One of the dumbest aspects of learning about the Russian and Chinese revolutions is just seeing how many of the original revolutionaries got shot for being counterrevolutionaries.
The idea that guys like Peng Dehuai, Zinioev and Kamenev were secretly fascists all along, but they only revealed it after they’d risked everything for the revolution just seems insane.
I don’t know about Zhu De, but for the Bolsheviks the idea generally wasn’t that they were crypto-fascists, but that they firmly and sometimes by means of conspiracy maintained a reactionary ideology that they tried to wreck the socialist project with, e.g. that class antagonism could be reconciled and class society thereby preserved indefinitely. Other times, it was not that they had such an ideology but that they insisted on enabling people who do. I don’t endorse every accusation made but, even in one of the most extensive cases, Trotsky, the accusation wasn’t that he was a fascist but that he collaborated with fascists for the sake of subversion (which I don’t believe is true in the case of supposedly working with the Axis, though he sure did work with Russian rightists and try to work with the HUAC), whether because he didn’t believe in anything or because he thought he was such a clever boy that he could get a net benefit out of working with fascists.
As for why, well, it makes perfect sense to me why someone who is just somewhat progressive for the time (or even just personally aggrieved) would support the Bolsheviks when the February Revolution failed to produce an end to Russian involvement in WWI. People have all sorts of reasons for supporting the communist revolution without being on the same page as characters like Lenin, as Lenin himself wrote repeatedly about in texts like “Left Wing” Communism and elsewhere, and that should in fact be expected to be a huge proportion of the support.
Trotsky generally is honestly a great proof of how what you’re saying, though you are right it “just seems insane,” is perfectly likely, because beneath the accusations that we agree are probably false was a history of decades of careerism, repugnant ideological contortions, and wrecker behavior. Depending on your view, Solzhenitsyn might be an even greater example, because he was a military officer in the Red Army but had the most abominable political values short of the people who he was fighting in the war.
Trotsky is a horrible example. The policies for which he was condemned were for being on the left side of the party and advocating positions that would later be adopted by Stalin. His biggest falling out with the rest of the party was the trade union debate, and Stalin copied his homework on that one 100%.
The issue with Trotsky was personal, and that he would always exist as a possible rallying figure for opposition, not that he was insufficiently revolutionary or did not follow the party program. And trying to turn him into a fascist figure or a fascist supporting figure is honestly cope trying to pretend Stalinist wasn’t a pragmatist but did things purely out of ideological purity, which is absurd.
Edit: Stalin killed trotsky because he perceived trotsky as a threat to the soviet union, a view that was in part informed by personal distaste but also massively informed by the fact that he was seen as valid counter figure for any communist opposition to Stalin, not because one of the guys who helped arranged his transport was a White or because he held a talk in front of social democrats or that he told the American government that even if he didn’t like stalin the soviet union was still better than capitalism, because if that was his motivation Stalin would have been a fucking idiot.
My syntax was probably muddled, though I do also feel like I made it clear that I wasn’t claiming Trotsky was a fascist or even a rightist, but that he acted in such a way as to enable rightists and was interested in self-promotion to the point of resorting to wrecking and collaborating with rightists. Congrats that he was big on industrialization and Stalin later adopted that policy, it’s an observation so sharp that only a mind as fine as Orwell could catch that Trotsky sometimes put forward a correct position and Stalin sometimes changed his position to that position.
Trotsky couldn’t handle not winning the popularity contest and violated the most basic principles of democratic centralism by organizing an opposition bloc to continuously try to undercut Stalin and replace him despite not having the backing needed for the position. I furthermore reject the dichotomy you offer of pragmatism and purity as being idealist nonsense, letting someone play rebel whenever the vote doesn’t go their way is counter to democracy. Even beyond that, there was the fact that this agitation, again, involved working with rightists as a major faction of the “opposition bloc.” I can’t tell if the thing about the White was meant to deflect that as though anyone would think that’s what I meant.
