USSR bashing

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

I don't know whether "learning" is the right place to put this topic, but history seems to be kinda deserted.

Why do so many people who call themselves communists/marxsists etc take such pleasure in bashing the soviet union as much as possible?

They emphasize and blow out of proportion the drawbacks of the ussr and demonize stalin, but never mention the positive aspects of what the existence of the ussr achieved both in russia and on a global scale.

I'm very...confused about this and would like to hear people opinions.

[KickMcCann]

I think the main reason people on the left bash the sovet union is to reach some common ground with those who are open-minded about socialism/communism but know the human rights violations that occured in the USSR is not what they seek. In a way it keeps socialism/communism alive in the face of the capitalist leadership who said socialism/communism "died" with the Soviet Union.
They say "yes the soviet union is gone, but it wasn't socialist or communist, let me tell you what real socialism or communism is...." .
But also there's alot of historical regret. The Russian revolutions really opened the possibility for the world's first worker-run proletarian democracy, but the bueauracracy, stalin, lenin, trosky, breshnev, gobechev, whoever you want to blame, destroyed that possibility with their strangle hold on power or their inability to effectively correct injustices .
So, despite the triumphs and progresses made in the USSR, they were only under the pretense of proletarian democracy and internationalism, the system collapsed and couldn't sustain itself under pressure from the west or its own needs. All we can do on the left is say, they succeeded in this or that department, but in order for socialism or communism to thrive in the future we must do some things differently, and from that new theory and understanding is developed.

I wouldn't say marxists or communists take pleasure on bashing the Soviet Union, most of us wish it had been successful and was still around today, but that criticism is neccessary to move on and improve our chances next time around. Marxism is still young, and it needs some time to ferment.

[danny android]

The USSR gets bashed because it was such a poor example of a communist society. According to Marx government is supposed to wither away in a socialist state, right. The USSR showed no signs what so ever of ever "withering away" instead it grew stronger and more oppresive of individuals. As for Stalin I am not a big fan of mass murdedring paranoid despots.

[anomaly]

Why shouldn't we bash the USSR? It was a corrupt socialist state in which, as Orwell cleverly observed, all were equal, but some were more equal than others (those being the USSR government). It was a dictatorship! The people owned nothing, and the state owned all.

The idea of a 'vanguard' is a terrible one, and, as Trotsky pointed out, socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. Tyranny and socialism are simply incompatible. There are just so many negatives to the old USSR, I can't understand why anyone would support it.

Oh, and as for Stalin, he was a frightened little fuck as a child, and he was a frightened little fuck as a despot. He even befriended Hitler when it proved profitable to him!

[Poum_1936]

Basically the USSR was NOT perfect. Oh Booo hhoooo

If the HARD CORE stalinists need "PROOF." I have a whole inventory of "proof."

[bombeverything]

As for Stalin I am not a big fan of mass murdedring paranoid despots.

:lol:


They ... never mention the positive aspects of what the existence of the ussr achieved both in russia and on a global scale.

Could you please elaborate?

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

I see. So the main reasons are:

1. that the left wants to move on from that period and leave behind the steretypical view of communism, which many people associate with the ussr (a valid reason) and

2. Many/most on the left hate stalin for the terrible crimes he committed against his own people (another valid reason)

However it saddens me that so many comrades that say they are on the left slag off the ussr while evidently not even knowing much about its achievements (like bombeverything) or when people try to stick up for the ussr, start raving about "hardcore stalinim! Despotic fanatics! Scared fucks...?" (such as anomaly or danny android).

I want to say that I am certainly not a "hardcore stalinist" or even a softcore one, and I am NOT defending Stalin's crimes and mistakes. I am simply defending the ussr as a whole, what impact it had overall on the lives of its people.

Before the Russian revolution, Russia was, to put it bluntly, a shithole stuck in the 1800s. After, it turned into a superpower. Not only a superpower, but a superpower to rival the imperialism of the US, to provide a counterbalance. The US would never have dared do half the evils it has done this past decade and half had the ussr still been around.

You ask me to elaborate on the achievements of the ussr. Here I quote a section from Michael Parenti's book "Blackshirts and Reds":

"During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism doesn't work" is to overlook the fact that it actually did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched exsistence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers and western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
State socialism transformed desperately poor countries into modernised societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing, and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and nobody was denied medical attention. Some of us from poor families who carry around the hidden injuries of class are much impressed by these achievemetns and are unwilling to dismiss them as merely "economic." "

Yes, comrade Poum_1936 the soviet union was not perfect, I never said it was. And I am not a stalinist so don't need your "proof". But you compare the USSR to what Russia is now - the difference is..I can't think of a word to describe it.

