This is a hard pill to swallow but if you don't just read Lenin's pamphlets and theoretical works you'd realize he was actually a very ruthless, Machiavellian, and hypocritical person who neither represented the "bolshevik" (majority) of the population, nor even the proletarian minority in the cities. The SRs were much closer to a majority of the country and the Mensheviks (ironically "minority") were much closer to representing a majority of the proletariat. This is why Lenin dissolved the constituent assembly after the October revolution and betrayed his promise to the SRs and Mensheviks of a coalition government despite "supporting" it for years running around with the slogan "All power to the soviets." Which btw he led a war against the soviets while also claiming to represent them. The more history you read and the less theory you read the more you'll understand this. I know it can be hard to see past soviet hagiography, especially when the alternative histories are mostly cold war dogshit that overly slanders Lenin and everyone to the left of the Monarchists. You might say "well he won" but you have to accept he set up a govt. that couldn't even last 80 years. If all his ruthlessness resulted in a party dictatorship that was easily subverted from within by Khruschevite revisionists, then Perestroika revisionists, then fucking Yeltsinites, what was the point?
>>2253109And yet they called themselves the majority. Curious.
>vulgar tailgate>pogromsOK the majority of peasants might have been pogromist hicks but the majority of proletarians were not. The Mensheviks and SRs, neither of which were antisemitic, beat the Bolsheviks in the constituent assembly, and that's when Lenin dissolved the constituent assembly. This was all after the October revolution. And they were only able to achieve this with the help of soldiers and former tsarist officers, none of whom were particularly loyal to the Bolsheviks and many of whom turned on them during the civil war, or needed to get purged by Stalin later on. It was a total shitshow.
>>2253109Oooh nooo the poor jews :,(
It's almost as if Bakunin was right
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) Yes, the Bolsheviks dismantled the soviets that weren't dominated by them, the reason for this was that they saw themselves as the vanguard of the working class and therefore they needed to "capture" the soviets for them to be truly revolutionary. Whether you think this is right or wrong is really up to what theory you follow and whether you think the USSR was a successful socialist state in general.
In my opinion, their reasoning behind dismantling the non-Bolshevik soviets was justified a lot of the time but it inevitably led to a systemic problem of a strangling bureaucracy existing in the USSR.
>>2253168Back to r/Ultraleft pls
>>2253189>and whether you think the USSR was a successful socialist state in generalit didn't even last a century
it's only success was speed running industrialisation, which is good, but also irrelevant to socialists in the 21. century
>>2253053You forgot to mention that if you read more history and less theory you realize that bolshevism is in fact a jewish ploy to enslave the world. Also Stalin killed ruthlessly over 9,000 trillion innocent bourgeois capitalists.
>syndicalismOh, an anarchist. What a surprise.
So what? The communist position isn't "do exaclty what the last guys did" or else it wouldn't really be scientific socialism, would it? Leninists aren't leninists because they look at the actions of the bolsheviks and try to apply them exactly, they are leninists because they agree with the
theoretical framework, tactics and strategies in general. It is then up to the various communists to apply those theories to their unique conditions regardless if lenin was a saint or a child eating red fascist or whatever. For communists, the important thing is that the bolsheviks
won power for the working class in a situation which was
nigh apocalyptic.
It is interesting to note that the video doesn't really go over the positions of the various opposition parties, the dire circumstances of the country, the looming famine, the threats of international capital, the class composition of various areas yada yada yada. Not to mention the fact that the bolsheviks, with their own internal competing tendencies, seem to be treated as a homogenous mass, as if the banditry of some soldiers is a decree by the party itself. From the first 5 minutes you can tell that the video was made by an anti-communist who cannot imagine
why the bolsheviks took the actions they did aside from pure hunger for power.
>This is a hard pill to swallow but if you don't just read Lenin's pamphlets and theoretical works you'd realize he was actually a very ruthless, Machiavellian, and hypocritical personWe know and we agree, some more or less so on the latter part. The lesson for communists from the whole experience definitely has to be that if you give reaction an inch, it will take a mile. Also that theory, no matter how good, has to contend with reality and sometimes to win you have to compomise.
>>2253196>it didn't even last a century>it's only success was speed running industrialisation, which is good, but also irrelevant to socialists in the 21. centuryThis is such a fucking stupid thing to say. The duty of socialists is to analyse the past for both sucess and failures. The USSR teaches us about:
- Party organization
- Management of a multi-ethnic country
- Management of a union of republics
- Interaction with international capital after consolidation of state power
- Economic planning methods and the effects of black markets
- Revisionism and Bureaucracy
- The de/politicization of the army
- Cooperation between socialist nations on the world stage
- Socialism in crisis
And much more.
Honestly, this thread seem like just another petty squabble over past AES which does
nothing to further any theoretical or practical discussion. The OP reads as a run of the mill hit piece that doesn't critically discuss the attached video or it's contents whatsoever. Most dammingly of all, there is no positive position taken or analysis as to what this might mean for contemporay work, only slander against historical communist practise. The last line really says it all.
>If all his ruthlessness resulted in a party dictatorship that was easily subverted from within by Khruschevite revisionists, then Perestroika revisionists, then fucking Yeltsinites, what was the point?As if
A - There was no struggle against revisionists etc. which we today may learn from
B - There was some alternative to the DoTP which would be steadfast against counterrevolution
C - The achivement of socialism in the USSR is not a world historical feat in itself
>>225319680 years without capitalism, without capitalists, with the means of production actually controlled by workers, without poverty, without homelessness, with virtually no crime, with free education and healthcare for all, with excellent working conditions, an average living standard way above contempory western middle class and lower class standard and with the 2nd most powerful and technologically advanced military defense in the world.
How the fuck is this supposed to be irrelevant to proper socialists in the 21st or 25th century until they achieved something better with more longevity for the national and/or international working class?
>>2253236I'm no historian in that regard, i grew up under real socialism.
That being said no liberal, reactoid or neo-nazi ever gives a single shit about being lumped in with the baggage of their 20th century predecessors and they have absolutely nothing to be proud of, to say the least.
>>2253236The future of communidm is not worker led. Its ai+useless ppl
Uselessism
>>2253236>To the uninitiated personCommunist and socialist propaganda is not meant to be consumed by an uninitiated person. It is meant for the more progressive bunch that are in the process of actual organization. The anarchist obsession with the 'average Joe' is fascinating. Such a person does not exist. It's an illusion - an 'average' distribution of the
essential characteristics of the
members of the working class makes no sense.
This is one thing you'd know if you read about agitation that the Emancipation of Labor and RSDLP did.
>ideologically is you are lumped with the baggage of 20th century socialist statesWhat does this mean? Which baggage? The one that the bourgeois intellectuals burden us with? Or the one anarchoid intellectuals do? Who cares about those lies? Statistics tell you a different story, everywhere. Socialist ideas are popular and those who lived under socialism want a return to socialism.
>say you're a syndicalist<an ideology of revolutionary trade unionism associated with pre USSR socialismpray tell ms anarchist, how can trade unionism be revolutionary? how come the working class in britain, with its deep deep working class history based on syndicates, did not overthrow capitalism in the 1970s? we are no longer living in the times of competing state capitalisims in which it made sense for states to make concession to
their working class. we are living under imperialism and the question of the day is
stilll the proletarian dictatorship.
>>2253189> the reason for this was that they saw themselves as the vanguard of the working class and therefore they needed to "capture" the soviets for them to be truly revolutionary. This is an uncritical reading of their public-facing reasoning, not a critical reading of the actual history, combined with their public statements, combined with their private statements, combined with the statements of their opponents (and no, I don't expect you to to necessarily give White Army sources the time of day, but at least the Mensheviks and SRs)
I actually started out with very hard Bolshevik leanings when I discovered Communism and Socialism, due to my respect for the USSR saving the world from fascism, and due to my understanding of the civil war era where the imperialist nations invaded the Soviet Union to kill the revolution in its infancy,and only after reading more and more about the nuances of the left infighting during the early Soviet era did I start to have a more critical understanding of the Bolsheviks, and understanding which holds them in a higher regard than the reactionaries, no doubt, but which seems them as also being ruthless towards their own allies, and even towards themselves, often to their own detriment.
I think people, in their revolutionary fervor, and in their respect for the big figures in Communist history, get too enamored with theoretical treatises and polemics and forget to look at who actually did what to who, and when.
>>2253255 (me)
>2. Anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism is the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook. Defence of petty property and petty economy on the land. Keine Majorität. [1] Negation of the unifying and organising power of the authority.from
https://redsails.org/theses-on-anarchism/ >>2253258>>2253256>>2253255>>2253253Yeah just forget i posted about the current problem with all that bullshit like three hours ago
<Y'know, there's something neither the Marxists nor the syndicalists will understand. The theory, the organizations and supposed systems are all.for naught. All relics of a bygone era, from a time when workers could be mobilzed. The government apparatuses control the dissident factions of the masses. Let us go on our broad temper tantrums every decade or so. Never really changing economic relations. Every facet of society organized in such away to filter anti capitalists out; through death, imprisonment etcThe only thing that matters to me is the insurrection. Quoting Lenin's isn't going to convince me to follow a party line and play wannabe government. I'll leave the world building to the survivors of the revolution. Maybe you ought to do the same.
>>2253260>The only thing that matters to me is the insurrection.repeat after me
NOTHING
BUT
PLATITUDES
>>2253053>it's another liberal coming in hot with his complaints about authoritarianismWhat about the words "vanguard party" do you not understand? The vanguard party represents the forward elements of the working class. Lenin was against WWI from the beginning while the average proletarian was for it. Lenin was right and the working class turned his way.
>liberal complaint about representative democracyDon't care, I'm not a liberal, go back
>>2253053What is actually wrong with being Machiavellian? I’m a Machiavellian because it’s the literally the only way to be a successful politician. You think Machiavelli wrote The Prince because he was just an amoral psycho? Nah he was an advisor that saw what the most successful leaders did to not just keep their power but also keep check of their enemies. Politics isn’t about good guys vs bad guys, politics is a bloodsport. The most ruthless win every single time. FDR didn’t become president and stay president for 3 terms because he was a “good guy”, the man literally sidestepped a bunch of laws and used political capital to force people to accept HIS way. You’re a bitch and you’re a liberal.
Liberalism is a politics of weakness and a politics that forces people to not actually follow the natural order of things which is the most ruthless win. Liberalism allows the incompetent to fail upwards so we get people like Trump.
>>2253222Stalin raped a 6 year old
Umm actually she was 12 so that makes it ok or something idk :)
>>2253573Of course, you're only supposed to
call your self "Majority (Bolshevik" and you're only supposed to make a
rhetorical distinction between proletarian and bourgeois democracy. But if you actually become democratic in practice it's a
deviation from the vanguard's plan. Even
proletarian supremacy is a deviation from the vanguard's plan. The proletariat doesn't even matter at the end of the day. Only the vanguard. And not even all of the vanguard, just the members of the vanguard who come out on top of all the infighting and purges.
>>2253577red square 16
yellow square 16
blue square 16
green square actually its 25
>>2253722I'd agree with your first sentence but this
>Lenin was a fake revolutionarymust be one of the most retarded takes i've read on this board since it spawned on 8chan.
I hope you're a troll, but then again, you're a trot.
