The Soviet Union
Re: The Soviet Union
Isolate the north of the Soviet Union
January 5, 19:26
Isolate the north of the Soviet Union
The FSB has declassified archives about the NKVD operation to liquidate the German DRG operating in Arkhangelsk in 1942.
Among the saboteurs were Estonians who were recruited by the Nazis to work on the territory of the USSR.
According to the documents, they planned to isolate the north from the central part of the Soviet Union, find suitable landing sites and obtain as much data as possible.
One of the detainees admitted: “According to the instructions received from German intelligence, people from the local population who met us were to be killed after interrogation.”
It also became known from the testimony that German planes dropped torpedoes with food for saboteurs, as well as with poison and explosives intended for Soviet troops.
But the support of Nazi Germany did not help the spies: some of them simply could not withstand the harsh Russian frosts, went hungry, and then surrendered to the Red Army after one of the shootouts.
https://vk.com/bair.irincheev - zinc
General Frost interfered. In 1942, the Estonian Nazis still hoped for a Reich victory. After Stalingrad things started to get worse.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8875627.html
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate.
January 5, 17:32
The harsh everyday life of the Samara GubChK.
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate.
Traditional Samara "all against all."
I have never seen such a cool description of the head of the GubChK. Actually, the whole post is for her sake)
At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921 in Samara, Gubchek’s board was completely changed twice: either the Mensheviks got through, or the Socialist Revolutionaries were not finished off. To be sure, they appointed to the post of acting an honored Samara Bolshevik with solid pre-revolutionary experience, a friend of Kuibyshev himself, comrade Chuikov.
His characterization immediately came to Moscow from the security officer and deputy commander of Samgubrozysk, Comrade Shchelkunov:
“In the Cheka. Copy in the Samgubkom RCP (b).
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate. In 1918, during the invasion of the Czech-Socialist Revolutionary gang to Samara, we - ordinary workers of the Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks fought at the front, setting an example for other comrades. And Comrade Chuikov, in such hot battles, found himself in a workshop on the corner of Leo Tolstoy and Troitskaya, which is unacceptable.
January 20, 21 Shchelkunov."
Particularly annoying is the fact that Shchelkunov wrote his characterization while in prison, where he was imprisoned by the previous board of Gubchek for putting pressure on the head of the Samara water police, Comrade Solovyov, regarding the release of Shchelkunov’s friend, a certain Mikhail Karpov, who was arrested for poaching.
Comrade Soloviev, in turn, was sitting in the next cell for selling government linen; he was arrested by agents of the provincial intelligence department with the sanction of Chuikov.
Chuikov was asked to respond to Shchelkunov, but he requested sick leave and it was immediately withdrawn. Solovyov was imprisoned (his pre-revolutionary profession - an assistant bailiff) had an effect. Shchelkunov was given a severe reprimand. His sidekick Karpov was sentenced to forced labor and a fine.
I found denunciations of everyone against everyone and characterizations in SOGASPI.
https://vk.com/id6186050?w=wall6186050_14169 - zinc
Actually, the first years after the end of the civil war were, among other things, associated with the cleansing of the Cheka from random/dubious elements that had joined the Cheka during the civil war. Various issues from this period were later recalled during the period of repression, when they brought up old cases and wondered who was doing what before the revolution or during the civil war. And there, such complaints and denunciations already had much more serious consequences.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8875447.html
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The Violet Ray
Reproduction and commentary on a classic short story about civil war Kiev, 1918. Rule by Rumours. Petlyura's Wunderwaffen. Haidamaky warriors. My recollections of wartime Kiev.
EVENTS IN UKRAINE
JAN 2, 2024
The text reproduced here as ‘the Violet Ray’ was translated by Manya Harari and Michael Duncan, published in 1967 by the Harvill Press as a chapter in the book ‘In That Dawn’, which is the third volume of Paustovsky’s memoirs ‘Story of a Life’. It was originally published in 1958 in the Soviet Union. The literal translation of the title of the book is in fact ‘The Start of an Unknown Era’. It treats the events of the revolution and civil war in Ukraine, 1917-1920.
Commentary
The Story of a Life, Konstantin Paustovsky - The Neglected Books Page
Konstantin Paustovsky (1892-1968)
Konstantin Paustovsky is a great Soviet writer who grew up and spent most of his life in modern-day Ukraine. His magisterial, 7-volume memoirs ‘Story of a Life’ are essential to understanding the epoch and region. Even in modern-day Ukraine, pro-Kyiv political commentators like Yury Romanenko often cite the following story positively. As I wrote in a recent article about Romanenko, he considers Paustovsky to have been correct in his diagnosis of Ukrainian nationalism’s tendency towards chaotic fantasy:
Romanenko is particularly fond of referring to Paustovsky’s ‘the Violet Ray’. I will try translate it soon. In it, Paustovsky describes his experiences in Kiev as it was under the control of Simon Petliura - ‘This was the opening scene of the brief and irresponsible era of the Directorate in Kiev’. Riding into Kiev on a magnificent white horse, followed by his ideologically committed (comically so) ‘Haidamaky’ cavalry, Petliura certainly had quite an image, mixing pro-peasant populism (fairly mild, to peasant dismay and Bolshevik profit) with an anti-communist, pro-entente geopolitical orientation. But despite the striking appearances, and the grandiose proclamations of the Directory, filled with renowned intellectuals such as Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a stable government or army was not built. The classic joke about the Directory is that it was generally a ‘Directory on wheels’ - its ‘state’ only existed where the carriages carrying Petliura and his (relatively) loyal soldiers were.
Simon Petlyura (1879-1926). Originally a journalist and Ukrainian nationalist of vague socialist inclinations, he became leader of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic, which was proclaimed in 1917. Rebelling against more rightwing elements, he staged of coup d’etat and the new organ of state became the ‘Directory’ in 1918, which was a committee led by him and his comrades. Petlyura would be later assassinated in Paris by a Ukrainian Jew in retaliation for the large scale massacres of Jews his army conducted during the civil war.
Romanenko focuses on this ‘inability to build a state’ as the Directory’s main fault and reason for the Bolshevik victory and contrasts them unfavorably with his favorite figure of the time, Pavlo Skoropadsky. While he does mention Bolshevik 'social populism’ as another reason for their victory, this is of course not his favorite theme, though he does have some interesting things about how Ukrainians in 1917-20, despite being far more uniformly Ukrainian speaking and less ‘culturally Russian’ than today, still chose the Bolsheviks. He uses this to blame the Poroshenkites of focusing too much on cultural matters and too little on more material issues.
Back to Skoropadsky. Coming from old Cossack nobility that had done very well under the tsars, he led a rightwing military junta propped up by the German Kaiser that replaced Petliura’s pro-entente government. Skoropadsky’s openly pro-kulak (kurkul, as they were called in Ukraine) policies led to constant peasant uprisings under various banners. No matter how much of a wise statesman he might have been, according to Romanenko, his government was quite short-lived.
Some more terminological notes - Haidamaky were originally mercenary groups in the 17th-18th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They were alternatively mercenaries and bandits, and their service to the PLC alternated with cooperation with the Tsar of Moscow. They are quite famed for their bloody slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, and are revered in Ukrainian nation-making mythology as peasant patriots. They were particularly famously memorialized in the epic poem ‘Haidamaky’, by Ukraine’s 19th century national poet Taras Shevchenko:
At Pac's appeal, Pulawski's call
The Polish nobles rise.
A hundred leagues — Confederates —
All Poland they inflamed,
Lithuania they overran,
Moldavia, Ukraine;
They scattered wide and they forgot
That freedom was their aim —
They joined with Jews in compact foul
To rob and devastate.
They ran mad riot through the land,
They churches set ablaze....
The Haidamaki then began
To sanctify their blades.
….
Thus, far into the night
Yarema and Oksana talked,
And only stopped to plight
Their love with ardent, sweet caress;
Sometimes they wept with pain
That they must part, and then embraced
And pledged their love again.
How they would live, Yarema told,
When home again he came,
How he’d obtain a lot of gold,
How fortune he would gain,
How Haidamaki planned to slay
All Poles in the Ukraine,
How he’d be master, not a slave,
If he alive remained.
Oh girls, he talked till one was bored
To hear him talk that way!
‘Haidamaky near Uman’, a historical painting by I M Buryachok from 1922.
Finally, I ought to make a note about my personal experience reading the following text. I first read it in mid-2022. By that time, I had already spent several months away from. Reading this book was quite revelatory for me. As I said in my article on Romanenko, I was recommended it by a quite charismatic Ukrainian anti-maidan activist. There were two things that struck me about the following story. First, the impression of total transience and uncertainty. New rulers come and go, new costumes, new masks, new songs, dances, new warriors, new slogans - all so serious and sincere that it is hard to take them seriously. Asides from politics, I often had this impression in Kiev because of how quickly new cafes and restaurants would be set up and promptly replaced, usually within the space of 2 months (the lifespan of Kievan cafes seemed to be constantly shrinking over 2020-2021).
Second, the description of the power of rumours in wartime Kiev. I was viscerally reminded of my rather awful time in the Kiev metro around February 26-28 2022. Down there, barricaded inside by AK-47-carrying policemen, trying and failing to sleep in the cold carriages, rumours were the main way to pass time. Everyone was glued to their phones, to telegram. I remember one young blond woman with dead eyes suddenly turn to me (I had never talked to her before) and tell me about a new American statement promising a huge new military aid package to Ukraine, planes, tanks, everything. A Violet Ray indeed….
The Violet Ray
Next morning, I was woken up by the sound of cheering outside, and guessed that Pan Petlyura, Ataman of the Ukrainian army and the Gaidamak host, was making his triumphant entry into Kiev.
A notice to that effect by the Town Commander had been posted up on the previous day. It stated pompously and in an oddly humourless language that Petlyura, at the head of his 'Directorate', would ride into the city, mounted on a white steed—a present from the railwaymen of Shmera.
Why the railwaymen should have presented him with a horse rather than a railway coach, or say an engine, was a mystery. But the hopes of the Kiev housewives were not deceived and Petlyura rode into the vanquished city, mounted on a fairly placid white steed.
The horse had a pale-blue saddlecloth embroidered in yellow. Petlyura wore a wadded khaki coat, his only ornament; a curved Ukrainian sabre, obviously taken from a museum, slapped against his thigh as he jogged along. Loyal Ukrainians gazed reverently at the Cossack sword, the puffy, pale-faced Ataman, and his guard of Gaidamaks prancing on their shaggy horses.
The Gaidamaks, their heads shaven except for a single strand of blue-black hair hanging from under their sheepskin hats, reminded me of my childhood and the old Ukrainian Theatre. At nearly every show, just such Gaidamaks, their eyes touched up with blue, had danced the Gopak. 'Hi, hop, shout! This way, that way, turn about!'
Every nation has a right to its eccentricities, but the chauvinists who drool over them destroy the magic. Our neighbour, when I lived in Kiev as a boy, was a well-known painter, Pimonenko, renowned as the ‘glorifier’ of traditional Ukraine. Always in his studio, the old gentleman painted exclusively from memory. With incredible speed, he turned out daubs of pretty, old-world cottages, cherry orchards, sunflowers, hollyhocks and village girls beribboned from head to toe. Hardly had he finished one picture when he started on another—his output was prodigious. He laboured in the sweat of his brow to create the picture-postcard image of a honey-sweet Ukraine—even as children, it turned our stomachs.
It was this Ukraine that Petlyura tried to re-create. Needless to say, he failed.
Riding after the Ataman came the Directorate—the sad and seedy writer Vinnichenko followed by a number of Ministers whom nobody knew, and who looked as if they had just been taken out and dusted. This was the opening scene of the brief and irresponsible era of the Directorate in Kiev.
Ironical like all southerners, the Kievites made the new régime the target of innumerable jokes. They were delighted with the sight of smartly dressed-up Gaidamaks stomping up and down the Khreschatik with step-ladders, taking down Russian shop-signs and replacing them with Ukrainian ones. Petlyura introduced a language known as Galician—a clumsy dialect full of words borrowed from its neighbours. Before this intruder, the native language of the Ukraine—witty, singing, sharp and sparkling like the teeth of Pimonenko’s village girls—took refuge in remote cottages and vineyards where it hid throughout the troubled times, keeping all its poetry and vigour.
Everything under Petlyura’s rule had a contrived air—the Gaidamaks, the dialect, Petlyura’s policies, the crowds of hoary, whiskered chauvinists who crept out of their dusty holes and everything down to the public speeches of his ministers. But more of this later.
Meeting a Gaidamak in the street, people rubbed their eyes and stared—was it a soldier in uniform or an actor in disguise? The same impression of make-believe was produced by the tortured sounds of the new language. And when customers counted their change in a shop, they looked suspiciously at the greasy scraps of greyish paper faintly stained with yellow and blue, so like the toy money used in nursery games.
There were so many more spurious banknotes than genuine ones, that the population tacitly agreed to accept both at the same rate.
At every printing press in town, typesetters and printers were cheerfully turning out forged Petlyura notes—Karbovanetsi and Sbagi. The Sbag was the smallest unit, worth about half a kopek. Some enterprising citizens produced them at home, using water-colours and Indian ink. They didn’t even bother to put them away when a stranger dropped in.
One of the busiest centres for the manufacture of money as well as of hooch was Pan Kturenda’s room.
Ever since the pompous little man had pushed me into the Hetman’s army, he showed me an affection rather like that of the hangman for his victim. He was always inviting me.
Interested in this remnant of the Polish gentry washed up in what he called ‘our shattering age’, one day I went to see him in his small room, crowded with carboys of muddy homebrew and smelling sourly of paint.
Kturenda was busy making hundred-ruble notes. They were decorated with the engraving of two stout, bare-legged, sultry-eyed young women poised like ballerinas on clouds of intricate arabesques. Kturenda was shaking them in with Indian ink.
Pan Kturenda’s mother, a gaunt old lady with a twitching face, sat behind a screen, reading in a low voice from a Polish prayer-book.
‘The arabesque is the alpha and omega of the Petlyura banknote,’ Kturenda told me in a professional tone. ‘You could quite easily replace these two Ukrainian misses by any two stoic patriots you chose. It wouldn’t matter a scrap. What matters is to get this curlicue exactly right. If you do, you’ll get change for your banknote without anyone batting an eyelid.'
‘How many do you make?’
‘I can paint,’ Kturenda said importantly, sticking out his lip with its cropped little moustache, ‘I can paint up to three a day. Sometimes even five. It depends on my inspiration.’
‘Bassya!’ The old lady called from behind the screen. ‘Bassya, my son, I am so frightened, my dear.’
‘Now don’t worry, Mama. Nothing will happen. No one is going to lay a finger on Pan Kturenda.’
‘It’s not prison I’m afraid of,’ the old woman said unexpectedly. ‘It’s you, Bassya.’
‘Water on the brain!’ Pan Kturenda winked at me. ‘Couldn’t you please just manage to keep quiet, Mama?’
‘No, I won’t. I can’t. God will punish me if I don’t tell everyone that my son’—the old lady sobbed—‘that my son is a Judas . . .’
‘Shut up!’ Kturenda jumped up and violently shook the screen. It danced about and creaked, letting out a cloud of yellow dust. ‘Shut up you silly old fool, or I’ll gag you with an oil-rag.’
The old lady sobbed and blew her nose.
‘What does she mean?’ I asked.
‘That is strictly my own business,’ Kturenda replied defiantly.
The crisscrossed veins on his contorted face looked as if they were about to burst. ‘I advise you not to stick your nose into my affairs—unless you want to end up in the same common grave as the Bolsheviks.’
‘You scoundrel,’ I said quietly. ‘You are such a cheap scoundrel that you are not worth as much as your own forged notes.’
‘Under the ice with you!’ Kturenda shrieked and stamped hysterically. ‘That’s what Pan Kturenda does with people like you—into the Dnieper and under the ice . . .’
I described the incident to Amalia. She said that she had long suspected Kturenda of acting as informer for each of the successive governments which had ravaged the Ukraine—the Central Rada, the Germans, the Hetman and now Petlyura. She was convinced that he would pay me out by denouncing me. Careful and practical as ever, she set up her own watch on Kturenda that same day.
But her precautions proved unnecessary. That very evening, Pan Kturenda met his end before our eyes. And his death was as unbearably pointless as had been the whole of his mean and boorish life.
Towards dusk, we heard pistol shots outside. As usual on such occasions, I went out onto the balcony to see what was going on.
Across the empty square in front of the church, two civilians were running in our direction and, chasing after them but plainly frightened of catching up, were several Petlyura officers and men. The officers were firing as they ran and shouting to the fugitives to stop.
Suddenly I caught sight of Kturenda. Darting out of his room in the wing of the house, he hurried to the massive gate between the courtyard and the street and took from the lock a key as huge as that of a mediaeval city.
Key in hand, Pan Kturenda lay in wait inside the gate. As the civilians were running past, he flung it open, thrust out his hand holding the key like a pistol (from a distance it did look like an antiquated firearm) and shouted:
‘Halt, you Bolshevik scum! Halt or I fire!’
He meant to help the officers by holding up the fugitives, if only for a moment. That moment would of course have settled their fate.
From my balcony, I saw clearly what happened next. The second of the two men fired at him as he ran, without even looking. Screaming and spitting blood, Kturenda rolled over and over on the cobbled drive, twitched, and with a last rattling breath died, still clutching the key in his hand. Blood dripped down his pink celluloid cuffs and his open eyes glazed in an expression of angry terror.
It took an hour for the rickety old ambulance to come and take him to the morgue.
Kturenda’s mother slept through his death and heard of it only late that night.
A few days later, she was bundled off to the ancient almshouse in Sulima. I often came across the inmates on my walks. They went about in crocodile, like schoolgirls, all dressed alike in dark cotton frocks. They made me think of a solemn procession of ground-beetles.
I have described this incident in detail only because it was so in keeping with the whole tenor of life under the Directorate. Everything seemed equally mean and pointless, like a badly-produced but occasionally tragic farce.
One day, the whole of Kiev was plastered with enormous posters. They announced a meeting at the ‘Ars’ Cinema where the Directorate would give an account of itself to the citizens.
The whole town tried to squeeze into the cinema. The citizens expected an unusual show. They got it.
The long, narrow hall was wrapped in mysterious gloom. No lights had been switched on. The crowd buzzed cheerfully in the dark.
At last, a gong boomed off-stage, coloured footlights blazed and, against a garish backdrop of ‘the Dnieper on a sunny day’, there appeared an elderly but well-built man in black with a becoming beard—Premier Vinnichenko.
Patently unhappy and embarrassed, he fidgeted with his spotted tie, made a short, dry speech on the international position of the Ukraine, and was given a round of applause.
Next came an unbelievably gaunt young woman also in black, with a thickly powdered face, who clutched her hands in a despairing gesture and, to the accompaniment of pensive piano-chords, shyly recited a poem by the Ukrainian poetess Galina:
They felled the wood,
The young, green wood . . . She too was briefly applauded.
Every speech was followed by musical interludes. After the poetry reading, two plump girls in Ukrainian costumes danced the Gopak.
The audience was thoroughly enjoying itself but quietened down discreetly when the Minister of Finance walked onto the stage.
The Minister was dishevelled and looked truculent. He was snorting with anger. His round, closely cropped head shone with sweat. His grey Cossack moustache drooped over his chin.
He wore baggy grey pin-striped trousers, an equally baggy tussore coat with bulging pockets, and an embroidered shirt fastened at the neck with a cord ending in red pompoms.
He had no intention of making a speech. Walking up to the footlights, he stood listening to the low hum of conversation in the hall. He even cupped his hand over his ear. People laughed.
The Minister grinned with a satisfied air, nodded as though at some passing thought, and asked:
‘Moskovites?’
The audience were indeed mostly Russians. Yes, they replied unsuspectingly, they were nearly all from Moscow.
‘I see-e-e,’ the Minister said ominously, blowing his nose into a large checked handkerchief. ‘Very understandable. But no more pleasant for that.’
The sound of conversation ceased. The audience scented trouble.
‘And why the hell,’ the Minister suddenly shouted, turning as red as a beetroot, ‘why the hell did you come here from your bloody Moscow? Swarming like flies round a honeypot! What have you come for, blast you? I know what—your Moscow is in such a state that there is nothing to eat and nothing to . . .’
The audience roared with indignation and hooted. A little man leapt out onto the stage and tried to take the Minister by the elbow and lead him away, but the old fire-eater gave him a push which nearly knocked him down. The Minister had got into his stride. Nothing could stop him.
‘Well, why don’t you say something?’ he asked slyly.
‘Acting stupid, eh? Well, I’ll say it for you. Here you can stuff yourselves with bread and sugar and fat and buckwheat and cakes. And in Moscow you’d be sucking lamp oil off your thumbs! That’s what you’ve come for!’
Two men were now pulling him away by the skirts of his tussore coat, but he struggled furiously, shouting:
‘Beggars! Parasites! Back to your Moscow! Back to your Jewish bosses! Get out!’
Vinnichenko appeared in the wings and waved his hand angrily. Purple with indignation, the old man was finally dragged off the stage.
To counter the unfortunate impression left by this performance, young men in sheepskin hats set at a jaunty angle, bounced onto the stage. Some struck up their balalaikas, others swung into the national dance, singing:
Whose’s the dead man lying there?
Not the prince, or squire, or colonel,
But the old crone’s love eternal.