And you know as well as I do that Trotsky spent his whole exile career promoting ridiculous myths, most of all the Permanent Revolution “debate,” to say nothing of his absurd leftcom stance on the Spanish Civil War which, as far as I can tell, he literally only took to be contrary to Stalin. I can say the same with his furious opposition to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which led him to considering the Nazis and Soviets to being in one camp (in his “third camp” theory, they were the second). I’ll dig it up if I really need to, but an interesting point of flip-flopping that people usually don’t mention is that he at some point as a Bolshevik argued in favor of what amounts to Blanquism, saying that the dictatorship of the party was for the fostering of democracy (in a separate debate, Stalin opposed any endorsement of a “dictatorship of the party” and I believe that when he was outvoted on this matter, he attempted to resign but this was also rejected). Nonetheless, despite Lenin and indeed even Stalin writing about the problems with bureaucracy, Trotsky gets to be some champion of the notion because of what amounted to sour grapes. However, I will admit that normally his vacillations were not based on rightism, usually they were either being an ultra or muddying reality in a way that is difficult for me to map on to the ideological framing you’re discussing (e.g. lying about the Testament). To be clear, of the possible interpretations that I mentioned in the last comment, I personally believe that Trotsky didn’t believe in anything, he was just saying things at his own convenience. I worry about how one could vacillate from his experiences in Russia to his stance on Spain otherwise, unless I missed the part where he went through and explained why and how he changed his mind.
I believe that there is a reason Lenin said things like:
Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other.
But it’s okay, because Trotsky felt the need to report to us that Lenin once said of him that there was “never a better Bolshevik,” and don’t worry about proof of this being a real statement, much less a meaningful one.
I’m curious about the quote regarding the American government that you are referencing. The correspondences I read had no comment from him on America and were instead all about him being excited to denounce Stalinism while the CPUSA was being decapitated. Idk, it seems to reflect very different priorities, but perhaps your episode was an earlier one.
I am not going to get into a debate on trotsky’s merits, because what I wanted to point out was that his merits or lack of same weren’t and aren’t the point. Trotsky had to go because of what he he was and the potential damage that could cause to the soviet union, not because his beliefs were wrong or because he said stupid shit. Plenty of people said stupid shit and plenty of people had dumb beliefs. He had to go because he was perceived to be a threat to the stability of the state.
I apologize for not being clear enough. The original idea was “there is no way that someone could fight for the revolution and be a counterrevolutionary” and my involvement of Trotsky was that he was indeed an important figure in the revolution and civil war, but in his subsequent wrecking and willingness to work with rightists, behaved as a counterrevolutionary once he was no longer on the ascent. It has nothing to do with his policy proposals or anything like that.
And as a I said, I think his “Wrecking”, “Willingness to work with rightists” et al. wasn’t the point of why he had to go. He had to go because he had the potential of destablising the soviet union, not because he was a dipshit who said stupid shit. Trotsky could have toed the line utterly once he had gone into exile and he would still have needed to go.
I’m confused, is what I am talking about not him trying to doing destabilizing? I thought we agreed on that point, that it wasn’t just that he was such a leftist icon that he mogged Stalin, but that he was engaged in agitation and organization that was counterrevoltionary and thereby a direct and practical threat and thus his removal and eventual assassination.
I’ve seen it argued that many in the early CPC were primarily motivated by nationalism rather than socialism, so the idea that they’d betray the leftist aspects of revolution if they thought it was in the better interest of China isn’t completely nonsensical.
A lot of communist movements in the imperial periphery or semi-periphery are fueled more by nationalism than communism, and it’s just that the communist party has the best program for achieving a lot of what the nationalists want.
Sankara entered the chat
the girl reading this
lol, I feel like a pretty decent percentage of State and Revolution was Lenin throwing shade on his contemporaries.
Fucking
Kautsky!
“How much more betrayal can I take? It’s like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.”Note
Kautsky had a special place in Lenin’s heart, especially when the former saw revolutionary potential in Russia, when this Tsarist bastion of reaction turned more revolutionary by the day, compared to Western Europe
This didn’t last, after Kautsky decided criticize Lenin for incorporating the Workers’ Soviets into a new Soviet Union, for state power
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like every theory writer was basically posting a twitter thread shittalking their contemporaries. Lenin would’ve been an amazing poster
Uhm each other right?
As someone broadly supportive of Stalin, I think that among Stalin’s contemporaries who he could name, he might consider the majority that way. Tito is an example that people here don’t bring up very often, but he was regarded as a sicko revisionist. I’ve got some friends who have a special interest in the subject, but I personally know basically nothing about it.
Stalin: Trotsky
and a whole bunch of the old bolsheviks
I don’t actually think Stalin disliked them as much on a personal level as he did Trotsky. His sidelining of Kamanev and Zinoviev was a power play and a consolidation of power but until the Ryutin affair it doesn’t seem like he wanted to do much more than marginalize them as political rivals
well that’s all right then
The great purge was in many ways a tragedy and a great crime, both for the loss of life involved but also for the loss of talent within the soviet political and bureaucratic sphere. That said I have a hard time crying many tears for the old bolsheviks who were so willing to go along with power plays, purges and clique/factionalism bullshit but then ended up on the wrong end of it themselves.
Trotsky
/thread lmao
Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Chang Kuo-tao)