Being Russian myself, I will always love and be proud of my country whoever rules it, but it really does sadden me when people that call themselves leftists dismiss everything that generations - that millions of people fought for - as a waste of time and the pople that try to stick up for it as "stalinists".

[bombeverything]

However it saddens me that so many comrades that say they are on the left slag off the ussr while evidently not even knowing much about its achievements (like bombeverything)

Aww. No, I was just wondering what it was in particular that you saw as a success. I am not denying that there were any per se, however I am sure Hitler also did some "good things" if you follow what would seem to be the same logic.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Ok. Yes, but how can you compare the achievements of Hitler and Stalin? Hitler did some good things, and then threw them all away by leading his country and people into a suicidal war based on beliefs that Germans were a superior race and other races had to be eliminated - that is a true sign of a maniac!

I can list the achievements but they are so broad, and isnt it obvious? Healthcare, education, literacy, housing, transport, technology, benefits, military, development, economy etc etc. I'm not saying it was perfect, but look at what it was before and after. Churchill once said "Stalin inherited Russia with a wooden plough and left it with the atomic bomb"

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 11:21 AM
Basically the USSR was NOT perfect. Oh Booo hhoooo
You could use the same claim for George Bush. "So Bush isn't perfect, oh booo hhooo hoo stop criticisizing him." It's just as false in the case of stalin. Lenin & Stalin had anarchists & leftists who criticized them murdered en masse and Stalin extended it to murder members of his own party. They suppressed strikes & independant unions, oppressed peasants & starved millions to death.


how can you compare the achievements of Hitler and Stalin? Hitler did some good things, and then threw them all away by leading his country and people into a suicidal war based on beliefs that Germans were a superior race and other races had to be eliminated - that is a true sign of a maniac!

So the main differences are that Hitler lost the war, while Stalin won it. So what, they were still visiously anti-proletarian tyrants.

[urben]

I agree with you, Comrade Yastrebkov. Above all, here in the US, the anti-Soviet tendency represented an accomodation with the unofficial state religion: anti-communism. I consider the unbalanced "left" attacks on the Soviet Union to be a subtler, perhaps even more dangerous, form of that anticommunism.

These psychological comparisons of Stalin to Hitler and Bush are of limited use to anyone who cares about addressing the burning political issues of the day. Regardless of the individuals leading or misleading a particular government, the social system of the USSR was built on different foundations. The state ownership of the means of production, the planned economy, and the monopoly on foreign trade represented huge advances for the people of the USSR. This does not mean that exploitation was not part of the economic system, but in a broader historical analysis, can we delude ourselves into thinking the world would have been better without the Soviet Union? Not only did the USSR have an expansive social safety net (which more than anything convinced the capitalists to pursue a "welfare state" - now destroyed after the collapse of the USSR), but it often played a progressive role in third world national liberation movements.

Fidel, who clearly had his own left objections to the USSR considered its collapse the biggest tragedy for the world's working class. I too hate it when people lose perspective entirely. Many of the problems of the USSR were exacerbated by bad leadership, but to be honest, most of those problems would have existed if I, you - or any of these enlightened message board communists - had the task of leading the socialist state after the russian revolution. The hostile world environment, the low level of productivity, the technological and educational backwardness, the underdeveloped working class, etc... those were the insuperable challenges facing the russian revolution, and stalin can only be seen on that backdrop.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 11:34 PM
[QUOTE=Poum_1936,Nov 6 2005, 11:21 AM] Lenin & Stalin had anarchists & leftists who criticized them murdered en masse and Stalin extended it to murder members of his own party. They suppressed strikes & independant unions, oppressed peasants & starved millions to death.


how can you compare the achievements of Hitler and Stalin? Hitler did some good things, and then threw them all away by leading his country and people into a suicidal war based on beliefs that Germans were a superior race and other races had to be eliminated - that is a true sign of a maniac!

So the main differences are that Hitler lost the war, while Stalin won it. So what, they were still visiously anti-proletarian tyrants.
I can't see how Stalin - one man - can be held responsible for "starving millions to death".

