"You Can't Make an Omelette without Breaking Eggs."

Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell

Here's a pithy maxim that I've heard any number of times, but most recently it came in the form of this anecdote.

Orwell & the Marxist:
Orwell points out all the failures of Stalin and Marxism, the tens of millions who died. The Marxist defends this by saying, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Orwell replies: "Where's the omelette."

Clever. How often people justify "collateral damage"on behalf of their "omelette."

So I decided to go further and verify this before sharing it. Here's what I found:

The anecdote as described—George Orwell directly confronting a Marxist defender of Stalinism with the retort "Where's the omelette?" in a personal exchange—is likely fictional or unsubstantiated folklore. There's evidently no verifiable historical record of this specific conversation occurring. 

Orwell was indeed a fierce critic of Stalinist atrocities, documenting them in works like Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945), and he frequently encountered pro-Soviet Marxists during the 1930s Spanish Civil War and in British intellectual circles. However, no diaries, letters, biographies, or contemporary accounts confirm this exact dialogue. It appears to be a modern summation of Orwell's broader rhetorical style and writings, popularized as a pithy quote to illustrate the failure of communist promises.

Digging further, the story's roots lie in Orwell's own essays, where he critiques the "ends justify the means" rationale used by Stalin's apologists. The core phrase—"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"—originated in French as On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des œufs, has been attributed to a fictional diplomat in a 1924 satirical newspaper (Comic-Finance) to downplay World War I casualties. Still earlier we find the idea promulgated by Robespierre in the context of the French Revolution.

Orwell referenced it directly in his 1943 essay "Catastrophic Gradualism" (also published as "Spilling the Spanish Beans" in some collections), responding to delays in socialist progress under Soviet influence:

       The formula usually employed is ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ And if one replies, ‘Yes, but where is the omelette?’, the answer is likely to be: ‘Oh well, you can’t expect everything to happen all in a moment.’

This passage, written amid Orwell's disillusionment with Stalin's purges (which killed tens of millions via famine, gulags, and executions), forms the anecdote's foundation. It is therefore not inconceivable that a "Marxist defender" might be lacerated in such a way by Orwell, who "points out all the failures" in his lucid, clear-eyed rebuttal.

As we dig deeper still we can see how this story gained traction as a meme-like quip in the late 20th century, especially post-Cold War, to mock failed communist regimes. It appears in:

• George Will's 2016 Washington Post column on Fidel Castro, framing it as Orwell's "acid" reply to 1930s Stalin apologists.
• Similar op-eds in The Australian Financial Review (2016) and Socialist Viewpoint (2007), tying it to utopian failures.
• Online discussions, e.g., TV Tropes (2009) calling it "popular but likely apocryphal," and X posts recirculating it as a direct quote (e.g., from 2023 and 2025).

Bottom Line: It seems to be a faithful encapsulation of Orwell's anti-totalitarian wit but not a literal event—more a cultural shorthand for questioning revolutionary violence without results.

Related Orwell Links

George Orwell's "How the Poor Die": Exploring Themes of Inequality, Neglect and Other Grim Realities

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/09/george-orwells-how-poor-die-exploring.html

George Orwell on Wells, Hitler and "Patriotism vs. the World State"

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/07/george-orwell-on-wells-hitler-and.html

George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/08/orwells-homage-to-catalonia-is.html

Orwell on Media Mischief

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/11/orwell-on-media-mischief.html

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Is Instructive on Many Levels, Plus a Good Read

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/08/orwells-homage-to-catalonia-is.html

Flashback Friday: Did you Know George Orwell Took a Stand Against Paperbacks?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2019/11/flashback-friday-did-you-know-george.html

Public Introspection: George Orwell's Why I Write

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/08/public-introspection-george-orwells-why.html

Shooting an Elephant

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2011/05/shooting-elephant.html
Excerpts from Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/09/excerpts-from-orwells-road-to-wigan-pier.html

Solzhenitsyn Re-Affirms My Low Opinion of Henry Kissinger

My low regard for Henry Kissinger began when I was waking up to what was happening in the world in my later youth. Kissinger was an insider in the Nixon White House, end of story. I was biased, no doubt influenced by a strong feeling that Vietnam was an injustice, and that Nixon corruption was real.

