[_callcc]

All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century. The old Bolsheviks I once knew would have laughed at this "thesis". But who is around anymore to argue against it?

[narag]

Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record.

It's interesting how a lot of people tries to defend the unambiguously totalitarian party and, at the same time, criticizes autoritarian trends of western democracies.

[coldtea]

>Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record.

And yet people don't have issues with political movements with the same or even worse records (from colonialism to slavery), and can swipe their issues under the carpet (what does capitalism has to do with some such countries enslaving 2/3rds of the world causing untold suffering and deaths, that's just human nature, some bad apples, some greedy leaders, etc) whereas issues with other systems they present as "inherent".

It's mostly the winners getting to write history.

[hacknat]

The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn, who are/were hardly neo-liberals. For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

[danharaj]

> For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

Are you sure? For example, colonialism was a project of capitalist development and it very much involved a moral prerogative to '''civilize''' the inferior races of the world... by plundering them of their resources and subjugating them.

[coldtea]

>The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn

Bolshevism yes, the political movement it belongs in general, no. Take Zinn for example: "Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name."

>For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

The protestant work ethic? The white man's burden? The various civic-religious views of the free-market and the invisible hand?

Or, Dr Bowring, an English economist said it in the 19th century: “Jesus Christ is free trade and free trade is Jesus Christ.”

Or maybe it's freedom itself? Friedman: "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself".

-- and tons of such colonial, and neo-liberal moral justifications, from the 16th century to Fukuyama end of history with the triumph of the one true system.

[throwaway2048]

I see a ton of moral prerogative behind ideas like "hard work" and "private property", "they worked hard and deserve it" and "just get a job" myself.

[mythrwy]

Disclaimer: not a Bolshevik.

You raise a very valid point. Also often disregarded are social advances from the movement.

I mean, my understanding of pre-communist Russia was that it was still basically medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships and very not advanced. I'm not sure it would be were it is now, nor have become a major 20'th century super power without what happened.

Not saying the end justifies the means at all, just we have to take progress into account when weighing relative merit.

[thriftwy]

> pre-communist Russia was that it was still basically medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships

Which were dismantled in 1961.

Since then, 56 years passed before the revolution. That's a lot of time. Russian Empire was urbanizing and industrializing rapidly.

If not for communists, Russia will be more like 300 mln strong Norway today, not 140 mln strong Guatemala like it's today.

[coldtea]

>Which were dismantled in 1961. Since then, 56 years passed before the revolution.

You mean 1861 (emancipation of the serfs). That didn't prevent 1917 Russia from still being a "medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships" country -- like the civil war might have meant the end of slavery in the US, but it took a century for de-seggregation, and still today blacks are over-represented in poverty and prison populations (long term after-effects of starting worse than nothing -- other "white" immigrants started their US life with nothing, but blacks, until the 60s, started worse than that).

And there were several revolutions before November 1917, precisely because the masses felt the need for them. (If anything November 1917 was a party takeover of the grass-roots February revolution).

>If not for communists, Russia will be more like 300 mln strong Norway today, not 140 mln strong Guatemala like it's today.

Nobody cared for Norway. Everybody cared (had it in) for Russia (from Napoleonic France to Nazi Germany, all the way to global corporate interests today that plunder all around the world but are bitter because Russia prefers its own national class of kleptocrats to do the plundering instead of selling to the lowest bidder).

If it wasn't for the communists (not the ideology, but the hard-forced fast-track industrialization and urbanizing project) they'd be plundered all the way now, and WWII might have ended very differently.

[thriftwy]

We are plundered every way either way.

However there's also 50 mln death toll.

Come on! Nobody pushes divisions of Poland as something positive for Poland. Revolution is tragedy, communism is failure, have the dignity and leave our corpse alone.

[mythrwy]

Or perhaps like the Eastern suburb of Germany.

We'll never know for sure.

[thriftwy]

You can't control a 200 mln strong nation from 100 mln remote location with different language. One thing that had zero chance of working in XX century.

Moreover, Allies will meanwhile fick said Germany with rake. That's actually what got Russia, being biggest fish in a pond and unstable at the same time.

[sorokod]

So, can't make omlet without breaking eggs?

