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A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

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Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#101

Post by yyyk »

pasabagi wrote: post #100
yyyk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Also, there's an argument (ironically mirroring yours) that had Russia avoided WW1, the Tsar's system would end up evolving towards a constitutional monarchy, but without the piles of corpses.

> Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Sure. But that's also very normal in revolutions, to have a multiple-stage affair with different conceptions of what the revolution is for emerging throughout the duration. Karensky has often been portrayed as a sort of mini-Napoleon figure, so it's hard to see his overthrow as a pure 'palace coup'. To be honest, I feel like the h…

>With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique...

Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself.

I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik contempt to democracy and anything that was standing in the way of their ideals. They had to experiment on their society no matter how many people died.

Eventually after a long paroxysm of violence it morphed to a clique, which was actually less evil than what preceded it despite being less idealistic.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#102

Post by pasabagi »

yyyk wrote: post #101
pasabagi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that it already went away by the time the Bolshevik's staged their 'Revolution'. Sure. But that's also very normal in revolutions, to have a multiple-stage affair with different conceptions of what the revolution is for emerging throughout the duration. Karensky has often been portrayed as a sort of mini-Napoleon figure, so it's hard to see his overthrow as a pure 'palace coup'. To be honest, I feel like the h…

>With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique... Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself. I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik c…

I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly.

I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the Bolsheviks. German armies were literally rolling through Russia at the time. All of these guys were raised on the history of the french revolution and the paris commune, both events in which the far left had an almost complete mortality rate.

It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals. They would call what we call democracy an oligarchy, an 'bourgeois democracy', etc. So, obviously, they wouldn't have any patience for its trappings. I don't think you can simply call them anti-democratic on the simple grounds that their idea of democracy differs from yours.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#103

Post by yyyk »

pasabagi wrote: post #102
yyyk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique... Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself. I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik c…

I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly. I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the B…

Soviets had no power by design. 'Democratic centralism' and banning all opposition when Lenin was still alive show how meaningful their democracy was.

>It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals.

Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy. e.g. the various People's Democratic Republic of X, like say North Korea.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#104

Post by pasabagi »

yyyk wrote: post #103
pasabagi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly. I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the B…

Soviets had no power by design. 'Democratic centralism' and banning all opposition when Lenin was still alive show how meaningful their democracy was. >It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals. Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy. e.g. the various People's Democratic Republic of X, like say North Korea.

> Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy.

I think people are way too black-and-white about these things. Democracy is supposed to be a mapping of the people's will to the people's living conditions. It's very obvious that some states are way better at this than others. The amount of control the US voter has over the specific policy regime they live under is almost nonexistent. That's quite normal in western democracies.

To put it in context, an Athenian democrat would call every one of our modern democracies an oligarchy, and we in turn would call their democracy an apartheid state.

I don't think you're right about the Soviets, but my observation is that a large part of western misunderstandings of the Bolsheviks come from failing to understand them on their terms. In my eyes, a state based on soviet sovereignty, even with a strong executive in emergency situations, would be a very democratic state. That's what the Bolsheviks said they wanted to deliver, and I don't see why we shouldn't believe them.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#105

Post by yyyk »

pasabagi wrote: post #104
yyyk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviets had no power by design. 'Democratic centralism' and banning all opposition when Lenin was still alive show how meaningful their democracy was. >It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals. Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy. e.g. the various People's Democratic Republic of X, like say North Korea.

> Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy. I think people are way too black-and-white about these things. Democracy is supposed to be a mapping of the people's will to the people's living conditions. It's very obvious that some states are way better at this than others. The amount of control the US voter has over the specific policy regime they live under is almost nonexistent. That's quite normal in weste…

>That's quite normal in western democracies.

Well, there are a lot of things one can say about these countries, but we're talking about the Soviets here. The Western flaws don't excuse the 'idealistic' Soviets.

>In my eyes, a state based on soviet sovereignty, even with a strong executive in emergency situations, would be a very democratic state.

A pity the Communists never ever tried to implement soviet sovereignty.

>That's what the Bolsheviks said they wanted to deliver, and I don't see why we shouldn't believe them.

Their very consistent actual record?

