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Squalid posted:Even if you think WWI was inevitable it makes a big difference if it happens in 1916 or 1920 instead of 1914. Imagine if Germany had tanks during the first battle of the Marne. tbf, the military innovations in wwi were mostly a product of desparation. all of the great powers expected a short victorious war, not static meatgrinder, and people were still preparing for 19th century military conflicts. like i read the memoir of a white russian cavalryman who was in military school around 1910. he was required to take a course on artillery, and on the first examination he recieved an 'A'. word got around, and the class servant approached him and said "what have you done? you have brought shame to the fighting spirit of your class!" on the next examination, he received a 'D', and showed it to the servant to get an approving smile. he then remarks about how in hindsight, it would have been much better to learn about modern warfare rather than focus on elan.
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Nov 13, 2018 19:59
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evilweasel posted:I'll give this book a read but what I've read in other books on Stalin is a little more nuanced. What other Stalin books have you read? I'd be interested in seeing some alternate hypotheses and analysis on Stalin. I got the same sense you did that the purges weren't really ideological and instead were going after whoever wasn't 100% "loyal" for whatever Stalin's shifting definition of loyal was each day. axeil fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 20:01
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axeil posted:What other Stalin books have you read? I'd be interested in seeing some alternate hypotheses and analysis on Stalin. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar is the one I most recently read and thought was very good.
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Nov 13, 2018 20:04
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axeil posted:What other Stalin books have you read? I'd be interested in seeing some alternate hypotheses and analysis on Stalin. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10554.html https://global.oup.com/academic/product/everyday-stalinism-9780195050011?cc=us&lang=en& https://global.oup.com/academic/product/stalins-peasants-9780195104592?cc=us&lang=en&
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Nov 13, 2018 20:07
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evilweasel posted:Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar is the one I most recently read and thought was very good. Red Tsar is dark comedy
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Nov 13, 2018 20:09
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evilweasel posted:I think you've also got to draw a really important distinction between the toppling of the Czar in favor of a republic, and the Bolshevik seizure of power. I think there's no reason that the Bolsheviks had to take power, but I see no way the Czar was going to keep his throne no matter what happened. It was just too late to transform an absolute monarch into a weak constitutional monarch on the English model; he had to get toppled entirely. To be clear, I was talking about the February Revolution. That said, something closer to the October revolution would have still happened probably happened around 1930 after commodity prices fell threw the floor. I doubt a new regime would have missed the fate of post-NEP USSR as far as trade. As for how much Stalin believed in his own messaging is up for debate, that said the more you get into party documents who can see how mechanical terminology had become and how much it was timed as needed. Honestly I think it was fairly situational until the great purge itself when everything came to ahead. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 20:22
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evilweasel posted:Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar is the one I most recently read and thought was very good. icantfindaname posted:https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10554.html Thanks for this! Court of the Red Tsar looks pretty good.
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Nov 13, 2018 20:24
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GoluboiOgon posted:tbf, the military innovations in wwi were mostly a product of desparation. all of the great powers expected a short victorious war, not static meatgrinder, and people were still preparing for 19th century military conflicts. I think you are wrong about innovation, even if the war certainly accelerated developments on practical military tools. Airplanes and civilian vehicles were rapidly advancing in this period and even relatively short delays in the beginning of the war mean there will be much better equipment getting deployed. It's hard to say what consequence any of this would have on a conflict, and where to even start with larger trends in Russian social and political life, and the continued rapid growth of the Russian economy? With hindsight everything that was, was inevitable. If Kennedy and Krushchev had started WWIII in 1962 I have no doubt we'd all be talking about how inevitable it was that the Cold War went hot. Fortunately things went the other way, but that doesn't mean it had to.
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Nov 13, 2018 20:57
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Squalid posted:With hindsight everything that was, was inevitable. If Kennedy and Krushchev had started WWIII in 1962 I have no doubt we'd all be talking about how inevitable it was that the Cold War went hot. Fortunately things went the other way, but that doesn't mean it had to. I doubt we'd be talking about much of anything had that happened, truth be told. evilweasel posted:I think you've also got to draw a really important distinction between the toppling of the Czar in favor of a republic, and the Bolshevik seizure of power. I think there's no reason that the Bolsheviks had to take power, but I see no way the Czar was going to keep his throne no matter what happened. It was just too late to transform an absolute monarch into a weak constitutional monarch on the English model; he had to get toppled entirely. It's very much a dated view these days, but Massie argues in Nicholas and Alexandra that Russia was prior to about 1911 or so was moving in that direction and while the Tsar didn't like it, he was also too vacillating and weak a figure to oppose it effectively had not crises of the war and his heir's health intervened, and would have probably fit quite well into the role of limited monarchy similar to his uncle in Britain.
