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Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

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Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#51

Post by wellthisisgreat »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #2

Beria really was in charge of the early Soviet nuclear weapons program, and, while everyone was terrified of him, he was apparently good at managing the program. The classic joke about that, and it may not have been a joke, is that after the first bomb worked, the people who would have been shot if it failed got the Hero of the Soviet Union award. The ones that would have been sent to a labor camp got some lesser awa…

" he was apparently good at managing the program." That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Beria was a good manager, so was Himmler who led the Nazi SS. Stalin also was a hard worker and a master bureaucrat.

There is a really interesting take on Beria in what is possibly the best Stalin's biography ("Court of the Red Tzar"). Apparently, Beria saw himself a successor to Stalin who would put the country onto a milder course, and he was looking forward to redeeming himself in the face of history. There was something to the effect of him saying that his children would get educated at Oxford. And he did not mean it how current Russian elites do it (so that their seed can escape the country they have been destroying), but rather to highlight his appreciation for Western values / education / culture and willingness to learn from the recent WW2 allies and adapt their methods on USSR territory. The whole idea of "my children will study at Oxford" coming from someone like Beria was shocking.

Beria was by all means a horrible person. But Khruschev (or anybody else really that high up the Soviet totem pole) was as much of an executioner and a murderer. It's just that Khruschev has won and he got to make Beria a (justified) boogeyman. Now we know of Khruschev as just an inefficient manager who took off his shoe at UN and not as a person who called arresting 308 people a poor performance for 1936 Moscow or a person who orchestrated bloody repressions in Ukraine.

At the same time, although Beria's activities were pure terror during Stalin's rule, chances are, if Beria did come to power, he'd have been a better ruler than Kruschev from the humanistic perspective (less people would have been murdered and sent to camps, less errors made etc.). But that's a lot of "ifs".

It does sound wild (to me as well), but then there is evidence of USSR party elites (e.g. Kaganovich) turning from maniacs and terrorists into peaceful bureaucrats overnight upon Stalin's death.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#52

Post by DoreenMichele »

1123581321 wrote: post #48
DoreenMichele wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. I am somewhat skeptical of this take. I think if heaping abuse and threats of worse on people worked magic, there would be no homeless people in the US. Threats only work if the capacity is there -- or almost there -- and it's feasible to extract X with sufficient pressure. But you still can't g…

The threat must be legible and have a credible threat of authoritative judgment so steps can be taken to predictably avoid the consequence. It's not at all clear to a homeless person what steps they should take to reduce suffering in their life. (I'm aware I'm replying to a homeless or formerly homeless person. And it needn't be said, but I'm not saying that an effective threat is moral.)

Or the steps to reduce suffering are clear to them. You just don't like the conclusion they drew and don't approve.

There is insufficient affordable housing in the US. We build apartments designed for a nuclear family and expect young single people to get roommates and split the rent and then you see questions on the internet about "How do I deal with this roommate from hell?" and we make horror movies about it like Single White Female and continue to not offer housing options suitable for living alone on a budget.

Since WW2, we've torn down about a million SROs. We now think of SROs as housing for homeless people when it used to be normal market rate housing for single people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

Some people are homeless because they left abusive situations. They decided "I would rather sleep outside than continue to put up with this."

But the narrative most people accept is that homeless people are all addicts and crazies and this somehow means it's a personal problem, they aren't trying hard enough, they would rather be high than in shelter.

Addiction is a hard problem to solve no matter your social class. We don't act like "Wealthy rock stars with a drug habit must be wealthy because they take so many drugs." but we conclude that there is a cause and effect relationship between drug use and homelessness.

It's basically prejudice talking.

People on the street tend to be square pegs who have trouble finding a slot that fits them. We've actively eliminated a lot of those oddly shaped slots and then act like "You just don't want to make your life work."

Homeless people aren't necessarily any more or less virtuous or hard working or whatever than anyone else. The fabric of their life came unraveled and they don't know how to readily weave it back together and then the world tells them "The beatings shall continue until morale improves."

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#53

Post by d0mine »

lmilcin wrote: post #15
spaetzleesser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" he was apparently good at managing the program." That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Beria was a good manager, so was Himmler who led the Nazi SS. Stalin also was a hard worker and a master bureaucrat.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. A lot of that "management" was simply terrorizing people to do your bidding. So, no, he most likely wasn't a good manager the same way a bank robber isn't showing "good interpersonal skills" because he was able to convince all patrons to sit by the wall and employees to open the vault.

Fear may be harmful for creative work.

At the very least it is not obvious whether threatening to fire/firing say 10% of under-performers would improve productivity for complex tasks.

There can be other ways to make people productive e.g., "psychological safety" https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful...

