Olentzero and Guinastasia on the Russian Revolution

OK, I’m creating a new thread off of Scylla’s Nazi thread in order to prevent a serious hijacking of his original question.

This is the premise: Guinastasia and I are gonna get this debate about the Russian Revolution into high gear. I know how she feels about the subject and I am not looking for an excuse to devolve a discussion into a Pit thread. People are welcome to join the discussion; my only request is that we keep on the subject of the October Revolution itself and not on the philosophical strengths or shortcomings of socialism and communism in general.

I don’t want to start off with a huge monster brick of a post so I’m going to keep it to the last statements she made in the abovementioned thread:

Only as regards the old classes which the Revolution overthrew. Not towards Russian society in general. The Bolsheviks wouldn’t have repressed the whole of society, as both Nikolai II and Stalin did, because they looked to the working class as a whole to provide the initiatives for change and progress, rather than making the changes themselves.

Yeah, isn’t he the one who plotted with General Kornilov on a military takeover to crush the rising challenge of the soviets, only to withdraw support at the last minute because he finally figured out he’d also be on the business end of the army’s bayonets?

Kerensky couldn’t have maintained control except by such means anyway. The Provisional Government’s support was eroding steadily throughout 1917.

I still maintain that he did not; I’ll have to check some sources I have at home tonight.

Building a new society is not a clean business. But there’s a vast difference between involving people in building a new society and ruthlessly forcing your visions down their throats.

Denying that Lenin took violent measures to safeguard the revolution is denying history. Denying he was a brute is denying an interpretation of that history. Facts stem from context, and not all interpretations of a particular context are correct.

Mine too. I’m inclined to believe them a little more, however, since they were at the heart of events and had a little more of a perspective on things in general. :wink:

I know you aren’t supposed to pull up a lawn chair and crack open a bottle in GD, but da-yumn!

Vodka all around!

Hey, if Lincoln and Douglas could have a lawn party, I don’t see why we can’t. :smiley:

:wink: All, right, break out the blinis and the samovar, I’m game.
I’d like to start off with a quote from Kerensky. Whether or not he conspired with Kornilov-I don’t have my sources on that-I believe, if I remember correctly, wasn’t he the one who dismissed Kornilov in the first place?

“Let no one say that Lenin is an expression of some kind of allegedly Asiatic ‘elemental Russian force.’ I was born under the same sky, I breathed the same air, I heard the same peasant songs and played in the same college playground. I saw the same limitless horizons from the same high bank of the Volga and I know in my blood and bones…that it is only by losing all touch with our native land, only by stamping out all native feeling for it, only so could one do what Lenin did in deliberately and cruelly mutilating Russia.” -Alexander Feodorovich Kerensky.

All right. Yes, ruthlessness perhaps was needed to some degree. There’s no denying Russia in the latter part of the 1910s was in massive chaos, if not outright anarchy. However, Lenin’s cruelty was very shocking to even those of his own party. To say that he was better than Nikolai, was laughable, to say the least.

Nicky’s problems stemmed from his insecurity, his upbringing, and his personality. He was unsuited to be an absolute autocrat-which he had been brought up to be. Whatever mistakes he made as a ruler, as a person, he was exceptional. He was, without a doubt, patriotic. Lenin, on the other hand, could have cared less-his working with Germany was well-known and horrified many of his own people.

What got me most about the guy was his hatred of anyone who even remotely disagreed. His hatred of the intelligentsia and the intellectuals, the moderates, etc etc.
Most of my opinions on Nicholas come from his personal life and how he truly was, one on one, not as a ruler. I still don’t see how his repression is any more or less justifiable than Lenin’s itself.

jourini@laroche.edu This is the e-mail of my professor, Dr. Jourin, a highly knowledgable man, who was born and raised in Russia, and could probably tell you a LOT more than I ever could.

I’ll be hittin’ the books for a bit tonight on this one, but I just wanted to respond to this:

I’m not interested in what Dr. Jourin knows and thinks, except perhaps through your use of him as a resource for rebuttals. I’m interested in what your opinions and assertions are.

According to a timeline by PBS, the Checka founded the Gulag in 1919.
http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/inv/prop_inv_time.htm
I am of course trying to get independent conformation.

