Stalin - classic or dud

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/pl/1/1a/Slutsky_aa.jpg

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 02:18 (seventeen years ago) link

The noble lineage in his brow...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 02:29 (seventeen years ago) link

i have no idea why shakey mo linked to that review.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 07:27 (seventeen years ago) link

What Amis is saying in that quote looks like a re-wording of "shitting on people is human nature, innit?" I don't wholly disagree, but if that's the best argument you've got against Communism...

― Pier Paolo Semolina (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 08:47 (seventeen years ago) link

not even, though; he's saying even if this utopia were possible, it would not be desirable.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 08:49 (seventeen years ago) link

GOD FORBID WE LIVE IN A WORLD WITHOUT ME BEING FAMOUS

― Pier Paolo Semolina (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 08:51 (seventeen years ago) link

uh there's also the subordination of all forms of intellectual enquiry to the will of the politburo.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 08:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't read that implication in the quote above, tho obviously it might be there in the book. I get a whiff of Pangloss, tho.

― Pier Paolo Semolina (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 08:58 (seventeen years ago) link

Martin Amis' Koba The Dread is more-or-less a booklength review of The Great Terror by Robt Conquest (also author of the linked review above).

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 09:46 (seventeen years ago) link

I just linked the review cuz I'm reading the book and have been thinking a lot about this period lately and this is the thread about Stalin - is that really so strange?

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 14:46 (seventeen years ago) link

(and not entirely coincidentally, the review has a nice bit about western revisionists/apologists for the Stalinist regime, which is apt in light of Bethune's nonsense on this thred)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 14:47 (seventeen years ago) link

ah fair play then.

i get the sense that stalinism was a much bigger problem in the uk than in the states (where i gather trotsky was big dog in the '30s). as a result it's still less about telling the historical truth than present-day politics.

so simon ballbag montefauntleroy's take is *bound* to be (this is my reading) more an attack on the left *in general* than anything else.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 14:55 (seventeen years ago) link

"robert conquest"??

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:05 (seventeen years ago) link

the review goes into that aspect of it, but so far (300+ pages in) Montefiore makes no mention of the western left or even Stalin's larger role on the world stage - his focus is incredibly specific, almost hermetically sealed. It is ALL about the machinations of Stalin's "court" and the internal politics/relationships in Stalinist Russia. Lefties - of both the US and UK variety - are never mentioned. Montefiore's agenda seems to be of the more benign, academic variety, ie, making the most of newly available documents to provide an authoritative overview of a previously highly disputed period.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:06 (seventeen years ago) link

"robert conquest"??

Yup. That's his real name.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

and em, pinkski, this graf from "robert conquest"'s review seems to at least challenge your thesis that stalin was just another leader, whose policies and obsessions would have been taken up by someone else had he not existed:

For example, newly uncovered high-level political documents from 1931 to 1934 finally destroy the argument, canvassed even quite recently, that there were no disputes in the post-1930 Politburo — that Stalin ruled unopposed. This is crucial to both historical and biographical insight: it confirms that Stalin's fight to retain power was not only a struggle against the people but also, and concomitantly, a struggle against any signs of independence, or even wavering, within his own apparat.

i mean he has never seemed like some putin-type functionary or a simple product of his system anyway, but this would appear to shed new light on that in any case

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

there's a lot of complicity with Stalin's magnates - Kaganovich, Molotov, Zhdanov, Voroshilov - but he didn't really "rule unopposed" until after the Terror/Party purges had severely cowed everyone around him, and the country as well. Stalin greatly expanded the basis of fanatical party loyalty as a prerequisite to political (not to mention actual physical) survival, and while he didn't do it alone all the documents with his signature and his orders on them indicate pretty indisputably taht he was the major guiding force. Beria and Yezhov were more than willing to lend their own bloodthirst to the cause, but they didn't execute hundreds of thousands on their own, without Stalin's explicit direction and approval.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:20 (seventeen years ago) link

bethune:
>This environment is turning increasingly hostile.
>Most of you aren't serious anyway.

We've been waiting for you. Welcome aboard!

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm resisting the urge to post the crazier bits of this bio, like the anecodte from Kruschev about Yezhov showing up to a Politburo meeting, fresh from the torture chambers at Lubianka, with blood from the "Enemies of the People" on his cuffs and trousers.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:33 (seventeen years ago) link

robert conquest wrote the great terror: a reassessment which has pretty much become the standard reference for its title subject. he wrote the original edition back in 1968, and the "reassessments" are based on soviet records not available when it was originally written. it is one of the more interesting and frightening books i have ever read, not only b/c of its description of what was going on w/n the USSR during the purges but also b/c of the examples conquest provides of western apologetics for same (both during the purges and afterwards [when more details had become known]).

if our "friend" bethune is still here, he'd obviously abhor the thing.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 23:32 (seventeen years ago) link

four months pass...

http://www.gandalf23.com/images/sovietpropaganda/1278.jpg

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Friday, 19 January 2007 04:00 (seventeen years ago) link

I had forgotten how great this thread is.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 19 January 2007 09:31 (seventeen years ago) link

three months pass...

happy may day, y'all!

― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Quote of the day from Stalin (and my Russian drama class):

"The writer is the engineer of the human soul."

― Maria, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Still some crazies at it

― latebloomer, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:27 (seventeen years ago) link

haha amazing

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:55 (seventeen years ago) link

whatever happened to bethune anyway

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:59 (seventeen years ago) link

he's probably largin' it in the venezuelan oil ministry or something

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:36 (seventeen years ago) link

I wish we could have a RED WING CARTOONISTS!! thread

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:35 (seventeen years ago) link

Stalin - Dud

This thread - CLASSIC!!!!

Did anyone ever figure out who Bethune is or anything about him?

Did he post on anything besides the virtues of the Soviet Union?

― Moodles, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:10 (seventeen years ago) link

"If you could sum up Stalin's major mistakes and contributions, what do you think they would be?

Everybody makes mistakes, so Stalin must have made some."

"Lenin’s magnificent work The State and Revolution explains the double-talk about “democracy.” In my opinion everybody should study it. It has some weaknesses – for example, there is nothing in it about the need for a communist party to lead the revolution! But it is a brilliant work, basic to the understanding of the world we live in. Like Lenin, Stalin wanted a form of widespread representative democracy – as the word “democracy” has been understood in capitalist countries since the 18th century. My two essays – really, one long essay in two parts, which you hyperlink above – give the details of this fact, covered up since at least Khrushchev’s day. Could it have worked? It is a shame that Stalin and his supporters did not succeed in implementing it. We would then have that rich experience from which to learn, both positively and negatively. But Stalin would surely have never permitted socialism to have been overthrown by electoral means. Nor should he have."

"Lenin and Stalin were brilliant men, sincerely dedicated to the goal of communism, devoted to the working class. They had no personal ambitions except to try to bring about that society of justice and equality which the communist movement has always stood for, and that the working people of the world desperately desperately needed then and still do."

― Frogman Henry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:44 (seventeen years ago) link

ok i'm now discovering that this guy Grover Furr is a right-wing hate-figure.

― Frogman Henry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:50 (seventeen years ago) link

whatever happened to bethune anyway

He's probably editing Wikipedia articles on Stalinism.

― 31g, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:05 (seventeen years ago) link

lol omgz

― lfam, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:11 (seventeen years ago) link

eight months pass...

bethune, a poster for the ages!

Another thing mostpeople don't realize is that cheney-rove actually pays people to post sympathetic comments on boards like this. Usually through third parties, of course. Impossible to say for sure, but look at TOMBOT's posts carefully.
-- bethune, Monday, January 30, 2006

― gershy, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:48 (sixteen years ago) link

I think it is outrageous to suggest that highminded public figures like Dick Cheney or Karl Rove would stoop to paying people to post favourable comments on message boards.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Thursday, 24 January 2008 13:15 (sixteen years ago) link

four years pass...

like a couple of bumps in the road and suddenly Stalin is a "bad guy"

― JoeStork, Tuesday, 1 May 2012 05:00 (twelve years ago) link

lol whatever happened to Bethune?!?

― Nu Metal is the best music there is, the rest is pussy shit. (Eisbaer), Tuesday, 1 May 2012 05:13 (twelve years ago) link

iirc he became a part of putin's inner circle, rose in power and then disappeared mysteriously

― iatee, Tuesday, 1 May 2012 05:23 (twelve years ago) link

show trial, plexiglass cage, the usual

― their private gesture for bison (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 1 May 2012 05:32 (twelve years ago) link

six months pass...

http://memoryfull.ru/purge/repressions.html

― mookieproof, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:00 (eleven years ago) link

wow

― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:17 (eleven years ago) link

a close friend is a Stalin apologist now :(

― Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:20 (eleven years ago) link

:>(

― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:21 (eleven years ago) link

wait I mean

>:(

― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:21 (eleven years ago) link

how does that even work

― mookieproof, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:22 (eleven years ago) link

always loved this one re: Yezhov

http://firstlightforum.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/nikolai-yezhov-nkvd.jpg

― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:23 (eleven years ago) link

mookie mystified by shakey's nose-becomes-hat move

― iatee, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:24 (eleven years ago) link

xp @ mookie my stepfather was one too. the line they tend to take is that the longer broader view of building communism is one that requires great sacrifice and long-term vision, and that humanism is bullshit, it's a whole huge self-deluding schema that's very hard to penetrate from the outside - like any rigid ideology you sort of have to make a leap of buying into some shit you don't naturally buy into & then you're golden

― Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:25 (eleven years ago) link

wow

― mookieproof, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:28 (eleven years ago) link

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