This was the closing scene of the meeting. Laughing and shouting, ‘Back to Moscow! Back to your Jewish bosses!’ the audience poured into the street.
Everything about the régime had a provincial air. Once a glittering city, Kiev turned into a backwater, a large-scale Shpola or Mirgorod, stuffy with antiquated ritual and hide-bound officialdom.
Everything looked like a stage-set for Ukrainian opera—down to the grocery shop with its old worlde sign ‘Taras Bulba of Poltava’. The grocer, with his long moustache and snow-white shirt blazing with scarlet embroidery, was so impressive that it took courage to ask him for biscuits and honey.
The whole town seemed to be taking part in a performance of The Gaidamaks.
It was hard to sort things out. Upheaval followed upheaval. Each government in turn, as soon as it seized power, showed signs of imminent and ignominious collapse. Each hurried to pass as many resolutions and decrees as possible, hoping that a few at least would leave their mark on history. Petlyura’s government, like the Hetman’s before him, produced an impression of utter confusion and lack of confidence in its own future.
Against the Soviet armies bearing down on Kiev from the north, Petlyura put his trust mainly in the French who were occupying Odessa.
His agents circulated rumours that the French were coming to the rescue—they were in Vinnitsa, in Fastov, tomorrow their brave Zouaves in fezes and red trousers would be seen in the Boyarka suburb of Kiev. This Petlyura had on oath from his bosom-friend, the French Consul Hennault.
Bewildered by conflicting rumours, the papers printed this nonsense, although everyone knew that the French were sitting tight in Odessa, keeping strictly to their occupation zone, although the ‘zones of influence’ (French, Greek and Ukrainian) were separated from each other by no more than rows of rickety wicker chairs.
Rumour became an elemental force, a cosmic phenomenon, an irresistible epidemic. It was a form of mass hypnosis.
Rumours lost their normal purpose: to spread fictitious news. They changed their character, their substance. They became a powerful drug, a means of reassurance, the only way of holding on to hope.
Even outwardly, the citizens of Kiev began to look like drug addicts. At each new rumour, their eyes became clearer and brighter, their torpor vanished. They ceased to mumble, they were excited, even witty.
Some rumours were fleeting, others kept people in a state of artificial animation for as long as two or three days.
Even the most hardened sceptics could be made to believe anything. They swallowed the story that the Ukraine was to become a department of France and that President Poincaré himself was on his way to Kiev to announce this act of State. According to another, the cinema star Vera Kholodnaya had recruited her own army like Joan of Arc and, riding a white charger at the head of her victorious troops, had entered the town of Priluki and proclaimed herself Empress of the Ukraine.
I began to keep a list of such rumours but soon gave up. It was enough to make one sick and drive one quietly insane. I felt like liquidating the whole lot—from Presidents Poincaré and Wilson down to Makhno and the notorious Ataman Zeleny who had set up his H.Q. in the village of Tripolye near Kiev. I now wish I hadn’t destroyed my notes. They were a fantastic catalogue of lies, and of the wild imaginings of helpless, bewildered souls.
To keep my sanity, I re-read some of my favourite books—Tristan and Isolde, Manon Lescaut, Turgenev’s Torrents of Spring, Boris Zaitsev’s The Blue Star. In the muddy darkness of those Kiev evenings, their message seemed indeed as clear and incorruptible as the stars. I lived alone. Mama and Galya were still completely cut off from Kiev. I could get no news of them.
I had decided that in spring I would make my way to Kopan on foot, in spite of people warning me that I would have to cross the unsettled ‘Dymersk’ Republic and had little chance of coming through alive. But new events made it useless even to think of such a plan.
I lived with my books. I tried to write a little but the result looked like the ravings of a lunatic.
At night, I listened to the silence in the house and in our district, where nothing seemed awake except the clouds, the stars, and an occasional patrol.
The sound of the patrolmen’s footsteps carried from a long way off. Each time, I put out my oil-lamp for fear of attracting the patrol to our house. At rare intervals, I heard Amalia crying in the night and thought of how much harder to bear her loneliness was than mine.
Always for a few days after such a crying fit, she spoke to me in an arrogant, almost hostile tone. Then, with a shy, apologetic smile, she would once more look after me with the same devotion as she had lavished on each of her lodgers in turn.
Revolution broke out in Germany. The German forces stationed in Kiev quietly elected their Soviet of army deputies and prepared to go home. Taking advantage of their weakness, Petlyura decided to disarm them. But they heard about his plan.
On the day the Germans were to be disarmed, I woke up to a roll of drums loud enough to shake the house. I went out onto the balcony. Amalia was already there. Down Fundukleyev Street, German regiments were tramping in silence. Windows jingled to the beat of hobnailed boots. The drums rolled warningly.
The cavalry followed, faces equally stern, horse-shoes clicking on the wooden blocks which paved the road. Then came dozens of field-guns, jolting and rumbling.
Silently, with no music except the rolling of the drums, the Germans marched round the city and back to their barracks. Petlyura at once cancelled his secret order.
Soon after this silent demonstration, the sound of distant gunfire began to reach us from the left bank of the Dnieper. The Germans were hurriedly clearing out of Kiev. The gunfire grew ever louder, and we learned that Soviet forces were advancing quickly from Nezhin.
When the fighting broke out on the very outskirts of Kiev and it became clear to everyone that Petlyura’s goose was cooked, a new decree by the Town Commander was posted up.
It announced that on the following night Petlyura’s High Command would use a secret weapon against the Bolsheviks. This was a deadly violet ray which the French military authorities had put at Petlyura’s disposal through the intermediary of that well-known ‘friend of Free-Ukraine’, the Consul Hennault.
To avoid unnecessary casualties, all civilians were instructed to take shelter in their basements from nightfall to morning. Kievites were used to sheltering in their basements—they had sat it out there through each political upheaval in turn. The next safest place was the kitchen, where cosy conversation could be carried on over endless cups of tea. The kitchen was usually fairly safe because it was at the back of the house, and there was something soothing about the smell of cooking that clung to it.
You could coax a little water from the tap. It took an hour to fill a kettle, but you could then brew yourself a good strong pot of cranberry tea.
All who drank that tea during those nights remember it as our only comfort—a sort of elixir of life, a panacea for all our troubles and misfortunes.
It seemed to me that the country was rushing headlong into dense banks of all-embracing fog. It was hard to believe that, to the whistling of the wind through bullet-riddled roofs, the dark night thick with soot and despair would at last give way to a bleak dawn, if only to reveal again the empty streets or the blindly running men livid from hunger and cold—men with guns of every calibre and make, men with fingers numbed by the steel triggers and every trace of human warmth blown out of them through their threadbare greatcoats and scratchy cotton shirts.
On the night of the ‘violet ray’, the city was dead still. Even the artillery fire had died down—there was only the sound of wheels rumbling in the distance. From the quality of this sound, the more knowledgeable citizens judged that army convoys were hurriedly withdrawing from the city.
And so it turned out. By morning, the city was free of the Petlyurists—not one of them was left. The story of the violet ray had been put about only to enable them to get away unhindered.
As often before, Kiev was left without a government. But neither the Atamans nor the suburban gangs had time to take over. At twelve noon—horses stamping, wheels rumbling, crowds shouting and singing, accordions squeaking—the Bogun and Tarashchensky Red Army Regiments crossed the river by the Chain Bridge, and once again the life of the city was shaken to its very foundations.
There was a total change of scenery, but what the future held in store for the famished citizens, no one could guess. Only time would tell.
https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/the-violet-ray
January 5, 19:26
Isolate the north of the Soviet Union
The FSB has declassified archives about the NKVD operation to liquidate the German DRG operating in Arkhangelsk in 1942.
Among the saboteurs were Estonians who were recruited by the Nazis to work on the territory of the USSR.
According to the documents, they planned to isolate the north from the central part of the Soviet Union, find suitable landing sites and obtain as much data as possible.
One of the detainees admitted: “According to the instructions received from German intelligence, people from the local population who met us were to be killed after interrogation.”
It also became known from the testimony that German planes dropped torpedoes with food for saboteurs, as well as with poison and explosives intended for Soviet troops.
But the support of Nazi Germany did not help the spies: some of them simply could not withstand the harsh Russian frosts, went hungry, and then surrendered to the Red Army after one of the shootouts.
https://vk.com/bair.irincheev - zinc
General Frost interfered. In 1942, the Estonian Nazis still hoped for a Reich victory. After Stalingrad things started to get worse.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8875627.html
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate.
January 5, 17:32
The harsh everyday life of the Samara GubChK.
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate.
Traditional Samara "all against all."
I have never seen such a cool description of the head of the GubChK. Actually, the whole post is for her sake)
At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921 in Samara, Gubchek’s board was completely changed twice: either the Mensheviks got through, or the Socialist Revolutionaries were not finished off. To be sure, they appointed to the post of acting an honored Samara Bolshevik with solid pre-revolutionary experience, a friend of Kuibyshev himself, comrade Chuikov.
His characterization immediately came to Moscow from the security officer and deputy commander of Samgubrozysk, Comrade Shchelkunov:
“In the Cheka. Copy in the Samgubkom RCP (b).
Comrade Chuikov is a petty coward, a careerist and a degenerate. In 1918, during the invasion of the Czech-Socialist Revolutionary gang to Samara, we - ordinary workers of the Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks fought at the front, setting an example for other comrades. And Comrade Chuikov, in such hot battles, found himself in a workshop on the corner of Leo Tolstoy and Troitskaya, which is unacceptable.
January 20, 21 Shchelkunov."
Particularly annoying is the fact that Shchelkunov wrote his characterization while in prison, where he was imprisoned by the previous board of Gubchek for putting pressure on the head of the Samara water police, Comrade Solovyov, regarding the release of Shchelkunov’s friend, a certain Mikhail Karpov, who was arrested for poaching.
Comrade Soloviev, in turn, was sitting in the next cell for selling government linen; he was arrested by agents of the provincial intelligence department with the sanction of Chuikov.
Chuikov was asked to respond to Shchelkunov, but he requested sick leave and it was immediately withdrawn. Solovyov was imprisoned (his pre-revolutionary profession - an assistant bailiff) had an effect. Shchelkunov was given a severe reprimand. His sidekick Karpov was sentenced to forced labor and a fine.
I found denunciations of everyone against everyone and characterizations in SOGASPI.
https://vk.com/id6186050?w=wall6186050_14169 - zinc
Actually, the first years after the end of the civil war were, among other things, associated with the cleansing of the Cheka from random/dubious elements that had joined the Cheka during the civil war. Various issues from this period were later recalled during the period of repression, when they brought up old cases and wondered who was doing what before the revolution or during the civil war. And there, such complaints and denunciations already had much more serious consequences.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8875447.html
Google TRanslator
*******
The Violet Ray
Reproduction and commentary on a classic short story about civil war Kiev, 1918. Rule by Rumours. Petlyura's Wunderwaffen. Haidamaky warriors. My recollections of wartime Kiev.
EVENTS IN UKRAINE
JAN 2, 2024
The text reproduced here as ‘the Violet Ray’ was translated by Manya Harari and Michael Duncan, published in 1967 by the Harvill Press as a chapter in the book ‘In That Dawn’, which is the third volume of Paustovsky’s memoirs ‘Story of a Life’. It was originally published in 1958 in the Soviet Union. The literal translation of the title of the book is in fact ‘The Start of an Unknown Era’. It treats the events of the revolution and civil war in Ukraine, 1917-1920.
Commentary
The Story of a Life, Konstantin Paustovsky - The Neglected Books Page
Konstantin Paustovsky (1892-1968)
Konstantin Paustovsky is a great Soviet writer who grew up and spent most of his life in modern-day Ukraine. His magisterial, 7-volume memoirs ‘Story of a Life’ are essential to understanding the epoch and region. Even in modern-day Ukraine, pro-Kyiv political commentators like Yury Romanenko often cite the following story positively. As I wrote in a recent article about Romanenko, he considers Paustovsky to have been correct in his diagnosis of Ukrainian nationalism’s tendency towards chaotic fantasy:
Romanenko is particularly fond of referring to Paustovsky’s ‘the Violet Ray’. I will try translate it soon. In it, Paustovsky describes his experiences in Kiev as it was under the control of Simon Petliura - ‘This was the opening scene of the brief and irresponsible era of the Directorate in Kiev’. Riding into Kiev on a magnificent white horse, followed by his ideologically committed (comically so) ‘Haidamaky’ cavalry, Petliura certainly had quite an image, mixing pro-peasant populism (fairly mild, to peasant dismay and Bolshevik profit) with an anti-communist, pro-entente geopolitical orientation. But despite the striking appearances, and the grandiose proclamations of the Directory, filled with renowned intellectuals such as Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a stable government or army was not built. The classic joke about the Directory is that it was generally a ‘Directory on wheels’ - its ‘state’ only existed where the carriages carrying Petliura and his (relatively) loyal soldiers were.
Simon Petlyura (1879-1926). Originally a journalist and Ukrainian nationalist of vague socialist inclinations, he became leader of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic, which was proclaimed in 1917. Rebelling against more rightwing elements, he staged of coup d’etat and the new organ of state became the ‘Directory’ in 1918, which was a committee led by him and his comrades. Petlyura would be later assassinated in Paris by a Ukrainian Jew in retaliation for the large scale massacres of Jews his army conducted during the civil war.
Romanenko focuses on this ‘inability to build a state’ as the Directory’s main fault and reason for the Bolshevik victory and contrasts them unfavorably with his favorite figure of the time, Pavlo Skoropadsky. While he does mention Bolshevik 'social populism’ as another reason for their victory, this is of course not his favorite theme, though he does have some interesting things about how Ukrainians in 1917-20, despite being far more uniformly Ukrainian speaking and less ‘culturally Russian’ than today, still chose the Bolsheviks. He uses this to blame the Poroshenkites of focusing too much on cultural matters and too little on more material issues.
Back to Skoropadsky. Coming from old Cossack nobility that had done very well under the tsars, he led a rightwing military junta propped up by the German Kaiser that replaced Petliura’s pro-entente government. Skoropadsky’s openly pro-kulak (kurkul, as they were called in Ukraine) policies led to constant peasant uprisings under various banners. No matter how much of a wise statesman he might have been, according to Romanenko, his government was quite short-lived.
Some more terminological notes - Haidamaky were originally mercenary groups in the 17th-18th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They were alternatively mercenaries and bandits, and their service to the PLC alternated with cooperation with the Tsar of Moscow. They are quite famed for their bloody slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, and are revered in Ukrainian nation-making mythology as peasant patriots. They were particularly famously memorialized in the epic poem ‘Haidamaky’, by Ukraine’s 19th century national poet Taras Shevchenko:
At Pac's appeal, Pulawski's call
The Polish nobles rise.
A hundred leagues — Confederates —
All Poland they inflamed,
Lithuania they overran,
Moldavia, Ukraine;
They scattered wide and they forgot
That freedom was their aim —
They joined with Jews in compact foul
To rob and devastate.
They ran mad riot through the land,
They churches set ablaze....
The Haidamaki then began
To sanctify their blades.
….
Thus, far into the night
Yarema and Oksana talked,
And only stopped to plight
Their love with ardent, sweet caress;
Sometimes they wept with pain
That they must part, and then embraced
And pledged their love again.
How they would live, Yarema told,
When home again he came,
How he’d obtain a lot of gold,
How fortune he would gain,
How Haidamaki planned to slay
All Poles in the Ukraine,
How he’d be master, not a slave,
If he alive remained.
Oh girls, he talked till one was bored
To hear him talk that way!
‘Haidamaky near Uman’, a historical painting by I M Buryachok from 1922.
Finally, I ought to make a note about my personal experience reading the following text. I first read it in mid-2022. By that time, I had already spent several months away from. Reading this book was quite revelatory for me. As I said in my article on Romanenko, I was recommended it by a quite charismatic Ukrainian anti-maidan activist. There were two things that struck me about the following story. First, the impression of total transience and uncertainty. New rulers come and go, new costumes, new masks, new songs, dances, new warriors, new slogans - all so serious and sincere that it is hard to take them seriously. Asides from politics, I often had this impression in Kiev because of how quickly new cafes and restaurants would be set up and promptly replaced, usually within the space of 2 months (the lifespan of Kievan cafes seemed to be constantly shrinking over 2020-2021).
Second, the description of the power of rumours in wartime Kiev. I was viscerally reminded of my rather awful time in the Kiev metro around February 26-28 2022. Down there, barricaded inside by AK-47-carrying policemen, trying and failing to sleep in the cold carriages, rumours were the main way to pass time. Everyone was glued to their phones, to telegram. I remember one young blond woman with dead eyes suddenly turn to me (I had never talked to her before) and tell me about a new American statement promising a huge new military aid package to Ukraine, planes, tanks, everything. A Violet Ray indeed….
The Violet Ray
Next morning, I was woken up by the sound of cheering outside, and guessed that Pan Petlyura, Ataman of the Ukrainian army and the Gaidamak host, was making his triumphant entry into Kiev.
A notice to that effect by the Town Commander had been posted up on the previous day. It stated pompously and in an oddly humourless language that Petlyura, at the head of his 'Directorate', would ride into the city, mounted on a white steed—a present from the railwaymen of Shmera.
Why the railwaymen should have presented him with a horse rather than a railway coach, or say an engine, was a mystery. But the hopes of the Kiev housewives were not deceived and Petlyura rode into the vanquished city, mounted on a fairly placid white steed.
The horse had a pale-blue saddlecloth embroidered in yellow. Petlyura wore a wadded khaki coat, his only ornament; a curved Ukrainian sabre, obviously taken from a museum, slapped against his thigh as he jogged along. Loyal Ukrainians gazed reverently at the Cossack sword, the puffy, pale-faced Ataman, and his guard of Gaidamaks prancing on their shaggy horses.
The Gaidamaks, their heads shaven except for a single strand of blue-black hair hanging from under their sheepskin hats, reminded me of my childhood and the old Ukrainian Theatre. At nearly every show, just such Gaidamaks, their eyes touched up with blue, had danced the Gopak. 'Hi, hop, shout! This way, that way, turn about!'
Every nation has a right to its eccentricities, but the chauvinists who drool over them destroy the magic. Our neighbour, when I lived in Kiev as a boy, was a well-known painter, Pimonenko, renowned as the ‘glorifier’ of traditional Ukraine. Always in his studio, the old gentleman painted exclusively from memory. With incredible speed, he turned out daubs of pretty, old-world cottages, cherry orchards, sunflowers, hollyhocks and village girls beribboned from head to toe. Hardly had he finished one picture when he started on another—his output was prodigious. He laboured in the sweat of his brow to create the picture-postcard image of a honey-sweet Ukraine—even as children, it turned our stomachs.
It was this Ukraine that Petlyura tried to re-create. Needless to say, he failed.
Riding after the Ataman came the Directorate—the sad and seedy writer Vinnichenko followed by a number of Ministers whom nobody knew, and who looked as if they had just been taken out and dusted. This was the opening scene of the brief and irresponsible era of the Directorate in Kiev.
Ironical like all southerners, the Kievites made the new régime the target of innumerable jokes. They were delighted with the sight of smartly dressed-up Gaidamaks stomping up and down the Khreschatik with step-ladders, taking down Russian shop-signs and replacing them with Ukrainian ones. Petlyura introduced a language known as Galician—a clumsy dialect full of words borrowed from its neighbours. Before this intruder, the native language of the Ukraine—witty, singing, sharp and sparkling like the teeth of Pimonenko’s village girls—took refuge in remote cottages and vineyards where it hid throughout the troubled times, keeping all its poetry and vigour.
Everything under Petlyura’s rule had a contrived air—the Gaidamaks, the dialect, Petlyura’s policies, the crowds of hoary, whiskered chauvinists who crept out of their dusty holes and everything down to the public speeches of his ministers. But more of this later.
Meeting a Gaidamak in the street, people rubbed their eyes and stared—was it a soldier in uniform or an actor in disguise? The same impression of make-believe was produced by the tortured sounds of the new language. And when customers counted their change in a shop, they looked suspiciously at the greasy scraps of greyish paper faintly stained with yellow and blue, so like the toy money used in nursery games.
There were so many more spurious banknotes than genuine ones, that the population tacitly agreed to accept both at the same rate.
At every printing press in town, typesetters and printers were cheerfully turning out forged Petlyura notes—Karbovanetsi and Sbagi. The Sbag was the smallest unit, worth about half a kopek. Some enterprising citizens produced them at home, using water-colours and Indian ink. They didn’t even bother to put them away when a stranger dropped in.
One of the busiest centres for the manufacture of money as well as of hooch was Pan Kturenda’s room.
Ever since the pompous little man had pushed me into the Hetman’s army, he showed me an affection rather like that of the hangman for his victim. He was always inviting me.
Interested in this remnant of the Polish gentry washed up in what he called ‘our shattering age’, one day I went to see him in his small room, crowded with carboys of muddy homebrew and smelling sourly of paint.
Kturenda was busy making hundred-ruble notes. They were decorated with the engraving of two stout, bare-legged, sultry-eyed young women poised like ballerinas on clouds of intricate arabesques. Kturenda was shaking them in with Indian ink.
Pan Kturenda’s mother, a gaunt old lady with a twitching face, sat behind a screen, reading in a low voice from a Polish prayer-book.
