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doing the purges meant that the Party got to assert its primacy of the army, and that Stalin got to assert his leadership over the Party. they hurt the military and political leadership in the short to moderate term, during which hitler invaded. had the army not been purged, it's very possible that there would've been a military coup of some kind from an uncowed military leadership; or there might not have been. at any rate, the military would've remained a power factor outside of the Party, which would've been trouble in the long run. purging the Party was almost certainly a power play by stalin and his clique, and it's hard to see how not doing it would've made thing worse
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Oct 20, 2021 16:55
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V. Illych L. posted:doing the purges meant that the Party got to assert its primacy of the army, and that Stalin got to assert his leadership over the Party. they hurt the military and political leadership in the short to moderate term, during which hitler invaded. had the army not been purged, it's very possible that there would've been a military coup of some kind from an uncowed military leadership; or there might not have been. at any rate, the military would've remained a power factor outside of the Party, which would've been trouble in the long run. purging the Party was almost certainly a power play by stalin and his clique, and it's hard to see how not doing it would've made thing worse look all i'm asking is that voroshilov and budyonny get killed
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Oct 20, 2021 16:58
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budyonny was a legitimately excellent officer in his day and absolutely reliable politically, and voroshilov was literally a personal friend of stalin, weird as that concept seems, and his man in the military leadership there's no way that either gets purged
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Oct 20, 2021 17:00
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V. Illych L. posted:budyonny was a legitimately excellent officer in his day and absolutely reliable politically, and voroshilov was literally a personal friend of stalin, weird as that concept seems, and his man in the military leadership yeah but that day was 50 years earlier when cavalry forces were still a thing. accusing people who recognize the battlefield usefulness of tanks IN THE 1930s of wrecking is beyond idiotic
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Oct 20, 2021 17:05
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after voroshilov’s defeat in the winter war he excoriated Stalin to his face in a meeting for the purge of the officer corps. whatever they were doing with the purges they shouldn’t have killed everyone so they could have rehabilitated guys they ended up needing. which they ended up doing, but the Soviets weren’t skilled necromancers so the pool of people to rehabilitate was smaller than it should have been. Torpor has issued a correction as of 17:16 on Oct 20, 2021 |
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Oct 20, 2021 17:14
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the great purges are one hell of an exercise in thinking history in marxist terms, I suppose Were they necessary (as in more specifically the way it happened)? no, not at all Were they inevitable due to the many historical circumstances and factors that were at play much earlier? Absolutely yes To sorta demonstrate, it's like asking "what if Lenin didn't suffer his strokes?" Plausibly, the institutional strength of the party under his leadership would have meant much more directed purges of party rosters that were known as problematic. Still, purges would happen. I posted this a while ago quote:The main point of nuance that is missed from "what about the purges" is that by the time Stalin is directly on-hands about it, the systemic causes that justified action (corruption, sabotage, infiltration, careerism, opportunism) weren't fully addressed at the critical revolutionary period. By that time, the Party knew it had incorporated a lot of people it shouldn't have, that it pardoned reactionaries, former tsarist officers, grifters and all sorts of corrupt people that were actively hindering the Soviet state The framing of the question is evasive because what really comes to discussion is "was Stalin right on the money?" and the answer is: it doesn't matter. Had Trotsky succeeded Lenin, there would be great purges as well. Had anybody else succeeded Lenin, it could have been even worse. If the discussion is about the morality of the matter, well, then of course everyone involved is fantastically bad. From that point of view, the supposedly "moral" thing to do would be simply for Stalin to resign and wash his hands. Moralism, however, doesn't exempt responsibility. In such a scenario, there would also be a lot of people blaming Stalin for resigning and abdicating from revolutionary duty. In the end, a lot of people die in any case and here is the huge loving problem: we are taught in school that history is fixable, that there is some correct way for things to happen. There isn't. (I think this is the mistake of some specific walks of the left in the West, that they think they wouldn't immediately fail at their morality standard if they ever had their hands at the helm and wanted to succeed) If anything else, it is a testament to the merit of the revolution that even after a civil war, profound institutional turmoil and a goddamn world loving war, the soviet society managed to not only win but somehow also managed to prosper and advance after so much tribulation
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Oct 20, 2021 17:16
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I mean some of the officers who survived had started in the Tzars army. the criteria to be purged (and/or killed) seems vague and not uniformly applied. the brutal torture and “name names! style of investigation undoubtedly didn’t help.
