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Oh, so you're just ignoring the Red Terror? Or the murder of the Cossacks before Stalin came to power? Lenin never murdered anybody? The failings of the Soviet

Oh, so you're just ignoring the Red Terror? Or the murder of the Cossacks before Stalin came to power? Lenin never murdered anybody? The failings of the Soviet Union are the failings of an ideology whose explictly stated goal was the overthrow of every existing social institution. Stalin merely implemented the Bolshevik vision on a much grander and bloodier scale. Unless your argument is that the Bolsheviks were wrong (which would include people before Stalin).

danharaj 9y ago
Ideology is not nearly as important as material circumstances in describing how history happens. > Stalin merely implemented the Bolshevik vision on a much grander and bloodier scale. I have a serious hunch that you haven't actually done any scholarly inquiry into the ideological landscape of the revolution and how that fits with its material reality. > Unless your argument is that the Bolsheviks were wrong (which would include people before Stalin). Well yes, of course they were wrong. The government Lenin established had to make essentially impossible compromises in order to survive. Lenin himself wrote about how they were making ideological compromises due to the exigencies of their circumstances. He thought that those compromises could be undone once the state had been stabilized. He died before that happened, and it never happened. The Soviet Union was always in a state of constant peril due to internal and external forces. It does not help that they were always militarized since its inception. No good civil institutions can come out of a state of perpetual war. My personal hot take which is not a position I would take if I had to give my opinion grounded in scholarship about the time period is that the revolution could have succeeded if the SPD hadn't order the Freikorps to crush the revolution in Germany; granted that they did so, it would have perhaps been better for the socialist cause for the USSR to collapse than cling to power. On the other hand, Stalin's USSR did the lion's share of the work in defeating Nazi Germany. What would have happened if he were deposed and the Soviet Union failed to industrialize?
- dragandj 9y ago
  At first they did their fair share in helping Nazi Germany, their official ally until Germans decided that their pact is not useful any more and suddenly attacking them in June 1941.
- nickik 9y ago
  > The Soviet Union was always in a state of constant peril due to internal and external forces. Mostly because their own ideology forced them into stupid policies that constantly caused chaos.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    That's not how ideology works. That's not how history works.
    - nickik 9y ago
      Yes. Yes, it is. I'm not saying Russia did not have any problems, but its absolutely unarguable that their ideology made them implement policies that made the problems worse. That is exactly how history works.
    - sbmassey 9y ago
      How would you describe the support for Lysenko's disastrous agricultural policies, or the persecution of the Kulaks, if not as ideological?
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        Strategic. Stalin preferred to have absolute power within a smaller, weaker economy (but one with vast territorial and material resources available for the future) than to be part of a distributed power structure in a larger economy. This is a very common pattern among dictators, and this is where I cite Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's Logic of Political Survival or dictator's handbook, depending on whether you want the theoretical or narrative exposition of the same basic idea. Better yet, read both.
        sbmassey 9y ago
        I can well imagine that Machiavellian strategies of that type go on in most politically powerful peoples heads, but as far as I know Stalin never stated anywhere that his aim was to reduce the size of the economy, and the beliefs of everyone under Stalin carrying out the massacres seem to have been true ideological fervour for communist doctrine, so I would chalk it up to ideology personally.
