"[Stalin] still believed that the emergency measures the government took were only temporary."
Tony Cliff, Trotsky: The Darker The Night The Brighter The Star (London, 1993), p. 26.
Compare this with the title and concluding line of Poul Anderson's "For the Duration." (See More Latin.)
Note also the Latin phrase used in "For the Duration": "Primus inter pares," first among equals. Of course, a dictator has the power to call himself whatever he wants...
Such changes in the uses of words are the theme of Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors." (See The Long Night.)
And the point of reading something else was to get me away from blogging at this time of night, not back into it.
39 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't in the least believe Tony Cliff! My view is that of Poul Anderson in "For The Duration," dictators and tyrants can easily find any excuse for using "emergency measures" to clamp down their despotic rule more and more tightly. That has been the standard wheeze ever since the French Revolution!
Sean
Sean,
Cliff was anti-Stalin.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I had not known that! The "context" of the bit you quoted led me to think Cliff believed Stalin took seriously what he said about "emergency measures." Good, I'm glad to be wrong thinking Cliff was one of those sickening Stalin worshipers.
And one thing I remember about "A Tragedy of Errors" is how "Engineer" changed its meaning to become what we call "Lord" or "Baron."
Sean
Sean,
Oh yes, Stalin believed it because he was stupidly reacting to circumstances without any plan or understanding, killing anyone who might have been able to help him out of the mess.
Paul.
Sean,
I think that, when Anderson's character said, "It's only for the duration...," he also believed it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Since I've not read Tony Cliff's book, I'm not sure of the context behind this particular behavior by Stalin. I did wonder if you meant the reports he got from spies trying to warn him of the German plans and preparations for Operation Barbarossa. Amazingly, despite his notorious suspiciouness and paranoia, Stalin disbelieved them. And I can easily imagine him ordering that these bringers of unwelcome news be shot.
Sean
Sean,
It was about the mass industrialization and forced collectivization begun in 1928.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I remember the young man in "For The Duration," he was already becoming a dictator. So while he might have believed the measures he ordered were only temporary, for an "emergency," it still came down to being an excuse for concentrating power in his own hands alone.
As for Stalin's insane forced industrialization/collectivization, I remember scathing comments about them in THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO about the sheer waste and brutality of these policies.
Sean
Stalin did probably believe, in one sense, that the measures he was using were "temporary" -- but he certainly didn't believe they'd pass away in his own lifetime, or for a very long time thereafter.
The thing about Leninists (including Trotsky and Stalin both) is that they believed that humans as they actually existed in their own time were basically worthless, vile and evil; valuable only as raw materials for the New Man of the future, under True Communism. In their unguarded moments, they said so. Since the future was infinitely valuable, and the present (and its inhabitants) worthless, any amount of death and suffering simply did not matter at all.
Stalin was an active sadist. Lenin and Trotsky were just as ruthless, but probably enjoyed cruelty less on a personal level, though Lenin was certainly a man who boiled with anger.
Stalin used to laugh when he signed death sentences, and have descriptions of the begging and pleading of the victims read out at dinner and laugh until he cried and got the hiccups.
That sort of thing is probably what Lenin meant when he described Stalin as "excessively crude" in his (suppressed) testament. But at seventh and last it doesn't matter much.
Mr Stirling,
When Trotsky described human beings as malignant, tailless animals, I understood this as an ironic comment on his and our species, not as contempt for the Russian population regarded as his subordinates.
I did not find him threatening families of Red Army officers in MY LIFE.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree with your summing up of Marxist/Leninism, it fits in with what I have read about that odious ideology. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, etc., had only contempt for actual human beings as they existed/exists. Stalin differed from Lenin/Trotsky only in the personal, sadistic pleasure he took in being cruel.
I remember the many quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn took from Lenin's writings showing very amply the contempt and cruelty he had for human beings. And Robert Massie's quoting from Trotsky's MY DIARY in NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA about the massacre of the Russian royal family shows us Trotsky's callous smugness.
Sean
Hi all,
How does this sound? Mankind can transform itself, yes. A bureaucracy can transform mankind, no. But the former can be distorted into the latter.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sorry, but I don't agree that mankind, by its own unaided efforts, can transform itself. Not if you mean the human race no longer being imperfect, flawed, prone to evil and folly, etc.
