And, of course, the Communists, much like the Nazis, have their psuedo-scientific doctrine ‘proving’ that the people they killed were objectively hostile and that the deaths were historically inevitable. Even if Jews or kulaks didn’t resist or plan on resisting, they must be cleansed before we can reach our utopia. And, at any rate, their deaths were inevitable, so we didn’t do anything that wasn’t going to happen anyway.
We didn’t kill them!
And if we did, they were our enemies even if they didn’t know it! So we were justified in killing them before they realized they were our enemies!
They WERE the locals. What they were trying to “tame” was the counter-revolutionary forces, armed by 14 capitalist states.
OK, it appears that nobody is able to back up the claim that Lenin was a mass murderer.
Let’s try this one more time…
I don’t consider any of the deaths caused during the civil war to be murders committed by Lenin (or the Bolsheviks). There are many things that are intentionally confused here, namely the numbers, the responsibility and the culpability.
There is obviously no question that the Bolsheviks killed plenty of people in the Civil War. It was a war, not a sunday picnic. And, there is also no question that many died as a result of starvation. My contentions are these: (1) Every death from the civil war, including the famine, is ultimately the result of the intervention of the imperialists, who, not content with the bloodbath of WWI, were intent on destroying Soviet Russia, (2) None of the killings the Bolsheviks were compelled to do can be considered “murder.”
And one more thing, it is evident that nobody here knows what the Red Terror was.
I am happy to engage in a debate over anarchism, but it would probably take this thread way off-topic. Why don’t you start a new thread, perhaps on “anarchism vs. Marxism.” I’ll leave you with just a few things to think about. I wrote a little article on the anti-communism of Noam Chomsky here, that deals briefly with anarchism in the section on “The class nature of Chomsky’s world-view.” You might want to take a look at it. You also might want to be a bit careful about the people you hold up as anarchist leaders. For example, Proudhon was a virulent mysoginist who supported the south in the American Civil War; Emma Goldman and Makhno worked against the Soviets when they were fighting for their lives; Makhno himself was an anti-semite; Kropotkin was a virulent war-monger during WWI, arguing for the “defense” of “democratic” England; the anarchists in Spain sold out the workers, crucially in battle in Barcelona in 1937, and so on. Anarchism has a nice little safety valve to explain every betrayal, but you should really look a bit deeper if you are under the misconception that it represents a revolutionary alternative to Marxism.
Actually, that isn’t the root of my fear of revolutionary Marxism. My fear is that I’ll become collateral damage, or one of those who falls into the category of
It’ll be nice to know that once I’m liquidated that I was not, in fact “murdered.” Regarding the Red Terror, there’s a brief summary of it here, though I gather that it is just more lies of the bourgeois academia. On the site there is this from the newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta announcing the start of the Red Terror on 1 Sep 1918:
Additionally there is this from that lovely individual Felix Dzerzhinsky who was appointed to head the Cheka by Lenin:
Quite an impressive judicial system, though somehow I doubt it was as efficient at uncovering truth as Dzerzhinsky says it was.
Sandino is simply proving his point about Marxism. This isn’t a democracy you know. Who cares if the majority of posters to this thread DO accept the numbers in light of the lack of any counter numbers…Sandino says its been proved that nobody can back up the claim about Lenin, so there for it has been. And if you don’t go along, you will be shot.
Its obvious that you,Sandino, are not going to be swayed by the facts, nor are you going to provide anything substantial of your own facts wise to prove a counter claim…you are simply going to ignore what has been presented as ‘wrong’ without presenting any counter number or facts of your own…then you have the nerve to get frustrated when no one just believes you, 'cause you said so. :wally
Basically its pointless to continue this…its exactly like trying to convince a flat earther that the world is a sphere or a creationist that evolution took place…though I have to say in THEIR defense that at least they TRY and present something…even if it is wrong.
Sandino is engaging in something that is morally equivalent to Holocaust denial.
And the Bolsheviks were forced to do some killing? Geez, this guy has to be joking, no one could actually think this way, could they? Kill people whose only crime is not wanting to become Borgs?
It’s a real testament to liberal democracy that we let an admitted plotter of violence to keep speaking freely. OTOH, any time you find yourself wanting to kill to make things better, it’s time to take personal stock of where you are in your life.