Guin, I don’t know if lionizing Nikolai is the best course. He seems to honestly come across as a stubborn, anti-semitic, not very bright autocrat who was manipulated by the people around him, When he was surrounded by good advisors, he ruled decently, but when he wasn’t… The Russia Nikolai seemed to care about was the Russia of the nobility and of a few rich capitalists. He doesn’t seem to have done anything for, or even noticed, the peasant, or the non-Russian nationalities. Remember, in 1899, he abolished all civil rights in Finland, which had been autonomy in 1809, crushed down on Poland, and sponsored pogroms which killed thousands of Jews. I’m not saying that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were paragons of virtue…I don’t think they were, but to say that Nikolai II was is sort of misstating the case.

If I may be permited to quote my father (and his circle of friends) on this subject. Their qualifications are simply these: They are highly educated people born just prior to WWII in the USSR. They survived the war and the communist propaganda about Lenin & the revolution, and the events that followed. They took the time to educate themselves about many of the facts and fictions surrounding Lenin. The consesus seems to be (among my sources) and various reading materials I’ve perused in the past is that Lenin was little more than a common thug with the gift for gab who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

It is said that he was essentially kicked out of Germany for causing the same kind of shit the Bolsheviks were causing in Russia. The German rulling classes did not need a trouble maker in their midst. Especially one that would cause more grief on the heels of a lost war.

Furthermore, Lenin’s policy of busting the kulachs and giving land to the roving gangs of bolsheviks (read: bullies with no productive skills) for farming were directly responsible for the destruction of Russia’s agriculture and ability to feed the people of the entire nation.

But this is only if I may permited to use the educated opinion of people who have not published books but who posses considerable knowledge and first hand experience with Russian history and politics.

I do not doubt that the quality of education they received in the Soviet Union was indeed high, as far as the academic disciplines are concerned. Politically, though, their education was completely distorted by Stalinism.

It is not surprising that the reaction is one of total disbelief that Lenin had any political or personal worth about him, but the assertions that he was a lucky thug completely ignore the political career he had in the twenty-five years before 1917, trying to build an organization of revolutionary workers and intellectuals through argument and example, not the brute force of muscle. If Lenin had been a complete thug in the political arena of Russian exiles in Europe he would not have lasted long at all.

The only time Lenin spent in Germany was in the “sealed train” on the way back to Russia in 1917. He never lived there, nor did he spend any time there outside of traveling through it the once.

I don’t remember if he was ever kicked out of England or France or Switzerland for his political activities but I wouldn’t be surprised; such a fate was not unique among exiled revolutionaries.

Russia’s agricultural and industrial production were smashed as a direct result of its involvement in the First World War. If I remember my source correctly, the level of production in 1918 was lower than England’s in 1688. As for Bolsheviks being bullies with no productive skills: the membership inside Russia in 1917 just before the Revolution was some 240,000 - concentrated in Petrograd and Moscow. Given that the majority of the members were industrial workers, the assertion that they had no productive skills whatsoever makes no sense. Consider also that the working class in Russia was composed largely of peasants that could no longer make a living in the country and had come to the cities to seek work. They were well acquainted with the ways of the land - they hadn’t been gone long enough to forget, or to be a generation that had been born and raised in the cities.

Grain requisitioning did occur both before and after the Revolution, but the forcible collectivization of land was a Stalinist plan. The Bolsheviks knew they needed to cooperate with the peasants in order to move forward, not alienate them, which is what the forcible seizure of land achieved.

Use whomever you like. Just don’t expect me to treat them as unbiased sources.

I’m being facetious(sp?), you mudak!

:stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, I have my books. But…before we go on, I think we should BOTH acknowledge bias when it comes to Lenin and Nikolai, shall we?

Captain Amazing-yes, but let’s look at a few things. I’m not lionizing the TSAR, I’m talking about the MAN himself. Nicholas actually was not too crazy about the nobility and society in general, and generally thought of himself as the Father Tsar, the batiushka, if you will. Yes, he was out of touch. Yes, indeedy he was anti-semitic, but no more so than most people at that time. And I know what I’m talking about, I have numerous books, documents, sites to state my case, if you will. I’m not saying his system of rule was a great one-frankly, it sucked. What I AM saying is that he was not quite Bloody Nicholas that everyone seems to think he was.

