Zonie63
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Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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But there are people who can and do support reasoned fairness. A lot of people saw those sit-ins, boycotts, and marches and it got their attention. They realized that what was happening was wrong and that it had to be stopped. These included people at the level of the Presidency, the Supreme Court, the Congress - some rather powerful people involved.
The civil rights movement was not received with such reasoned sympathy by my aquaintances in the North as I recall. Oh no. Not at all. In the Senate the Civil rights Act of 1964 passed only after 57 days of Fillibuster by southern senators failed to stop it. Not much reasoning and fairness there. "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga) see wiki
But it still passed, didn't it? FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, and even LBJ supported civil rights to one degree or another.
True, some people were sharply against it, just as there were divisions and arguments in my own family over the issue. The country was not of one like mind, but I know many who supported the Civil Rights movement out of reasons of conscience, not because they were cowed or in fear for their lives.
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I'm not diminishing the success of the movement in any way, but you're making it sound like humans won't do the right thing unless they're forced to.
Exactly. Politics is all about Power. And Power is all about vote-getting.
If true, then the non-violent resistance practiced by Gandhi and MLK would have been a dismal failure.
It can be argued that support for civil rights and other anti-racist measures actually grew after World War II, largely as a counter-reaction to the brazen and unrestrained racist policies of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during that war. The Nazis just went so beyond that pale that it created a certain level of political fallout in the West that our own policies were becoming more heavily scrutinized from those who previously didn't care.
We had also begun a global propaganda war with the Soviet Union, and in our struggle to gain hearts and minds in the rest of the world, it was clear that our overtly racist policies were a serious liability and embarrassment to our political leadership. Political power is based more on faith and image than on actual physical force (which is generally used as a last resort). That's why it's generally believed that the pen is mightier than the sword. A good propagandist can gain more willing converts with words far better than an army can gain compliant subjects through force. Politics and religion are quite similar in that both require widespread faith of the populace to truly be effective (oftentimes working hand-in-hand with each other). Politicians exist to inspire that faith, whether through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement (more often through negative reinforcement). In essence, that's their whole job in this world.
No single individual is powerful enough to force everyone else into compliance, so the true essence of political power comes in the ability to persuade others to voluntarily put themselves under your leadership. Humans are very complicated organisms, and the societies we create and their mechanisms of power are equally complex. You've mentioned this yourself several times in previous discussions we've had.
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They weren't ignorant to what was going on in the rest of the world nor to the manifest opposition they faced from the capitalist/imperialist West
Imperialism was not invented by the West.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire[1] extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea on the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean and into North America on the east. With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and the British Empire
Sure, the Russian Empire was an expansionist monarchy for centuries, no different than their Western European cousins in that respect. It's a bit more complex, though, since a lot of their territory was gained through their previous role as a subservient vassal of the Mongol Empire, as well as a consequence of wars with other European states at various points in history.
But in any case, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Imperial government, so they saw likely themselves as anti-imperialist.
Also, it should be noted that, among the Imperial powers, Russia was still viewed by the West as a rival and an outsider, not a co-conspirator. Britain was greatly concerned about Russian imperialism, as they felt it could threaten British imperial interests. Even though they were allies during World War I, the relations between Russia and the West were never all that great, and they had been slowly deteriorating toward the end of the 19th century and into the early part of the 20th century. I think the West may have been secretly pleased that the Japanese kicked their butts in the Russo-Japanese War, as it stopped Russian expansionism in East Asia, but it also had the consequence of increasing concerns about Japan.
So, a geopolitical rivalry between the West and Russia was likely in the cards no matter what type of government they had.
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Secondly, Lenin formed the Commitern in 1915, calling for worldwide social revolution well before any Allied involvement in the Russian Civil War.
Lenin was in exile at the time and wasn't even sure if he would ever be able to go back to Russia. It's no secret that Marx and Lenin believed in world wide revolution and that they wanted the workers of the world to unite. I don't think that this demonstrates any desire on Lenin's part to use the Comintern as a vehicle for Russian imperialism as it was in 1915, but if anything, it was likely to be used for Lenin to spread his own personal brand of "imperialism," possibly more aptly compared to a new world "religion" of a sort.
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Thirdly, isn't it perhaps a bit simplistic to blame the Allies for the fall of the Provisional Government?
One of my Russian History professors was a good friend of Alexander Kerensky, and they both collaborated on a three-volume work compiling the historical documents of the Provisional Government. My professor taught a semester-long history course on the Russian Revolutions, and his opinion was that the Western Allies primary failure was in refusing to agree to a joint Allied statement pledging peace without annexations or indemnities. I'm not directly blaming the Western Allies for the fall of the Provisional Government, nor am I denying the internal pressures and the catastrophic situation they inherited.
