Stalin - classic or dud

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds

in general i think this -- is it that the institute of the tsar already represented the legitimate right-wing -- is right; "orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality" had been the tsarist slogan for so long by that point that they had to call to mind defeat by the japanese, cartoonishly incompetent/callous incidents like khodynka, and of course world war i, on top of the obvious and more controversial oppressions. even after nicky fell, the rightist/reformist elements in the provisional government remained committed to the war.

also i think once tsarism was pulled, like a tooth, there was all of a sudden much less conservative feeling in the villages and peasant army than the aristocratic/administrative class had come to expect. a lot of peasants had maintained a mystical faith in the tsar but hated their local priests and were eager to kill their landlords.

(that hardly made them bolsheviks, it turned out, but it made them revolutionaries for a moment.)

so kotkin seems pretty sure that lenin's testament was a forgery.

finished this last night. i like in the coda that kotkin drops all pretenses of objectivity and is just like "stalin was a fucking maniac and probably no one would've been as bad as him [even tho contradictions of NEP + communism would've still existed]

this is obv not the right thread for this question but for some reason i feel like ppl who read this thread might know the answer (and i couldn't find a better thread to post it to):
who is good to read about left-wing german politics at the end of the weimer republic?

i found this and it's really good:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-ghost-of-social-fascism/#10

er that link goes to the middle of the article but the entire thing is worthwhile imo

There is a good account of the post Weimar years in Volker Ullrich's Hitler biography Mordy. It is a decent enough book but is too reliant on Goebbel's dairies and not a patch on Kotkin's.

have you read Richard Evans' Third Reich Trilogy? I'm on the third volume now, on the war, but volumes 1 in particular, on the rise of the Third Reich, goes into quite some detail on the politics of Weimar. it's not fully satisfying but it's enough of a start to see what more specialized interest you want to pursue next.

i haven't. i found a few things last night to read and then stayed up way too late reading them --

The German Left and the Weimar Republic - A Selection of Documents (Historical Materialism Book Series Volume 75)
Eric Weitz - Creating German Communism, 1890-1990
Catherine Epstein - The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century
Robert Heynen - Degeneration and Revolution: Radical Cultural Politics and the Body in Weimer Germany

plus the afore-linked Commentary article which is really quite good and gets to exactly what i really wanted to read the most about, aka the relationship between various left, liberal and moderate groups in the wake of the rise of national socialism

i've been pulling quotes too - was thinking i'd maybe start an ilafl social fascism thread w/ them later today. i'll link from here if i do.

pumped!

social fascism

stalin does turn out to be super relevant since a lot of the harder line messaging coming out of KPD + Thälmann in particular came straight from stalin and the transition in german communist rhetoric can be mapped directly onto the post-lenin power struggle happening next door. (tho the draper piece predates the social fascism concept to before stalin so it's really more of a flowering than sui generis

what I want to understand right now is the German revolution of 1918, from which the "stab in the back" narrative emerges. I'd like to read something in particular about this.

just reached Operation Barbarossa in the Evans book. it's terrible reading about Soviet soldiers fleeing the front, hoping they'll be treated better by Hitler than Stalin, and then finding out how wrong they were. & about how Stalin had soldiers who (sanely) fled the front in the early days of Barbarossa classed as traitors.

the second and third chapters of this are probably worth reading

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/hindenburg-9780199570324?cc=us&lang=en&

interesting paragraph from the epstein book re jews + KPD:

The Eislers were of Jewish origin, but the family was completely assimi- lated and never practiced Judaism. Interestingly, besides Ruth Fischer, a number of the KPD’s early leaders were also of Jewish descent— Luxemburg, Levi, and Maslow. By the mid-1920s, however, relatively few individuals of Jewish origin remained in the leading bodies of the party; by the end of the Republic, there were virtually none. According to one historian, the KPD was well aware of omnipresent anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany and, for tactical reasons, tried to keep Jews out of prominent party positions. The party did not engage in propaganda campaigns against anti-Semitic feeling and, to strengthen its popularity, occasionally even deployed anti-Semitic rhetoric. But the KPD was not an anti-Semitic party. Rather, it had little reason to focus on Jewish is- sues. German Jewry was overwhelmingly bourgeois, and the party had little chance of attracting Jewish voters, much less Jewish party members. The exact percentage of KPD members with Jewish backgrounds is un- available, but it is estimated that in 1927 0.7 percent of party members, or roughly one thousand individuals, were of Jewish descent.24 At the same time, those like the Eisler siblings who did join the KPD had usually distanced themselves from their Jewish origins and thus had little inter- est in Jewish matters. They were, in their own minds, German commu- nists—neither German Jews nor Jewish communists. Like all KPD mem- bers, they saw themselves as struggling for universal emancipation; they believed that the communist revolution would resolve all social and other problems (including, if they considered the issue at all, the “Jewish Question”). In postwar East Germany, approximately seventy longtime communists with Jewish backgrounds achieved some renown.25

like so many other german communism developments this seem symmetrical to stalin cleaning house on the jews. from the kotkin:

In December 17, the expulsions of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and others from the party, which had been voted back at the previous plenum, were confirmed.301 Two days later, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others, twenty-three people in total, signed a degrading petition to the congress—which they were not even allowed into the hall to present in person—renouncing their “wrong and anti-Leninist views.” Stalin again refused to reinstate them.302 Orjonikidize engaged in negotiations over the disposition of the highest-profile Trotskyites who sought to continue working in some capacity, but Stalin soon scattered them into internal exile.303 Whereas in the politburo back in mid-1924, Great Russians accounted for 46 percent, with a third having been Jews and the remaining three a Pole, Latvian, and Georgian, now the politburo became two-thirds Russian (and would retain a Russian majority thereafter).304 The talk around the congress was that “Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin took them out of the Central Committee.”305

Citing the words a Swiss newspaper had attributed to British General Sir Frederick Maurice, Hindenburg thus lent his mythical authority to the ‘stab-in-the-back’ allegation. His endorsement popularized the narrative immediately; conservative commentators proclaimed a ‘victory of the truth’ within 24 hours.13 Hindenburg had not invented the narrative, but broadened its dissemination considerably. His statement was printed in all the major daily papers the day after his testimony and debated endlessly in the opinion columns. He was therefore midwife to an idea German society had been pregnant with since the revolution—an idea that burdened the young republic with accusations of treachery, thereby intensifying political polarization and shifting the political climate decisively to the right.

Hindenburg’s endorsement put the democratic camp in a near-impossible position. Republican commentators faced the complicated task of defying a narrative granted the Field Marshal’s official approval, whilst avoiding personal and direct criticism of a man whose mythical adulation had lent legitimacy to their cause until a few months previously. Even if Theodor Wolff had recognized the danger of the ‘infallibility theory’ about Hinden- burg, which strengthened the allegations of democratic treason, he insisted in the same article: ‘Tannenberg remains Tannenberg. [Hindenburg] . . . is one of those historical figures to whom the people’s feelings [Volksgefuhl] will always flow.’14

the jewish character of the "stab-in-the-black," as well as the accusation of jewish bolshevikism being responsible for the stalin catastrophe, are shockingly still alive online. i keep running into them on seemingly unrelated reddit threads. you'd think both would be ancient history at this pt; which i guess just goes to show that nazis have memories like elephants.

thanks nakhchivan I'll read that!

it's younger than the protocols of the elders of zion which is still doing a roaring trade

also don't read reddit

good advice. is protocols still popular in europe? thought it mostly got a second life in the islamic world.

euler, the "labor and war" chapter of the weitz book (creating german communism) is good on the ww1 strikes

If the demand for better quality food was not exactly revolutionary, nor was it merely a “bread and butter” issue. Embedded in the demand for a single cafeteria lay a challenge to the class and status hierarchies that were constitutive of the workplace regime and of German society in general. Moreover, workers had learned that their demands could be efficacious, especially when backed with the reality or threat of a strike. As the management of one mining company in the Halle-Merseburg region remembered this period, “uprisings of the workforce were the order of the day.”

The wartime strikes were not sudden explosions of an immiserated proletariat. Clearly, workers responded to the very real material deprivations that they suf­ fered. However, strikes can be repressed and workers can be shot down or marched off to prison and the army. They sometimes were, but the centrality of labor to the war effort made it impossible for the forces of order to revert to a policy of repression alone. The army, the state, the companies—all needed workers more than ever. Slowly, the company became aware of the precarious situation. State and industry were forced continually to renegotiate the terms of social peace. Management foisted the blame, when possible, on union leaders, the army, and the state. Hesitantly, reluctantly, bitterly, BASF had to give in to the autonomous demands of workers and become party to the inflationary spiral in the effort to maintain production and social order.

the end, it was the workers themselves— at Leuna, Krupp, and elsewhere in Germany— who destroyed the patriarchal workplace regime by moving increas­ ingly boldly as they saw the efficacy of their own actions. Certainly, not all workers engaged in protest actions and many remained loyal to the firm. But the initiative lay with the rebellious ones, who forced the management of Krupp and Leuna to respond. The fact that wage hikes and increased food rations resulted not from the beneficence of the companies meant that workers had destroyed the very essence of the patriarchal system.