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Nov 13, 2018 21:05
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Did Stalin actually have any real friends that weren't hell purged?
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Nov 13, 2018 21:08
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Wistful of Dollars posted:Did Stalin actually have any real friends that weren't hell purged? No, closest I think was Sergei Kirov who got shot stalin by the late 40s- 1950s was super lonely cuz all his social cycle got caught up in the purges, and he was randomly asking his old classmates from his seminary school days to be brought to the kremlin to party with him, he also made everyone in the politburo have dinner parties with him all night long and watch US cowboy movies with. Since those guys had to run the soviet government during the day partying was actually really taxing for them physically. Typo fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 21:17
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Typo posted:No, closest I think was Sergei Kirov who got shot Also his wife had killed herself, one of his sons was a useless drunk, the other had been captured and killed by the Germans, and his relationship with his daughter was somewhat strained. So not a lot of family either.
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Nov 13, 2018 21:23
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evilweasel posted:Also his wife had killed herself, one of his sons was a useless drunk, the other had been captured and killed by the Germans, and his relationship with his daughter was somewhat strained. So not a lot of family either. He never really got over the death of his first wife from typhus in 1907, for that matter.
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Nov 13, 2018 21:38
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It's very much a dated view these days, but Massie argues in Nicholas and Alexandra that Russia was prior to about 1911 or so was moving in that direction and while the Tsar didn't like it, he was also too vacillating and weak a figure to oppose it effectively had not crises of the war and his heir's health intervened, and would have probably fit quite well into the role of limited monarchy similar to his uncle in Britain. I would say the second duma put the kibosh on the endeavor, how do you get a constitutional monarchy without giving the Men/Bolsheviks or the SRs a voice and how do you keep it together if you do? There wasn't a robust middle class to hand political power to, and the only alternative would just be handing power to the military. Squalid posted:I think you are wrong about innovation, even if the war certainly accelerated developments on practical military tools. Airplanes and civilian vehicles were rapidly advancing in this period and even relatively short delays in the beginning of the war mean there will be much better equipment getting deployed. It's hard to say what consequence any of this would have on a conflict, and where to even start with larger trends in Russian social and political life, and the continued rapid growth of the Russian economy? Eh there were some real issues with the Russian economy of the period, they are a bit covered up by the war but in all honesty, late Tsarist Russia would still have the issues of the NEP including something paralleling the price scissor. One thing is while the economy was growing, Russia simply was not technically or industrially competitive. A good example was its oil industry which was already having serious issues before the war, it was actually the Soviets who really rebuilt and modernized it. At a certain point, you have to pencil out the forces at play and see in which direction it was going to likely go (without turning into Turtledove). (Also nukes are very much an all or nothing thing that forced a pull-back.)
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Nov 13, 2018 21:44
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Ardennes posted:I would say the second duma put the kibosh on the endeavor, how do you get a constitutional monarchy without giving the Men/Bolsheviks or the SRs a voice and how do you keep it together if you do? There wasn't a robust middle class to hand political power to, and the only alternative would just be handing power to the military. the imperial russian war economy was terrible in all sectors tho, not just the railroads and oil. at the beginning of 1914, russia was one of the largest food and textile exporters, but that had collapsed by the end of 1914. russia imported most chemicals, processed goods, and tools from germany, and they couldn't effectively import goods from other countries (the railroad to murmansk wasn't finished until 1916, and hostile countries controlled all of the overland routes in europe and the middle east). in 1914, there were even seed shortages, as seeds were imported from germany, supposedly because russian peasants couldn't produce seed mixes that contained the correct plants. russian nationalists also went all in on closing and looting german owned buisnesses, of which there were many in the western empire and spread to even american companies with german sounding names. in addition to the negative growth of civilian industry, the government bought up almost all of the cloth being produced domestically, and focused all of russia's budding industrial production on military uses. as a result, there were massive shortages of finished goods for peasants to buy, so peasants simply kept their grain or fed it to their animals instead, which meant that there was no food in the cities. no food caused the march revolution. imo, if the russian empire had been able to maintain a functioning economy both before and during wwi, there would have been no revolutions. that's kind of the lesson i think, the imperial russian government was simply unable to cope with the modern world. even at peace, the russian empire had constant issues with famine and strikes after 1905. it wouldn't matter exactly who took power in 1905 or march 1917, because none of the factions were willing to make the large structural changes that needed to happen in order to give russia a working economy.
