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I have joked often that the fact that still-colonial Britain and Stalin's Russia were the good guys tells you an awful lot about just how bad the Nazis really w

I have joked often that the fact that still-colonial Britain and Stalin's Russia were the good guys tells you an awful lot about just how bad the Nazis really were A lot of the non-European support for Hitler really did come down to "well, he's not British, how bad can he really be?" And a lot of the Eurasian support for Hitler and Tojo came down to "they're not Stalin, how bad can they be?" What's interesting is that the brutality and Machiavellian political infighting of Stalin's era were sort of present from the beginning in Lenin's Bolsheviks (arguably down to the name), and I'm honestly not convinced that things would've been better if someone like Trotsky had come to power after Lenin's death instead. The stage was set for brutal oppression and criminal negligence almost from the beginning, and were certainly very bad even under Lenin. I don't believe the Reds won the Russian Civil war so much as the Whites' incompetence lost the war before the Reds' brutality caused a mass uprising.

vkou 3y ago
> What's interesting is that the brutality and Machiavellian political infighting of Stalin's era were sort of present from the beginning in Lenin's Bolsheviks (arguably down to the name), and I'm honestly not convinced that things would've been better if someone like Trotsky had come to power after Lenin's death instead. The stage was set for brutal oppression and criminal negligence almost from the beginning, The fact that the party took power through a coup, and then fought a horrific, five-year existential civil war meant that no matter who was running it, the culture of paranoia, desire for control, and repression would have prevailed, no matter who was general secretary. It would have certainly been worse, or better under different people, but the party's culture was pretty fixed by the time the 30s rolled around. It took a generation of being fairly secure in their power for things to relax. > I don't believe the Reds won the Russian Civil war so much as the Whites' incompetence lost the war before the Reds' brutality caused a mass uprising. Was the White Terror significantly less brutal in its means? The Whites were a coalition of warlords that were quite happy to carry out pogroms, massacres, exterminations of jews, and other enemies of the counter-revolution.
- petsfed 3y ago
  > The Whites were a coalition of warlords that were quite happy to carry out pogroms, massacres, exterminations of jews, and other enemies of the counter-revolution. I was more expressing that the day-to-day practices of war communism made "no pogroms or massacres" less of a value add than it might seem at first blush, even for Jews. I've read that the two things that doomed the Whites were a lack of a coherent message re: after the counter revolution, and lack of a coherent strategy for winning the war, because it was just warlords. And even then, it was less that the Reds decisively won over the population so much as the Whites completely failed to. I am, by and large, pretty far left, but the history of the Russian revolution makes me highly suspicious of anyone advocating armed revolt.

vkou 3y ago

> What's interesting is that the brutality and Machiavellian political infighting of Stalin's era were sort of present from the beginning in Lenin's Bolsheviks (arguably down to the name), and I'm honestly not convinced that things would've been better if someone like Trotsky had come to power after Lenin's death instead. The stage was set for brutal oppression and criminal negligence almost from the beginning, The fact that the party took power through a coup, and then fought a horrific, five-year existential civil war meant that no matter who was running it, the culture of paranoia, desire for control, and repression would have prevailed, no matter who was general secretary. It would have certainly been worse, or better under different people, but the party's culture was pretty fixed by the time the 30s rolled around. It took a generation of being fairly secure in their power for things to relax. > I don't believe the Reds won the Russian Civil war so much as the Whites' incompetence lost the war before the Reds' brutality caused a mass uprising. Was the White Terror significantly less brutal in its means? The Whites were a coalition of warlords that were quite happy to carry out pogroms, massacres, exterminations of jews, and other enemies of the counter-revolution.

petsfed 3y ago
> The Whites were a coalition of warlords that were quite happy to carry out pogroms, massacres, exterminations of jews, and other enemies of the counter-revolution. I was more expressing that the day-to-day practices of war communism made "no pogroms or massacres" less of a value add than it might seem at first blush, even for Jews. I've read that the two things that doomed the Whites were a lack of a coherent message re: after the counter revolution, and lack of a coherent strategy for winning the war, because it was just warlords. And even then, it was less that the Reds decisively won over the population so much as the Whites completely failed to. I am, by and large, pretty far left, but the history of the Russian revolution makes me highly suspicious of anyone advocating armed revolt.