Mexican Revolution forum game

thanks

Ismail is the most knowledgable individual I have ever encountered regarding the USSR. Seems like a nice guy from what I've met of him.

What does tankie even mean? Ismail thinks Stalin "violated socialist legality" and endorses the XX Party Congress of the CPSU. He criticizes Hoxha and Mao and thinks China and Vietnam are socialist.

He is actually one of the very few examples of a Brezhnevite I have seen, the type who supports peaceful coexistence and stuff like that.

Also he deserves props for scanning loads of books in English from the USSR from the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's. archive.org/search.php?query=uploader:"[email protected]"&sort=-publicdate

Shut up about Ismail. He isn't running the game. Go join because it is fun.

I didn't get that impression. He does put inordinate amount of trust into liberal propaganda, but I can't say he goes as far as you claim.

I'm assuming you are the one who claimed USSR was Capitalist in 1956.

okay then

When I say Liberal propaganda I mean Liberal propaganda, not CPSU.

what liberal propaganda does he even cite??

Oh, he doesn't cite. I meant he relies on Liberal perception of Stalin as the determinant of the Soviet politics (voluntarist approach to history). IRL Stalin was simply expressing opinion of the majority of Bolsheviks, not deciding everything personally. Making him either the Great Tyrant or Great Saviour - or mix of both - is equally wrong. He was important, but he was one among many.

So what happened, Stalin just looked on in utter confusion and helplessness as Political Bureau, Central Committee, and countless other Bolshevik officials were tortured and executed?

It's one thing to say that Stalin expressed the majority opinion of the party (I think that's correct), it's something totally different to claim he was powerless or that he had nothing to do with all the bad shit that was done.

And here we have another example of Liberal propaganda.

You are assuming that:
a) all people were actually innocent
Don't pretend that it's strawman; practically nobody says "miscarriage of justice exceeded 60%, while maximum acceptable level is 25%" - that would imlpy someone actually doing research, and results might be unexpected.
b) lower-level purges happened without input from population
c) NKVD did not try to misinform government and abuse it's position
d) government was omniscient and did not try to have its own investigation done - and did not try to intervene

And a third example of Liberal propaganda. You assume Soviet Union functioned like some sort of dictatorship. But USSR was a Soviet democracy.

Stalin did not have an authority to single-handedly disband NKVD, remove Yezhov from the post or arrest him. If that's what you are implying, then - yes. Stalin was "powerless". While he did wield a lot of influence, it was non-executive kind of influence. For any major action a consensus must've been reached and proper justifications had to exist.

Stalin's faction started acting around early 1938 (Jan 11-20 discussions about wrongly convicted), but things didn't get through until summer of 1938. And only by the late fall of 1938 Beria was put in charge of NKVD and could stop things. By some "coincidence" that was the time when purges stopped.

How convenient that all of Stalin's political opponents had already been shot.

Do you even read what you write?

Which is why he gets denounced within three years of his death, with people pushing through reforms he was fighting against.

Try again.

Here's the thing, I get that a whole bunch of people could have actually hated the government and/or Stalin personally, and felt so hopeless in the face of things, that they went so far as to collaborate with foreign states.

But I can't accept that 70% of the Central Committee, nearly 100 persons, were foreign agents. I can't accept that every leader of the Komsomol since its founding was a foreign agent. I can't accept that someone like Fritz Platten, who took a bullet for Lenin, would so easily have become an agent of foreign powers, along with many other old, retired people who had known and helped Lenin.

That would entail a conspiracy so immense that you'd have to think Stalin was a god for him not to have been overthrown.

This isn't "Stalin can't be personally responsible for the NKVD branch in the obscure village of Myassov", this is "holy shit why did so many prominent Bolsheviks, most of whom had nothing to do with any oppositionist activities, get shot".

Then name a single prominent person who was rehabilitated under Stalin.

Stop with the drama.

It's not about being "hopeless". It's a common thing among politicians. It's just not being treated as something unacceptable in Capitalist states. At worst you'll get fired. But with the actual conspiracies around (yes, some were real) USSR suddenly got very old-fashioned about people talking with foreigners without making the rest of Party aware and was interpreting it as espionage. Politics, obviously, also played a major role.