But it was largely because of those internal pressures and the fragile situation that the Provisional Government was in that the Western Allies could have done better to remove the pressure from their end and try to be more helpful to a new government which was making an honest go at establishing a free and democratic society. But they were in a middle of a war which had not been going well for them. There were numerous factions vying for power, of which Lenin was only one of many, along with non-Russian nationalities seeing an opportunity to gain independence from the Russian Empire. The leadership was fractured and regional, with individual units voting on which side they were going to take.
The Kerensky government was also caught in the middle, between conservative Tsarists on the right and the socialist revolutionaries on the left. Kerensky himself was trying to be a moderate in a sea of extremists. Where he really screwed himself was when he armed the Bolshevik Red Guards in order to defend his regime from an abortive right-wing coup led by General Kornilov. Not only did it weaken the Kerensky government, it also sent alarm among the left (even those who didn't support the Bolsheviks) of the possibility that a Tsarist regime could again come to power, which they were quite fearful of. After the Kornilov Affair, Kerensky asked the Red Guards for the weapons back, and the Red Guards politely declined to do so.
So, no, I don't blame the Western Allies completely. The Tsar and his government are probably the most to blame, and Kerensky may have been a tragic figure more than anything else. But from the point of view of the average person in Russia trying to decide which faction to support, the war itself was a significant factor in shaping their perceptions about the world, their own country, and the system of government they were living under. Large chunks of their country were already under German occupation, and they were losing millions of men. Other troops were deserting by the thousands. Back home, the people were facing starvation and living in squalor, with their loved ones coming home in boxes.
So, there was huge pressure on the Provisional Government to pull out of the war, although Kerensky felt that they invested too much in it and sacrificed so much already to just pull out, but they did seek a pledge of peace without annexations or indemnities with the Western Allies. Even if Russia didn't pull out of the war, the Provisional Government might have at least demonstrated its desire to make an honorable peace, which could have gotten them some support, perhaps just the slight boost they would have needed to forestall the Bolshevik seizure of power. The other factor was in the Provisional Government's failure to elect a Constituent Assembly, something which was promised but kept getting delayed.
But just because the Provisional Government failed and the Bolsheviks seized power within a few key cities and posts, it didn't automatically put the entire country in Bolshevik hands. It would take a few more years of civil war before the Bolsheviks solidified their power on a national scale. That's another point where the Western Allies had a role when they sent troops to intervene on the side of the Whites against the Reds. Trotsky was a skilled and persuasive orator who was able to gain a great many recruits for the Red Army, and by seeing the Western powers clearly siding with their Tsarist enemies, they no doubt perceived the West to be an enemy as well. That, coupled with their perception that they were bearing the brunt of the fighting and losing the most men so that the Western powers could remain wealthy and powerful with hegemony over most of the world, pretty much put the West on their shit list for a while.
Could we in the West have made it better? Possibly. We weren't exactly paragons of virtue ourselves at that moment in history, so I can see that, from the point of view of men like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and those guys - they might see a reasonable justification in being wary, mistrustful, and even antagonistic towards the West, not just because they're communists, but also because they knew their own country's history and overall relationship with the West. It's difficult to say what might have happened if Stalin had not gained power. Lenin and Trotsky were more active proponents of world revolution, whereas Stalin's emphasis was on building socialism within their own country first. Lenin's New Economic Policy was actually not that bad, comparatively speaking. Lenin felt that Russia needed to go through a quasi-capitalist stage in order to catch up with the industrialism of the West before communism could actually be achieved, and with the Civil War behind them, things were starting to improve.
To be sure, communism and other socialist revolutionary factions were spreading to other areas of the world, which made the West extremely nervous. We had our own Red Scare here in the United States which set the tone for our decidedly anti-communist attitude for many decades to come. Communism was also viewed as a threat in nations like Germany, which triggered an even more intensified anti-communist reaction which some would consider even worse than communism itself.
It's interesting how history all fits together like a puzzle, with all these pieces connected to each other - events triggering other events and causing counter-reactions, which then lead to even more fun and excitement. It's really quite fascinating.
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What specific events are you saying that I invented or never happened? I can easily demonstrate how many times Russia has been invaded during their long and rich history, as they're all a part of the historical record.
Please do inform me. I don't know of any. Other than Napolian 100 years earlier. Seriously.
Well, Russian history has been a subject of interest of mine for quite a number of years. I grew up in fear of Soviet nuclear attacks and the idea that the Russians were coming to get us. Perhaps it sparked in me an interest in wanting to find out what they're all about, why they want to attack us, and so forth. So, I've taken a number of courses related to Russian history, language, culture, literature, etc. I wanted to learn about them and understand them better.
