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I think it’s difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that the Russian Revolution brought to the working people. That hypotheses didn’t workout very well

I think it’s difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that the Russian Revolution brought to the working people. That hypotheses didn’t workout very well.

ben_w 2y ago
Now I'm curious: most of us are familiar with what the USSR did wrong, were they better or worse than the Tsars before them?
- jfengel 2y ago
  It kinda depends on how you measure. Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled. And the process killed literally millions -- some from outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement. Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural societies can be very conservative. And things had been slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century. Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that could easily have gone the other way and saved the institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations of improvements. So... depends.
- waynecochran 2y ago
  One metric would be body count. 20th century Marxists are somewhere between 60 and 148 million dead. Hard to top that.
  - datameta 2y ago
    One thing that puzzles me is those people who shudder at comparing Stalin's murderous spree with what Hitler's effects were. Is it the cognitive dissonance of not wanting to believe that we not only allied with a genocidal dictatorship but heavily supplied them with industrial output during the war? My family lived in the USSR and I can say for a fact - knowing it was the NKVD rather than Gestapo that might knock on the door in the middle of the night to disappear your father or uncle was of little consolation.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      Most people don’t know that Lenin was sent to Russia from his Swiss exile by the Germans in a sealed diplomatic train with the express intent to induce the October revolution and end the hostilities on that front. It was done to the Russians by cynical Germans who still ended up losing WWI. Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won WWII at the cost of Russian lives. I’m one of those people who see China as a bigger threat to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented divisions between Russia and China. It would have been possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as well be considered a single entity. I think the west overestimated its strength, and even now with the posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it appears that the West doesn’t understand that warfare has forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would have woken people up to that reality but somehow we’re holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable. I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway. I much prefer the Chinese way of fighting with ‘high tech overproduction’ and wish we could ‘fight back’ with our own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it, especially since the alternative is massively destructive.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - surfingdino 2y ago
        China no longer sees Russia as a partner, but a vassal state. They rejected Putin's proposal for the Siberian pipeline and are slowing down deliveries of various components needed to manufacture weapons. Chinese banks are limiting their dealing with Russian banks and companies to avoid sanctions. Like it or hate it, US Dollar is the world's reserve currency and getting cut off from the global banking network is not worth all the gold that Putin can offer. China doesn't want Russia to attack other countries, because like a wise drug dealer, it does not want to loose its customers. Russia is killing them and that messes with China's business. To be honest if China could capture Putin and give him to the West in a box with a red ribbon it would. They saw how weak he is and have no respect for him. On top of that, China has its own problems--demographic and economic. Russia cannot help China solve them so China is happy to see Russia bleed and slowly descend into the inevitable chaos once the Russian economy collapses. Xi will be happy to carve out a part of Russia for himself once an opportunity presents itself. Although how much more of a really backwards population and barren land he needs is a open question.
- danielvf 2y ago
  The early USSR was at least two orders of magnitude worse than the czars, if you score either by yearly executions or by yearly sent to Siberia. And that's not evening counting the USSR's millions "resettled" in ethic operations, with about a 20%-25% death rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov... And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths under the czars.
  - thiagoharry 2y ago
    Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle. Do this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France? Russia during the czarist era suffered severe famines about one each 11 years, and the death toll was on the order of millions, all happening while Russia exported grains [1]. It could be argued that the modernization happened in the post-revolutionary Russia prevented new famines after some time, despite the initial drawbacks caused by revolutionary changes. It would be very difficult to do a proper land reform with a regime backed by a rural nobility. [1] http://www.domarchive.ru/history/part-1-empire/61 http://www.domarchive.ru/history/part-1-empire/61
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      > Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle. Do this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France? Post-revolutionary France was Napoleon causing somewhere between 3.25 million and 6.5 million deaths across Europe. Then back to the monarchy, so very little net change from pre-revolutionary France, except for all the dead bodies. But I agree with your first sentence. Any real revolution will cause a great deal of death. Can you build back something enough better to be worth all that? For many revolutions, the answer is no.
- GnarfGnarf 2y ago
  Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century. The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier. Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    A NASA saying; “there is no situation so bad that it cannot possibly be made worse” Which I think applies to people who think communism will somehow save them from their predicaments. Communism has that special something that destroys the soul. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t seen it or talked to those who have lived it. The attempt at the impossible in creating the ‘new man’ free of greed in combination with a secret police that pits friends against friends, family member against family member such that all personal relationships are voided. I get that our current system of ‘capitalism’ is more of an oligarchical corporatism than ‘true capitalism’ and is really failing people. But communism is not the answer because it’ll be the same oligarchs in charge and there will be far fewer ways to escape them. I understand that ‘true communism’ would obviate the need for greed and corruption but in trying to get there from here by crossing a river of blood in an continuous revolution it’s far more likely to get stuck in the corrupt communism state which is far worse than our current corrupt capitalism state.
  - antonf 2y ago
    > Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not allowed to legally leave. > Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier. It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.