‘The arabesque is the alpha and omega of the Petlyura banknote,’ Kturenda told me in a professional tone. ‘You could quite easily replace these two Ukrainian misses by any two stoic patriots you chose. It wouldn’t matter a scrap. What matters is to get this curlicue exactly right. If you do, you’ll get change for your banknote without anyone batting an eyelid.'
‘How many do you make?’
‘I can paint,’ Kturenda said importantly, sticking out his lip with its cropped little moustache, ‘I can paint up to three a day. Sometimes even five. It depends on my inspiration.’
‘Bassya!’ The old lady called from behind the screen. ‘Bassya, my son, I am so frightened, my dear.’
‘Now don’t worry, Mama. Nothing will happen. No one is going to lay a finger on Pan Kturenda.’
‘It’s not prison I’m afraid of,’ the old woman said unexpectedly. ‘It’s you, Bassya.’
‘Water on the brain!’ Pan Kturenda winked at me. ‘Couldn’t you please just manage to keep quiet, Mama?’
‘No, I won’t. I can’t. God will punish me if I don’t tell everyone that my son’—the old lady sobbed—‘that my son is a Judas . . .’
‘Shut up!’ Kturenda jumped up and violently shook the screen. It danced about and creaked, letting out a cloud of yellow dust. ‘Shut up you silly old fool, or I’ll gag you with an oil-rag.’
The old lady sobbed and blew her nose.
‘What does she mean?’ I asked.
‘That is strictly my own business,’ Kturenda replied defiantly.
The crisscrossed veins on his contorted face looked as if they were about to burst. ‘I advise you not to stick your nose into my affairs—unless you want to end up in the same common grave as the Bolsheviks.’
‘You scoundrel,’ I said quietly. ‘You are such a cheap scoundrel that you are not worth as much as your own forged notes.’
‘Under the ice with you!’ Kturenda shrieked and stamped hysterically. ‘That’s what Pan Kturenda does with people like you—into the Dnieper and under the ice . . .’
I described the incident to Amalia. She said that she had long suspected Kturenda of acting as informer for each of the successive governments which had ravaged the Ukraine—the Central Rada, the Germans, the Hetman and now Petlyura. She was convinced that he would pay me out by denouncing me. Careful and practical as ever, she set up her own watch on Kturenda that same day.
But her precautions proved unnecessary. That very evening, Pan Kturenda met his end before our eyes. And his death was as unbearably pointless as had been the whole of his mean and boorish life.
Towards dusk, we heard pistol shots outside. As usual on such occasions, I went out onto the balcony to see what was going on.
Across the empty square in front of the church, two civilians were running in our direction and, chasing after them but plainly frightened of catching up, were several Petlyura officers and men. The officers were firing as they ran and shouting to the fugitives to stop.
Suddenly I caught sight of Kturenda. Darting out of his room in the wing of the house, he hurried to the massive gate between the courtyard and the street and took from the lock a key as huge as that of a mediaeval city.
Key in hand, Pan Kturenda lay in wait inside the gate. As the civilians were running past, he flung it open, thrust out his hand holding the key like a pistol (from a distance it did look like an antiquated firearm) and shouted:
‘Halt, you Bolshevik scum! Halt or I fire!’
He meant to help the officers by holding up the fugitives, if only for a moment. That moment would of course have settled their fate.
From my balcony, I saw clearly what happened next. The second of the two men fired at him as he ran, without even looking. Screaming and spitting blood, Kturenda rolled over and over on the cobbled drive, twitched, and with a last rattling breath died, still clutching the key in his hand. Blood dripped down his pink celluloid cuffs and his open eyes glazed in an expression of angry terror.
It took an hour for the rickety old ambulance to come and take him to the morgue.
Kturenda’s mother slept through his death and heard of it only late that night.
A few days later, she was bundled off to the ancient almshouse in Sulima. I often came across the inmates on my walks. They went about in crocodile, like schoolgirls, all dressed alike in dark cotton frocks. They made me think of a solemn procession of ground-beetles.
I have described this incident in detail only because it was so in keeping with the whole tenor of life under the Directorate. Everything seemed equally mean and pointless, like a badly-produced but occasionally tragic farce.
One day, the whole of Kiev was plastered with enormous posters. They announced a meeting at the ‘Ars’ Cinema where the Directorate would give an account of itself to the citizens.
The whole town tried to squeeze into the cinema. The citizens expected an unusual show. They got it.
The long, narrow hall was wrapped in mysterious gloom. No lights had been switched on. The crowd buzzed cheerfully in the dark.
At last, a gong boomed off-stage, coloured footlights blazed and, against a garish backdrop of ‘the Dnieper on a sunny day’, there appeared an elderly but well-built man in black with a becoming beard—Premier Vinnichenko.
Patently unhappy and embarrassed, he fidgeted with his spotted tie, made a short, dry speech on the international position of the Ukraine, and was given a round of applause.
Next came an unbelievably gaunt young woman also in black, with a thickly powdered face, who clutched her hands in a despairing gesture and, to the accompaniment of pensive piano-chords, shyly recited a poem by the Ukrainian poetess Galina:
They felled the wood,
The young, green wood . . . She too was briefly applauded.
Every speech was followed by musical interludes. After the poetry reading, two plump girls in Ukrainian costumes danced the Gopak.
The audience was thoroughly enjoying itself but quietened down discreetly when the Minister of Finance walked onto the stage.
The Minister was dishevelled and looked truculent. He was snorting with anger. His round, closely cropped head shone with sweat. His grey Cossack moustache drooped over his chin.
He wore baggy grey pin-striped trousers, an equally baggy tussore coat with bulging pockets, and an embroidered shirt fastened at the neck with a cord ending in red pompoms.
He had no intention of making a speech. Walking up to the footlights, he stood listening to the low hum of conversation in the hall. He even cupped his hand over his ear. People laughed.
The Minister grinned with a satisfied air, nodded as though at some passing thought, and asked:
‘Moskovites?’
The audience were indeed mostly Russians. Yes, they replied unsuspectingly, they were nearly all from Moscow.
‘I see-e-e,’ the Minister said ominously, blowing his nose into a large checked handkerchief. ‘Very understandable. But no more pleasant for that.’
The sound of conversation ceased. The audience scented trouble.
‘And why the hell,’ the Minister suddenly shouted, turning as red as a beetroot, ‘why the hell did you come here from your bloody Moscow? Swarming like flies round a honeypot! What have you come for, blast you? I know what—your Moscow is in such a state that there is nothing to eat and nothing to . . .’
The audience roared with indignation and hooted. A little man leapt out onto the stage and tried to take the Minister by the elbow and lead him away, but the old fire-eater gave him a push which nearly knocked him down. The Minister had got into his stride. Nothing could stop him.
‘Well, why don’t you say something?’ he asked slyly.
‘Acting stupid, eh? Well, I’ll say it for you. Here you can stuff yourselves with bread and sugar and fat and buckwheat and cakes. And in Moscow you’d be sucking lamp oil off your thumbs! That’s what you’ve come for!’
Two men were now pulling him away by the skirts of his tussore coat, but he struggled furiously, shouting:
‘Beggars! Parasites! Back to your Moscow! Back to your Jewish bosses! Get out!’
Vinnichenko appeared in the wings and waved his hand angrily. Purple with indignation, the old man was finally dragged off the stage.
To counter the unfortunate impression left by this performance, young men in sheepskin hats set at a jaunty angle, bounced onto the stage. Some struck up their balalaikas, others swung into the national dance, singing:
Whose’s the dead man lying there?
Not the prince, or squire, or colonel,
But the old crone’s love eternal.
This was the closing scene of the meeting. Laughing and shouting, ‘Back to Moscow! Back to your Jewish bosses!’ the audience poured into the street.
Everything about the régime had a provincial air. Once a glittering city, Kiev turned into a backwater, a large-scale Shpola or Mirgorod, stuffy with antiquated ritual and hide-bound officialdom.
Everything looked like a stage-set for Ukrainian opera—down to the grocery shop with its old worlde sign ‘Taras Bulba of Poltava’. The grocer, with his long moustache and snow-white shirt blazing with scarlet embroidery, was so impressive that it took courage to ask him for biscuits and honey.
The whole town seemed to be taking part in a performance of The Gaidamaks.
It was hard to sort things out. Upheaval followed upheaval. Each government in turn, as soon as it seized power, showed signs of imminent and ignominious collapse. Each hurried to pass as many resolutions and decrees as possible, hoping that a few at least would leave their mark on history. Petlyura’s government, like the Hetman’s before him, produced an impression of utter confusion and lack of confidence in its own future.
Against the Soviet armies bearing down on Kiev from the north, Petlyura put his trust mainly in the French who were occupying Odessa.
His agents circulated rumours that the French were coming to the rescue—they were in Vinnitsa, in Fastov, tomorrow their brave Zouaves in fezes and red trousers would be seen in the Boyarka suburb of Kiev. This Petlyura had on oath from his bosom-friend, the French Consul Hennault.
Bewildered by conflicting rumours, the papers printed this nonsense, although everyone knew that the French were sitting tight in Odessa, keeping strictly to their occupation zone, although the ‘zones of influence’ (French, Greek and Ukrainian) were separated from each other by no more than rows of rickety wicker chairs.
Rumour became an elemental force, a cosmic phenomenon, an irresistible epidemic. It was a form of mass hypnosis.
Rumours lost their normal purpose: to spread fictitious news. They changed their character, their substance. They became a powerful drug, a means of reassurance, the only way of holding on to hope.
Even outwardly, the citizens of Kiev began to look like drug addicts. At each new rumour, their eyes became clearer and brighter, their torpor vanished. They ceased to mumble, they were excited, even witty.
Some rumours were fleeting, others kept people in a state of artificial animation for as long as two or three days.
Even the most hardened sceptics could be made to believe anything. They swallowed the story that the Ukraine was to become a department of France and that President Poincaré himself was on his way to Kiev to announce this act of State. According to another, the cinema star Vera Kholodnaya had recruited her own army like Joan of Arc and, riding a white charger at the head of her victorious troops, had entered the town of Priluki and proclaimed herself Empress of the Ukraine.
I began to keep a list of such rumours but soon gave up. It was enough to make one sick and drive one quietly insane. I felt like liquidating the whole lot—from Presidents Poincaré and Wilson down to Makhno and the notorious Ataman Zeleny who had set up his H.Q. in the village of Tripolye near Kiev. I now wish I hadn’t destroyed my notes. They were a fantastic catalogue of lies, and of the wild imaginings of helpless, bewildered souls.
To keep my sanity, I re-read some of my favourite books—Tristan and Isolde, Manon Lescaut, Turgenev’s Torrents of Spring, Boris Zaitsev’s The Blue Star. In the muddy darkness of those Kiev evenings, their message seemed indeed as clear and incorruptible as the stars. I lived alone. Mama and Galya were still completely cut off from Kiev. I could get no news of them.
I had decided that in spring I would make my way to Kopan on foot, in spite of people warning me that I would have to cross the unsettled ‘Dymersk’ Republic and had little chance of coming through alive. But new events made it useless even to think of such a plan.
I lived with my books. I tried to write a little but the result looked like the ravings of a lunatic.
At night, I listened to the silence in the house and in our district, where nothing seemed awake except the clouds, the stars, and an occasional patrol.
The sound of the patrolmen’s footsteps carried from a long way off. Each time, I put out my oil-lamp for fear of attracting the patrol to our house. At rare intervals, I heard Amalia crying in the night and thought of how much harder to bear her loneliness was than mine.
Always for a few days after such a crying fit, she spoke to me in an arrogant, almost hostile tone. Then, with a shy, apologetic smile, she would once more look after me with the same devotion as she had lavished on each of her lodgers in turn.
Revolution broke out in Germany. The German forces stationed in Kiev quietly elected their Soviet of army deputies and prepared to go home. Taking advantage of their weakness, Petlyura decided to disarm them. But they heard about his plan.
On the day the Germans were to be disarmed, I woke up to a roll of drums loud enough to shake the house. I went out onto the balcony. Amalia was already there. Down Fundukleyev Street, German regiments were tramping in silence. Windows jingled to the beat of hobnailed boots. The drums rolled warningly.
The cavalry followed, faces equally stern, horse-shoes clicking on the wooden blocks which paved the road. Then came dozens of field-guns, jolting and rumbling.
Silently, with no music except the rolling of the drums, the Germans marched round the city and back to their barracks. Petlyura at once cancelled his secret order.
Soon after this silent demonstration, the sound of distant gunfire began to reach us from the left bank of the Dnieper. The Germans were hurriedly clearing out of Kiev. The gunfire grew ever louder, and we learned that Soviet forces were advancing quickly from Nezhin.
When the fighting broke out on the very outskirts of Kiev and it became clear to everyone that Petlyura’s goose was cooked, a new decree by the Town Commander was posted up.
It announced that on the following night Petlyura’s High Command would use a secret weapon against the Bolsheviks. This was a deadly violet ray which the French military authorities had put at Petlyura’s disposal through the intermediary of that well-known ‘friend of Free-Ukraine’, the Consul Hennault.
To avoid unnecessary casualties, all civilians were instructed to take shelter in their basements from nightfall to morning. Kievites were used to sheltering in their basements—they had sat it out there through each political upheaval in turn. The next safest place was the kitchen, where cosy conversation could be carried on over endless cups of tea. The kitchen was usually fairly safe because it was at the back of the house, and there was something soothing about the smell of cooking that clung to it.
You could coax a little water from the tap. It took an hour to fill a kettle, but you could then brew yourself a good strong pot of cranberry tea.
All who drank that tea during those nights remember it as our only comfort—a sort of elixir of life, a panacea for all our troubles and misfortunes.
It seemed to me that the country was rushing headlong into dense banks of all-embracing fog. It was hard to believe that, to the whistling of the wind through bullet-riddled roofs, the dark night thick with soot and despair would at last give way to a bleak dawn, if only to reveal again the empty streets or the blindly running men livid from hunger and cold—men with guns of every calibre and make, men with fingers numbed by the steel triggers and every trace of human warmth blown out of them through their threadbare greatcoats and scratchy cotton shirts.
On the night of the ‘violet ray’, the city was dead still. Even the artillery fire had died down—there was only the sound of wheels rumbling in the distance. From the quality of this sound, the more knowledgeable citizens judged that army convoys were hurriedly withdrawing from the city.
And so it turned out. By morning, the city was free of the Petlyurists—not one of them was left. The story of the violet ray had been put about only to enable them to get away unhindered.
As often before, Kiev was left without a government. But neither the Atamans nor the suburban gangs had time to take over. At twelve noon—horses stamping, wheels rumbling, crowds shouting and singing, accordions squeaking—the Bogun and Tarashchensky Red Army Regiments crossed the river by the Chain Bridge, and once again the life of the city was shaken to its very foundations.
There was a total change of scenery, but what the future held in store for the famished citizens, no one could guess. Only time would tell.
https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/the-violet-ray
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Grossest perversions of revolutionary legality
January 14, 17:35
Order of the Prosecutor of the USSR No. 1265/70с. About the grossest violations of revolutionary legality in cases of k.r. crimes by the prosecutor's office of the Ryazan region. September 23, 1938
Archive - GAVO. F. 6466. Op. 1. D. 2. L. 7
https://istmat.org/node/68376 - zinc
An important document signed by Vyshinsky.
1. Even under Yezhov (he will be removed only after 2 months - formally, the period of mass repression ends with his removal) Vyshinsky demands that an investigation be carried out into the violations identified during the repressions in the Ryazan region and that the perpetrators be punished, pointing to the facts of cases based on slander and careerism and reinsurance - read fake cases formed based on denunciations. This again refers to the vulgar myth that Vyshinsky knew nothing and covered up violations during the repressions. On the contrary, he knew and took measures through the Prosecutor’s Office. Even under Yezhov. As a result, this will lead to a serious purge of prosecutorial workers in the 1939-1940s and will accelerate the fall of Yezhov.
2. This document, among others, once again exposes the myth that violations were hidden and only Khrushchev then exposed everything and released everyone. No, they began to be opened during the repressions of 1937-1938. This is actually why Yezhov and the leadership of the NKVD paid with their heads a little later for what happened. Subsequently, documents like this led to the fact that after Lavrentiy Beria came to control of the NKVD and the purge of the NKVD leadership for counter-revolutionary crimes, the 1st “Berievskaya” amnesty was held, within the framework of which hundreds of thousands of cases were reviewed and many unjust sentences were overturned. This is a serious merit of Vyshinsky, to whom one can show anything, it is that he was somewhat late in revealing systemic violations of social law during repressions.
3. At the same time, it is worth paying attention to the accusation against the Ryazan prosecutors that in addition to conniving at violations of socialist legality and initiating illegal criminal cases, these same prosecutors negligently conducted cases against the real enemies of the people, as a result of which these cases were “smeared” (read fell apart). That is, on the one hand, innocent people suffered, and on the other, enemies of the people evaded responsibility. This is already about the difficulty of analyzing the process of repression and separating the lambs from the goats in this stream.
Whether there was malicious intent here (in the Ryazan region) or whether it was simply a matter of low qualifications of the prosecutors, unfortunately, the document does not specify. In any case, a state commission was sent to the Ryazan region to check the entire local prosecutor's office on the facts of violations identified.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8893976.html
Google Translator
January 14, 17:35
Order of the Prosecutor of the USSR No. 1265/70с. About the grossest violations of revolutionary legality in cases of k.r. crimes by the prosecutor's office of the Ryazan region. September 23, 1938
Archive - GAVO. F. 6466. Op. 1. D. 2. L. 7
https://istmat.org/node/68376 - zinc
An important document signed by Vyshinsky.
1. Even under Yezhov (he will be removed only after 2 months - formally, the period of mass repression ends with his removal) Vyshinsky demands that an investigation be carried out into the violations identified during the repressions in the Ryazan region and that the perpetrators be punished, pointing to the facts of cases based on slander and careerism and reinsurance - read fake cases formed based on denunciations. This again refers to the vulgar myth that Vyshinsky knew nothing and covered up violations during the repressions. On the contrary, he knew and took measures through the Prosecutor’s Office. Even under Yezhov. As a result, this will lead to a serious purge of prosecutorial workers in the 1939-1940s and will accelerate the fall of Yezhov.
2. This document, among others, once again exposes the myth that violations were hidden and only Khrushchev then exposed everything and released everyone. No, they began to be opened during the repressions of 1937-1938. This is actually why Yezhov and the leadership of the NKVD paid with their heads a little later for what happened. Subsequently, documents like this led to the fact that after Lavrentiy Beria came to control of the NKVD and the purge of the NKVD leadership for counter-revolutionary crimes, the 1st “Berievskaya” amnesty was held, within the framework of which hundreds of thousands of cases were reviewed and many unjust sentences were overturned. This is a serious merit of Vyshinsky, to whom one can show anything, it is that he was somewhat late in revealing systemic violations of social law during repressions.
3. At the same time, it is worth paying attention to the accusation against the Ryazan prosecutors that in addition to conniving at violations of socialist legality and initiating illegal criminal cases, these same prosecutors negligently conducted cases against the real enemies of the people, as a result of which these cases were “smeared” (read fell apart). That is, on the one hand, innocent people suffered, and on the other, enemies of the people evaded responsibility. This is already about the difficulty of analyzing the process of repression and separating the lambs from the goats in this stream.
Whether there was malicious intent here (in the Ryazan region) or whether it was simply a matter of low qualifications of the prosecutors, unfortunately, the document does not specify. In any case, a state commission was sent to the Ryazan region to check the entire local prosecutor's office on the facts of violations identified.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8893976.html
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
JANUARY 16, 2024 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
An anniversary West would rather forget
On the 75th anniversary of the battle that lifted the Siege of Leningrad in World War 2, people walk in snowfall to the Motherland monument to place flowers at the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery where the victims were buried, St. Petersburg, Russia, January 26, 2019
An epochal anniversary from the annals of modern history is coming up in another ten days that remains a living memory for the Russian people. The Siege of Leningrad, arguably the most gruesome episode of the Second World War, which lasted for 900 days, was finally broken by the Soviet Red Army on 27th January 1944, eighty years ago to be exact.
The siege endured by more than three million people, of whom nearly one half died, most of them in the first six months when the temperature fell to 30° below zero. It was an apocalyptic event. Civilians died from starvation, disease and cold. Yet it was a heroic victory. Leningraders never tried to surrender even though food rations were reduced to a few slices of bread mixed with sawdust, and the inhabitants ate glue, rats — and even each other — while the city went without water, electricity, fuel or transportation and was being shelled daily.
It was on the 22nd of June, 1941 that the German armies crossed the Russian frontiers. Within six weeks, the Army Group North of the Wehrmacht, armed forces of the Third Reich, was within fifty kms of Leningrad in a fantastic blitzkrieg and had advanced 650 kms deep into Soviet territory.
A month later, the Germans had all but completed the city’s encirclement, only a perilous route across Lake Ladoga to the east connected Leningrad with the rest of Russia. But the Germans got no further. And 900 days later their retreat began.
The epic siege of Leningrad was the longest endured by any city since Biblical times, and, equally, citizens became heroes — artists, musicians, writers, soldiers and sailors who stubbornly resisted the iron from entering their souls. Petrified by the prospect of surrender to the Soviet Union, the Nazis preferred to lay down arms before the western allied forces, but Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, ordered that the honour of victory should go to the Red Army.
Herein lies one of the greatest paradoxes of war and peace in modern times. Today, the anniversary of the siege of Leningrad has become, most certainly, an occasion that the US and many of its European allies would rather not remember. Yet, its contemporary relevance is not to be glossed over, either.
