Constitution of the USSR. Political system 1.

[Revolution Hero]

Chapter 1
Political system.

Article 1. The union of the Soviet Socialistic Republics is the Socialist State of the whole people, which express the will and the interests of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia, working people of all nations and nationalities of the country.
Article 2. All power belongs to the people.
People implement the state power through the Soviets of the people’s deputies, which form the political base of the USSR.
All of the other state organs are under the control and accountable to the Soviets of people’s deputies.
Article 3. The organization and activity of the Soviet state are based according to the principles of the democratic centralism: appointment by election of all of the organs of the state power from the bottom to the top, theirs accountability to the people, the obligatory character of the decisions of the higher standing organs to the lower ones. Democratic centralism combines common leadership with the initiative and creative activity on the places, with the responsibility of each state organ and official for the assigned task.
Article 4. Soviet state, all of it’s organs function on the basis of the socialistic lawfulness , ensure the defense of law and order, interests of the society, rights and freedoms of it’s citizens.
State and social organizations, officials are obliged to observe the Constitution of the USSR and soviet laws.
Article 5. The most important questions of the state’s life are submitted to the nation-wide discussion, and are put to the nation-wide vote. ( referendum )

[redstar2000]

Article 5 on the national referendum is interesting. Was it ever used?

[Revolution Hero]

Redstar, it was right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was referendum, on which people decided should USSR be disintegrated or not. The majority voted for the USSR to stay, but Yeltsin, Kravchuk and other renegades gathered in Belovezhskaya Pusha and signed unconstitutional document on the disintegration of the USSR. So, the USSR was destroyed by the unconstitutional actions of minority.

(Edited by Revolution Hero at 8:52 am on Nov. 8, 2002)

[redstar2000]

Wow!

Were the results of the referendum ever published in the western media? Breakdown of the vote in different parts of the USSR?

This is something completely new to me! Thanks!

[antieverything]

What about the part that says that rights can only be exercised till the point where they interefere with the interests of the state? Are you trying to prove something with this?

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 9:05 am on Nov. 8, 2002
What about the part that says that rights can only be exercised till the point where they interefere with the interests of the state? Are you trying to prove something with this?

I don't try to prove anything. ( at least I don't try to prove what you think I do)

The part you mentioned really existed and I consider it 100% correct and necessary. If a person goes against the interests of the socialist state, then this person can't be called communist, means he/ she is an enemy not only of the socialist state, but of the whole international communist movement.

[peaccenicked]

The constitution of the USSR is a bit like the Constitution of the USA. Dress cover. Polls in the USSR were a exactly like the one that Saddam held. Farcical.

[antieverything]

What must be understood is that there is no "people", only persons. It is the interest of everyone for ever individual to have certain rights. Rights should be held as a microcosm of society, not as seperate.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from peaccenicked on 11:49 pm on Nov. 8, 2002
The constitution of the USSR is a bit like the Constitution of the USA. Dress cover. Polls in the USSR were a exactly like the one that Saddam held. Farcical.


That is not true.
How can you prove that your hypothesis is the correct one?

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 3:31 am on Nov. 9, 2002
What must be understood is that there is no "people", only persons. It is the interest of everyone for ever individual to have certain rights. Rights should be held as a microcosm of society, not as seperate.


You probably don't know that soviet people ( individuals) enjoyed rights and freedoms, which didn't even exist in the bourgeoise society, such as the right for free education , labour and rest. By the way freedom of speech also existed, but it was limited for such liberals like you, for anti-sovietists and anti-communists.
USSR's state was more democratical than any modern bourgeoise state, as Soviet Union was the socialist state of the whole people.

[Conghaileach]

How could it have been more democratic than modern bourgeois states if there were restraints on the freedoms of liberals?

[Revolution Hero]

Because liberals are the enemies.

[Blasphemy]

so, basically, everyone can say whatever they want to, unless the state doesn't agree with it. some freedom.

[Som]

I think marx said it very nicely here:


Whenever one form of freedom is rejected, freedom in general is rejected and henceforth can have only a semblance of existence, since the sphere in which absence of freedom is dominant becomes a matter of pure chance. Absence of freedom is the rule and freedom an exception, a fortuitous and arbitrary occurrence. There can, therefore, be nothing wronger than to think that when it is a question of a particular form of existence of freedom, it is a particular question. It is the general question within a particular sphere. Freedom remains freedom whether it finds expression in printer's ink, in property, in the conscience, or in a political assembly.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Som on 6:54 am on Nov. 9, 2002
I think marx said it very nicely here:


Whenever one form of freedom is rejected, freedom in general is rejected and henceforth can have only a semblance of existence, since the sphere in which absence of freedom is dominant becomes a matter of pure chance. Absence of freedom is the rule and freedom an exception, a fortuitous and arbitrary occurrence. There can, therefore, be nothing wronger than to think that when it is a question of a particular form of existence of freedom, it is a particular question. It is the general question within a particular sphere. Freedom remains freedom whether it finds expression in printer's ink, in property, in the conscience, or in a political assembly.

This quote can't be used in this particular case.
It was restricted to speak against socialism and socialist state. If one dares to do this, he/ she will be punished and this policy is the correct one. Enemies have to be punished.
The discussions on the state policy ( internal or external) were allowed, the criticism was allowed too, but this criticism had to be constructive , the one which wouldn't contradict to the communist ideology.
At the same time attack on socialism and communism was restricted. The point was not to let outside bourgeoise forces interfere in the USSR's domestic affairs.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Blasphemy on 4:52 am on Nov. 9, 2002
so, basically, everyone can say whatever they want to, unless the state doesn't agree with it. some freedom.

You forgot to add the word "speech"- some freedom of speech.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from CiaranB on 4:31 am on Nov. 9, 2002
How could it have been more democratic than modern bourgeois states if there were restraints on the freedoms of liberals?


You really want to know this. Allright, I will explain.
Who rule the bourgeoise states? Bourgeoise class, capitalists, exploiters and oppressors. Proletarians and peasantry have their rights, but the state is not on their side.
Who ruled USSR? Proletarians, peasants and intelligentsia. The state protected their rights and interests.
The conclusion is that socialist democracy is the only true democracy , which can ever exist.

[kingbee]

i sometimes think that just because the west allows you to do so, it doesnt mean its pure and true. the winners always make the rules and always seem to be the better side. the western constitutions are a bit over the top- its a bit like saying everyone can go for dinner in the savoy every night- its nice to have it, but its pretty unrealistic

[redstar2000]

I'm still interested in verification of the use of Article 5--the national referendum--in re the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Is there any link where this is reported, with a breakdown of the vote by regions, etc.?

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from kingbee on 8:21 am on Nov. 9, 2002
i sometimes think that just because the west allows you to do so, it doesnt mean its pure and true. the winners always make the rules and always seem to be the better side. the western constitutions are a bit over the top- its a bit like saying everyone can go for dinner in the savoy every night- its nice to have it, but its pretty unrealistic


yeah, it's all just the veil , which hides their true cruel nature.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 8:23 am on Nov. 9, 2002
I'm still interested in verification of the use of Article 5--the national referendum--in re the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Is there any link where this is reported, with a breakdown of the vote by regions, etc.?


I am not sure if I would be able to find it in English, as western bourgeis bastards wouldn't let this information to get through.
But if the russian version suits you, I can give you the link to the source.

[antieverything]

No, RH, I think that Marx was quite clear. He didn't say freedoms for socialists or for the workers, he said "any freedom" and I believe that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the freedom of organization, are very fundamental to any democracy. Just because they aren't guaranteed in America doesn't mean that they are fundamental.

To say that the USSR was ruled by proletarians is ridiculous. It was ruled by a small minority in the name of the people...and it was done rather well (which schools won't teach you) but that doesn't make it a democracy. I'm not attacking the USSR as being an evil empire (I'm not saying that it wasn't), I'm saying that it wasn't a democracy, it wasn't a free society, and it wasn't ruled by the workers. Remember one candidate ballots...for almost any important position? Rule by a Communist Party isn't rule by the people.

I don't know what you guys are talking about when you bash "western" constitutions. The US constitution doesn't mention many rights, such as the right to a job or a living wage. The rights it does address are actually protected most of the time...there is a bit of tyrrany but if I want to go out and say "Fuck Bush! Kill your boss and take over the factories!" I can and nobody can do a fucking thing about it. That is something that you could never say about the USSR. If I was a sydicalists that wanted to break from Moscow and start an independant commune on a collective farm...would my opinion be protected or would I be put in prison in the name of "public interest"?

The most dangerous people are those who claim a monopoly on the truth. THEY are the enemies of Democracy and the enemies of the workers and of Socialism

Freedom and Socialism: Self-governance through local control of the economy.

[Dan Majerle]

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 10:49 pm on Nov. 7, 2002
Redstar, it was right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was referendum, on which people decided should USSR be disintegrated or not. The majority voted for the USSR to stay, but Yeltsin, Kravchuk and other renegades gathered in Belovezhskaya Pusha and signed unconstitutional document on the disintegration of the USSR. So, the USSR was destroyed by the unconstitutional actions of minority.

(Edited by Revolution Hero at 8:52 am on Nov. 8, 2002)


After reading that it reminded me of the minority Bolshevik Party who in 1917 went against national referrendum held, (Constituent Assembly) in which they received 1/4 of the votes, and usurped power. You can't have it both ways RH. You complain what happened in 1991 but the same thing happened in 1917. Are you for socialist revolution regardless of how it takes place even if it is against the people's wishes? Does the means always justify the end? Just curious.