[mythrwy]

Nope. Just that there are many ways to break eggs and make omelets.

Not justifying (can anyone really justify Stalin?). Just pointing out we have to take the omelet into account when pointing out a messy kitchen with roughly broken egg all over.

Because no matter who you are, no matter where you are, I assure you a lot of eggs were broken to get there. And no, the broken eggs are not OK with me. But sometimes that's how it is and we can't rewind the clock. But we should try to look at the whole story, not just the parts we find morally repugnant.

[narag]

Or maybe it was just a bad idea.

Forbidding diversity and giving absolute power to the leaders. What could go wrong?

[AnimalMuppet]

I'm not sure that colonialism, taken as a whole, has a worse record than Bolshevism (or even Communism), taken as a whole.

[coldtea]

Make sense, since colonialism belongs to the winners, who have been whitewashing (and continuing) its legacy at the same time.

From the murdered native Americans (North and South), to concentration camps, mass executions, slavery work (including US blacks), huge colonial wars, all the way to human zoos...

[riffraff]

it's not uncommon in some countries/cultures to see people defend an abstract "communist" ideology while acknowledging the evils of the actual regimes.

So, it seems likely that if specifically more bolsheviks were around, they might take issues with the characterization of TFA, as grandparent says.

[geofft]

Is this very different from the tendency in the US to say "the problem isn't capitalism, the problem is 'crony capitalism', if we were living under real capitalism things would be okay"?

[muninn_]

Well, mostly, because capitalist systems work. Look at Sweden, or Germany, or Japan, or the United States (largely) or Canada. These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. Some forms of capitalism work better than others (maybe look at Norway vs idk Brazil or something) but they largely work.

[pbhjpbhj]

>These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. //

Work for the betterment of the community in preference to selfish ambition; from each according to there abilities, to each according to their needs; ...

These are what I think of as basic tenets of communism ... What about this is not consistent with technological progress of society?

Communism seems, to me, to be our last great hope for a long future for the human race.

I suppose some would prefer technological advancement over sustainability.

[TeMPOraL]

IMO in terms of technological advancement, the primary difference between (theoretical) communism and (theoretical) capitalism is that the former lacks a strong forcing function. One has to admit that market pressures are a tremendous incentive to develop new technologies. But it's also totally misaligned with what's important. I feel a communist-tech society might develop slower, but in more meaningful ways.

[influx]

For folks who don’t know and want to learn more:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis...

Note: please no what aboutism as a response to this. I’m aware that this isn’t the only ideology that has committed atrocities, but we are discussing this one in this thread.

[geofft]

"Whataboutism" is absolutely relevant, though. In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. If there's one other ideology that's committed atrocities, sure, I understand that that doesn't absolve communism. But if every ideology has, saying "We're only talking about this one" is actively misleading.

And the very article you link to acknowledges that, by comparing killings under communist regimes to killings under the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, and so forth, and by comparing deaths under famine in Communist countries to deaths under famine in the British empire.

Otherwise you might as well say "Look at this list of atrocities committed by men, I'm aware that women have committed atrocities too but that's not what we're discussing in this thread."

[narag]

In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it.

Mass killings under communism is not an idea, it's a fact, isn't it?

Was it caused by communism in general or some persons in particular is debatable.

[geofft]

Yeah, I was a bit sloppy in my wording. The deaths are a fact; I am referring to the idea that "mass killings under communism" / "mass killings under communist regimes" is an appropriate descriptor - as well as the idea that "killings" is an appropriate descriptor for deaths from famine / poverty. (And yes, both of these are debatable ideas.)

[candiodari]

Mass killings are caused - in almost all cases in history - by disastrous economic performance preceeding them, and yes, including the Holocaust. But of course there are many cases, mostly further back, where economic disaster was caused by climate change or just a real natural disaster.

In many cases in the 20th century (arguably including that one) disastrous economic performance was caused by incompetent and corrupt central control of the economy, and then that caused massacres, essentially from Western Europe Eastward all the way the the pacific coast.

Say, what was the basic idea behind communism again ? Yeah I'm sure that version 2.0 will "skip" the incompetent and corrupt parts. Right. Otherwise it's not real communism.