If you read Russian and have a Cyrillic keyboard, have at it. Otherwise, your conspiracy theories about that quote just sound like the ravings of a true believer prepared to kill for his faith.
OK, first to the question by xtisme and El_Kabong as to which figures I think are overinflated. As I said in my original analysis, the figure of 4 million seems to be coming from the high-end total estimate of people killed as a result of the Red Terror. That high-end estimate uses figures provided by the White general Denikin. Of course, being fanatically opposed to the October revolution is not enough to discount the figures, but there are other factors at play here. Most of the other sources seem to apply to Russia as a whole and are nowhere near as high; Denikin’s figure of 1.7 million is for South Russia only. It stands to reason, I should think, that if Denikin’s figures were accurate, the other sources’ estimates for all of Russia should be higher than that 1.7 million figure. What we have, then, is a serious warning sign that the figure used is way off base and should probably be discounted. Which still leaves us with two figures - the low and middle estimates - to use, and there seems to be no real reason to discount either of them, unless you want to apply the same standard for the middle estimate because it takes Denikin’s figure into account there, as well.
I’m not trying to dismiss Rummell’s numbers out of hand; clearly the man has done some serious and commendable research. But I think there’s good reason to reject some of the figures. Are you following my thinking here?
I wrote extensively on this subject back in February, which IIRC is before you registered on the boards; here’s a link to the post in question to help you orient yourself to my position. In short, I neither hold up nor defend those countries you mentioned as examples of workers’ states or as examples of communism in practice.
Not so. The civil wars in Russia and Paris occurred after the seizure of power by the working class. As for the democide argument, it’s pretty clear even from Rummell’s figures that far more people died from other causes, such as war and famine, that cannot be directly ascribed to the Bolsheviks. Furthermore, it would only really be possible to explicitly link a program of democide to a Communist agenda under circumstances where those were the only deaths occurring. It is more likely that what terror did occur was because of the exigencies of the civil war and the need to defend the revolution from enemies determined only to crush it.
Olentzero, all I’ve been asking for is ANY counter numbers. 4 million is indeed incorrect, as the mean number was 3.2 million. How accurate is it? God only knows…I sure don’t. I assume it REASONABLY accurate, within some specific margin of error, but I have no idea.
From Olentzero
Do you have a cite that Denikin is where the numbers came from? Was it in Rummell’s figures and I just missed it? I definitely conceed that the numbers could have been inflated (to what degree I have no idea), though I also have to point out that all this is mere speculation on your part…unless you have some counter numbers to present. I would be VERY interested in seeing them, as I’ve been asking for them for two pages now of Sandino.
I was using mostly the middle number in my earlier posts. The high number was 8.122 million from line 195. This number I definitely think a good case could be made for inflation of figures. THe low number from the same line was 832k btw. Even taking just the low number, its still an aweful lot of folks, though I wouldn’t used either the high or low number without something further to back up ANY of these numbers from a separate source.
From Olentzero
Definitely following you here. Unfortunately for the thread, these are the ONLY hard numbers we’ve been presented with. It would be nice to have some counter numbers to compare as well as other hard data. Lacking that, we should probably provisionally accept the numbers with the range as somewhere between 832k and 8.122 million, with the reality falling SOMEWHERE inbetween. Again, unless we get some better or at least counter data.
The rest of your post deals with other things, so I’ll leave off that for now while I read through your link and see what its about. I might pop back in if this thread heats up again and some interesting things shake out.
Line 65, under Notes: “low is official and excludes Cheka units; high is from Denikin and is for South Russia.” The work cited is by Stewart; it should be easily identifiable from the sources Rummell lists elsewhere on his website. Line 62 gives the 1.7m estimate again, this time with the cite directly from Denikin, and the note “from the Special Judiciary Commission of Inquiry into Bolshevist atrocities”.
Again, I’m not trying to dismiss all of Rummell’s research out of hand. I just think his high-end estimate relies on totally suspect data, and a more realistic estimate would probably be the low-end one, since even the middle estimate relies on Denikin’s figures from line 62. The man’s done some research, and from sources published within the USSR by the Soviet government itself. I got no reason to suspect he’s a total liar.
