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Russia the wild east
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by philipfoxe (U13946222) on Friday, 15th July 2011
Can't understand why Martin Sixsmith's history of Russia isn't here but it's probably because of the the new website being so crap that it's impossible to find anything. Anyhoo I really felt that this coverage of the post revolutionary situation quite biased and 'establishment' ie 'socialism always leads to authoritarian rule and the crappy capitalist free market it the best we can do' He completely fails to untangle the complexities of the situation that Lenin and co were in. It was always Lenin's view that the revolution would fail and there would be a reversion to capitalism in some form should the revolution fail to be replicated in the more advance nations. The failure of the German revolution sealed its fate. Lenin was forced into doing anything he could to defend what was left of the socialist ideal until better times. However the Bolshevik rank and file were largely wiped out in the disastrous civil war and foreign invasions and the working class of Russia was far too small to defend the gains. In the absence of an indigenous capitalist class and with access to foreign capital being denied it for political reasons, the state intervened as that class, and brought about 'State Capitalism' that is, it took the place of that class. This model was later used by a large number of third world countries who had freed themselves from colonial rule to find they also needed to substitute the state for the bourgeoisie. This does indeed tend to lead to a bloated and autocratic state and almost all of them have either fallen or turned into dictatorships which are now under threat, eg Syria etc. This doesn't mean that Socialism is not possible, just that it needs to take place of a world scale. State Capitalim ain't socialism, indeed it has polluted and degraded the whole notion. But I still live in hope. Long live the Revolution!
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Message 2
Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Friday, 15th July 2011
I have to agree with the general argument that you present, difficult to do in such a short space but your points are well made.
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Message 3
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Friday, 15th July 2011
He completely fails to untangle the complexities of the situation that Lenin and co were in. It was always Lenin's view that the revolution would fail and there would be a reversion to capitalism in some form should the revolution fail to be replicated in the more advance nations. The failure of the German revolution sealed its fate. Lenin was forced into doing anything he could to defend what was left of the socialist ideal until better times.Ìý
So, all the horrors of the gulags, the purges etc are to be excused on the grounds that those self-appointed, wannabe-rulers-of-the-world, the Bolsheviks, had *only* managed to impose themselves on that (rather large) chunk of the earth's surface that became the USSR...
Seems to me that 'what was left of the socialist ideal' amounted to little more than the 'principle' that a particular clique comprising Lenin and his mates should be securely ensconced as Bosses...
This doesn't mean that Socialism is not possible, just that it needs to take place of a world scale. State Capitalim ain't socialism, indeed it has polluted and degraded the whole notion. But I still live in hope. Long live the Revolution!Ìý
Thankfully, most of the world's population are too grown up and sensible to be revolutionary socialists.
Long live Freedom!
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Message 4
Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Friday, 15th July 2011
So, all the horrors of the gulags, the purges etc are to be excused Ìý
I cannot see where in the OP there is an attempt to 'excuse', that is your , presumably 'grown up', intepretation. If I read it correctly, the post identifies USSR under Stalin as a variant of capitalism and is therefore to be judged in those terms. -
Message 5
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 15th July 2011
Short of spending a lot of time in archives on both sides of the pond, the best way of get an idea of what the Bolshevik Revolution was really all about is to read this fairly short but superb book:
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Message 6
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 15th July 2011
Real socialism isn't possible I think because homo sapiens isn't prepared for it from his prehistoric roots. Only by state terrorism is it possible and if you speak about the world then... worldstate terrorism...and it is always the question from history how long state terrorism can widstand the collective longings of homo sapiens...
Regards, Paul. -
Message 7
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 15th July 2011
Suvorovetz,
I have just received yesterday a book from Yuri Felshtinsky to read during my hours in the clinic as my wife is overthere at the moment.
A bit reluctant to start the reading, while I have up to now a bit of a hesitating view on him. He can be a doctor in history from an American university, but for me if you give some biased statements not based on proven facts I think he is not a real "historian" on the academic level. It remembers me of the 9/11 conspiracy theories...
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 8
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Friday, 15th July 2011
So, all the horrors of the gulags, the purges etc are to be excused Ìý
I cannot see where in the OP there is an attempt to 'excuse', that is your , presumably 'grown up', intepretation. If I read it correctly, the post identifies USSR under Stalin as a variant of capitalism and is therefore to be judged in those terms.Ìý I'd have thought the attempt to excuse was pretty obvious from the claim that 'Lenin was forced into doing anything he could to defend what was left of the socialist ideal until better times'...
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Message 9
Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
I'd have thought the attempt to excuse was pretty obvious Ìý
It is only 'pretty obvious' to someone who believes that one event followed another, sometime later, automatically proves causation. Somebody who believes that is not engaging in grown up thinking and is probably making a politically motivated interpetation. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
There is much to sympathise with in the OP--
But the human tragedy of the situation was that some people remained "true believers" in a world that had "lost faith" with progress. And perhaps others were more cynical, or possibly "Asiatic" or "Byzantine" in their beliefs and expectations.