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Oct 20, 2021 17:21
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i think guyovitch has written on the purges of the party but the officer corp purge should have hit all the marshals and generals it didn't instead of the ones it did budyonny and voroshilov should've got got e: beaten like tukachevksy
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Oct 20, 2021 17:27
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look even the name says the Purges were Great, you can't argue with that
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Oct 20, 2021 17:37
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honestly when the purges reach guys like sinovjev, kamenjev etc they're no longer about getting rid of the chancers, to the extent that they ever were
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Oct 20, 2021 17:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:look even the name says the Purges were Great, you can't argue with that
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Oct 20, 2021 19:57
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V. Illych L. posted:honestly when the purges reach guys like sinovjev, kamenjev etc they're no longer about getting rid of the chancers, to the extent that they ever were yeah cant imagine why the two dipshits that were against the october revolution got purged
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Oct 20, 2021 20:35
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yeah the purges being unavoidable (albeit, not good at all) given what happened in the soviet union leading up to them seems right. maybe if the USSR hadn't immediately been invaded by the rest of the major powers and the whites had crumbled quickly, but the protracted civil war just instilled a fear of counterrevolutionaries
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Oct 20, 2021 21:38
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Instead of doing the "Great Purge," the government of the Soviet Union should have done a "Great Splurge," and bought themselves a gift such as a nice handbag, or tickets to a baseball game.
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Oct 21, 2021 04:34
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boss makes a dollar i make a dime that's why i great purge on company time
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Oct 21, 2021 04:46
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so its settled: Stalin still did Nothing Wrong
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Oct 21, 2021 05:27
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:so its settled: Stalin still did Nothing Wrong Stalin did nothing but enact the revolutionary will of Soviet workers faithfully, comrade 
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Oct 21, 2021 06:28
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i posted something about how the officer purges actually didn't decimate the ranks the way it's claimed, since big percentages of those purged were reinstated. but i think that was in the old thread
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Oct 21, 2021 10:56
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R. Guyovich posted:i posted something about how the officer purges actually didn't decimate the ranks the way it's claimed, since big percentages of those purged were reinstated. but i think that was in the old thread The thing is putting commissars in co leadership positions had a chilling effect on officers making militarily viable decisions during the early war. Trying to do localized counterattacks when armor wasn't massed.
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Oct 21, 2021 10:59
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turning the terror machine on to 11 when you realize youve created a state structure with structural corruption issues seems like a bit of a contradiction when youre trying to convince the people that you definately know what youre doing and that its going towards a good place with less autocratic repression
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Oct 21, 2021 11:08
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Does anyone happen to know if the English print version of Qiushi offers more content than the website does? I've been thinking about subscribing, but wouldn't mind not spending that money if its all already on the site. And about the subscription cost -- the site states something like $210 in subscription fees. I'm assuming that's yearly? Site performance is poor otherwise I'd quote directly. Maybe that's enough of an argument for subscribing to print edition...
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Oct 21, 2021 15:18
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Raskolnikov38 posted:yeah cant imagine why the two dipshits that were against the october revolution got purged For real. Stalin didn’t just purge the military of reactionaries, he also purged bourgeois writers and celebrities who actively wanted a return to liberalism and the monarchy
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Oct 21, 2021 18:11
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Raskolnikov38 posted:yeah cant imagine why the two dipshits that were against the october revolution got purged seeing some problematic organisational implications here tbh
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Oct 21, 2021 18:13
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https://youtu.be/p26A0H3IoO4
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Oct 21, 2021 18:28
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https://twitter.com/ScottishCommie/status/1450515381966229505
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Oct 21, 2021 20:15
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lollontee posted:turning the terror machine on to 11 when you realize youve created a state structure with structural corruption issues seems like a bit of a contradiction when youre trying to convince the people that you definately know what youre doing and that its going towards a good place with less autocratic repression
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Oct 21, 2021 20:23
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some people are just asking to be purged, how can Stalin have done wrong if it is asked?
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Oct 21, 2021 20:49
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I think this Lenin guy might have been on to something.