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Nov 13, 2018 23:15
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Ardennes posted:At a certain point, you have to pencil out the forces at play and see in which direction it was going to likely go (without turning into Turtledove). Not really. The forces at play are so complicated and numerous its impossible to make meaningful statements that this or that specific event is inevitable. Change might have been necessary, but there's lots of different ways things can change. Let's pose a theoretical problem. My mother is buying cereal at the corner store, it has only two options: Wheat Os, and Wheat Rings. Both are completely identical except Wheat Rings are 10c or 5% more expensive. Which cereal does she buy? Suppose we ask an economist. Which cereal do we expect people to buy. The economist might say something like "Assuming we are talking about a rational actor with perfect information, the logical decision is that the person will buy the Wheat Os." An empirical economist asked they same question might perform an experiment or collect real field data and conclude "In our observations, the consumer selected the Wheat Os 74.3% of the time. From this we can conclude the typical consumer would be expected to select the Wheat Rings." In this example its easy to conclude which direction the forces pointing. The rational decision is completely clear and measurable. Yet none of this tells us what my mom will actually do. Maybe she just alternates her purchases for variety. We might be able to predict an average outcome, but predicting how any particular scenario will turn out is impossible. If she selects the Wheat Rings, the historians would quickly supply a plethora of explanations for how this seemingly unexpected outcome was actually inevitable. Maybe she forgot her glasses and so couldn't read the prices, making her odds of selecting either close to 50%. Maybe the Wheat Rings were closer to the door, and she simply grabbed the first box she saw. Or she often picks the more expensive of two generic options, on the assumption that it should be better in proportion to its price. In reality the choices are far more complicated. The real world so easily modeled as in Asimov's psychohistory. Human organizations necessarily become more predictable the larger the scale. Rather they often exhibit self-similarity, with the decision-making of entire states controlled by leaders whose whims are no less capricious than the average shopper.
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Nov 13, 2018 23:42
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GoluboiOgon posted:the imperial russian war economy was terrible in all sectors tho, not just the railroads and oil. at the beginning of 1914, russia was one of the largest food and textile exporters, but that had collapsed by the end of 1914. russia imported most chemicals, processed goods, and tools from germany, and they couldn't effectively import goods from other countries (the railroad to murmansk wasn't finished until 1916, and hostile countries controlled all of the overland routes in europe and the middle east). in 1914, there were even seed shortages, as seeds were imported from germany, supposedly because russian peasants couldn't produce seed mixes that contained the correct plants. russian nationalists also went all in on closing and looting german owned buisnesses, of which there were many in the western empire and spread to even american companies with german sounding names. To add to this, no less a figure than Rasputin wrote to the Tsar more than once to urge him to cancel civilian rail travel to allow greater food and fuel transportation and distribution, particularly during the winter months.
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Nov 13, 2018 23:48
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GoluboiOgon posted:the imperial russian war economy was terrible in all sectors tho, not just the railroads and oil. at the beginning of 1914, russia was one of the largest food and textile exporters, but that had collapsed by the end of 1914. russia imported most chemicals, processed goods, and tools from germany, and they couldn't effectively import goods from other countries (the railroad to murmansk wasn't finished until 1916, and hostile countries controlled all of the overland routes in europe and the middle east). in 1914, there were even seed shortages, as seeds were imported from germany, supposedly because russian peasants couldn't produce seed mixes that contained the correct plants. russian nationalists also went all in on closing and looting german owned buisnesses, of which there were many in the western empire and spread to even american companies with german sounding names. I the way would say it as it was very import-dependent and that made it extremely vulnerable to shocks. The relative growth of the Russian economy was hidden by the fact it was so uncompetitive otherwise, and that at a certain point this was going to cause balance crisis. The war force the situation by cutting imports directly and starting the crisis then and there but there would absolutely reach a point where Russia would continue draining capital as its industries simply couldn't compete with its more technologically advanced rivals. It is probably would happen because it is the exact situation the Soviets would face only a few years later. quote:imo, if the russian empire had been able to maintain a functioning economy both before and during wwi, there would have been no revolutions. that's kind of the lesson i think, the imperial russian government was simply unable to cope with the modern world. even at peace, the russian empire had constant issues with famine and strikes after 1905. it wouldn't matter exactly who took power in 1905 or march 1917, because none of the factions were willing to make the large structural changes that needed to happen in order to give russia a working economy. A lot of it is simply timing and how serfdom ended, Alexander the Second clearly lost interest in reform during the later part of his reign at a critical juncture when the second