Most of the pogroms were ordered by the court ministers-THOUGH NICHOLAS DID GO ALONG WITH THEM. Frankly, I’m not going to appologize for that-although most of the ones in Moscow-the worst of them, I believe, were under the orders of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Nicholas’s uncle, who was married to Alexandra’s sister.

But I digress. Nicholas actually approved Stolypin’s gradual reforms at first. He DID care about the peasants, but his ideas were wrong. I’m not going to appologize for that either. Most of the people though who came into contact with the guy, KERENSKY included-hardly a champion of the monarchy, said the man’s character was excellent. I’m not arguing that he was a good ruler, but that he was a good man, who was a terrible Tsar. (And even if he hadn’t been a good man, his family-particularly his four daughters and his son were innocent-Alexei wasn’t even fourteen when he was murdered. Nor was Anastasia’s dog-also murdered at that night, as well as four retainers-a doctor, a maid, Nikolai’s valet and their cook).

I do indeed intend to use my professor as a source, as many of his accounts were first hand-the man was a descendent of the kulaks. He is also an anti-Stalinist-he was seven when Stalin died. He is actually a very close friend of Sergei Khruschev, (yet another name I can’t spell), Nikita’s son.

If I may quote from the PBS site:

Look, I’m not saying that Nicky is a Saint and Volodya was the Devil! But, the reverse is also false, in more ways than one. Most historians will tell you that the Bolshevik regime following that of Nicholai was much more repressive.

{fixed bold --Gaudere}

[Edited by Gaudere on 08-16-2001 at 12:39 AM]

Possible relevant debate I found on the World Socialist website (A search engine lead me there! Honest!)

http://www.wsws.org/correspo/1998/mar1998/leni-m06.shtml

Just a stupid little aside, did Lenin have any children? A teacher in high school once said something about Lenin’s daughter, but I have never heard of Lenin having any offspring-he was probably confusing maybe with Stalin’s daughter?

The problem is, it’s impossible to seperate Nicholas the man from Nicholas the tsar, because public figures are known by their public acts. If he was a wonderful person, kind to children and dogs, pleasant and charming, and he also led an autocratic, repressive state, when he had the power to change it, then that’s what we need to look at. The fact that he’s nice to his servants doesn’t make up for that. I don’t particularly know why you bring up the killings of the Romanovs. I never argued that his children were evil…I don’t think anyone argued that his children were evil. They were killed because they were a threat. As long as they lived, they were a magnet for monarchists, and their death was a neccesary evil.

BTW, the worst pogrom was probably at Odessa:

http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/Depts/History/Faculty/BCooperman/City/Pogrom1905.html

There might have been more oppression under the Communists than tsars…I’ll leave that for you two to hash out, but there was also a lot more opportunity. In Tsarist Russia, there was next to no social mobility. You were born a peasant, you died a peasant. In the Soviet Union, you had an opportunity, as a peasant, to become something more.

As far as I know, Lenin didn’t have any children. Trotsky had a daughter, I believe, and Stalin had two sons and a daughter, I think.

I was talking about replying to yer remark about Dr. Jourdin, bol’van! :stuck_out_tongue:

OK, plenty to work with here. Let’s take it chronologically.

Lenin was an internationalist through and through. He had little time for this sort of sentimental patriotism because it was an attitude brought out by nationalism, which is a product of any class society. He certainly didn’t see himself as any sort of ‘elemental Russian force’. As for mutilating Russia, a man who belonged to a party that promised an end to a vicious, bloody war that Russia was losing if the tsar was deposed but continued that same war once in power doesn’t have much room to talk about others mutilating his beloved country.

Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” devotes an entire chapter to this particular incident. The first information came from two Russian intelligence agents, one of whom only had hearsay evidence, and the other of whom was deemed by the intelligence service as “a person not deserving the slightest confidence”. The Minister of Justice at the time, one Pereverzev, recruited the services of a Duma member with a penchant for accusing pretty much everyone of being in the Kaiser’s employ. (After his retirement some weeks after, Pereverzev admitted he used “unfounded rumors” in his campaign against the Bolsheviks.)
Not everyone opposed to Lenin believed it; there were several other prominent revolutionaries and Duma members who admitted they thought the rumors false. Finally, in 1918 a sheaf of documents was produced that the American government claimed was definitive proof; however, it came to pass that these documents from several different international sources were all printed on the same machine.