Sean
Sean,
We disagree on that but my only present point is that bureaucratic dictatorship is a distortion of the philosophy of collective human self-transformation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But bad bureaucracies are like that BECAUSE of how flawed or bad are the people who staff those bureaucracies. Not because it's a bureaucracy. Which means I cannot believe in any philosophy teaching ideas about "...collective human self-transformation." Because such philosophies are hopelessly unrealistic.
Sean
Sean,
I understand but such "unrealistic" philosophies do not entail bureaucratic dictatorships. Any dictatorship that claims to impose emancipation is clearly distorting the ideas of the "unrealistic" philosophers who do believe in the possibility of collective self-emancipation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this last comment of yours. My understanding, possibly incorrect, has been that Marxism has also claimed to be a philosophy teaching how mankind can attain emancipation and "collective self-transformation." If so, the results of that claim has been less than satisfactory!
No, the only realistic philosophies has been those who take the human race as it actually is, not as we would like it to be. Such as those advocating the limited state and free enterprise economics.
Sean
Leon Trotsky, Order of the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic. September 30, 1918
Original Source: L. Trotskii, Kak vooruzhalas revoliutsiia (Moscow: Izd. VVRS, 1923-25).
Cases of treacherous flight by members of the commanding apparatus into the enemy’s camp, though less frequent, are still occurring. These monstrous crimes must be stopped, without shrinking from any measures. The turncoats are betraying the Russian workers and peasants to the Anglo-French and Japanese-American robbers and hangmen. Let the turncoats realize that they are at the same time betraying their own families-their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, wives and children.
I order the headquarters of all the armies of the Republic, and also the district commissars to supply by telegram to member of the Revolutionary War Council Aralov lists of all the members of the commanding apparatus who have gone over to the enemy camp, with all needful data about their family situation. I entrust Comrade Aralov with the responsibility for taking, in co-operation with the appropriate institutions, the measures necessary for arresting the families of deserters and traitors.
The only way humankind could transform themselves would be by genetic engineering.
I doubt the product would be very satisfactory.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Very damning, your quoting, in toto, of Trotsky's order that lists of the families of Red Army officers who defected to the White Russians should be drawn up, and then be arrested. That should settle the matter of Trotsky's guilt in ordering the arrests of innocent people!
I agree, I really cannot see any "transformation" of the human race by human beings except by genetic engineering. And real people being what they are, flawed and imperfect, the results of that kind of genetic engineering is unlikely to be satisfactory.
The horrendous Homo drakensis of your later Draka books and how they used genetics to make human beings WANT to be slaves of the "New Race" comes to mind as some of those unsatisfactory possibilities.
Sean
Sean,
Our pre-human ancestors transformed themselves into human beings by their cooperative action on the environment and human beings have transformed themselves from hunters and gatherers into urban internet-users. This, collaborative change, is how we are, not how anyone thinks we should be. Although I think that we together can change ourselves further, my only present point is that this cannot be done by someone like Stalin denouncing and killing everyone who disagrees with him.
I am very concerned about Trotsky ordering the arrests of families of deserters. In what conditions were they held and for how long? If he took the further step of having them killed, then he would definitely have crossed a moral line into Stalinism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I don't consider the "transformation" you talked about immediately above as anything but humans using their INTELLECT to change the environment among which they lived to one more suitable to them. A slow, gradual increase in the knowledge of how to use technology. That is not the same as INTERNALLY changing human beings so they would no longer be so prone, AS WE KNOW is the case, to evil, error, folly, etc.
I agree that tyrants like Lenin and Trotsky cannot "transform" further, in the ways you wish. Ways the likelihood of which I continue to be extremely skeptical about!
It was right of some Red Army officers to defect to the White Russians, the embryonic USSR did not deserve anyone's loyalty. I strongly suspect, given the brutal history of the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, that many of the families of defectors Trotsky ordered arrested were shot or imprisoned in wretched conditions.
Trotsky was as much a Stalinist as was Stalin (minus perhaps taking personal pleasure in the torment of his victims). He simply lost the struggle for power with Stalin which occurred after the death of Lenin.
