4 ms·

I'm reminded a bit of Marx's Eighteenth Bruminaire of Louis Bonaparte, where the line 'once as grand tragedy, and the second time as rotten farce' was coined, b

I'm reminded a bit of Marx's Eighteenth Bruminaire of Louis Bonaparte, where the line 'once as grand tragedy, and the second time as rotten farce' was coined, because just like Napoleon III to Napoleon I, compared to Stalin, Putin is a dwarf. Sadly, I don't find the comparison particularly reassuring. Hilter, another 'moon-calf', with his 'first available dozen debt-encumbered lieutenants', did far more damage than Stalin ever did, and far more damage still than Bismark, who would be the 'big' Napoleon to Hitler's 'little'. The amount of horror a head of state can spawn has little or no relation to their individual talents or lack thereof. I think Stalin is a bit of an outlier, in that he took a fairly sane if shaky revolutionary party, and turned it into a cannibalistic monster state, essentially through his own hard work and talent.

yyyk 5y ago
>a fairly sane if shaky revolutionary party Lenin started the Checka. Trotsky's complaint was that Collectivization didn't go far enough. We can go on and on. This party was rotten from the beginning.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  "Stalin was but a lamb compared to Lenin"
cafard 5y ago
Somebody (George Kennan? Gordon Craig?) quotes Bismarck as telling the German generals that it would be mad to fight a war with Russia: You would find no one to surrender to you, and the farther east you got, the worse off you would be.)
panick21_ 5y ago
Bismark is a far more reasoned and careful strategist with incredibly different goals compared to Hitler. He wanted short wars for limited strategic gains and Prussia to be dominate within the German Empire. That is totally different then believing in a global race war. Its not at all like Napoleon and Napoleon III. They hoped for the same thing, but were just differently capable. > did far more damage than Stalin ever did That's debatable. > fairly sane if shaky revolutionary party That is a delusional take on the Bolsheviks. Their state was fundamentally evil from the beginning. The literal first act of the Bolshviks was to do a coup against NOT THE DUMA but rather the Soviet. They first purged the other Socialist parties. And then engaged in some of the worst economic policies in the history of humanity that lead to a mass starvation unbelievable proportions and only report that if they didn't change their policies they would soon be ruling a graveyard finally changed their minds about that. It was Lenin who created the General Secretary. It was Lenin who gave the General Secretary an absurd amount of Power. The constant claim by Communist that if not for Stalin the Bolsheviks would have produced some great government is so much historical revisionism. Trosky with his amazing writing and speaking was the darling of the Western Left but he proclaimed proudly that he was pro-Finish Winter War and that killed his movement to a significant degree. The secrete is that all those guys were more the same then they were different.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  > That is a delusional take on the Bolsheviks. I don't really want to argue in detail about the character of the Bolsheviks. I agree they were extremely ruthless, and that they created a lot of the norms and institutions that Stalin later used. Taking a bit of a step back, however, I think most of this stuff is pretty normal for the winning party in a civil war, especially a revolutionary party. It was an extremely chaotic situation, and if they were not the kind of bloody-minded, ruthless people they were, it's really unlikely they would have been successful. If you take the Finnish civil war, for instance, there was systematic use of terrorism by both sides, and in the aftermath, the victorious whites essentially went on a political purge, imprisoned socialists en masse, etc. The 'whites' in Korea killed hundreds of thousands of 'communists' and 'suspected communist sympathizers' during the Korean war. The liberals in the French Revolution (Robespierre, etc) killed enormous numbers of people. Civil wars are like that. Revolutions are like that. As 'winners' of this kind of thing go, the Bolsheviks are really pretty mild. Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another, and if the Bolsheviks had not had Stalin, the period of violence would have turned into a normal state with a fairly normal post-revolutionary democratic deficit, that would have been resolved in a way compatible with the (actually very lofty) goals of the revolution.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    After the revolution was won, the bolsheviks shut down the constituent assembly after they lost the election, and disbanded the rival socialist parties. During the revolution, they killed anarchists, most notably in the Kronstadt rebellion. They also invaded the Ukrainian free territory, an anarchist stateless territory, to bring them under the Soviet heel. The bolsheviks were against any revolution that wasn't in their own totalitarian control. They were also actively anti-democratic, which flies in the face of core socialist principles.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    >Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Also, there's an argument (ironically mirroring yours) that had Russia avoided WW1, the Tsar's system would end up evolving towards a constitutional monarchy, but without the piles of corpses.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
Lenin was already a murderer and brutal dictator. Stalin just followed in his footsteps.

