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Vavilov dying of hunger in a prison :( Many of his friends persecuted. I like to print out articles like this and wonder what led to such extreme situations.

Vavilov dying of hunger in a prison :( Many of his friends persecuted. I like to print out articles like this and wonder what *led* to such extreme situations. Gradual slippery slope? Big bang bad decisions? All said, the big takeaway has been that science can't be subservient to politics. It's a tragic lesson on what happens if this becomes true.

naringas 6y ago
> what led to such extreme situations I think it's more plausibly a gradual slippery slope. the kind of slope you don't notice
- google234123 6y ago
  How could you describe that part of russian history as anything like a gradual slippery slope? It start with a revolution followed by another more radical revolutions and went one from there. Nothing gradual about it.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    The revolution was a reaction to the terrible leaders in Russia. The start wasn’t the revolution. Where do you pick as the beginning? I’m not sure, but the revolution was a reaction.
    - TeeMassive 6y ago
      You need to drop your Communist Manifesto and actually read what has been really going on in Russia at the time. Lenin and his cronies were revolutionaries well before the calamities of the Great War. The leaders of Russian revolutions were were mostly upper middle class intellectuals and were radicalized in relatively comfortable social circumstances at universities and in various intellectual circles. Lenin often bragged that he actively pushed people against one another so he could harness more revolutionary momentum, which led to even more calamities. And that's not even mentioning that he was implanted as an ideological virus to destroy the Russian Empire by the German agents. The revolution wasn't some romantic reaction lead by the proletariat against the oppressor. It was led by power hungry fanatics who manipulated the people's grievances to remove those who were in their way and then installed themselves into power.
      - hanche 6y ago
        That is all true, as far as I know, but then the question is why did they succeed, if not by exploiting widespread discontent in the general population?
        TeeMassive 6y ago
        > if not by exploiting widespread discontent in the general population? That wasn't the original point. Widespread discontent do not always lead to bloody revolution or communist regimes with despotic leaders.
        hanche 6y ago
        Indeed, but widespread discontent seems to be an important risk factor for that outcome, isn’t it? My understanding of history is limited, but this I know; History is always messy, and you can never identify just one single reason for the way things turned out.
        TeeMassive 6y ago
        The US hasn't seen total war, famine and disease yet the Marxists are openly pushing people against one another to ferment a revolution. Again we see the same pattern of upper middle class intellectuals radicalized in universities openly opposing incremental reforms in favor of violent uprisings. Just saying "History is messy" is intellectual laziness, the patterns are clear and happened many times before.
      - lostlogin 6y ago
        I’m a huge fan of Simon Sebag Montefiore. You couldn’t read his Russian histories and find much to like in any of Russia’s leaders. The system overthrown by the revolution was brutal, but so were the revolutionaries. Where do you think they learned their policing tactics and techniques? In terms of Lenin being a weapon, one of the greatest quotes on this is Churchill’s. Germany “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia” It’s a quote from a book that’s well worth a read if you haven’t already, ‘Lenin on the Train’ by Catherine Merridale. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the-train-catherine-merridale.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the...
    - theamk 6y ago
      So it was a slow slope, followed by a series of high cliffs. This is not what people usually mean when they say “slippery slope”
- andreskytt 6y ago
  Golodomor was not gradual and not slippery. The entire ideology of the Bolševik party relied on systemic eradication of classes they found hostile to their cause - intellectuals, land gentry, well-do peasants. You kill off the folks in the land that know, how to farm, you get famine. Nothing to do with “war and outdated farming methods”
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    The poor peasants knew how to farm as well, but they were forcibly rounded up into communal kolkhozes and had fixed quotas of grain brutally confiscated.
google234123 6y ago
This is what led to the situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  That doesn’t seem right to me. Feels like the issue was Stalinism rather than pure soviet incompetence. Seems he did ok under Lenin and had received a pardon after Stalin was gone (though maybe that doesn’t mean much as it seems Lysenko also needed to be revealed as useless first)
Viliam1234 6y ago
There is a certain... willful blindness... that you can easily see also in socialists today. Not sure I can describe it well in a short comment, but it's a principled unwillingness or inability to distinguish between good intentions and good outcomes. (To keep this simple, let's ignore the question whether the intentions really qualify as good; just suppose they do.) It's as if good intentions automatically lead to good strategies that automatically lead to good outcomes. Therefore, if you start a revolution with pure heart, a perfect future is guaranteed. And if it does not happen, it is only because someone with bad intentions prevented it -- you need to find the asshole and execute him, before he can cause more harm. There is no such thing as legitimate criticism. You can't say e.g. "hey guys, I agree with your goal of feeding more people, but your methods are based on pseudoscience and are not going to work; how about trying some actual science instead?". What they hear is "he opposes our attempts to feed the people, he must want them to starve, what an asshole"; and if they have the power, that might mean prison time for you. It is extremely frustrating to debate with a person who believes that if you don't 100% agree with them about something, the only possible explanation is that you are the bad guy who wants bad things to happen. But it becomes much worse when such person has the power to send you and your entire family to a death camp.