Arguably corrupt and incompetent leadership is a fact of life and is the very core of what distinguishes theory from practice.

[undersuit]

But why did you link the article. Are you asserting something?

[dragonwriter]

> All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century

I don't think so; Bolshevism itself was the decay and ruin in left-wing consciousness. The emphatic rejection of Leninism and it's descendants by many on the left, even many who remain committed to Marxism and non-Leninist derivatives thereof, is a renaissance in left-wing consciousness and thought, and an escape from the swamp in which much of it was mired for much of the twentieth century.

[anigbrowl]

Compared to what, though? Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions, whereas the economist/trade unionist approach hasn't panned out so well for the working class, or indeed the middle class in developed countries.

[dragonwriter]

> Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions

Leninism, like traditional western capitalism, “worked” at displacing a pre-capitalist elite with a new elite and industrializing pre-industrial societies, and largely in the process replicated the key problems associated with western capitalism identified in works like Marx’s Capital, which is why post-Leninist Marxist critics of Leninism often call that system a “state capitalism”.

Leninism didn't however, “work” at solving any problem for which the Left didn't have a clear, well-established working solution before Lenin, and I don't think the Left (outside of the Leninist part, which just ignores the problem and pretends that Leninism is perfect) yet has a theory of how to move on from a Leninist society that doesn't run through capitalist democracy on the route to anything else. Leninism is an unproductive dead-end for the Left.

[anigbrowl]

Most of this I agree with. What I'm not clear on is what you consider to be the promising developments on the left in contrast to Leninism. Put a different way, Leninism may well have been a dead end but at least it proved capable of effecting drastic change. Trade unionism and other organizational models don't seem to have fared that well and keep getting co-opted to capitalist ends, at best resulting in a sort of labor aristocracy (itself a contested term).

I'm not a Bolshevik but I am a proponent of industrial unionism if that helps.

[dragonwriter]

> Trade unionism and other organizational models don't seem to have fared that well and keep getting co-opted to capitalist ends,

Trade unionism and related models on the left have been incredibly successful, without radical seizure of power, in effecting change within advanced democratic capitalist societies; Leninism has had no success either in seizing power or effecting change without seizing power in advanced capitalist societies (except as part of a coalition with trade unionists and others.)

It's true that trade unionism and related models have had trouble firmly institutionalizing changes, and that the progress they've made has suffered reversed and is under constant threat, and that fundamentally upending the capitalist heirarchy remains out of reach of those models.

Which is why it's good that Leninism—as a complete failure at doing anything capitalism doesn't already adequately do—is falling out of favor in the radical Left, because for a long time it was the only theoretical model with any mindshare outside of moderate models, and if there is going to be a successful radical model (whether successful in its radical form or providing new ideas that can transform the moderate Left), it's not going to emerge with Leninism getting all the mindshare.

[anigbrowl]

I'm having a hard time conceiving of a radical alternative, and it's not because I was previously invested in a Leninist model. But if you run across any (even in theory) I'd be delighted to hear about them.

[lfischer]

This _renaissance_ is at least as old as the Bolsheviks, though. You could even go all the way back to Eduard Bernstein.

[dragonwriter]

It's true they Leninism hadn't always been dominant, but it did spend a lot of the twentieth century with a dominant position in left wing thought even in the West, which is somewhat ironic since it is largely an adaptation of Marxism to work outside of the developed capitalist world, which arguably, aside from whether it worked to achieve it's theoretical goals, never had relevance to the West.

It is the escape from that dominance that is the Renaissance, and, yes, as a rebirth, it is naturally prefigured by conditions that existed prior to what it is an escape from.

[hacknat]

You knew old Bolsheviks? Or did you know some Western sympathesizers? Big difference, but either way you’d have to be north of 80 years old.

Chomsky on Leninism:

https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc

Hint: he’s not a fan

[lostlogin]

How? A Bolshevik could have died at 80 or 90, and the OP could have met them at age 20, making them 60ish now. There is plenty of wriggle room for the OP to be younger.

[woodandsteel]

>All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century. The old Bolsheviks I once knew would have laughed at this "thesis". But who is around anymore to argue against it?

So are you saying the thesis is wrong, but you are not going to offer us any arguments as to why?