yyyk 5y ago

>a fairly sane if shaky revolutionary party Lenin started the Checka. Trotsky's complaint was that Collectivization didn't go far enough. We can go on and on. This party was rotten from the beginning.

selimthegrim 5y ago
"Stalin was but a lamb compared to Lenin"

cafard 5y ago

Somebody (George Kennan? Gordon Craig?) quotes Bismarck as telling the German generals that it would be mad to fight a war with Russia: You would find no one to surrender to you, and the farther east you got, the worse off you would be.)

panick21_ 5y ago

Bismark is a far more reasoned and careful strategist with incredibly different goals compared to Hitler. He wanted short wars for limited strategic gains and Prussia to be dominate within the German Empire. That is totally different then believing in a global race war. Its not at all like Napoleon and Napoleon III. They hoped for the same thing, but were just differently capable. > did far more damage than Stalin ever did That's debatable. > fairly sane if shaky revolutionary party That is a delusional take on the Bolsheviks. Their state was fundamentally evil from the beginning. The literal first act of the Bolshviks was to do a coup against NOT THE DUMA but rather the Soviet. They first purged the other Socialist parties. And then engaged in some of the worst economic policies in the history of humanity that lead to a mass starvation unbelievable proportions and only report that if they didn't change their policies they would soon be ruling a graveyard finally changed their minds about that. It was Lenin who created the General Secretary. It was Lenin who gave the General Secretary an absurd amount of Power. The constant claim by Communist that if not for Stalin the Bolsheviks would have produced some great government is so much historical revisionism. Trosky with his amazing writing and speaking was the darling of the Western Left but he proclaimed proudly that he was pro-Finish Winter War and that killed his movement to a significant degree. The secrete is that all those guys were more the same then they were different.

pasabagi 5y ago
> That is a delusional take on the Bolsheviks. I don't really want to argue in detail about the character of the Bolsheviks. I agree they were extremely ruthless, and that they created a lot of the norms and institutions that Stalin later used. Taking a bit of a step back, however, I think most of this stuff is pretty normal for the winning party in a civil war, especially a revolutionary party. It was an extremely chaotic situation, and if they were not the kind of bloody-minded, ruthless people they were, it's really unlikely they would have been successful. If you take the Finnish civil war, for instance, there was systematic use of terrorism by both sides, and in the aftermath, the victorious whites essentially went on a political purge, imprisoned socialists en masse, etc. The 'whites' in Korea killed hundreds of thousands of 'communists' and 'suspected communist sympathizers' during the Korean war. The liberals in the French Revolution (Robespierre, etc) killed enormous numbers of people. Civil wars are like that. Revolutions are like that. As 'winners' of this kind of thing go, the Bolsheviks are really pretty mild. Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another, and if the Bolsheviks had not had Stalin, the period of violence would have turned into a normal state with a fairly normal post-revolutionary democratic deficit, that would have been resolved in a way compatible with the (actually very lofty) goals of the revolution.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  After the revolution was won, the bolsheviks shut down the constituent assembly after they lost the election, and disbanded the rival socialist parties. During the revolution, they killed anarchists, most notably in the Kronstadt rebellion. They also invaded the Ukrainian free territory, an anarchist stateless territory, to bring them under the Soviet heel. The bolsheviks were against any revolution that wasn't in their own totalitarian control. They were also actively anti-democratic, which flies in the face of core socialist principles.
- yyyk 5y ago
  >Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Also, there's an argument (ironically mirroring yours) that had Russia avoided WW1, the Tsar's system would end up evolving towards a constitutional monarchy, but without the piles of corpses.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

Lenin was already a murderer and brutal dictator. Stalin just followed in his footsteps.