>>2253752has to be lmao, trots are usually some of the biggest dickriders of lenin, surprised to see something like this
and we can rule out anon being too stupid to know what the 4th international is since they know about trotsky at least
>>2253768ngl tired of this meme about the bolsheviks supposedly hating the peasantry and wanting to kill them all
"All class-conscious workers support the revolutionary peasantry with all their might. All class-conscious workers want and are fighting for the peasantry to receive all the land and full freedom. “All the land” means not putting up with any partial concessions and hand-outs; it means reckoning, not on a compromise between the peasantry and the landlords, but on abolition of landed estates. And the party of the class-conscious proletariat, the Social-Democrats, have most vigorously pro claimed this view: at its Third Congress held last May, the R.S.D.L.P. adopted a resolution directly declaring for sup port of the peasants’ revolutionary demands, including confiscation of all privately-owned estates. This resolution clearly shows that the party of the class-conscious workers supports the peasants’ demand for all the land. And in this respect the content of the resolution adopted at the conference of the other half of our Party fully coincides with that of the resolution passed by the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P."
- Lenin, "The Proletariat and the Peasantry" 1905
>>2253109>The Soviet Union was the most advanced democracy of all time! Which is why it only represented sufficiently advanced people!You sound like that one 4chan post Musk tweeted where it says women and low-T men shouldn't be allowed to vote.
>>2253150To be fair, that's how a lot of people on this site act.
>>2253053All these "leftist" parties sided with the whites or collaborated with the rich or betrayed the bolsheviks. Any legitimacy they had, they lost it by their own actions. You're lying about the coalition government too as the Bolsheviks after October immediately offered to form a new coalition. What was the SRs and Menshevik response? To demand 1. The disarming of workers and the reversal of the second congress of soviets 2. The removal of Lenin and Trotsky 3. a new government with the bolshevik party excluded.
And the Constituent assembly was shut down for several reasons that you're completely ignorant about, such as the White army rallying behind the assembly to wage war on the soviets (oh what a coincidence) or the fact that it was dominated by right wingers who had no interest in a socialist revolution. And the Left SRs and anarchists supported closing it too. That's because liberal-style parliaments like the Constituent Assembly have been used in history again and again to crush workers revolutions. How are there people still crying about this is beyond me.
>The more history you read and the less theory you read the more you'll understand this.Take up your own advice first. I've read dozens of history books on the Russian Revolution and they only helped convince me that Lenin was really right. All the other parties tried to gang up on the bolsheviks and got btfo for it.
>>2253053>The SRs were much closer to a majority of the country and the Mensheviks (ironically "minority") were much closer to representing a majority of the proletariat.An unironic "elected under bourgeois democracy (february 1917), therefore more legitimate (than october 1917 councils)" argument, lmao.
if they were more democratic and more representative of the people, why is it then that they resorted to the most blatant electoral fraud to keep their seats? In trade unions, they have straight up banned re-elections each in their controlled trade union "until provisional government elects a proper government"
>>2254377Anarkiddie will strike you with this one in response
<b-but muh trade union leadership opposing Bolsheviks! How could this not convince you that workers were for SRs and against the Bolsheviks?!as if we don't see betrayal of the working class by trade union leadership every single day
>>2253053>You might say "well he won" but you have to accept he set up a govt. that couldn't even last 80 years. If all his ruthlessness resulted in a party dictatorship that was easily subverted from within by Khruschevite revisionists, then Perestroika revisionists, then fucking Yeltsinites, what was the point?Let's say for the sake of argument you're right. OP's vid backs its sources with citations and should at least be taken seriously.
However
1. As the video states from 32:00 the mensheviks and other forms of opposition found within the soviets were far from a united front, with constant infighting and bickering. True, the Bolsheviks were far from correct to repress them, but if what OP vid says is true, it's arguable that their opposition had similar policies that they were willing to enact, and would have possibly allowed said revisionists in had they won power and not the Bolsheviks. Neither were counter-revolutionary, but rather poorly misguided and having to deal with capitalist encirclement, fostering an atmosphere of paranoia, hyper-vigilance and suspicion- which lead them to do some really stupid shit. If the Bolsheviks weren't repressing others, are you confident in thinking the Mensheviks and left SRs wouldn't have done the same?
2. As the video pointed out, the Bolsheviks cracked down on the soviets- despite the fact that these soviets were the ones that initially allied with them and aided them, and created a hierarchical representative democracy as opposed to the localised and direct one. However, given the chaos that some of these soviets were creating and combining that they were all competing for different goals, this also presented a fuckton of chaos which could have arguably harmed as many people as it helped. A soviet system also had the risk to cave into possible reaction and lumpen-bourgoise behaviour as much as it had in combatting it and possibly even absorbing the lumpenproles to aid the revolution.
I guess what I'm trying to say OP is that this was the first revolution of its kind with its own unique problems, with its own unique triumphs and losses. The only thing we can do is ensure that we learn from Lenins mistakes as well as that committed by the soviets- and ensure that in future, socialist govs that we may build have better systems of direct accountability, control, informal leadership, and more constructive debate as opposed to calling the other "counter revolutionary" at the drop of a hat.
Besides, it's not as if a majority of us are living in a time where we're all a bunch of illiterate peasants in a backwards non-industrialised tsardom and are lacking the gift of hindsight.
At least not yet.
>>2254782>Except the collusion with reactionaries by Mensheviks and SRs is a proven factThe Mensheviks and SRs who couldn't even form a united front and were actually in favour of the Bolsheviks policies? Secondly, as the video states, (14:54) the Bolsheviks allied with industrialists to crush striking workers as well as those who demnaded more autonomy and there facts to prove that too.
Do you have a citation of this or this more paranoia?
>>2254784
>There was no such a thing. Forcing elections to take place, when elections were banned for a year by elected leadership to preserve said leadership, counts towards restoring democracyDid you watch the actual video or are you just parroting what a bunch of Stalin-simps told you?
>>2254787>Bolsheviks allied with industrialists to crush striking workers"Crush" of striking workers happened via Bolsheviks coming to striking workers and talking to them directly. After that talk, striking workers gave their trade union leadership the boot - and SRs and mensheviks were crying ever since
Meanwhile, SR and Menshevik collusion included railroad trade union's leadership smuggling soldiers and weapons from the frontlines towards Leningrad and Moscow in order to oppose Soviets taking power.
Fuck you, honestly, for daring to compare the two
>Did you watch the actual video or are you just parroting what a bunch of Stalin-simps told you?Zelensky - a democratic president, or a tyrant who postpones elections under the pretext of war - when even Russia did elections? Your excuses for tyrants are pathetic
>>2254798>i don't want to be ordered around by a democratic government. I am a strong independent LEADER, nobody, nethier from above or below, have any right to make me do anything!Odd, because that's what certain Bolsheviks wound up doing :^)
>>2254797
>"Crush" of striking workers happened via Bolsheviks coming to striking workers and talking to them directly. After that talk, striking workers gave their trade union leadership the boot - and SRs and mensheviks were crying ever since Meanwhile, SR and Menshevik collusion included railroad trade union's leadership smuggling soldiers and weapons from the frontlines towards Leningrad and Moscow in order to oppose Soviets taking power. <still no citations and is hardly in relation to the Novgorod soviet mentioned. So it's clear none of you actually watched the vid and are getting butthurt for being criticised. Gotcha.
>>2254797>>2254798Oh, and also, a major part of anticommunist propaganda regarding Bolsheviks was that throughout 1917 workers were striking, striking, striking, but then came in the damned Bolsheviks and SQUASHED the strikes, because OBVIOUSLY a communist party in charge would also enjoy the opposition to it's rule like a bourgeois country does. Workers defending their conquests with showing up to work and working hard for the Revolution?! Can't be, communism is all about STRIKING and doing the least amount of work possible :^)
>>2254801>that's what certain Bolsheviks wound up doing :^) Your projections are hilarious
>none of you actually watched the vidYou are getting btfod by me alone who's actually read through history of the October Revolution instead of anticommunist propaganda surrounding it.
>Novgorod sovietLet's see…
Primary Sources
Archives of newspapers: Delo, Delo naroda, Golos Naroda (Tula), Izvestiya, Izvestiya Saratovskogo soveta, Izvestiya Tverskogo soveta, Nash golos, Nashe slovo, Novvy den’, Novvy luch, Novaya zarya, Novaya zhizn’, Partiynyye izvestiya, Petrogradskii golos, Rabochaya gazeta, Rabochiy internatsional, Svobodnaya zhizn’ (Nizhny), Vechernyaya zvezda, Volya i dumy zheleznodorozhnik, Vozrozhdeniye, Vpered, Zaria Rossii, Zhizn’ (Nizhny)
More than half of those are SR newspapers. Yikes
So, for some reason, he brings up this document, which proves against everything he was talking about
https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/425963-pobeda-oktyabrskoy-sotsialisticheskoy-revolyutsii-v-nizhegorodskoy-gubernii-sbornik-dokumentov#mode/inspect/page/454/zoom/4We see: counterrevolutionary activity of SRs was headed by Kaledin and centered around former adjutant of Kornilov, i.e. we have a clear fact of collusion of SRs and counterrevolutionaries
If we read more reports from the archive, suddenly, we find out that bolsheviks have nationalized factories and instituted worker control, and that industrialists clearly were against this, employing trade unions in banks and telegraph stations and such to oppose bolsheviks. SRs did the usual bullshit tactic of accusing Bolsheviks of betraying the revolution, while being the pro-capitalist traitors themselves aka projecting. There is even stuff like pic 2, where capitalists were arrested for evading "owning classes tax", lmao, with their (personal) property getting CONFISCATED and AUCTIONED OFF, with their families to be "squeezed into 2-3 rooms large apartments"
You retard are trying to prove that Bolsheviks le bad same way Trots try to accuse Stalin of being bad - by uncritically quoting opposition as if it was truth. They also report about kulaks trying to bribe the poor with food, trying to make the poor oppose government-run distribution of food, lmao
>>2254834Why is nobody reacting to gigachad Soviets? Kulak wanted to blackmail workers with food access, to which workers have responded with showing kulak who are the ones growing grain, with showing kulak that he is a parasite hoarder of people's product, and that it is not he who has all the cards, but workers. Disregard to private property
It would be analogous to American people's state imposing a tax on porkies, porkies threatening to cut support for social programs, to which the state instead of cowing in like a cuck confiscating porkies' property, just to show them who's the boss here now, and who's a parasite muncher
Typical SR tactic, but done by kulaks. So, there was a large discussion regarding food security, that attracted 2000 people. Due to illness of a comissar, kulaks have managed to usurp the tribune, and, via refusing anybody else but themselves to have any word, started agitating against Soviet rule, claiming that Soviets will lead to famine, and only kulaks can provide food. They managed to persuade a part of the crowd, and kulaks marched to the local Soviet and disarmed local Red Guard. Immediately they've organized armed guard - by paying everyone willing 20 rubles per night
"For this Kulaks have money" - implying that Kulaks were asked to help those in need, to fight against famine, but kulaks declined under the pretext that Soviets have already took everything from them
>>22548301. He cites the Bolsheviks as a means to quote them on their own record
<but it contradicts what he says!Yeah no shit, because he’s using them as a source himself
>im BTFO of you!By poisoning the well and screaming “anti communism” in spite of the clear evidence that the Mensheviks, SRs and other factions weren’t a unite front, and therefore cannot be held collectively responsible for their supposed anti communism.
You look at the Mensheviks and SRs and are quick to dismiss them, even though OPs vid is deliberately drawing from primary and secondary sources
>spams source without contextYou post a lot while saying little.
