshiva controlled by Gourary. As Gourary was also the senior officer of Agudas chassde Chabad (Union of Chabad Chassidim) the umbrella Chabad group, the Rebbe put this group on ice and created a counter group called the Union of Chabad Youth controlled by himself thereby assuring that Gourary would have no organizational power in Chabad. Until the organization was revived as a tool in the book case against Barry Gourary,”Aguch” functioned solely as a burial society for over thirty years. Finally since Gourary was delivering a chassidic discourse at the Shlosh Seudos meal in 770, the Rebbe abolished this ritual in Lubavitch. Of course Gourary continued to lead the 770 meal, but it was sparsely attended as all knew that this was without the Rebbe’s blessings. Was the Rebbe living in a dream world when he cried in response to his not being invited to Barry’s wedding at the same time?

Another fact ignored by the authors was the growing power by Avrohom Shemtov and Yudel Krinsky. Both created the American Friends of Lubavitch as a fundraising vehicle and as such became the voice of their donors in the Lubavitch court. It was their voice and power as conduits for rich donors that led the Rebbe to drop his “Who is a Jew” demands from the Israeli governement. The American donors many of whom were not Orthodox could not stomach such a demand. In fact this cosmetic treatment of Chabad by Krinsky and Shemtov continues to this very day. When the Australian Chabad millionaire Joseph Gutnick and the whole Chabad community in Israel supported Netanyahu in the Israeli elections, a denial was issued by Krinsky and Shemtov claiming that Chabad was neutral in these elections. Of course the American Chabad donors could hardly be expected to look favorably on Chabad’s support of the hard line Likkud and their opposition to the two state solution.

Together with Rabbi Manis Friedman they developed a new philosophy for Lubavitch outreach. Where as previously Lubavitch was out to make new orthodox Jews and chassidim, now the chief purpose was to attract the newcomers to “Judaism Lite” and to insure continued contributions to the Chabad cause. The new phiosophy smacked more of Mordecai Kaplan than it did of lets say the Baal Shem Tov. In fact shlichus became a financially positive career as most shluchim were living well better than their brothers who remained behind in Crown Heights. In fact publicity and fundraising became the chief responsibility of many Chabad shluchim. And the aging Rebbe seemed unable or unwilling to deal with these new ideas.

The book also fails to devote any significant space to analyzing the cult of personality that was developing about the Rebbe after 1970 which included the use of his portrait in their books and ads. His speeches of hours upon hours and other similar tactics were clearly patented after other totalitarian leaders.

In terms of the afterlife the book plainly ignores the deterioration of Orthodox religious standards in Crown Heights since the death of the Rebbe. Costume for men and women was becoming modern, beards were being trimmed if not removed and a general laxity in the strict standards of Chasidic social norms were reported. Many young Lubavitchers were leaving the community, others were going to college including Modern orthodox schools like Yeshiva University and Touro College. A quick glance at the Wikepedia biography of Rabbi Avrohom Shemtov will reveal this fact in the Rabbi’s own family. This culminated in the creation of a controversial wine bar “BASIL” in Crown Heights run by a group of young lubavitchers. In general one wonders how a community that is now having difficulty in retaining the loyalty of its own youth can go out and offer itself as a model and solution for secular and modern Jews? In fact the turmoil and conflict in Lubavitch today is not between the Messianists and anti Messianist but between those Lubavitchers who wish to continue to function as Chassdim and those who seemingly wish to become Modern Orthodox and less.

Speaking of the turmoil, the books fails to explore any post Rebbe leadership models. As I am certain the authors know there were those in Crown Heights who wanted a new Rebbe, yes few in number but there were such people. Others like Rabbi Yecheskel Sofer the campus Rabbi at the University in Beersheva also called for some formal system of spiritual leadership in post Rebbe Chabad.

Finally a word about recent reviews of this book. This book is hardly anti Lubavitch. I think it paints a very evenhanded portrayal of the Rebbe’s life. Parts of the book are clearly very favorable to the Rebbe, other parts present him as a human who was undergoing change as he got older and changed circumstances. Yet why the long negative reviews of the book? Seemingly they seek to present the book as having many historical errors, in fact the book does have many such. But permit me to say that is the case in many academic studies, but in does not need interfere with the auhthors thesis. So what is really bothering men like Rabbi Boteach or Rapoport? Clearly the chapter about the Rebbe in Berlin and Paris (my conversations with Mr. Barry Gourary over the course of many years gave me a much clearer picture of the Rebbe’s life and times in Berlin and I am a tad surprised that Friedman and Heilman did not use such materials if it was available to them) does not warrant a forty page response and I think the answer is clear, while the book is objective and overall depicts a favorable portrait of Rabbi Schneerson, these reviewers would not be happy with anything less than a propaganda work about the Rebbe the like of which their own press churns out on a regular basis. Nothing less will make these people completely happy. That is sad because the reviewers are intelligent and likeable people, yet they too are caught up in the cult around the Rebbe. Perhaps that fact itself shows the power of Rabbi Schneerson that even years after his death seemingly intelligent and good people still can not stomach any biogrpahy attempting to deal with the life of Rabbi Schneerson and leaving his afterlife to G-D. For now this book is a welcome addition to the study of the life of Rabbi Schneerson, with warts, mistakes and omissions, it still attempts to deal with Rabbi Schneerson as a human who functioned as such. Hopefully in the future a more complete biography based on the same methodology will be undertaken. In the meantime I think the book is worth reading and can serve as the basis for future study of his life.