The Nazi leadership aimed to exterminate Leningrad’s entire population by enforced starvation. Death by starvation was a deliberate act on the part of the German Reich. In the words of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler “intended to have cities like Moscow and St Petersburg wiped out.” This was “necessary”, he wrote in July 1941, “because if we want to divide Russia into its individual parts,” it should “no longer have a spiritual, political or economic centre.”
Hitler himself declared in September 1941, “We have no interest in maintaining even a part of the metropolitan population in this existential war.” Any talk of the city surrendering had to be “rejected, as the problem of keeping and feeding the population cannot be solved by us.”
Simply put, the population of Leningrad was left to starve to death – much like the millions of Soviet prisoners of war held by the Wehrmacht. The historian Jörg Ganzenmüller later wrote that this form of mass murder was cost-effective for Berlin, for, it was “genocide by simply doing nothing”.
“Genocide by doing nothing”! Those chilling words are as well applicable today to the West’s “sanctions from hell” with an ulterior agenda to “erase” Russia and carve out five new states from its vast landmass with fabulous resources that can be subjugated by the industrial world.
The mother of all ironies is that Germany is even today at the forefront of the “genocide by doing nothing” strategy to weaken and bring down the Russian Federation on its knees. The Biden administration depended on a troika of three German politicians to do the heavy lifting in that failed effort to erase Russia — EU’s top bureaucrat in Brussels Ursula von der Layen, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is how the far-right thrives.
In Germany and elsewhere, younger generations are becoming indifferent to the history of fascism. The idea of a Fourth Reich has entered an unprecedented heyday and is currently experiencing a new phase of normalisation in Europe. The tumultuous political upheaval throughout the western world provides the backdrop today.
The author of The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present, historian and professor of history and Judaic studies Gavriel Rosenfeld has written that “The only way to mute the siren call of the Fourth Reich is to know its full history. Although it is increasingly difficult in our present-day world of fake ‘facts’ and deliberate disinformation to forge a consensus about historical truth, we have no alternative but to pursue it.”
The justification of political violence is classically fascist. This past week, we saw a breathtaking spectacle at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague reminding us that we are now in fascism’s legal phase. If the Nazis used Judeo-Bolshevism as their constructed enemy, Israel is doing the same thing by raising the bogeyman of Hamas. Fascism feeds off a narrative of supposed national humiliation by internal enemies.
Meanwhile, what gets forgotten is that there has been a growing fascist social and political movement in Israel for decades. Like other fascist movements, it is riddled with internal contradictions, but this movement now has a classically authoritarian leader in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has shaped and exacerbated it, and is determined that in his time in politics it will be normalised.
The probability is high that in a matter of a few days, the ICJ will give some sort of interim order/injunction to Israel to end the violence against the hapless Palestinians in Gaza. But the fascist movement Netanyahu now leads preceded him, and will outlive him.
These are forces that feed off ideologies with deep roots in Jewish history. They may be defending a fictional glorious and virtuous national past, but it would be a grave error to think they cannot ultimately win.
The Russians are learning this home truth the hard way in Ukraine where “de-nazification” is turning out to be the weakest link in their special military operation, given its geopolitical moorings traceable to Germany’s dalliance with the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi groups in Kiev in the run-up to the 2014 coup, which the US inherited gleefully and wouldn’t let go.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/an-anni ... er-forget/
******
Workers and their products
January 17, 17:06
Workers with their products, which adorn the Kremlin to this day. Photo from 1937.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8900169.html
Google Translator
An anniversary West would rather forget
On the 75th anniversary of the battle that lifted the Siege of Leningrad in World War 2, people walk in snowfall to the Motherland monument to place flowers at the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery where the victims were buried, St. Petersburg, Russia, January 26, 2019
An epochal anniversary from the annals of modern history is coming up in another ten days that remains a living memory for the Russian people. The Siege of Leningrad, arguably the most gruesome episode of the Second World War, which lasted for 900 days, was finally broken by the Soviet Red Army on 27th January 1944, eighty years ago to be exact.
The siege endured by more than three million people, of whom nearly one half died, most of them in the first six months when the temperature fell to 30° below zero. It was an apocalyptic event. Civilians died from starvation, disease and cold. Yet it was a heroic victory. Leningraders never tried to surrender even though food rations were reduced to a few slices of bread mixed with sawdust, and the inhabitants ate glue, rats — and even each other — while the city went without water, electricity, fuel or transportation and was being shelled daily.
It was on the 22nd of June, 1941 that the German armies crossed the Russian frontiers. Within six weeks, the Army Group North of the Wehrmacht, armed forces of the Third Reich, was within fifty kms of Leningrad in a fantastic blitzkrieg and had advanced 650 kms deep into Soviet territory.
A month later, the Germans had all but completed the city’s encirclement, only a perilous route across Lake Ladoga to the east connected Leningrad with the rest of Russia. But the Germans got no further. And 900 days later their retreat began.
The epic siege of Leningrad was the longest endured by any city since Biblical times, and, equally, citizens became heroes — artists, musicians, writers, soldiers and sailors who stubbornly resisted the iron from entering their souls. Petrified by the prospect of surrender to the Soviet Union, the Nazis preferred to lay down arms before the western allied forces, but Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, ordered that the honour of victory should go to the Red Army.
Herein lies one of the greatest paradoxes of war and peace in modern times. Today, the anniversary of the siege of Leningrad has become, most certainly, an occasion that the US and many of its European allies would rather not remember. Yet, its contemporary relevance is not to be glossed over, either.
The Nazi leadership aimed to exterminate Leningrad’s entire population by enforced starvation. Death by starvation was a deliberate act on the part of the German Reich. In the words of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler “intended to have cities like Moscow and St Petersburg wiped out.” This was “necessary”, he wrote in July 1941, “because if we want to divide Russia into its individual parts,” it should “no longer have a spiritual, political or economic centre.”
Hitler himself declared in September 1941, “We have no interest in maintaining even a part of the metropolitan population in this existential war.” Any talk of the city surrendering had to be “rejected, as the problem of keeping and feeding the population cannot be solved by us.”
Simply put, the population of Leningrad was left to starve to death – much like the millions of Soviet prisoners of war held by the Wehrmacht. The historian Jörg Ganzenmüller later wrote that this form of mass murder was cost-effective for Berlin, for, it was “genocide by simply doing nothing”.
“Genocide by doing nothing”! Those chilling words are as well applicable today to the West’s “sanctions from hell” with an ulterior agenda to “erase” Russia and carve out five new states from its vast landmass with fabulous resources that can be subjugated by the industrial world.
The mother of all ironies is that Germany is even today at the forefront of the “genocide by doing nothing” strategy to weaken and bring down the Russian Federation on its knees. The Biden administration depended on a troika of three German politicians to do the heavy lifting in that failed effort to erase Russia — EU’s top bureaucrat in Brussels Ursula von der Layen, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is how the far-right thrives.
In Germany and elsewhere, younger generations are becoming indifferent to the history of fascism. The idea of a Fourth Reich has entered an unprecedented heyday and is currently experiencing a new phase of normalisation in Europe. The tumultuous political upheaval throughout the western world provides the backdrop today.
The author of The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present, historian and professor of history and Judaic studies Gavriel Rosenfeld has written that “The only way to mute the siren call of the Fourth Reich is to know its full history. Although it is increasingly difficult in our present-day world of fake ‘facts’ and deliberate disinformation to forge a consensus about historical truth, we have no alternative but to pursue it.”
The justification of political violence is classically fascist. This past week, we saw a breathtaking spectacle at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague reminding us that we are now in fascism’s legal phase. If the Nazis used Judeo-Bolshevism as their constructed enemy, Israel is doing the same thing by raising the bogeyman of Hamas. Fascism feeds off a narrative of supposed national humiliation by internal enemies.
Meanwhile, what gets forgotten is that there has been a growing fascist social and political movement in Israel for decades. Like other fascist movements, it is riddled with internal contradictions, but this movement now has a classically authoritarian leader in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has shaped and exacerbated it, and is determined that in his time in politics it will be normalised.
The probability is high that in a matter of a few days, the ICJ will give some sort of interim order/injunction to Israel to end the violence against the hapless Palestinians in Gaza. But the fascist movement Netanyahu now leads preceded him, and will outlive him.
These are forces that feed off ideologies with deep roots in Jewish history. They may be defending a fictional glorious and virtuous national past, but it would be a grave error to think they cannot ultimately win.
The Russians are learning this home truth the hard way in Ukraine where “de-nazification” is turning out to be the weakest link in their special military operation, given its geopolitical moorings traceable to Germany’s dalliance with the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi groups in Kiev in the run-up to the 2014 coup, which the US inherited gleefully and wouldn’t let go.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/an-anni ... er-forget/
******
Workers and their products
January 17, 17:06
Workers with their products, which adorn the Kremlin to this day. Photo from 1937.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8900169.html
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Lenin speaking in Moscow’s Red Square on May Day 1919, Source: Chairman1922 – Wikicommons / cropped form original / shared under license CC BY-SA 4.0
Lenin and his times
Originally published: Counterfire on January 19, 2024 by Alex Snowdon (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Jan 22, 2024)
Lenin died 100 years ago. He was one of the towering figures in the Marxist tradition, who translated ideas into action by building a revolutionary party and leading a working-class revolution. It is important to have some grasp of who Lenin was—and of the times in which he lived—to make sense of his ideas, where these ideas emerged from, and what impact they made.
Lenin’s life, which was utterly bound up with his political work and the wider class struggle, can be roughly defined into the following phases:
Lenin’s formation as a Marxist, 1887-92
Nobody is born a revolutionary. Not even Lenin. He became a Marxist in Russian conditions in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Lenin reacted against the weaknesses of Narodism, a revolutionary movement mainly composed of students and intellectuals that adopted terrorist methods and aimed to liberate the peasantry. The massive Russian Empire was ruled by an autocratic Tsar with very little political freedom or democratic rights for its people.
Serfdom may have been abolished in 1861, but peasants had little control of the land on which they worked, while national minorities were brutally oppressed. The emerging capitalist economy was pushing up against antiquated feudal structures and the power of the landed aristocracy, but the new capitalist class feared the working class too much to risk leading a popular struggle against the old order.
For Lenin, the crucial element in breaking from the Narodniks was his discovery of the power of the emerging working class. Connecting the Marxist tradition (which has the self-emancipation of the working class at its core) with the real struggles of workers in cities like Petrograd and Moscow would become central to Lenin’s life’s work.
His early years building revolutionary organization, 1892-1905
By 1892, Lenin was committed to revolutionary socialism and convinced by Marxist analysis and arguments. From then until the revolutionary outbreak of 1905, he played an influential role in coalescing scattered and tiny Marxist study circles into a national organisation. It grew considerably and intervened in working-class struggles.
Lenin was heavily influenced by Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, but he also made his own theoretical contributions, notably his writings on capitalist development in Russia in 1897-99. He also intervened heavily in debates among Russian socialists: for example, What is to be done?’ (1902) was a polemic against those he thought guilty of making concessions to ‘economism’, an approach that concentrated on trade-union issues to the exclusion of political perspectives, as well as an attempt to define the strategy and tasks of a revolutionary organisation. A major debate at the Third Congress of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party (RSDLP) led to a divergence between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, with Lenin emerging as leader of the former.
The revolutionary upheavals of 1905-07
All wings of the Russian socialist movement grew enormously in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which saw the emergence of radical new forms of working-class democracy, above all the Petrograd Soviet (or workers’ council). Lenin analysed such developments and generalised from them about the dynamics of mass struggle, the nature of workers’ power, and the goals of revolutionaries in Russia.
These upheavals were ultimately defeated, but they represented a massive challenge to the status quo. They radicalised a layer of workers and provided an experience that would prove valuable in 1917. This is why 1905 would later be referred to as ‘the great dress rehearsal’.
Building the Bolsheviks, 1907-14
The vicious counter-revolutionary repression, following the defeat of these workers’ rebellions, caused serious problems for revolutionaries like Lenin’s Bolsheviks. A process of patient party building was required in such challenging circumstances. Lenin had to navigate numerous tactical challenges, including how to relate to the very limited forms of democracy and political freedom in Russia.
Lenin argued relentlessly against those in the socialist movement who succumbed to opportunism (being pulled to the right, away from revolutionary socialist goals), but also against those ultra-left elements who wanted to stand aloof from elections and trade union struggles.
A fresh upsurge of workers’ resistance began in 1912, with a burgeoning strike wave that was only halted by the start of war. The Bolsheviks finally split from the Mensheviks in 1912—constituting themselves as an independent party, not merely a faction. In the same year, the Bolsheviks launched a daily paper, Pravda, which proved indispensable to building their strength among militant workers in the factories.
Opposing the war, 1914-17
The onset of war in August 1914 transformed European and Russian politics and, in the longer term, triggered major social convulsions. Crucially for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, it was the catalyst for the collapse of most European socialist parties into national chauvinism. Germany’s SDP (the dominant section in the Second International) led the way in backing its own nation-state’s war effort. The Second International effectively collapsed.
The Bolsheviks were unusual in adhering to anti-war, internationalist positions. They engaged in anti-war agitation, sought to link anti-imperialism with domestic politics, and forged connections with otherwise extremely isolated anti-war socialists in other countries. Lenin turned to the issues of imperialism and war—for example, in his 1916 book Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism— to provide a clear theoretical basis for anti-war socialist organising.
The revolutions of 1917
Revolution broke out in Russia in February 1917. It took just several days of huge demonstrations and mass strikes to topple the Tsarist regime. Soviets re-emerged in a bigger and more widespread form than in 1905, providing workers, peasants mutinous soldiers, and sailors with democratic arenas in which to put forward demands.
An unstable ‘dual power’ scenario emerged, with the Soviets offering a counterpoint to the newly formed Provisional Government led by pro-capitalist liberals. Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 (he had spent most of his adult life outside Russia). He shocked even many of his own supporters when he outlined the perspective that the working class must move ahead to social revolution and the seizure of state power, not limiting itself to the democratic reforms ushered in by the fall of Tsarism.
By October, the conditions were ripe for insurrection, which Lenin argued for doggedly within the leading bodies of the Bolsheviks. The insurrection in Petrograd marked the peak of the revolutionary struggle and led to the founding of the first workers’ state in history.
Leading a workers’ state, 1917-23
The new revolutionary government, headed by Lenin, did not delay introducing major changes. The Bolsheviks had called for land for the peasants, peace for the soldiers and sailors, and bread for the workers. Now they delivered on all these fronts: taking land into social ownership, pulling Russia out of the imperialist war, granting freedom for many of the national minorities, and introducing economic reforms rooted in socialist principles of cooperation and equality. There was a flowering of real democratic and personal freedoms too, challenging various forms of oppression—in particular the subjugation of women.
However, there were massive obstacles. Counter-revolutionary ‘White’ armies inside Russia were joined by military intervention from numerous European states, determined to crush the example of workers’ power and nascent socialism in Russia. Economic blockade and sanctions had a devastating impact.
Enormous resources had to be invested in protecting the new workers’ state through the civil-war period (1918-20). Many of the workers who had made the revolution were killed in the civil war, or deserted the cities for the countryside under huge economic pressure, or were drawn into the state apparatus.
Workers’ revolts happened in Europe, but none were as successful as Russia’s revolution. Russia was isolated. The strains and setbacks took their toll—the urban working class shrank, the Soviets became hollowed out and the state increasingly substituted itself for the working class. These conditions laid the basis for the appalling rise of Stalinism that followed Lenin’s death.
Lenin’s political career was ended by a debilitating stroke in March 1923. He died in January 1924.
https://mronline.org/2024/01/22/lenin-and-his-times/
Well, little Alex, if not for "appalling rise of Stalinism" the Soviet people would have been enslaved or massacred by the Nazis. Get fucking real.
******
Harpal Brar: Long live Leninism!
Why does Lenin hold such an honoured position in the lexicon of socialist leaders? A century later, what can we learn from his teachings?
Harpal Brar
Sunday 26 April 2020
22 April this year marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the inspirer of the great proletarian socialist revolution in Russia, the leader of the Russian and world proletariat. We publish this article in tribute to his earth-shaking contribution to the cause of world proletarian revolution and the struggle for the overthrow of world imperialism.
*****
VI Lenin fought all his life against opportunism in the working-class movement, in Russia as well as in the west. He exposed and fought against the German socialist Kautsky’s degeneration into opportunism, making a concrete analysis of every important question at issue, drawing clear and definite lines of demarcation between Marxism and Kautskyism, between the Marxist position and the plethora of tendencies within the socialist movement that conciliated with opportunism and thus stood in the way of successfully making a socialist revolution.
Lenin delved deep into the root causes of the emergence of Kautsky’s degeneration, bringing them into the broad light of day – not allowing any considerations of diplomacy (for Kautsky was the acknowledged leader of world socialism at that time), tactics or expediency to inhibit his thorough exposure of this dangerous trend, for he knew only too well that any gains made by ‘tactical’ manoeuvres are not worth a farthing if into the bargain they bring strategic losses and even the negation of basic principles.
Had it not been for Lenin’s exposure of Kautsky’s opportunism during the first world war, the gigantic proletarian opposition to social democracy a few years later would have been out of the question. The result would have been widespread confusion in the working-class movement, accompanied by organisational stagnation.
After Lenin’s death, Josef Stalin maintained that because of Lenin’s services in the defence of Marxism against social-democratic opportunism, because of his development of Marxism on such questions as proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, party organisation, etc, the science of Marxism should be called Marxism-Leninism; and in this Stalin was absolutely right, for such was Lenin’s contribution to Marxism – to its general treasury.
Leninism, far from being merely a Russian phenomenon, became an international phenomenon rooted in the entire international development.
Lenin applied Marxism to Russian conditions in a masterly way. He helped restore the revolutionary content of Marxism, which had long been suppressed by the opportunists of the Second International. Above all, he took a giant leap forward, developing Marxism further under the new conditions of capitalism and proletarian class struggle.
This is how Stalin defined Leninism: “Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is a theory of proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.” (JV Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, 1924, Introduction)
Leninism is characterised by its exceptionally militant and revolutionary spirit, which can be explained by two causes: first, that Leninism was born of the proletarian revolution, the imprint of which it could not but bear; second, that it grew and gained strength in the struggle against the opportunism of the Second International.
The Second International followed the line of opportunism in practice, while paying lip service to Marxism in theory. As Stalin put it: “The opportunists adapted themselves to the bourgeoisie because of their adaptive, petty-bourgeois nature; the ‘orthodox’, in turn adapted themselves to the opportunists in order to ‘preserve’ unity with them, in the interests of ‘peace within the party’. Thus the link between the policy of the bourgeoisie and the policy of the ‘orthodox’ was closed, and, as a result, opportunism reigned supreme.” (Ibid, chapter 2)
Instead of an integral revolutionary theory, there prevailed eclectic, contradictory propositions and scraps of theory. Instead of a revolutionary policy, there was flabby philistinism and contemptible parliamentary scheming and diplomacy. Instead of a correction of mistakes and of tactics on the basis of the party’s own mistakes, every attempt was made to evade difficult questions and to gloss over them.
As a new era of imperialist wars and of revolutionary proletarian battles drew nearer, the old methods, parliamentary and trade union, were patently useless and powerless “in the face of the omnipotence of finance capital”. (Ibid)
It thus became a matter of the utmost importance to “overhaul the entire activity of the Second International, its entire method of work” and to drive out all philistinism, renegacy, social-pacifism and social-chauvinism; to throw out all that was rusty and antiquated in the arsenal of the Second International and to forge new weapons.
Without the fulfilment of this task, the proletariat would have been completely unarmed in its struggle against imperialism. Stalin added: “The honour of bringing about this general overhauling and general cleansing of the Augean stables of the Second International fell to Leninism.” (Ibid)
Leninism insisted on restoring the breach between theory and practice, through testing the theoretical dogmas of the Second International in the crucible of living practice. It insisted that the policy of the parties belonging to the Second International be tested, not by their slogans and resolutions, but by their actions.
And it insisted on the reorganisation of all party work around new revolutionary lines, in order to train and prepare the masses for the revolutionary struggle.
Finally, it insisted on the necessity of self-criticism within the proletarian parties, in order that they may learn from their own mistakes. In this context, Lenin wrote in his pamphlet Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder:
“The attitude of a political party towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it in practice fulfils its obligations towards its class and the toiling masses.
“Frankly admitting a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the circumstances which gave rise to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it – that is the earmark of a serious party; that is the way it should perform its duties, that is the way it should educate and train the class, and then the masses.” (1920, chapter 7)
A party, according to Leninism, is to be judged not by its pompous slogans and declarations but by its practice.
On the eve of the first world war, at its conference in Basel, the Second International, knowing full well that war was then impending, passed a resolution declaring “war against war”. A little later, as the war began, the parties of the Second International gave the workers a new slogan – to slaughter each other at the altar of the glory of their imperialist fatherlands.
The contrast between the policy of the Second International and that of the Leninist policy of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war for the overthrow of one’s own bourgeoisie makes starkly clear not only the baseness of the opportunism of the leaders of the Second International but also the magnificent grandeur of the method of Leninism.
The Bolsheviks generally, and Lenin in particular, were often accused by their opportunist opponents in Russia, as well as in the Second International, of being guided by their factional struggles and always putting fundamental problems of the Russian revolution in the forefront.