>I know more about the Russian revolution than you do You certainly are focused on spinning a narrative that’s for sure.
It’s bad enough you lack understanding how historiography works and how citations are used.
It’s
>>2254820You know for a rape apologist so called “anarcha” feminist, who claims I’m a fed, it’s kind of odd that fed jacketing is often a tactic used by feds themselves.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad-jacketing Anti-Soviet rebellion in Bogorodsk
Mensheviks have organized a strike, collected workers from factories, and marched to the local communist party building. There were 4 communists inside. Communist Jurgens offered the crowd to speak with them properly, to understand what they want, and instead they got stoned, to which he answered with gun fire. In the end, Menshevik-led crowd has burned to death 4 communists
Menshevik agitation was focused on food security. There were cases when Menshevik agitators met peasants with food going to the local markets from their villagers to sell the food there, and were turned around by the Mensheviks. There was also a failure to distribute leatherworks products which were lying in the storerooms without getting distributed
In response, Bolsheviks have sent a punitive force, which raided all the usual suspects and confiscated foodstuffs, which were then promptly distributed amongst the poorest strata of peasants and workers. Traders have had been subjects to 1 millions large punitive tax. Murderers, 9 of them, were summarily shot against the wall, some have managed to escape though
Factories after this had a morale boost, and a reelection in the local Soviet was carried out.
>>2254861>still posting the same source <you see it’s a contradictionAs opposed to using/citing the Bolsheviks own words and scrutinising them.
This is embarrassing, lad.
>>2254860>h-he posted Soviets-own source to prove that they were lying!He didn't prove it, though, lmao
>You look at the Mensheviks and SRs and are quick to dismiss them, even though OPs vid is deliberately drawing from primary and secondary sources His primary sources are Menshevik newspapers, having an obvious bias, and on top of that being in the process of anti-Soviet agitation at the time which resulted in murders like this one
>>2254861 With rebellions getting resolved either through communists speaking to the crowd, or through punitive Soviet raids into kulaks and traders and assorted menshevik scum's larders with food redistribution from there to the poor.
In other words:
>Mensheviks cry: Soviets don't distribute food, reeee, famine is on the horizon, must kill every communist!<Soviets respond: that's an awful lot of food you have there, menshevik-supporting kulak, we think you should share, if your cries about coming famine are to be believed>>2254864>le lying Mensheviks and SRs are the same as Bolsheviks, ackshually>here, to prove this, I'll bring in Trot ramblings about how Bolsheviks oppressed themYikes.
So, case 1. Vikzhel, aka the railroad union. Oh nooo, poor little socialists just wanted to be represented in the Soviets (nevermind that they were asking Bolsheviks to give them permanent seats without elections, ala they just wanted to exchange their unelected position in a bourgeois parliament with a position in Soviets). They also graciously have offered Bolsheviks something like "Fiiiiine, 2/3 seats go to us, 1/3 go to you" kind of a deal for their support and their united government plan, lmao.
Meanwhile, railroad trade union was shipping weapons to White Guards, and that trade union was fucking outraged when Bolsheviks came to railroad workers in around Minsk and Novgorod and asked them to stop the transfer of troops and weapons to internal cities, such as Leningrad and Moscow, by disassembling rails - to which workers happily agreed. AGAINST THE WILL AND BLACKMAIL BY RAILROAD TRADE UNION
Coaltion government? With these kind of BASTARDS??? Fuck you
Yet you have the audacity to bring this nonsensical Vikzhel apologia as some kind of a proof that Bolsheviks are as bad or worse than Mensheviks and SRs.
>>2254877>ur lying He literally uses both Bolshevik and Menshevik sources as primary sources to back the arguments and secondary sources from historians to clarify this.
Come on lad, this isn’t hard.
>but muh TrotskyOk and? Regardless of your opinions on him Bolshevik falsification is a provable act, no amount of seething over the sentient ice pick receptical is going to change that, nor is your ability to understand how historiography works.
>>2254877>but-but-but Bolsheviks have started it first! They've declared that the new government will consist of only Bolsheviks!!1 Other parties had no choice!!!!!!111Except what this new government did was actually a result of Mensheviks and others marching out of the room when the government was forming over disagreeing with Bolsheviks on the program of the government, namely, full dissolution of bourgeois parliament, alongside peace program and nationalizations. They walked out, and expected the people to follow after them. Instead, after they walked out, real communists have "usurped" full power, and didn't give the saboteurs even an inch. Mensheviks and SRs, expectedly, threw a bitch fit over it, but again, workers they were relying on BETRAYED them for Bolsheviks, and have refused to obey Menshevik liars
Bet Menshevik and SR press didn't talk about how they didn't have the ordinary people's support in this most crucial, huh? HUH?
>>2254879He doesn't use both sources, he uses Menshevik sources, and then sprinkle it with shit like "wow, Red Guards shot in the air, and then there were 5 wounded??? IT MUST MEAN THAT COMMUNISTS WERE LYING AND ACTUALLY SHOT INTO THE CROWD, and not that there was a fist fight going on, for which men with guns were called in to stop the fight"
>>2254879>Bolshevik falsification is a provable actDude, your video is literally talking about Vikzhel chimp out while leaving out all the fucking context, and then calls Trotsky to have been correct. Yeah dude, calls of Vikzhel to have a "uniform socialist government" after a walk out by all the non-Bolsheviks, and that walk-out having no effect other than those who have walked out losing all the legal powers they had, is a tooootally fair and justified deal offered. Bolsheviks should have accepted! After all, they must have felt bad for getting walked out on, after Bolsheviks have couped the bourgeois parliament and dissolved it in favor of Soviets, only to encounter leadership of those Soviets to oppose Bolsheviks making Soviets the de facto government in the country. Remember: no reelections happened since fucking March, and all the leadership in Soviets was supporting provisional government and was envisioning Soviets to be political cucks with no legislative or executive powers at all, only to look and advice on how bourgeois parliament should run the country :^)
>>2254893>he doesn’t use Bolshevik sourcesOk now I know you’re lying. He straight up quotes Lenin and the Bolshevik reports of the situation.
Stop lying to yourself lad. Its clear you’re melting down at your world view being challenged
>>2254904As I said earlier, the Mensheviks were far from innocent and their incompetence and lack of cohesive political positions/ infighting made them a liability. Simultaneously the Bolsheviks were to damn hard handed and over reacted to a perceived enemy.
People act like criticism of their party means out right dismissal of their party and therefore equivalent to anti communism. It’s sad that these are the conclusions they jump to.
>>2254907>Simultaneously the Bolsheviks were to damn hard handed and over reacted to a perceived enemy. Yeah, Bolsheviks overreacted to supposedly neutral railorad trade union 1) demanding a uniform socialist government from Bolsheviks 2) all the while smuggling weapons and soldiers from the frontlines towards Leningrad and Moscow. That's totally not a reason to overreact - Bolsheviks should have let socialists *like this* to join Soviet government on equal, or better, footing as Bolsheviks themselves.
The hoops you jump through to remain in support of obvious reactionaries
>>2254905<I didn’t watch the videoIt's a what, 3 minutes long segment devoted to 1917, where "Noj Rants" lies more than says truth. If *this* is how much lies he puts in 3 minutes of footage, then how much is there of nonsense in other segments?
Btw, are you going to disprove me on Vikzhel/railroad trade union, or not? Do you agree with me that Vikzhel were a bunch of reactionaries masquerading as neutral socialists, POSTPONING ELECTIONS INDEFINITELY BECAUSE OF VOLATILE SITUATION SINCE FUCKING MARCH 1917 on top of that? With first free elections in railroad trade union happening only after Bolsheviks forced the issue?
Also, you haven't answered me on the status of tyranthood of Zelensky
Honestly, this obsession with "truth" of SRs and Mensheviks reminds me of other anticommunists - blatant rightoid historians who research exclusively White emigres' newspapers and then search for proof within Bolshevik reporting that mass murders of priests happened, that Soviets couldn't produce footwear, that Soviets were destied to fail by the end of next year because of budget deficit, etc etc nonsense. Neither SR/Menshevik press or White emigre press are any good, it's just full of blatant lies and speculation and what else, not much different from Ukraine war reporting. Rumour mills, totally real leaks, "oh, Lenin must be a tyrant who is deathly afraid of his subordinates", "just look at that repressed Bolshevik leader, he was silenced for speaking DA TRUTH" and so on and so forth
>>2254909*no arguments here.
The Bolsheviks did a lot of great things, and it cannot be denied that in comparison to the stardom they overthrew they improved the lives of many tenfold. But as this video shows, and as I said it has the evidence to back it- there’s some shitty things they did themselves.
>majority >majority>democratic>majority >coalition >majorityBordiga was right, you people will put "democracy" on a pedestal at the expense of communism and the revolution.
<"As to pure democracy and its role in the future I do not share your opinion. Obviously it plays a far more subordinate part in Germany than in countries with an older industrial development. But that does not prevent the possibility, when the moment of revolution comes, of its acquiring a temporary importance as the most radical bourgeois party (it has already played itself off as such in Frankfort) and as the final sheet-anchor of the whole bourgeois and even feudal regime. At such a moment the whole reactionary mass falls in behind it and strengthens it; everything which used to be reactionary behaves as democratic. Thus between March and September 1848 the whole feudal-bureaucratic mass strengthened the liberals in order to hold down the revolutionary masses, and, once this was accomplished, in order, naturally, to kick out the liberals as well. Thus from May 1848 until Bonaparte's election in France in December, the purely republican party of the National, the weakest of all the parties, was in power, simply owing to the whole collective reaction organised behind it. This has happened in every revolution: the tamest party still remaining in any way capable of government comes to power with the others just because it is only in this party that the defeated see their last possibility of salvation. Now it cannot be expected that at the moment of crisis we shall already have the majority of the electorate and therefore of the nation behind us. The whole bourgeois class and the remnants of the feudal landowning class, a large section of the petty bourgeoisie and also of the rural population will then mass themselves around the most radical bourgeois party, which will then make the most extreme revolutionary gestures, and I consider it very possible that it will be represented in the provisional government and even temporarily form its majority. How, as a minority, one should not act in that case, was demonstrated by the social-democratic minority in the Paris revolution of February 1848. However, this is still an academic question at the moment."(Engels, 1884.) <In any case our sole adversary on the day of the crisis and on the day after the crisis will be the whole collective reaction which will group itself around pure democracy, and this, I think, should not be lost sight of.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/letters/84_12_11.htm<But perhaps the supreme lie and main plank of counter-revolutionary thought is the notion of the State as neutral arbiter of class and party interests, and therefore also of a farcical freedom of opinion. Such a State, and such a freedom, are monstrous inventions that history has never known nor ever shall know. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm<"Bourgeois electoral democracy seeks the consultation of the masses, for it knows that the response of the majority will always be favourable to the privileged class and will readily delegate to that class the right to govern and to perpetuate exploitation." https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1921/party-class.htm >>2255270>you’re using liberal dualism By acknowledging how there were both good and bad things about the USSR? Do you realise how vague and broadly that can apply to any marxist or pro socialist historian?
Though again, I shouldn’t be be surprised at the person who calls me a lib one day, a nardonist the next, and an anti communist, and then a “holier than thou socialist” all within the space of a few weeks- all of this to say that it’s clear you’re using words that clearly you don’t understand and then making it all about “kurdophiloa”
Pointing out the flaws and merits of a socialist movement he it Menshevik, Bolshevik etc isn’t “liberal dualism”, because that would imply that such findings and critiques means disregarding socialism as a whole as opposed to learning from history to be better prepared for movements that may arise today or in the future.