wave of industrialization was hitting the US and Central Europe. By the 1890s when Russian industrialization started to progress, they were already behind and events like the Russo-Japanese war and the 1905 revolution and its aftermath absolutely certainly delayed development. Btw, the oil industry if anything was a lost opportunity, if anything it was an industry Russia had excelled at early as the 1870s but was simply felt to gradually wither on the vine. Obviously, oil has its own issues, but the industry in Azerbaijan kind of gives you a glimpse of why industrialization was such a mess to begin with. On one hand the state largely refrained from investment, but nevertheless constantly dithered on the issues of leasing and taxes which created a bunch of chaos while at the same time both political and ethnic radicalization was being super-charged. Admittedly, it was one industry but honestly could have been one where Russia could have theoretically competed at a world stage beyond grain. (Also, industrialized states were probably going to protect their local textile industries so it wasn't much of a route.) The question is how does a country like Russia with domestic-focused industry and largely commodity exports at a time relatively high protectionism actually starts with the rest of the world? (Btw, the post-world war 2 period isn't very useful here because it is a completely different geopolitical and trade environment.) Squalid posted:Not really. The forces at play are so complicated and numerous its impossible to make meaningful statements that this or that specific event is inevitable. Change might have been necessary, but there's lots of different ways things can change. If you want to say it wasn't inevitable, because nothing is inevitable, fine, but we should probably firmly tack down how unlikely the alternative result was going to be. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 23:51
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There is a strong argument to made that eventually a massive economic crisis would have caused a political crisis that the Tsar migth not survive. But dealing with a domestic crisis in a time of peace when the Tsar presumably still commands the loyalty of the armed forces is a completely different thing to what happened in 1917. Is not possible that Nicholas could have suppressed any unrest with enough brute military force? Or things might take a different turn if he had allowed the Duma more influence over his government . Russia is still a mess but now he can say" You little father was deceived by the politicians/jews, if only i had known".The only reason that did not work in 1917 was because he had taken up command of the army himself and dismissed the Duma. There was no one else to shift to blame towards no one but the royal family itself who could play the part of the backstabber that prevented victory. He had made himself impossible not to hate.
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Nov 14, 2018 00:24
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Baudolino posted:There is a strong argument to made that eventually a massive economic crisis would have caused a political crisis that the Tsar migth not survive. But dealing with a domestic crisis in a time of peace when the Tsar presumably still commands the loyalty of the armed forces is a completely different thing to what happened in 1917. Is not possible that Nicholas could have suppressed any unrest with enough brute military force? Or things might take a different turn if he had allowed the Duma more influence over his government . Russia is still a mess but now he can say" You little father was deceived by the politicians/jews, if only i had known".The only reason that did not work in 1917 was because he had taken up command of the army himself and dismissed the Duma. There was no one else to shift to blame towards no one but the royal family itself who could play the part of the backstabber that prevented victory. He had made himself impossible not to hate. this is basically what happened in 1905, the tsar was able to make concessions, then mostly revoked them and cracked down hard on anyone who dissented. the regime survived, but only barely. bloody sunday (where a pro-tsarist demonstration led by a police informant was murdered by the tsarist police) was really the nail in the coffin for the tsar's public opinion, and all of the shellings of rebellious city blocks and pogroms did nothing further to endear the tsar to the people. the attempts to stir up ethnic hatred (this is when the protocols of elders of zion were forged) were as effective in promoting anti-russian nationalism among eastern europeans as they were in dividing revolutionaries. i don't think that this would have worked in a hypothetical economic crisis. the reason the march revolution wasn't put down wasn't that the tsarist government tolerated it; most of the troops were simply unwilling to fire on unarmed crowds, and disobeyed orders to shoot to kill. 1905 destroyed the image of the government (not that it was beloved beforehand), and planted the seeds of revolution, which were waiting for any crisis to grow.
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Nov 14, 2018 01:28
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Btw, I updated the op, I am going to allow discussion of modern-day Russia and topics related to it with key expectations, the Mueller case and gbs type of material.
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Nov 14, 2018 07:17
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I would hope so given that this thread is in D&D rather than A&T. I'm curious what the current domestic political landscape is like. How and why does Putin stay in power? On a lighter note I'm almost done with Anna Karenina and I was wondering. Am I supposed to want to punch half these people in the face? It's filled with rich people angsting about how they can't have literally everything they want when peasants are standing around everywhere toiling in poverty. Is Tolstoy actually hot poo poo with typical Russians or is he just the guy you have to read for lit class?