[IHP]

And the Nazi party never received the absolute majority. They never got above 38% of the votes.

--IHP

[redstar2000]

RH, unfortunately I can't read Russian (few westerners can). But there ARE services that translate TASS stuff into English, are there not? Meanwhile, I'll try a keyword search on Alta Vista & google--though I don't think they're very good for things like this.

AE, I think you are...well, misinformed to say the least if you think that the formal liberties in western constitutions actually protect you. History makes it pretty clear that you are "protected" only until the rulers notice that people are LISTENING to what you have to say.

In the U.S., it started at the very beginning. The ink wasn't dry on the "Bill of Rights" when Congress passed the "alien & sedition" acts...used to throw people in jail for criticizing President John Adams (the George W. Bush of his time). Adams and the Federalists even hired thugs to beat up newspaper editors and publishers who were less than respectful of his imperial presidency.

Many, many times since, people have been jailed in the U.S. for speech crimes...but ONLY when large numbers of other people were listening. You can freely publish a communist newspaper in the U.S. today...start lining up defense attorneys when your circulation hits 500,000--because the grand juries are already passing on the indictments.

If the U.S. government had any reason to believe that 1,000,000 people a day were reading the posts on che-lives...they'd hack the site and bring it down within hours or try to.

In other words, AE, they are NOT nice guys, they are NOT honorable men, they are GREEDY, RUTHLESS BASTARDS who would and who have wiped their asses with the "Bill of Rights" whenever they thought it useful to do so. It's what you do when you are a ruling class; it's part of the package.

[antieverything]

I realize that, redstar. I said, if you read my posts, that just because they aren't always protected in the United States, doesn't mean that the rights are not fundamental.

What I did say is that Western Constitutions don't guarantee a whole lot. The countries do a fairly good job at protecting what is in there. I do have the right to sue my school because of their drug testing program because it breaches my constitutional rights[I am doing this]. Many political prisoners have been released in the United States because the Supreme Court decided that the laws that they were being held under were unconstitutional. The court now, sadly, probably wouldn't do this, but the rights we are spelled out in the US Constitution are mostly upheld. When they aren't, you CAN fight it and you CAN win.

I think that is better than what was given in the USSR.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 10:53 am on Nov. 9, 2002
No, RH, I think that Marx was quite clear. He didn't say freedoms for socialists or for the workers, he said "any freedom" and I believe that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the freedom of organization, are very fundamental to any democracy. Just because they aren't guaranteed in America doesn't mean that they are fundamental.

To say that the USSR was ruled by proletarians is ridiculous. It was ruled by a small minority in the name of the people...and it was done rather well (which schools won't teach you) but that doesn't make it a democracy. I'm not attacking the USSR as being an evil empire (I'm not saying that it wasn't), I'm saying that it wasn't a democracy, it wasn't a free society, and it wasn't ruled by the workers. Remember one candidate ballots...for almost any important position? Rule by a Communist Party isn't rule by the people.

I don't know what you guys are talking about when you bash "western" constitutions. The US constitution doesn't mention many rights, such as the right to a job or a living wage. The rights it does address are actually protected most of the time...there is a bit of tyrrany but if I want to go out and say "Fuck Bush! Kill your boss and take over the factories!" I can and nobody can do a fucking thing about it. That is something that you could never say about the USSR. If I was a sydicalists that wanted to break from Moscow and start an independant commune on a collective farm...would my opinion be protected or would I be put in prison in the name of "public interest"?

The most dangerous people are those who claim a monopoly on the truth. THEY are the enemies of Democracy and the enemies of the workers and of Socialism

Freedom and Socialism: Self-governance through local control of the economy.


quote:"I believe that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the freedom of organization, are very fundamental to any democracy"
US citizens do enjoy these freedoms and this fact doesn't make US a true democracy. You have to analyze who rule the state, which class stands at the top of all nation and only then you would understand what democracy is. Democracy is always limited:
- the rule of the bourgeois class in the capitalist states with the freedoms of speech, assembly etc.;
- the rule of the united proletarians and peasants, with the limited freedom of speech for the enemies of the socialist state.

quote:"Just because they aren't guaranteed in America doesn't mean that they are fundamental. "
Actually the freedoms you mentioned are guaranteed and fixed in the Bill of Rights. And these freedoms are just nice little presents to the blind people. "Hey, we do have freedom, USA is the free country". yeah right. You know, their was one veteran of the Viet Nam war who said that he had fought for freedom in jungles. All these american freedoms are bullshit.

quote:"To say that the USSR was ruled by proletarians is ridiculous. It was ruled by a small minority in the name of the people..."
USSR was ruled by the Communist Party and Soviets of the People's deputies. If you really have read my post at the beginning of the thread, then you wouldn't have said such ignorant words.
USSR functioned in the interests of all working people.

quote:"I'm not attacking the USSR as being an evil empire (I'm not saying that it wasn't), I'm saying that it wasn't a democracy, it wasn't a free society, and it wasn't ruled by the workers."
Actually you do, reagan's antieverything student. You are spreading a blatant lie.

quote:"Rule by a Communist Party isn't rule by the people"
The vast majority of the USSR's population were the members of the Communist Party of the Sovet Union. Others also agreed with the state's policy, there also were some enemies .

quote:"The rights it does address are actually protected most of the time...there is a bit of tyrrany but if I want to go out and say "Fuck Bush! Kill your boss and take over the factories!" I can and nobody can do a fucking thing about it. "
You are right, people around would think :" what a punk, is he drunk or is he on drugs?" Do you think that if you would say this , you would actually change something?

quote:"That is something that you could never say about the USSR"
You would be punished for a crime. ( and that is the crime, it is called high treason).



quote: " The most dangerous people are those who claim a monopoly on the truth. THEY are the enemies of Democracy and the enemies of the workers and of Socialism "
They are the enemies of the bourgeois class.
There was the only truth in the USSR, this truth was called Marxism- Leninism and I have not met any man here who could successfully argued against this truth.

quote:"Freedom and Socialism: Self-governance through local control of the economy"
Good slogan, it perfetly describes communism, but not socialism, socialism is a little bit different.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 3:10 pm on Nov. 9, 2002

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 10:49 pm on Nov. 7, 2002
Redstar, it was right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was referendum, on which people decided should USSR be disintegrated or not. The majority voted for the USSR to stay, but Yeltsin, Kravchuk and other renegades gathered in Belovezhskaya Pusha and signed unconstitutional document on the disintegration of the USSR. So, the USSR was destroyed by the unconstitutional actions of minority.

(Edited by Revolution Hero at 8:52 am on Nov. 8, 2002)


After reading that it reminded me of the minority Bolshevik Party who in 1917 went against national referrendum held, (Constituent Assembly) in which they received 1/4 of the votes, and usurped power. You can't have it both ways RH. You complain what happened in 1991 but the same thing happened in 1917. Are you for socialist revolution regardless of how it takes place even if it is against the people's wishes? Does the means always justify the end? Just curious.

If the revolution is not supported by the majority of the population, then it can't be called a revolution, it is called plot.
Bolsheviks were supported by the whole proletariat in the union with peasants.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 3:23 pm on Nov. 9, 2002
And the Nazi party never received the absolute majority. They never got above 38% of the votes.

--IHP

I suggest you to start a separate thread about Nazis.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 4:45 am on Nov. 10, 2002
RH, unfortunately I can't read Russian (few westerners can). But there ARE services that translate TASS stuff into English, are there not? Meanwhile, I'll try a keyword search on Alta Vista & google--though I don't think they're very good for things like this.




Hope you will find an objective source.

[Dan Majerle]

RH, how were they supported by the majority of the people if in the only national referendum ever held in Russia till 1917 demonstrated that they only received a 1/4 of the votes and the the majority party were the Social Revolutionaries.

[Revolution Hero]

LOL.
Great October Revolution was done by the majority of the population of the Russian Empire and expressed the true will of the people, nobody was forced to fight for the socialism.

[Dan Majerle]

I'm sorry but that is nonsense. I have figures to prove it. Results of the Constituent Assembly courtesy of MIchael Lynch, "Russia in Revolution"...
SRs 17,490,00(votes) 370(seats)
Bolsheviks 9,844,00(votes) 175(seats)
These were the top two parties. Clearly the Bolsheviks came second and received only a quarter of overall votes. How does that represent the majority?
Another reason for Bolshevik success was the Provisional Government's weakness and failures. The PG did not possess any military weapons or the support of the army to stop opposition. The Bolsheviks were the only committed party at the time who sought violent revolution to overthrow the government and therefore merely picked up the power that the PG had callously dropped.
RH you seem very dogmatic when it comes to the USSR. I like Chomsky was against the USSR due to its illegitimacy and brutal and repressive measures that mirrorred that of capitalist governments we detest.

[antieverything]

You are fooling yourself, RH. If you bother to read the rest of the constitution, you will find that the Communist Party had almost absolute power over the people. And you are wrong, the vast majority of the population were not party members. Even if they were, the elected officials did nothing but vote unanimously in agreement with decisions that the few Communist elites had already made.

I liked your comment about me being a Reagan whore...very funny. Not true, however. I hated regan as I hate many US policies as I hate many soviet policies. Think for yourself, RH.

[peaccenicked]

For Stalinists the truth is lies. Everything condemning Stalinism is anti-socialist. That is pure bullshit and you idiots should study your subject in depth.
Here is an objective report of events.

