7 ms·

Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. It primary goal was to serve as a resource base for spreading the fire all over t

by euos 8y ago

Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. It primary goal was to serve as a resource base for spreading the fire all over the world. I just checked and it looks like English version of “the Internationale” is mild, the Russian lyrics explicitly state “this world of oppression we’ll reduce to rubble and will use that rubble to build our new world” - and I can guarantee you, USSR was really looking forward to destroy the capitalist world. The industrial design showcased in this article is nice. But the reality was that most “nice things” were replicas, authorized or otherwise, of the things developed in the first world. I remember in 1980s looking throw the mail catalogues people brought from abroad and being amazed on how many nice things there were in the world. Obviously, I was mostly interested in the toys section back then - but those toys were decades ahead of what we had in USSR.

_nalply 8y ago
Who knows perhaps they will succeed after all? But not a tiniest bit in the way the communists envisioned! Inequality will be stopped from growing indefinitively because somewhere must be a limit. What if the one percent owning ninety nine percent of global wealth is not enough for them? When will the rest of the world stop being sheeple and how will they change this? I hope in a peaceful way. Communism is dead. It's a stillborn ideology. I experienced Communism during a trip to the German Democratic Republic 1986. I found it dodgy and full of internal inconsistency. However the problems Communism tried to solve are real and as of today even more pressing than ever.
- Viller239 8y ago
  >However the problems Communism tried to solve are real and as of today even more pressing than ever. How are they more pressing than ever? Are communities in more dire situation than let's say after or during first world war?
  - mantas 8y ago
    Thanks to computing, companies are getting more and more centralized into fewer hands. Automatisation introduces new challenges as well.
- v_lisivka 8y ago
  Yeah, today it's hard to kill every person with signs of intellect as in Cambodia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_humanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
  - MsMowz 8y ago
    The US-backed Khmer Rouge was propped up to defeat the communist movement in Cambodia. They certainly weren't communists by any post-1848 definition.
    - v_lisivka 8y ago
      Why they was in war against US forces then?
      - MsMowz 8y ago
        Which war? The US backed them in the civil war.
        v_lisivka 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Foreign_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Foreign_involvemen...
        MsMowz 8y ago
        That source doesn't say anything that adds credibility to your point. It's just waffling about the US's involvement in the civil war. By contrast, the WikiLeaks dump of the 1973 diplomatic cables undermine what you're saying. It's no longer a question of whether or not the US supported the Khmer Rouge. The question now is how much did the US support them. Some members of the state department at the time suggested that the US orchestrated the whole thing. While that seems unlikely to me, it's worth wondering about.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
When the Soviet Union was formed Russia was a pre-industrial feudal monarchy. It recapitulated roughly two hundred years of Western industrial development in less than fifty, mostly under the leadership of a murderous quasi-feudal dictator who purged all the brightest and most interesting people. And it still survived WWII to become a competitive space-faring superpower. I don’t particularly like Russia, but I think it’s wise not to underestimate what the country is capable of. Also applies to China, even more so.
- mantas 8y ago
  Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.
  - realusername 8y ago
    > Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy That's easy to say now but no other country achieved that at that time. Especially not in a such a short time, it was an impressive feat.
    - mantas 8y ago
      Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize. Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history. It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressive.
      - realusername 8y ago
        > And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. > Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was actually to point out the failures of capitalism in Asia as why capitalism would never work. At that time the industrialisation receipe did not work for a lot of countries and plenty of people believed the industrialisation of the West could not be reproduced, and especially not with capitalism. Everything is obvious in hindsight, it's how history work, you would create your own country now, it would not take that much time to industrialise it with modern techniques. The Soviets managed to take one of the least developed agricultural country of Europe (comparatively worse that current African countries) and transform it into a global superpower while other countries failed to even industrialise, this isn't a small feat at all.
dghf 8y ago
> Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. Communists in general may have, but did the Soviets? I thought Stalin's stance was socialism in one country, leading (at least in part) to the breach with Trotsky. And he deliberately crushed the incipient workers' revolution in republican Spain during the civil war.
pnathan 8y ago
Yes, marxism-leninism definitely sought to build a new world on the rubble of capitalism, with the Soviet Union the starting point prior to the socialist paradise. Please, I'm not that naive. However, modifications to core ideologies are possible, and reform is possible. E.g., the USA started by defining its voting citizens as "property owning white male". Today we have altered that. So I rather wonder what would have happened if the ideology had been dialectically altered to form a new synthesis of post-Marxism-Leninism with a non-aggressive goal. But that's a long-past alternate time, and what was, was.