I think it’s difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that the Russian Revolution brought to the working people. That hypotheses didn’t workout very well.

ben_w 2y ago

Now I'm curious: most of us are familiar with what the USSR did wrong, were they better or worse than the Tsars before them?

jfengel 2y ago
It kinda depends on how you measure. Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled. And the process killed literally millions -- some from outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement. Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural societies can be very conservative. And things had been slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century. Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that could easily have gone the other way and saved the institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations of improvements. So... depends.
waynecochran 2y ago
One metric would be body count. 20th century Marxists are somewhere between 60 and 148 million dead. Hard to top that.
- datameta 2y ago
  One thing that puzzles me is those people who shudder at comparing Stalin's murderous spree with what Hitler's effects were. Is it the cognitive dissonance of not wanting to believe that we not only allied with a genocidal dictatorship but heavily supplied them with industrial output during the war? My family lived in the USSR and I can say for a fact - knowing it was the NKVD rather than Gestapo that might knock on the door in the middle of the night to disappear your father or uncle was of little consolation.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    Most people don’t know that Lenin was sent to Russia from his Swiss exile by the Germans in a sealed diplomatic train with the express intent to induce the October revolution and end the hostilities on that front. It was done to the Russians by cynical Germans who still ended up losing WWI. Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won WWII at the cost of Russian lives. I’m one of those people who see China as a bigger threat to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented divisions between Russia and China. It would have been possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as well be considered a single entity. I think the west overestimated its strength, and even now with the posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it appears that the West doesn’t understand that warfare has forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would have woken people up to that reality but somehow we’re holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable. I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway. I much prefer the Chinese way of fighting with ‘high tech overproduction’ and wish we could ‘fight back’ with our own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it, especially since the alternative is massively destructive.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      China no longer sees Russia as a partner, but a vassal state. They rejected Putin's proposal for the Siberian pipeline and are slowing down deliveries of various components needed to manufacture weapons. Chinese banks are limiting their dealing with Russian banks and companies to avoid sanctions. Like it or hate it, US Dollar is the world's reserve currency and getting cut off from the global banking network is not worth all the gold that Putin can offer. China doesn't want Russia to attack other countries, because like a wise drug dealer, it does not want to loose its customers. Russia is killing them and that messes with China's business. To be honest if China could capture Putin and give him to the West in a box with a red ribbon it would. They saw how weak he is and have no respect for him. On top of that, China has its own problems--demographic and economic. Russia cannot help China solve them so China is happy to see Russia bleed and slowly descend into the inevitable chaos once the Russian economy collapses. Xi will be happy to carve out a part of Russia for himself once an opportunity presents itself. Although how much more of a really backwards population and barren land he needs is a open question.
danielvf 2y ago
The early USSR was at least two orders of magnitude worse than the czars, if you score either by yearly executions or by yearly sent to Siberia. And that's not evening counting the USSR's millions "resettled" in ethic operations, with about a 20%-25% death rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov... And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths under the czars.
- thiagoharry 2y ago
  Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle. Do this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France? Russia during the czarist era suffered severe famines about one each 11 years, and the death toll was on the order of millions, all happening while Russia exported grains [1]. It could be argued that the modernization happened in the post-revolutionary Russia prevented new famines after some time, despite the initial drawbacks caused by revolutionary changes. It would be very difficult to do a proper land reform with a regime backed by a rural nobility. [1] http://www.domarchive.ru/history/part-1-empire/61 http://www.domarchive.ru/history/part-1-empire/61
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    > Any revolution and revolutionary change will cause a considerable amount of deaths during the power struggle. Do this mean that post-revolutionary France is orders of magnitude worse than pre-revolutionary France? Post-revolutionary France was Napoleon causing somewhere between 3.25 million and 6.5 million deaths across Europe. Then back to the monarchy, so very little net change from pre-revolutionary France, except for all the dead bodies. But I agree with your first sentence. Any real revolution will cause a great deal of death. Can you build back something enough better to be worth all that? For many revolutions, the answer is no.
GnarfGnarf 2y ago
Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century. The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier. Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  A NASA saying; “there is no situation so bad that it cannot possibly be made worse” Which I think applies to people who think communism will somehow save them from their predicaments. Communism has that special something that destroys the soul. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t seen it or talked to those who have lived it. The attempt at the impossible in creating the ‘new man’ free of greed in combination with a secret police that pits friends against friends, family member against family member such that all personal relationships are voided. I get that our current system of ‘capitalism’ is more of an oligarchical corporatism than ‘true capitalism’ and is really failing people. But communism is not the answer because it’ll be the same oligarchs in charge and there will be far fewer ways to escape them. I understand that ‘true communism’ would obviate the need for greed and corruption but in trying to get there from here by crossing a river of blood in an continuous revolution it’s far more likely to get stuck in the corrupt communism state which is far worse than our current corrupt capitalism state.
- antonf 2y ago
  > Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not allowed to legally leave. > Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier. It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.