PURGES AND HYSTERIA IN THE SOVIET UNION
.
.
.
During the Great Depression elsewhere, there was no dearth of government spending in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government was pursuing a planned growth of basic manufacturing -- for the sake of industry rather than public consumption. It was a "command economy," without unemployment and with as much wealth invested in economic growth as the government could muster. Soviet manufacturing was not advancing in productivity, but by 1935 in volume Soviet manufacturing was more than five times what it had been in 1913, and in percentage of the world's share in manufacturing the Soviet Union had surpassed France, Great Britain and Germany. The United States had a 33 percent share of the world's manufacturing, Russia had 13 percent, and Germany was third at 11 percent.
During the Depression, unemployment in capitalist nations enabled the Soviet Union to import thousands of engineers. And others came, running from unemployment and eager to help build socialism. Not receiving wages high enough to consume much of anything except subsistence food, building socialism had to be an incentive too for Soviet citizens. And they were told that they were sacrificing for the Revolution and for the future.

Meanwhile, the so-called class war in agriculture during the late twenties had extended into the thirties. The rationing of food in cities was combined with a gigantic police operation to collectivize agriculture. All over the Soviet Union, peasants resisted collectivization. They burned their crops, destroyed their tools and their livestock. -- which people in cities saw as criminal sabotage. In places, peasant resistance became uprisings that were crushed by forces sent by Moscow. Police and army units surrounded rebellious peasant communities, burned homes and shot into crowds. A million peasants are believed to have died in 1932. By 1933 the Soviet Union had lost forty-five percent of its cattle, two-thirds of its sheep and goats and half its horses. And 1933 was a year of famine, the worst areas of the famine being the grain producing regions in the Ukraine and the southern Urals. Starving people invaded cities, banging on doors and rummaging through garbage cans. And while peasants and their children were dying of starvation, the government was exporting millions of tons of grain to earn foreign currency for industrialization.

An estimated three million peasant households had been expropriated. According to Soviet statistics, the number of so-called rich peasants -- the Kulaks -- had dropped from 5.5 million to 150,000. The homes, barns, land and tools of rebellious peasants had been turned over to the new collective farms. Trainloads of peasants, including children and old people, had been transported to remote areas, some to labor camps or to colonies in Russia's far north or in Siberia. Arrested peasants made up new labor battalions that worked at building railways, cutting timber and building the canal between the White and Baltic seas. The Soviet prison system, which had been founded for re-education, was developing into slave labor camps.

The inhumanity of force against the peasants increased tensions among the Bolsheviks, and it increased Bolshevik fears of those opposed to revolution. More intellectuals stood trial in 1930, and more Mensheviks were persecuted in 1931. That year Stalin spoke of his programs in terms of the need to protect the Revolution against its enemies. "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries," he said. "We must catch up in ten years, or they will crush us."

Extending the battle to the home front, there were to be no more diverse schools of thought. Supervision of literature had begun, and Stalin himself intervened in the studies of philosophy and history. Ideological battle erupted in the Comintern. Lenin's approval of Communists working with reformers was reversed. Communist parties outside the Soviet Union pulled their membership out of reformist unions and other organizations and began organizing alone, hoping to benefit from increased visibly and by putting themselves at the forefront of the assault against capitalism. Bukharin and his followers, past supporters of peasant free enterprise, were persecuted. And Stalin's wife committed suicide with the pistol she had been given for her self-protection.

Calm returned to countryside in 1933. A good harvest that year brought relief to the nation and the Bolsheviks. With Hitler in power and winning adulation from the German public, the Bolsheviks decided to bolster adulation for their regime. And it worked. The dead had been buried, dissident peasants were out-of-sight in distant work camps, and in the cities the persecuted remained a small minority. While many people in the United States were feeling despair, many people in the Soviet Union had a sense of direction. They believed they were building a new society. Foreigners noted that workers were putting pictures of Bolsheviks on their walls -- pictures of Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin and Kirov. And peasants on collectives had icon-like pictures of Lenin and Stalin in their homes. How much all of this was adulation and how much was a demonstration of conformity is hard to measure, but foreign observers did see a good amount of the old Russian tradition of adulation for those in power.

A new breed of Soviet citizen was developing. Young adults were grateful for the opportunities that had been denied their poor parents -- opportunities at occupations such as teaching, medicine and engineering. For many of them Stalin was a symbol of unity, and they believed that unity was necessary in the face of a world hostile to their nation.

During 1934, H.G. Wells came again to the Soviet Union, and he was impressed by what he saw. He visited Stalin, and, amid all that they talked about, Stalin pointed out that Wells was proceeding from the assumption that all people are good. Stalin reflected on the struggles he had experienced and gave Wells a rationale for his brutality. "But," he said, " I do not forget that many people are evil."

Other well-meaning and intelligent people visited the Soviet Union, among them the American singer, actor and human rights advocate Paul Robeson. In an interview that he gave in Moscow to a correspondent for New York's Daily Worker, Robeson is reported as saying that wherever he turned in Moscow he had found happiness and "bounding life, the feeling of safety and abundance of freedom." Commenting on recent trials and executions, Robeson said that from what he had seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, "anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!" 1

..
HOPES OF LIBERALIZATION,
AND THE MURDER OF KIROV

In 1934, the Soviet Union was still devoted to industrializing, trying to catch up, as Stalin had put it, rather than let the other powers overwhelm them -- Stalin's version of the Darwinian struggle, vaguely similar to Hitler's. By 1934, the Soviet Union had completed its collectivization of agriculture, and it left an unpleasant aftertaste within the Soviet Union's Communist Party. Many Party members believed that it was time for reconciliation and a move closer to the communist ideal of happiness and liberty for all. The Communist Party was still supposed to be a family of comrades. And still in the Party, or readmitted to the Party, were some of Stalin's former opponents, the so-called Rightists, Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov, and the so-called Leftists, the humbled Zinoviev, Kamenev and others of the old "United Opposition." Leon Trotsky, however, was in exile in Turkey, an outcast, trying to organize an alternative to Stalinist rule.
A part of the Marxist ideal was democracy, and Communist Party members still believed in democracy within the Party. One such Party member was Sergei Kirov, who also sat on the politburo and was leader of the Communist Party in Leningrad. It was easier for someone at the top to believe that democracy was functioning than it was for those who still looked with favor upon a dissenter or outcast like Trotsky, and Kirov was one such believer. With other Party members he also believed in the Leninist position that the Party should debate and then close ranks. Kirov was one of those who not only believed in democracy within the Party but also believed that the Party gave democracy to the country as a whole -- a democracy for the working class.

Kirov also believed in class struggle, which allowed him to support Stalin's positions concerning industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. He saw this use of force as having no parallel with fascism. Kirov was genuinely repelled by the barbarism of Germany's National Socialists. He saw Hitler's ideology as medieval. Kirov's wife was Jewish, and he disliked Hitler's anti-Semitism. He disliked dictatorship and rule by terror. The burning of books or the burning of Communists at the stake, he said, would not stop the international communist movement.

On occasion, while continuing to support the Stalinist majority, Kirov was outspoken in his defense of dissent within the Party. He recognized Stalin as the Party's foremost leader, but he had a mind of his own, and Stalin's personality annoyed him. He might argue with Stalin -- as friends sometimes do. And Stalin, being the politician that he was, remained friendly with Kirov. The highranking Bolshevik, Molotov, after he retired in the sixties, would say that Kirov was Stalin's favorite. But Stalin had reason to be concerned about Kirov as a rival. Kirov was a good speaker and a Russian, without Stalin's accent. The Russian masses were inclined to favor their fellow Russians, and Kirov's show of intelligence, energy and concern added to his popularity outside and within the Party.

In 1934, 1,966 delegates to the 17th Party Congress met to do their duties, including electing members to the Central Committee. Many of the delegates believed that while Stalin had served the Party well, he was not the man to lead the Party into a new era of internal reconciliation. They looked forward to removing Stalin from the position of General Secretary and giving him some other work. A group of senior delegates approached Kirov and asked him if he would be interested in replacing Stalin as General Secretary. Kirov refused, and he reported the incident to Stalin -- out of respect and as insurance against Stalin believing that he, Kirov, was a part of any conspiracy. And Stalin responded with anger.

In Party Congress elections, Kirov received more votes than did Stalin. Stalin lost his title as Secretary General and retained the title of Secretary. The friendship between Stalin and Kirov continued, at least in appearance, while the extent of any increase in Stalin seeing Kirov as a rival remains unknown.

In November, 1934, Kirov's bodyguards arrested a man named Leonid Nikolayev, who was carrying a loaded revolver. They gave Nikolayev over to the NKVD, who, with uncharacteristic leniency gave Nikolayev his revolver and released him. Kirov's bodyguards arrested Nikolayev, again with a revolver, a second time in late November. And again the NKVD released him. When Kirov's guards asked the NKVD why, they were told to mind their own business. Then, on December 1, 1934, Nikolayev hid himself in the men's room at the Smolny Institute, where Kirov had his office. Kirov was walking to his office, without his usual bodyguards, and in the hallway of the Smolny building Nikolayev shot him to death.

In response to the assassination, that same day, Stalin, with Molotov and Voroshilov, rushed by train to Leningrad. Stalin was greeted by the head of the Leningrad NKVD, and Stalin struck the man in the face with his fist. Stalin, Leningrad Party Officials and NKVD agents were in a room, and the assassin, Nikolayev, was dragged into the room by NKVD agents. Stalin, sitting behind a table, asked Nikolayev why he shot Kirov. Nikolayev fell to his knees, pointed to a group of NKVD police standing behind Stalin and said, "They forced me to do it." NKVD agents rushed to the assassin and beat him unconscious with their pistol butts and dragged him away.