[ocschwar]

Of course they would have laughed, just as the Mormon leadership laughs at The Book of Mormon, the musical.

[raguuu]

Shocking to see something like this here. Could moderators explain why defending these vile people is allowed here? Next someone starts a story about misunderstood old nazi friends.

[grzm]

If you believe a post is inappropriate for HN, you can flag the submission (if you have sufficient karma). You can also contact the mods directly via the Contact link in the footer. Help make HN the place you want it to be.

[aaron-lebo]

Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR.

I understand your complaint were it about communism, but it's hard to defend a group (Bolshevism) that was loaded with cowardly and narcissistic mass murderers. There's no one to defend them because they're all dead, in many instances killed off by each other. Their form of government collapsed. What's there to defend? Does anyone really want to associate themselves with the actions and mistakes of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Beria, etc. at this time?

Is this incorrect? Were there Bolshevik communities elsewhere that you may have been part of? I thought most of the Bolsheviks were dead by the 1950s.

[pandaman]

>Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR.

Nope. It was a majority faction ("bolshevik" literally means "member of majority" as opposite to "menshevik", "member of minority") in the Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party (РСДРП). They took power during the October Revolution. Soon after the revolution the party was renamed into Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). A year later the Communist International (Commintern) was created by Lenin's order and its first congress in 1919 was attended by delegates from 21 different countries.

So, it seems to me, it was not a minor faction in a single country but a member of the international Communist movement.

[aaron-lebo]

Minor is the wrong word. I was trying to get across that the Bolsheviks were but one political entity that existed as of about 1915 and ended up winning, and even as of 1904 they didn't exist separately within their own party (as you say). It was a relatively small group of men that ended up dominating Russia, partially due to how ruthless they were willing to be.

I'm still not sure how the OP knew any Bolsheviks, was anyone calling themselves that in 1970?

[pandaman]

My point is that it was the mainstream Left in 20th century. The fact that people insist on calling them "Bolsheviks" instead of "Communists" is, IMHO, an indication that Left still hope to salvage their ideology by implying that "it was not the true Communism!". There were plenty of them in 1970 (6M or so party members) and, even though, the CPSU was officially disbanded in 1991, a new CPSU has been established in 1993 as its successor and still has enough support to win seats in Duma.

[kmonsen]

I don't think Leninism, Bolsheviks or Communism are anything to do with what I understand leftism (or socialism) to be.

The former were all about a minority controlling the majority, while the latter is about the majority being in control (although that does not work out all that well always either).

Note that the it is almost impossible to discuss this due to overloaded terms like liberalism which means the opposite depending on who you ask. I define leftism like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics

[aaron-lebo]

I'm getting into semantics, but though I get that the Bolsheviks of 1920 transformed (officially) and eventually into the CPSU in 1952, with that "rebranding", did anyone in the USSR still call themselves Bolsheviks or were they communists or was there a more popular term?

It's just that I've never seen it in (historical) contexts outside of describing the pre 1920s revolutionaries.

[pandaman]

>anyone in the USSR still call themselves Bolsheviks or were they communists or was there a more popular term

They used "bolshevik" as a term of endearment especially in reference to the old party members.

[LoSboccacc]

> that Left still hope to salvage their ideology by implying that "it was not the true Communism!"

don't worry most of the left repackaged the old communism into moral relativism and is no longer trying to win that unwinnable battle to keep communism as an ideology detached from all communist implementations.

it's mostly the older guards that still try that line.

[anigbrowl]

OK, but so what? Most political parties in history started out as factions of other parties that then split off and coalesced around a new ideological tendency. The Republican party in the US was formed by members of the Whig and Free Soil parties, while the Democratic party (incidentally, the world's oldest political party) grew from the Anti-Federalist party in the late 18th century.

It was a relatively small group of men that ended up dominating Russia, partially due to how ruthless they were willing to be.