Calling you deranged isn’t an opinion comrade- in your case, it’s a fact. The fact you see my flag and start to pick a fight and start shitflinging is indicative of this.
Kurdish Derangement Syndrome and its consequences, indeed.
>>2255579here's to help your reading comprehension. i know it's hard when you're seeing red. i have continuously called you
just an anarchist and narodnik, which i think are reasonable accusations given your opinions you espouse (i was especially convinced of that in the bushnell thread)
<you're literally operating under liberal ethics and trying to shove dualism, an incessant struggle of good and evil, of the two rivers into what is nothing more than [noj's] implicit anticommunism, [noj's] holier-than-thou socialism
>Pointing out the flaws and merits of a socialist movementbut you're not doing this. you're taking menshevik accusations at face value. attacking the bolsheviks with the mensheviks is diregarding socialism - it's akin to arguing for utopian socialism after scientific socialism. there is rarely a positive critique of the bolsheviks that anarchists like you give.
>Kurdish Derangement Syndrome and its consequences, indeed.trust me, you're not that special. it's a shame i have to call out your nonsense because i can't do it nicely. the new paradigm (=kurdophilia) is
at its core a revision of marxism and a revision of marxism in the anarchist direction. it's also a fact that the german kurdish intellectuals are the ones financing kurdish expeditions across europe spreading demconfederalism. call it paranoia but this is very suspiscious given that europe needs organizational clarity more than ever, and then you get your retards coming and talking about kurdish nonsense which helps no one practically here and today.
btw i find it really funny that you think i'm a rape apologist for one oneoff comment in an anticommunist thread spreading goebbelsian propaganda about berlin hahahaha. go read arendt and jack yourself to sleep how the ussr was an evil empire and we have to help muh cutie patootie femboys in rojava. this last part has nothing to do with the above reply i just had to write it out
>>2255579"Bad things" you want to acknowledge about USSR didn't fucking exist, that's the problem with you people
So, we have a situation - SRs and Mensheviks win Soviet elections in February-March 1917, and immediately ban further elections "until the provisional government forms a real government and situation stabilizes". People, obviously, eventually start seeing this as stalling, those who were elected as traitors to the working class who are in cahoots with reactionaries (and they were!), and that somebody more true to the working class are required in power. So, people back Bolshevik coup and total dissolution of bourgeois parliamentarism
SR and Menshevik reaction?
<REEEEEEEE HOW DARE YOU MUH DEMOCRACY GIB US 2/3 OF THE GOVERNMENT OR ELSE!!!1They walk out of the government in protest, and Bolsheviks make a government without them.
And after this - full scale attempt at counter-revolutionary revolt in cahoots with kulaks and capitalists and reactionaries in order to "restore democracy" (which had had no elections since fucking March 1917) and claims that Bolsheviks are undemocratic usurpers
And then a retard like you comes in and start worshipping newspapers which were justifying such political positions, and you cry about Bolshevik "heavy handedness" and "perceived enemies" when IN FACT SRs and Mensheviks WERE enemies of the people hellbent on taking away people's freedoms for the reinstatement of their bourgeois parliament
And I haven't even mentioned flip-flopping on the issues done by those retards. They came in power with the promises of immediate redistribution of land, and by April 1917 they were already voting in Provisional Government for Cossack regiments to go into the villages where land was redistributed and to force the land to be returned to landowners. With the overall position shifting to "no land reform until real government", lmao, and besides that "land reform" was reimagined as a TAX ON THE POOR that was going to be collected by the state and handed over to the landowners for the buyout of land
Fuck. You. You have no fucking idea about the context, about historiography, about fucking anything. You just read propaganda pieces fit into a line saying "Bolsheviks le bad", and you don't actually research sources - in historiography, you have to research ALL sources, and don't just skim over them to find that one Lenin's quote to prove to yourself that the SR newspapers didn't tell lies
And you still are avoiding calling Zelensky a tyrant, because you want to remain ambiguous about SRs being tyrants, lmao >>2255837>>2255579Well, while we are at it, let's continue with SR and Menshevik vile behaviour that has made them unelectable and reliant on fake legitimacy gained in March
1. April Crisis. SRs and Mensheviks, without doing any fucking military reforms, have proclaimed that the military STILL composed of all the same generals and officers and same power dynamics was now A REVOLUTIONARY ARMY (!!!), and that Russian Republic was a REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLIC at war with REACTIONARY GERMAN EMPIRE
Therefore, it stands, that REVOLUTIONARY ARMY must fight against REACTIONARY GERMAN EMPIRE and force them to accept peace - such a peace that will see replacement of kaiser with a republic, with assorted reparations. AKA imperialist position. SRs and Mensheviks also supported the conspiracy theory of Lenin being a German spy, btw
And Nicholas 2 was deposed in part because of his secret peace negotiations with Germans behind government's back. Unlike Provisional Goverment, Nicholas 2 wasn't a full puppet to Entente interests and could imagine a separate peace deal with Germany2. Provisional Government - with SRs and Mensheviks - have organized a failed offensive in June. Failure of the offensive was ENTIRELY blamed on Bolsheviks, and obviously not on the military planners who who were pushed into an offensive by British and French and AMERICAN pressure. Somehow they thought that by renaming Imperial Army to Revolutionary Army it will magically perform better than before. When it didn't happen, and people have started accusing socdem traitors of being traitors to the working class, calling out their fake peace positions and such, SRs and Mensheviks have doubled down on declaring their opponents enemy spies
Doesn't it just remind you of Dem party branding everyone they don't like as Russian spies and assets?3. July Days. Prior to banning Bolsheviks, SRs and Mensheviks have started a full-blown propaganda campaign against Bolsheviks, accusing them of planning a military coup. SRs and Mensheviks were in full support of Provisional Government, of Provisional Government dismantling any kinds of militias forming on factory floors and in the villages, of keeping all the old order societal structure intact - again, until situation stabilizes, there's a real government, war has ended, etc etc stalling tactics employed by socdems to make sure that fascists have enough time to mobilize
So, Mensheviks and SRs use their unelected positions in Sovies to smear Bolsheviks, refuse Bolsheviks petitions for demonstrations with demands, and instead occupy the timeslots and people who could participate in such demonstrations to organize their own demonstration - one in support of Provisional Government
Instead, what they got was SR and Menshevik sanctioned demonstration - but with people proudly sporting the repressed demands. A demonstration with Bolshevik words, against the Provisional Government. Oh, and also, there was a division worth of garrison troops who have sided with the demonstration agaisnt the PRovisional Government
Guess what SRs and Mensheviks did? Obviously, they've begged Bolsheviks in Soviets to call militants to disarm (all the while hiding the fact that they knew that pro-Government military forces were on their way). Were there any begging by Mensheviks and SRs to stop counter-revolutionaries? Of course not
4. Kornilov. Seeing how Socdems can't fulfill their role as spoilers to Bolsheviks, as how SRs and Mensheviks lost immense amounts of popularity, fascists thought it's time to start open terror against the working class. They were presenting Provisional Government to be in cahoots with those darn German spies Bolsheviks, and in response SRs and Mensheviks, isntead of calling out this lie, doubled down on accusing Bolsheviks of being German spies, and how against the German spies loyal Socdems are!
Meanwhile, Kerensky has tried to mobilize every force he could to stop Kornilov from taking power from him. And Bolsheviks have just like came out of the woodworks and disarmed Kornilov's troops with well-placed agitators. This resulted in people now FOR SURE seeing Bolsheviks as the SAVIOURS OF DEMOCRACY, and SRs and Mensheviks, alongside other assorted reactionaries, as TRAITORS
Now, in Soviets, SRs and Mensheviks started feeling themselves in the minority. Hence even further doubling down on refusal for reelections of any kind
>>2255837> Bad things" you want to acknowledge about USSR didn't fucking exist, that's the problem with you peopleStopped reading there.
No amount of seething and your cult like devotion can either justify the corruption (which is documented in primary and secondary sources), ethnic deportation, collective punishment, homophobic policies and the dissolution of the Soviets.
Just because someone criticises the Bolsheviks and their faults doesn’t dismiss them fully of their merits and successes. But to people like you, you only think in terms of binary thinking.
The rest of your argument is just incoherent ramblings and seething at the Mensheviks who I have mentioned
repeatedly were far from saints either.
And again, you’re still seething over me holding positions that I don’t have regarding Zelensky. You’re as deranged as the an-fem.
>>2255806>>2255806>you take them at face valueConsidering there is secondary sources and primary sources and the Bolsheviks are on record for falsifying records this isn’t hard to not view them as a reliable source and have to be taken with a grain of salt.
>btw i find it really funny that you think i'm a rape apologist for one oneoff comment in an anticommunist thread spreading goebbelsian propaganda about berlin hahahaha
>it was just a jokeI’m an SA survivor. Rape jokes aren’t fucking Funny and are indicative of rape culture and rape apologism.
>jerk off about muh Hannah ardent >you just hate the ussr If all you can do is just strawman and then double down on your shitty behaviour and just make up bullshit positions I don’t hold and put words in my mouth, there’s nothing more to discuss.
>>2255918>I’m an SA survivor.boo fucking hoo you can't cancel me like you can in your squat for being selectively edgy.
no one gives a shit about (YOU) since after you post here the author is DEAD and we can do as we please with your words. or is that also patriarchal? grow a spine. you're getting dunked on because you have shit takes
>>2255956do you understand that this forum is
not the movement? do you understand you're creating a personality based on words on a screen? do you not see the issue with psychologizing and personalizing statements here? how are you all so stupid to always go for the nebulous 'tone it down for the le working classes'?? no workingwomen gets (or doesn't get) organized because of posts here. leave the kitchen if you can't handle the heat of limitless critique
>>2255837>"Bad things" you want to acknowledge about USSR didn't fucking exist, that's the problem with you peopleThe problem with people like you is that you think this shit matters. Again, even if everything OP's video says is true, it doesn't mean the USSR wasn't a net force for good and a major driver of liberation, which YPG Anon openly agrees it was. I don't understand hysterical responses like this to a position which is objectively pro-Soviet and pro-communist. If a liberal agrees that America has a lot of problems and did a lot of bad things, but overall thinks that US hegemony and liberal capitalism are good and should be supported, then you would have no problem saying that such a person is objectively counterrevolutionary and pro-imperialist (and you'd be right). By the same token, when a person holds an identical position vis a vis the USSR and Marxism-Leninism, then it makes them objectively pro-Soviet and pro-revolutionary. Criticism, even if erroneous, is not equivalent to opposition. Talk about myopia and the narcissism of small differences.
>>2256087Why are we still pretending like anti-soviet perspectives aren’t liberal and purely reactionary? We need to stop tolerating this form of thinking in our movements. It’s one thing for a person to be ignorant on the Soviet Union and how it worked but it’s another thing for a so called leftist to be spreading misinformation on the Soviet Union willingly in order to wreck or disorganize any movement. The fall of the Soviet Union, the neoliberal shock treatment, Putin’s bullshit now, the massive neoliberal movement that is choking and squeezing the working class to death, the neo-reactionaries today, all of it was kept in check by the Soviet Union’s existence. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can’t fault the communists who were seethingly critical of the Soviets before they fell, they just did not understand how bad shit would get.
