Felix Dzerzhinsky

[Tower of Bebel]

I've seen a decent amount of Dzerzhinsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky) avatars / profile pictures / album pictures, and some users mentioned his name in a few threads here and there. Sometimes favourably. I didn't know who he was, so I had to look it up.

So why the Dzerzhinsky avatars? What do peope think of him?

[Brutus]

Dzerzhinksy was as instrumental in crushing the counter revolution as the red army was. I believe that without the CHEKA, the red army would not have succeeded. Dzerzhinksy also personified the revolutionary: he was wholeheartedly devoted to the cause, got sacked from
3 jobs for organising the workers, was known as incorruptible, and lived in austerity in an apartment.

[Brutus]

He also kept a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg in his office.
But Rosa did say something along the lines of "Felix has gotten so cruel"

[tuwix]

And Derzhinsky was instrumental in crushing all hopes for freedom in soviet state. CHEKA was the basis of later secret police which oppressed all freedom movements regardless their origins. And not all of them were reactionary. Soviet secret police oppressed Anarchists, Trotskists and Marxists who are not Leninists or Stalinists too.

[Let's Get Free]

Dzerzhinsky was a goddamn psychopath.

[Rafiq]

The archtype for a good Communist. An eternal hero of the proletariat, the mighty sword of the october revolution. Never before has the class enemy trembled before a name as much as they did Dzerzhinsky. Felix, honorable and noble as he was, allowed himself to be the face of the terror, in order to save the revolution. Personally, despite his work, he was kind and gentle, even took up the task of sheltering all of Moscow's homeless children. Dzerzhinsky was the most skilled counter intelligence officer to ever exist. And a feirce enemy of the counter revolution. Indeed he sided with Stalin, as any good marxist would have, had they not known what was to come. Every revolution needs a Felix Dzerzhinsky.

[goalkeeper]

The archtype for a good Communist. An eternal hero of the proletariat, the mighty sword of the october revolution. Never before has the class enemy trembled before a name as much as they did Dzerzhinsky. Felix, honorable and noble as he was, allowed himself to be the face of the terror, in order to save the revolution. Personally, despite his work, he was kind and gentle, even took up the task of sheltering all of Moscow's homeless children. Dzerzhinsky was the most skilled counter intelligence officer to ever exist. And a feirce enemy of the counter revolution. Indeed he sided with Stalin, as any good marxist would have, had they not known what was to come. Every revolution needs a Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Its cute how your posts always read like some old lefty propaganda rag from a different era.

[Brutus]

Rafiq hit the nail on the head, apart from the Stalin part...

[Tower of Bebel]

A question comes to mind. It concerns Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Thermidor and the expression "the revolution devours its own children".

Trotsky saw in Stalin's comming to power a Soviet variant of the Thermidorian reaction that ended the most radical phase of the French Revolution. One could say, however, that Stalin actually represented a Soviet Brumaire, some kind of coup that would replace the revolution(ary phase) with a (military) dictatorship. Just like the Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte (1799) and the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Bonaparte) (1851).

By this analogy, Dzerzhinsky would be the one representing the Thermidorian reaction. He and others who supported the repressive methods of economic, military and political stabilisation during the mid twenties (1922-1929) were the ones who created the means by which many children of the revolution, among them many old Bolsheviks, were devoured in the 1920's and 1930's. Or is such a concideration too far-fetched?

[Old Bolshie]

A question comes to mind. It concerns Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Thermidor and the expression "the revolution devours its own children".

Trotsky saw in Stalin's comming to power a Soviet variant of the Thermidorian reaction that ended the most radical phase of the French Revolution. One could say, however, that Stalin actually represented a Soviet Brumaire, some kind of coup that would replace the revolution(ary phase) with a (military) dictatorship. Just like the Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte (1799) and the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Bonaparte) (1851).

Regarding the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx said that "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"

Instead of twice he should have said thrice. I completely agree with Trotsky's analysis of the Thermidorian reaction in the Russian revolution and I usually have it in mind when I evaluate how Stalin ended the revolutionary stage of the Russian revolution and allowed the return of the Old Order with a new face pretty much like Napoleon.


By this analogy, Dzerzhinsky would be the one representing the Thermidorian reaction. He and others who supported the repressive methods of economic, military and political stabilisation were the ones who created the means by which many children of the revolution, among them many old Bolsheviks, were devoured in the 1920's and 1930's. Or is such a concideration too far-fetched?

I would say that he would be the one representing the Great Terror of the French Revolution (Red Terror in the Russian Revolution), the most violent and revolutionary stage of the French Revolution, since Dzerzhinsky was already dead when the Thermidorian reaction began in USSR.