by euos 8y ago

_nalply 8y ago

Who knows perhaps they will succeed after all? But not a tiniest bit in the way the communists envisioned! Inequality will be stopped from growing indefinitively because somewhere must be a limit. What if the one percent owning ninety nine percent of global wealth is not enough for them? When will the rest of the world stop being sheeple and how will they change this? I hope in a peaceful way. Communism is dead. It's a stillborn ideology. I experienced Communism during a trip to the German Democratic Republic 1986. I found it dodgy and full of internal inconsistency. However the problems Communism tried to solve are real and as of today even more pressing than ever.

Viller239 8y ago
>However the problems Communism tried to solve are real and as of today even more pressing than ever. How are they more pressing than ever? Are communities in more dire situation than let's say after or during first world war?
- mantas 8y ago
  Thanks to computing, companies are getting more and more centralized into fewer hands. Automatisation introduces new challenges as well.
v_lisivka 8y ago
Yeah, today it's hard to kill every person with signs of intellect as in Cambodia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_humanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
- MsMowz 8y ago
  The US-backed Khmer Rouge was propped up to defeat the communist movement in Cambodia. They certainly weren't communists by any post-1848 definition.
  - v_lisivka 8y ago
    Why they was in war against US forces then?
    - MsMowz 8y ago
      Which war? The US backed them in the civil war.
      - v_lisivka 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Foreign_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Foreign_involvemen...
        MsMowz 8y ago
        That source doesn't say anything that adds credibility to your point. It's just waffling about the US's involvement in the civil war. By contrast, the WikiLeaks dump of the 1973 diplomatic cables undermine what you're saying. It's no longer a question of whether or not the US supported the Khmer Rouge. The question now is how much did the US support them. Some members of the state department at the time suggested that the US orchestrated the whole thing. While that seems unlikely to me, it's worth wondering about.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

When the Soviet Union was formed Russia was a pre-industrial feudal monarchy. It recapitulated roughly two hundred years of Western industrial development in less than fifty, mostly under the leadership of a murderous quasi-feudal dictator who purged all the brightest and most interesting people. And it still survived WWII to become a competitive space-faring superpower. I don’t particularly like Russia, but I think it’s wise not to underestimate what the country is capable of. Also applies to China, even more so.

mantas 8y ago
Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.
- realusername 8y ago
  > Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy That's easy to say now but no other country achieved that at that time. Especially not in a such a short time, it was an impressive feat.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize. Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history. It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressive.
    - realusername 8y ago
      > And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. > Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was actually to point out the failures of capitalism in Asia as why capitalism would never work. At that time the industrialisation receipe did not work for a lot of countries and plenty of people believed the industrialisation of the West could not be reproduced, and especially not with capitalism. Everything is obvious in hindsight, it's how history work, you would create your own country now, it would not take that much time to industrialise it with modern techniques. The Soviets managed to take one of the least developed agricultural country of Europe (comparatively worse that current African countries) and transform it into a global superpower while other countries failed to even industrialise, this isn't a small feat at all.

dghf 8y ago

> Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. Communists in general may have, but did the Soviets? I thought Stalin's stance was socialism in one country, leading (at least in part) to the breach with Trotsky. And he deliberately crushed the incipient workers' revolution in republican Spain during the civil war.

pnathan 8y ago

Yes, marxism-leninism definitely sought to build a new world on the rubble of capitalism, with the Soviet Union the starting point prior to the socialist paradise. Please, I'm not that naive. However, modifications to core ideologies are possible, and reform is possible. E.g., the USA started by defining its voting citizens as "property owning white male". Today we have altered that. So I rather wonder what would have happened if the ideology had been dialectically altered to form a new synthesis of post-Marxism-Leninism with a non-aggressive goal. But that's a long-past alternate time, and what was, was.