photo illustration via flickr/robdobi

Paul Gregory on Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina

by Ben Atlas on 07.12.2010.4:24pm · 0 comments

A worthwhile podcast from Russ Roberts with a despicably stupid Hollywood title - Gregory on Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin. (I also deleted the video about CCCP posted here last week. I decided it was a moronic propaganda. I also deleted all my aphorisms, I decided they need more work to hone the style.)

P.S. Speaking of Hollywood. One of the tensions of the podcast is the questions how our world would have been different if Nikolai Bukharin became a communist leader or Grigory Zinoviev, etc. There is an article by Slavoj Zizek, offensively about Hollywood - Hallucination As Ideology In Cinema. Her writes about the vertigo of Stalingrad:

“So much has already been written about the battle for Stalingrad, this battle is invested with so many fantasies and symbolic meanings – when the German troops reached the Western bank of Volga, the “apolitical” Franz Lehar himself, the author of The Merry Widow, Hitler’s favored operetta, quickly composed “Das Wolgalied,” celebrating this achievement. Let us just recall the two main “as if” scenarios: IF the Germans were to break through to the East of Volga and to the Caucasus oil fields, the Soviet Union would collapse and Germany would have won the war; IF Erich von Manheim’s deft manoeuvres were not to prevent the collapse of the entire German front after the defeat of the 6th Army in the Stalingrad Kessel, the Red Army would have rolled over into Central Europe already in 1943, defeating Germany before the Allied invasion in the Normandy, so that the whole of the continental Europe would have been Communist…”

The Persistence of Political [and Religious] Misperceptions

by Ben Atlas on 07.12.2010.7:42am · 0 comments

People are clicking this article in the Boston Globe - How facts backfire - Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains. The article is based on the paper by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler - When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions. The research is obviously left-wing biased (see the questions there) but as the authors themselves state, it fits both liberals and conservatives and even the religious misconceptions I might add. In one sentence: if you confront a person with the contradictory to a belief facts, the brain goes into a stress and will “backfire”, reinforcing the original beliefs despite the facts. The paper concludes:

“We find that responses to corrections in mock news articles differ significantly according to subjects’ ideological views. As a result, the corrections fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants. Even worse, they actually strengthen misperceptions among ideological subgroups in several cases”.

and

“The backfire effects that we found seem to provide further support for the growing literature showing that citizens engage in “motivated reasoning.” While our experiments focused on assessing the effectiveness of corrections, the results show that direct factual contradictions can actually strengthen ideologically grounded factual beliefs..”

The Boston Globe explains:

“This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon – known as “backfire” – is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.”

I have often wrote that political and religious beliefs (and all politics are based on religions) should be subjected to a detox, not rational arguments. This also pretty much explains the reaction to James Kugel or Wilhelm Stekel or even Samuel Heilman. Instead of facing the facts, the facts backfire, the brain short circuits to the default concepts. In other words it is all hopeless.

P.S. I was just thinking about the genius of the Hammer and Sickle logo. Communism as a successor religion morphed both the Islamic Crescent and the Russian Orthodox Cross (right). With the sidekick star being the subliminal nod to the Jews.

Hammer and Sickle photo via flickr/jectre

Monotheism and the Monarchical Authoritarian State

by Ben Atlas on 07.10.2010.12:21pm · 4 comments

There are three glorious kings at the genesis of the three great monotheistic religions:

King David, the Judean Emperor in the 10th century BC. According to James Kugel the recording of the key passages in Torah and the most important Judaic formulations point to the 10th century BC.
King Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor in the 3rd century AD. Constantine legalized Christianity in the Empire and introduced it as a state religion.
King Muhammad, the Prophet of the Arabian Peninsula and the future Caliphate, 5th century AD. During that time (or after) was the recording of the Qur’an and the creation of the creed.

The three kings had much in common. Foremost each emperor unified the dispersed tribes and the remote provinces into a state ruled by the absolutist power, a one monarch (monarcha – one ruler):

King David attacked and captured Jerusalem and made it his capital, the City of David. He unified or conquered the Northern tribes of Israel, creating an empire that lasted till the death of his son Solomon. Still the new Temple and the ritual became etched in the imagination for the next three thousand years.
King Constantine attacked and captured Byzantium, renamed it Constantinople and made it the capital of the unified Roman Empire. The period immediately preceeding Constantine’s rule is known as Tetrarchy when the vast territory of the Roman Empire was split into four separately governed provinces. Constantine unified the empire by force and intrigue and moved the capital from Rome. Allegedly before one of his victorious battles he branded his soldiers with a cross and hence became a believer.
King Muhammad attacked and captured Mecca and Medina and made it the base for the jihad, the complete conquest and unification of the Arabian Peninsula.