The nineteenth century had been a era of tremendous change that- perhaps in a hang-over from Christian centuries of being taught about a benevolent "God the Father" - people assumed was part of that the story of life which was a progressive one. Even biology evolved progressively.
The German school of scientific history in particular developed a progressive model that projected that the "golden ages " of Antiquity might be equalled and surpassed. This belief in historical progress was taken to an extreme by Karl Marx who was convinced of the inevitability of history. But generally it seems that the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century tapped into very deep and irrational superstitions about the "tide in the affairs of man".
Oscar Wilde was associated with a movement called "decadence" that argued that, with only one decade left in the century, it was time to do and try all that had not been done and tried before..
This seems to have been in keeping with a repeated pattern in which Western Europeans have tried to make significant progress as the end of a century draws near, followed by a belief- once a new century (or in our case a Millennium) has arived- that it is now really time to push on towards better times and a revolution suitable to the hopes for the new age.
In 1911 [as in 2011] those struggles for various revolutions attracted mass unrest domestically and internationally, and three years later people embarked on "The Great War" as a war for the Future..
Well. The war "did for" many Empires.. But it also "did for" the thrust of progress and the widespread belief in a better future any time soon. In 1917 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, in spite of the death of 27 young men in her extended family in the war so far, could still herald the February Revolution and other advances- like the probability of Female Emancipation- as evidence that great changes were happening in the world. Those who had hoped and planned for such times for decades could feel that the Revolution had arrived..
But these were times without real power and forward momentum.. As J.M. Keynes had foreseen, the war-time impact on the German Empire- the great powerhouse of the European economy- followed by reparations and dismemberment- meant that the economic momentum that had built up before 1914 no longer existed.
As the OP stated Lenin believed that the Bolsheviks were an advance guard some way ahead along the route of Future History, but Present History could not "support" that "avant garde", and in fact took other routes.
Just in Russia alone what economic progress that had been made before 1914, and it was appreciable, was closely linked to producing goods for export to Europe. Like modern China the small proletariat in the growing industrial cities of Russia could only hope for continued employment in a country where the domestic society was largely made up of poor peasants working largely for a pretty basic subsistence, selling produce and handicrafts goods to pay for the loans that had enabled the "emancipated serfs" to "hire-purchase" small plots.
But to many men after the First World War the attractions of getting away from machines and what they could do and back to the simple life was quite attractive..
I have written before about Henry Williamson's "Tarka the Otter". It was written because Williamson, who had served on the Western Front 1914-18, had first tried to work as a journalist in London. One day he just left and walked 200 miles to Exmoor. There he settled in a small cottage and studied nature. In 1927 he first published "Tarka" and it was an instant success becoming a best seller especially in the thirties when illustrations were added.
To so many people the pursuit of power and economic wealth was no longer the priority. But these had been taken a the proofs of progress and the advance of Civilization.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
Hello, Paul
I have just received yesterday a book from Yuri Felshtinsky to read during my hours in the clinic as my wife is overthere at the momentÌý I hope she is alright, and I wish her all the best.
A bit reluctant to start the reading, while I have up to now a bit of a hesitating view on him.Ìý Seems like an Agatha Christie mystery bit to me here. So, what are you going to do with it?
He can be a doctor in history from an American university, but for me if you give some biased statements not based on proven facts I think he is not a real "historian" on the academic level. It remembers me of the 9/11 conspiracy theories…Ìý I wish I knew what are you talking about exactly… -
Message 12
Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
Correction to message 9, should read 'one event followed BY another'
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Message 13
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
I'd have thought the attempt to excuse was pretty obvious Ìý
It is only 'pretty obvious' to someone who believes that one event followed another, sometime later, automatically proves causation. Somebody who believes that is not engaging in grown up thinking and is probably making a politically motivated interpetation.Ìý These criticisms would be better levelled at the OP, with its attribution of the horrors of Soviet communism to the 'failure of the German revolution' and dubious claims about the alleged practicality of world socialism...
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Message 14
Posted by stuart (U1648283) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
These criticisms would be better levelled at the OPÌý
But the OP is a critique of Sixsmith. It accuses of Sixsmith of, for example, saying that if a factory produces a product made of iron and some years later the product is found rusted, the the factory (or in this case the revolution) MUST be responsible for the rust. Sixsmith refuses to consider 'other factors' (the situation in Germany as being one example) for the rusting. One suspects that blaming the factory for the rust fits in with the political position of the programme makers. And you are simply reinforcing such a bias, saying that one event (revolution) followed by another event some years later (Stalinism) is proof of causation (revolution causes Stalinism).