Doubtless, the Bolsheviks put in the forefront the fundamental problems of the Russian revolution. These, however, were the fundamental problems of the revolution everywhere – not just Russia.
Problems such as the question of theory, the attitude of the Marxist party towards the bourgeois-democratic revolution, of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, of the hegemony of the proletariat, of the significance of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles, of general strike, of the passing of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of imperialism, of the self-determination of nations, of the liberation movements of the colonial and oppressed peoples and of the necessity for the proletariat to support these movements.
The Bolsheviks put forward these problems as the touchstone on which to judge the revolutionary consistency of the parties of the Second International.
They were right to do so. Nay, they had a duty to do so, because all these problems were also the fundamental problems of the world proletarian revolution, to which the Bolsheviks subordinated their policy.
The Russian revolution was no private affair of the Bolsheviks or the Russian proletariat. Lenin had realised very early on that the revolutionary centre was beginning to shift from the west to Russia, and that the outcome of the Russian revolution would have world-historic significance.
As early as 1902, in his pamphlet What Is to be Done?, Lenin wrote:
“History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks that confront the proletariat of any country. The fulfilment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful bulwark not only of European but (it may now be said) of Asiatic reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.” (Chapter 1A)
Nearly 120 years have passed since these words were written and history has eloquently confirmed Lenin’s words. However, it does follow from this that the Russian revolution was “the nodal point of world revolution; that the fundamental problems of the Russian revolution were … the fundamental problems of the world revolution”. (JV Stalin, Some questions concerning the history of Bolshevism, January 1934)
Let us now briefly look at some of these fundamental problems of Leninism.
Marxist theory
Lenin constantly insisted that the proletariat should recognise the role of revolutionary theory. “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” he wrote in What Is to be Done? (Chapter 1D)
He understood better than anyone else the importance of theory, for theory alone can give the movement confidence, purpose and direction. As early as 1902 he pointed out: “The role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.” (Ibid)
This does not mean that theory should be separated from practice, for “theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory”. (JV Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924, chapter 3)
Lenin waged a merciless struggle against the ‘theory’ of spontaneity, the ‘theory’ of worshipping the spontaneity of the labour movement, as an opportunist theory which repudiated the leading role of the party of the proletariat, a ‘theory’ which dragged the party of the proletariat to tag along at the tail end of the spontaneous working-class movement.
The leading proponents of this ‘theory’, the Economists, went to the extent of denying the need for an independent party of the proletariat. Lenin’s What is To Be Done? demolished this ‘theory’ and furnished the theoretical foundations for a genuinely revolutionary movement of the Russian proletariat.
Lenin’s theory of proletarian revolution
According to Lenin, imperialism (monopoly capitalism) intensifies all the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme. In the heartlands of capitalism, finance capital makes the yoke of monopolies unbearable, thus serving to exacerbate the resentment of the working class against the foundations of capitalism, and bringing the masses to the proletarian revolution as their only salvation.
Second, the export of capital, which is such a characteristic feature of monopoly capital (finance capital), leads to the transformation of capitalism into a world system of financial enslavement and colonial oppression of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’countries, thus splitting the global population into two camps: the handful of countries that exploit and oppress the vast masses of dependent and colonial countries, and the huge majority inhabiting the oppressed world.
All this leads to the intensification of the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed countries, resulting in the growth of the movements of revolt against imperialism on the external front.
Third, the uneven development of capitalist countries, and the resultant frenzied struggle for the redivision of the world between those countries that already possess territories and those claiming a ‘fair share’, leads to imperialist wars as the sole means for restoring the disturbed ‘equilibrium’ – the intensification of the struggle on the third front, the interimperialist front.
Hence Lenin’s conclusion: that wars cannot be averted under imperialism. Hence also the inevitability of a coalition between proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries and the anti-imperialist movements in the oppressed countries in a united revolutionary front against the world front of imperialism.
Combining all these conclusions into one general conclusion, Lenin observed that: “Imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.” (Preface to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, April 1917)
According to Lenin’s theory, with the development of capitalism into imperialism, individual national economies have ceased to be self-sufficient units; they have become links in a single chain of the world economy; that imperialism is a global system of financial enslavement and oppression of the vast majority of the world’s population by a handful of imperialist countries.
This creates the objective conditions for revolution to break out in countries that are not particularly advanced in terms of industrial development because the system in its entirety is ripe for revolution.
As a result, the chain of the world imperialist front may break in any one country or another depending on where the chain is at its weakest. Hence the victory of the revolution is possible in one country, even a relatively backward country (as for instance Russia in 1917).
Dictatorship of the proletariat
“The fundamental question of every revolution is the question of power,” said Lenin. The aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and break its resistance; to organise construction; and to arm the revolution, organising the army against foreign enemies in the struggle against imperialism.
The dictatorship of the proletariat spans a whole historical epoch. It cannot result in complete democracy for all – it institutes democracy for the majority and dictatorship over the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot result from peaceful development of bourgeois society and bourgeois democracy; it can only arise as a result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine.
With the appearance of Soviet power, the era of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism draws to a close and a new chapter in world history – the era of proletarian dictatorship – is ushered in.
The Republic of Soviets is thus the political form so long sought and finally discovered, within the framework of which the economic emancipation of the proletariat, the complete victory of socialism, must be accomplished. (Theses on the constituent assembly, December 1917)
The peasant question
Leninism has three slogans on the peasant question, each corresponding to a different stage of the revolution: (a) the peasantry during the bourgeois-democratic revolution; (b) the peasantry during the proletarian revolution; and (c) the peasantry after the consolidation of Soviet power.
Those who are marching and preparing to assume power cannot but be interested in the question of who are their real allies. In this sense, the peasant question is part of the general question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and is thus one of the most important problems of Leninism.
Some people maintain that what is special about Leninism is its stance on the peasantry. This is not true. “The fundamental question of Leninism, its point of departure, is … the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the conditions under which it is to be achieved, of the conditions under which it can be consolidated.” (JV Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, chapter 5)
The peasant question, since it concerns the question of who are the allies of the proletariat in its struggle for power, is a secondary question, deriving from the question of state power.
During the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the struggle was between the Cadets (the liberal bourgeoisie) and the Bolsheviks (the proletariat) for influence over the peasantry. The Cadets were attempting to win over the peasantry and to reconcile it to tsarism. During this stage of the revolution, therefore, the Bolsheviks concentrated their fire on the Cadets.
During the proletarian revolution, the struggle was between the so-called Socialist Revolutionaries (petty-bourgeois democrats) and the Bolsheviks for influence over the peasantry – a struggle to win over the majority of the people by ending the war. But to end the war it was necessary to overthrow the provisional government – to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and the power of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks who were compromising with the bourgeoisie.
After the consolidation of Soviet power, the task was to win over the majority of the peasantry for socialist construction. Lenin was correctly of the view that a peasantry that had received peace and land at the hands of the proletariat could be mobilised to build socialism through the cooperatives.
“State power over all large-scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc – is not this all that is necessary for the building of the complete socialist society from the cooperatives, from the cooperatives alone, which we formerly looked down upon as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to look down upon as such now under the NEP?
“Is this not all that is necessary for building a socialist society? This is not yet the building of a socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building.” (On cooperation, January 1923)
The national question
In the period of the Second International, the national question was seen as being confined to a few European countries – ie, Poland, Hungary, Ireland, etc. The vast majority of subjugated peoples in Asia and Africa remained outside the purview of the Second International.
Leninism broke down the wall between whites and blacks, Europeans and Asians and Africans; between the ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ slaves of imperialism. With this, the national question was transformed from being an internal state problem into a general international problem – a problem of the liberation of oppressed peoples in the colonial and dependent countries from the yoke of imperialism through self-determination and complete secession.
With this slogan of self-determination, Leninism educated the masses in the spirit of internationalism. It brought the national question from the realm of high-sounding declarations to the solid ground of the utilisation of the revolutionary potentialities of the national movements for advancing the movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of imperialism.
It thus transformed the revolutionary national-liberation movements into a reserve of the revolutionary proletariat.
The revolutionary character of the national movements does not presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement or a republican programme.
Thus, according to Leninism, the world is divided into two camps: (1) the camp of a handful of imperialist exploiting and oppressing nations, which possess finance capital and exploit the majority of the population of the globe; (2) the camp of the oppressed and exploited hundreds of millions around the world.
The interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and the national-liberation movement call for a union of these two forms of revolutionary movement in a common front against imperialism – against the common enemy.
Without such a front, the victory of either is impossible. “No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.” (Speech by Friedrich Engels, November 1847)
The union between the revolutionary proletarian movement and the national-liberation movements can only be voluntary – on the basis of mutual confidence and fraternal relations amongst the people.
“If a [Marxist] belonging to a great, oppressing, annexing nation, while advocating the amalgamation of nations in general, were to forget even for one moment that ‘his’ Nicholas II, ‘his’ Wilhelm, George, Poincaré, etc, also stands for amalgamation with small nations (by means of annexations) … such a Marxist would be a ridiculous doctrinaire in theory and an abettor of imperialism in practice.
“The weight of emphasis in the internationalist education of the workers in the oppressing countries must necessarily consist in their advocating and upholding freedom of secession for oppressed countries. Without this there can be no internationalism.
“It is our right and duty to treat every Marxist of an oppressing nation who fails to conduct such propaganda as an imperialist scoundrel.” (The discussion on self-determination summed up, July 1916)
The wars of national liberation against imperialist domination are just wars, and it is the duty of every proletarian revolutionary in the imperialist countries to support such wars and to work for the defeat of his own ruling class. Any other stance would be a total betrayal of the principles and ideals of socialism, for:
“The revolutionary movement in the advanced countries would in fact be nothing but a sheer fraud if, in their struggle against capital, the workers of Europe and America were not closely and completely united with the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of ‘colonial’ slaves, who are oppressed by that capital.” (Speech at the second congress of the Communist International, August 1920)
Strategy and tactics
The period of domination of the Second International was characterised by parliamentary forms of struggle, whose importance it overestimated. Only in the period of revolution could an integral strategy and elaborated tactics for the struggle of the proletariat be worked out.
It was in this period that Lenin brought out into the light of day the brilliant ideas of Marx and Engels on strategy and tactics, which had been suppressed by the opportunists of the Second International. He developed them further and supplemented them with new provisions, working them all into a system of rules and guiding principles for the leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat.
His works such as What Is to be Done?, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, The State and Revolution, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky and ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: an Infantile Disorder constitute priceless contributions to the general treasury of Marxism, to its general arsenal.
The strategy and tactics of Leninism constitute the science of leadership in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
Stages of the revolution and strategy
Strategy is the determination of the direction of the main blow of the proletariat at a given stage of the revolution; the elaboration of a corresponding plan for the disposition of the revolutionary forces. This is how Lenin’s teachings on strategy and tactics worked during the various stages of the Russian revolution:
First stage: 1903 to February 1917
The objective at this stage was the overthrow of tsarism and the destruction of the survivals of medievalism. The main force of the revolution in this period was the proletariat and its immediate reserves, the peasantry.
In this stage, the direction of the blow was the isolation of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, which was attempting to bring the peasantry under its wing and liquidate the revolution by a compromise with tsarism.
“The proletariat must carry to completion the democratic revolution, by allying to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy and paralyse the instability of the bourgeoisie.” (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, 1905, chapter 12)
Second stage: March 1917 to October 1917
The objective during this stage was to overthrow imperialism and withdraw from the imperialist war. During this period, the proletariat was the main force of the revolution and its immediate reserves were the poor peasantry.
The direction of the blow in this period was the isolation of the petty-bourgeois parties – the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks – which were trying to win over the toiling masses of the peasantry and liquidate the revolution by a compromise with imperialism.
“The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, by allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie.” (Ibid)
Third stage: After the October Revolution
The objective of the revolution during this stage was to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, using it as a base for the defeat of imperialism in all countries. The main forces of the revolution in this period were the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country and the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries. The main reserves of the revolution were the semi-proletarian and small peasant masses in the developed countries and liberation movements in colonial and dependent countries.
The direction of the main blow in this period was the isolation of petty-bourgeois democrats and isolation of the parties of the Second International, which formed the main support for compromise with imperialism. The plan for the disposition of forces in this period was the alliance of the proletarian revolution with the liberation movements of the oppressed peoples.
Tactics determine the line of conduct of the proletariat over a comparatively short period of the ebb or flow of the movement. They are a part of the strategy, subordinated to it and serving it.
Changes in the form of struggle are accompanied by corresponding changes in the form of organisation. The point is to put to the fore precisely those forms of struggle and organisation which are best suited to the conditions during the ebb or flow of the movement, and thus facilitate and ensure the bringing of the millions to the revolutionary front, organising also their disposition at the revolutionary front.
The aim must be to locate at any given moment the particular link in the chain of processes which, if grasped, will enable the proletariat to keep hold of the whole of the chain and to prepare the conditions for achieving strategic success.
“It is not enough to be a revolutionary and an adherent of socialism or a communist in general. One must be able at each particular moment to find the particular link in the chain which one must grasp with all one’s might in order to keep hold of the whole chain and prepare firmly for the transition to the next link.” (The importance of gold now and after the complete victory of socialism, November 1921)
The revolutionary party of the proletariat must know not only how to advance, but also how to retreat in good order when the circumstances so require.
“The revolutionary parties,” said Lenin, “must complete their education. They have learnt to attack. Now they have to realise that this knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat properly.
“They have to realise – and the revolutionary class is taught to realise it by its own bitter experience – that victory is impossible unless they have learnt both how to attack and how to retreat properly.” (‘Left-wing’ Communism, chapter 3)
The purpose of any retreat is to gain time, to disrupt the enemy, and to gather force in order later to assume the offensive. The signing of the Brest peace treaty in 1917 is a model of this strategy as it gained the Bolshevik party time to take advantage of the conflicts in the imperialist camp, to disrupt the enemy forces, to maintain the support of the peasantry, and to gather sufficient forces in preparation for the offensive against the counter-revolutionary generals Kolchak and Denikin.
“In concluding a separate peace,” said Lenin at the time, “we free ourselves as much as is possible at the present moment from both warring imperialist groups, we take advantage of their mutual enmity and warfare, which hinder them from making a deal against us, and for a certain period have our hands free to advance and consolidate the socialist revolution.” (On the history of the question of the unfortunate peace, January 1918)
Three years after the Brest peace, Lenin returned to the subject, saying: “Now even the biggest fool [Trotsky being the chief of these fools] can see that the ‘Brest peace’ was a concession that strengthened us and broke up the forces of international imperialism.” (New times and old mistakes in a new guise, August 1921)
The workers’ party
According to Leninism, the party of the proletariat is the advanced detachment of the working class, possessed of the best elements and an advanced theory.
It must be ahead of the masses and see further than the working class; it must lead the proletariat and not drag at the tail end of the spontaneous movement. Only such a party can divert the working class from the path of trade unionism.
No army at war can do without an experienced general staff if it does not want to be doomed to defeat. The revolutionary party of the proletariat constitutes precisely such a general staff. The working class without a revolutionary party is an army without a general staff.
“We,” said Lenin, “are the party of a class, and therefore almost the whole class … should act under the leadership of our party, should adhere to our party as closely as possible.
“It would be Manilovism [smug complacency] and ‘khvostism’ [tailism] to think that any time under capitalism almost the whole class, or the whole class, would be able to rise to the level of consciousness and activity of its advanced detachment … No sensible Marxist has ever yet doubted that under capitalism even the trade union organisations (which are more primitive and more comprehensible to the undeveloped strata) are unable to embrace almost the whole, or the whole, working class.
“To forget the distinction between the advanced detachment and the whole of the masses which gravitate towards it, to forget the constant duty of the advanced detachment to raise ever-wider strata to this advanced level, means merely to deceive oneself, to shut one’s eyes to the immensity of our task, and narrow down these tasks.” (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, 1904, Chapter I)
The party is the organised detachment of the working class. It must imbue the millions of unorganised non-party workers with the spirit of discipline in the struggle, with the spirit of organisation and endurance. But the party can fulfil these tasks only if it is itself the embodiment of discipline and organisation.
Lenin’s formulation of the first paragraph of the Bolshevik party rules embodies this concept. According to it, the party is the sum total of its organisations, and the party member is a member of one of the organisations of the party.
It denies self-enrolment so as to prevent the party from being inundated with professors and high-school students and thus degenerate into a loose, amorphous, disorganised body lost in a sea of ‘sympathisers’ that would obliterate the dividing line between the party and the class and thus thwart the party’s task of raising the unorganised masses to the level of the advanced detachment.
“From the point of view of Comrade Martov,” said Lenin, “the borderline of the party remains quite indefinite, for ‘every striker’ may ‘proclaim himself a party member’. What is the use of this vagueness? A wide extension of the ‘title’. Its harm is that it introduces a disorganising idea, the confusing of class and party.” (Ibid)
The Leninist party is a single system of these organisations, with higher and lower bodies, with subordination of the minority to the majority.
“Formerly,” said Lenin, “our party was not a formally organised whole, but only the sum of separate groups, and therefore no other relations except those of ideological influence were possible between these groups. Now we have become an organised Party, and this implies the establishment of authority, the transformation of the power of ideas into the power of authority, the subordination of lower Party bodies to the higher Party bodies.” (Ibid, Chapter O)
Fighting against wavering elements like Martov, who at the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) opposed Lenin’s formulation of the party rules, he wrote:
“This aristocratic anarchism is particularly characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the party organisation as a monstrous ‘factory’, he regards the subordination of the part to the whole and of the minority to the majority as ‘serfdom’ … division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a tragicomical outcry against people being transformed into ‘wheels and cogs’ …
“Mention of the organisational rules of the party calls forth a contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark that one could very well dispense with rules altogether.
“It is clear, I think, that the cries about this celebrated bureaucracy are just a screen for dissatisfaction with the personal composition of the central bodies, a figleaf …
“You are a bureaucrat because you were appointed by the congress, not by my will, but against it; you are a formalist because you rely on the formal decisions of the congress, and not on my consent; you are acting in a grossly mechanical way because you plead the ‘mechanical’ majority at the party congress and pay no heed to my wish to be co-opted; you are an autocrat because you refuse to hand over the power to the old gang [the ‘gang’ referred to was composed of Axelrod, Martov, Potresov and others, who would not submit to the decisions of the second congress and accused Lenin of being a ‘bureaucrat’].” (Ibid)
The Leninist party is the highest form of class organisation of the proletariat. It is the rallying centre of the finest elements of the working class, whose political leadership must extend to every other form of organisation of the proletariat.
That is why the opportunist theory of the ‘independence’ and ‘ neutrality’ of non-party organisations, which breeds independent members of parliament and journalists isolated from the party, narrow-minded trade-union functionaries and cooperative officials who have become philistines, is wholly incompatible with the theory and practice of Leninism.
The party is the instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat – an instrument in the hands of the proletariat for achieving and consolidating state power.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat,” said Lenin, “is a stubborn struggle – bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative – against the forces and traditions of old society.
“The force of habit of millions and tens of millions is a most terrible force. Without an iron party tempered in the struggle, without a party enjoying the confidence of all that is honest in the given class, without a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, it is impossible to conduct such a struggle successfully.” (‘Left-wing’ Communism, chapter 5)
The party is the embodiment of the unity of will of the workers, unity incompatible with the existence of factions. Hence Lenin’s insistence on the “complete elimination of all factionalism” and the “immediate dissolution of all groups, without exception, that have been formed on the basis of various platforms”, on pain of “unconditional and immediate expulsion from the party”. (Resolution on party unity, 1921)
Elsewhere, he wrote: “In the present epoch of acute civil war, the Communist party will be able to perform its duty only if it is organised in the most centralised manner, if iron discipline bordering on military discipline prevails in it, and if the party centre is a powerful and authoritative organ, wielding wide powers and enjoying the universal confidence of the members of the party.” (The terms of admission into the Communist International, 1920)
And further: “Whoever weakens in the least the discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship) actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.” (‘Left-wing’ communism, chapter 5)
The party becomes strong by purging itself of opposition elements. A source of factionalism is its opportunist elements – the “stratum of bourgeoisified workers or the ‘labour aristocracy’ who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is … the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie.
“For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, the real channels of reformism and chauvinism. (Preface to the French and German editions of Imperialism, 1920)
Style of work
The Leninist style of work represents a specific and peculiar feature in the practice of Leninism, which creates a special type of Leninist worker.
Leninism is the school of theory and practice that trains a special type of worker and creates a special Leninist style of work. It combines Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency. Revolutionary sweep is the life-giving force that stimulates thought and propels things forward, opening up new perspectives. Without such revolutionary sweep, no progress is possible.
However, on its own revolutionary sweep stands every chance of degenerating into empty phrasemongering if it is not combined with professionalism and efficiency. That is why Lenin emphasised: “Fewer pompous phrases, more plain, everyday work … less political fireworks and more attention to the simplest but vital facts of communist construction.” (A great beginning, June 1919)
On the other hand, such workaday efficiency stands every chance of degenerating into narrow and unprincipled practicalism if it is not combined with a wide revolutionary sweep.
“The combination of Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism in party and state work.” (JV Stalin, Foundations, chapter 9)
Lenin’s fight against opportunism
Leninism was born, grew up and became strong in its relentless struggle against opportunism of every variety.