Vavilov dying of hunger in a prison :( Many of his friends persecuted. I like to print out articles like this and wonder what *led* to such extreme situations.

naringas 6y ago

> what led to such extreme situations I think it's more plausibly a gradual slippery slope. the kind of slope you don't notice

google234123 6y ago
How could you describe that part of russian history as anything like a gradual slippery slope? It start with a revolution followed by another more radical revolutions and went one from there. Nothing gradual about it.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  The revolution was a reaction to the terrible leaders in Russia. The start wasn’t the revolution. Where do you pick as the beginning? I’m not sure, but the revolution was a reaction.
  - TeeMassive 6y ago
    You need to drop your Communist Manifesto and actually read what has been really going on in Russia at the time. Lenin and his cronies were revolutionaries well before the calamities of the Great War. The leaders of Russian revolutions were were mostly upper middle class intellectuals and were radicalized in relatively comfortable social circumstances at universities and in various intellectual circles. Lenin often bragged that he actively pushed people against one another so he could harness more revolutionary momentum, which led to even more calamities. And that's not even mentioning that he was implanted as an ideological virus to destroy the Russian Empire by the German agents. The revolution wasn't some romantic reaction lead by the proletariat against the oppressor. It was led by power hungry fanatics who manipulated the people's grievances to remove those who were in their way and then installed themselves into power.
    - hanche 6y ago
      That is all true, as far as I know, but then the question is why did they succeed, if not by exploiting widespread discontent in the general population?
      - TeeMassive 6y ago
        > if not by exploiting widespread discontent in the general population? That wasn't the original point. Widespread discontent do not always lead to bloody revolution or communist regimes with despotic leaders.
        hanche 6y ago
        Indeed, but widespread discontent seems to be an important risk factor for that outcome, isn’t it? My understanding of history is limited, but this I know; History is always messy, and you can never identify just one single reason for the way things turned out.
        TeeMassive 6y ago
        The US hasn't seen total war, famine and disease yet the Marxists are openly pushing people against one another to ferment a revolution. Again we see the same pattern of upper middle class intellectuals radicalized in universities openly opposing incremental reforms in favor of violent uprisings. Just saying "History is messy" is intellectual laziness, the patterns are clear and happened many times before.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      I’m a huge fan of Simon Sebag Montefiore. You couldn’t read his Russian histories and find much to like in any of Russia’s leaders. The system overthrown by the revolution was brutal, but so were the revolutionaries. Where do you think they learned their policing tactics and techniques? In terms of Lenin being a weapon, one of the greatest quotes on this is Churchill’s. Germany “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia” It’s a quote from a book that’s well worth a read if you haven’t already, ‘Lenin on the Train’ by Catherine Merridale. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the-train-catherine-merridale.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the...
  - theamk 6y ago
    So it was a slow slope, followed by a series of high cliffs. This is not what people usually mean when they say “slippery slope”
andreskytt 6y ago
Golodomor was not gradual and not slippery. The entire ideology of the Bolševik party relied on systemic eradication of classes they found hostile to their cause - intellectuals, land gentry, well-do peasants. You kill off the folks in the land that know, how to farm, you get famine. Nothing to do with “war and outdated farming methods”
- Clewza313 6y ago
  The poor peasants knew how to farm as well, but they were forcibly rounded up into communal kolkhozes and had fixed quotas of grain brutally confiscated.

google234123 6y ago

This is what led to the situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution

dan-robertson 6y ago
That doesn’t seem right to me. Feels like the issue was Stalinism rather than pure soviet incompetence. Seems he did ok under Lenin and had received a pardon after Stalin was gone (though maybe that doesn’t mean much as it seems Lysenko also needed to be revealed as useless first)

Viliam1234 6y ago

There is a certain... willful blindness... that you can easily see also in socialists today. Not sure I can describe it well in a short comment, but it's a principled unwillingness or inability to distinguish between good intentions and good outcomes. (To keep this simple, let's ignore the question whether the intentions really qualify as good; just suppose they do.) It's as if good intentions automatically lead to good strategies that automatically lead to good outcomes. Therefore, if you start a revolution with pure heart, a perfect future is guaranteed. And if it does not happen, it is only because someone with bad intentions prevented it -- you need to find the asshole and execute him, before he can cause more harm. There is no such thing as legitimate criticism. You can't say e.g. "hey guys, I agree with your goal of feeding more people, but your methods are based on pseudoscience and are not going to work; how about trying some actual science instead?". What they hear is "he opposes our attempts to feed the people, he must want them to starve, what an asshole"; and if they have the power, that might mean prison time for you. It is extremely frustrating to debate with a person who believes that if you don't 100% agree with them about something, the only possible explanation is that you are the bad guy who wants bad things to happen. But it becomes much worse when such person has the power to send you and your entire family to a death camp.