You mean like every other successful revolutionary party? Revolutionaries that aren't willing to be ruthless end up in prison or on the scaffold. To quote Ben Franklin as he was preparing to sign the Declaration of Independence, 'We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'

[aaron-lebo]

Requisitioning disincentivised peasants from producing more grain than they could personally consume, and thus production slumped.[247] A booming black market supplemented the official state-sanctioned economy,[248] and Lenin called on speculators, black marketeers and looters to be shot.[249] Both the Socialist Revolutionaries and Left Socialist Revolutionaries condemned the armed appropriations of grain at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in July 1918.[250] Realising that the Committees of the Poor Peasants were also persecuting peasants who were not kulaks and thus contributing to anti-government feeling among the peasantry, in December 1918 Lenin abolished them.[251]

Lenin repeatedly emphasised the need for terror and violence in overthrowing the old order and ensuring the success of the revolution.[252] Speaking to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in November 1917, he declared that "the state is an institution built up for the sake of exercising violence. Previously, this violence was exercised by a handful of moneybags over the entire people; now we want ... to organise violence in the interests of the people."[253] He strongly opposed suggestions to abolish capital punishment.[254] Fearing anti-Bolshevik forces would overthrow his administration, in December 1917 Lenin ordered the establishment of the Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, a political police force led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.[255]

In September 1918, Sovnarkom passed a decree that inaugurated the Red Terror, a system of repression orchestrated by the Cheka.[256] Although sometimes described as an attempt to eliminate the entire bourgeoisie,[257] Lenin did not want to exterminate all members of this class, merely those who sought to reinstate their rule.[258] The majority of the Terror's victims were well-to-do citizens or former members of the Tsarist administration;[259] others were non-bourgeois anti-Bolsheviks and perceived social undesirables such as prostitutes.[260] The Cheka claimed the right to both sentence and execute anyone whom it deemed to be an enemy of the government, without recourse to the Revolutionary Tribunals.[261] Accordingly, throughout Soviet Russia the Cheka carried out killings, often in large numbers.[262] For example, the Petrograd Cheka executed 512 people in a few days.[263] There are no surviving records to provide an accurate figure of how many perished in the Red Terror;[264] later estimates of historians have ranged between 10,000 and 15,000,[265] and 50,000 to 140,000.[266]

What did Ben Franklin do that was comparable to that?

[anigbrowl]

Wow - whataboutism, a Gish gallop, and cherry-picking all at once. Quite the rhetorical cocktail, but I'd have preferred a responsive answer in your own words.

[icebraining]

Marxism-Leninism is certainly not dead, although the fall of the USSR was a harsh blow. In my Western European country, the Communist Party still gets almost 10% of the votes, and while they no longer openly defend Stalin's legacy, Leninism is still very much at the core of their identity.

[geofft]

> Does anyone really want to associate themselves with the actions and mistakes of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Beria, etc. at this time?

For Lenin at least, yes, absolutely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Democratic_Front_(Kerala)

[lostlogin]

Alarmingly, Putin has praised Stalin’s management of the USSR and has spoken out about how Stalin is perceived. He seems disturbingly fond of the guy.

Interesting connection - Putins father was a cook for both Lenin and Stalin.

[testestx]

There are many people today that want to associate themselves with Trotsky. They are called trotskyists.

[anigbrowl]

Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR.

No. They were the largest left faction, and the word bolshevik translates to 'majority', while menshevik means 'minority' - so named because the Bolsheviks pursued a majority-rule policy while the Mensheviks wanted a more parliamentarian system that preserved the rights of minority parties. There were two communist revolutions in 1917; the first, in February, toppled the Tsar but the provisional government led by Kerensky didn't deliver on its promise of pulling Russia out of the war and made so many compromises with the conservative and militarist interests that eventually it lost the confidence of the working class, and the Bolsheviks were able to take power in an almost bloodless second revolution in October.

Lenin was in hiding at the time, having been accused of sedition (I think, I forget the exact charge) against the provisional government, and Trotsky's execution of the takeover went so smoothly that when Lenin turned up at the Bolsheviks' HQ a couple of days alter he demanded of Trotsky to know why they weren't fighting and was astonished to learn that they had already won. Having seized power, the Bolshevik's first task was to get Russia out of the war, and they sent Trotsky off to negotiate the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This didn't go as well as they hoped, and to get Russia out of the war they had to make huge compromises, but they succeeded in signing a peace treaty thereby fulfilling their primary objective.