Still, I knew little of the depth of Kissinger's badness. The movie Missing--Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek--gives a glimpse of the dark side of our State Department in Central and South America during the 50s and 60s. Kissinger was a major player in the Chile debacle.

Years later, reading Sy Hersh's autobiography Reporter added new dimensions to the kind of malodorous influence Kissinger was. The press seemed to love him, seduced perhaps by his sonorous accent. Yes, he projected something, much like our fascination with British accents and Irish brogue.

The manner in which Hersh was ambushed by Ted Koppel when his book on Kissinger, was released is eye-opening. The establishment, and mainstream media, still loved the guy, decades after the Nixon-Ford era. It's pretty revealing that neither Koppel nor either of the guests who lacerated Hersh in front of a national audience had read Hersh's The Price of Power, the topic of discussion. Hersh had dared to criticize this iconic figure and had to be publicly flogged for it.

More recently I found myself absorbed by Paul Thomas Chamberlin's The Cold War's Killing Fields and who should come up again repeatedly as a scoundrel? Yes, Henry K. When Bangladesh was suffering after a devastating cyclone, and West Pakistan did nothing, Kissinger advised that Nixon and the U.S. do nothing to alleviate the suffering because it would "make the Pakistan government look bad."

And because their government did nothing to help the traumatized East Pakistanis after the monsoons and flooding that caused so much death and destruction, the East Pakistani people voted for the opposition party in nearly every voting district. This pissed off the ruling party, so they sent in the army and slaughtered the masses using U.S. supplied armaments. Millions fled to India.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Kissinger's response to the behavior of West Pakistan toward its Bengali brethren.

Kissinger sneered at people who "bleed" for "the dying Bengalis" and ignored the first telegram from the United States consul general in East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, and 20 members of his staff, which informed the US that their allies West Pakistan were undertaking, in Blood's words, "a selective genocide" targeting the Bengali intelligentsia, supporters of independence for East Pakistan, and the Hindu minority. In the second, more famous, Blood Telegram the word genocide was again used to describe the events, and further that with its continuing support for West Pakistan the US government had "evidenced [...] moral bankruptcy".

Makes one ill to think about it, but Kissinger was the influencer who again moved the hand of power.

* * * *

And so... As I was last night reading the Writings of Aleksandr Solzenitsyn, edited by Michael Loyd Chadwick, and once again came across some barb comments regarding this man. A chapter titled Henry Kissinger begins on page 75. It's not pretty, and only confirms what I have previously only sensed.

The style of this book is somewhat different. Solzhenitsyn divides each thought into a headline and then a little text, like a news story with more details. I am going to share here only the headlines from this four page article.

Failure of U.S. Judicial Authorities to Uncover the Real Assassins of Kennedy*
Need to Speak Bluntly about the Activities of Kissinger
Kissinger's Policy of Unending Concessions to World Communism Demonstrate THat He Is Anything But a Diplomat
Kissinger Attempts to Put Diplomacy at Its Lowest Level
The Art of Diplomacy Has a Wide Spectrum of Possibilities
The Great Diplomats of the Past
Kissinger's Endless Obscuring of Facts
Kissinger's Opponents Are Always Winning and He Is Always Yielding
Should the U.S. Surrender Its Position to the World?
Kissinger Does Not Possess the High Diplomatic Intellect Ascribed to Him
It Is Not Diplomacy to Negotiate Continual Concessions
The Vietnam Peace Agreement Prepared the Way for the Quiet Surrender of Three Countries in Indo-China
Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize Was the Ultimate in Political Pornography
Disregard By Israeli Leaders of Kissinger's Shuttle Diplomacy in the Middle East
The Real Goal of Future Convergence of the U.S with the USSR Is Kept Hidden from the American People
Surrender of the West Approaches an Avalanche Stage
The U.S. Government Will have No Emergency Exit
Genocide In Cambodia And Vietnamese Prison Camps Is Not Peace
The Peace Aimed At by Kissinger and His Associates Has No Moral Loftiness

In short, Solzhenitsyn had a pretty low opinion of this "Golden Boy" who loved the spotlight in his time, and the Nobel laureate doesn't mince words.

* * * *
The title of this book of Solzhenitsyn's writing is World Communism: A Critical Review. It begins with an intro by Michael Loyd Chadwick, who edited this volume.