That evening (December 1) Stalin ordered by telephone a decree that became the legal foundation for a new repression -- a decree that speeded and simplified procedures for handling "terrorist acts." The following day, amid the stirred emotions over the assassination, the decree was published. The decree stated that in cases involving people accused of terrorist acts investing authorities were to speed up their work, judicial authorities were not to allow appeals for clemency or other delays in which the sentence was death, and the NKVD was to execute those sentenced to death immediately.

Such a decree was supposed to have politburo approval before it was established, and on December 4 the politburo approved the decree. And the following day, under the new law, dozens of people not charged in connection with the Kirov assassination were executed by the NKVD, and before the month was over almost a hundred others were eliminated in the same way.

.
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THE ASSASSIN AND CRACKDOWN WITHIN THE PARTY
The assassin, Leonid Nikolayev, it was determined, had been a Party member around the years 1917 to 1924. He had harbored a grudge against the Party bureaucracy, and he had been expelled. After the assassination, the NKVD announced Nikolayev's association with a conspiratorial group of youthful supporters of Zinoviev that it had known about -- a group in Leningrad, where Zinoviev had been Party leader before being replaced by Kirov. It was a group unhappy over Zinoviev's demotion and perhaps the demise of the positions of their fathers within the Party. It was a group that may have looked with hope to the Soviet Union's leading dissident, Trotsky. Before Kirov's assassination, the NKVD had asked Kirov for permission to arrest this group of "Zinovievites," but Kirov, characteristically, had refused. He had seen no danger in the group and thought that eventually their opposition to Party positions would diminish -- a liberal and hopeful approach to dissent quite different from Stalin's.

Now, with Kirov dead, Stalin obtained a NKVD list of Zinovievites in Leningrad. He took some names from a list of Moscow Zinovievites and added them to the Leningrad list, and shortly thereafter everyone on the Leningrad list was arrested.

To crackdown against rivals, Stalin needed more than Nikolayev as the murderer of Kirov. The NKVD declared that Nikolayev and the Zinovievite group in Leningrad had conspired together to murder Kirov and to murder also Stalin, Molotov and Kaganovich. The arrested Zinovievites confessed to belonging to a group but not to any involvement in Kirov's murder, and they denied that Nikolayev had been a member of their group, but their denials were of no avail. On December 27, the indictments were read in court, its details riddled with amateurish contradictions. Nikolayev was led to believe that his life would be spared if he implicated the Zinovievites. He did so and confessed to Kirov's murder. The court presented no other evidence of a link between Nikolayev and the Zinovievites. The court pronounced the death penalty for all. A surprised Nikolayev struggled with his guards as he was dragged away, and he and his thirteen alleged accomplices were shot within hours.

Without a free press in the Soviet Union, there were no newsmen probing the background of Nikolayev and the others who were accused and executed. There were no newspeople analyzing the trial, and no newspeople asking about Nikolayev having been released twice by the NKVD or other details that would have aroused suspicions or exposed the trial as a farce. Nor was there an investigation of the murder of the NKVD official, Borisov, who had been the head of the detail guarding Kirov. Borisov was murdered by other NKVD police with crowbars while being driven in a closed truck. Borisov's wife was sent to an insane asylum. And no newspeople were asking why Stalin had allowed the NKVD to beat Nikolayev unconscious while he was asking Nikolayev questions.

Without an opposition press, the assassination and the trial that followed left the public with the impression that dangerous people were running about trying to wreck the revolution. To the common Russian, any suggestion that Stalin was behind Kirov's murder would have seemed wild and as slander by enemies of the revolution. Many people were ready to believe in conspiratorial theories but they were also reluctant to accept anything that appeared far out of context -- just as they would not have accepted that the great Bolshevik leader, Stalin, had once spied on revolutionaries.
.
.

THE SHOW TRIALS AND
GREAT PURGES OF 1936 TO 1938
In the place of questions from an independent press and comments from liberal editors and journalists, there were pronouncements about the fault of dissidents like Zinoviev having encouraged the likes of Nikolayev and the Zinovievite co-conspirators. Their opinions, it was claimed, encouraged the radical dissidents like the Zinovievites and all of the enemies of the revolution. For their role in having encouraged the conspirators, the Communists supporting Stalin now moved against two more of their old comrades: Zinoviev and his old partner in opposition to Stalin, Kamenev. Zinoviev was sentenced to ten years in prison, and Kamenev to five.

Meanwhile, alongside the new drive against enemies of the revolution, the contrary move toward liberalism that had existed within the Communist Party before Kirov's assassination continued in the form of a new Soviet Constitution. It would be a contradiction that the Stalinists would easily resolve in favor of the drive against enemies.

The new constitution was written largely by Bukharin and was to take effect in 1936. The government was to be divided into two legislative bodies: the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. The Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of religious worship. The Constitution guaranteed the inviolability of individuals, their home and the privacy of their correspondence. According to the Constitution, any of the republics could choose to secede from the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. And according to the Constitution, the exploiting classes had been defeated, the class war was at an end, and the working class and those on the collective farms, and the intelligencia, and the vanguard of working people were all working together to build a new socialist society.

Stalin was hardly a supporter of such liberality, but he could not very easily do away with the new constitution. Instead, he made a show of supporting it, presenting it as a gift from the Communist Party. The Party press was touting the new constitution. Meanwhile, through 1935 to mid-1936 hundreds of arrests were made. A law was passed that lowered the age of criminal responsibility. A new article was added to the Criminal Code -- Article 58 -- which defined new offenses that were counter-revolutionary and stated that persons who fled abroad could be executed and families of defectors imprisoned or exiled.

With Stalin pursuing class conflict, he had reason for more fear from dissidents within the Party, and the government passed a law that denied Party members the right to carry guns. Party members did not react to the law, but some of them must have been disturbed by Stalin's moves against so-called enemies. A vicious circle was spiraling toward a purification campaign not unlike the terror during the French Revolution. Stalin would now move against the rank and file opposition that had long festered among Leningrad Party members since Zinoviev's split with Stalin some years before. To eliminate a breeding ground for what he saw as mistaken ideas and weaknesses, Stalin would order thousands of Bolsheviks and their families deported to northern Siberia.

Trotsky as Arch-Villain and Darkness at Noon

Now in Norway, Trotsky was announcing to the world that political prisoners in the Soviet Union were being harshly treated, and among Stalin's supporters Trotsky remained enemy number one alongside fascism. The Bolshevik press, which had once claimed Trotsky as their hero, was now demonizing him. In August 1936, the Soviet regime accused Trotsky of conspiring with fascists in a counter revolutionary plot against the Soviet Union, and the Party newspaper, Pravda, announced that German secret police were involved in the plot. Trotsky was now to be portrayed not as a Left deviationist as before, but, having been demonized, he could be portrayed as having surrendered all his scruples and become a Rightist.

That same month, the first of the big show trails in the Soviet Union took place. Sixteen were to be tried. The two leading defendants were the already imprisoned Zinoviev and Kamenev. Before the trail they had been worked on by the NKVD, and Stalin was kept informed. When an official told Stalin that Kamenev could not be broken, Stalin became enraged and told the official not to come back with a report until he had a confession from Kamenev.

The court charged the defendants with complicity in the murder if Kirov and of plotting to kill Stalin. The trail lasted five days. No material evidence was presented, and the Soviet Union's Supreme Court asked for none. The defendants confessed their guilt, Zinoviev saying that because of his having been seduced by Trotskyism he had gone all the way to fascism. Decades later, some people were to believe that the defendants may have confessed to save their families, or that they may have confessed believing that this would spare their lives. Some others were to believe that the defendants had been convinced that the charade was for the good of the Party -- as described in Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon.

Half way through the trial, Stalin went to the home of an old friend and former politburo member, Tomsky, with a bottle of wine. Tomsky, with Bukharin and Rykov, was facing a charge of treasonable complicity with Zinoviev. Tomsky ordered him out, and Stalin left, shaking with anger. Moments later a shot rang out. Tomsky, the good Bolshevik that he was, was opposed to individual terror. He had chosen to kill himself with his pistol rather than to kill Stalin.

The prosecutor, Vishinsky closed his speech for the prosecution saying, "I demand that these mad dogs be shot, every last one of them." On August 25, Zinoviev, Kamenev and the fourteen others were shot. And Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia.

The trial caused a sensation through the Soviet Union and the world. Soviet newspapers applauded the executions and demanded more purges of counter revolutionaries. The public in the Soviet Union accepted the confessions of the accused -- easier to believe perhaps than that their government had been perpetrating a gigantic hoax. In Norway, Communists demonstrated against Trotsky. In the United States, the Left was stunned. Most of those associated with the Socialist Party denounced the trial, while many if not most Communists believed that bourgeois newspapers and radio stations were distorting the news. In New York City, a mass meeting of Stalinists adopted a resolution urging Stalin to expel all Trotskyists, and the U.S. Communist Party leader, Earl Browder, denounced Trotsky. The popular Leftist magazine, the New Masses, began its description of the purge trials as legitimate judicial procedures. From Germany came Dr. Goebbels' expert analysis of the trial. The Bolshevik government, he explained, was a Jewish business.

More Purges

On September 10, it was announced that the charges against Bukharin and Rykov had been dropped due to lack of evidence. Neither had been willing to make the confessions demanded of them. Then the head of the NKVD, Yagoda, was replaced by someone who would take a harder approach to the fight against counter-revolution. This was Nikolai Yezhov, a Bolshevik from before the revolution, a former industrial worker, a former Secretary of the Central Committee, and someone who enjoyed a reputation as an agreeable and conscientious man. The greatest terror came during Yezhov's rule over the NKVD, and people in the Soviet Union would call the Great Terror Yezhovshchina (the times of Yezhov). Yezhov began his new reign by rooting out NKVD commissars that he saw as not fit to serve under him. In 1937, it is estimated, around 3000 of them were shot.