They have been invaded a number of times. Some of that was more the result of geography, being mostly a flat plain and easily crossed by various migrating tribes from other regions. Kiev is regarded as the first Russian capital during the Kievan Rus period starting around the 9th century. It had been pretty much an open target right from the start, having been sacked and burned a few times during its early history - from all sides. Much of their early history is characterized by them just trying to hold on to a city, with invading tribes and kingdoms coming at them from all sides. Eventually they moved their center of power up to Vladimir, which is a city close to Moscow, which was then just an insignificant village. Novgorod was also a strong principality, but they also had invaders from Europe, namely the Swedes and the Germans. This is where Alexander Nevsky made his claim to fame.
The Mongols were also a powerful invading force which dominated Eurasia, including Russia, for centuries. The interesting thing about the Mongols was that they didn't actually run a traditional "empire" in the sense that we understand the term today. The Mongols didn't run things on a day to day basis, leaving most of the administrative tasks to the local governments. Muscovy (Moscow) grew in significance because they were appointed the tax collectors for the Mongols in that region. They were collaborators with their Mongol occupiers, yet they were also skimming the profits and building up their own power which came in handy as the Mongol Empire started to splinter and fall into disarray. It left quite a power vacuum by the time Ivan IV came to power and expanded his empire beyond the district of Muscovy which he inherited. The last remnants of the Mongol Empire were gone, and there was really nothing left to oppose Muscovy's expansion into other regions.
But considering the turmoil they had been dealing with - all the different groups pouring through their territory at various times, the idea of building up a buffer zone of defense makes a certain logical sense. It's something that has been a part of the Russian consciousness ever since. It proved to come to come in handy in later wars.
After Ivan IV killed his own son and heir, leaving the country in the hands of a sickly child, the Rurik Dynasty collapsed and Russia fell into chaos once again. Poland and Lithuania were actually quite powerful around this time, and the Poles were actively involved in various intrigues in trying to take over the Russian government. It led to a Polish invasion and a war between Poland and Russia. Actually, there were a few wars between Poland and Russia in the 17th century, as well as further wars with the Swedes.
It's pretty clear that when the Russians looked to their west, they didn't see very many friendly faces. To their south, the Byzantine Empire fell and Russia would have continual problems with Turkish incursions into Russia and the Balkans which would go on for centuries. They were pretty much bottled up at that end of their country, so they continued to move east, into Central and East Asia which constitutes the bulk of their land mass. But even then, they started to encounter resistance from Japan, China, and even the British as they tried to move any further.
But they still had great cause for worry on the European side of Russia. As you mentioned, the Napoleonic invasion of Russia was a major threat, although the results of that demonstrated that the Russians had learned a few things about being invaded - because it happened so many times before. Being on the side of the victors in that war put Russia among the ranks of the Great Powers, but they were still geographically and culturally isolated from the West. There was still a level of friction between Russia and the West. Ongoing troubles with Turkey eventually involved France and Britain against Russia in the Crimean War. There were subsequent wars against Turkey later on in the 19th century, with Russia being unable to find reliable allies. Germany and Austria were considered duplicitous and untrustworthy, not to mention Austria's attempt to gain hegemony in the Balkans which were in the process of finally gaining independence after centuries of Ottoman rule. The Russians undoubtedly felt threatened by that, as well as increasing German nationalism.
The Germans had also established a huge industrial base, a large modern army, and a modern communications and transportation infrastructure, while the Russians were decades behind. They had good reason to fear the Germans, as did the French and the British at that time. As it turned out, those fears were not unfounded, as the Germans invaded Russia twice during the past century, causing millions of deaths and untold devastation.
When I visited there in the 1980s, I could sense that they were still living in the shadow of all that devastation. It was something still a part of their active national memory and no doubt greatly influenced Soviet geopolitical perceptions during the Cold War. Their position became even more complicated as their relationship with Communist China deteriorated and Chinese-American relations improved. So, not only did they have NATO in the West (as well as to their south, with Turkey being a part of NATO and much of the Middle East under Western hegemony), they also had to deal with China nipping at their heels from the East.
So, from their perception, they were still surrounded, even despite the buffer zone they gained in Eastern Europe. They felt they needed a large army there to discourage any thoughts of invasion from the West, which was also not an unfounded fear. With guys like Generals Patton and MacArthur calling for all-out invasion (even despite they were fired), that no doubt rattled the cages of more than a few Soviet military leaders.
