Nearly 25 years after the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II an Italian Parliamentary Commission has reached a conclusion that many have long held: that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt on the Pope’s life. From Reuters:
Leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, an Italian parliamentary investigative commission said in a report.
A final draft of the report, which is due to be presented to parliament later this month, was made available to Reuters on Thursday by the commission president, Senator Paolo Guzzanti.
“This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul,” the report said.
“They relayed this decision to the military secret services for them to take on all necessary operations to commit a crime of unique gravity, without parallel in modern times,” it said.
The report also says “some elements” of the Bulgarian secret services were involved but that this was an attempt to divert attention away from the Soviet Union’s alleged key role.
A 36-page chapter on the assassination attempt was included in a wider report by parliament’s Mitrokhin Commission, which probed the revelations of Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior Soviet archivist during the Cold War who defected to Britain in 1992.
The Pope was shot in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who was arrested minutes later and convicted of attempted murder.
At the time of the shooting, events in the Pope’s Polish homeland were starting a domino effect which was eventually to lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
From a strategic standpoint, the Soviet attempt proved prescient—as Pope John Paul’s reign helped bring about the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
But that the attempt failed gave the Pope even more power—and, when coupled with Reagan’s military and ideological pressure—may have even expedited the collapse that not many though would occur so suddenly and resoundingly.
(h/t Stop the ACLU)
I wonder what the worker-communist secularist of the year has to say.
With regard to this subject, I recommend Claire Sterling’s book The Time Of The Assassins, which documents her own investigation of the Bulgarian and Soviet connections to Mehmet Ali Agca and his attempt on the live of John Paul II.
You know actus, back in the day, your kind was first in line to act as apologist for the Soviets.
You are not fooling anybody.
wishbone,
Actus is pretty tame, really. The real fellow travellers are infesting the “Buckley lynching” threads.
Cordially…
Oh stop it! We all know the USSR was teetering on the brink and Reagan had nothing to do with bringing it down. I even read somewhere, maybe on the Daily Kos, that Reagan’s stupid policies actually delayed the fall for 20 years. That’s right–if Reagan weren’t president in the 80’s, the USSR would have collapsed around 1970.
Actually, wishbone, actus’ comment was my thought as well.
Well, my second thought. My first thought was to steel myself for the inevitable moonbat onslaught from Jeff Goldstein combining Reagan, the Pope, and the collapse of the Soviet Union into one sentence.
I do want there to not be a pope. But I don’t think killing the guy solves that. We’ll just end up with another one.
Catholic? If so, you might want to change denominations, buddy.
As opposed to moonbat observations that the Pope and Ronnie didn’t matter. Correct?
Raised that way. Now more worker-communist secularist. I do think we might be able to get away with a good pope. I liked the brazilian candidate last time around.
Catholic? Worker-Communist?
Catholic? Worker-Communist?
Catholic? Worker-Communist?
Catholic? Worker-Communist?
Catholic? Worker-Communist?
Can’t make up your mind?
I don’t know if it’s your first hint of honesty, actus, but it must be your first hint of indecision.
ROTFLMAO!
Yep. I was in a bit of a rush when I posted that, wishbone. As Jeff G noted, Reagan and the Pope both had a lot to do with the SovUnion imploding as it did (after the Soviets shot themselves in their collective economic foot), said attribution usually driving barking moonbats mad with rage.
TW: I’m in the <i>office
.
I said I was raised catholic. And then made a reference to our hero, the worker communist secularist of the year on the Anti-islamism manifesto.
As far as I know i’ve never been kicked out of the church though.
Sorry JeffS, the Buckley thread and the intellectually feckless bullshit spouted by those on the left has put me in the foulest of moods from which I do not recognize friendly sarcasm.
Is cool, wishbone. Been there, done that.
Hard to understand what the Soviets were thinking, if they in fact had anything to do with the assasination attempt.
If anything, it made the Pope stronger morally.