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#54

Post by simonh »

dmz73 wrote: post #34
motohagiography wrote: post #17

I ask people who say they don't belive in hell whether they have heard and understand the Russian sense of humor, as when you do, there's no other place it could have come from. na zdarovye my friends! Joking about the annhialiation of cities of people, and potentially the species, is dark - but to call it merely "problematic" as though there were some solution to said problem instead of recognizing the existential h…

Life in the west can be much more horrible for a lot of people than life in USSR was for most but dark humor is very mild and looked down upon. I would say cultural differences play much bigger role. Whose life is worse in the west? Homeless, outlaws (drug addicts, prostitutes), arrested illegal immigrants, some aboriginal communities. I am wrong about that? I lived in a communist country as a child and young adult.…

The USSR had homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes and marginalised communities too. It had all the same problems, plus a whole lot more. Admittedly, there were a lot fewer people outside trying to get in though. I'll give you that.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#55

Post by the_af »

beervirus wrote: post #16
the_af wrote: post #5

> Some of the stories are more in the line of “hooray for Soviet scientists” genre, which I find a lot less interesting I find this very telling about the reviewer. When the Russians (or Soviets) show gallows humor, or are simply bizarre or we (in the West) want to read dark undertones in what they wrote: hell yes, it's just like I thought, the Soviet Union must have been a constant nightmare! When they write in a se…

I think he’s just saying that self-congratulatory stuff, from any source, is expected and unenlightening.

I don't think it's expected or unenlightening. Scientists are scientists; we want to cheer at their wins. Feynman was pretty much self-congratulatory in "Surely you're joking" -- sometimes annoyingly so -- yet we celebrate his anecdotes, we don't skip them.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#56

Post by Tuna-Fish »

tada131 wrote: post #46
IgorPartola wrote: post #40

I was born in the USSR and speak Russian. I generally get Russian humor and some Russian jokes are quite funny. However I share the author’s opinion here: finding the humor in these jokes is rough. I watched the first video where the jokes are being told and honestly event the funniest of these are barely funny. You have to really place yourself into the situation where these people are considered larger than life an…

Russian too, yep thats not funny, but you should know one of the most must-do things for US (gov payed) historian today - eventually write story about freaky-bloody Stalin, Gulag and Beria who eats children. For the sake of Freedom and Wellfare of course. Don't forget that von Neumann was truly genious at least because he wanted to wipe that Hell from the Earth (Yep they never told you that) Somewhat expressive and s…

It's questionable how much that really was von Neumann's actual opinion. It was stated during the peak of McCarthyism, and he had a lot of personal contacts with people who had been impacted by it.

Always very vocally being the most anti-communist person in the room might have been just a defensive strategy.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#57

Post by the_af »

google234123 wrote: post #25
the_af wrote: post #5

> Some of the stories are more in the line of “hooray for Soviet scientists” genre, which I find a lot less interesting I find this very telling about the reviewer. When the Russians (or Soviets) show gallows humor, or are simply bizarre or we (in the West) want to read dark undertones in what they wrote: hell yes, it's just like I thought, the Soviet Union must have been a constant nightmare! When they write in a se…

If you ever need a dose of reality, go see (google) some of Nikolai Getman's paintings of the life of prisoners in the Gulag which he had to paint in secret after being imprisoned for 8 years.

Thanks for the recommendation, I googled the paintings and they are both impressive and depressing.

However, I'm not sure I understand the relation to my comment. Do you think I was claiming life in the Gulag wasn't oppressive? Let me clarify: I was pointing out what I think is a curious bias in the author of the article.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#58

Post by RealityVoid »

Animats wrote: post #49
spaetzleesser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" he was apparently good at managing the program." That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Beria was a good manager, so was Himmler who led the Nazi SS. Stalin also was a hard worker and a master bureaucrat.

A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Scary thought for today: what happens when MAGA world finds someone with not just charisma, but competence and energy?

I'm not even from the US but that possibility is horrifying to me.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#59

Post by butterknife »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #47
IgorPartola wrote: post #40

I was born in the USSR and speak Russian. I generally get Russian humor and some Russian jokes are quite funny. However I share the author’s opinion here: finding the humor in these jokes is rough. I watched the first video where the jokes are being told and honestly event the funniest of these are barely funny. You have to really place yourself into the situation where these people are considered larger than life an…

I am French. This is the exact problem I have with some movies my Polish friends told me to watch. They were from the 70-80's and were making fun of the situation at that time (how to game the communists, the system, or the absurdity of said system). I did not find them funny at all because I did not have the context. To me they were depressing. I wonder how contemporary young Polish people see them today (when they…

Czech here. Lived through last ten years of Communism. These films were repeated ad nauseam like a propaganda assuring us that the system is great because we can game it. Hated it then, hate it now.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#60

Post by picsao »

nine_k wrote: post #23
lmilcin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. A lot of that "management" was simply terrorizing people to do your bidding. So, no, he most likely wasn't a good manager the same way a bank robber isn't showing "good interpersonal skills" because he was able to convince all patrons to sit by the wall and employees to open the vault.

This is true, but only partly. Say, copious killings did not help the Big Jump in China, or the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, to achieve any impressive breakthroughs.

The big leap was a disaster in all relevant metrics but propaganda.
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