Constantine burning Arian books, from a compendium of canon law, ca. 825

There is a pattern, monotheism was initially an instrument for the rapid imperial expansion. Later even Stalin figured this shtick, he had a blueprint. If you rule over the dispersed and conquered by force tribes with conflicting ethnic allegiances to their own gods and idols, a single ideology it’s not just a religion but a confirmation that a king is anointed (a moshiach) by the Creator himself. Hence a rebellion is a religious offence against the One God who shows no mercy.

The central shrine inevitably moves to the new capital – Beit Hamikdash Temple in Jerusalem, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The ruthless founding generals over time morph into the lyrical founding poets (in addition to the loot of the land, the illiterate warlords plunder the creative imagination of the nameless scribes).

Interestingly the most important theological controversy in Christianity was Arianism after the teaching of Arius of Alexandria (256-336 AD). Arius preached that Jesus was a man, not a God’s essence. The Bishops were doctrinally split when the Emperor Constantine hosted the Council of Nicaea in 325. The illiterate Emperor Constantine sided with the (meshichisten) bishops who maintained that the Jesus was God and in the Nicene Creed declared the Arianism a heresy. This was no accident, although Constantine formally only converted on his death-bed, he had his burial prepared far in advance. At the splendid Church of the Holy Apostles they entombed Constantine inside a lavish gold coffin surrounded by the symbolic twelve coffins representing the apostles of the Almighty God, with the Christ’s successor in the middle. Similarly both David and Muhammad are meta messianic. Had the Turks not destroyed the Byzantine civilization with the Christendom shifting back to the old Rome and to the Third Rome in Moscow, Constantine would have endured as the central meta myth as well.

From the beginning the imperial business (and later business of nation states) was war, slaughter and conquest. In the authoritarian states the monotheism evolved as the unifying ideology. The mortal, monarchical powers relied on monotheism to further the earthly grab, to nourish the thirsty souls, to bathe the senses in the cathartic rituals and to dance deliriously to the cruel, territorial drumbeat of One God and One Truth.

The 20th Century Script according to Kim Il-sung

by Ben Atlas on 06.5.2010.1:44pm · 0 comments

The familiar George Orwell reenactment captured in a rare 15 minute documentary by the BBS – Life inside the North Korean bubble.

Russia in 1931 by Margaret Bourke-White

by Ben Atlas on 12.20.2009.6:54pm · 0 comments

I plan several posts from the Russian collection of photos by Margaret Bourke-White. These are all from 1931 in addition to the 1931 Magnitogorsk photos and 1941 Stalin photos.

Worker tightening a bolt on a generator shell. Dnieper River Dam.

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Magnitogorsk, Russia in 1931 by Margaret Bourke-White

by Ben Atlas on 12.20.2009.11:02am · 0 comments

I continue to curate the Russian collection of photos by Margaret Bourke-White. These photos are all from 1931 in Magnitogorsk, the mining and industrial town on the border with Kazakhstan.

Russian woman grimly holding a slab of meat as other women staunchly stand

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Margaret Bourke-White photographs Stalin Family

by Ben Atlas on 12.19.2009.9:22pm · 2 comments

Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) “was born in the Bronx, New York, to Joseph White (who came from an Orthodox Jewish family) and Minnie Bourke, the daughter of an Irish ship’s carpenter and an English cook; she was a Protestant. She grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey (in a neighborhood now part of Middlesex), but graduated from Plainfield High School. Her father was a naturalist, engineer and inventor. His work improved the four-color printing process that is used for books and magazines.”

View of the bed where Joseph Stalin was born.

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Vladimir Bukovsky Archive Raises Questions about Baroness Ashton

by Ben Atlas on 11.25.2009.8:51pm · 0 comments

Vladimir Bukovsky, the former dissident, secretly copied and eventually published on the internet Soviet era Kremlin archive. There is a treasure trove of information that no one wants to touch. The archive can expose multiple politicians that did business with the communist Russia. Similar archive of the Gorbachev era have been copied electronically (not yet revealed, expect in bits and pieces) from the Gorbachev Foundation by Pavel Stroilov who was granted political asylum in Britain because of the archive.

Baroness Ashton was just appointed to the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in the new EU parliament, equivalent of the European Foreign Ministry. Watch Nigel Farage take Catherine Ashton to task in the EU parliament yesterday. This is a great theater. ►►►read more

Psoy Korolenko & Daniel Kahn – Yiddish Song to Stalin

by Ben Atlas on 11.12.2009.9:25pm · 0 comments

Another one, sorry, hard to resist. This a Soviet Yiddish song from the 1930s to haver Stalin. Where did I hear this before, hmmm… ►►►read more

LIFE – The Cuban Revolution by Joseph Scherschel

by Ben Atlas on 11.12.2009.11:24am · 0 comments

I was looking at the Die Kubanische Revolution exhibition in München. So I decided to curate the Cuban Revolution Life archive and there are really interesting photos taken by Joseph Scherschel in 1958 -1961.