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Slavvy posted:Anime Napoleon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-cbq3IAiEI From what I hear its pretty good at depicting some of the chaos and politics of the time, albeit with a Chinese spin
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Mar 3, 2024 10:32
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:If people want to continue the discussion from the Ukraine thread regarding the effectiveness of purges (and particularly the late 30s mass trials) and the relation to the fall of the USSR, I am really interested in that. The fall of USSR was always downstream from Khruschev's nonsense. You can argue that the rise of Khruschev was because of the purges, but ultimately he was more responsibile for accelerating the bureaucratization of the KPSU and depriving it of the influx of future talent. Destroying the ideological base also kind of destroyed a lot of the groundside motivation to expand the means of production from the people, because of the contradiction between the Party and People. Enrollment in Brezhnev and Gorbachev's time was especially dire, and its also why people like Putin (who came from a family of royalists who were playing the long game hoping for the Tsar's return) were able to rise up very highly in the state apparatus. You should also read Losurdo's Stalin, because the 'historical consensus' that vyelkin mentions is total bumpkis. The entire thrust of western historical analysis of the USSR has been to drag Stalin under the mud as much as possible to blunt communism as much as possible as well as for the use for atrocity propaganda. The 'Great Purge' was a far more complicated/nuanced affair than one thinks, and Losurdo is the best place to start. One thing is that you shouldn't be is 'pro-/anti-purge'. Historical materialism means understanding that certain things happen because of certain conditions and certain tools that were only possible at the time. The Great Purge happened for reasons that were relevant in the 1920-30s. Yes, enforcement of party discipline are always going to be something one has to do as hypothetical leader of any organization, but that doesn't mean you would be doing it the same way or with the same means as the USSR in 1930. Iriscoral has issued a correction as of 09:36 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 09:33
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Joe Chip posted:On the topic of purges and the historiography of actually existing Communism: I've been reading The Three-Body Problem and the parts that take place during the Cultural Revolution seem to be critical of the actions of the Communists. I only have a vague, possibly incorrect understanding of the Cultural Revolution, that it was hardcore Communist youth groups denouncing/killing/imprisoning/exiling alleged counter-revolutionaries that the party eventually had to reign in. Is there a good history of the Cultural Revolution that isn't explicitly anti-Communist and, while I understand this is probably harder to get (especially in English), is there any information on what modern Chinese people and historians think about it? Liu Cixin's not a communist, and a lot of his writing is written from a very technocratic prespective, so its not surprising that he implicitly lamppoons the CR - for the modern intellectuals of China, especially those living in the coastal cities the CR is a bit of inconvienient truth to deal with. Iriscoral has issued a correction as of 09:58 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 09:55
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