Here’s a good litmus test for any so called leftist, ask them if they would prefer the 20th century stuff still continuing into our generation, we still have strong unions and welfare states in the west and the Soviets are still the vanguard of socialism. Would they prefer this reality or the that reality? Would they prefer to be living in the current neoliberal paradigm and socialism almost all but destroyed as an idea to fight for. If they prefer the latter than that is all you need to purge them from any movement.
>>2256110>Their position is that the USSR was a good thing that advanced the liberation struggle, but that it had flaws. Even if they're mistaken about the precise nature or extent of those flaws I find it very hard to view this as an anti-Soviet position.so your whole thing is a platitude? because "thing is good, but also bad" is a platitude. it means shit all. the problem is the nature of the thing ypg is criticizing which is entirely fabricated and we are still pretending like menshevik, SR or white press has any weight.
it seems one liberal can just make shit up and another will come along and say that it is a nuanced position and we should uphold le critique because there is some truth in everything. no - that is retarded, it is a stupid kind of idealism that thinks that the all-good is present in parts everywhere. literally denying dialectics when you do this btw, that's another fucking example of you anarchists entertaining bourgeois dualism and ethics to push anticommunism
>>2256173>because "thing is good, but also bad" is a platitude"The USSR was on the whole a good thing despite its flaws" isn't a platitude, it's the basic position held by the vast majority of Marxist-Leninists.
>it means shit all. the problem is the nature of the thing ypg is criticizing which is entirely fabricated That's a non-issue. They hold the same basic position on the USSR as most MLs, and its an objectively pro-Soviet one. Again, differences over which particular flaws existed, what their causes were, how severe they were, etc. is of no consequence for class struggle today.
>>2256174>from what? for whom?Liberation from capitalism and imperialism for the proletariat, peasantry, and colonized peoples.
>>2255918>corruption (which is documented in primary and secondary sources)Just because SRs claimed this doesn't mean it was real, lmao
>ethnic deportationYou mean "moving populations away from danger". "Deportation" implies punishment, and by no metric it was one.
>collective punishmentOf who? Kulaks and capitalist class? oh noooo
>homophobic policiesHilarious
>dissolution of the SovietsWe are talking about this exact point, and you have FAILED to prove that dissolution has happened. Instead, I've put you facefirst into your own shit
>Mensheviks who I have mentioned repeatedly were far from saints either. >far from saints>eitherMensheviks and SRs were reactionaries, for fuck's sake. Bolsheviks were revolutionaries. There's neither "far from saints" or "either" for Bolsheviks, you are just consuming SR propaganda pieces
I'm done with you, because you seem to be incapable of arguing in good faith. You can't even bring yourself to call Zelensky a tyrant, for fuck's sake, even jokingly, because of how invested you are in coming out as never admitting to your opponent being right on anything
<Bad things" you want to acknowledge about USSR didn't fucking exist, that's the problem with you people>Stopped reading there. Cuz you are an idiot, lol. It's quite obvious that I meant that 1) bad things in USSR existed 2) yet you want to acknowledge "bad things" about USSR, which didn't. That's the problem with people like you, you don't want to talk about real stuff, you want to talk about mass murders, dissolution of Soviets, deportations, secret killing of 700.000 reactionaries, holodomor, etc etc. And when you get told that, you just double down on your nonsense anticommunist and reactionary "sources"
Do you acknowledge the fact that SRs and Mensheviks accused Lenin and Bolsheviks of being German spies? Yes or no, retard, on this very important question of whether or not SR and Menshevik press could be trusted at face value
>>2256173>everyone who ever so slightly disagrees slightly with me is…… le liberal>i am le one true gommieLARP
A
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>>2256110>Their position is that the USSR was a good thing that advanced the liberation struggle, but that it had flawsit's not, their position is that Lenin le bad, communists very antidemocratic, destroyed Soviets, punished largely innocent SRs and Mensheviks, who were disunited, and there was no reason to punish them collectively, yadda yadda. Usual anticommunist nonsense.
If you ask YPG poster about Stalin, and then USSR foreign policy as a whole, you'll just hear usual Trot nonsense about muh bureaucracy and muh imperialist USSR oppressing Eastern Europe
>>2256201>>2256110What I mean is, it's akin to memes about religions where there's circular reasoning of "bible says god is real" -> "we know that this is true because god is the one who inspired bible". It's a collection of beliefs that reinforce each other, and this kind of world understanding is how humans think about issues, making it impossible to persuade anybody of anything
YPG poster's anticommunism is a set of nonsense beliefs that reinforce each other, and quite obviously they'll find justifications for those beliefs anywhere they look. Bolshevik sources, to them, are largely wrong, lies, whatever, but one or two pieces of SACRED ADMISSIONS? GOOD SHIT. Defectors are sacred cows, too, because if a person escapes a totalitarian nightmare in must mean they are very Brave and very Honest and hold Only The Correctess Of Opinions. So, in the end, you get to a worldview that is based entirely on rumours and propaganda, very fucking unscientific and very deserving of getting bullied for
>>2256203>spouts every anticommunist talking point about mass murders, antidemocracy, unlawful seizure of power, deportations, etc>does a 180 at the end and says "it was good, actually!"Either they are schizophreniac, then, or dishonest, or lack reading comprehension and/or empathy to call out evil as evil. To compare, I, for example, dismiss SR propaganda as SR propaganda, i.e. baseless lies and rumors and accusations and bourgeois politicking and the desire to fool workers and so on and so forth, and say that USSR was great and revolutionary. I have no schizophrenia here. YPG poster is, at best, misguided, at worst a liar who lie about what they think about USSR
>>2256215>Either they are schizophreniac, then, or dishonest, or lack reading comprehension and/or empathyNot really. Its easily explained by the "Two Terrors" outlook described by Mark Twain regarding the French Revolution, picrel. He makes no attempt to downplay the revolutionary terror of the Jacobins, he simply says that it was justified or at least tolerable given that the Ancien Regime had enacted the far longer, deadlier, and more brutal terror of feudalism which the revolution put a stop to, ultimately creating a more just and free world despite its excesses. This seems to be YPG Anon's position vis a vis the USSR and I would consider it objectively pro-Soviet.
>>2256217<literally making a variation of the 'human nature' argumentI don't see how it's anything of the sort. I'm just saying that YPG Anon's overall outlook on the USSR is essentially the same as that held by the majority of Marxist-Leninists.
>>2256220So, what you are saying is, Bolshevik terror against habitual ancien regime terrorists was le bad? Like, you even frame the issue in nonsesne propaganda against Jacobins.
Like, you are the kind of a guy Noj Rants of the future would use as a "Bolsheviks admitted it themselves!" argument, lmao
>>2256225>So, what you are saying is, Bolshevik terror against habitual ancien regime terrorists was le bad? You need to work on your reading comprehension. I'm saying it ranged from good where it was warranted to ultimately irrelevant where it was excessive. They produced a better world at the end of it, one that was closer to socialism than what came before. If we agree on that then I don't see why its so important if we disagree on the precise nature of any revolutionary excesses, or even whether they happened.
>>2256226>because a Nazi somehow has managed to persuade him that Bolsheviks have secretly killed 1/4 of Ukraine without anyone noticingNot if that person already thinks the USSR was overall a positive force in large part of how many Nazis they killed lmao. Why do some people have a pathological need to push people into the camp of the enemy over such minor differences?
I'm gonna hold you by the hand in this one, Sabo.
>>2256187>"The USSR was on the whole a good thing despite its flaws" isn't a platitude, it's the basic position held by the vast majority of Marxist-Leninists. i) assuming moral categories of good and bad and having a moral instead of scientific judgement of the USSR
ii) a basic position held by so-called MLs means as much today as saying something is a basic Trotskyite position when a) there is not a unified ML movement b) there are as many MLs as there any other sects of leftism c) all of these sects have different ideas of which parts of the USSR were 'good' and which were 'bad' (let's use your categories for simplicty)
iii) therefore, a 'general basic position' exists inasmuch the MLs agree some things were 'good' and some where 'bad' but this neither tells which things were good or bad and why they were good or bad and not as a 'general basic position on the nature of good and of bad things the USSR did"
iv) calling upon 'general basic positions' is the same as saying that something is just 'natural', just 'like that' - it's completly unscientific and retarded
v) stemming from the problem of the general basic position being neither general nor basic, any anticommunist actor (like YPG, for example) can come along and spew complete (SR, menshevik) fabrications, pretend these are the 'bad' things, judge them severely, but then just as easily say 'but hey, there were also
good parts of the USSR like…' and then proceeds to list phrases devoid of meaning ('Liberation from capitalism and imperialism for the proletariat, peasantry, and colonized peoples.' yes that is all very nice but it omits the crucial part that the USSR did this through a
proletarian dictatorship)
>That's a non-issue. It very much is so when the facts being claimed are outright lies.
>[D]ifferences over which particular flaws existed, what their causes were, how severe they were, etc. is of no consequence for class struggle today. It very much is, because as we see on the example of you two, without learning history you're bound to regress the movement with your childish outlooks on political organizing.
>>2256229>Why do some people have a pathological need to push people into the camp of the enemy over such minor differences?Are you really going to pull a "you made a Nazi out of a harmless Socdem by not entertaining their harmless beliefs" on me?
They were defending traitors to the working class, scum who worked with reactionaries to kill communists, and at the same time accused Lenin of being a tyrant who dissolved democracy
You know what? I'll pull a John Brown on them. A DEMOCRACY TO DO WHAT, REACTIONARY?
>>2256223>Somebody who has a mostly bog-standard communist take on the USSR is worse than a Nazi because they disagree on irrelevant historical minutiae.but this is (nominally) not such a forum. we are not agitating among workers or organizing the proletariat when we post here. here we have complete freedom for actual honest critique aimed at other intellectuals (that is what we do with every post, we
intellectualize)
you really need to stop pulling this "muh average joe doesn't care" because we are not dealing with average joes (not like that exists anyway, just think for a second how it is retarded to think there is something like a normal distribution of
essential characteristics of
individual persons) but with other intellectuals (or the shit-for-brains, as lenin pbuh said)
>I'm saying it ranged from good where it was warranted to ultimately irrelevant where it was excessive. They produced a better world at the end of it, one that was closer to socialism than what came before.the phrasemongering on this one lmao
>If we agree on that then I don't see why its so important if we disagree on the precise nature of any revolutionary excesses, or even whether they happened.THE PRECISE NATURE IS THAT THEY ARE LIES! DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND??? YOU ARE REPEATING ANTICOMMUNIST LIES AND PRETENDING THESE ARE SOMEHOW REAL IN SOME SENSE!! HOOOOLY SHIT
>>2256229Just admit that you’re an anticommunist and be done with it, this bullshit where you pretend to support the USSR over liberal bullshit but then concern troll by bringing up either outright lies or presenting objectively good things as bad is tiresome and fools nobody. So stop wasting everyone’s time and just admit that you are a liberal.
Jesus Christ no wonder you faggots got a bullet to the head, I’ve only read a few of your posts and I already want to shoot you for being an insufferable pseud
>>2256234>i) assuming moral categories of good and bad and having a moral instead of scientific judgement of the USSRThat's a semantic distinction. If you want to couch it in morally neutral terms then you could say that its about the USSR still moving us closer to socialism than anything else.