In 1975, a year after Solzhenitsyn had been exiled from the Soviet Union, the author had been invited to Washington D.C. to speak to the AFL-CIO. The became a grave problem for then sitting president Gerald Ford. Shouldn't this great advocate for freedom be invited to the White House? Should we not welcome the man who put his life on the line to reveal to all the cold brutality of Soviet totalitarianism?

But no, Henry Kissinger stepped in and beseeched President Ford to not do such a thing. Why? Because befriending Solzhenitsyn would be bad for detente, and evidently Detente was Kissinger's life force.

Not only did Kissinger interfere with (ultimately blocking) the White House visit, he also said it would be "diplomatically inadvisable" for the president to attend the banquet at which Solhenitsyn was speaking. Members of the State Department and NSC whom had been invited were quietly pulled away and did not attend either.

Much more can be said, but I think you get the picture. It's only a small section of the book but when I entered into it, the story leaped off the page.

Related Links
George Harrison & Friends: The 1971 Concert for Bangladesh 
Reporter by Seymour Hersh is a Must Read for all young journalists
*Murder Most Foul: Dylan Dishes Up a New Meal with a Feast of References
Solzhenitsyn Indictment of the West Still Stands

The China Factor

I remember in my youth when Communism was portrayed with two faces. The Russia face, which was aggressive and seeking world domination. And the China face, which was home grown and contained its interests within its own borders. This was, purportedly, how the world was and why Moscow was the big bad wolf during the Cold War.

Of course this view was simplistic. It is our nature to hope for simplistic solutions to everything. In point of fact, Chinese Communism was likewise vigorous, with tentacles in South America and Africa as well as Southeast Asia and even connections to the Middle East.

The June issue of Fast Company magazine has a detailed feature story by Richard Behar called "China Invades Africa." It’s an eye opening account of current events in the African subcontinent as multi-national corporations and Chinese opportunists battle for natural resources. According to Behar, “The sub-Sahara is now the scene of one of the most bare-knuckled resource grabs the world has ever seen.”

In the 1800’s European Colonialism divvied up Africa and exploited the peoples there, but rebellions and persistence with a pinch of conscience mixed in helped to peel back the blanket. Perhaps journalism contributed by revealing what was going on in the “dark continent” just as journalists helped reveal British brutality in the face of Ghandi’s non-violent uniting of disparate groups in India.

The situation in Africa today is this: the Continent has natural resources that the world needs. And preserving the environment, or helping the vanquished masses, is not on the agenda here.

What follows here is a brief intro to a longer backgrounder by the Heritage Foundation. It’s a good read, and gives a measure of insight into why there will continue to be problems in Africa in the 21st Century.

China's Influence in Africa: Implications for the United States
by Peter Brookes and Ji Hye Shin

Amid growing concerns about the People’s Repub­lic of China’s burgeoning influence around the globe, Beijing has now set its sights on Africa. China’s inter­est in Africa is not new. In the 1960s and 1970s, Beijing’s interest centered on building ideological sol­idarity with other underdeveloped nations to advance Chinese-style communism and on repelling Western “imperialism.” Following the Cold War, Chinese interests evolved into more pragmatic pursuits such as trade, investment, and energy.

In recent years, Beijing has identified the African continent as an area of significant economic and stra­tegic interest. America and its allies and friends are finding that their vision of a prosperous Africa gov­erned by democracies that respect human rights and the rule of law and that embrace free markets is being challenged by the escalating Chinese influence in Africa.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) aids and abets oppressive and destitute African dictatorships by legit­imizing their misguided policies and praising their development models as suited to individual national conditions. Beijing holds out China’s unique develop­ment model—significant economic growth overseen by a disciplined, one-party totalitarian state with full authority, if not control, over all aspects of economic activity—as an example for others to emulate.

Moreover, China rewards its African friends with diplomatic attention and financial and military assis­tance, exacerbating existing forced dislocations of populations and abetting massive human rights abuses in troubled countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe. As a consequence, Chinese support for political and economic repression in Africa counters the liberalizing influences of Africa’s tradi­tional European and American partners. China’s vigorous campaign to develop close ties with indi­vidual African nations also reflects Beijing’s global quest to isolate Taiwan diplomatically (seven of the 26 countries that have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan are African).

If interested in more, you can read it here

EdNote: I am not encouraging you to lose sleep over this, but as the future unfolds, you might find it helpful to have seen some of it coming.