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Oct 21, 2021 23:01
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lollontee posted:turning the terror machine on to 11 when you realize youve created a state structure with structural corruption issues seems like a bit of a contradiction when youre trying to convince the people that you definately know what youre doing and that its going towards a good place with less autocratic repression tbqh the apparent contradiction comes from a staggered red terror, in my read because of the intervention and civil war, the soviet state incorporated/absorbed much of the previous imperial structure, which is pretty understandable from a survival perspective. War Communism would transform it a lot but the cheka only partially succeeded in the political/administrative fronts from that point of view, the problem was that the red terror was insufficiently destructive, politically speaking. Risking a comparison that may sound very stupid (apologies in advance if it's the case), I would say that the critical phase of the Russian revolutionary period didn't have a resolutive stage like the Convention/Directorate did for France. When Napoleon takes power, France was fundamentally transformed by its revolution. An entirely new political reality was in effect already perhaps exactly because they were informed by history, the bolsheviks didn't want thousands of consecutive snafus with a civil war to win and foreign intervention of all other participants of the world war, so they pardoned and commissioned a lot of people for the Party. Given Lenin's command of history, I think his idea was to clean house once their position was secured and the economic front being good enough. Stalin, once in charge, didn't enjoy Lenin's political advantages and had Trotsky opening an incredibly dangerous flank in a critical period of stabilization, which did make a lot of the problematic elements of the Party position themselves to take advantage from that thus, anyone in the leadership of the union at that point in time would be forced in the role of the axeman if they wanted to preserve it I suppose
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Oct 21, 2021 23:20
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The thing is that tukhachevsky was called a wrecker and his ideas were discarded as junk. Then the STAVKA proceeded to reimplement it after Stalin cooled it a bit and let the generals do their thing.
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Oct 21, 2021 23:22
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Tankbuster posted:The thing is that tukhachevsky was called a wrecker and his ideas were discarded as junk. Then the STAVKA proceeded to reimplement it after Stalin cooled it a bit and let the generals do their thing. no disagreement here, that's a secondary effect specific to the military what I am talking about is the entire political reality of the union of the time, which goes far beyond the army
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Oct 21, 2021 23:56
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dead gay comedy forums posted:tbqh the apparent contradiction comes from a staggered red terror, in my read thank god there zinoviev, kamenev and bukharin were there to sell the revolution to the capitalists and for the liberals to cry crocodile tears about their deaths
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Oct 21, 2021 23:56
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lollontee posted:turning the terror machine on to 11 when you realize youve created a state structure with structural corruption issues seems like a bit of a contradiction when youre trying to convince the people that you definately know what youre doing and that its going towards a good place with less autocratic repression i'd have to do a deep dive into the circumstances. in general i tend to think if i have to be a monster, best be the really scary type that doesn't take the mask off until it's too late to run, though.
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Oct 22, 2021 06:54
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there is, as far as i can tell, no real evidence to suggest that the old bolsheviks were in fact plotting the downfall of the revolutionary government
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Oct 22, 2021 06:58
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yr new gurlfrand! posted:some people are just asking to be purged, how can Stalin have done wrong if it is asked? look, some people need to be purged and you try not to make it that bad and just remove them from power. that's the scariest thing to a liberal so they'll never admit it a distinction between that and a torture death camp. other people need to be whipcrack purged. to each according to their needs! the people's gulags stand ready to punish such miscreants. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 07:02 on Oct 22, 2021 |
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Oct 22, 2021 06:58
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it also bears noting that stalin empowered beria, a complete psycho who really was plotting the downfall of the soviet union once stalin died and he could take over in the form of extensive market reforms, so his grasp of personell politics should not be seen as infallible
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Oct 22, 2021 07:00
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V. Illych L. posted:there is, as far as i can tell, no real evidence to suggest that the old bolsheviks were in fact plotting the downfall of the revolutionary government sorry but I'm afraid this doesn't jibe with the many tweets I have read on this subject
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Oct 22, 2021 07:03
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Ferrinus posted:We live in brutal capitalism, and instead of paying for it, we should brutally use it. The problem isn't some idiot in power giving you money. Take the money! Take the money! But take it without moralistic feelings of guilt. The next day, kill him, and if he says "But I gave you money," tell him, "You idiot, why did you give me the money?"
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Oct 22, 2021 07:21
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V. Illych L. posted:it also bears noting that stalin empowered beria, because he was by many accounts a diligent administrator and manager who was instrumental in increasing industrial productivity during the war
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Oct 22, 2021 07:28
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V. Illych L. posted:it also bears noting that stalin empowered beria, a complete psycho who really was plotting the downfall of the soviet union once stalin died and he could take over in the form of extensive market reforms, so his grasp of personell politics should not be seen as infallible thats the clincher for me. if youre intent on fighting corruption among party ranks, why the flying gently caress would you put someone like beria and his utterly nihilistic goons up to it? i get the argument that the party was a bit hosed when it came to unsuitable new members after the civil war chaos and all that, but i dont think clearing those guys was a the major objective. stalin was an absolute realist when it came to power, and he empowered people who saw the world on the same terms. he was determined to hold on to power, no matter the price other people had to pay for it, for reasons im sure we'll be debating for centuries, but it seems to me with all the completely unjustifiable arrests and executions that occurred regardless of whether you actually were corrupt party official or not, stalin didnt seem to care all that much so long as his orders and economic plans were implemented
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Oct 22, 2021 10:09
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