Sean
Sean,
Collective action on the environment changed animals into human beings, a fundamental change of nature. Acting on the environment led to thinking about it and thus generated intellect.
Assuming that humanity survives and continues to advance technologically, then technological production of abundance will make market economics, private hoarding of wealth and a social division between rich and poor redundant. People born in such a society will accept its norms and not feel nostalgic about a struggle for survival.
During wars, people are detained for many reasons like Japanese residents of the US during WWII. I would want to send a defector's family to join him, if they wanted to go. But what if some of them were bound to become enemy combatants? Such dreadful decisions are made by fallible human beings in the midst of major conflicts. I am glad that I am able just to discuss it here.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I think you are putting far too much stress on "collective action," and minimizing too far the role played by INDIVIDUALS, esp. those rare individuals who are geniuses. I don't believe it was a "collectivity," for instance, who invented so fundamental a thing as the wheel. I strongly suspect some forgotten geniuses, thousands of years ago, who independently invented the wheel in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, or the Yellow River region of China. And so on for many other crucial, basic inventions by INDIVIDUALS.
Assuming, first, the possibility of a post scarcity economy (a mighty big IF), I don't believe at all that will eliminate the drive, URGE, to compete. Even if competition (or merely working) for wealth no longer comes to be thought necessary, people will still compete in other ways. Many will try to outdo one another in sports, arts, crafts, POLITICS. I add politics because the drive for power will not be eliminated due to a post scarcity economy. And Poul Anderson shows us exactly that in the HARVEST OF STARS books and GENESIS.
I do not agree that it was right to intern all of those Japanese who happened to be in the US at the time of Pearl Harbor. Some yes, esp. those reasonably thought to be Japanese Intelligence agents. But most could have been returned to Japan via neutral agencies and nations like the Red Cross and Sweden or Switzerland. And it was wrong to intern US citizens of Japanese descent merely because of their national origins.
If the Bolsheviks had not already shown how cruel and ruthless they were during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, I can bring myself to accepting the interning, not imprisoning, for the duration of the Civil War some of the older relatives of men who defected to the Whites. With the understanding they would then be released unharmed. But you know it was not like that. Trotsky ordered the arrest of the families of these defectors as a means of getting revenge on them, to punish them by imprisoning and killing their families. He was as ruthless and evil as Lenin and Stalin!
Sean
Sean,
Individuals give a lead to groups that act together. The wheel conquered distance because it was universally adopted.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree! And it was universally accepted because some forgotten genius somehow invented it and every body else smacked their foreheads and exclaimed: "Why didn't we think of that???" (Smiles)
Sean
I present the following summary not expecting to convince anyone (!) but to show that there is another point of view.
The actual replacement of the Provisional Government by Soviet government was almost without violence because it had been well prepared for and was supported. Some army officers agreed not to oppose the new republic, were released, then did oppose it. There was civil war with armies of intervention.
Mass industrialization:
swamped politically conscious workers with former peasants;
intellectually disarmed the Left Opposition because Trotskyists thought that industrialization was a turn to the working class whereas instead it combined the proletarianization of unpolitical peasants with the smashing of the workers' democracy that had overthrown the Provisional Government.
Stalin killed the revolution. Neither workers nor rich peasants but bureaucrats ruled against the intentions of Old Bolsheviks, including Lenin and Trotsky, and, before them, Marx and Engels.
Kaor, Paul!
As you said, I am not convinced by the POV you offered here. Because it fails entirely to take into account the fact that LENIN still unlawfully seized power from the Russian Provisional Gov't and had absolutely no intention of setting up any kind of real democracy. And the same was true of Trotsky and Stalin. Stalin did not "kill" the revolution, he completed and extended what LENIN had started.
Nor do I believe that all "workers" in Russian cities were left wing in their views. I know just enough to state the range of political opinions was more varied than that, even among leftists. And I have more sympathy for the peasants than I do for leftists. Because I agree with them that land should be privately owned and the owners alone should decide how and with what crops to farm them for.
Sean
Sean,
I have again, I hope only temporarily, ceased to receive email notifications of blog comments so again it is a matter of looking for them on the blog. I am glad that you spotted this one.
