OCTOBER 13
On the Basis of Falsehood
Pravda, (literally meaning: truth) a Russian daily newspaper with a circulation of eleven million was brought out by the Communist Party in 1912, a few years before the Russian revolution. With editors of the calibre of Stalin and Lenin on its editorial board in the initial stages, it came to be regarded as one of the most important newspapers of the former Soviet Union. Its correspondents numbered more than forty thousand.
Besides being in possession of large properties, Pravda was granted extraordinary aid by the government. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, all aid stopped and its properties were confiscated in the same year by the newly formed government.
Consequently, the newspaper suffered from insurmountable monetary problems, and its publication ultimately ceased on March 14, 1992.
Pravda’s entire importance was associated with the socialist regime. The communists had carved out an economic and political hell in the name of the Soviet Union, but through Pravda they contrived to present this system to the world as a kind of Paradise. Herein lay the value of the Pravda as it served their purpose only too well. When the spell of the socialistic ‘heaven’ was broken and the truth laid bare, Pravda was left with no chance to present falsehood as truth. It was this reality which dealt it the final death blow.
Under the heading ‘Truth is Dead’ (Times of India, March 19, 1992) a commentator wrote:
No wonder it now finds it difficult to face up to the truth: that it has no place in post-Communist Russia.’
A somewhat similar happening will occur in the Hereafter. They will then learn, all of a sudden, that not to speak of eleven million, not even eleven people will be subscribers to their so-called truth.