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Nov 14, 2018 10:14
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Some Guy TT posted:I would hope so given that this thread is in D&D rather than A&T. I'm curious what the current domestic political landscape is like. How and why does Putin stay in power? Btw to be clear, I am not Russian even if I live there. A lack of options, and it isn't really just the suppression of opposition and violence, there is just a huge ideological gap in the Russian political landscape a the moment. Most Russians I talk to I get the same answer (they desperately want their pensions back, more basic domestic spending, have continued wariness of the West), but it usually comes to the same answer, there is no way to get rid of "this guy" without chaos and foreign intervention and even if they did no one knows who they could put in his place. So the answer is to either get another drink or switch the topic of conservation. He fills a void, someone has to lead the country. quote:On a lighter note I'm almost done with Anna Karenina and I was wondering. Am I supposed to want to punch half these people in the face? It's filled with rich people angsting about how they can't have literally everything they want when peasants are standing around everywhere toiling in poverty. Is Tolstoy actually hot poo poo with typical Russians or is he just the guy you have to read for lit class? Granted, it was arguably intentional on part of the Tolstoy, he had a long-standing belief in what could be term a form of peasant communalism, the fated nature of history, and the relatively small place of single individuals in it. As far his focus on the aristocracy being annoying, arguably it is so, but it is perhaps useful to dig a little extra on some of the subtext of the book. He is still taught in Russian schools but perhaps doesn't have the special status of Western countries. This is in contrast to Pushkin.
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Nov 14, 2018 12:05
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Ardennes posted:Btw to be clear, I am not Russian even if I live there. Or leave it seems. I've read some articles in various newspapers, so might be taken with a grain of salt, that something like more than one third of Russians aged below 35 or so want to just straight up leave the country. Anyway, do you know anything about environmental issues in the Soviet Union (post-Soviet Russia would also do, but alot of it seems to stem back to practices and policies of the Soviet era)? I know a little bit from some cursory reading and the general public knowledge of things such Chernobyl, the Aral Sea and the issues with the wrecks of old nuclear submarines that no one knows what to do with up in Arkhangelsk and/or Murmansk (can't quite remember of the top of my head). Generally it seems like the Soviet Union had a pretty dire environmental record, particularly in more peripheral non-Russian regions such as Central Asia, where mismanaged agricultural and irrigation projects have done alot of harm to local ecosystems and agriculture (as many of those projects, introducing cash crops to replace traditional crops for instance IIRC, didn't quite work out and were introduced, proved to be disappointing and then abandoned with little done to help make the transition back again). So yeah, do you know or have access to stuff about this? It's of some interest to me, even if it is generally depressing. Do you know anything about the institutional structures that allowed this to happen again and again? I've seen it suggested that a factor was officials and functionaries having alot of expectations to meet plan quotas from the top, limited resources to work with and pretty much no accountability to or meaningful pressure from the local population, which caused alot of corners to be cut, particularly as regards environmental concerns, in order to meet targets and complete projects on time (at least on paper).
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Nov 14, 2018 12:42
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Ardennes posted:Granted, it was arguably intentional on part of the Tolstoy, he had a long-standing belief in what could be term a form of peasant communalism, the fated nature of history, and the relatively small place of single individuals in it. As far his focus on the aristocracy being annoying, arguably it is so, but it is perhaps useful to dig a little extra on some of the subtext of the book. Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. I was legitimately really surprised to see peasants in the book at all. As far as I can recall no similar English language high society books deal with the lower classes whatsoever. It added a real dark subtext to all the constant fetishism of European culture. I kept wondering if one of the things the characters were yearning for but were unwilling to explicitly admit was a lifestyle where they could remain filthy rich without ever actually having to see or deal with the land management which is where all their money comes from. Well that and their cushy jobs which have no apparent responsibilities. I was wondering at a lot of the political subtext. The scene where Levin participates in a convention without having the slightest idea what's going on or what the difference between the candidates is was an obvious one. But I also wondered what was going on with a late scene where Stephan asks Alexei for a recommendation to some sort of railroad position which pays a lot more than he does right now but where the only apparent qualification is having an "honest" reputation (emphasis Tolstoy's not mine). Alexei bristles at the idea entirely because the job sounds like a made-up position that adds no actual value, exactly the kind of thing he's been trying to legislative out of existence except that by this point Alexei has no real political power anymore. The whole thing sounds like an obvious metaphor for some really bad decisions in Russia's political culture in the 1870s. But since I only have the faintest outline of Russian history in my head, I couldn't figure out what.