>iii) therefore, a 'general basic position' exists inasmuch the MLs agree some things were 'good' and some where 'bad' but this neither tells which things were good or bad and why they were good or bad Okay, but I'm saying that those disagreements don't matter that much, and that somebody who disagrees about the details isn't an anti-communist as long as they hold the view that the USSR was an ultimately progressive and revolutionary force.
>It very much is so when the facts being claimed are outright lies.Lies over shit that doesn't matter. If somebody wrote that Lenin had a foot fetish I literally wouldn't give a shit because my position on him would remain the same regardless of whether it was true.
>you're bound to regress the movement with your childish outlooks on political organizingChildish outlooks like how we should emphasize unity wherever possible, and focus our energies on issues that actually matter to the modern class struggle? You're right, we should spend all day arguing about what exactly the Bolsheviks did or did not do 100 years ago in a state that no longer exists. This is the most important thing we could be worrying about right now. Not only that, but we should be splitting over it! Calling each other counterrevolutionaries and Nazis over it! This is very productive.
>>2256236>Are you really going to pull a "you made a Nazi out of a harmless Socdem by not entertaining their harmless beliefs" on me?No, I'm saying that treating people like enemies over shit that doesn't matter is counter productive.
>>2256240>THE PRECISE NATURE IS THAT THEY ARE LIESIf somebody said that "It was bad for the US to fake the moon landing, but overall I think American hegemony and capitalism is a good thing" would you consider them to be anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist? Probably not, because their "critique" is irrelevant, they are pro-American where it matters. At worst this is what YPG Anon is doing. Falling for a falsification sure, but not to the degree that it produces opposition to the Soviet project.
>>2256248>>2256251Also also, a tale of two parties. KPRF in Russia admits to every wrongdoing the same way YPG poster acknowledges heavy handedness, unnecessariness, etc etc. Their polling numbers are horrible, and they are on the verge of being below the threshold for getting into parliament at all. Then there's CPC, which jails retards for trying to taint CPC's reputation, and CPC is VERY popular and well-supported by the people
Reputation matters. Besides, truth is on my side
>All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not "make inevitable" the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of "suspect" nationalities.t. Micheal Parenti
So guys, based on this quote can we come to the conclusion that Micheal Parenti is a viscious anti-communist who's worse than a Nazi?
>>2256251>admit that they are wrongI think they are wrong, but being wrong is less destructive than getting so antagonistic about things that don't matter.
>>2256255>Then there's CPC, which jails retards for trying to taint CPC's reputation, and CPC is VERY popular and well-supported by the peopleProbably has something to do with the fact that the CPC is in power, whereas the KPRF is a communist opposition party operating in a bourgeois state, and get repressed by the Russian government whenever they start to do well lmao. Also the CPC does admit to mistakes and flaws in past policies or their execution. Self-criticism is a cornerstone of MZT, which is a big part if why the CPC governs so effectively.
>>2256260>and get repressed by the Russian government whenever they start to do well They literally are in an agreement with United Russia over electoral districts and representatives. They manipulate elections with all the other parliamentary parties by United Russia placing bad polling candidates in districts where there are supposed to be KPRF victories
Russia of today is a one party state. KPRF's opposition is Zyuganov receiving Stolypin's Medal
Stolypin was the guy who hanged revolutionaries in 1905 for praising Putin for being Russia's saviour and true patriot
>>2256248Once confronted with facts you do as all good retards do and argue about the
tone of the message.
>I'm saying that those disagreements don't matter that muchDisagremeents about not accepting menshevik/SR lies matter. You pretend they are real, you get to critique Leninism all you want on a moral basis, which is what the anti-communist intellectuals love
>emphasize unity wherever possible<Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxismt. Lenin
>focus our energies on issues that actually matter to the modern class struggleIt actually matters that we have a clear and unified view of history.
>You're right, we should spend all day arguing about what exactly the Bolsheviks did or did not do 100 years ago in a state that no longer exists. This is the most important thing we could be worrying about right now. Not only that, but we should be splitting over it! Calling each other counterrevolutionaries and Nazis over it! This is very productive.Nice strawman. But thank you for admiting that you (again) think that when we here talk as intellectuals floating heads (people doing intellectual work and discussing theory), we do not pretened this things don't matter because of some illusory 'unity' you think exists between a communist and an anticommunist stance.
>At worst this is what YPG Anon is doingWhat YPGnon is doing is peddling anticommunists myth because they are careless about what opinions they hold - this is a direct consequence of kurdish eclecticism btw.
>>2256260>heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leadersLiterally didn't happen. Or rather, framing is extremely retarded, Stalin was an Old Bolshevik, and the people executed were traitors and were vaccilating historically on all the monumental issues
>the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievementDidn't happen either.
> the suppression of party political life through terrorNope
>the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivizationOh yes, where would we ever be without bitching about the supposed suffering created by moving people into factories from villages. No one who has bitched about has ever proven to anybody that "forced industrialization" brought any factual suffering to anybody (well, apart from reactionaries, it hurt their souls, and capitalists, it hurt their purses). Same with collectivization
>the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural lifeCensorship is historically progressive
>mass deportations of "suspect" nationalitiesAgain, retarded framing
Parenti needed to learn what he was talking about before opening his mouth. No research, no right to speak. If he spent even a half as much time researching Stalin as he did research Caesar, his words would have any weight, but this quote is just blatantly false on every issue
>>2256270>Once confronted with factsI never disagreed with your assessment of the facts.
>Disagremeents about not accepting menshevik/SR lies matter.No they don't, how could they possibly be relevant when it comes to modern day organizing and the current tasks of the socialist movement?
>some illusory 'unity' you think exists between a communist and an anticommunist stanceYour inability to identify an anti-communist stance is precisely the problem. How does YPG Anon's position differ meaningfully from Parenti's? Do you consider him an anti-communist and an enemy?
>>2256277Read OP. In short, "Bolsheviks were bad while doing their job, killed a lot of innocents, and then got destroyed by revisionists and capitalism was restored anyway". OP is not schizophreniac, they just believe lies, and ask correct questions based on those lies.
Parenti is not a specialist on Stalin, clearly, but he did good lectures and wrote good books. In those, he did research. Disregard him speaking on Stalin and USSR.
YPG poster in this thread was defending straight up lies despite being shown that those are lies. He had his entire defence based around "watch le video, read le sources", and then, when shown that it's all bullshit framing and SR lies, he kind of doubled down on refusing to acknowledge that video is bullshit, just repeating old talking points and refusing to refute even a single argument
If YPG poster is not anti-communist, why is so hellbent on upholding such a stance?
>how could they possibly be relevant when it comes to modern day organizing and the current tasks of the socialist movement?KPRF admits to every imaginary wrongdoing, and nobody's voting for them. CPC jails Tiananmen retards, and everyone votes for them. REPUTATION MATTERS
>>2256301>Yet despite this, he still spent his entire career defending the USSR and Marxism-Leninism.And he did a shitty job of it. Parenti was good exposing fascist narratives, and that's it. And Parenti's intetions were good, at the very least, while YPG has doubled down on gurgling down anticommunist lies
It is you who are missing the point here. Parenti wasn't even challenged on this issue! He spoke out of his ass and wasn't stopped. Here, YPG anon was stopped, but he chose to continue with his nonsense anyway
What would Parenti do if he was called out on repeating lies, and that he didn't do any real research?
>>2256277It’s she anon.
And don’t bother. Parentti’s position is argue is pretty much similar to mine, but of course these lads have their had so far up their ass they can’t see that.
>>2256581NEP saw nationalization of all industries, worker control in the factories, partial collecitivization and state distribution and sale of bread, and full nationalization of land with no recompense for prior owners. None of those were policies SRs have pursued
Like, historically, SRs proposed collective farming in a sense that obschina - a peasant collective that was subservient to local noble and collectively responsible for providing all the taxes and recruits and labor - should be the owner of land. They had this idea since before 1860s, but after serfdom got abolished, and kulaks started to grow in size, SRs got swayed by kulaks towards something like "take land away from nobles, give it to kulaks" masqueraded with words. And when they finally got into power in 1917, and got their democracy, they've used this democracy to retcon core tenet of their ideology into a desire to collect taxes from peasantry and buy the land from landowners, and then sale this land on auctions to kulaks and whoever was willing to pay.
Apart from this, what else did SRs offer? It's not like there were good ideas floating around, like that one about the reform of Russian language to throw out unnecessary letters, or some basic irrigation works and digging channels to connect Russian rivers together, but all those weren't party-coded ideas. Those became possible to implement because of Soviet enthusiasm, and communism deniers have used the fact that it wasn't Bolsheviks who came with those ideas to claim that Bolsheviks have merely stole credit for others' work, and that Russia could have implemented it all without them - and without all this suffering to boot!
>>2256616>full nationalization of land with no recompense for prior owners.was this part of preobrazhenky's idea of primitive socialist accumulation sounds familar. I suppose the assumption I was operating on that many of the policies of the early more chaotic years of the NEP remind me of the kind of demands SRs would make. officially legalizing peasant trade, "socialism at a snails pace" and other right oppositionist policies aiming at a gradual integration of the countryside instead of sudden nationalization/industrialization. although from my limited knowledge of the NEP many,many people in and outside of party were against this and some provincial officials harassed the shit out of local NEPmen.
But from your description it seems like by the end of the NEP all that shit got scrapped and even the SRs were less about creating autonomous peasant communities and agrarian socialism and instead started on there own path of slowly degenerating into the kulak interest group party. I wonder if the tsarists deliberately abolished serfdom in such a way to create a new petty boug class to help stabilize there rule. the auction stuff really does seem to separate the late period SRs from the bolshleviks and even some of there more radical rank and file SRs who I imagine who were perfectly fine with forced collectivization.
I would also agree those ideas you mentioned aren't really party-coded, I would wager any group of revolutionaries even libs or socdems would recommend the same changes due to material conditions but only the soviets or some similarly popular and militant socialist power could have had some follow through. kinda of weird request but if you know(or other anons I suppose) of any good books covering this time period im all ears .
>>2256323>yes he is a retard peddling anticommunists lies, and crucially would participate in destroying the real revolutionary movement in a crisis to side with the "left" bourgeois party because of the bullshit he swallowed, but lets not "ostracize" (ruthlessly criticize until he admit he is wrong) because who cares about history! especially on a fucking imageboard, its where its most important we avoid antagonizing people!real history gave real lessons. Which is why an organized vanguard establishing a dotp in a time of crisis is still the best way we know to establish a socialist society. And the last thing we need is people falling for lies about bolsheviks and becoming more trusting of the liberals that will betray them and less inclined to escalate by fear of "doing bad things like the old soviets"
>>2256220>He makes no attempt to downplay the revolutionary terror of the Jacobinsand yet when you take a look at the real numbers, the french revolution "terror" was really quite tame, they just seethed hard because those were nobles clerics and notables, people of means and quality that arent supposed to get slaughtered like the masses, and even more, they were terrified of the social order changing. The french "terror" was not excesses. It was the necessary amount of violence towards the ones clinging to the old order.
Just because the french revolution was very much slandered (quite like ussr) doesnt mean you can just be like "yeah ok lets accept it whatever its in the past", because this change fundamentally the lessons learned (rather than, lot of violence will be required, it is, we have to take care of excesses!) and what people might do in a real revolutionary situation.