At least three factions were ripping each other apart (probably, four or five - if you count military and Yezhov group as separate). Same as any political landscape, except there wasn't any Capitalists around to keep politicians on the leash - that's Dictatorship of the Proletariat for you. Thus, things escalated (not unlike French Revolution).

Frankly, I don't consider this a problem (infighting at the top): if having some politicians being unfairly executed is what keeps Socialism functioning - so be it. That's preferable to having "benevolent" Capitalists.

Do you even logic? If Stalin got overthrown, you'd be talking about tyrant Eikhe.

What does "oppositionist" even mean in this case? A faction that did not get ousted from power yet?

And quite a few of "prominent Bolsheviks" undeniably were initiating purges themselves, you know.

If it's "nearly 100 persons" - that's not 70%. That's 145%.

Didn't Central Committee have 69 members by 1937 (71 elected in 1934, then Kirov and Kuybyshev died)?

Flawed argument. Prominent persons got executed practically immediately and those that weren't alive were not a priority for rehabilitations - prisons were full of wrongly arrested or convicted.

That said: Rokossovsky. Full rehabilitation.

Yeah because he was alive (although tortured). Give me an example of someone who was executed being rehabilitated.

Ah good, so you admit that espionage claims were very largely bullshit and accusations that prominent Bolsheviks had been in the employ of British/Polish/German/French/Japanese/etc. intelligence for decades, even before October in many cases, were blatant lies?

And? Where was Stalin in all this? Why did he congratulate Yezhov on his "thorough" work and instruct him to torture prisoners? Why did Stalin do nothing as huge swathes of the party and government were being executed? It wasn't even government officials. Even archaeologists were being shot for "wrecking" activities.

How was it possible that the Bolshevik leadership, including Stalin, was so astronomically inept that bourgeois nationalists and spies supposedly got a hold of the political machinery of entire republics?

No, because Eikhe was loyal to the Party and people. He would not have been involved in any imaginary conspiracy. That is why he was rehabilitated after Stalin died, the same with so many other officers who were unjustly repressed on ridiculous charges.

Okay let's try: what purges did Enukdize, Mezhlauk, Piatnitsky, Lozovksy, Rudzutak or Berzin initiate?

There were 139 members of the Central Committee elected in 1934.

And yet a slew of executed figures were rehabilitated in the years 1955-1957.

nothing like wacthing stalinist autistic screeching

Rehabilitated Helmuth von Pannwitz would've been proud of you.

There weren't. You are including candidate members to increase numbers.

Which is why Eikhe's case is a state secret of Russia, an absolute black hole with only indirectly related stuff to ever surface?

The rest is too schizophrenic to address.

Not sure why you are comparing a Nazi officer "rehabilitated" under Yeltsin with Soviet officers rehabilitated mere years after Stalin's death.

Pretty sure if you restrict the amount of full members purged it would still come out at a huge level relative to the numbers.

Huge portions of the Soviet archives are still under wraps, especially anything to do with military affairs. Using that as as "proof" Eikhe or any other officer was guilty is dumb.

If Eikhe interfering with investigations is proof that he was a German agent plotting to overthrow the government, then Stalin ought to have been shot for the same sort of interference.

The rest of your arguments can be summed up as: there was some shady stuff going on so it was necessary to torture and execute vast swathes of the state and party apparatus as well as people all over society (including writers, artists, archaeologists, scientists…), Stalin could have Yezhov (and anyone else during the purges) removed at will and yet was a mere plaything in factional infighting, some people using the purges for their own purposes proves Stalin wasn't responsible for giving them that power, and innocent victims had to wait until Stalin was dead to be exonerated because for some reason Stalin didn't bother to support an inquiry as to why tons of innocent people died.

I would also like to add that besides the rank stupidity of "Stalin wasn't responsible for anything and also all those who were executed deserved it" is hardly any different from "Mao couldn't control the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and also everyone who suffered was a capitalist roader".