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Nov 14, 2018 12:52
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Some Guy TT posted:Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. I was legitimately really surprised to see peasants in the book at all. As far as I can recall no similar English language high society books deal with the lower classes whatsoever. It added a real dark subtext to all the constant fetishism of European culture. I kept wondering if one of the things the characters were yearning for but were unwilling to explicitly admit was a lifestyle where they could remain filthy rich without ever actually having to see or deal with the land management which is where all their money comes from. The cushy jobs specifically is a reference to the post-Serfdom period of the 1870s when a Zemstvo (basically a basic form of rural government) was formed and staffed by basically well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) young men from the lower nobility that had no idea what they were doing. My interpretation is that Tolstoy saw this as missing an honest chance for reform and advancement of rural Russia, and it is a pointed criticism of the period he is writing (1878) You could also say that mixed successes of reform of period would have an impact by eventually inciting the reaction of movements like the SRs. Tolstoy, a pacifist, genuinely believe the "soul of Russia" lived in its villages. Randarkman posted:Or leave it seems. I've read some articles in various newspapers, so might be taken with a grain of salt, that something like more than one third of Russians aged below 35 or so want to just straight up leave the country. No doubt many want to leave, but at the same time, it is pretty unlikely due to how visa standards have tightened up. Also, the mindset of the US specifically as the "land of opportunity" still very much exists but I wonder for how long that will last. Russians who lived in the states I know have a mixed experience usually correlating with the pay they were getting. Well depends if you are asking on works on specific subjects (the aral sea is one in itself) or broader Soviet environmental history, as far as bibliography goes. That said, as far as institutional structures, it is honestly most about cost-cutting and raw economics. As far as the Soviets go, they often knew the consequences for actions but went through with it anything since they believed x needed to happen for y. Also, part of this is simply that the Soviet Union through the post-war period in many ways was more of a developing country than it was developed, and therefore specifically industrial damage came with it, but obviously the relative lack of public input helped but we also shouldn't shy anyway from the open damage that was happening in the liberal democracies of the post-war period either. The Aral Sea specifically was both drained because the Soviets were prioritizing cotton production to offset imports, but also due ot the fact that the Central Asian nations after 1991 essentially had very few other exports and honestly would have faced economic catastrophe otherwise. In comparison, Chernobyl was mostly due to reckless corner cutting to build plants as cheaply as possible using out of date technology, even for the period. As far as something like the Kursk disaster, the Russian navy was imploding and even today isn't really in especially good shape. (They didn't ask for help due to simply fear (or paranoia) of Western re-engineering. The Oscar II class was still relatively new at the time of the disaster, and the Kursk had been commissioned only 6 years prior to the disaster. (But that is another subject I guess).
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Nov 14, 2018 13:44
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Ardennes posted:That said, as far as institutional structures, it is honestly most about cost-cutting and raw economics. As far as the Soviets go, they often knew the consequences for actions but went through with it anything since they believed x needed to happen for y. Also, part of this is simply that the Soviet Union through the post-war period in many ways was more of a developing country than it was developed, and therefore specifically industrial damage came with it, but obviously the relative lack of public input helped but we also shouldn't shy anyway from the open damage that was happening in the liberal democracies of the post-war period either. So in many ways the same story as in Western countries in general. In that environmental concerns are known but are ignored or hushed down in order to cut down on costs and open more areas to exploitation and development and generate higher profits. The difference then being mostly one of means and technology which meant that in the Soviet system corners might be cut even more ruthlessly and more low-tech methods employed that were more open to cause damage and to outright failure? Here's another question also mostly about the Soviet Union, but of a more political nature rather than economic/environmental. In the past during Russian elections I've read some up about the various parties in the Duma, and one that kind of interests me are the communists. What's kind of interesting about them is that they seem to be quite socially conservative, being supportive of Putin's clamp down on gay rights and expression and I also think I've read something about them being quite close to the Orthodox Church actually. Now I realize the present day communist party doesn't have a direct link to the old ruling communist party (right?) and that they are probably influenced in their politics by mostly being supported by the elderly (and also because any party in the Duma essentially has to be okay by Putin), what I'm wondering is if the communist party of the Soviet Union, and Soviet society in general maybe, also displayed alot of this social conservatism that the present day Russian communist party seems to be championing (I think they are also pretty big on Russian nationalism and the military)? It wouldn't really surprise me given how much of an old man's club the Soviet Union grew to become.