- dtornabene 9y ago
  I can't remember where I read it, I'd have to do some googling, but from what I remember there were very real material obstacles to the Red Army making it all the way to Germany. While the German revolution of 1918 was absolutely a tragedy (in a myriad of ways) there's some decent scholarship on how isolated the Soviet state would still have remained. iirc things like Polish nationalism, and internal disagreements within Russia( bol vs Left SR; bolsheviks wanted to wait and the Left SRs wanted to march all the way to Germany)
monocasa 9y ago
The Bolsheviks wouldn't even say they were communist if you asked. Lenin's main contribution to Marxist theory as that of a 'vanguard party', the idea of having an intermediary step between capitalism and communism (a 'dictatorship of the proletariat') to manage the lengthy and difficult transition. A very Russian 'strongman leading' idea IMO, and there are certainly other schools of thought on how that transition should work.
- varjag 9y ago
  Bolsheviks were a faction in Russian communist movement (vs. Mensheviks), they would totally say they were communist. Lenin's idea of transitional phase did not materialize until the failure of "war communism" policy in 1918-1920 became apparent. That phase was more-or-less direct attempt at implementing the tenets of Communist Manifesto literally.
losteric 9y ago
Like I said, I'm a pedant not an apologist. The USSR was a miserable failure, but it was not a totalitarian dictatorship prior to Stalin's rule... "merely" an authoritarian oligarchy. The Bolshevik's ideology did not align with their actions - they didn't destroy the state, they built it. Their best achievement was scaring the US into going to the Moon.
- arethuza 9y ago
  I'd have thought the USSR's greatest achievement was doing most of the fighting in the defeat of the Nazis.
- varjag 9y ago
  Revolutionary sailors in Petrograd would stop a tram and execute the passengers that did not have rough hands of factory workers.
  - baursak 9y ago
    Was this during the revolution, or much later? Do you have a source?
    - varjag 9y ago
      Dmitry Likhatchov memoirs. Early months of revolution, hence still Petrograd. Class struggle is no joke if done properly, this isn't your typical plastering of Che posters in the campus these days.
      - baursak 9y ago
        So then blaming communism for these actions is a bit of a stretch. It's like blaming capitalism for any atrocities committed by rank and file US soldiers/agents.
        varjag 9y ago
        I specifically replied to the claim that Bolsheviks were some mild, Singapore-style autocracy in their pre-Stalinist period. They were not, this was systematic, and of course it didn't get much better once Stalin assumed power.
googletazer 9y ago
The Cossacks were split along class lines too, there is a lot of documentation on that. Young and poorer ones fought for the reds, wealthier and older landowning ones for the whites. Lenin at least was smart enough to keep some elements of the market economy around, tells a lot about his university education and coming from a minor noble family. Stalin was a huge piece of shit with three grades of religious education. If Lenin didn't kick the bucket too soon, the whole experiment would probably last a bit longer.
- nickik 9y ago
  > Lenin at least was smart enough to keep some elements of the market economy around No he was not smart enough. He pushed the idea so far that they were about to collapse and then in a emergency move they liberalized because they had no other option. He and everybody else hated allowance that they had to make for the market. All of them absolutely hated it and the thing they debate most is how to get ride of the market. > If Lenin didn't kick the bucket too soon, the whole experiment would probably last a bit longer. It was not so much a 'experiment' as something that was forced on them because they did not have enough power. The NEP was collapsing because even within the NEP the USSR did so many counterproductive things, it could not have continued so much longer. Stalin did exactly what everybody wanted, but most people disagree with him about if they could actually do it.