>>2256277I don't know Parenti's position on this but YPG anon does parrot menshevik and SR talking points. I'm willing to evaluate and consider any critique on USSR/WP politics, economy, geostrategy or whatever, because one can get better only by learning from previous failures & mistakes, however not siding with the bolsheviks but the Russian equivalents of the SPD during the most crucial moment of the revolution is an ABSOLUTE no-go and in practice straight anti-communism.
If the bolsheviks had not seized total control and not bootet out the SRs and mensheviks the USSR would have never come into existence, the revolution would have failed. Just like how the German revolution got successfully thwarted by the socdem traitors Ebert, Noske, Wels and Scheidemann, despite the majority of German workers and experienced soldiers being revolutionary and in favour of getting rid of capitalism and installing full socialism. We were soooo close, in fact the German Socialist Republic actually existed for a brief moment already :-(
With SRs and mensheviks getting their "democracy" 1920s Russia would have mirrored 1920s Germany - mensheviks & SRs aka socdem traitors allying with the bourgeoisie and remnants of the ancien regime against the bolsheviks in order to crush them and prevent even the slightest chance of installing a DOTP. Which thankfully didn't happen, because the bolsheviks made the right decisions at the right time and there can be no doubt about it.
>>2255270>you are literally putting the movement back some 50 years just by espousing this wicked narodism.no sacred cows and anyway lenin was arguably more inspired by the narodiks than the mensheviks were (but less so than the SRs)
people on here really think defending bolsheviks from liberal slanders is more important than learning from their mistakes, and even worse they think acknowledging the mistakes they made IS liberal slander.
They cannot move past hagiography and into historiography… sad dickriders
>n-no, he was a dictator! It's just that I read "dictator" not as a person with absolute power, but as a person in charge of a group of people with absolute power!
>WAOW CIA document mentions poor food situation, it must mean a checkmate to you, tankies!
>Akshually, CIA operated totally blind! They couldn't just read SOVIET LAWS, obviously, and conjure the actual state structure from SOVIET LAWS, therefore they had to rely on defector testimonies to gain a glimpse into how Soviet state operated!
This is supposedly a position 1) of a sane person 2) of a person who is communist-adjacent. Like, yeah, taking one CIA document and drawing it out as if entire CIA thought thas was an overexaggeration, but it was initially used as a "even CIA have received truthful reports, even some defectors and reactionaries had a correct understanding of Soviet state structure" - and that Stalin wasn't a dictator.
>>2256741Tsarists wanted to stop constant peasant uprisings in their own bloodthirsty way, partly through hanging and stabbing rebels without any trial, partly through raising kulaks as a disciplinary force. So yeah, you are correct
>any good books covering this time period im all earsSoviets' own book.
https://archive.org/details/civilwar_ussr It's really in detail in regards to context. It is also slogan-y, though, not history book dry
Check this out, for example:
>How strong was the pressure of the railwaymen can be judged from the fact that the Vikzhel, whose name was synonymous with servile fidelity to the capitalists, agreed to call a general strike on the railways on September 23. True, these “revolutionaries of the hour and of necessity”—revolutionary, that is to say, because of the pressure of the masses and not from innate class convictions—managed to stifle the strike within two days; but they could not switch the movement on to lines of compromise. The railwaymen’s organisations, especially the lower ones, protested against the treachery of the leaders and remained out on strike >>2257177I think the point of that video is that people defending the USSR from western imperialist rhetoric are doing themselves a disservice when they use that one semi-declassified but still redacted 1950s CIA document as a proof for their claim, since one single document (regardless of who made it) shouldn't be taken as a credible or conclusive source, especially when it's an unevaluated testimony they gathered, that subsequently wasn't processed, and also the same organization being cited also put out several other documents at the same time with testimony to the contrary, because that's what intelligence agencies fundamentally do: gather testimonies and process them into an "average." He points out how the source in question is used to "prove" that Stalin wasn't a dictator even though in all other situations people who defend Joseph Stalin would say the CIA is a bad source. He also points out that people only cite one paragraph of that document while ignoring all the things that very same document says against the soviets. his whole point is that if you use that document to defend Stalin, people are just going to go look it up, and see that it doesn't quite say what you're saying it says… it's bad strategy for agitprop, and in addition to that it's bad historiography. The creator of that video is a historian, reads and speaks Russian, and has traveled to Russia and read primary sources directly… do you think he's saying this stuff out of pure hatred for the soviet union, or do you think there might be a more subtle and nuanced point being made?
>>2257136Imagine Bolsheviks refusing to seize total control in a situation when workers were seizing total control themselves. It would be a top levels of cuckery and cowardice, betrayal of the working class.
>>2257188>The creator of that video is a historianAAAAH so that's why he has horrible takes on communism. He is just fucking brainwashed by bourgeois academia. All intellectuals deserve either a dunce hat or a bullet, eventually, for their retarded takes
>>2257177the whole idea of "the dictator" has become a pet peeve of mine lately. Even literal absolute monarchs and emperors still operated with narrow confines and were never in full control and often having to balance a bunch of competing interests so they dont get shit on in a palace coup. I honestly can't think of a single historical leader who gets the dictator/autocrat treatment who was even close to this idea of all powerful evil wizard figure with complete control of the political establishment much less the entire state apparatus and everything in it's jurisdiction. its just not how the world works and greatman theory with extra steps.
>>2257185this three volume series you just sent is awesome thx anon. just going through the table of contents was promising. It really seems like at any given point during this time period all the nominally socialist parties were torn between those who wanted to calm and restrict the various worker and peasant uprisings and those actively trying to "catch-up" with them I guess. The bolshleviks ended up being the best at playing catch-up while the Mensheviks doing the opposite. SRs seem like the wild card but ended doing the Menshevik thing of moderating the radicalism of there base(legal land auctions for kulaks vs. lower peasants getting more violent than the bolshleviks ever were during the tambov rebellion)
>>225757370 years. 40 years of which were as a real deal superpower on top of the world, something Russian Empire could only dream of
But historically, the collapse meme came to be as a result of constant collapse porn akin to what we hear about China today. An endless stream of clickbait articles about how USSR will be destroyed in a year's time - with the date of collapse being moved back in time for 70 years. And when it finally happened, all those "experts" who talked about collapse congratulated themselves on being prophets who have foreseen it all in finest detail
>Sure as shit lasted longer than European fascism.Yeah, a thousand year Reich that lasted all of 12 years
Lmao, he follows talking about Grover Furr with conspiracism. Their whole fucking critique of Grover Furr is that 1) he isn't a professional historian 2) that he dismisses (to a certain degree) obvious anticommunist and revisionist sources
In regards to sources bias, he just goes bitching about his post 1990s sources not being accepted because those are fake, Brezhnev sources not being accepted for being revisionism, and 1930 sources for being 1990s fakes
And then! 21:40 he bitches about how Soviets have made it so all history sources must be partisan (as in, non-bipartisan), and be approved by the Party. "Wow, they don't evaluate sources by their veracity, but by how Party thinks about them?!" Ahahaha what a fucking clown
So, then, the retard goes on to dismiss Soviet historiography for bias, and goes searching, desperately, for SR newspapers (and probably Nazi propaganda as well, because they worked towards the same goals anyway) to prove that Bolsheviks did bad things
In any case, it's hilarious listening to them blearing about archives, sources, etc etc, when this fucking moment, SBU straight up prints forgeries and legalizes them through "historians" in order to oppose Russian state providing full texts of documents which Soviets have previously were citing as proof of Katyn being committed by Germans. Anticommunists are THIS FUCKING OBIVOUS, and yet retards like Noj Rants will act like elitist pricks jerking off to academia's self-congratulatory fake non-bias, ignore obvious fucking forgeries being introduced into the archives and into the "circulation", as they call it, and act all smug about "muh 1930s documents admitted to be true by Soviets themselves!!!1"
>>2257926>two super powers committing propaganda>historians who are cutting through both propaganda narratives>bits of truth in each>going beyond good versus evilHistorians act all smug because they believe that history CANNOT BE TESTED to be true. Therefore, they NEED TO accept all kind of crap documents, and they are ALLOWED TO just spout nonsense without doing critical dismissal of obvious falsehoods. When was the last fucking time for mainstream historians to even consider that archives are fake? That's fucking right, 1990s, when they didn't find evidence of Soviets committing massacres, like was claimed by anticommunist press, and so they went and started producing fakes that repeated after anticommunist press claims in order to justify their propaganda
Like holy hell, those same SBU adjacent historians, in regards to Katyn and such, are straight up saying that 31st of June is a perfectly normal date for Soviet documentation, Soviets were illiterate :^) Printing same document in 6 pages on two different typewriters is also fiiiine, because how could even consider that it's a forgery??? To this fucking day their canon on Troikas isn't consistent, and they cannot answer the question of how Troikas were officially called, for fuck's sake.
And then come out retards like Noj Rants and keep crying about how if two documents both talk about Troikas, but neither can name those properly - and both are claimed to be written by Soviet bureaucracy, NKVD, etc - then the historical truth is that Troikas existed in reality, and not that both sources are lying
No fucking critical thought whatsoever. That's why they hate Grover Furr, he has the audacity to try and understand which sources are fake - through those sources being contradictory towards other sources. And we don't talk about claims and opinions, we talk about contradictions in body counts, who headed what, dates, ridiculous reports written towards people who had no right to see those reports, no fucking adherence to secrecy laws (which are themselves secret, and historians never have had access to such secret shit), impossible claims like NKVD employing civilian truck drivers to shoot Polish officers, and so on and so forth
>>2257573People blow their gaskets at my opinion that simply re-applying USSR's programme without alterations would be a great pursuit, more worthwhile than anything else happening in the west
but it's true. it's anglo-brained to think that failure discredits a method. sometimes shit just happens and you gotta try again lol
>>2258282>it is exactly the mistakes made in the earliest years which magnified the difficulties later onokay. which mistakes, and how did they manifest later on?
>any criticism from the perspective of making things betterthis is not what is happening
>>2258278>Shouldn't there be a method to evaluate sources other than cite all the ones that agree with me and ignore all the ones that don't?I like things that are true and don't like things that are obviously ridiculous. Accepting nonsense sources is the bane of Westoid academia. They just don't fucking do any criticism of sources! They look at big ass The History of The Civil War in The USSR and put it on the same level as fucking SR newspapers. They take Cold War era Westoid publications and think those contain "bits of truth" the same way Soviet statistics do.