The successor to the Ceasers beat the successors to Marx.
Never thought it would happen.
And I for one question the existence of this substance known as “oxygen.”
Ditto on the whole gravity thing.
Idiot.
Hint to JG and the BBC this is old news. Yall getting all worked up a fews years too late. But that is no surprise.
Carry on.
Like certain lefties about the whole Al Qaeda thing.
Khartoum aspirin factory anyone?
Dammit to hell, I just get the loudspeakers working on top of my pick-up, fixin’ to start running all over town hollerin’ “THE RUSSKIES SHOT THE DAMN POPE!!!!”, and now you tell me everbody already knows. I reckon I should’ve done figgered it out when JG wrote:
Dumbfuck.
Yeah. And I’m so worked up I had a corn beef sandwich and watched American Idol.
I believe the Hindu Times went on record with this. I thought the final draft of an Italian parliamentary investigation was more authoratative.
Just keeping the world informed. It’s what I do.
Jeff.
Incontrolados would likely that the item more seriously if it were reported by the likes of Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn.
You know, stand-up, speak-truth-to-power guys like them.
Cordially…
Yeah, Marx, Jesus, whutdafuck, as long as my messiah can work miracles…
What part of ”Nearly 25 years after the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II an Italian Parliamentary Commission has reached a conclusion that many have long held,” did you miss, incontrolados?
Perhaps the part that confirmed that the USSR was a pretty evil enterprise? Or an “evil empire,” if you will? Not that anybody in the know ever said as much.
It’s almost as if the trolls around here aren’t bothering to read the posts they’re commenting on. Perish the thought.
We’ve known for many years that the USSR was involved in the plot to kill the Pope. Even before that, we knew that the Bulgarians were involved. This is surprising?
The failure of the Communist economic and political models was responsible both for the conservative turn in the US and UK in the late ‘70s – hence the election of Ronald Reagan – and for the collapse of the USSR. Reagan’s policy choices were peripheral in that collapse, though by helping to “heighten the contradictions” (as a Marxist might put it) he did help convince many in the USSR, both Russian and non-Russian, that a nationalist, democratic, free market system would bring them the peace and prosperity (and personal security) that Communism had failed to bring. And the selection of a Polish pope was important in encouraging the anti-Communist resistance movement in Poland, which eventually served as the leading edge of the Soviet-bloc crackup.
But the notion that RR’s or JP2’s policy decisions in and of themselves led to the breakup of the USSR is both ludicrous and incompatible with the obvious truth that Communism is a failed political and economic system. I was a very liberal Russian Studies student when I first visited the USSR in 1989 and 1990; in 1990 I wrote that the USSR was going to collapse within a year into its constituent republics, and that Boris Yeltsin would take over as president of Russia. It was obvious. At that point American conservatives were still arguing that glasnost was some sort of ruse and that the USSR remained an expansionist threat. Ludicrous.
The ultimate irony is that the Russians who brought down the USSR expected that democracy and the free market would bring them prosperity and security. Instead they’ve had 15 years of collapse, decline, the utter impoverishment of working class people, the obscene and corrupt enrichment of the few, skyrocketing alcoholism, life expectancy dropping to under 60 for men, and ultimately a turn towards a sort of Peronist/Chavista semi-democratic autocracy of the majority. The collapse of the USSR was supposed to be good, in the first instance, for Russians themselves. Yet they’ve come to think of it as a catastrophe. Given that China’s reform without collapse has gone so much better for everyone than the USSR’s collapse without reform, why are we still cheerleading over this event?
Beats me brooksfoe.
Maybe because the chinks have been civilized as part of a more or less unified state, much longer than the russkies.
Thank you, brooksfoe and Carl. Although two numbnuts chattering away is hardly an onslaught, I appreciate your predictability. Keep up the good work!
The real fellow travellers are infesting the “Buckley lynching†threads.
It’s like the Third International over there. I haven’t seen so many Marxists since my last vacation to San Francisco.