Michael Reiman's 'The Birth of Stalinism' is useful to read in this regard. -
Message 15
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
I thought Sixsmith''s last programme covering the period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the death of Lenin was a pretty fair summmary. He used Lenin's actual words (in some cases in actual recordings) to show Lenin's contempt for democracy as shown by his closure of the Constituent Assembly after 12 hours, his hostility to the kulaks (whom he termed "bloodsuckers"), later enlarged upon by Stalin, his brutal response to external dissent as shown by the crushing of the Kronstadt mutineers and his authoritarian attitude to criticism within the CPSU, most notably his reforms in response to those critical of his New Economic Policy in 1921, which handed Stalin a perfect instrument he could use to facilitate the purges of the 1930s.
It is indisputable that the show trial, the secret police and the gulag were Lenin's introductions into the revolutionary communist model not Stalin's. He merely carried on where Lenin had left off. This book shows how the three principal dictators of the first half of the twentieth century were united in their aims and methods as well as level of brutality:
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Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 16th July 2011
Interesting, however, to see how things could look to Professor Birnie of Edinburgh University in his 1930 published Economic History of Europe.
He talked about the necessity of War Communism followed by Lenin forcing through the NEP, putting Russia back on the only viable route "State Capitalism".
"But no reaction against the NEP could make headway in face of its undeniable success in raising the general level of production. In 1925 Russia had reached a position both in agriculture and industry only 30% below her pre-war standard. This remarkable result is striking testimony to the wisdom of the decision taken in 1921, and makes it unlikely that there will be any advance towards pure communism in the near future..The departments of economic activity which it has surrendered to private enterprise are not those in which huge fortunes can usually be made, and there is little danger that a new race of capitalists will arise to replace the old.. It is the servant , not the master of the State.. Politically, the Revolution has.. made the proletariat the governing class in Russia. It has established for the first time in history a working-class State. This event is of capital importance. The existence of a workers' and peasants republic in Eastern Europe can not be without its reactions and repercussions on the capitalist societies of the West, and the influence of Lenin must necessarily spread far beyond the boundaries of the State which he created."
In another passage he describes the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a necessary but imperfect transition..[for, of course, the proletariat were the very small proportion of the population who were waged-industrial workers in the modern sense..The majority of the "Russian people" were peasants.. and had to feel the weight and authority of the new ruling class]. So "Pure communism does not exist. Socialization is confined to the means of production and compulsion must be applied to induce men to work. But at some indeterminate date , this intermediate stage will come to an end and the era of pure communism will begin. Socialization will be extended to all forms of wealth, and men will work not for reward or to escape punishment, but as a means of self-expression. The use of force, alike in the economic and the political sphere, will become unnecessary , and the State will gradually wither away. But this golden age is far off".
In 1930- you betcha it was.. But Birnie was an historian dealing with past times...
Still it is interesting to see a serious academic study printed by a British University Press in 1930 taking this line at that time.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 17th July 2011
British universities were full of Marxists in 1930 and it's a good bet that Birnie was one of them feeding the party line to unblinking, unthinking students and anyone else prepared to waste good money on such twaddle. Some things never change.
At the same time the Soviet Union was enduring one of the greatest state-sponsored famines in the whole of human history. For a more factual account of what actually occurred under the "dictatorship of the proletariat" I suggest you read the following:
That certainly opened my eyes to what communism was really about when I read the original edition over 35 years ago.
Mr Conquest has also wriiten a valuable study of the famine and its causes as well:
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Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 17th July 2011
Actually Allan D
One of our set books was the official history of the Soviet Communist Party-- and the thruth was there .. I always come back to my favourite quote in the period of the elimination of the kulaks "The Red Army was used in every conceivable way to educate the peasants politically".
As to your comment about universities in the inter-war period and again in my final year specialisation on the Soviet Economy in 1965-6, I did write a post this morning on the change in the times, which all got lost.
In short by the Sixties the culture was all about managing the post-war reconstruction during a period when the Future path was largely "playing catch up".. And certainly my own studies were in that context of the Capitalist v Communist model or system- both of which evolved during and largely because of the industrial revolution that spread out from England/Britain from the mid-eighteenth century.
But what Stalilism and Nazism have in common is that the modernisation of both Russia from the time of Peter the Great, and Germany- one might say from the creation of the Kingdom of Prussia around the same time- was bound up with the economic dynamism around the North Sea as a new heart of global trade which Peter the Great saw and experienced during his travels incognito. The effect of the French Wars of 1793-1815 seems to have been to galvanise Prussia into "modernism" and progress, while Russia and the Three Emperors League chose reaction.