As early as 1903-4, when the Bolshevik group took shape in Russia, Lenin pursued the line aimed at a rupture, a split, with the opportunists both in Russia and in the Second International. Not surprisingly, then, the Bolsheviks were abused by their opportunist opponents as ‘splitters’ and ‘disrupters’.
The Bolsheviks pursued this line long before the imperialist war (from 1904-12). In 1903, the left-wingers in the German social-democratic party, Rosa Luxemburg and Alexander Parvus, came out against the Bolsheviks on the question of the party rules, accusing them of betraying ultra-centralist and Blanquist tendencies.
In 1905, on the question of the character of the Russian revolution, Luxemburg and Parvus invented the semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution (a distorted version of the Marxian scheme of revolution), characterised by the Menshevik repudiation of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, opposing the Bolshevik scheme of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
Subsequently, this semi-Menshevist scheme was picked up by Leon Trotsky and turned into a weapon of struggle against Leninism.
The Bolshevik support for the liberation movement of the oppressed and colonised nations on the basis of self-determination, and the creation of a united front between the proletarian revolution in the advanced countries and the revolutionary-liberation movement of the peoples of colonies and oppressed countries invited abuse from the opportunists of the Second International.
For this line of theirs, the Bolsheviks were baited like mad dogs. Even the German lefts opposed the Bolsheviks on this. Naturally, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, strongly criticised the German lefts for this approach of theirs; any other course of action would have been a betrayal of the working class, a betrayal of the interests of the revolution, a betrayal of communism.
The consistent and thoroughly revolutionary internationalism of the Bolsheviks is a model of proletarian internationalism for the workers of all countries.
The alliance between the proletariat of the advanced countries and the oppressed peoples of the enslaved countries is a question of emancipating the oppressed peoples, a question of emancipating the labouring masses of non-proletarian classes from the oppression and exploitation of finance capital.
Thus Bolshevism is not only a Russian phenomenon; it is “a model of tactics for all”. (Lenin)
The international significance of the October Revolution
In this context, the following points are worthy of note:
1. The October Revolution, unlike all previous revolutions (except for the short-lived Paris Commune) did not merely replace one type of exploitation by another; it put an end to all exploitation.
2. It caused a breach in the front of imperialism and ushered in a new era of proletarian revolution in the countries of imperialism.
3. It ushered in the era of Soviet democracy and put an end to bourgeois parliamentarism; it showed the world that the proletariat can not only destroy the old but also build a new society, thus setting a contagious example.
4. It shook the rear of imperialism by breaking the chains of national and colonial oppression under the flag of internationalism, thus unleashing an era of colonial revolution.
5. Before the October Revolution, the world was supposed to be divided between inferior and superior races, between blacks and whites, according to which only the superior white races were the bearers of civilisation and were the natural rulers of the world. The October Revolution shattered this legend forever.
6. The October Revolution jeopardised the very existence of world imperialism and created a powerful base for the world revolutionary movement. The result of the October Revolution has been that capitalism can never recover the ‘equilibrium’ and ‘stability’ that it possessed before the revolution. The October Revolution created a beacon which has illumined the path of the labouring masses ever since.
7. The October Revolution was a revolution in minds as well, a revolution in the ideology of the working class; it represented the victory of Marxism over reformism, of Leninism over social-democratism. From then on the only vehicle and bulwark of Marxism has been Leninism.
The above, then, were the achievements of Leninism and of the October Revolution. These were badly damaged by the triumph of Khrushchevite revisionism at the 20th party congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which eventually led to the collapse of the once great and glorious Soviet Union, and brought in its train, albeit temporarily, the destruction of the base of the world revolution, casting over the social and political life of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples the gloom of unbridled reaction.
In marking the 150th anniversary of the great VI Lenin’s birth, that giant of revolutionary thought and action, we must remember Lenin’s injunction as to the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism and conducting a ruthless struggle against it:
“Most dangerous are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and a humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.” (Imperialism, chapter 10)
Finally, we greet hundreds upon hundreds of millions of proletarian and labouring masses all over the world on Lenin’s birthday and join them in their celebrations of this great occasion, and we pledge ourselves to revive the theory and practice of Leninism and devote ourselves to the cause of overthrowing imperialism and ending all exploitation through proletarian revolution.
Our day will come, and there shall be celebrations in our street.
https://thecommunists.org/2020/04/26/ne ... -lenin150/
Compare and contrast the social democratic view of the 1st piece and the communist view of the 2nd.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Five of Lenin’s Insights That Are More Pertinent Than Ever
JANUARY 23, 2024
Vladimir Lenin. Photo: Midwestern Marx/File photo.
By: Carlos L. Garrido – Jan 21, 2024
The day Lenin passed away
A soldier of the death watch, so runs the story, told his comrades: I did not want to
Believe it. I went inside, and
Shouted in his ear: ‘Ilyich
The exploiters are on their way!’ He did not move. Now
I knew that he has expired.
When a good man wants to leave
How can you hold him back?
Tell him why he is needed.
That holds him.
What could hold Lenin back?…
The weak do not fight. The stronger
Fight on perhaps for an hour.
Those who are stronger still fight for many years
The strongest fight on all their life.
These are indispensable.
Bertolt Brecht – Cantata on the Day of Lenin’s Death
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.
Langston Hughes – Lenin
Today we mourn a hundred years since the physical death of one of our dearest comrades, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to us as Lenin. It would be foolish, however, to think that his physical death meant the death of his ideas. Today, after a hundred years, Lenin’s ideas are as indispensable as ever. “They are mistaken when they think that his death is the end of his ideas”. This was told to us by Fidel Castro upon the death of Che Guevara, but it applies with equal accuracy to Lenin’s death.
Lenin was never, as the West reduces him to, simply the man of practice who ‘applied’ what Marx and Engels wrote. To be sure, in terms of revolutionary practice and the development of the tactics for class struggle in the era of imperialism, there is a particle of truth to this understanding. Few have understood the class struggle, and how to advance it, better than Lenin. Few have been so in tune with the Marxist worldview, so utterly devoid of dogmas and the purity fetish, as to understanding the dialectics of socialism in its utmost profundity. Lenin, whether pre or post conquest of power, was a man who excelled in using the Marxist outlook as a guide to action, as the greatest tool and best working weapon, as Engels described it, for the masses to change (and not just interpret) the world. Whether in the creative development of the vanguard party of a new type in the era of ultimate tzarist repression, where organizing work had to take a clandestine underground form with professional revolutionaries (which has always been misinterpreted in the West as a top-down elitist party), or in his understanding of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle, or in his development of the New Economic Policy during the first period of socialist construction, Lenin’s practice indubitably applied and creatively developed upon the work of Marx and Engels.
However, Lenin as a theoretician (which is dialectically embedded with the previous Lenin) is often overlooked, especially in the chauvinistic West which sees Europe as the bearers of ‘theory’ and the East as the appliers of it in ‘practice’. Lukacs is still right in telling us that “Lenin is the greatest thinker to have been produced by the revolutionary working-class movement since Marx… the only theoretician equal to Marx.”
On this centenary anniversary of his passing, here are five central developments of Lenin’s upon the Marxist tradition.
1) In the sphere of philosophy, he develops Marxist materialism in the context of the critique of Machist idealism and its spread in Russian Marxist spaces. This is done in his 1908 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a text which the postmodernized Western Marxists are nauseated by because of its outright defense of materialism and philosophical realism. Even some of those who have not fully condemned Lenin would like to create a split between the 1908 Lenin and the post-1914 one. While it is true that his 1914 philosophical studies in Switzerland, especially his study of Hegel, represents one of the greatest advancements in dialectical materialist literature, it ought to be added to the previous philosophical insights, not used to reject them. Frankly, what else can be expected from the Western Marxists, those who look everywhere and only see splits (early and mature Marx, Marx from Engels, pre and post 1914 Lenin, Lenin and post Lenin socialist construction in Russia, etc.)? Conjoined, therefore, with his philosophical developments to the Marxist worldview in 1908 are his 1914 philosophical notebooks. While Marx never got to provide us with the short ‘Dialectics’ text he promised, in his 1914 studies Lenin does give us ample work on a materialist interpretation of Hegel and the Marxist sublation of his dialectical worldview (which, as an upside-down materialism, holds the germ for the Marxist outlook), playing for future revolutionaries the role Marx’s ‘Dialectics’ presumably would have.
2) Lenin developed the Marxist understanding of capitalist political economy for the stage of imperialism and monopoly capital. Headway had already been made here by Marx in the third volume of Capital, but it is only with the carnage of the first world war that the imperialist stage of capitalism develops to a point of maturity where it could be understood as a stage of its own, a partially qualitative development within the capitalist mode of life as a whole. It is here where Lenin crystalizes this analysis, concretizing the previous work done by Hobson, Hilferding, and Bukharin. Lenin’s analysis of the dominance of finance capital in the age of imperialism has only become more indispensable as global financial institutions rose following the second world war. His prediction that imperialism will be conjoined with constant imperialist warfare (both of an inter-imperialist kind and of the kind that attempts to subjugate under imperial dominance nations outside of its sphere of influence), could not have been proven more prophetic in this last century, as US imperialism has waged hybrid warfare against virtually every country on the planet. Without the theoretical framework of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, it is quite literally impossible to come anywhere near an accurate understanding of the world today. We have Lenin to thank for this clarity.
3) Conjoined with his insights on imperialism and the role of the peasantry in socialist revolutions, Lenin develops upon the anti-colonial works of Marx and Engels, who see national liberation struggles as forms of class struggles. Lenin sees the primacy these often take in the class struggles of imperialized nations against national oppression. All throughout the non-Western-European/Anglo world, these struggles have risen – sometimes securing their successes for decades to come (Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc.) and sometimes being overthrown by dirty US/European imperialist tactics after the successful conquest of power (Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, etc.).
The task Lenin bestowed on the proletariat of imperial nations, of connecting their class struggles to the rising anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, is as pertinent as ever. In the US, as it becomes more evident how the empire feeds off the republic (as Michael Parenti calls it), it is easier than ever to see the unity of interests between the anti-imperialist struggles of the global south and those we face at home. As the labor aristocracy (a concept Lenin develops from Engels and the American Marxist, Daniel de Leon) is further disconnecting itself from the rank-and-file, the task of showing American working people the ineptitude of their bourgeoisified leaders, and henceforth, the socialist and anti-imperialist way forward, becomes easier. In some ways, the leadership of Chris Smalls in the Amazon Labor Union, Shawn Fain in the UAW, and (to a lesser extent) Sean O’Brian in the Teamsters, signifies a militant development in the labor movement – a movement growing (to various degrees) in class, socialist, and internationalist consciousness along lines Lenin would be proud of. This would, of course, also be true of the millions of American working folks who’ve protested over the last three months against the Zionist genocide of the colonized, Palestinian people.
4) Lenin concretizes the Marxist understanding of the state and socialist construction. In The State and Revolution (as well as in other essays), Lenin compiles Marx and Engels’s insights on the state and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. No text had ever provided the Marxist view of the state so succinctly and elaborately as Lenin, using the works of Marx and Engels (and most importantly, the Marxist method), did. This remains a necessary read for all communists. With it, all the abstract usages of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘dictatorship’ that the imperialist bourgeoisie uses to legitimize itself and attack its enemies are capable of being unpacked and ridiculed for what they are – empty abstractions. For whom is the democracy and freedom the bourgeoisie talks about? Is it for the people? NO! It is democracy for the rich, the insignificant minority! It is freedom of capital to exploit and accumulate! Is this not in direct opposition to a democracy and freedom of the people? Has it not been shown that the people, if they succeed in the conquest of power, must employ the method of ‘dictatorship’ against the counter-revolutionaries and imperialists to protect their revolutions? To protect actual popular and participatory democracy and freedom? Lenin’s refinement of Marx and Engels’s insights has allowed subsequent revolutionary struggles to understand the importance of overturning a state which is designed to reproduce the bourgeois mode of life for a working class state which can, as long as capitalist-imperialism exists, defend the people’s revolution from imperialist hybrid warfare and the counter-revolutionary collaborators which might still exists at home.
Lenin’s understanding of the workers state must also take into account the adjustments that had to be made in the post-revolutionary period, when it became clear that emphasis had to be put on developing the productive forces and an efficient state that could guide the process of destroying the global inequalities between imperialist and imperialized nations. This project, as Lenin’s NEP, Stalin’s collectivization, and the experience of China’s reform and opening up shows, can occur through various means. Capital can be employed, under the leadership of a strong and disciplined communist party, in the task of developing the forces of production for socialism. As long as “political capital,” as Mao called it, is sustained in the hands of the people through their communist and workers parties, the process of capital expropriation can take a variety of different speeds and time. Lenin’s insights following the revolution helps us concretize the dialectic of political and economic capital already employed by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto, where they argued that: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”
5) Lastly, Lenin’s development of democratic centralism continues to be, in my estimation, the most effective organizational method (whether for a party or state) that has ever been employed. Its unity (when it is properly applied) of the democratic components of open debate and consultation with the efficiency of centralized and unified action, are pillars of socialist democracy. “Centralism based on democracy with democracy under the guidance of centralism,” as Deng Xiaoping said. Unity of action amongst those which fight for the masses of humanity is amongst the scariest dictums the ruling classes’ ears have heard. The ruling classes (not just the capitalist ones) survive from divide et impera (divide and conquer). They love factions and factionalization. Just take a look at James Madison’s Federalist 10, where factionalization of the masses is seen as the key to preventing their unified revolt against the elite on the basis of the property question. But Leninist unity of action is preceded by democratic consultation, by the debating, on the part of the party cadre (the most advanced detachment of the proletariat), of the question at hand. The democratic component has often been the hardest to achieve, limiting our ability to appreciate the effectiveness of the unity of action. Nonetheless, even as the old communist parties in the West seem to have mostly fallen down the route of tailing the social democrats and liberals, the need for a strong communist party, guided by the methods of democratic centralism, could not be more urgent for satisfying the crisis in the subjective factor we are experiencing in our time – a time objectively pregnant with revolutionary potential (see my book, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism for more here).
Marxism-Leninism is the only worldview that contains within it these indispensable developments upon the open and ever-expanding Marxist tradition. In the US, Marxism-Leninism has been concretized to the national conditions of our country through the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Henry Winston, and others who have been able to assess the role of the color line in dividing working people, and hence, the role that the anti-racist struggle has played as the leading form of class struggle in the US (for a detailed analysis of this, see my paper ‘Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction: The Black Worker and Racist False Consciousness’). It is this Marxist-Leninist tradition, enhanced and concretized by the insights of Dubois (the father of American Marxism – see article cited above for why I say this), Winston, MLK Jr., etc., that creates the foundation for the development of American Marxism (as some of us have called it at the Institute), or American Marxism-Leninism. It is this theoretical framework which allows us to avoid the purity fetish, understand the American trajectory and the process of the last centuries’ bourgeoisfication and this centuries’ reproletarianization of the working masses. It is, in short, this Marxism-Leninism adjusted to our context that allows us to understand our class struggles and our pathway forward, guiding us as we overthrow the parasitic imperialist state and establish a working class democratic-dictatorship on its ruin. In other words, an actual government (or mode of life) of, by, and for working people. A promise our capitalist class was never able to actualize, but that we – working people – will!
Leninism is not only the body of Marxist ideas that guided the Soviet-Russian proletarian revolution to victory and allowed socialist construction to begin, but is also an international Marxist theory, rooted in the thinking of Marx and Engels, that has guided the international proletariat in its struggles and construction activity. In the twenty-first century, worldwide Marxism-Leninism still has great contemporary value, and remains very much “present.” Marxism-Leninism and its application to national conditions will surely promote the development of world socialism, from a low tide to a climax and victory. – Cheng Enfu
Do you know that the mighty hand
that plucked a Caesar from the throne, was
as soft as the rose?
The mighty hand
do you know whose it was?
Do you know that the voice of flaming water,
Earthly impulse in which your owner drowned,
always sang to life?
Of that flaming voice
do you know who its owner was?
Do you know that that wind that roared
like a nocturnal bull, was also
a caressing wave?
The wind that roared
do you know whose it was?
And do you know that the red-robed sun,
of hard arrows implacable owner,
dried Nevas of weeping?
Of the sun of red weeping
Do you know who was its owner?
I'm talking about Lenin, storm and shelter,
Lenin sows with you,
oh peasant with wrinkled brow!
Lenin sings with you,
oh pure neck without no halter or master!
Oh people you defeated your enemy, Lenin is with you,
Like a simple and cheerful kind god,
Day by day in the factory and the wheat,
one and diverse universal friend,
Of iron and lily, of volcano and dream!
“ Lenin ”
Nicolás Guillén
https://orinocotribune.com/five-of-leni ... than-ever/
JANUARY 23, 2024
Vladimir Lenin. Photo: Midwestern Marx/File photo.
By: Carlos L. Garrido – Jan 21, 2024
The day Lenin passed away
A soldier of the death watch, so runs the story, told his comrades: I did not want to
Believe it. I went inside, and
Shouted in his ear: ‘Ilyich
The exploiters are on their way!’ He did not move. Now
I knew that he has expired.
When a good man wants to leave
How can you hold him back?
Tell him why he is needed.
That holds him.
What could hold Lenin back?…
The weak do not fight. The stronger
Fight on perhaps for an hour.
Those who are stronger still fight for many years
The strongest fight on all their life.
These are indispensable.
Bertolt Brecht – Cantata on the Day of Lenin’s Death
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.
Langston Hughes – Lenin
Today we mourn a hundred years since the physical death of one of our dearest comrades, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to us as Lenin. It would be foolish, however, to think that his physical death meant the death of his ideas. Today, after a hundred years, Lenin’s ideas are as indispensable as ever. “They are mistaken when they think that his death is the end of his ideas”. This was told to us by Fidel Castro upon the death of Che Guevara, but it applies with equal accuracy to Lenin’s death.
Lenin was never, as the West reduces him to, simply the man of practice who ‘applied’ what Marx and Engels wrote. To be sure, in terms of revolutionary practice and the development of the tactics for class struggle in the era of imperialism, there is a particle of truth to this understanding. Few have understood the class struggle, and how to advance it, better than Lenin. Few have been so in tune with the Marxist worldview, so utterly devoid of dogmas and the purity fetish, as to understanding the dialectics of socialism in its utmost profundity. Lenin, whether pre or post conquest of power, was a man who excelled in using the Marxist outlook as a guide to action, as the greatest tool and best working weapon, as Engels described it, for the masses to change (and not just interpret) the world. Whether in the creative development of the vanguard party of a new type in the era of ultimate tzarist repression, where organizing work had to take a clandestine underground form with professional revolutionaries (which has always been misinterpreted in the West as a top-down elitist party), or in his understanding of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle, or in his development of the New Economic Policy during the first period of socialist construction, Lenin’s practice indubitably applied and creatively developed upon the work of Marx and Engels.
However, Lenin as a theoretician (which is dialectically embedded with the previous Lenin) is often overlooked, especially in the chauvinistic West which sees Europe as the bearers of ‘theory’ and the East as the appliers of it in ‘practice’. Lukacs is still right in telling us that “Lenin is the greatest thinker to have been produced by the revolutionary working-class movement since Marx… the only theoretician equal to Marx.”
On this centenary anniversary of his passing, here are five central developments of Lenin’s upon the Marxist tradition.
1) In the sphere of philosophy, he develops Marxist materialism in the context of the critique of Machist idealism and its spread in Russian Marxist spaces. This is done in his 1908 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a text which the postmodernized Western Marxists are nauseated by because of its outright defense of materialism and philosophical realism. Even some of those who have not fully condemned Lenin would like to create a split between the 1908 Lenin and the post-1914 one. While it is true that his 1914 philosophical studies in Switzerland, especially his study of Hegel, represents one of the greatest advancements in dialectical materialist literature, it ought to be added to the previous philosophical insights, not used to reject them. Frankly, what else can be expected from the Western Marxists, those who look everywhere and only see splits (early and mature Marx, Marx from Engels, pre and post 1914 Lenin, Lenin and post Lenin socialist construction in Russia, etc.)? Conjoined, therefore, with his philosophical developments to the Marxist worldview in 1908 are his 1914 philosophical notebooks. While Marx never got to provide us with the short ‘Dialectics’ text he promised, in his 1914 studies Lenin does give us ample work on a materialist interpretation of Hegel and the Marxist sublation of his dialectical worldview (which, as an upside-down materialism, holds the germ for the Marxist outlook), playing for future revolutionaries the role Marx’s ‘Dialectics’ presumably would have.
2) Lenin developed the Marxist understanding of capitalist political economy for the stage of imperialism and monopoly capital. Headway had already been made here by Marx in the third volume of Capital, but it is only with the carnage of the first world war that the imperialist stage of capitalism develops to a point of maturity where it could be understood as a stage of its own, a partially qualitative development within the capitalist mode of life as a whole. It is here where Lenin crystalizes this analysis, concretizing the previous work done by Hobson, Hilferding, and Bukharin. Lenin’s analysis of the dominance of finance capital in the age of imperialism has only become more indispensable as global financial institutions rose following the second world war. His prediction that imperialism will be conjoined with constant imperialist warfare (both of an inter-imperialist kind and of the kind that attempts to subjugate under imperial dominance nations outside of its sphere of influence), could not have been proven more prophetic in this last century, as US imperialism has waged hybrid warfare against virtually every country on the planet. Without the theoretical framework of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, it is quite literally impossible to come anywhere near an accurate understanding of the world today. We have Lenin to thank for this clarity.