So it was “well-known” in that the rumor was widespread and quickly so; of course people close to Lenin were somewhat taken aback because it came out of nowhere, more or less. That still doesn’t make it true.

There is a difference between holding on to a set of ideas and arguments, arguing again and again why opposing arguments are faulty or incorrect and hating someone who holds them. Lenin was an intellectual but one who saw the need for deep involvement in the only class that could bring the world out of capitalism. If he fought with anyone, it is because he saw their ideas as leading away from the way forward. Which is not to say he was right all the time, either.

Fully and openly. I’m defending Lenin - not on his personality, but on his politics and the actions they guided.

Trotsky had several children. To quote from an excellent biography by Tony Cliff:

It certainly seems to me that Lenin, who made the revolution side by side with Trotsky, would never have stooped to such bloodiness if they disagreed fundamentally.

Oh, yes - the Cheka and the Gulag. Last item and then I’m heading to bed. Firstly, in The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police, historian George Leggett - no friend of the Bolsheviks - writes:

It wasn’t that secret, either - its formation was publicly announced, had an office open to the public during business hours, and even briefly published its own bulletin.

There may have been instances of torture - although Leggett admits that most of the examples cited come from White literature - but it is important to note that Soviet law forbade it and the Soviet government tried to stamp it out whenever it became known.

As for the prisons - there’s no denying that Stalin threw millions upon millions into the camps. But at the height of the civil war in 1919, there were only 100,000 prisoners behind bars in Russia - that’s including ordinary criminals. The CheKa had 56 camps with only 24,750 people within them in 1992; by 1923 the number of camps had been halved.

Executions were not CheKa policy - in fact the death penalty was abolished in 1920. The degradation and torture of prisoners was not a feature of these prisons; the 1924 Corrections code stated

Again, there were probably incidences of violation of the code, but the Soviet government took great care to eradicate them once they came to light. Roy Medvedev asserts ‘in most cases this code was observed at the time’.

Overall the CheKa admitted that the prison system was a product of the civil war and as early as 1921 was calling for an emptying out of the prisons, saying that only those who were truly dangerous to the Soviet regime (i.e. not peasants and workers inside for speculation or such like) should remain.

So - I maintain that the Russian Revolution under Lenin was nowhere near as bloody as has been portrayed, nor does it accurately indicate the leadership of a brutish personality. I certainly believe that the prison system under Nikolai II was a thousand times harsher, more arbitrary, and more degrading than the early Soviet prison system - and even if he had a layer of ministers between him and the running of the country, it was he who appointed them and it was he who was ultimately responsible for what went on in his reign. I agree with Captain Amazing that he may have been more than kind to his family and his pets, but those weren’t the only lives he was responsible for.

Sources used: History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky; In Defence of October by John Rees; Lenin, Vol I: Building the Party and Vol. II: All Power to the Soviets and Trotsky, Vol. IV:The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Star by Tony Cliff.

This is from Elliot Rosenburg’s “But Were They Good For the Jews”

<quote> Nicolas encouraged the [pogroms]. In 1904, he accepted badges of honorary membership for himself and his son in the League of the Russian People, a paramilitary outfit devoted to Jew-bating. He reportedly assured one pogrom leader, “I know the Russian courts are too severe toward the participants in the pogroms. I give you my imperial word that I should always lighten their sentences on the application of the League of the Russian People, so dear to me”…Straight through to the regime’s collapse, Nicholas welcomed an outpouring of anti-Semitic books and pamphlets, and he spent 12,329,000 rubles on their printing and distribution.</quote>

Being a citizen of the regime and being able to analyze the “official” party line as well as studiously seeking out more accurate historic accounts does not make one a biased or unreliable source. YMMV.

Stalinism did not wipe out all vestiges of independant thought and ability of accute political(and historic) analysis. Though not for a lack of trying. The gulags were a strong indication of that.

