John Charity Spring posted:

I've got a pamphlet from 1939 called Through Soviet Russia by Major AS Hooper, a British army officer and certainly no communist although a vocal advocate of allying with the Soviets to fight the Nazis, and it's really fascinating as a travelogue from an outsider. He travelled through Ukraine and to Baku and then to Moscow in 1937 and it's full of interesting descriptions of just regular life in the USSR and how collective farms and soviet democracy worked, the kind of cultural life in cities and towns, and even a glimpse at how ordinary people viewed the onset of the Great Purge. I picked it up when one of the communist parties was doing a clearout of stuff in their offices when I happened to be in London a few years and I haven't found it anywhere online, so I could maybe post some photos of pages from it if anyone's interested and I find the time to do so. I'd scan it but I don't have a scanner, so terrible phone camera pictures are the next best thing.

Hodgepodge posted:

why should I?

John Charity Spring posted:

I've got a pamphlet from 1939 called Through Soviet Russia by Major AS Hooper, a British army officer and certainly no communist although a vocal advocate of allying with the Soviets to fight the Nazis, and it's really fascinating as a travelogue from an outsider. He travelled through Ukraine and to Baku and then to Moscow in 1937 and it's full of interesting descriptions of just regular life in the USSR and how collective farms and soviet democracy worked, the kind of cultural life in cities and towns, and even a glimpse at how ordinary people viewed the onset of the Great Purge. I picked it up when one of the communist parties was doing a clearout of stuff in their offices when I happened to be in London a few years and I haven't found it anywhere online, so I could maybe post some photos of pages from it if anyone's interested and I find the time to do so. I'd scan it but I don't have a scanner, so terrible phone camera pictures are the next best thing.

Ferrinus posted:

listen, i'm not saying trotsky was drawing on family connections to deliberately move money through nazi germany in order to hasten the collapse of the soviet order. but, now that you mention it,

Raskolnikov38 posted:

thank god hodgepodge showed up the moment it looked like the thread was going to get back on track by calling people wreckers, a trot to the end

John Charity Spring posted:

I've got a pamphlet from 1939 called Through Soviet Russia by Major AS Hooper, a British army officer and certainly no communist although a vocal advocate of allying with the Soviets to fight the Nazis, and it's really fascinating as a travelogue from an outsider. He travelled through Ukraine and to Baku and then to Moscow in 1937 and it's full of interesting descriptions of just regular life in the USSR and how collective farms and soviet democracy worked, the kind of cultural life in cities and towns, and even a glimpse at how ordinary people viewed the onset of the Great Purge. I picked it up when one of the communist parties was doing a clearout of stuff in their offices when I happened to be in London a few years and I haven't found it anywhere online, so I could maybe post some photos of pages from it if anyone's interested and I find the time to do so. I'd scan it but I don't have a scanner, so terrible phone camera pictures are the next best thing.

Yossarian-22 posted:

The dude was very much in the "both, and" camp when it came to defending the USSR against the Nazis and wanting to overthrow Stalin. Say what you will against the guy but the idea that he was helping Nazis at the USSR's expense simply because he didn't make total peace with Stalin for the war effort is 100% propaganda and not vindicated by the historical record at all. You might as well be one of the Tsarists who claim that the Bolshevik revolution was a plot by the Kaiser from the very beginning

Ferrinus posted:

trotsky was a logical man. you just have to ask yourself: who's the greater threat? the nazis, whose conquering armies would soon become sympathetic to those they were now oppressing and exploiting, or the stalinists, who had betrayed the revolution and were even now causing the degeneration and decay of the world's first and only socialist country?

Raskolnikov38 posted:

I’m exceedingly curious what role the PRC could have possibly played in the downfall of the Union

i say swears online posted:

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1388541929181306890

apropos to nothing posted:

interesting point which is probably why you find in all of trotskys writings a defense of the ussr even as it existed under Stalin, even as it made peace with and split Poland between it and nazi Germany. he was critical because it is correct to expose mistakes and explain why they are mistakes. that some self described trotskyists over the years have rejected this and have taken to the position that the ussr was bad or even worse than the capitalist powers like tony cliff or others is no different than claiming that the politics of bob avakian are a repudiation of marx. the ussr falling was probably the single greatest tragedy in human history, even with the political degeneration, the mistakes, and rotten political leadership it had even at the very end.

always great to listen to the stalinists describe how trotsky betrayed the revolution or whatever when you’ll never hear a negative word about mao or the ccp in this regard which did more to undermine and lead to the eventual fall of the ussr than anything trotsky or any Trotskyist organization could ever even be imagined to have done. of course the reason for this split came down in part though not entirely because of problems with the rcp and the early Comintern related to Russian chauvinism and the subordination of the Comintern to the Russian state rather than to the revolutionary aims of the working classes within the various countries, an analysis that the early communists who would go on to form the trotskyists in most countries had put forward for many decades before.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

I’m exceedingly curious what role the PRC could have possibly played in the downfall of the Union

Algund Eenboom posted:

apropos to nothing posted:

interesting point which is probably why you find in all of trotskys writings a defense of the ussr even as it existed under Stalin, even as it made peace with and split Poland between it and nazi Germany. he was critical because it is correct to expose mistakes and explain why they are mistakes. that some self described trotskyists over the years have rejected this and have taken to the position that the ussr was bad or even worse than the capitalist powers like tony cliff or others is no different than claiming that the politics of bob avakian are a repudiation of marx. the ussr falling was probably the single greatest tragedy in human history, even with the political degeneration, the mistakes, and rotten political leadership it had even at the very end.