Even Grover fucking Furr acknowledges that "Nothing can absolve Stalin and his supporters of a large measure of responsibility for the executions – evidently, several hundred thousand – that ensued. If these people had been imprisoned rather than executed, almost all would have lived. Many would have had their cases reviewed and been released."

Why should I agree with Grover Furr? Why not Ludo Martens, for example? And why can't I have my own fucking opinion? Does it make you uncomfortable if someone doesn't submit to your retarded stereotypes? Get over it.

Also, I must say I'm tired of your bullshit.

First you claim Stalin surviving is a proof of his culpability:
But this is a survival bias:
You claim that - no. Stalin was special and everyone (Eikhe included) was innocent:
I provide sources that point to Eikhe being anything but:
And what do I get in response? That this is not enough to convict Eikhe!

But we are not talking about Eikhe's guilt. We are talking about his supposed innocence that would somehow prove (your another logic failure, btw) that everyone but Stalin was a innocent.

You don't have anything except circular reasoning and strawmanning.

This is exactly opposite of my point of view.

I explicitly stated "some reason": priority was given to re-investigating cases of people that were alive.

You are thoroughly disingenuous and emotional. Why are you so personal about Stalin?

No you don't. All that shows is that, if it's true, Eikhe was unfortunately one of the many officials (including Khrushchev) who tried to save his life by carrying out orders from the center to maximize quotas for arresting people.

Even if it proved Eikhe was somehow in a position to order purges independently of anyone else, that still doesn't prove he was a foreign agent or involved in an anti-Soviet conspiracy.

Why was he rehabilitated? Was it because the post-Stalin leadership were secret Nazis too?

In that case there is not a shred of evidence that Stalin lacked the ability to remove Yezhov the same way he had him appointed.

J. Arch Getty is an example of an actual historian who points to the complexities of the purges without stupidly claiming that Stalin had no control over anything or that the vast majority of those targeted were actually guilty of being foreign spies or some other kind of anti-Soviet conspirator.

And yet for the next 15 or so years prominent Bolsheviks like Bubnov, Kosior, et cetera forever were damned as agents of imperialism with not the slightest doubt expressed as to their purported betrayal. I guess Stalin didn't mind that maybe such people were accidentally being slandered as enemies.

Don't forget those who started getting purged in the late 40's and early 50's too, like Ivan Maisky, Solomon Lozovsky or Mikhail Borodin. That doesn't even have the excuse of mass hysteria or NKVD bungling, just a bunch of prominent Bolsheviks being arrested or shot for no good reason.

My family is from Belarus. One of my relatives is related to N M Golodev, one of the founders of the Bielorussian Communist Party and a participant in the Great October Revolution. Just one of many senseless executions. He didn't get executed though, because during interrogation and torture he either threw himself out a window or was thrown out by the NKVD.

He got an "honorable mention" in the Moscow Trials when one of the defendants claimed he was actually a secret conspirator together with other important Bielorussian leaders who all supposedly aspired to annex the country to Poland, a country that treated Bielorussians like dirt. Neither the Soviet court that cleared him, or modern historians, have found the slightest shred of evidence that he was anything other than a Bolshevik.

Now I get why you are such an insufferable "expert" on Soviet Union. Even Americans didn't get the infamous Perestroika/90s brainwashing.

The answer is: no. I'm not interested in being part of your retarded political vendetta against some imaginary enemies. If you are willing to spend the rest of your life slaving away at Capitalists and being proud of it - I am not. That's the crux of our differences. Not your inability to think for yourself (maximize quotas!) or being hideously misinformed.

However hard you'll do your ritual dance of Innocent Victims I'm not going to change my opinion - nobody actually cares about people getting hurt or killed. Countless people die every day, but that's not an argument for almost everyone to do anything about Capitalism. Why should some politicians that got executed 80 years ago be special?

Moreover, if Khrushchevites rehabilitated them (they didn't rehabilitate Zinoviev or Kamenev or Bukharin), then they shared the same goals and mindset. And events of 1956-1961 is a crime ten times worse than any "Nazi agent" accusation.

So - fuck off. There is an option to filter people out (Options - Filters - tripcode). I advise you to use it.