Yes, there were droughts and famines throughout the history of Russia - one in the 1580s, (when russia was ruled by tzars) one in 1600 (claiming hundreds of thousands, again under tzarist rule), in 1891 - 92 (under Nicholas I), and in 1921 under soviet rule there was a famine, which happened to occur in the middle of the civil war which the western triple entente countries were supporting.

Many claim the 1932-33 famine to be "man-made" "genocidal" "artificial". But recent analyses of the data on the 1932 harvest shows that, contrary to the official yield of 69.9 million metric tons (which approximated the grain harvests for preceeding and successive years), the real output was well below 50 million tons. if so, the famine was caused by an absolute shortage of grain. That peasant population in Ukraine suffered badly and that this deprivation was due to a political decision are not in question. Procurements displaced famine from the city to the village.

It is ridiculout to blame this just on Stalin, and make it sound like he starved millions to death just because he could.

[A Man of no Nation]

I have asked so many people this question and I have never received a clear answer:

"How did socialism/communism fall in Russia?...Why are they now a capitalistic society?"

Of course, I do not have an answer and I look like an hijo de puta.

Ayudenme por favor!

-xXxA man of no nationxXx-

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 7 2005, 05:10 PM
I can't see how Stalin - one man - can be held responsible for "starving millions to death".
It's actually the system that's responsible, but Stalin was the leader in charge at the time and he advocated the system & policies that caused it, so he shares responsibility. It's similar to attacking George Bush over the invasion of Iraq.


Yes, there were droughts and famines throughout the history of Russia - one in the 1580s, (when russia was ruled by tzars) one in 1600 (claiming hundreds of thousands, again under tzarist rule), in 1891 - 92 (under Nicholas I), and in 1921 under soviet rule there was a famine, which happened to occur in the middle of the civil war which the western triple entente countries were supporting.

The '21 famine actually came at the end of the civil war. In all of those cases it was not the ruling class who starved, it was the poor. That's just as true in the USSR as it was in Tsarist Russia. The cause of this is the class system. The leaders of the bureaucracy & party formed a ruling class above the workers & peasants and recieved all sorts of priviledges that were denied to the general population. Had resources been distributed in a more equitable manner, instead of skewed towards those on top, many lives could have been saved with those resources.

In addition, the grain procurements under war communism decreased agricultural production which, at a minimum, exacerbated famine. Under War Communism the state exploited peasants by taking all of the peasants surplus grain. Since it will only be stolen from them by the state, there's not much reason for peasants to produce surplus grain in the first place. As a result, agricultural production declined. Furthermore, determining how much peasants need for themselves and how much is "excess" is not easy for state officials to do. As a result, many peasants were accused of hording excess grain when they were not, and grain they needed for themselves was taken by the state. This, combined with the previously mentioned decline in agricultural production, leads to famine.


Many claim the 1932-33 famine to be "man-made" "genocidal" "artificial". But recent analyses of the data on the 1932 harvest shows that, contrary to the official yield of 69.9 million metric tons (which approximated the grain harvests for preceeding and successive years), the real output was well below 50 million tons. if so, the famine was caused by an absolute shortage of grain.

And what caused the shortage of grain? Coerced state-driven collectivization. Forced collectivization played a similar role in the USSR as the enclosures did in other capitalist states. The USSR's economy was state capitalism from beginning to end, and a standard part of the transition from an old semi-feudal agrarian society to a modern industrial capitalist one. The state - the sole capitalist monopoly - waged a class war against the peasants by seizing control of their land - effectively "enclosing" the land - forcibly converting them into proletarians. The short term effect of enclosures as collectivization was the reduce grain output, which lead to famine. Famine in the villages helped drive peasants into the cities, where they became indutrial workers.


It is ridiculout to blame this just on Stalin, and make it sound like he starved millions to death just because he could.

No, he starved people to death because that is what capitalist states in that stage of development do. He never would have risen to power had he not been willing to take these actions.

[cccpcommie]

listen bash my country all u want..it doesnt prove much. we all know it was corrupt.
listen. the kgb takes your guns away..how u gunna fight the govt...you cant..talking and spreading teachings can help a little but russians wants a fast change..that how the mafia became so notorious..look at a lot of russians either tall and skinny or in russia they are kinda jacked..its because the skinny ones had the guns and knew how to shoot and the big men broke your neck...u couldnt say anything to anybody without being scared they would rat u out to the kgb..