In January 1937, more Bolsheviks stood trial. They confessed and were executed for participating with anti-Soviet "Trotskyites" and for having spied for Germany and Japan. Trotsky, it was said, had met Rudolf Hess and had agreed to plans for sabotaging Soviet industry and plans to frustrate the Soviet Union's military. Trotsky had moved to Mexico that month, having been booted out of Norway for violating his agreement not to make political statements. And Trotsky was to continue his attempt to expose the fraudulent nature of the accusations against him. Publicly he offered to submit to a trial if the Soviet government published actual details supporting the accusations.

Unwittingly, it was actually the Soviet regime that was in complicity with the fascists doing damage to the Soviet Union's defense establishment. Hitler's regime was happy to help the Soviet Union damage itself. The chief of staff of the Soviet army was Tukhachevsky, an able man. Stalin had reason to fear him, for it was the army that had the power to overthrow Stalin and his entire regime. Some people were to claim that such a plot against Stalin was actually being hatched by high-ranking military people, although no conclusive evidence of this exists. What is known conclusively is that in early 1937 the Germans forged a letter that Tukhachevsky was supposed to have sent to friends in Germany telling of plans to overthrow Stalin's regime. These documents were well planted by the Germans. The documents were found and passed on to Stalin. The Soviet government put Tukhachevsky and other top army men on trial in June, and they were quickly executed. Then purges began among others in the Army officer corps and in the Navy. Including Tukhachevsky and those executed with him, before it was over the Soviet Union had lost 3 army marshals, 14 of the Soviet Union's 16 army commanders, 65 of 67 corps commanders; 136 of 199 division commanders, 221 of 397 brigade commanders, and all eight of the Soviet Union's admirals. In all, about 35,000 military officers had been shot or imprisoned.

The purging spread to the masses. It was worse than the anti-German hysteria during World War I in the U.S. It was more like the Cultural Revolution that was to take place China in the 1960s. A society that is intense in its struggle for change has a flip side to its idealism: intolerance. People saw enemies everywhere, enemies who wanted to destroy the revolution and diminish the results of their hard work and accomplishments, enemies who wanted to restore capitalism for selfish reasons against the collective interests of the nation. If those at the top of the Communist Party and an old revolutionary like Trotsky could join the enemy, what about lesser people. In factories and offices, mass meetings were held in which people were urged to be vigilant against sabotage.

It was up to common folks to make the distinction between incompetence and intentional wrecking, and any mishap might be blamed on wrecking. Denunciations became common. Neighbors denounced neighbors. Denunciations were a good way of striking against people one did not like, including one's parents, a way of eliminating people blocking one's promotion, and denunciations were a means of proving one's patriotism. Many realized that some innocent people were being victimized, and the saying went around that "when you chop wood the chips fly." As with Lenin, it was believed some who were innocent would have to be victimized if all the guilty were to be apprehended.

Yezhov established denunciation quotas. Labor camps were in need of more people for their enterprises, as they were losing people through expirations of prison terms, and from death. Some in the camps whose terms expired were given second terms without interrogation or hearings. Re-supplying labor for the camps was an unruly business in 1937 and 1938. NKVD prison cells were stuffed with new candidates, and NKVD interrogators were swamped.

The last show trial opened to a packed house on March 2, 1938. Bukharin and Rykov were two of the defendants. The former head of the NKVD, Yogoda, was included among the defendants -- getting a taste, it would be said, of his own medicine. Two Uzbek Communists were also included, charged with Bourgeois nationalism, reflecting a clamp down on nationalistic tendencies among the Soviet Union national minorities. Twenty-one Bolsheviks in all were tried, accused of belonging to a rightist Trotskyite bloc. They were accused of having killed Gorky (who would have opposed the trials and had conveniently died in 1936). They were accused of attempting to kill Lenin in 1918 and of trying to give away the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Far East, Central Asia and Turkestan during the early days of the revolution. To historians today, the charges appear ridiculous. But people then in the Soviet Union accepted the charges as valid.

Again those standing trial confessed. Bukharin confessed to having been one of the leaders of the "rightist Trotskyite bloc." Their goal, he said, was in essence to restore capitalism in the USSR, although some of the Trotskyites might not have been aware of what the consequences of their positions. Bukharin denied direct participation in any espionage or in the murder of Kirov and others, including Gorky, and he denied charges that he had tried to give away the Ukraine and other territories. Bukharin went to his death believing the Cheka under Dzerzhinsky had been heroic in its ruthless fight against counterrevolutionary terror but that it had degenerated into an organization of well-paid bureaucrats living off the reputation of the Cheka.

The year ended with Yezhov's demotion, marking the end of his campaign against Trotskyite subversion. Then Yezhov was himself arrested. In conversations that were recorded when Molotov was in his seventies, Molotov described Yezhov as having exceeded his authority, as having been overzealous. In these conversations, Molotov denounced Yezhov for having set quotas -- no fewer than two thousand "liquidated in such and such region," he said, and "no fewer than fifty in such and such district." Yezhov, claimed Molotov, was shot when he was "unmasked." And, when asked whether the politburo had placed too much trust in security agencies, Molotov said "No. There were deficiencies." The main problem he said was that "oversight was inadequate." 2

Yezhov was replaced by Stalin's old friend and fellow Georgian, Lavrentry Beria -- the man Stalin's dead wife had disliked and had not wanted in her house. Beria claimed the NKVD fascists had been responsible for excesses, and, striking against those guilty of these excesses, Beria arrested and executed nearly all senior NKVD officers and sent many NKVD officers to labor camps, where they were to join some of those they had interrogated or tortured.

It was a general rule, claim some historians, for Stalin to eliminate those who knew too much. Molotov was to describe it differently. Late in his life, Molotov believed that Stalin would be rehabilitated. He denied that Stalin was behind Kirov's murder, and he blamed others for what he called excesses. He claimed that Stalin knew little about the purges -- although Stalin signed death warrants sometimes numbering more than a thousand a day, in the presence of Molotov.
.
.

COUNTING THE DEAD, AND PREPARATIONS
FOR NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE
Counts of the number of people who were purged vary. The Russian historian Roy Medvedev has written of reliable Soviet records indicating 1,116 having been sentenced to death in 1936, and 353,680 in 1937. The decline in 1938, it is estimated, may have brought the number of executed to 200,000 or 300,000. Stalin's opponents in the Party had been effectively silenced. Of the 1966 delegates to the 17th Party Congress -- the Party Congress of 1934 that had threatened Stalin's position within the Party -- 1,108 had been shot as enemies of the people.

Perhaps it can be said that ten percent of the Soviet Union's adult population were executed or deported to labor camps. The total had to be small enough for the Soviet regime to maintain the support that it needed to survive. It was, it seems, a majority again letting a minority go under. In 1938 and beyond Stalin was still receiving loud cheers and applause. After the trials and deportations, Stalin appeared smiling at festivals, handing prizes to athletes, or appearing among happy workers or peasants, still father to his people -- a stern father. The purges had not reached the level of imploding Soviet society. Soviet citizens were still hard at work. In 1937 industrial production in the Soviet Union was 14.1 percent of world production, and in 1938 it had risen to 17.6 percent.

To a lot of Soviet citizens, a lot of traitors and wreckers and misguided old revolutionaries had been driven from the ranks of good people. Old revolutionaries were of little use, anyway. Old revolutionaries become old cranks. In their place, a younger generation of people had risen, and they were enthusiastic about the revolution and making the nation strong.

A few old Bolsheviks would survive Siberia, but hardly any of Trotsky's old supporters would. Nor would Trotsky's family, or Trotsky. In May 1940 an attempt on Trotsky almost succeeded, led by David Siqueiros, the Mexican artist and Mexico's Communist Party leader. In August that year, another succeeded. Ramon Mercader had become one of Trotsky's trusted helpers, and one night he drove an ice pick into Trotsky's head. Mexican authorities sentenced Mercader to 20 years in prison. The Soviet Union awarded him with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded Mercader's mother the Order of Lenin.

Meanwhile, the Soviet regime had been increasing its appeal to Russian tradition and patriotism, and it was adopting stricter social policies. Divorce laws were tightened. Abortions were made illegal, and women were encouraged to bear more children. In education it was back to basics rather than any new theories. Plans to latinize the alphabet were dropped. Russian became a compulsory subject throughout the Soviet Union. Military schools and other establishments for national minorities were closed, and no more criticism about Russian arrogance toward national minorities could be found in the Soviet press. Instead came comments about the Russian people extending unselfish and constant help to every other Soviet nation. .

.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 10:00 am on Nov. 10, 2002
I'm sorry but that is nonsense. I have figures to prove it. Results of the Constituent Assembly courtesy of MIchael Lynch, "Russia in Revolution"...
SRs 17,490,00(votes) 370(seats)
Bolsheviks 9,844,00(votes) 175(seats)
These were the top two parties.