Because you are wondering why the Great Purges were such a tragedy for the Soviet people and why virtually everyone welcomed the mass rehabilitations.

It shows the serious defects that existed in the USSR that it was possible for the rule of law to be thrown aside so violently in conditions that did not justify it in the least.

They rehabilitated those that had no evidence in regards to their guilt. There is actually some circumstantial evidence of Bukharin's guilt, not everything he was accused of (espionage, plotting to kill Lenin in 1918) but certainly some involvement in anti-Stalin activities.

Yes, they fiendishly plotted to run the Soviet Union in a slightly different way, and although they went to their deaths exposed as German/Italian/Japanese/Polish/British/American/Iranian/Romanian/whatever spies, they said to themselves "it's okay at least Khrushchev is alive to continue our dastardly course".

Do you realize how stupid you sound? What "mindset" did these rehabilitated people have? How do you determine it when the whole point is that these people were supposedly foreign agents who merely feigned their praise of Stalin?

What were the "events of 1956-1961"? Rebuking Stalin for killing innocent people and the dismissing of a few dogmatists who couldn't tolerate a relaxation of public life?

Also you don't seem to know anything about Belarus. Many countrymen have a positive view of the Soviet period. Nobody actually takes the "all of our communist leaders in the 1910's-20's-30's were secret Polish agents" shit seriously because it's stupid, but the rest of the Soviet period is generally looked favorably on.

Also, just to add, you must admit that Stalin was guilty of critical incompetence if you seriously believe that there were massive spy rings and sabotage networks all over the country, in every republic, among journalists, doctors, archaeologists(!), everywhere. The imperialists even recruited pensioners who helped Lenin 20 or 30 years earlier. I guess those old people got bored of life and decided at one last chance at excitement!

The reward for all this "vigilance" and absurd shedding of blood was … what? Khrushchev peacefully undoes Stalinism four years after Stalin kicks the bucket. Why could no one locate the "foreign spy" Khrushchev? Or the "foreign spy" (and Stalin associate) Mikoian? Or all those other hundreds of "wreckers" who dethroned Stalinism in the 1950's?

Maybe it's because your whole worldview is warped. Instead of defending socialism, you are zealously defending Joseph Stalin. You are not even defending the USSR ("defense of the USSR" is incompatible with killing hundreds of thousands of Soviet officials), you are defending a single person during the worst period of his life.

Rather than acknowledge that Stalin was not a god, you concoct ridiculous conspiracies and justifications and try to absolve Stalin of what he was responsible for because it might mean he was not a god.

oh the drama queen
people are different faggot
my greatgrandmother told me about how war was shit, but not about how purges were shit, because they happened somewhere far away in the big cities to some higher ups that no one really cared about

I dunno, maybe disbandment of MTS which handed the state property into private hands of cooperatives?
or maybe the sovnarkhoz reform which essentially destroyed central planning?
or maybe the appropriation of artel sector?
or maybe monetary reform which led to Novocherkassk massacre?
or maybe corn adventure?
or maybe or maybe or maybe

Oh okay so the executions of hundreds of thousands of innocent people don't matter because your great-grandmother was in a village that didn't experience it. I'll file that right up there with "racism doesn't exist because I don't personally experience it as a white person living in vermont".

And? cooperatives according to Stalin were a form of socialist property. how does owning a tractor turn a cooperative from socialism to capitalism?

Sovnarkhozy were abolished after Khrushchev was removed.

???

Very bad, but still pales in comparison to executing hundreds of thousands of people for "maybe they are actually secret fascists".

Stop showing off your immense lack of knowledge. If you want to talk about Soviet Union actually learn things, rather than spew regurgitated Cold War propaganda.

Learn some fucking Marxism, will you. Not third-hand opinions and Stalin quotes ripped out of context.

What are you, twelve?

Decentralization - instead of having dedicated technological centres that were saving costs on maintaining equipment, each kolkhoz was forced to maintain their own agrotech. Additionally, kolkhozs essentially went bankrupt, since they were forced to pay state for tech they were forced to buy.