3) Conjoined with his insights on imperialism and the role of the peasantry in socialist revolutions, Lenin develops upon the anti-colonial works of Marx and Engels, who see national liberation struggles as forms of class struggles. Lenin sees the primacy these often take in the class struggles of imperialized nations against national oppression. All throughout the non-Western-European/Anglo world, these struggles have risen – sometimes securing their successes for decades to come (Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc.) and sometimes being overthrown by dirty US/European imperialist tactics after the successful conquest of power (Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, etc.).
The task Lenin bestowed on the proletariat of imperial nations, of connecting their class struggles to the rising anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, is as pertinent as ever. In the US, as it becomes more evident how the empire feeds off the republic (as Michael Parenti calls it), it is easier than ever to see the unity of interests between the anti-imperialist struggles of the global south and those we face at home. As the labor aristocracy (a concept Lenin develops from Engels and the American Marxist, Daniel de Leon) is further disconnecting itself from the rank-and-file, the task of showing American working people the ineptitude of their bourgeoisified leaders, and henceforth, the socialist and anti-imperialist way forward, becomes easier. In some ways, the leadership of Chris Smalls in the Amazon Labor Union, Shawn Fain in the UAW, and (to a lesser extent) Sean O’Brian in the Teamsters, signifies a militant development in the labor movement – a movement growing (to various degrees) in class, socialist, and internationalist consciousness along lines Lenin would be proud of. This would, of course, also be true of the millions of American working folks who’ve protested over the last three months against the Zionist genocide of the colonized, Palestinian people.
4) Lenin concretizes the Marxist understanding of the state and socialist construction. In The State and Revolution (as well as in other essays), Lenin compiles Marx and Engels’s insights on the state and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. No text had ever provided the Marxist view of the state so succinctly and elaborately as Lenin, using the works of Marx and Engels (and most importantly, the Marxist method), did. This remains a necessary read for all communists. With it, all the abstract usages of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘dictatorship’ that the imperialist bourgeoisie uses to legitimize itself and attack its enemies are capable of being unpacked and ridiculed for what they are – empty abstractions. For whom is the democracy and freedom the bourgeoisie talks about? Is it for the people? NO! It is democracy for the rich, the insignificant minority! It is freedom of capital to exploit and accumulate! Is this not in direct opposition to a democracy and freedom of the people? Has it not been shown that the people, if they succeed in the conquest of power, must employ the method of ‘dictatorship’ against the counter-revolutionaries and imperialists to protect their revolutions? To protect actual popular and participatory democracy and freedom? Lenin’s refinement of Marx and Engels’s insights has allowed subsequent revolutionary struggles to understand the importance of overturning a state which is designed to reproduce the bourgeois mode of life for a working class state which can, as long as capitalist-imperialism exists, defend the people’s revolution from imperialist hybrid warfare and the counter-revolutionary collaborators which might still exists at home.
Lenin’s understanding of the workers state must also take into account the adjustments that had to be made in the post-revolutionary period, when it became clear that emphasis had to be put on developing the productive forces and an efficient state that could guide the process of destroying the global inequalities between imperialist and imperialized nations. This project, as Lenin’s NEP, Stalin’s collectivization, and the experience of China’s reform and opening up shows, can occur through various means. Capital can be employed, under the leadership of a strong and disciplined communist party, in the task of developing the forces of production for socialism. As long as “political capital,” as Mao called it, is sustained in the hands of the people through their communist and workers parties, the process of capital expropriation can take a variety of different speeds and time. Lenin’s insights following the revolution helps us concretize the dialectic of political and economic capital already employed by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto, where they argued that: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”
5) Lastly, Lenin’s development of democratic centralism continues to be, in my estimation, the most effective organizational method (whether for a party or state) that has ever been employed. Its unity (when it is properly applied) of the democratic components of open debate and consultation with the efficiency of centralized and unified action, are pillars of socialist democracy. “Centralism based on democracy with democracy under the guidance of centralism,” as Deng Xiaoping said. Unity of action amongst those which fight for the masses of humanity is amongst the scariest dictums the ruling classes’ ears have heard. The ruling classes (not just the capitalist ones) survive from divide et impera (divide and conquer). They love factions and factionalization. Just take a look at James Madison’s Federalist 10, where factionalization of the masses is seen as the key to preventing their unified revolt against the elite on the basis of the property question. But Leninist unity of action is preceded by democratic consultation, by the debating, on the part of the party cadre (the most advanced detachment of the proletariat), of the question at hand. The democratic component has often been the hardest to achieve, limiting our ability to appreciate the effectiveness of the unity of action. Nonetheless, even as the old communist parties in the West seem to have mostly fallen down the route of tailing the social democrats and liberals, the need for a strong communist party, guided by the methods of democratic centralism, could not be more urgent for satisfying the crisis in the subjective factor we are experiencing in our time – a time objectively pregnant with revolutionary potential (see my book, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism for more here).
Marxism-Leninism is the only worldview that contains within it these indispensable developments upon the open and ever-expanding Marxist tradition. In the US, Marxism-Leninism has been concretized to the national conditions of our country through the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Henry Winston, and others who have been able to assess the role of the color line in dividing working people, and hence, the role that the anti-racist struggle has played as the leading form of class struggle in the US (for a detailed analysis of this, see my paper ‘Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction: The Black Worker and Racist False Consciousness’). It is this Marxist-Leninist tradition, enhanced and concretized by the insights of Dubois (the father of American Marxism – see article cited above for why I say this), Winston, MLK Jr., etc., that creates the foundation for the development of American Marxism (as some of us have called it at the Institute), or American Marxism-Leninism. It is this theoretical framework which allows us to avoid the purity fetish, understand the American trajectory and the process of the last centuries’ bourgeoisfication and this centuries’ reproletarianization of the working masses. It is, in short, this Marxism-Leninism adjusted to our context that allows us to understand our class struggles and our pathway forward, guiding us as we overthrow the parasitic imperialist state and establish a working class democratic-dictatorship on its ruin. In other words, an actual government (or mode of life) of, by, and for working people. A promise our capitalist class was never able to actualize, but that we – working people – will!
Leninism is not only the body of Marxist ideas that guided the Soviet-Russian proletarian revolution to victory and allowed socialist construction to begin, but is also an international Marxist theory, rooted in the thinking of Marx and Engels, that has guided the international proletariat in its struggles and construction activity. In the twenty-first century, worldwide Marxism-Leninism still has great contemporary value, and remains very much “present.” Marxism-Leninism and its application to national conditions will surely promote the development of world socialism, from a low tide to a climax and victory. – Cheng Enfu
Do you know that the mighty hand
that plucked a Caesar from the throne, was
as soft as the rose?
The mighty hand
do you know whose it was?
Do you know that the voice of flaming water,
Earthly impulse in which your owner drowned,
always sang to life?
Of that flaming voice
do you know who its owner was?
Do you know that that wind that roared
like a nocturnal bull, was also
a caressing wave?
The wind that roared
do you know whose it was?
And do you know that the red-robed sun,
of hard arrows implacable owner,
dried Nevas of weeping?
Of the sun of red weeping
Do you know who was its owner?
I'm talking about Lenin, storm and shelter,
Lenin sows with you,
oh peasant with wrinkled brow!
Lenin sings with you,
oh pure neck without no halter or master!
Oh people you defeated your enemy, Lenin is with you,
Like a simple and cheerful kind god,
Day by day in the factory and the wheat,
one and diverse universal friend,
Of iron and lily, of volcano and dream!
“ Lenin ”
Nicolás Guillén
https://orinocotribune.com/five-of-leni ... than-ever/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
100 years ago Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was buried
January 27, 23:33
And today is the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s funeral on Red Square in Moscow.
It turns out that the difference between them and the date of lifting the siege of Leningrad is exactly 20 years, day to day. I’ll also post some photos from those days.
1. Meeting Lenin’s coffin at the Paveletsky station (a steam locomotive is visible in the background). Kalinin (in front of everyone) carries the coffin across the square, with Bukharin and Tomsky to his right and left. Behind Tomsky are Kamenev and Stalin, and behind Bukharin one can see Zinoviev’s hair, then Molotov (who is only 31 years old) and someone else, he has not identified. Trotsky was not there, which later cost him dearly.
2. Also Paveletsky station. But here it was mainly the military who were in the foreground. The coffin is carried by Kalinin in a fur coat, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov, the rest are not visible.
3. And the ceremony on January 27, 1924 - the military carries the coffin to Red Square. Budyonny is clearly recognizable ahead.
@periskop_pacific - zinc
More photos from the funeral here https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/618747.html
At home I still have a 1924 newspaper published on the day of the funeral. She survived the Great Patriotic War with occupation and numerous relocations.
Well, according to Ilyich, everything has already been said long ago - a block that forever changed Russia and the rest of the world. One of the greatest representatives of our people, who will be remembered for a very, very long time.
And it is not at all by chance that Stalin always called himself the main disciple of Lenin, on whose ideas our country and our people rose to unprecedented heights, and then to the stars.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8922484.html
Google Translator
********
From Cassad's Telegram account:
Colonelcassad
355th day of the siege of Leningrad. There were posters all over the city: “Great Philharmonic Hall, Sunday, August 9, 1942. Symphony orchestra concert. Shostakovich. Seventh Symphony (for the first time)."
The concert was supposed to last 80 minutes. The command set a task for the Red Army soldiers:
“During the performance of the Seventh Symphony by composer Shostakovich, not a single enemy shell should explode in Leningrad!”
The artillerymen took up their combat positions at the guns. The timing has been calculated. Spectators will begin to gather at the Philharmonic in advance, which means an additional 30 minutes and the same amount of time for citizens to go home. For 2 hours and 20 minutes, the German guns must be silent, which means our art must work, performing its “fiery symphony.” Everyone was involved. A special role was given to intelligence. It was necessary to know exactly which enemy guns were ready and able to hit the city. You need to know their number in order to calculate the required ammunition to complete this task.
The reconnaissance was completed. Goals were defined. Ammunition is allocated with a reserve. The commander of the artillery of the 42nd Army, Major General Mikhail Semenovich Mikhalkin, was appointed responsible for completing the task.
The Germans knew about the upcoming concert and prepared their guns to deliver a precise and massive strike just in time to kill as many citizens as possible. But they did not know about the plans of the Red Army command to hold their own artillery concert.
And so, half an hour before the start of the concert, our artillery began to play with all its “violins”. The strike was carried out simultaneously on all enemy batteries, observation posts and communication centers, without giving a single German gun a chance to “speak.”
At this time, nothing in the Philharmonic hall reminded of the war. The smell of peace was in the air. Huge crystal chandeliers were lit. The halls were cleaned to a shine. However, the Philharmonic was not heated, and the audience sat in outerwear. Despite the fact that it was summer, it was bitterly cold in this stone building. Conductor Karl Ilyich Eliasberg stood at the console in a tailcoat and a snow-white shirt with a bow tie, which set an example and, despite the cold, the entire orchestra took off their outerwear and took their places. Throughout the city, the performance of the concert was broadcast through loudspeakers. And the conductor waved his baton.
During the concert, a combat alarm sounded. There were some military personnel in the hall who were forced to move into position. At this time, violating the rules for holding symphony concerts, but paying tribute to the Red Army soldiers, Eliasberg stopped the game and applauded the Red Army soldiers leaving their seats, and the entire orchestra applauded.
Many years after the war, two German tourists sought out the conductor Eliasberg and told him: “We listened to the symphony that day. It was then, on August 9, 1942, that it became clear that we had lost the war. We felt your strength, capable of overcoming hunger, fear, even death.”
During the entire eighty minutes that Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony was playing, not a single enemy shell exploded in Leningrad. Not a single enemy Messer broke into the sky over Leningrad. The forces of the defending Soviet soldiers were exhausted. But each of the soldiers firmly held his post. The composer of the Leningrad Symphony, Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, also held his battle post. He volunteered for the fire department and preferred to hear his work on combat duty rather than in the Philharmonic hall.
@NeoficialniyBeZsonoV
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
January 27, 23:33
And today is the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s funeral on Red Square in Moscow.
It turns out that the difference between them and the date of lifting the siege of Leningrad is exactly 20 years, day to day. I’ll also post some photos from those days.
1. Meeting Lenin’s coffin at the Paveletsky station (a steam locomotive is visible in the background). Kalinin (in front of everyone) carries the coffin across the square, with Bukharin and Tomsky to his right and left. Behind Tomsky are Kamenev and Stalin, and behind Bukharin one can see Zinoviev’s hair, then Molotov (who is only 31 years old) and someone else, he has not identified. Trotsky was not there, which later cost him dearly.
2. Also Paveletsky station. But here it was mainly the military who were in the foreground. The coffin is carried by Kalinin in a fur coat, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov, the rest are not visible.
3. And the ceremony on January 27, 1924 - the military carries the coffin to Red Square. Budyonny is clearly recognizable ahead.
@periskop_pacific - zinc
More photos from the funeral here https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/618747.html
At home I still have a 1924 newspaper published on the day of the funeral. She survived the Great Patriotic War with occupation and numerous relocations.
Well, according to Ilyich, everything has already been said long ago - a block that forever changed Russia and the rest of the world. One of the greatest representatives of our people, who will be remembered for a very, very long time.
And it is not at all by chance that Stalin always called himself the main disciple of Lenin, on whose ideas our country and our people rose to unprecedented heights, and then to the stars.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8922484.html
Google Translator
********
From Cassad's Telegram account:
Colonelcassad
355th day of the siege of Leningrad. There were posters all over the city: “Great Philharmonic Hall, Sunday, August 9, 1942. Symphony orchestra concert. Shostakovich. Seventh Symphony (for the first time)."
The concert was supposed to last 80 minutes. The command set a task for the Red Army soldiers:
“During the performance of the Seventh Symphony by composer Shostakovich, not a single enemy shell should explode in Leningrad!”
The artillerymen took up their combat positions at the guns. The timing has been calculated. Spectators will begin to gather at the Philharmonic in advance, which means an additional 30 minutes and the same amount of time for citizens to go home. For 2 hours and 20 minutes, the German guns must be silent, which means our art must work, performing its “fiery symphony.” Everyone was involved. A special role was given to intelligence. It was necessary to know exactly which enemy guns were ready and able to hit the city. You need to know their number in order to calculate the required ammunition to complete this task.
The reconnaissance was completed. Goals were defined. Ammunition is allocated with a reserve. The commander of the artillery of the 42nd Army, Major General Mikhail Semenovich Mikhalkin, was appointed responsible for completing the task.
The Germans knew about the upcoming concert and prepared their guns to deliver a precise and massive strike just in time to kill as many citizens as possible. But they did not know about the plans of the Red Army command to hold their own artillery concert.
And so, half an hour before the start of the concert, our artillery began to play with all its “violins”. The strike was carried out simultaneously on all enemy batteries, observation posts and communication centers, without giving a single German gun a chance to “speak.”
At this time, nothing in the Philharmonic hall reminded of the war. The smell of peace was in the air. Huge crystal chandeliers were lit. The halls were cleaned to a shine. However, the Philharmonic was not heated, and the audience sat in outerwear. Despite the fact that it was summer, it was bitterly cold in this stone building. Conductor Karl Ilyich Eliasberg stood at the console in a tailcoat and a snow-white shirt with a bow tie, which set an example and, despite the cold, the entire orchestra took off their outerwear and took their places. Throughout the city, the performance of the concert was broadcast through loudspeakers. And the conductor waved his baton.
During the concert, a combat alarm sounded. There were some military personnel in the hall who were forced to move into position. At this time, violating the rules for holding symphony concerts, but paying tribute to the Red Army soldiers, Eliasberg stopped the game and applauded the Red Army soldiers leaving their seats, and the entire orchestra applauded.
Many years after the war, two German tourists sought out the conductor Eliasberg and told him: “We listened to the symphony that day. It was then, on August 9, 1942, that it became clear that we had lost the war. We felt your strength, capable of overcoming hunger, fear, even death.”
During the entire eighty minutes that Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony was playing, not a single enemy shell exploded in Leningrad. Not a single enemy Messer broke into the sky over Leningrad. The forces of the defending Soviet soldiers were exhausted. But each of the soldiers firmly held his post. The composer of the Leningrad Symphony, Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, also held his battle post. He volunteered for the fire department and preferred to hear his work on combat duty rather than in the Philharmonic hall.
@NeoficialniyBeZsonoV
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Warsaw reinforcement shock battalion
February 1, 23:26
“Red Tin”
The Whites were hopelessly losing to the Reds in biting battle titles.
"Warsaw Reinforcement Shock Battalion" - a detachment formed from workers of the Warsaw Reinforcement Plant evacuated to Moscow. Fought on the Tsaritsyn front.
And all the pathos of the whites with all sorts of “Death Battalions” goes head to head.
In September 1917, the factory manager of the Saratov Zhest plant formed a Red Guard detachment of 150 soldiers. The detachment was called simply: “Red Tin”.
In the photo - the direct organizer of "Red Tin", the head of the factory Bolshevik cell, Kirill Ivanovich Plaksin.
(c) Grigory Tsidenkov
https://vk.com/id6186050 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8933200.html
Small war of a big country
February 2, 8:48
Small war of a big country
On today's stream ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3u-d7B ... acticMedia ) with O.N. Kiselev on Tactics, a question arose about ammunition consumption during the Soviet-Finnish war. I'll give you a little information.
Let's start with the main ridge of the Red Army artillery. During the entire Soviet-Finnish Red Army, 152-mm rounds for howitzer-cannons ML-20 model 1937 fired 288 thousand. How can December 1939 and January-February and half of March 1940 be compared? I propose in the summer of 1943. Then, too, there was a pause for a month and no longer the shell hunger of the first war winter. The numbers of the fronts roughly corresponded to the group deployed against the Finns.
The Voronezh Front fired 59.7 thousand of the same 152-mm rounds for the ML-20 in June-July-August 1943, at the height of the Kursk Bulge, and the Central Front fired 78.5 thousand in the same three months. Even as a duet they don’t live up to the Finnish campaign.
The Finnish spacecraft fired 47.5 thousand 203-mm rounds, the Voronezh Front for June-August 1943 - 6.8 thousand, the Central Front - 7.4 thousand. Well, OK, after all, the fortifications in the summer of 1943 were attacked more simply, the field defenses.
The Finnish one fired 487.7 thousand pieces of 152-mm howitzer rounds of all types, the Voronezh one - 27.6 thousand pieces (due to the gradual disappearance of the artillery systems of this class themselves, and the D-1s were just appearing). The central front fired 67.3 thousand rounds of 152-mm howitzers. The difference is impressive.
122-mm howitzers fired 889 thousand units against the Finns, the Central Front during the specified time interval of the summer of 1943 277.3 thousand units, the Voronezh Front 169.8 thousand units.
But in terms of smaller calibers, the fronts of the summer of 1943 covered the Soviet-Finnish sheep like a bull. The spacecraft fired 881.5 thousand rounds of 76.2 mm divisional guns against the Finns. During the indicated three months, the Central Front fired 1 million 241 thousand rounds to the divisions, the Voronezh Front 975.3 thousand.
So the Red Army then, in the “unfamous war,” could more freely use artillery ammunition, especially heavy artillery.
(c) Alexey Isaev
https://t.me/iron_wind/797 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8933661.html
Google Translator
******
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHq777 ... 6SZdABmyaA
(Google translator getting weirder and weirder. Dunno if it's colloquialisms or what, but 'landings', 'attack aircraft' and now 'spacecraft'....geez Louise.)
February 1, 23:26
“Red Tin”
The Whites were hopelessly losing to the Reds in biting battle titles.
"Warsaw Reinforcement Shock Battalion" - a detachment formed from workers of the Warsaw Reinforcement Plant evacuated to Moscow. Fought on the Tsaritsyn front.
And all the pathos of the whites with all sorts of “Death Battalions” goes head to head.
In September 1917, the factory manager of the Saratov Zhest plant formed a Red Guard detachment of 150 soldiers. The detachment was called simply: “Red Tin”.
In the photo - the direct organizer of "Red Tin", the head of the factory Bolshevik cell, Kirill Ivanovich Plaksin.
(c) Grigory Tsidenkov
https://vk.com/id6186050 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8933200.html
Small war of a big country
February 2, 8:48
Small war of a big country
On today's stream ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3u-d7B ... acticMedia ) with O.N. Kiselev on Tactics, a question arose about ammunition consumption during the Soviet-Finnish war. I'll give you a little information.
Let's start with the main ridge of the Red Army artillery. During the entire Soviet-Finnish Red Army, 152-mm rounds for howitzer-cannons ML-20 model 1937 fired 288 thousand. How can December 1939 and January-February and half of March 1940 be compared? I propose in the summer of 1943. Then, too, there was a pause for a month and no longer the shell hunger of the first war winter. The numbers of the fronts roughly corresponded to the group deployed against the Finns.
The Voronezh Front fired 59.7 thousand of the same 152-mm rounds for the ML-20 in June-July-August 1943, at the height of the Kursk Bulge, and the Central Front fired 78.5 thousand in the same three months. Even as a duet they don’t live up to the Finnish campaign.
The Finnish spacecraft fired 47.5 thousand 203-mm rounds, the Voronezh Front for June-August 1943 - 6.8 thousand, the Central Front - 7.4 thousand. Well, OK, after all, the fortifications in the summer of 1943 were attacked more simply, the field defenses.