I’ll concede this point. I was getting ahead of myself. Still, knowing how to run a dye and cast press does not mean you know how to run a factory profitably. Lenin lacked this understanding. At least Nikolai understood that the wealthy industrialists and land owners knew how to run their businesses and in turn make a profit and maintain the russian economy (though they too were not immune to the ravages of WWI). Which is not to say that they were not often cruel or unfair to the peasants and workers.

Lenin had good intentions but it’s the correct solution that eluded him.

Biased does not necessarily mean unreliable. As I noted before, I think it likely that the people you knew were so fed up with the official Stalinist line of how Lenin was almost godlike and infallible that the natural reaction was to go to the other extreme and try to prove how politically and personally useless Lenin was. This does not exclude them from laying their hands on correct information; on the other hand it does not mean they will draw correct conclusions either.

I’m not saying it did. I’m saying that the official Stalinist view of Lenin and Soviet history was so severely distorted as to become myth. Stalinism deserves to be challenged and discredited, but the assumption that Lenin led to Stalin is faulty. Therefore attempts to discredit Lenin because of Stalin are mistaken.

On the contrary, he had the correct solution. You’re mis-stating the problem. The whole point of the revolution was to deal a blow to the system of capitalism and profits and put the wealth of the world directly into the hands of the people that produced it. Lenin understood very clearly how capitalism worked - both from reading books like Marx’ Capital and from practical experience in dealing with the Russian working class. His idea was to get rid of it, not change it.

Whew! THank you so much, Gaudere!

um… huh?

Look, the point I’m trying to make is that extremes-whether all the way to the right, or all the way to the left-are NOT good. If there is one thing I am against, it’s extremists. What Lenin did was create a new oligarchy of the proletariats-did I spell that one right?
Let me point out that both Nicholai and Lenin meant well. Nikolai especially WAS a good man, but not equipped to rule such a country as Russia-the very system was hopelessly antiquated. His main problems were his insecurity, and his prejudices-given to him by his tutor, Pobedonostev, a true bigot, a narrow-minded bastard, if ever there was one. However, there are a few things that MIGHT have made things better-
IF Nikolai had not abdicated in favor of his brother, but instead for his son, Alexei. The Duma was fully prepared for this, and most would have welcomed this change. Yes, Alexei DID have hemophilia. BUT, his uncle, Mikhail Alexandrovich, would have been Regent-and Mikhail was much more progressive and liberal minded than his brother. Mikhail would also have had the support of the army, as he was a war hero and a general at the front. Likewise, many people believe that the symbol of the Child Tsar may have softened the people-we’ll never know. However, Nicky did not want to leave his son.

He did not trust the nobility-THAT much I can tell you as fact. If he hated the peasants, he would not have relied so much on Rasputin-as damaging at that was, he saw Rasputin as one of the TRUE Russians. The petty nobility and upper classes disgusted him and his wife. One of his problems was, ironically, the man was too soft, too gentle and meek. He didn’t want to hurt feelings, or cause distress, and so often he would appear sneaky-because no one realized after a meeting that they had been dismissed. He was stern enough to be an absolute autocrat. BUT, he had been brought up to believe that to not do so would be practically a sin-against Russia and against God. I’m not defending or agreeing with that, but stating fact. As well as my belief that we cannot judge people by today’s standards and then criticize them for failing to meet our standards-we have to look on them as the mood was when they lived.

The Russian Revolution-whose fault was it? In my true belief, it was the fault of no one and everyone. No one can solely be blamed for such a huge complicated system and series of events. Nor can Lenin be ENTIRELY blamed for being ruthless-since a certain kind of hardness is needed when dealing with such a situation.

HOWEVER, a tyranny or control of an entire nation by one class-whether it be peasants, nobility, workers, etc etc, is not going to be a very liberal and free society. And it is ironic, that for all the Bolshevik hatred of the bourgeosie (again-spelling?), Lenin was as bourgeosie as they come. He was a nobleman from Simbirsk, his parents were hereditary noblemen, etc etc. He was not a proletariat-he was The Man. Make of that what you will.

She fixed my coding-if you’ll look, I accidentally made it all bold-and she fixed it.

Or should I say, Spasiba bolshoia, tovarish?