Those two factors greatly contributed to degradation of Soviet agricultural sector.

Abolished, to be replaced by Kosygin-Liberman reform that provided even more decentralization.

~5% of Soviet economy (non-state industrial co-ops; including worker-owned factories) got nationalized without any compensation as part of de-stalinization program by Khrushchevites.

No. Fuck off and stay fucked off.

stalinists are insane

One hundred million. If you shitpost, do it with style.

not the belorussian guy but are you seriously arguing soviet agriculture wasn't a shitheap by the time stalin died?

you attack him for having an immense lack of knowledge but here you are acting as if the plight of the soviet peasantry was actually worse after stalin than under him. also you equate "centralization" with socialism which is dumb as fuck and act like the liberman reform didn't get repealed a few years after it was enacted.

Yes. You are welcome to present evidence that contradicts this.

What that's supposed to mean?

Read Marx, please.

Please, tell me exact date when it was "repealed".

you are arguing that soviet society was worse under khrushchev than it was under stalin, which is fucking stupid.

also you can make light of gulags and purges all you want but at the end of the day stalin was responsible for a whole fuckton of innocent people dying and the only excuse you have is "well how could stalin have known famous people and veteran revolutionaries were being shot left and right over the course of years??"

Okay. Got it.

lazar volin:
"The lagging capital investment in agriculture and inputs of agricultural machinery,
commercial fertilizers and construction were increased."
"The changes in agricultural policy which have taken place during the post-Stalin period have had, for the most part, a beneficial effect on production."
"There was often a conflict of interest between the management of the MTS and the collective. The former was interested primarily in performing those operations, like plowing, which brought the greatest financial returns, often at the expense of other necessary operations,
like mowing hay. There were cases when plowing done by the MTS was superfluous or even harmful. Difficulties also often developed regarding the timeliness of MTS farm operations, which is so important in agriculture, especially in Russian agriculture with its short season.
It was complained, on the other hand, that collectives tended to rely too much on the MTS for even the simplest type of work, such as carting feedstuff for livestock, which could have been done by farm horses."
"The reform of 1958 unified the different types of procurements into a single system of state purchases. Compulsory deliveries as such were nominally abolished,
but the new system retains quotas per unit of land which collectives are supposed to meet. Instead of multiple prices, single prices are now fixed by the state for each commodity within a region."
"These changes simplified the cumbersome procurement and price system."
"agricultural production in 1952 was only 10 per cent higher than in 1940, when industrial production was more than twice as high. Even the 10 per cent increase may have been optimistic. During the Stalin era crop production estimates, especially the important grain figures, were inflated by the use of the so-called biological estimates which grossly exaggerated the picture. These were estimates of crops standing in the field prior to the harvest, which did not reflect the officially admitted large harvesting losses and, in general,
lent themselves to manipulation. They were not comparable with crop figures for other countries, or, indeed, with Russian figures prior to the 1930's.
Such a statistical malpractice brought down, after Stalin's death, even the official Soviet wrath. Malenkov, for instance, declared in August 1953 that: "it should not be forgotten that our country, our collective farms can prosper with a crop gathered in the barn and not with a crop standing in the field."
"The post-Stalin leadership adopted a policy of substantially raising the very low prices paid by the Government for farm products."

albert szymanski:
"The actual reforms implemented in 1965 (referred to as the Kosygin
reforms) were actually considerably less far reaching than even those actually
proposed by Liberman. These Kosygin reforms were quite modest and
amounted to no fundamental change in the Soviet system of planning, enter-
prise management or incentives. The reforms were implemented in an
attempt to reverse the lagging performance of the economy by countering
tendencies of the enterprises to hoard, become self-sufficient in inputs and
be particularistic in outlook."
"Limited as the Kosygin reforms were, they were in any case largely
rescinded in favour of increased centralization in the early 1970s."

not real communism

I'd like facts, not opinions of Liberal pundits. They lie often and they lie openly. We already have this "quotas for NKVD" thing recently.

I see only one"fact":
Do you have any other?

> had this

Fun fact: according to Soviet data, in 1945 agricultural production was equal to 61% of the level it was in 1940.