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Nov 14, 2018 14:14
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Randarkman posted:So in many ways the same story as in Western countries in general. In that environmental concerns are known but are ignored or hushed down in order to cut down on costs and open more areas to exploitation and development and generate higher profits. The difference then being mostly one of means and technology which meant that in the Soviet system corners might be cut even more ruthlessly and more low-tech methods employed that were more open to cause damage and to outright failure? Essentially, a big issue is simply that the Soviets, even by the 1980s desperate to import what technology they could from the West. However, by the that point they simply ran out of cash. It is also why the Soviet Union is usually labeled as "state capitalist" by often reality is more complicated than what labels are applied to it. quote:Here's another question also mostly about the Soviet Union, but of a more political nature rather than economic/environmental. In the past during Russian elections I've read some up about the various parties in the Duma, and one that kind of interests me are the communists. What's kind of interesting about them is that they seem to be quite socially conservative, being supportive of Putin's clamp down on gay rights and expression and I also think I've read something about them being quite close to the Orthodox Church actually. Now I realize the present day communist party doesn't have a direct link to the old ruling communist party (right?) and that they are probably influenced in their politics by mostly being supported by the elderly (and also because any party in the Duma essentially has to be okay by Putin), what I'm wondering is if the communist party of the Soviet Union, and Soviet society in general maybe, also displayed alot of this social conservatism that the present day Russian communist party seems to be championing (I think they are also pretty big on Russian nationalism and the military)? It wouldn't really surprise me given how much of an old man's club the Soviet Union grew to become. Part of it is simply that Russia generally was pretty socially conservative outside the intelligentsia in the two big cities, and generally, politics followed that. The Communist Party of today, is technically still the same communist party, it just that under Zyuganov it moved much more to a cowed-nationalist position and gave up any real attempt at being revolutionary or even very reformist. If anything they occupy one of the few gaps in political discourse that could off real resistance (economic populism would essentially go off like jet fuel in present-day Russia.) That said, it was the largest party to openly oppose pension reforms, and there is actually a young militant faction that is gaining strength in Komsomol (yes it still exist). As far as the church, United Russia and the president are an obviously a lot closer although militant atheism among the KPRF is a thing of the past. I have been hearing a lot more grumbling about the Church more recently, and I think faith among young people has been seriously slipping.
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Nov 14, 2018 14:25
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Some Guy TT posted:On a lighter note I'm almost done with Anna Karenina and I was wondering. Am I supposed to want to punch half these people in the face? It's filled with rich people angsting about how they can't have literally everything they want when peasants are standing around everywhere toiling in poverty. Is Tolstoy actually hot poo poo with typical Russians or is he just the guy you have to read for lit class? wanting to punch the russian upper classes in the face was a common response to meeting them. tolstoy was quite popular during his lifetime as a religious figure who called for a return to traditional peasant values. he ended up being included in the soviet cannon of authors, and many people still revere him, but i think the younger generations in russia (like america) don't have the patience for 500 page books with long rants about how everyone must live like a peasant to be moral. tolstoy was also notable for being a massive piece of poo poo towards his family. he got so angry at his wife that he wrote "the kreutzer sonata", a novel about a man who kills his wife because women are laviscuous seducers who fall prey to the evil temptations of classical music. this book was filled with auto-biographical incidents, such as when the main character gave his wife his diary (full of encounters with prostitutes) on their wedding night. his wife was his editior, so she was forced to copy-edit a book that fantasized about her own murder and ends by forgiving the murderer. late 19th century literature is actually full of descriptions of the lower class. charles dicken, les miserables, zola, etc. most of their perspectives were very distorted by the authors being from the upper class, as is tolsoi's.
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Nov 14, 2018 16:37
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Ardennes posted:Btw to be clear, I am not Russian even if I live there. I recently read Shaun Walker's recent book The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past which argues, among other things, that a lot of how Putin solidified his base among the people was in redeveloping/reviving the mythology of the Great Patriotic War.
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Nov 14, 2018 17:19
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So would it be fair to consider soviet Russia a type of mega corporation that had to pay lip service to socialism?
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Nov 14, 2018 21:12
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drilldo squirt posted:So would it be fair to consider soviet Russia a type of mega corporation that had to pay lip service to socialism? you mean state capitalism?