By the 1860's however both were embracing modernisation and the capacity of railways to integrate vast landllocked spaces into the developing global economy. That growth was badly damaged by the First World War and its aftermath, and the force of progress (as opposed to the political will of obsessed individuals) was missing from both German and Russian affairs, though US aid did briefly produce another German economic miracle before 1929.
So Stalinist Communism was an attempt to follow Communist/Socialist ideology in defiance of the tide of the global economy that would have emphasized the common interest of "workers of the world". And in the same way there is some truth in the Anthony Sutton line that German Nazism was a Capitalist sponsored exploitation of a powerful nation that could be turned into a major force to protect Capitalism from Communism in a situation in which, as Keynes developed in his own theories of money collective "will" could be used to triumph over and harness economic forces as if they were Zombies with no life of their own.. In both situations the "Triumph of the Will" meant the destruction of humanity- both within the conduct of individual human being and within the wider domestic and international community.
But the inter-war period was one in which it was still possible to explore this left-right divide in a mood that accepted the need to find a synthesis in line with Hegelian thought. Over the last 20 years or so since the fall of Communism/ Socialism there has been a tendency for the West to claim that Capitalism won. But as perhaps I have said before - and not just in the post that I lost- French debate has reflected the fact that even from the Fifties France was much more prepared to mix and match the two extremes; and even in the circles of President Sarkosy and Madame Lagarde there has been a recognition that France had allowed itself to be too seduced by the self-confidence and the apparent success of the "Anglo-Saxon free trade model"..
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 17th July 2011
"The Red Army was used in every conceivable way to educate the peasants politically".Ìý
I am reminded of Stalin's remark to Churchill in August 1942 that fighting the kulaks was harder than fighting the Nazis. Starving women and children are pretty redoubtable after all. -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 17th July 2011
Allan D
Reading that offical History was quite interesting.. and reminded one the truth- that I think Goebbels understood too- that the best propaganda is a presentation of the parts of the truth in a way that suits the case that you are making..
I was reminded of the need for a Communist filter"- in the absence of the Hitch-Hikers translating fish- about six years ago when some French Trotskyists gave me a copy of their latest journal.. Though it was in French, some of the Communist "ways of looking at things" came back to me after c40 years.
Going back to your remarks about democracy- There was great play in that official history of "economic democracy" as being the true form of democracy- almost in line with Syndicalism..
After all people still wonder at the way that "talking shop democracy" like our "parliamentary" one actually favours those who are good at talking and making arguments and cases out of words..
Naturally enough it is a situation that favours those who have attained at least degree status, and the British electorate is mostly aware that if it wants someone to champion its cause in the face of the different arms of government it really needs to choose people with the appropriate strengths and skills.
Not for nothing has the intellectual middle class made legislation the heart of modern government.
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Tuesday, 9th August 2011
Hello, Paul
I have just received yesterday a book from Yuri Felshtinsky to read during my hours in the clinic as my wife is overthere at the momentÌý I hope she is alright, and I wish her all the best.
A bit reluctant to start the reading, while I have up to now a bit of a hesitating view on him.Ìý Seems like an Agatha Christie mystery bit to me here. So, what are you going to do with it?
He can be a doctor in history from an American university, but for me if you give some biased statements not based on proven facts I think he is not a real "historian" on the academic level. It remembers me of the 9/11 conspiracy theories…Ìý I wish I knew what are you talking about exactly…
Ìý Suvorovetz,
excuses for the delay. So busy the last two weeks.
"He can be a doctor in history from an American university, but for me if you give some biased statements not based on proven facts I think he is not a real "historian" on the academic level. It remembers me of the 9/11 conspiracy theories…
I wish I knew what are you talking about exactly…"
Did some research again and now I understand your questions.
When I started to read the book I did some quick research and found some link about 9/11 and Yuri Felshtinsky, but looking now I only find and perhaps misinterpreted it that some make a comparison between the appartments bombing and the 9/11 conspiracies. But as I see now Felshtinsky himself made never an allusion to 9/11 when he told about the appartement bombings.
I read now some three quarters of the new book of Yuri: The Corporation.
It is full of thousands of facts and names, but I think it is nearly impossible to have a second opinion, while in comparison with the US press there are in nowadays Russia no several sources as in the US to compare a number of independent authors? So we have to "believe" Yuri nearly "on his word"?
Also a little bit boring with all these names and dates...but at least a document that gives a historical context that can be checked by further independed historians (Russian ones and others if they once can investigate free in the future...and that with a big ?)
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 22
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
a little bit boring with all these names and dates...but at least a document that gives a historical context that can be checked by further independed historians (Russian ones and others if they once can investigate free in the future...and that with a big ?)Ìý That's the idea. For a historian, I'd take meticulous fact sorting of a detective over unsupported by facts smooth delivery of a politician any day.
Cheers.
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