Rummell uses a ton of sources - he provides cites and notes for pretty much all the numbers he uses.
I don’t think we’re going to find it. It’s crystal clear that Rummell isn’t pulling these numbers out of thin air; he’s using contemporary sources to present his data. You’re certainly correct in not uncritically accepting the numbers out of hand, but there comes a point where the data proves itself to hold up under criticism, and for me Rummell’s figures have done that in spades.
Doh! I totally missed that Olentzero. On my computer when I expand the Rummell’s figures it blurs the text somewhat to the right of the screen…totally missed that.
I’d still like to see other sources, as I’m ALWAY highly critical of such things, or at least see what his own margin of error for the numbers is, but as you say…its the best we have so far.
What I’d really like is for Sandino to provide counter numbers from whatever sources he’s looking at to dispute all this…if he’s looking at anything factual at all. I think it would be a big help if he actually ponied up some numbers to support his various positions.
Just popping in to let people know that I am not abandoning this thread. It will not be until tomorrow night that I will be able to make a full reply, but I wanted to make sure that people understand where I am coming from.
Lenin was not a mass murderer, nor was he a murderer. In fact, he was a champion not just of the workers, but of all the oppressed. That is why he is so hated by the western bourgeoisie. None of the killings during the civil war can be construed as crimes committed by the Bolsheviks. EVERY SINGLE drop of blood spilt during the Russian Civil War is the result of the counter-revolution, which wouldn’t have lasted two weeks without massive assistance from the western “democracies.”
The Bolsheviks were not pacifists, to be sure. They were fully in favor of defending the new republic against the vicious attack which had as its objective the re-instatement of the monarchy, the return of the lands to the landlords, and the return of the industry into the hands of the previous private owners. The measures taken by the Bolsheviks were necessary in order to defend the state.
Of course, that is the real crime, wasn’t it? The rage of anticommunists at the Bolsheviks is not over “mass murder”–a ludicrous charge in the context of civil war–but precisely because the soviet workers fought with arms in hand to defend their state. Every pacifist agrees with the rulers of the world on this basic premise: violence is to be abhorred, especially when it is done by the oppressed against their oppressors.
At any rate, what I was hoping was that somebody could give an argument, as I said before, for why Lenin should be considered a mass murderer. In other words, why should the measures taken by the Bolsheviks during the civil war be considered specifically as crimes (I mean, apart from the “crime” of self-defense)?
Here is the full text of a letter Lenin sent, ordering the mass murder of Kulaks. Last year I posted a link to a photo of the actual letter, in Lenin’s handwriting.
Lenin. Mass murderer. Case closed.
Of course, this one action is just a drop in the bucket compared to the huge numbers of people killed on Lenin’s direct order.
Yes, Sam, but don’t you see, those naughty kulaks were eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. So Lenin was not a mass murderer, he was a mass “deffender of the workers”.
The numbers do not matter. How ever many had to be killed to convince the rest that communism was a better system for them it was a worthy price. Even the numbers Stalin achieved would have been acceptable if he had not commited other sins against Marx.
Remember the soviets have only the workers best interests at heart. We know this because the workers have the power to shoot any of the soviet members who act otherwise. Just as the soviets have the power to shoot any worker who does not adhere properly to communist principles. In this way, communism is a peaceful philosophy.
The subjugation of the bourgeoisie by the workers (or their representitives in the soviets) is a gooooooooooooood thing.
Take it easy big guy. Tilting at windmills can make you dizzy
OK, Sam, so when was that letter sent and what was going on in Penza at the time? Was it just a couple of peasants saying “Ew, we don’t like Lenin and his stinky revolution” or something more serious?
So, Olentzero, if the peasants were in armed revolt, Lenin’s order would be justified? If that’s what you believe, that’s sufficient condemnation of Good Czar Lenin right there.
We have:
Taking and execution of hostages–no trial, no guilt of any anti-Bolshevik act.
Execution of 100 people apparently selected just for being kulaks–there’s no suggestion they should be guilty of anything
Who cares if the majority of posters to this thread DO accept the numbers in light of the lack of any counter numbers…Sandino says its been proved that nobody can back up the claim about Lenin, so there for it has been. And if you don’t go along, you will be shot.