The Russian civil war began after the exit from WW1, but the Bolsheviks were legitimately in power before it began and remained in power the whole time. Civil wars in any country are bitter and destructive, partly because many of the issues are personal and partly because both sides know the territory well and are able to wage war more intimately and effectively than a foreign invader, who is more constrained by logistical and infrastructural considerations.

I think the Bolsheviks and the left revolutionaries in general were quite justified in seizing power; Tsarism was dreadful and World War 1 was a horrific waste of life and treasure which the Bolsheviks were quite right to oppose (and which many socialist parties around europe cynically sold out the working class to promote). Having achieved victory and pulled russia out of the war, I don't know why you'd expect them not to defend the government they'd just established against its White Army challengers.

[aaron-lebo]

They may have been right to seize power, but the Bolsheviks have never struck me as anything but murdering gangsters with ideology attached. There's just very little good that came out of the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1940. Repeated missteps in government policy, mass starvations, purges, secret police led by a rapist, etc. It was a completely immoral system that above all else was about a small group obtaining power.

The Tsarists weren't much better, sure. Much of that history is covered here:

https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-New-History/dp/046...

Unfortunately, Putin is back to praising Stalinism. A free, democratic Russia would be really interesting.

[anigbrowl]

I'm certainly not endorsing the longer-term development of the USSR following the civil war and am no fan of Stalin. I think it's unfair to characterize them as gangsters in their earlier period since their seizure of power has to be weighed against the casualties of World War 1, which was horrific.

People seem to forget that ~18 million people died and >20 million people were wounded in that conflict - understandably since we have far more footage of WW2 and subsequent conflicts compared to a rather hazy conception of trench warfare and primitive tanks for WW1. Compared to this the Russian revolutions of 1917 were near-bloodless affairs. High estimates for the Red Terror in the lead up to the Russian Civil War are about 200,000 (100k is more common), a small number in that historical context, but worse because of the number and nature of the atrocities committed.

On the other hand, the White Terror to which it was a response claimed some 300,000 lives but nobody seems to care about that, which is a pretty weird double standard if you ask me. Perhaps this is because people conflate the Red Terror with the later events of the Stalinist period rather than looking at it in its contemporary context.

Unfortunately, Putin is back to praising Stalinism. A free, democratic Russia would be really interesting.

On this I completely agree, but I have to note that the West's response to the emergence of a somewhat free and democratic Russia after the collapse of the USSR was to set it up with a rudimentary market economy and milk it for profit, while keeping defense budgets in the West at about the same levels (until the early 2000s, when they almost doubled). I think Putin's rise is a direct result of our failure to invest in helping Russia to build democratic institutions.

[thriftwy]

I think you are downplaying number of Red Terror victims by an order of magnitude.

Tambov uprising alone had 11 thousands people directly dead, many more indirectly due to hunger, etc. And that's just a tiny episode.

[anigbrowl]

I took the large estimate from this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

My point is not to downplay it but to say it should be considered in the context of everything else that was going on at that time. By all means question the historical estimates if you disagree with them, but I think you should be equally concerned by the death attributable to the anti-communist forces, no?

[SiempreViernes]

It’s pretty clear Russia will never accept subjugation to the US, so I doubth it’ll ever be labeled free and democratic again.

[yks]

yeah, cause Kremlin presents being "free and democratic" as being "subjugated to the US" to its general population.

unfortunately, Russians who could see past that little trick were either exterminated or emigrated long ago.

[pandaman]

Not really because of Kremlin "presenting" but, rather, because Russians see an example of "young, progressive and free democracy" right next to them. The one, where the current government came to power through a revolt, displacing another "democratic" government, which also came to power through a revolt 10 years earlier. The one, which is waging a civil war right now. One, where corruption eclipses Russia's own in 1990s. It's hard not to notice since millions of their citizens flee war and poverty in Russia as well as other countries in Europe.

Nobody has a problem with it though since the government is eager to listen to the West so it's a proper "democracy" and things are fine.

[aaron-lebo]

That's needlessly binary way of viewing history.

Russia can and will be labeled free and democratic by outside organizations when it's not ruled by a dictator. The US did not chose Putin, though Putin might like to choose who leads the US.