The figures you posted are not of big importance.
SRs joined bolsheviks when October Revolution started, but it doesn't really matter.
All of the oppressed and exploited struggled against "white army" and foreign intervents, working people of different nationalities fought against capitalism for the socialism during the Civil War.
Great October revolution was the mass event , which took place in the country without democratic traditions and this revolution marked the age of the socialist democracy.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 11:56 am on Nov. 10, 2002
You are fooling yourself, RH. If you bother to read the rest of the constitution, you will find that the Communist Party had almost absolute power over the people. And you are wrong, the vast majority of the population were not party members. Even if they were, the elected officials did nothing but vote unanimously in agreement with decisions that the few Communist elites had already made.


It is obvious that you talk about what you completely don't know. This is the first thread about Constitution of the USSR, others will follow, so all of you will get the chance to study it and to express your opinion.

quote:". I hated regan as I hate many US policies as I hate many soviet policies. "
Then tell me what do you support? Are you anarchist, the utopian anacrhist punk? If yes, then I am not surptised, you guys are against the state, no matter if it is capitalist or socialist.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from peaccenicked on 4:49 pm on Nov. 10, 2002
For Stalinists the truth is lies. Everything condemning Stalinism is anti-socialist. That is pure bullshit and you idiots should study your subject in depth.


.

Off the topic bullshit. We don't discuss stalinism, but Soviet Constitution , which was adopted after the Stalin's age.

[antieverything]

Are you going to answer to anything I just said or are you just going to attack me?

FYI, I'm a deconstructionist in all my beliefs. I'm not spewing something I've heard from someone else, I've read the entire soviet constitution, I've studied the soviet political process. To call the USSR a democracy is a joke.

I'm not an anarchist although I do have some anti-authoritorian tendencies. I don't know where you got that idea. Saying that the USSR was somewhat screwed up doesn't make me anti-statist.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 10:00 am on Nov. 10, 2002
I'm sorry but that is nonsense. I have figures to prove it. Results of the Constituent Assembly courtesy of MIchael Lynch, "Russia in Revolution"...
SRs 17,490,00(votes) 370(seats)
Bolsheviks 9,844,00(votes) 175(seats)
These were the top two parties. Clearly the Bolsheviks came second and received only a quarter of overall votes. How does that represent the majority?
Another reason for Bolshevik success was the Provisional Government's weakness and failures. The PG did not possess any military weapons or the support of the army to stop opposition. The Bolsheviks were the only committed party at the time who sought violent revolution to overthrow the government and therefore merely picked up the power that the PG had callously dropped.
RH you seem very dogmatic when it comes to the USSR. I like Chomsky was against the USSR due to its illegitimacy and brutal and repressive measures that mirrorred that of capitalist governments we detest.



Read the following
"In an attempt to discredit the Bolsheviks, no effort has been spared to falsify the historical record. The usual trick is to describe the October Revolution as a coup d'état, that is, a movement carried out by a small minority using conspiratorial methods behind the backs of the majority. The Bolsheviks, so the argument goes, seized power from the Provisional Government which issued from the February Revolution and which, supposedly, represented the democratic will of the people. If only Lenin's "conspiracy" had not prospered, the story goes, Russia would have entered on the road of Western parliamentary democracy and lived happily ever after. This fairy story has been repeated so many times that it has been uncritically accepted by many. Like any other fairy story its purpose is to lull the wits to sleep. And also like any other fairy story, it is convincing only to very small children.

The first thing which springs to mind is: if the Provisional Government really represented the overwhelming majority, and the Bolsheviks only an insignificant group of conspirators, how did the latter succeed in overthrowing the former? After all, the government possessed (at least on paper) all the might of the state apparatus, the army, the police and the Cossacks, whereas the Bolsheviks were a small party which, at the beginning of the revolution in February had only about 8,000 members in all Russia. How was it possible for such a tiny minority to overthrow a mighty state? If we accept the argument of a coup, then we must assume that Lenin and Trotsky possessed magical powers. This is the very stuff of fairy tales! Sadly, it has no place in real life, or in history.

In reality, the conspiracy theory of history explains nothing. It merely assumes what has to be proved. Such a superficial mode of reasoning, which assumes that every strike is caused by "agitators" and not by the accumulated discontent in a factory, is typical of the police mentality. But when it is seriously advanced by self-styled academics as an explanation for great historical events, one can only scratch one's head in bewilderment - or else assume that an ulterior motive is present. The motive of the policeman who seeks to attribute a strike to the activities of unseen agitators is quite clear. And this mode of argument is really no different. The essential idea is that the working class is incapable of understanding its own interests (which are, naturally, identical to those of the bosses). Therefore, if they move to take their destiny into their own hands, the only explanation is that they have been misled by unscrupulous demagogues.

This argument, which incidentally can be used against democracy in general, also misses the point. How could Lenin and Trotsky "mislead" the decisive majority of society in such a way that in the short space of nine months, the Bolshevik Party passed from an insignificant minority to win the majority in the soviets, the only really representative organs of society, and take power? Only because the bourgeois Provisional Government had revealed its complete bankruptcy. Only because it had failed to carry out a single one of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. And this can be demonstrated very easily by one fact alone: the Bolshevik Party took power in October on the basis of the programme of "Peace, Bread and Land". This is the most graphic illustration of the fact that the Provisional Government had failed to achieve any of the most burning needs of the Russian people. This, and this alone, explains the success of the Bolsheviks in October.

The most striking thing about 1917 is precisely the active involvement of the masses at each stage. This, in fact, constitutes the essence of a revolution. In normal periods the majority of men and women are prepared to accept that the most important decisions affecting their lives are taken by others, by the "people that know" - politicians, civil servants, judges, "experts" - but at critical moments, the "ordinary" people begin to question everything. They are no longer content to allow others to decide for them. They want to think and act for themselves. That is what a revolution is. And you can see elements of this in every strike. The workers begin to participate actively, speak, judge, criticise - in a word, decide their own destiny. To the bureaucrat and the policeman (and some historians whose mental processes function on the same wavelength) this seems like a strange and threatening madness. In fact, it is precisely the opposite. In such situations, men and women cease to act like automatons and begin to behave like real human beings with a mind and a will. Their stature is raised in their own eyes. They rapidly become conscious of their own condition and their own aspirations. Under such conditions, they consciously seek out that party and programme that reflects their aspirations, and reject others. A revolution is always characterised by the rapid rise and fall of parties, individuals and programmes, in which the more radical wing tends to gain.

In all Lenin's speeches and writings of this period, we see a burning faith in the ability of the masses to change society. Far from adopting "conspiratorial" methods, he based himself on appeals to the revolutionary initiatives of the workers, poor peasants and soldiers. In the April Theses he explained that: "We don't want the masses to take our word for it. We are not charlatans. We want the masses to overcome their mistakes through experience." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 439, henceforth referred to as LCW.) Later on he said: "Insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced classÉ Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people." (LCW, Vol. 26. p. 22.)

The fact that Lenin here counterposes the masses to the Party was no accident. Although the Bolshevik Party played a fundamental role in the Revolution, this was not a simple one-way process, but a dialectical one. Lenin pointed out many times that the masses are a hundred times more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. It is a law that in a revolution, the revolutionary party and its leadership come under the pressure of alien classes. We have seen this many times in history. A section of the leadership at such moments begins to doubt and hesitate. An internal struggle is necessary to overcome these vacillations. This occurred in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin's return to Russia, when the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd (mainly Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin) adopted a conciliatory attitude to the Provisional Government and even considered fusing with the Mensheviks. The line of the Party was only changed after a sharp internal struggle in which Lenin and Trotsky joined forces to fight for a second revolution in which the working class would take power into its hands.

In this struggle, Lenin appealed directly to the advanced workers over the heads of the Central Committee. He said that "the 'country' of the workers and the poor peasants É is a thousand times more leftward than the Chernovs and the Tseretelis, and a hundred times more leftward than we are". (LCW, Vol. 24, p. 364.) The motor force of the revolution at each stage was the movement of the masses. The task of the Bolsheviks was to give a clear political and organisational expression to this movement, to ensure that it was concentrated at the right moment for the seizure of power, and to avoid premature uprisings which would lead to defeat. For a time this meant actually holding the masses back. The key Vyborg Committee in Petrograd stated in June: "We have to play the part of the fire-hose." (Quoted in M. Liebman, Leninism under Lenin, p. 200.) Podvoisky admitted at the Sixth Party Congress in August: "We were forced to spend half our time calming the masses." (Ibid., p. 200.)"

http://www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 2:52 am on Nov. 11, 2002
Are you going to answer to anything I just said or are you just going to attack me?

FYI, I'm a deconstructionist in all my beliefs. I'm not spewing something I've heard from someone else, I've read the entire soviet constitution, I've studied the soviet political process. To call the USSR a democracy is a joke.

I'm not an anarchist although I do have some anti-authoritorian tendencies. I don't know where you got that idea. Saying that the USSR was somewhat screwed up doesn't make me anti-statist.


quote:"I've read the entire soviet constitution, I've studied the soviet political process. To call the USSR a democracy is a joke."
It is obvious that you have not read it well. What do you think after reading the first post of the thread? The part of the Constitution , I quoted, perfectly shows the democratical character of the Soviet state.

quote:"Saying that the USSR was somewhat screwed up doesn't make me anti-statist"
It makes you anti-communist.

[antieverything]

How old are you, RH?

If that is so, then I am an anti-communist. If that is so then I am proud to be anti-communist.

The part of the constitution that you posted has nothing to do with the actual political process. Look at how politics in the USSR actually worked.

