Comment on Stay Mad
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 5 months agoAnd yet the Soviet economy uplifted hundreds of millions from poverty and built the war machine that was critical in stopping the Nazis. People went from working on tenant farms to living in modern cities with all of the amenities of the time in a single generation, and the first man in space was the son of a farmer! The achievements of the Soviet Union - yes, even the Soviet Union under Stalin - far outstrip its failures and mistakes. I’m partial to Mao’s overall critique of Stalin, that he was 70% good and 30% bad (which also applies to Mao as it turns out), and I feel that Mark Twain’s quote about the French Revolution equally applies to the Russian one.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Belastend@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Once again, i am willing to resort tp violence. but not for party elites. I am still getting the impression that you deem the great Terror to have been necessary. It wasnt. It didnt stomp out the “bourgeoisie”. It murdered old comrades fpr not bowing deep enough. It was the establishment of a cult of personality, in which noone was to critize the dear Leader. Which is eerily similar to Maos switch from “Please critize me and the party, for this is the only way of improving” to “Everyone who ever wrote something bad about the Party, the State or me is a despicable wrecker and needs to be dispatched” within one year.
I believe, that Millions of Non-Russian and Non-Georgians within the Sovietunion would have lived a better life, if the despotism within the Soviet Power Clique had been curbed. Stalins “30%” bad is more than just the Great Terror. Its the deportations and the ethnic cleansing of the new ruling class.
The Fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy to the imperial russian core and its subsequent plundering remains one of the greatest failures of the 20th century, i grant you that.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Repression of the previous ruling class was absolutely necessary, the fact that it went overboard and also targeted comrades is the mistake. If it were possible to have a revolution that made absolutely no mistakes I would sign onto it no question, but I believe that such a thing is idealistic nonsense - and that forswearing all repression of the previous ruling class in order to not accidentally target comrades is far worse, because it takes an essential tool out of the revolutionary’s belt and replaces it with nothing.
Belastend@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Previous Ruling class? The Great Terror almost exclusively killed old comrades. Once again, the 1936 purges did not target the bourgeosie.