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Nov 14, 2018 21:15
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That's the Trotskyist view, yes. Personally I think it's sort of absurd
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Nov 14, 2018 21:21
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I'd call it what it was. A one-party Socialist state. One-party in the sense that there was little real distinction between government and party bureaucracy and that the party controlled or pervaded many aspects of life, from industrial management to education and trade unions. And socialist because that was the ideology of the ruling party. Of course reality likely is a bit more complex than placing it in such a neat category. One thing that particularly complicates matters is the importance and influence of the armed forces. Which, though it was subordinated to the state and thus the party, wasn't part of the same party bureaucracy, with the size of the military sector and the extreme prestige the armed forces enjoyed as a result of WWII it does bear mentioning and I would be fascinated to read or listen to something which looked at the social and political role played by the armed forces and related military sectors of the economy (saying this this in because in all IIRC, during the high point of Soviet military spending and strength, or at least size, under Brezhnev something close to 20 or 25% of the population of the Soviet Union was employed in some way connected to the armed forces, directly serving, working in military production and research, etc) in the post-WWII USSR.
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Nov 14, 2018 22:47
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I recently read Shaun Walker's recent book The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past which argues, among other things, that a lot of how Putin solidified his base among the people was in redeveloping/reviving the mythology of the Great Patriotic War. It is common, especially recently, but also that often other parts of Russian history are accessed through the war. For example, there was an event on Red Square to celebrate the October Revolution, but celebrate it as it was celebrated in 1941. The October Revolution is essentially only publically celebrated as it forms a niche in the greater mythology of the Great Patriotic War. drilldo squirt posted:So would it be fair to consider soviet Russia a type of mega corporation that had to pay lip service to socialism? I wouldn't actually say that. One misconception that is common in the West is that the needs of common people were entirely disregarded at all times, which is actually patently not true. During the post-war period especially there was a genuine attempt to improve living standards and across the 1950s to the early 1980s, Soviet standards of living were improving and there was care to try to improve things, it is just Soviet standards never converged with the West (GDP per Capita was always around 30-40% of the US).
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Nov 15, 2018 07:30
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Typo posted:you mean state capitalism? I guess, but it's all one corporation.
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Nov 15, 2018 08:14
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Ardennes posted:During the post-war period especially there was a genuine attempt to improve living standards and across the 1950s to the early 1980s, Soviet standards of living were improving and there was care to try to improve things, it is just Soviet standards never converged with the West (GDP per Capita was always around 30-40% of the US). Why precisely was this?
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Nov 15, 2018 12:52
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Lightning Knight posted:Why precisely was this? It is a bit debatable. One thing you need to remember that directly after the war, that Soviet GDP per capita was very low. The Soviet Union had experienced a tremendous amount of damage but it was during the 1950s and early 1960s that the country experienced a tremendous amount of growth, comparable to China during the 2000s. During the late 1960s, under Brezhnev, growth started to slow down and by the 1970s growth was around that of Western countries. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union in most realistic senses was in a recession if not depression and things dropped farther during the 1990s. Basically, since around 1970, SU/Russia has experienced a relatively dramatic turn of fortune. The question is why and how it happened.
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Nov 15, 2018 13:04
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Ardennes posted:Basically, since around 1970, SU/Russia has experienced a relatively dramatic turn of fortune. The question is why and how it happened. Could excessive military spending (relative to the country of course, the Soviets couldn't really approach the spending in the US) have someting to do with it? Wasnt military spending and eventually economic stagnation kind of one the hallmarks of Brezhnev's reign, as well as turning back the clock on many of Khruschev's reforms as regards political liberalization. Lightning Knight posted:Interesting! I've seen it argued that Kruschev (spelling?) was on track to set the Soviet Union on a path of continued modernization and then when he was deposed and Brezhnev took over, things went badly under his more conservative leadership, does this hold water or is it an oversimplification? I think one of the things that felled Khruschev together with Brezhnev and his faction rallying party conservatives and military hardliners against him, was the relative failure of many of his reforms and policies, particularly in agriculture, which hurt his standing and popularity enough for them to move against him. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 15, 2018 13:10
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Ardennes posted:Basically, since around 1970, SU/Russia has experienced a relatively dramatic turn of fortune. The question is why and how it happened. Interesting! I've seen it argued that Kruschev (spelling?) was on track to set the Soviet Union on a path of continued modernization and then when he was deposed and Brezhnev took over, things went badly under his more conservative leadership, does this hold water or is it an oversimplification?
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Nov 15, 2018 13:21
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