The governing body of the Soviet Union was the Soviet government, elected by the Congress of Soviets, which in turn was elected by local Soviet's. The executive body of the USSR was the Central Executive Committee , comprised of 101 members. The legislative body of the USSR was the Council of People's Commissars. In the first decade after the October Revolution, these members were elected by the Congress of Soviets to these branches from various political parties, from Mensheviks to Anarchists to Bolsheviks. A decade later, after the complete destruction of Socialist-Democracy in the Soviet Union, only Communist Party members were elected to the Central Executive Committee or Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and elected from the top-down, not the bottom up.

By the 1930s, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Russian Communist Party transformed from being the executive body of the Communist Party to being the supreme executive body over the entire U.S.S.R., with Stalin at its head. Local Soviets lost their power as centralized planning meant a crushing autocracy and total domination by the center.

I'm challenging you, study the topic and then come back and honestly tell me that the USSR was not controlled by a few elites at the top of the Communist Party!

[IHP]

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 10:29 pm on Nov. 9, 2002

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 3:23 pm on Nov. 9, 2002
And the Nazi party never received the absolute majority. They never got above 38% of the votes.

--IHP

I suggest you to start a separate thread about Nazis.


I suggest you look at your closest dictionary and look up "relevant" then look up "comparison". Now combine your new knowledge and you'll understand why i made this "relevant comparison".

--IHP

(Edited by i hate pinochet at 7:02 am on Nov. 11, 2002)

[Dan Majerle]

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 9:32 am on Nov. 10, 2002

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 10:00 am on Nov. 10, 2002
I'm sorry but that is nonsense. I have figures to prove it. Results of the Constituent Assembly courtesy of MIchael Lynch, "Russia in Revolution"...
SRs 17,490,00(votes) 370(seats)
Bolsheviks 9,844,00(votes) 175(seats)
These were the top two parties.

The figures you posted are not of big importance.
SRs joined bolsheviks when October Revolution started, but it doesn't really matter.
All of the oppressed and exploited struggled against "white army" and foreign intervents, working people of different nationalities fought against capitalism for the socialism during the Civil War.
Great October revolution was the mass event , which took place in the country without democratic traditions and this revolution marked the age of the socialist democracy.


RH you cannot dismiss my figures as "unimportant" and supersede them with wild and unfounded claims that suggest the contrary to what my figures proove. You say it was a mass revolution, whereas the mass voted against the Bolshevik party. THe SR did not join the party they were abolished along with every other party.
The fact that people fought with the Reds in the White army was because of conscription laid out by Trotsky and brutal methods of repression he adopted to force people to fight other their families would be hunted down and murdered. This in many cases happened.
The October Revolution was more a coup de tat as it was a minority party picking up power from a desolate provisional government.

[new democracy]

RH, if people really wanted the USSR so much how come the people so strongly opposed the coup against gorbachev?

[Dan Majerle]

RH, that is one of the most ridiculous articles i have read. It attempts to refute the argument that the Bolsheviks were a minority and presents forward the false claim that they had full support of the masses and on occassion had to hose them down! LOL. Enlightening. Not really.
It's only evidence to support hollow proclamations are quotes from Lenin who i think we can rightfully consider biased at that period of time. Show me in the article where it refutes my concrete figures of Bolshevik insignificance and unpopularity as those from the National Assembly show. If the masses adored and followed the Bolsheviks so much why didn't they vote for them in the National Assembly? Now either many millions incorrectly filled in their votes and put SRs instead of Bolsheviks on their ballot paper or your article is erroneous and deceing. I think I, with the support of truth and reason, tend to walk on the path of the latter.

[new democracy]

Quote: from new democracy on 12:49 pm on Nov. 12, 2002
RH, if people really wanted the USSR so much how come the people so strongly opposed the coup against gorbachev?

and just wondering, the ones that organized the coup, where are they now?

[redstar2000]

RH, sorry to report that I could find no evidence that article 5 (national referendum) was ever used with regard to the dissolution of the USSR.

As far as I could tell, the USSR was dissolved by act of the Congress of Peoples Deputies in September 1991 (no account of what the vote was or even the exact date the vote took place). I did get a hell of a lot of "page not found" notices, though.

There apparently was a referendum that Yeltsin held to increase his "presidential powers" (the prick!), but that was after the USSR was gone and took place in Russia only.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from antieverything on 12:46 pm on Nov. 11, 2002
How old are you, RH?

If that is so, then I am an anti-communist. If that is so then I am proud to be anti-communist.

The part of the constitution that you posted has nothing to do with the actual political process. Look at how politics in the USSR actually worked.

The governing body of the Soviet Union was the Soviet government, elected by the Congress of Soviets, which in turn was elected by local Soviet's. The executive body of the USSR was the Central Executive Committee , comprised of 101 members. The legislative body of the USSR was the Council of People's Commissars. In the first decade after the October Revolution, these members were elected by the Congress of Soviets to these branches from various political parties, from Mensheviks to Anarchists to Bolsheviks. A decade later, after the complete destruction of Socialist-Democracy in the Soviet Union, only Communist Party members were elected to the Central Executive Committee or Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and elected from the top-down, not the bottom up.

By the 1930s, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Russian Communist Party transformed from being the executive body of the Communist Party to being the supreme executive body over the entire U.S.S.R., with Stalin at its head. Local Soviets lost their power as centralized planning meant a crushing autocracy and total domination by the center.

I'm challenging you, study the topic and then come back and honestly tell me that the USSR was not controlled by a few elites at the top of the Communist Party!




quote: "How old are you, RH?"
It doesn't really matter in this discussion.

quote:" If that is so, then I am an anti-communist. If that is so then I am proud to be anti-communist"

That is what I needed to hear from you. I am not surprised, as only anti-communists can attack the first socialist state in the world.

quote:" The part of the constitution that you posted has nothing to do with the actual political process"

Do you know what Constitution is? Constitution is the State's Supreme Law. The constitution comes first, and political process comes second, the first determines the second. The part of the Constitution I posted perfectly describes the basis principles of the Soviet state functioning.

quote:"The governing body of the Soviet Union was the Soviet government, elected by the Congress of Soviets, which in turn was elected by local Soviet's. The executive body of the USSR was the Central Executive Committee , comprised of 101 members. The legislative body of the USSR was the Council of People's Commissars.
. In the first decade after the October Revolution, these members were elected by the Congress of Soviets to these branches from various political parties, from Mensheviks to Anarchists to Bolsheviks"

True. But it contains one historical mistake. Anarchists were not the members of the Soviets. How could the one who was against state authority, participate in the state governing and be authority himself/herself? The part about anarchists is bullshit.

quote:"A decade later, after the complete destruction of Socialist-Democracy in the Soviet Union, only Communist Party members were elected to the Central Executive Committee or Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and "

The term " social-democracy" lost it's past meaning by that time,as it became a synonym of menshevism. That was Lenin who said that party had to change it's name into the Communist Party, as it expelled all of the SRs, mensheviks, and left just bolsheviks, who were true communists.
That was the answer on the actions of SRs and other mensheviks, who supported the counter-revolution, white army and went against Soviets. You should know that SRs tried to assasinate Lenin. They were not comrades.

quote:" elected from the top-down, not the bottom up. "

Blatant lie, anti-communist propaganda.
They were nominated by the Soviets and elected from the bottom to the top.

quote:"the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Russian Communist Party transformed from being the executive body of the Communist Party to being the supreme executive body over the entire U.S.S.R., "


Another lie. Politburo members were elected on the Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Politburo implemented it's power , considering the opinion of the Communist Party.


quote:"study the topic"
Unlike you, I know the topic.

Your mistake is that you study the works of the bourgeois analysts.
The mistake of many leftists is that they don't respect USSR. Their biggest mistake is that they doin't understand the historical importance of the Soviet Union and don't want to study the great experience of the Soviet state.


"Learn, learn and learn again."
Lenin




(Edited by Revolution Hero at 11:24 pm on Nov. 13, 2002)

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 5:01 pm on Nov. 11, 2002

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 10:29 pm on Nov. 9, 2002

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 3:23 pm on Nov. 9, 2002
And the Nazi party never received the absolute majority. They never got above 38% of the votes.

--IHP

I suggest you to start a separate thread about Nazis.


I suggest you look at your closest dictionary and look up "relevant" then look up "comparison". Now combine your new knowledge and you'll understand why i made this "relevant comparison".

--IHP

(Edited by i hate pinochet at 7:02 am on Nov. 11, 2002)


I don't need a dictionary for this.
You comparison wasn't good, it was the same as to compare a human being with an animal.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 8:52 am on Nov. 12, 2002

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 9:32 am on Nov. 10, 2002

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 10:00 am on Nov. 10, 2002
I'm sorry but that is nonsense. I have figures to prove it. Results of the Constituent Assembly courtesy of MIchael Lynch, "Russia in Revolution"...
SRs 17,490,00(votes) 370(seats)
Bolsheviks 9,844,00(votes) 175(seats)
These were the top two parties.

The figures you posted are not of big importance.
SRs joined bolsheviks when October Revolution started, but it doesn't really matter.
All of the oppressed and exploited struggled against "white army" and foreign intervents, working people of different nationalities fought against capitalism for the socialism during the Civil War.
Great October revolution was the mass event , which took place in the country without democratic traditions and this revolution marked the age of the socialist democracy.


RH you cannot dismiss my figures as "unimportant" and supersede them with wild and unfounded claims that suggest the contrary to what my figures proove. You say it was a mass revolution, whereas the mass voted against the Bolshevik party. THe SR did not join the party they were abolished along with every other party.
The fact that people fought with the Reds in the White army was because of conscription laid out by Trotsky and brutal methods of repression he adopted to force people to fight other their families would be hunted down and murdered. This in many cases happened.
The October Revolution was more a coup de tat as it was a minority party picking up power from a desolate provisional government.


quote:" RH you cannot dismiss my figures as "unimportant" and supersede them with wild and unfounded claims that suggest the contrary to what my figures proove. You say it was a mass revolution, whereas the mass voted against the Bolshevik party."