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#106

Post by fuy »

"In an interview I conducted with Vyacheslav Nikonov, he spoke to me of his grandfather Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s foreign minister, as a kindly old man who loved him as a grandson who at one time saved him from drowning. When the archives were opened Nikonov saw his granddad in a different light, spending almost a full day with Stalin signing thousands of death warrants." FWIW, V. Nikonov is a big fan of both his granddad Molotov and Stalin, and is one of Putin's party (United Russia) figureheads. So I'm not sure how well "different light" describes it.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#107

Post by panick21_ »

pasabagi wrote: post #102
yyyk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the old Bolsheviks,... you tend to get the feeling of ruthless, dedicated, but ultimately idealistic people. Pretending that they were always just an evil clique... Idealistic is not an antonym to evil. Ruthless and idealistic is a very good way to justify evil to oneself. I do agree evil clique is not the right way to consider the start of the revolution. The USSR was poisoned from the start by the Bolshevik c…

I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'. That was the basic unit of democracy in Russia at the time, far more relevant than stuff like the constituent assembly. I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the B…

> I don't see them as having contempt for democracy. Lenin's slogan, after all, was 'all power to the soviets'.

Do you usually just straight up buy propaganda served to you by dictators?

> I also think that it's normal to have a democratic deficit during an extremely chaotic situation, and a lot of the people 'standing in the way of their ideals' were also trying to kill the Bolsheviks.

Yes, but many were not in the way of 'all power to the soviets' but the Bolsheviks killed them anyway.

> German armies were literally rolling through Russia at the time.

German are the ones that helped put the Bolsheviks into power. This is well known fact. And not just transport, but also money and political protection.

> It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals.

Yes, the Bolsheviks definition of democracy of 'democracy' was 'what the people want' and the way to figure that out was to consult their own opinions.

So whatever Stalin/Lenin or later Mao wanted was by definition 'democratic'.

Everybody else calls that sort of thing a dictatorship, but I guess if you are far enough left you can transform language to use all the popular words to fit whatever you want to do.

> I don't think you can simply call them anti-democratic on the simple grounds that their idea of democracy differs from yours.

Yes actual that's exactly what you should do. Because we can not allow a group of extremist to simply change definitions of words that actually had a meaning for 1000s of years.

Do you also accept the Nazi opinion that they were Socialist? Do you just accept anything violent groups say in their propaganda?

At the end of the day, call it whatever you want, all this arguments about semantics is pointless. The simple fact is, they wanted power and control. And they killed literally everybody who opposed them. Its that simple and its fundamentally evil.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#108

Post by panick21_ »

bnralt wrote: post #23
VictorPath wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stalin foreign policy (not unlike Chamberlains) was to pull Germany to his side Sort of. Prior to 1933 was the Third Period where the Comintern was antagonistic in Germany even to socialists ("social fascists"). From 1934 to the end of 1938 the USSR was looking for a self-defense pact with France, or the UK, neither country of which was interested (Blum in France was not for complex reasons). In 1939 the USSR and G…

Indeed, it's worth pointing out that the Soviet Union offered to defend Czechoslovakia from Germany in 1938, but other countries opposed this. In general, I get the impression that European powers in the 1930's couldn't make up their mind between countering Germany or countering the Soviet Union.

Well they didn't just 'offer' that for nothing. This had conditions attached. And would have basically used it to take much of eastern Europe.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#109

Post by panick21_ »

user_7832 wrote: post #39

While searching about Stalin on Google I came across an interesting article (1) that provides some more perspective on his life (particularly his early years). He did seem mostly sound of mind especially in his earlier years (and the script was quite similar to any revolutionary), but somewhere it turned violent. Though in his later years - he believed his son surrendered to the Germans (!?) rather than getting captu…

> I wonder how things would have tuned out if he was a pacifist.

He would have never been even remotely close to any position of relevance and nobody would know his name.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#110

Post by panick21_ »

FredPret wrote: post #9
Zuider wrote: post #7

Hitler was also a voracious reader with a private library of some 2000 books. Surprisingly, Schopenhauer appears to have been Hitler's favorite reading rather than those books of Nietzsche which proclaim the right of the amoral Superman to impose his will on all, or the repulsive racist theories of Alfred Rosenberg and Houston Stuart Chamberlain which surface in Mein Kamph. Maybe it was Schopenhauer's notion of the n…

Nietzsche was staunchly against nationalism, socialism, and Prussian militarism. Pretty much the anti-Hitler.

His sister modified his works and tried to make it famous in Nazi Germany. This is the reason for the association.
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