Disprove my textbook. Get free hugs.

[AK]

Communism and Russia

In its struggle to survive, the Communist Party in Russia set up a secret police force (the Cheka). As party head, Lenin wielded supreme political power, having both the secret police and the army at his command. Human rights such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from arbitrary (i.e. random) arrest and imprisonment, and freedom of conscience were denied. It was becoming a totalitarian form of government. (See pages 28–9 for more on the 1917 Russian Revolution.)
Perhaps the biggest bullshit ever, but go on. Disprove it.

[ComradeOm]

the Communist Party in Russia set up a secret police force (the Cheka)The Cheka was established by the Sovnarkom on the suggestion of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets. Neither of which are synonymous with the "Communist Party of Russia". The Bolsheviks did not assume the latter name until 1918


As party head, Lenin wielded supreme political power, having both the secret police and the army at his commandLenin never occupied an extra-constitutional position in government and nor did his role within the party permit him to assume one. Government decrees were voted on by the Sovnarkom, with Lenin often on the losing side, and ratified by the CEC. Lenin never had "the secret police and the army at his command"


Human rights such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from arbitrary (i.e. random) arrest and imprisonment, and freedom of conscience were deniedSubjective at best. Censorship was introduced on those publications that were felt to be counter-revolutionary. This category, while flexible, was not the blanket ban that people often imagined. Sukhanov, for example, was able to openly publish his highly anti-Bolshevik memoirs in 1922. Atheism was promoted but worship, while belittled, was not illegal.

Ironically, one of the primary drivers for the establishment of the Cheka was the belief that the existing revolutionary organs (ie, the MRC) was too arbitrary. Not that "arbitrary" means "random"

[mikelepore]

I don't know exactly who did what, but if the paragraph is changed to say more generally that the government did, rather than Lenin did or the party did, it's essentially true.

Freedom of conscience is a strange phrase. Evey society that declares any act to be a crime, even murder, is saying that you can't allow everyone to use their conscience as their guide.

Freedom of the press is in another category. As the journalist H. L. Mencken once wrote, "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." You could likewise speak of the freedom to weave cloth however you wish, which could only be a freedom for those who happen to own a machine that weaves cloth. Therefore, in other words, there has been no society on earth where everyone has had freedom of the press. It's only the recent invention of the internet that is beginning to change that.

[A.R.Amistad]

Lenin never wielded supreme political power, even in the days of the civil war. Supreme Power was generally in the hands of the Congress of Soviets and the People's Commissars. Not even the Bolshevik Party wielded supreme political power until around 1921. Left SR (Social Revolutionaries) and other pro-Soviet parties worked side by side with the Bolsheviks in the soviets, and there were even non-party affiliated worker's. The one-party rule established at the height of the civil war was a temporary measure because of the onset of the civil war against the soviets and was in no way intended to be a ideological foundation in the soviet constitution, which originally, as adopted by the Bolsheviks, supported freedom of assembly as long as they did not take up violent arms against the soviets. Not even in WITBD or The State and Revolution does Lenin ever advocate a one-party dictatorship. That was a product of a civil war measure.

The Cheka was actually founded only after the Soviets took power just as a police force to replace the old one and protect the soviet public. It was created specifically as a non-party apparatus. It's leader, Felix Dzerhinsky, had originally been chosen to lead the Cheka because of his reputation of being a sane, rational and humane leader, and it was assumed that he would maintain a humane police force. I will concede that the Cheka did become much more brutal and extra-judicial than it ever should have, but unfortunately this pattern appears in every people's revolution, bourgeois, proletarian, whatever. Brutality should be avoided in times of revolutionary war, but writing off an entire movement because of it is just hypocritical and generally wrong.

As for freedom of the press, there were multiple papers operating legally in the Soviet Republic before the civil war (when many became organs of counter-revolution) and the original soviet constitution guaranteed freedom of the press as well as protection of the people's press from capitalist ownership.

Constitution of the RSFSR, Article 2, Chapter 5, Section 14

14. For the purpose of securing freedom of expression to the toiling masses, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic abolishes all dependence of the Press upon capital, and turns over to the working people and the poorest peasantry all technical and material means for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc., and guarantees their free circulation throughout the country.http://marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1918/index.htm

For those teachers who claim that there was some sort of genocide or persecution of people of religious belief under the Soviet Republic pre-Stalin, this is a good read. The story of Pavel Florensky

Wikipedia, Pavel Florensky, role in the revolution before Stalin

After the October Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution) he formulated his position as: I am of a Philosophical and scientific world outlook developed by me, which contradicts the vulgar interpretation of communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)... but that does not prevent me to honestly work for the state service. After the closing down, by the Bolsheviks, of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra (1918) and the Sergievo-Posad Church (1921), where he was the priest, he moved to Moscow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow) to work on the State Plan for Electrification of Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Plan_for_Electrification_of_Russia). (ГОЭЛРО) Under the recommendation of Leon Trotsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky) who strongly believed in Florensky's ability to help the government to electrify rural Russia. According to contemporaries, Florensky in his priest's cassock, working alongside other leaders of a Government department, was a remarkable sight.
In 1924, he published a large monograph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monograph) on dielectrics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric), as well as his The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters. He also worked simultaneously as the Scientific Secretary of the Historical Commission on Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra and published his works on ancient Russian art. He was also rumoured to be the main organizer of the plot to save the relics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic) of St. Sergii Radonezhsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergii_Radonezhsky) whose destruction had been ordered by the government.
In the second half of the 1920s, he mostly worked on physics and electrodynamics, publishing his main hard science work Imaginary numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_numbers) in Geometry («Мнимости в геометрии. Расширение области двухмерных образов геометрии» (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8_% D0%B2_%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D 0%B8%D0%B8)) devoted to the geometrical interpretation of Albert Einstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)'s theory of relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity). Among other things, he proclaimed that the geometry of imaginary numbers predicted by the theory of relativity for a body moving faster than light is the geometry of the kingdom of God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Florensky#Period_of_Communist_rule_in_Russia

Lenin On the Cheka

"We say that the use of violence arises from the need to crush the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists. When this is accomplished we shall renounce all extraordinary measures. We have proved this in practice. And I think, I hope, and I am confident that the All-Russia Central Executive Committee will unanimously endorse this measure of the Council of People's Commissars and will implement it in such a way that it will be impossible to apply the death penalty in Russia.
V.I. Lenin
Report on the Work of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee And The Council Of People’s Commissars (http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/feb/02.htm)
February 20th, 1920