I have all rights to say that these figures are just sophisticated tools in the hands of such anti- communists like you.
Firstly, the mass didn't voted against the Party of Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks got their votes.
Secondly, the majority of people were misleaded by the SRs. Do you know whom SRs were? Socialist Revolutionaries, mad men , who preferred the methods of terror. People didn't know whom they voted for.
SRs joined Bolsheviks during the Great October Revolution. If you don't know it, then go and study history books.
The Great October Revolution was really a mass movement as the Civil War followed it. Don't you think that if the majority of the population of the Russian Empire have not supported Soviets, bolsheviks would have never taken a victory in the Civil War.
Now, the most interesting part. SRs betrayed bolsheviks later. According to your logic, SRs would have defeated bolsheviks, as they were supported by the majority. LOL. Bolsheviks had the majority during the Civil War, and that is why they defeated not only White Army, but SRs , anarchists, and other anti-socialist of your kind.

quote:"The fact that people fought with the Reds in the White army was because of conscription laid out by Trotsky and brutal methods of repression he adopted to force people to fight other their families would be hunted down and murdered. "

The confusion of thought, which resulted in the complete lie.
First of all, you should have wrote "against" instead of " in".
Secondly, all of the men , who fought in the Red Army fought for the great ideals, they fought for the justice, for the communism, not because Trotsky made them to fight, but because they wanted to free proletarians from the exploitation.

quote:"The October Revolution was more a coup de tat as it was a minority party picking up power from a desolate provisional government"

All of the listed above, have alredy proved that this statement is wrong.

[Dan Majerle]

RH,

I see where your pitiful argument has arrived to. Correcting me on grammatical errors and typos that result from typing rather than my lack of knowledge of grammer highlight your need to distract people from the main issue at hand; the illegitimacy of the Bolshevik regime and your erroneous claims. You seem to be one of those dogmatic Soviet followers who despite facts and figures will support the USSR because it was a 'socialist' state and merely the first. You need a cold dose of reality to wake you from your dreams. RH you are absolving the USSR for everything it has committed in 80+ years in government. How can you say the Bolsheviks had the right to dissolve the Constituent Assembly because the people of Russia didn't know who they were voting for. That is reasong that fascists use. You must realise that just because i am not pro-Soviet that doesn't make me anti-communist and their are other roads to travel upon then the dogmatic and rigid brand of Marxism-Leninsm that you stubbornly support. I think you are trying to develop an identity for yourself so that is the reason you try really hard to love and revere a brutal regime.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 11:21 pm on Nov. 12, 2002
RH, that is one of the most ridiculous articles i have read. It attempts to refute the argument that the Bolsheviks were a minority and presents forward the false claim that they had full support of the masses and on occassion had to hose them down! LOL. Enlightening. Not really.
It's only evidence to support hollow proclamations are quotes from Lenin who i think we can rightfully consider biased at that period of time. Show me in the article where it refutes my concrete figures of Bolshevik insignificance and unpopularity as those from the National Assembly show. If the masses adored and followed the Bolsheviks so much why didn't they vote for them in the National Assembly? Now either many millions incorrectly filled in their votes and put SRs instead of Bolsheviks on their ballot paper or your article is erroneous and deceing. I think I, with the support of truth and reason, tend to walk on the path of the latter.


The article is very objective, and your subjective thoughts are not able to change the historical facts.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 10:18 am on Nov. 13, 2002
RH, sorry to report that I could find no evidence that article 5 (national referendum) was ever used with regard to the dissolution of the USSR.

As far as I could tell, the USSR was dissolved by act of the Congress of Peoples Deputies in September 1991 (no account of what the vote was or even the exact date the vote took place). I did get a hell of a lot of "page not found" notices, though.

There apparently was a referendum that Yeltsin held to increase his "presidential powers" (the prick!), but that was after the USSR was gone and took place in Russia only.


"RH, sorry to report that I could find no evidence that article 5 (national referendum) was ever used with regard to the dissolution of the USSR."

It doesn't mean that this article was not used. I am 100% sure that it was used , just like I described it before.

quote:" As far as I could tell, the USSR was dissolved by act of the Congress of Peoples Deputies in September 1991 "

What is the source of this information?
The man , who wrote it didn't know anything about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
USSR was destroyed unconstitutionally, as the minority ( Yeltsin, Kravchuk, Shushkevich) didn't care about the will of the Soviet citizens, gathered the power in their hands and signed " document" of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

quote:" There apparently was a referendum that Yeltsin held to increase his "presidential powers" (the prick!), but that was after the USSR was gone and took place in Russia only."

True. There were two referendums. The one before the disintegration, and the one after. The second was falsified by the renegades.

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 12:59 am on Nov. 14, 2002
RH,

I see where your pitiful argument has arrived to. Correcting me on grammatical errors and typos that result from typing rather than my lack of knowledge of grammer highlight your need to distract people from the main issue at hand; the illegitimacy of the Bolshevik regime and your erroneous claims. You seem to be one of those dogmatic Soviet followers who despite facts and figures will support the USSR because it was a 'socialist' state and merely the first. You need a cold dose of reality to wake you from your dreams. RH you are absolving the USSR for everything it has committed in 80+ years in government. How can you say the Bolsheviks had the right to dissolve the Constituent Assembly because the people of Russia didn't know who they were voting for. That is reasong that fascists use. You must realise that just because i am not pro-Soviet that doesn't make me anti-communist and their are other roads to travel upon then the dogmatic and rigid brand of Marxism-Leninsm that you stubbornly support. I think you are trying to develop an identity for yourself so that is the reason you try really hard to love and revere a brutal regime.


I really liked your reply, especially it's last part. What a nonesense!

Do you have something to say against my rational conclusions? Apparently , you don't. Come on, man, start answering on each my sentence, just like I did. Are you too weak? Are you out of your arguements and thoughts?
I am waiting for the continuation of this debate!

[Dan Majerle]

What a nonesense!



It is actually "What nonsense". ;)

[IHP]

"You comparison wasn't good, it was the same as to compare a human being with an animal."

LOL. If you cannot see that there is a similarity between one party without an absolute majority taking power, and another that takes power without absolute majority you are foolish.

--IHP

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from Dan Majerle on 2:16 am on Nov. 14, 2002



What a nonesense!



It is actually "What nonsense". ;)


Good revenge! "pitiful arguements?" Anyway, you just have confirmed that your reply was actually nonsense. You are very sincere and I respect you for this. But is it all you have to say?

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 3:36 pm on Nov. 14, 2002
"You comparison wasn't good, it was the same as to compare a human being with an animal."

LOL. If you cannot see that there is a similarity between one party without an absolute majority taking power, and another that takes power without absolute majority you are foolish.

--IHP


What were the poltical views of both parties? Think about it, analyze history and what I have said before, and then try to come up with some intelligent words.

By the way, the sentence- "mir lovil menya, no ne paemal" , have a meaning in russian. Do you know this language?

[peaccenicked]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...1917/oct/01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm)

[IHP]

"What were the poltical views of both parties? Think about it, analyze history and what I have said before, and then try to come up with some intelligent words."

intelligent words do not change fact. I didn't write my original post with the intention of arguing, i was simplying writing that in response to a comment you made. nothing more. But as you insist. My original statement compares a party taking power without absolute majority. I said nothing of their politics nor what their ideals were, you brought their politics into it, not I.

Your statement was:"The majority voted for the USSR to stay, but Yeltsin, Kravchuk and other renegades gathered in Belovezhskaya Pusha and signed unconstitutional document on the disintegration of the USSR. So, the USSR was destroyed by the unconstitutional actions of minority."


My comparison was totally relevent to this. I compared one party to another, in regards to not receiving an absolute majority, but still claiming victory. Once again, my intention was not to argue.

And yes, I speak russian. I like this sentence as its basically how I live my life. Vi panimaete?

--IHP

btw. can you remember who said it?



(Edited by i hate pinochet at 10:49 am on Nov. 15, 2002)

[Revolution Hero]

Quote: from i hate pinochet on 8:45 pm on Nov. 15, 2002
"What were the poltical views of both parties? Think about it, analyze history and what I have said before, and then try to come up with some intelligent words."

intelligent words do not change fact. I didn't write my original post with the intention of arguing, i was simplying writing that in response to a comment you made. nothing more. But as you insist. My original statement compares a party taking power without absolute majority. I said nothing of their politics nor what their ideals were, you brought their politics into it, not I.

Your statement was:"The majority voted for the USSR to stay, but Yeltsin, Kravchuk and other renegades gathered in Belovezhskaya Pusha and signed unconstitutional document on the disintegration of the USSR. So, the USSR was destroyed by the unconstitutional actions of minority."


My comparison was totally relevent to this. I compared one party to another, in regards to not receiving an absolute majority, but still claiming victory. Once again, my intention was not to argue.

And yes, I speak russian. I like this sentence as its basically how I live my life. Vi panimaete?

--IHP

btw. can you remember who said it?



(Edited by i hate pinochet at 10:49 am on Nov. 15, 2002)


Allright, I admit that I have misunderstood you, I thought that you had compared Bolsheviks and nazis. Quote and answer, so everyone will know what you referring to.

Da, ya ponimayu, Russian is my first language, no ya ne mogu pripomnit kto skazal, to , chto vosproizvedeno v tvoyey tsitate......