In other words, they dismiss Soviet academia and instead engage in conspiracy theory mindspace of Soviets hiding evidence, ignoring evidence, yadda yadda, and that only the "free nations" academia can say have unbiased opinion. They should get humiliated for this nonsense
>>2258286>okay. which mistakes, and how did they manifest later on?<thinking the Germans would just fuck off when they said "neither peace nor war" and losing Ukraine temporarily because of it at a critical moment leading up to civil war when control of food was essential<having to back off from this wishy washy policy really fast and sign the Brest treaty<coping with needing to sign the Brest treaty by betting their entire political future on the success of other revolutions in Western Europe which didn't end up happening<Sending mixed signals about wanting a coalition government and Constituent assembly with SRs after October only to forcibly dissolve that constituent assembly which drove their previous allies in The October Revolution away and weakened their own base of support among the peasants in the countryside as the White Movement was beginning to build up<sending mixed signals about wanting all power to the soviets but then regularly dissolving local soviets when they took actions the vanguard party didn't like<grain requisitions disincentivized the peasantry to grow surplus <needing to back off from that policy and do the NEP, Lenin described this aptly in a section titled "Our Mistake", quote "we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution. We thought that under the surplus-food appropriation system the peasants would provide us with the required quantity of grain, which we could distribute among the factories and thus achieve communist production and distribution […] brief experience convinced us that that line was wrong, that it ran counter to what we had previously written about the transition from capitalism to socialism, namely, that it would be impossible to bypass the period of socialist accounting and control in approaching even the lower stage of communism. Ever since 1917, when the problem of taking power arose and the Bolsheviks explained it to the whole people, our theoretical literature has been definitely stressing the necessity for a prolonged, complex transition through socialist accounting and control from capitalist society (and the less developed it is the longer the transition will take)"<Any society supporting non-producing members (such as vanguard party officials) and generating net investment must have some mechanism for inducing the direct produces (in this case peasants making the food and proles making everything else) to produce more than is needed to simply maintain themselves. Before the NEP the bolsheviks were failing to induce the peasantry to produce a surplus.<needing to purge bourgeois intellectuals from the universities in the 1920s but not having enough vanguard party approved educated communist professionals on deck to replace them with, at a time during the interwar rapid industrialization when educating the population in STEM by any means necessary was absolutely critical<Massive internal strife in their own party which led to the party basically being preoccupied after the civil war with internal conflicts until 1929<needing to purge the military and the party in the buildup to WW2<getting taken by surprise by Operation Barbarossa and thinking Shitler wouldn't just betray the M-R pact and invade<destalinization by Khruschevite revisionists who shouldn't have made it into the party in the first place (wtf were those purges of old bolsheviks for if they couldn't stop this?)<sino soviet split<KGB was not nearly as aggressive at the CIA was, when the CIA was basically couping everyone they could the KGB was not<not building a soviet internet at a critical point in history (1970s)<taking the operation cyclone bait and getting bogged down in Afghanistan <economic decline and perestroika<falling for the western supermarkets meme<voluntarily dissolving the USSR and allowing the blackest reaction to come trueBasically the Bolsheviks/CPSU made mistakes every single decade and some people think we should just endlessly dickride, dismiss anyone who acknowledges this shit as bourgeois, and try to make history repeat itself, quote from above in this very thread, "simply re-applying USSR's programme without alterations would be a great pursuit" instead of learning and moving forward. Hey, there's a reason the PRC still exists despite their many mistakes and the USSR does not. Not every mistake is a fatal mistake.
>>2258293<In other words, they dismiss Soviet academia and instead engage in conspiracy theory mindspace of Soviets hiding evidence, ignoring evidence, yadda yadda, and that only the "free nations" academia can say have unbiased opinionyou're just strawmanning. this conversation literally started with the question of whether we should trust WESTERN sources of information like the CIA, even when they say something nice about the USSR for once (while simultaneously slandering it in other regards). That is the context of this conversation. Did you think I forgot or that I can't scroll back up? We shouldn't trust anybody when they're sucking themselves off, regardless of who they are or how much we like/dislike them. We should evaluate sources not based on which powerful institutions think they're "credible" but based off of comparison with real world evidence. This is not "bourgeois" academia. This is how you avoid tricking yourself by only listening to what you want to hear.
>>2258303>thinking the Germans would just fuck off when they said "neither peace nor war" and losing Ukraine temporarily because of it at a critical moment leading up to civil war when control of food was essentialNobody has thought this. You are strawmanning. From the fucking getgo the default assumption was freeze of fighting along the frontlines, and IT FUCKING HAPPENED SINCE FEB 1917, there were no movements towards either direction UNTIL JUNE OFFENSIVE which was approved by SRs and Mensheviks under the guise that Russian "Revolutionary" army must bring democracy to reactionary Germany, and only then the peace offer would apply - aka the default imperialist crap, same one they peddle even today, but now against Russia and in support of fascoid Ukraine
>having to back off from this wishy washy policy really fast and sign the Brest treatyBrest treaty, huh. What did it say, asshole? What was the Brest treaty?
>betting their entire political future on the success of other revolutions in Western Europe which didn't end up happeningThis is what I was talking about when talking about cherrypicking Soviet "admissions" towards approving "unbiased" Westoid research. You see, Bolsheviks DID FUCKING NOT expect Revolutions to happen, they expected PROLETARIAT OF WESTERN NATIONS TO OPPOSE WAR AND SUPPORT SOVIET RUSSIA WHICH WAS A VICTIM OF IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION.
AND THAT EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. Full scale country wide strikes in Western countries against continuing the war, and against continuing the war agaisnt Soviet Russia, and this resulted in events such as French occupation forces in Odessa fraternizing with locals and refusing to carry out any orders other than vague "stay there and be police". No attacks on Soviet Russia was possible with troops like this, troops like this, in fact, were letting the Red Army to come into settlements and do whatever they wanted, because their whole JUSTIFIED reason of being there in the first place was police action
>Sending mixed signals about wanting a coalition government and Constituent assembly with SRs after October only to forcibly dissolve that constituent assembly which drove their previous allies in The October Revolution away and weakened their own base of support among the peasants in the countryside as the White Movement was beginning to build upThis whole thread has shit all over you for this. Reread thread, and fuck off
I'm not responding to this anticommunist crap. It was disproven in this very thread, all you have to do feel getting obliterated with facts and logic is to read it
>>2258303>thinking the Germans would just fuck off when they said "neither peace nor war"they didn't think that. the strategy was temporary peace to build up a red army. "neither peace nor war" was trotsky's line at the negotations which was harshly criticized by lenin (peace) and the leftcoms (war) at that time. this is historical revisionism at its finest.
>having to back off from this wishy washy policy really fast and sign the Brest treatyagain - peace was to be signed immediately but trotsky waivered and the germans continued their offensive and took over ukraine et al. had the peace been signed immediately, there would have been more time to organize and defend and german gains would have been smaller. but at this point this is just speculation and althistory aka NONSENSE
>other revolutions in Western Europe which didn't end up happeningbut they happened - in germany, in hungary, in austria, you had soviet republics in yugoslavia, even in ireland. it was not the bolshevik fault that the german communists were unprepared. read ernst tollar's memoirs to just see how little idea the bavarians had when organizing the raetrepublik compared to the bolsheviks and the soviet republic
>Sending mixed signals about wanting a coalition government and Constituent assembly with SRs after October only to forcibly dissolve that constituent assembly which drove their previous allies in The October Revolution away and weakened their own base of support among the peasants in the countryside as the White Movement was beginning to build upholy shit so much bullshit to unpack. "sending mixed signals" this is literally not true. i don't even want to get into the whole fiasco of left- right-SRs (the bolshevik and left-SRs were at the time together, mostly because the bolsheviks took up the SR programme of land redistribution, which, as has been, the right SR used to strenghen kulaks). "previous allies" damn you really are an ass. at that point any kind of knightly allyship dissappears when faced with the question of who gets to wield state power. the bolsheviks said - the soviets of worker, peasant and army deputees; the others said - the bourgeois pairlament. how can you stay allies at such a crucial point? THE ONLY PARTY THAT WAS POPULAR WITH THE PEASANTS WERE THE SRs!! THE BOLSHEVIK ONLY GATHERED PEASANT SUPPORT AFTER STARTING LAND REFORM AND GIVING OUT LAND TO PEASANTS, something which was part of hte SR programme already!!
>Lenin described this aptly in a section titled "Our Mistake"okay and? states change policy? parties update theory? what? what is the point? oooohh le greate man lenine said we made mistake therefore FUCKK the soviet union?
<Any society supporting non-producing members (such as vanguard party officials) and generating net investment must have some mechanism for inducing the direct produces (in this case peasants making the food and proles making everything else) to produce more than is needed to simply maintain themselves. Before the NEP the bolsheviks were failing to induce the peasantry to produce a surplus.fair point but the only one out of the bunch as is more a general critique you can make in retrospective of any would-be socialist regime (espescially one on this scale being made for the first time without clear ideas what to build) than a 'historical mistake'
>needing to purge bourgeois intellectuals from the universities in the 1920s but not having enough vanguard party approved educated communist professionals on deck to replace them with, at a time during the interwar rapid industrialization when educating the population in STEM by any means necessary was absolutely criticalbut history literally proves otherwise with the massive industrialization and modernization of soviet society? they purged bourgeois intellecutals for being hostile to soviet power. what is 'wrong' with that?
>Massive internal strife in their own party which led to the party basically being preoccupied after the civil war with internal conflicts until 1929but this is also expected? like this is how a party is supposed to function? do you want unreflected practice? they were literally building socialism for the first time - of COURSE there are going to be conflicts?? what is this point??????
>needing to purge the military and the party in the buildup to WW2YES because every other state that
didn't do that had a german fifth colon ready to help the occupier. THIS IS FACT! I AM NOT GOING TO ARGUE WITH SOMEONE WHO THINKS PURGES HAPPEN FOR NO REASON.
>getting taken by surprise by Operation Barbarossa and thinking Shitler wouldn't just betray the M-R pact and invadeABSOLUTE FUCKING LIE! stalin was suprised by the FORCE of the attack, not the attack itself. the writing was on the wall in mein kampf about subordinating and colonizing russia. rapid industrialization and collectivization was PREPARATION for the inevitable war with germany. WHAT THE FUCK.
i am not going to continue. damn. what a retarded post
>>2258327>THE ONLY PARTY THAT WAS POPULAR WITH THE PEASANTS WERE THE SRs!! THE BOLSHEVIK ONLY GATHERED PEASANT SUPPORT AFTER STARTING LAND REFORM AND GIVING OUT LAND TO PEASANTS, something which was part of hte SR programme already!! Check this out
>>2257201 SRs stopped being popular with peasants in around August-September, and we can see this in how peasants started torching landlord manors despite SRs begging them to protest lawfully
>>2258336>implying the USA wouldn't have simply done the jakarta method on China if they didn't normalize trade relationsface it, the "Dengism" started while Mao was still alive.
>he democracy, the constituent assembly/provisional government that SRs and Mensheviks were defending to their dying breath, had such an organization that owning classes had 100 to 1000 times more representatives than peasants and workers. 100 to 1000? that's a bold claim. also an incredibly wide range. 100 times to 1000 times? Somewhere between randomly number with 2 zeroes or random number with 3 zeroes? Got a
source? (or are sources all bourgeois academia anyway?) anyway it's the bolsheviks who CLAIMED to support the constituent assembly and then dissolved it when it no longer served their faction personally. Just like they were willing to proclaim "all power to the soviets" but then dissolve any local soviet that voted for SRs or didn't support some measure they wanted. This led actual workers and peasants to take issue with the bolsheviks, which led to their testimonies being recorded, which led to bolsheviks dismissing or censoring it, which led to modern day hagiographers either saying "well it was a civil war whatcha gonna do" or "it's all liberal bourgeois slander don't believe a single word of it." Which is it, again?
(since I've been randomly lumped in with NAFO libtards I expect the next accusation to be that I'm a fan of the foreign-agitated kronsdadt rebellion or something)
>>2258343>bolsheviks who CLAIMED to support the constituent assemblythis is
before tsarism was overthrown.
after tsarism fell and
while there were existing soviets structures the bolsheviks (as any good marxist)
changed their tactics. the constituent assembly was a demand of the "democratic" part of the russian social-democracy (the intellectuals which had wanted democracy in the bourgeois sense, representative pairalmentary democracy). this was a
tool, a demand almost all parties on the left had. now, why would you want a
bourgeois organ of state power while there are
actually existing worker organs of power?? the only reason is if you're an anticommunist.
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