I hope this evening to add to both Poul Anderson Appreciation and to James Blish Appreciation.
I know that workers' views were varied! The country was at a pitch of controversy and conflict. Since the peasants were the vast majority, their interests should have been addressed and they should not have been forcibly collectivized.
Paul.
Email notifications have arrived belatedly.
Kaor, Paul!
Fortunately, I'm getting your email notifications!
And some urban workers were even Kadets and (gasps) monarchists, supporters of the Octobrists! (Smiles) Not all were even Marxists of various sects.
And collectivization of land is a stupid and unworkable idea, and has never worked. Only the people who actually own and use the land should decide how to use it. Far better to teach peasants more efficient ways to farm their land via agricultural schools and colleges.
Sean
Sean,
Still, the Bolsheviks waited till they had a majority in the soviets/workers' councils before leading a seizure of state power and had even held the Petrograd workers back in July. October was more than a minority coup. It was time for the Bolsheviks to stop merely calling for power to the soviets.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Sorry, I disagree, for many reasons. It was STILL an unlawful coup by a minority, parts of a SINGLE city, Petrograd. Why on EARTH should a single city in a vast country like Russia have the GALL to arrogantly claim the right to determine the fate of an overwhelmingly RURAL nation like that?
And the loathsome Bolsheviks only used the "soviets" as a tool, an instrument for grabbing power. An instrument which they very soon broke to their despotic will. Lenin was an utterly cynical and opportunist politician aspiring to become a tyrant.
Sean
Sean,
I thought that there was a Congress of Soviets representing more than one city? Yes. The smallness of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry was one massive problem.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But not a LEGAL congress or legislative body, such as was the State Duma. And these "soviets" had no authority for determining the future form of gov't for Russia. THAT belonged to the Constituent Assembly the Provisional Gov't was planning to call.
But of course the extreme left didn't want to abide by the decisions of a Constituent Assembly dominated by peasants, moderates, and conservatives who might even have restored the monarchy!
Sean
Sean,
I think that we have clarified the issues enough. There are disagreements on matters of fact (what were the real intentions of leading revolutionaries?) and of legitimacy (at what does stage does legitimacy pass from old institutions to new institutions with popular support?.
Paul.)
Kaor, Paul!
But if a man is familiar with the historical facts about the Bolsheviks, as recorded in their own words and borne out by their acts, there should be no disagreement about the cruelty, fanaticism, hypocrisy, etc, of Lenin, Stalin, AND Trotsky. Also, Lenin's seizure of power in November 1917 PREVENTED new institutions from arising which would have had legitimacy.
Let me correct myself a bit, about my prior comments about the Constituent Assembly. Lenin was not politically secure enough to prevent the elections for the Assembly planned by the Provisional Gov't later in November. But he did try to get as many Communists elected to it as possible, and failed to obtain a majority. Also, there were complaints that the elections were not truly free and representative of all political views in Russia. Last, Lenin made sure the Assembly was packed with his troops (to cow the members) and met for only one day before he suppressed it.
Lenin and his chief hencemen never had any legitimacy!
Sean
Sean,
OK. I have been reminding myself of the chequered history of the Constituent Assembly. It is clear at least that a lot of things went very wrong very quickly after October 1917.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Or even, earlier, in March 1917! Nicholas II had to go because his fumbling and ineptitude was leading Russia to disaster. But he bungled even his abdication. The first time he abdicated naming his son Alexis to succeed him. BUT, anxiety over the boy's health (because of his hemophilia) led him to foolishly set aside his son and name his brother Michael as Tsar in a second decree of abdication. It was foolish because the muddle and confusion this caused led to a complete collapse of the monarchy.
It would have been far better if Alexis had succeeded his father immediately with the widely respected Grand Duke Nicholas as Regent. And the smart thing for the Regent to do in this scenario would have to cut Russia's losses and make the best peace possible with the Central Allies. Lenin and his cronies would have continued to languish in increasingly obscure and forgotten exile in Switzerland!
In fact, we see S.M. Stirling proposing something a lot like what I suggested above in his book BLACK CHAMBER. The chief difference being Stirling having Nicholas II abdicating in September 1916.
Sean
Post a Comment