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> 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 ruthle

> 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.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  > Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Sure. But that's also very normal in revolutions, to have a multiple-stage affair with different conceptions of what the revolution is for emerging throughout the duration. Karensky has often been portrayed as a sort of mini-Napoleon figure, so it's hard to see his overthrow as a pure 'palace coup'. To be honest, I feel like the history here is very murky, full of misleading names and conflicting accounts, and the best you can do is to try and get a grasp of the characters of the people involved. With the old Bolsheviks, most of whom Stalin had killed, you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique is basically anarchonism: you're taking the fate of the USSR, and putting it on to the people who formed its early days.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    >With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique... Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself. I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik contempt to democracy and anything that was standing in the way of their ideals. They had to experiment on their society no matter how many people died. Eventually after a long paroxysm of violence it morphed to a clique, which was actually less evil than what preceded it despite being less idealistic.
    - pasabagi 5y ago
      I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly. I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the Bolsheviks. German armies were literally rolling through Russia at the time. All of these guys were raised on the history of the french revolution and the paris commune, both events in which the far left had an almost complete mortality rate. It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals. They would call what we call democracy an oligarchy, an 'bourgeois democracy', etc. So, obviously, they wouldn't have any patience for its trappings. I don't think you can simply call them anti-democratic on the simple grounds that their idea of democracy differs from yours.

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.

pasabagi 5y ago
> Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Sure. But that's also very normal in revolutions, to have a multiple-stage affair with different conceptions of what the revolution is for emerging throughout the duration. Karensky has often been portrayed as a sort of mini-Napoleon figure, so it's hard to see his overthrow as a pure 'palace coup'. To be honest, I feel like the history here is very murky, full of misleading names and conflicting accounts, and the best you can do is to try and get a grasp of the characters of the people involved. With the old Bolsheviks, most of whom Stalin had killed, you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique is basically anarchonism: you're taking the fate of the USSR, and putting it on to the people who formed its early days.
- yyyk 5y ago
  >With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique... Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself. I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik contempt to democracy and anything that was standing in the way of their ideals. They had to experiment on their society no matter how many people died. Eventually after a long paroxysm of violence it morphed to a clique, which was actually less evil than what preceded it despite being less idealistic.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly. I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the Bolsheviks. German armies were literally rolling through Russia at the time. All of these guys were raised on the history of the french revolution and the paris commune, both events in which the far left had an almost complete mortality rate. It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals. They would call what we call democracy an oligarchy, an 'bourgeois democracy', etc. So, obviously, they wouldn't have any patience for its trappings. I don't think you can simply call them anti-democratic on the simple grounds that their idea of democracy differs from yours.