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 6 2005, 09:01 PM
Ok. Yes, but how can you compare the achievements of Hitler and Stalin? Hitler did some good things, and then threw them all away by leading his country and people into a suicidal war based on beliefs that Germans were a superior race and other races had to be eliminated - that is a true sign of a maniac!

I can list the achievements but they are so broad, and isnt it obvious? Healthcare, education, literacy, housing, transport, technology, benefits, military, development, economy etc etc. I'm not saying it was perfect, but look at what it was before and after. Churchill once said "Stalin inherited Russia with a wooden plough and left it with the atomic bomb"
It's not perfect (understatement) and its also not socialism or communism. If comrades take special aim at the totalitarianism of the USSR it's because unlike other tyrranies, the USSR was a tyrrany on top of a betrayal!

Hitler never betrayed his white-supremacy, he wanted to be genocidal and he did it. THe USSR on the other hand was formed by a revolution intened to bring about workers power but all this was betrayed, strikes were outlawed, revolutionaries were killed, and anti-semitism and sexism were restored.

THe USSR made great strides in industrializing itself, but for who? They outlawed abortion, and took rights away from people and built these "progresses" with the blood of the revolutionaries and on the backs of the workers.

[Xvall]

We'll stop bashing the USSR when you start smoking the Ganj.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 05:01 AM
We'll stop bashing the USSR when you start smoking the Ganj.
'fraid I'll still bash the USSR no matter what someone smokes. I'll stop bashing the USSR when someone prooves that workers had power there and that socialism "in one state" is possible and then gives me all the "ganj" they've been smokin'.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 02:37 AM
It's actually the system that's responsible, but Stalin was the leader in charge at the time and he advocated the system & policies that caused it, so he shares responsibility.

The '21 famine actually came at the end of the civil war. In all of those cases it was not the ruling class who starved, it was the poor. That's just as true in the USSR as it was in Tsarist Russia. The cause of this is the class system. The leaders of the bureaucracy & party formed a ruling class above the workers & peasants and recieved all sorts of priviledges that were denied to the general population. Had resources been distributed in a more equitable manner, instead of skewed towards those on top, many lives could have been saved with those resources.

In addition, the grain procurements under war communism decreased agricultural production which, at a minimum, exacerbated famine. Under War Communism the state exploited peasants by taking all of the peasants surplus grain. Since it will only be stolen from them by the state, there's not much reason for peasants to produce surplus grain in the first place. As a result, agricultural production declined. Furthermore, determining how much peasants need for themselves and how much is "excess" is not easy for state officials to do. As a result, many peasants were accused of hording excess grain when they were not, and grain they needed for themselves was taken by the state. This, combined with the previously mentioned decline in agricultural production, leads to famine.

And what caused the shortage of grain? Coerced state-driven collectivization. Forced collectivization played a similar role in the USSR as the enclosures did in other capitalist states. The USSR's economy was state capitalism from beginning to end, and a standard part of the transition from an old semi-feudal agrarian society to a modern industrial capitalist one. The state - the sole capitalist monopoly - waged a class war against the peasants by seizing control of their land - effectively "enclosing" the land - forcibly converting them into proletarians. The short term effect of enclosures as collectivization was the reduce grain output, which lead to famine. Famine in the villages helped drive peasants into the cities, where they became indutrial workers.

No, he starved people to death because that is what capitalist states in that stage of development do. He never would have risen to power had he not been willing to take these actions.
I have to agree (as anybody would) that the 1931-32 famine was a catastrophe for the USSR. However this alone cannot represent the failure of the entire system, and quotes such as "stalin starved millions to death" are rather childish. They remind me of Rob, a guy in my year who came up to me a few days ago and said "how can you justify Stalin gassing tens of millions of innocent people to death?" No need for words.

It has been traditional in Russia for hundreds of years for peasants to work in an "obschina" (the closest word I could find in a dictionary is "commune"). The climate in most parts of Russia does not allow each individual farmer to work for himslef, and only for himself. This is why peasants united in their efforts to work the land.

When Stolypin came to power in 1906 as the Prime Minister, he brought in the "stolypin reform". This gave each peasant family an "otrub" (literally, a "cut") off the land for them to work on. He became at the forefront of the forces that tried to break the commune apart, divide the peasants so that they would be easier to control, because by this time, the "obschina" became more than a commune - it became the organiser of fighting for the rights of peasants.However this reform was very unpopular amongst the majority of the peasantry and many rebelled against it.