In the learning process of the war years, many workers also took inspiration from news, however fragmentary, of the Russian Revolution and strikes and mutinies in many other countries. But perhaps more importantly, they drew on their prewar experiences. The strikes of the war were mass strikes, but militants played key roles—shop steward metalworkers in Berlin and at Krupp, construction workers, with a long record of strikes, at Leuna. More than in most other areas, resistance in the workplace at Leuna was closely connected with the overt political radicalism in the surrounding region, which penetrated both party and union. Within the union cartel, the metalworkers and construction workers unions played the dominant roles, and both had strongly radical casts. Many individuals involved in both unions found work at Leuna, despite the effort of the company and military to screen out radicals, and the trade unions developed a strong presence in the plant as well. As a result, strikes developed a strong political articulation, and radicals moved into positions of leadership within the Workers Committee and the trade union locals, typified best perhaps by Bernard Koenen, one of the leaders at Leuna, who went on to a long career in the KPD and SED. Among this increasingly assertive working class, the KPD would find strong support—at Leuna and in Halle-Merseburg and at Krupp and in the Ruhr.

The Maisky Diaries is quite entertaining, being such a haughty bourg type and a confirmed ex Menshevik he was probably very lucky not to get arrested as a spy + shot during the great terror. This otm entry about the English after George V's funeral made me lol!

Such mess and confusion! I am sure the Germans would have organised everything infinitely better in a similar situation. Even we in Moscow would probably have avoided many of the gaffes committed by the English. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the English are good at managing events that come round every year (for instance, the air shows in Hendon). They accumulate experience and make good use of it. But when it comes to arranging something from scratch and - above all - in haste, you may confidently expect a flop. ...

got the Kotkin from the library. hfs what am I in for

extremely readable - don't let the length put you off

oh it's not the length, just steeling myself for the historical rollercoaster ride

I've read Montefiore's "Court of the Red Tsar" so looking forward to this filling in the earlier years

did we decide if he's classic or dud

Reading this review on the eve of a reissue of Deustcher's essays. Probably the only time I found myself thinking I'd like to read a biography of Stalin.

I don't really want to get sucked into this because I don't think you're really serious. It's hard to tell on line. What is clear is that a lot of "fact" about the soviet economy is actually myth promulgated by a collaborationist western media--esp the US media structures.
How could e. Germany have been the world's sixth largest economy (no less an "objective" authority than the CIA) if they weren't doing something right. Not to mention basic human rights and equitable distribution of resources--completely absent in the Cheney-Rove regime we're labouring in now.

Still, you'll obviously believe whatever you're fed by CNN no matter what the facts say.

― bethune, Monday, January 30, 2006 11:20 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bethune was on the "CNN is fake news" train a decade ahead of his time

Lol

Nah that's just a happy phrasing of the classic "wake up sheeple" and so not worth lauding imo

Can we get a Venn diagram btwn sheeple and the self-proclaimed 'woke' btw that would be good to see if it's a match or parallel or perpendicular or tangential spectrum

You were all dicks to bethune tbh. Every american president has done things just as bad as stalin.

this is really the thread that keeps on giving

xp

most of the time ilx liberals are dicks to anyone stating something that goes against their ideology

but it looks like 34-49 million deaths can be directly linked to stalin, while globalresearch.ca says the us gov't as a whole has killed about 20 million in "victim nations" since the second world war

but

The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051

remember that time Gerald Ford killed 49 million people

james garfield, history's greatest monster

nah that'd be William Henry Harrison, he managed to murder ~40 million people in just one month!

re: that globalresearch.ca link, i am not really buying the idea that we can group korean war casualties with e.g. ppl who have been killed in wars in which the u.s. supported one side like the israel-palestine conflict, label them people "america has killed," and put the resulting number right next to the atrocities of stalin and hitler

Every american president has done things just as bad as stalin.

Stalin did bad things. Every American president has done bad things. Some of the bad things done by Stalin and American presidents are of equivalent badness. Therefore, you are correct, but only if you use the reasoning I have just given.

If you meant to say "every american president has done things just as bad as the worst things stalin did", then you'll have a much tougher sale. Of course, Stalin had a much longer run compared to any American president, so he had the leisure to accumulate a much longer list of horrible actions.

maybe rodimus just meant that every American President has done things just as badly as Stalin ie made horrible management decisions, been blinded by ideology, made shitty compromises etc.

i am not really buying the idea that we can group korean war casualties with e.g. ppl who have been killed in wars in which the u.s. supported one side like the israel-palestine conflict, label them people "america has killed," and put the resulting number right next to the atrocities of stalin and hitler

yeah and those drones are just doing killing brown and black people by themselves too.

drone strikes haven't killed anywhere near the number of people Stalin did

Counting games.

sure, 100 people, a million people what's the difference

The drone deaths amount to a mere drop in the bucket next to the more than a million Cambodians & Vietnamese civilians killed by US B52 bombing under LBJ and Nixon, with Nixon easily taking the numeric lead over LBJ in the bombing non-combatants department.

^^^

Hilarious to see all of these counting games being used to somehow absolve, or to pass over the deaths of millions across the world and over decades as 'we didn't do it'.

Yeah a few black people in Yemen last week, tens killed in Baghbad some other month. Sure yeah BUT Stalin AND Hitler.