always great to listen to the stalinists describe how trotsky betrayed the revolution or whatever when you’ll never hear a negative word about mao or the ccp in this regard which did more to undermine and lead to the eventual fall of the ussr than anything trotsky or any Trotskyist organization could ever even be imagined to have done. of course the reason for this split came down in part though not entirely because of problems with the rcp and the early Comintern related to Russian chauvinism and the subordination of the Comintern to the Russian state rather than to the revolutionary aims of the working classes within the various countries, an analysis that the early communists who would go on to form the trotskyists in most countries had put forward for many decades before.

apropos to nothing posted:

part of the only reason Chinese us relations are detiorioratijg now is because there’s no ussr to pit them against by the us.

mila kunis posted:

trots and other anticommunists

apropos to nothing posted:

pretty sure you’re trying to be sarcastic but you should really google this information if so cause pretty well known. the CCP gave support for the mujahideen and refused any kind of diplomacy with the ussr until they withdrew, they massed armed forces armed with American weapons during the war to prepare for a clash with the soviets, they fought the Vietnamese who were backed by the ussr over the support of the Khmer Rouge, a lot of other proxy wars in other former colonies or support for rival parties or armies. and then economically basically becoming the manufacturing partner for us capitalism. the sino Soviet split is pretty well known and the effects were disastrous for the soviets. part of the only reason Chinese us relations are detiorioratijg now is because there’s no ussr to pit them against by the us. if you look at the outcry over tiannanmen it was nothing compared to the situation now in xinjiang and the Hk protests, declassified exchanges at that time have pointed to the fact that the us told China that they viewed it as an internal matter, bush halted some weapon sales but no sanctions or economic threats, etc. China was a willing partner with the us it’s only been the last few decades where that’s changed because of their growing threat as a rival power and the lack of the ussr to keep them pitted against.

mila kunis posted:

i'm so happy for trots and other anticommunists after the state department called for a pivot to asia though. after calling for the USSR to be destroyed and #winning the cold war they now have a new hyped up non western boogeyman in the prc to rail against

Ferrinus posted:

and that god willing it wasn't too late for the soviet citizenry to rise up as one and overthrow stalin, which a german invasion might well spur them on to do

Yossarian-22 posted:

"Trotskyists" is about as much of a boogeyman as I've heard in these circles and it's mostly undeserved imo. Lots of French Maoist intellectuals became pretty right-wing later when it suited them. Intellectuals are just bastards and opportunists regardless of their tendency. Yeah, the Trot to neocon pipeline is weird, but to suggest that Trotsky was collaborating with/praying for the success of the Wehrmacht simply because he had hope that German soldiers would defect (recall that the German war effort literally ended in WWI because of defections) is birdbrained and disingenuous as gently caress.

It's convenient that tankie is considered a slur around these parts and yet it's okay to assume that anarchists and Trotskyists are liberals and pedophiles respectively. I'm more of a left-communist than anything else but there is so much LARPing of 1917-1940 here that is based on petty grudges against particular tendencies

mila kunis posted:

i use trots as a catchall for the anticommunist/western chauvinist/pro imperialist left, which is what people who self identified as such basically were some combination of. i dont give a gently caress about what trotsky did or didn't write after he was booted from the soviet union

Ferrinus posted:

"helped" occupy poland isn't really an honest description of dividing the country 50/50 as opposed to, say, 100/0

chairface posted:

hey ferrinus have you tried dying in a loving fire?

Yossarian-22 posted:

And this is just flat out ahistorical on its face, because between war planners, intellectuals, communists, etc. absolutely NOBODY thought that the Nazis were planning to invade Soviet Russia. Trotsky died a year before what you claim to be his romantic vision came to pass. The invasion was suicidal and led to the utter disintegration of the Nazi regime and forced the allies to support Stalin, so ipso facto Trotsky's supposed master plan was actually a boon to Stalin

Algund Eenboom posted:

Ferrinus posted:

now, to be clear, trotsky obviously doesn't want hitler to defeat the ussr, and says that in the event that the nazis attack, the Real True Socialists should fight side by side with the reds while simultaneously propagandizing against stalin to lay the groundwork for a proper revolution and return to form. however, he plainly lays out that he opposes the soviet bureaucracy exactly as he opposes the german bureaucracy, expects the proles to rise up and overthrow both (in particular he does not give this any kind of "once the nazis are finished" qualifier; his "defense" of the ussr is precisely the urging for the ussr to undergo a revolution, in 1939), believes that while soviet reforms to polish property are progressive the poles and any other people under soviet protection should immediately agitate to break away as independent socialist states rather than be part of the ussr, etc. he absolutely saw the second world war as a chance to finally kick off the global proletarian revolution that failed in the first world war, and such a revolution would absolutely, no question, involve stalin's downfall if trotsky had anything to say about it

Yossarian-22 posted:

Yeah this is extremely basic Revolutionary Defeatism as illustrated by Lenin. If you're a Leninist then I don't see the problem with following a basic Leninist precept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_defeatism

Also Stalin himself went back and forth on these questions. He was against popular front politics and called the social democrats in Germany "social fascists" (for somewhat legitimate reasons) before he began to side openly with democratic countries against fascist ones

Ash Crimson posted:

They fear you...

Remember; they crucified jesus christ

Slanderer posted:

^

if you ever see this loser praising your posts, understand that you're likely moments away from being permabanned for being an incompetent sexual predator on discord or something