The families that decided to leave the communes and find new life in the east of Russia often successfully set up farms and thrives, but millions returned back to the communes between 1907-1914 (over 1 million families were registered officialy)

You say the collectivisation was "coerced" and "state-driven". Yes, the state did plan and undertake the collectivisation of the country. However it was not as portrayed in the West, or by "left anticommunists". At first, collectivisation succeeded - the peasants could relate to the collective, it was like the commune. However it soon became apparent that the development was taking place too quickly. Stalin aknowledged this, and on the 2nd March 1930 an article written by him appeared in "Pravda". Te title was "Diziness from success", and in it he criticised the "etreme lenghts" to which collectivisation was going. The presure on the peasants was relieved, and the rate of collectivisation, which at this time had reached 57%, fell to 38% in April and down to just 25% in June. In January 1931 it stabilised at 22-24%, and from then to the summer of 1937, grew to nearly 93%.

Here I make an observation - there is a correlation between the decline of collectivisation and the amount of grain output - in 1929 it was 70.1 million tonnes, in 1930 it was 78.8 and in 1931 it dropped to 66.6.

The pesants and local party headquarters were driven by a desire to complete the ncessary task, so the central organs often had to restrain the pace of the local ones.

The main reaons were that in those years it became a policy to store grain in huge silos, so as to ensure the safety of the people in times of crisis. After Stolypin's reform which divided the obschina, the strengthening of the collecetive was a huge task for the government, especially after four years of civil war.

I still don't undertsand how the ussr could passibly have been capitalist. Maybe somebody has been smoking ganj?

[anomaly]

The USSR was still capitalist because it used 'capital' (money) as a medium of exchange (and for the other 'functions' of money), it used wage labor, and it made no attempt to eliminate either. The only thing the USSR eliminated was provate property, but it replaced this with an inefficient state-run bureacracy (which was centralized...and that's just stupid). If you're going to abolish one peg of capitalism, why not do away with the other two? Because the USSR made no attempt to do away with these 'pegs' of capitalism, we cannot even call it 'socialist' (in my opinion). Rather, 'state-capitalist' describes the tyrannical state much more accurately.

[Led Zeppelin]

The USSR was still capitalist because it used 'capital' (money) as a medium of exchange (and for the other 'functions' of money), it used wage labor, and it made no attempt to eliminate either.

What on earth are you talking about? Capital is not money.

And what is wrong with wage labor in a Socialist society?

[anomaly]

Are we getting technical here, sir? To get right down to it, capital is not money, but do we not agree that communism should include no money?
What does that have to do with your little point anyway? Capital is that which is used to increase production, of course. We have 'human capital' and 'physical capital' according to the liberal theories of economics. These distinctions, the definitions even, have no meaning here. Perhaps I should have said there was no attempt to do away with money rather than capital.

Nothing is wrong with wage labor in socialism in the beginning (in theory). But there should be some move to abolish this. Unfortunately, such a dynamic process is unlikely under socialism, which is why I tend to favor a more direct route to communism. That is why I included the fact that the USSR made no attempt to do away with wage labor...that is the key. Are you supporting wage labour here?

[Master Che]

Just wondering is it possible for the USSR to be recreated? Since the Majority of Russians wish they lived under it again?

[FreeChechnya]

8 million Ukrainians or 100,000 + Chechens. Murder is murder, imperialism is imperialism.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Comrade anomaly - the abolition of money is very very far in the development of a communist/socialist country. Other similar regimes (e.g. Cuba) have not abolished money and nobody slags them off so much. The USSR had enough other problems of its own to deal with and had it still been around things might have been different.

Comrade URSB_Revolution: Personally I don't think this is possible because the current leadership in Russia (as well as external forces) won't allow this. It is true that the majority of people preferred to live in the USSR than under the current regime, that the majority of seats in the duma belong to the communist party and that from the start, people voted for the retainment of the USSR with some reforms. The communist party came second in the last election. Perhaps if they come to power, they will try to organise something better then what Russia has had previously, although many still wish the USSR was still around.

Comrade FreeChechnya: I don't see the point you're trying to make.

[Taboo Tongue]

I personally don't bash the USSR at all and wish it was still around, hell who knows what would have changed if it still was. I'd love to be able to point North East and say "Well look at what Socialism [even with great distortions] has accomplished"; I could still point south east. (to Cuba) but they're not a world power.

I would like to know more about the USSR, Comrade Yastrebkov do you have an instant messanger, anyone have good pro-USSR links?