danharaj 9y ago

Ideology is not nearly as important as material circumstances in describing how history happens. > Stalin merely implemented the Bolshevik vision on a much grander and bloodier scale. I have a serious hunch that you haven't actually done any scholarly inquiry into the ideological landscape of the revolution and how that fits with its material reality. > Unless your argument is that the Bolsheviks were wrong (which would include people before Stalin). Well yes, of course they were wrong. The government Lenin established had to make essentially impossible compromises in order to survive. Lenin himself wrote about how they were making ideological compromises due to the exigencies of their circumstances. He thought that those compromises could be undone once the state had been stabilized. He died before that happened, and it never happened. The Soviet Union was always in a state of constant peril due to internal and external forces. It does not help that they were always militarized since its inception. No good civil institutions can come out of a state of perpetual war. My personal hot take which is not a position I would take if I had to give my opinion grounded in scholarship about the time period is that the revolution could have succeeded if the SPD hadn't order the Freikorps to crush the revolution in Germany; granted that they did so, it would have perhaps been better for the socialist cause for the USSR to collapse than cling to power. On the other hand, Stalin's USSR did the lion's share of the work in defeating Nazi Germany. What would have happened if he were deposed and the Soviet Union failed to industrialize?

dragandj 9y ago
At first they did their fair share in helping Nazi Germany, their official ally until Germans decided that their pact is not useful any more and suddenly attacking them in June 1941.
nickik 9y ago
> The Soviet Union was always in a state of constant peril due to internal and external forces. Mostly because their own ideology forced them into stupid policies that constantly caused chaos.
- danharaj 9y ago
  That's not how ideology works. That's not how history works.
  - nickik 9y ago
    Yes. Yes, it is. I'm not saying Russia did not have any problems, but its absolutely unarguable that their ideology made them implement policies that made the problems worse. That is exactly how history works.
  - sbmassey 9y ago
    How would you describe the support for Lysenko's disastrous agricultural policies, or the persecution of the Kulaks, if not as ideological?
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Strategic. Stalin preferred to have absolute power within a smaller, weaker economy (but one with vast territorial and material resources available for the future) than to be part of a distributed power structure in a larger economy. This is a very common pattern among dictators, and this is where I cite Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's Logic of Political Survival or dictator's handbook, depending on whether you want the theoretical or narrative exposition of the same basic idea. Better yet, read both.
      - sbmassey 9y ago
        I can well imagine that Machiavellian strategies of that type go on in most politically powerful peoples heads, but as far as I know Stalin never stated anywhere that his aim was to reduce the size of the economy, and the beliefs of everyone under Stalin carrying out the massacres seem to have been true ideological fervour for communist doctrine, so I would chalk it up to ideology personally.
dtornabene 9y ago
I can't remember where I read it, I'd have to do some googling, but from what I remember there were very real material obstacles to the Red Army making it all the way to Germany. While the German revolution of 1918 was absolutely a tragedy (in a myriad of ways) there's some decent scholarship on how isolated the Soviet state would still have remained. iirc things like Polish nationalism, and internal disagreements within Russia( bol vs Left SR; bolsheviks wanted to wait and the Left SRs wanted to march all the way to Germany)

monocasa 9y ago

The Bolsheviks wouldn't even say they were communist if you asked. Lenin's main contribution to Marxist theory as that of a 'vanguard party', the idea of having an intermediary step between capitalism and communism (a 'dictatorship of the proletariat') to manage the lengthy and difficult transition. A very Russian 'strongman leading' idea IMO, and there are certainly other schools of thought on how that transition should work.

varjag 9y ago
Bolsheviks were a faction in Russian communist movement (vs. Mensheviks), they would totally say they were communist. Lenin's idea of transitional phase did not materialize until the failure of "war communism" policy in 1918-1920 became apparent. That phase was more-or-less direct attempt at implementing the tenets of Communist Manifesto literally.

losteric 9y ago

Like I said, I'm a pedant not an apologist. The USSR was a miserable failure, but it was not a totalitarian dictatorship prior to Stalin's rule... "merely" an authoritarian oligarchy. The Bolshevik's ideology did not align with their actions - they didn't destroy the state, they built it. Their best achievement was scaring the US into going to the Moon.

arethuza 9y ago
I'd have thought the USSR's greatest achievement was doing most of the fighting in the defeat of the Nazis.
varjag 9y ago
Revolutionary sailors in Petrograd would stop a tram and execute the passengers that did not have rough hands of factory workers.
- baursak 9y ago
  Was this during the revolution, or much later? Do you have a source?
  - varjag 9y ago
    Dmitry Likhatchov memoirs. Early months of revolution, hence still Petrograd. Class struggle is no joke if done properly, this isn't your typical plastering of Che posters in the campus these days.
    - baursak 9y ago
      So then blaming communism for these actions is a bit of a stretch. It's like blaming capitalism for any atrocities committed by rank and file US soldiers/agents.
      - varjag 9y ago
        I specifically replied to the claim that Bolsheviks were some mild, Singapore-style autocracy in their pre-Stalinist period. They were not, this was systematic, and of course it didn't get much better once Stalin assumed power.

googletazer 9y ago

The Cossacks were split along class lines too, there is a lot of documentation on that. Young and poorer ones fought for the reds, wealthier and older landowning ones for the whites. Lenin at least was smart enough to keep some elements of the market economy around, tells a lot about his university education and coming from a minor noble family. Stalin was a huge piece of shit with three grades of religious education. If Lenin didn't kick the bucket too soon, the whole experiment would probably last a bit longer.

nickik 9y ago
> Lenin at least was smart enough to keep some elements of the market economy around No he was not smart enough. He pushed the idea so far that they were about to collapse and then in a emergency move they liberalized because they had no other option. He and everybody else hated allowance that they had to make for the market. All of them absolutely hated it and the thing they debate most is how to get ride of the market. > If Lenin didn't kick the bucket too soon, the whole experiment would probably last a bit longer. It was not so much a 'experiment' as something that was forced on them because they did not have enough power. The NEP was collapsing because even within the NEP the USSR did so many counterproductive things, it could not have continued so much longer. Stalin did exactly what everybody wanted, but most people disagree with him about if they could actually do it.