After that, the Cold War was manifested more in proxy wars between rival factions of communists and capitalists in various hot spots around the world. The advent of the nuclear age kind of quashed any dreams of “imperial” domination by either side, as both sides were put in a position where they were compelled to do whatever they can to avoid direct military confrontation. Whatever we define as “imperialism” in the nuclear age has to be defined within that context.
After the fall of Khrushchev, Soviet policy shifted somewhat. Brezhnev was probably a bit more moderate, not quite the insanely aggressive lunatics that his predecessors were. His policies were probably a bit milder than the harshness characterized by the Stalinist era, but with China falling out of the fold and the West showing stern determination in opposing communism in any way, shape, or form wherever it may arise in the world, Brezhnev thought of taking a more practical and realistic approach. Whatever became of Soviet “imperialism” started to take on a different form, since the Soviet “empire” was never really all that cohesive to begin with. Even other communists in the West and elsewhere were beginning to reject the Soviet model of communism. Even the Soviets were beginning to question it, and they did try to implement some reforms to make it better. I don’t think they were all madmen bent on world domination.
If anything, they may have seen themselves as champions for the world’s poor and underclasses against the big bad capitalistic Western powers, the same people who colonized, exploited, murdered, and enslaved much of the rest of the world and gained a great deal of wealth and power in the process. Maybe the Soviets had their own agenda to gain global power, but regardless, they still had an effective case to make against the West – which gave the Western powers a tremendously difficult time around the world, the legacy of which still haunts us today.
I’m not denying in any way what the Soviet government did. I’m not denying what Lenin or Stalin did. But I think it’s a bit more complex than just characterizing them as pure evil hellbent on world rule. At least not in the sense of the Russian Empire or other empires of their time. More than likely, they saw it as a new religion, and some religious fanatics have been known to be rather hardcore and harsh towards “unbelievers,” which is how they tended to operate.
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I can also cite numerous instances throughout history when the working classes and other oppressed peoples around the world have shown that they have some very serious and severe grievances with their capitalist bosses,
But Zonie, humans have exploited each other for labor long before the rise of capitalism. The wage labor of capitalism simply replaced the slave labor of agriculture. Nothing new there, right?
Right, but by the same token, there’s nothing new about uprisings and the general discontent of the classes doing all or most of the labor. They certainly have had good cause to have serious grievances with their bosses, whether it’s a feudal lord, a plantation owner, or a capitalist political boss.
We’ve had slave uprisings here in the United States, along with general labor uprisings and similar upheavals. These are all part of the historical record as well. In any case, there seemed to be good cause for the laboring classes in Russia or elsewhere to have grievances against those who were perceived to be the cause of their misery. If they focused on Western capitalists as being one of the problems they faced, then there must have been a reason for that. That’s really all I was saying.
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I do not consider it a value judgment but a reality check. We saw in 2009 that many people did lose their jobs when the money flow stopped during the great credit crunch. It was very near catastrophe. Some organizations are too big not to be bailed out. The federal government is the lender of last resort. The solution imo is not to take away the bail out ability of the government but to break apart the institutions that are too big and have too many connections to our money markets. Compare the history of 1931 and 2009 and you will readily see that the stall of money flow (credit) was the cause of disaster in the first and near disaster in the second. In both events worker layoffs lead to a drop in product demand and housing foreclosures which exacerbated the fall in demand for products and services.
Our economy is consumer dependent as well as credit dependent. The consequences of a drop in demand are too obvious to warrant a tedious recitation here. Alas, the Political powers have done little to correct the too-big-to-fail problem.
There may be more economic adjustments in our future if this keeps up, however. We might be forced to get back to basics of production and consumption. The basic problem is that we consume more than we produce, so we have to borrow in order to maintain our current rate of consumption. And many people share your belief that without that level of consumer spending, it can be catastrophic to the economy. As a result, we’ve continued the process of borrowing and importing, which can also be catastrophic for an economy if left unchecked for too long.
Somehow, we have to get our productivity up, and there are steps in that direction, from what I’ve read recently. Technology and innovation may be our savior in the long run. The factory worker of the future won’t be some low-paid, poorly-educated grunt on an assembly line, but well-paid and educated technicians and engineers sitting at computer terminals while machines do all the heavy work. Of course, there’s the question of what the low-paid would-be grunts would do besides factory work, which has been an ongoing problem here in America where our factory jobs have been outsourced overseas.
But eventually, when most goods and services can be replicated using machine technology, making human labor more and more obsolete, whatever will be done with all those extra people? Kind of makes one wonder where we’re headed. Just give people replicators and holodecks, and we’ll probably have the closest thing to utopia as we’ll ever get.
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Thank you for a gentlemanly discussion, Zonie. 
Same here, thanks, Vincent.
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