The Finnish one fired 487.7 thousand pieces of 152-mm howitzer rounds of all types, the Voronezh one - 27.6 thousand pieces (due to the gradual disappearance of the artillery systems of this class themselves, and the D-1s were just appearing). The central front fired 67.3 thousand rounds of 152-mm howitzers. The difference is impressive.
122-mm howitzers fired 889 thousand units against the Finns, the Central Front during the specified time interval of the summer of 1943 277.3 thousand units, the Voronezh Front 169.8 thousand units.
But in terms of smaller calibers, the fronts of the summer of 1943 covered the Soviet-Finnish sheep like a bull. The spacecraft fired 881.5 thousand rounds of 76.2 mm divisional guns against the Finns. During the indicated three months, the Central Front fired 1 million 241 thousand rounds to the divisions, the Voronezh Front 975.3 thousand.
So the Red Army then, in the “unfamous war,” could more freely use artillery ammunition, especially heavy artillery.
(c) Alexey Isaev
https://t.me/iron_wind/797 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8933661.html
Google Translator
******
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHq777 ... 6SZdABmyaA
(Google translator getting weirder and weirder. Dunno if it's colloquialisms or what, but 'landings', 'attack aircraft' and now 'spacecraft'....geez Louise.)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Pushkin's aerial duel
February 7, 12:08
Pushkin's aerial duel
Continuing to collect material on the history of the Oranienbaum bridgehead, I turned to the air battle for Leningrad in the fall of 1941. In September-October, the main goal of fighter aircraft, including naval ones, was to hunt for German bombers.
On October 13, a flight of the 71st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet flew out for reconnaissance along the usual route (as the pilots then called it “the ring”): Uritsk (now Ligovo) – Gatchina – Weimarn – Kotly – Oranienbaum. The flight did not detect the German bombers and made another “circle”. From the direction of the Gatchina airfield, two German Me-109s flew out to intercept the flight, which overtook our pilots over the Dudurgof lakes. The I-153 Chaika biplanes on which the pilots fought that day were naturally inferior in almost all characteristics to the Messers. During the battle, the leader's plane was shot down and began to leave for Kronstadt. The naval pilots still managed to “get” one Messer: it started smoking and went to the Gatchina airfield.
But another, almost at Kronstadt itself, overtook the plane of Lieutenant Grigory Pushkin and shot him down. Pushkin managed to jump out with a parachute. True, the German was so carried away by the pursuit that he did not notice how Pushkin’s comrade came “on his tail”. A well-aimed burst - and the German plane began to sharply lose altitude and the pilot was forced to abandon it. So, both pilots, ours and the German one, began to descend onto the surface of the Gulf of Finland on parachutes, and at a short distance from each other. The German pulled out a pistol and opened fire on Pushkin. Pushkin answered from his pistol. When they splashed down, the duel between them continued, although without much success. By the time the boat arrived from Kronstadt, both pilots had used up their ammunition and would probably have fought in a “water” hand-to-hand fight if the Soviet sailors had not caught both of them and taken them to different sides of the boat.
Grigory Ivanovich Pushkin was born in 1917 and was drafted into aviation in 1937. He took part in the Soviet-Finnish War, then continued to serve in naval aviation. Since August 1941, he took part in the Battle of Leningrad. In heavy battles in September-October 1941, he shot down three German Ju-88 bombers that did not deliver their bombs to Leningrad and Kronstadt, for which he was nominated for the Order of the Red Banner of Battle.
Unfortunately, on December 14, 1941, this brave commander died during one of the air battles for Leningrad.
In the photo: commander of the 1st squadron, Lieutenant Grigory Ivanovich Pushkin (1917-1941) at the I-153 “Chaika” fighter, Bychye Pole airfield, Kotlin Island. November 1941. Photographer Boris Vasyutinsky
(c) Gleb Targonsky
https://vk.com/targonskiy?w=wall-10116318_2326%2Fall - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8945904.html
Google Translator
February 7, 12:08
Pushkin's aerial duel
Continuing to collect material on the history of the Oranienbaum bridgehead, I turned to the air battle for Leningrad in the fall of 1941. In September-October, the main goal of fighter aircraft, including naval ones, was to hunt for German bombers.
On October 13, a flight of the 71st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet flew out for reconnaissance along the usual route (as the pilots then called it “the ring”): Uritsk (now Ligovo) – Gatchina – Weimarn – Kotly – Oranienbaum. The flight did not detect the German bombers and made another “circle”. From the direction of the Gatchina airfield, two German Me-109s flew out to intercept the flight, which overtook our pilots over the Dudurgof lakes. The I-153 Chaika biplanes on which the pilots fought that day were naturally inferior in almost all characteristics to the Messers. During the battle, the leader's plane was shot down and began to leave for Kronstadt. The naval pilots still managed to “get” one Messer: it started smoking and went to the Gatchina airfield.
But another, almost at Kronstadt itself, overtook the plane of Lieutenant Grigory Pushkin and shot him down. Pushkin managed to jump out with a parachute. True, the German was so carried away by the pursuit that he did not notice how Pushkin’s comrade came “on his tail”. A well-aimed burst - and the German plane began to sharply lose altitude and the pilot was forced to abandon it. So, both pilots, ours and the German one, began to descend onto the surface of the Gulf of Finland on parachutes, and at a short distance from each other. The German pulled out a pistol and opened fire on Pushkin. Pushkin answered from his pistol. When they splashed down, the duel between them continued, although without much success. By the time the boat arrived from Kronstadt, both pilots had used up their ammunition and would probably have fought in a “water” hand-to-hand fight if the Soviet sailors had not caught both of them and taken them to different sides of the boat.
Grigory Ivanovich Pushkin was born in 1917 and was drafted into aviation in 1937. He took part in the Soviet-Finnish War, then continued to serve in naval aviation. Since August 1941, he took part in the Battle of Leningrad. In heavy battles in September-October 1941, he shot down three German Ju-88 bombers that did not deliver their bombs to Leningrad and Kronstadt, for which he was nominated for the Order of the Red Banner of Battle.
Unfortunately, on December 14, 1941, this brave commander died during one of the air battles for Leningrad.
In the photo: commander of the 1st squadron, Lieutenant Grigory Ivanovich Pushkin (1917-1941) at the I-153 “Chaika” fighter, Bychye Pole airfield, Kotlin Island. November 1941. Photographer Boris Vasyutinsky
(c) Gleb Targonsky
https://vk.com/targonskiy?w=wall-10116318_2326%2Fall - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8945904.html
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
On liability for unauthorized departure from enterprises
February 22, 12:26
A remarkable order from the USSR Prosecutor on increasing liability for people leaving their jobs at enterprises and requiring the most high-profile cases of this kind to be covered in the press.
Order of the Prosecutor of the USSR No. 01. On measures to implement the Decree of the PVS of the USSR of December 26, 1941 “On the responsibility of workers and employees of military industry enterprises for unauthorized departure from enterprises.” January 4, 1942
Archive - GAVO. F. R-3174. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 12-14
https://istmat.org/node/68814 - zinc
The decree itself was issued in December 1941 and provided for 5 to 8 years in prison for unauthorized leaving a defense enterprise, equating this to desertion.
ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WORKERS AND EMPLOYEES OF MILITARY INDUSTRY ENTERPRISES FOR UNAUTHORIZED LEAVE FROM ENTERPRISES
Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated December 26, 1941 (“Gazette of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR” 1942 No. 2)
The task of increasing production at military industry enterprises and further strengthening the supply of the Red Army The army with all types of weapons requires the unconditional assignment of workers and employees to military industry enterprises.
Providing the military industry with a permanent workforce is of particular importance for the rapid restoration to full capacity of military factories evacuated to the eastern regions of the country.
In order to completely eliminate the still occurring unauthorized departures of workers and employees from military industry enterprises and to strengthen the responsibility of workers and employees working in military factories, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decides:
1. All male and female workers and employees of military industry enterprises ( aviation, tank, weapons, ammunition, military shipbuilding, military chemistry), including evacuated enterprises, as well as enterprises of other industries serving the military industry on the principle of cooperation, are considered mobilized for the period of the war and assigned for permanent work to those enterprises on whom they work.
2. Unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises of the specified industries, including evacuees, shall be considered as desertion and persons guilty of unauthorized departure (desertion) shall be punished with imprisonment for a term of 5 to 8 years.
3. Establish that cases of persons guilty of unauthorized departure (desertion) from enterprises of the specified industries are considered by military tribunals.
https://istmat.org/node/24361 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8980592.html
Google Translator
Skilled workers moving from plant to plant pursuing the highest wages had been problem in the USSR once it got on it's industrial feet. So much for the lack of freedom....But in times of existential war it was intolerable.
February 22, 12:26
A remarkable order from the USSR Prosecutor on increasing liability for people leaving their jobs at enterprises and requiring the most high-profile cases of this kind to be covered in the press.
Order of the Prosecutor of the USSR No. 01. On measures to implement the Decree of the PVS of the USSR of December 26, 1941 “On the responsibility of workers and employees of military industry enterprises for unauthorized departure from enterprises.” January 4, 1942
Archive - GAVO. F. R-3174. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 12-14
https://istmat.org/node/68814 - zinc
The decree itself was issued in December 1941 and provided for 5 to 8 years in prison for unauthorized leaving a defense enterprise, equating this to desertion.
ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WORKERS AND EMPLOYEES OF MILITARY INDUSTRY ENTERPRISES FOR UNAUTHORIZED LEAVE FROM ENTERPRISES
Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated December 26, 1941 (“Gazette of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR” 1942 No. 2)
The task of increasing production at military industry enterprises and further strengthening the supply of the Red Army The army with all types of weapons requires the unconditional assignment of workers and employees to military industry enterprises.
Providing the military industry with a permanent workforce is of particular importance for the rapid restoration to full capacity of military factories evacuated to the eastern regions of the country.
In order to completely eliminate the still occurring unauthorized departures of workers and employees from military industry enterprises and to strengthen the responsibility of workers and employees working in military factories, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decides:
1. All male and female workers and employees of military industry enterprises ( aviation, tank, weapons, ammunition, military shipbuilding, military chemistry), including evacuated enterprises, as well as enterprises of other industries serving the military industry on the principle of cooperation, are considered mobilized for the period of the war and assigned for permanent work to those enterprises on whom they work.
2. Unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises of the specified industries, including evacuees, shall be considered as desertion and persons guilty of unauthorized departure (desertion) shall be punished with imprisonment for a term of 5 to 8 years.
3. Establish that cases of persons guilty of unauthorized departure (desertion) from enterprises of the specified industries are considered by military tribunals.
https://istmat.org/node/24361 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8980592.html
Google Translator
Skilled workers moving from plant to plant pursuing the highest wages had been problem in the USSR once it got on it's industrial feet. So much for the lack of freedom....But in times of existential war it was intolerable.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: The Soviet Union
Siberian get-together
February 27, 14:39
Siberian get-together.
In the fierce battles for the Borzya and Olovyannaya stations in April 1918, the troops of the Red Transbaikal Front were represented by an international battalion, in which served:
- Russians
- Hungarians
- Czechs
- Slovaks
- Germans
- Serbs
- Romanians
- Hungarian gypsies.
From the side of the white detachments of Ataman Semenov, the following fought:
- Transbaikal, Argun, Ural Cossacks
- hired Chinese soldiers
- Czech officers from prisoners of war
- Croat prisoners of war
- Serbian officers.
The weapons of the Semyonovites were Japanese.
(c) Grigory Tsidenkov
https://vk.com/id6186050?from=search&w= ... 6050_15961 - zinc
About the content of the mentioned battles:
Civil War in the Far East
The second performance of Semenov’s gangs in Transbaikalia and their defeat by the Red Guard detachments of the Daurian Front
Simultaneously with the landing in Vladivostok After the Japanese and English landings, Ataman Semenov resumed his activities.
At the end of March 1918, he announced the mobilization of Cossacks in the villages bordering Manchuria along the Argun and Onon rivers, sent out recruiters and attracted the wealthy part of the Cossacks in the border areas. He managed to form three new regiments: 1st Ononsky, 2nd Akshinsko-Mangutsky and 3rd Purinsky, with a total strength of 900 sabers.
The Japanese imperialists provided great assistance to Semenov. They gave him several hundred of their soldiers, 15 heavy guns with servants and several staff officers. American President Wilson suggested that Secretary of State Lansing also provide assistance to Semyonov.
By April 1918, Semenov had a total of up to 3 thousand people and 15 guns. Having received instructions from the Japanese interventionists to cut off the Far East from Transbaikalia and disrupt the transfer of goods from Primorye to Russia, Semenov spoke on April 5, 1918 with Art. Manchuria.
Meeting weak resistance from small detachments of the Red Guard, the Semenovtsy occupied the station. Borzya and Art. Tin. The Red Guards blew up the bridge over the Onon River and retreated to the station. Adrianovka. Lesson Art. Tin gave Semenov great benefits. He received a line with good positions that dominated the area lying to the west of Olovyannaya. In addition, to the south of Olovyannaya there were large Cossack villages, from where Semenov could draw manpower for subsequent formations.
Moving further along the railway, the advanced enemy units shot down the Red Guards' outpost and captured the station. Buryat.
Seeing that Chita was in danger, the regional Soviets and Central Siberia hurried to provide assistance to the Daurian front. The Transbaikal regional executive committee transferred all power to the military-revolutionary headquarters. The workers of Transbaikalia unanimously stood up in defense of Chita. Red Guard detachments of railway workers began to arrive at the front in the Adrianovka area. Readings 1st, Art. Khilok, miners of the Chernovsky and Arbagarsky mines. Former Hungarian prisoners of war organized an international Red Guard detachment. The Aleksandrovsky plant sent a detachment of 300 fighters led by P. N. Zhuravlev, who later became the leader of the partisan movement in Transbaikalia and the first commander of the East Transbaikal partisan front. The villages of Unda also sent their detachments - 400 soldiers, Lomovsky - 250, Nerchinsk and Nerchinsky Plant - 360, Aksha - a company of Red Guards. Workers from the Chita railway workshops equipped an armored train for the Daurian Front.
The violent mobilizations and bullying of the Semyonovites caused the growth of the partisan movement among the peasantry and the poorest Cossacks. In the villages and villages of Kurunzulai, Onon-Borzya, Lozhnikovo, Kudarino, Nizhne- and Verkhne-Goryunino and Oldonda, on April 17, the first partisan cavalry regiment of 680 sabers was formed. On the 20th of April, the villages of Kopun, Zorgol and the Gazimursky plant deployed their detachments with a total number of up to 1,400 people. These detachments united into the Kop-Zor-Gaz brigade.
At the beginning of May at the station. Red Guard detachments from the Amur region and from Siberia (from Omsk), equipped with artillery, began to arrive in Adrianovka. The 1st Far Eastern Socialist Detachment, formed from sailors, loaders and port workers from Vladivostok, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, also arrived. The detachment numbered up to a thousand fighters and had artillery. The detachment was led by experienced Bolsheviks V.A. Borodavkin and M.I. Gubelman. With the arrival of all these units, it was decided to go on the offensive. The offensive plan was developed by the commander of the Daurian Front, Sergei Lazo, together with the chief of staff, former lieutenant of the Amur Military Flotilla V.I. Radygin. The plan provided not only for the release of Art. Tin, but also the complete extermination of enemy personnel at the crossings of the Onon River. The troops were supposed to launch an offensive at dawn on May 15 in order to take their starting position in the area of the station by the end of the day. Mogoituy. The decisive blow was supposed to be delivered on May 16.
Having launched the offensive on the morning of May 15, the advanced units drove the enemy out of Buryatskaya and deployed near Mogoituy. After a two-hour battle, the White Guards were thrown back to the southeast by an encircling column from the south. Having suffered defeat at Mogoituy, Semenov decided to take the initiative into his own hands at all costs. To do this, he intended to give two battles: the first - in the area of the station and the village of Aga, the second - near the station. Tin. By fighting near Aga, Semenov wanted to gain time to evacuate property from the station. Olovyannaya, release forces, replenish them and give a decisive battle in the Olovyannaya area. Taking advantage of the hidden location of the village of Aga, Semenov, by the evening of May 15, concentrated a large detachment here, which was supposed to launch a sudden flank attack on the Red Guard units.
The side detachment of the Red Guards, having stumbled upon the Semenovites at Aga, retreated. This forced the command of the Soviet detachments to postpone the transition to a general offensive at the station. Tin, but the enemy’s plan to strike the flank of the Soviet troops was thwarted. The main forces of the Red Guards arrived and defeated the Semenovites at Aga. After the defeat at Aga, Semenov tried to pull all his troops to the area of the station. Tin, to organize resistance here. But with a quick advance and a simultaneous attack on the enemy’s center and flanks, the troops of the Daurian Front inflicted a new defeat on the Semyonovites and threw them back across the Onon River. On the morning of May 18, the Far Eastern Socialist detachment captured the station. Tin, where he captured a lot of weapons, ammunition and equipment left by the enemy during a hasty retreat.
After the loss of Olovyannaya, Semenov intended to gain a foothold on the right bank of the Onon River, occupying heights favorable for defense. The difficulty of the Soviet offensive was that they had to cross the Onon River, which was constantly under enemy fire, without any means of crossing. Concentrating their forces to the Onon River, the troops of the Daur Front went on the offensive on May 27. Despite strong machine-gun and artillery fire, the Red Guards began crossing the Onon along a destroyed railway bridge, which attracted the attention of the Semyonovites to this section.
At the same time, a detachment of Red Guard cavalry swam across the Onon 15 km north of the railway bridge and went behind enemy lines. This bold maneuver decided the fate of the Semyonovites. Having abandoned everything that they managed to take out of Olovyannaya - artillery, machine guns and the wounded, they hastily retreated to the station. Matsievskaya. The troops of the Daurian Front began to pursue the Semyonovites and on July 19, after a fierce battle, captured the station. Matsievskaya.
Having retreated to the Manchurian border, the remnants of Semenov’s detachments entrenched themselves in the area of the 86th and 87th patrols. Taking advantage of the proximity of the border and the support of the reactionary Chinese authorities, the Semenovites made from time to time forays into Soviet territory. The difficulty of eliminating them was that when Soviet troops attempted an offensive, they immediately went abroad. To eliminate the Semyonovites, Lazo at the end of July 1918 organized a combined detachment of several hundred of the 1st Argun Cossack Regiment and the International Detachment. The combined detachment was given the task of taking advantage of the darkness of the night to get into the enemy’s location and, having surrounded it, destroy it. This task was successfully solved. One dark July night, the Red Guards silently approached the enemy camp and, using bayonets and rifle butts, eliminated most of the White Guards. The surviving Semyonovites abandoned all their property and fled to Manchuria. Semenov, tearing off his shoulder straps, ran first. By morning there was not a single bandit on Soviet territory. On July 27, troops of the Daurian Front occupied the station. Manchuria. With the Chinese delegation sent for negotiations, Lazo entered into an agreement under which the Chinese authorities pledged to disarm the Semyonovites and no longer allow them to cross the Soviet border. The Chinese authorities did not fulfill this obligation under pressure from the Japanese and American imperialists . “Bloody Gabnya” found the former ataman Semenov on the territory of Manchuria and in 1946 hanged him for all his crimes.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8992728.html
Google Translator
February 27, 14:39
Siberian get-together.
In the fierce battles for the Borzya and Olovyannaya stations in April 1918, the troops of the Red Transbaikal Front were represented by an international battalion, in which served:
- Russians
- Hungarians
- Czechs
- Slovaks
- Germans
- Serbs
- Romanians
- Hungarian gypsies.
From the side of the white detachments of Ataman Semenov, the following fought:
- Transbaikal, Argun, Ural Cossacks
- hired Chinese soldiers
- Czech officers from prisoners of war
- Croat prisoners of war
- Serbian officers.
The weapons of the Semyonovites were Japanese.
(c) Grigory Tsidenkov
https://vk.com/id6186050?from=search&w= ... 6050_15961 - zinc
About the content of the mentioned battles:
Civil War in the Far East
The second performance of Semenov’s gangs in Transbaikalia and their defeat by the Red Guard detachments of the Daurian Front
Simultaneously with the landing in Vladivostok After the Japanese and English landings, Ataman Semenov resumed his activities.
At the end of March 1918, he announced the mobilization of Cossacks in the villages bordering Manchuria along the Argun and Onon rivers, sent out recruiters and attracted the wealthy part of the Cossacks in the border areas. He managed to form three new regiments: 1st Ononsky, 2nd Akshinsko-Mangutsky and 3rd Purinsky, with a total strength of 900 sabers.
The Japanese imperialists provided great assistance to Semenov. They gave him several hundred of their soldiers, 15 heavy guns with servants and several staff officers. American President Wilson suggested that Secretary of State Lansing also provide assistance to Semyonov.
By April 1918, Semenov had a total of up to 3 thousand people and 15 guns. Having received instructions from the Japanese interventionists to cut off the Far East from Transbaikalia and disrupt the transfer of goods from Primorye to Russia, Semenov spoke on April 5, 1918 with Art. Manchuria.
Meeting weak resistance from small detachments of the Red Guard, the Semenovtsy occupied the station. Borzya and Art. Tin. The Red Guards blew up the bridge over the Onon River and retreated to the station. Adrianovka. Lesson Art. Tin gave Semenov great benefits. He received a line with good positions that dominated the area lying to the west of Olovyannaya. In addition, to the south of Olovyannaya there were large Cossack villages, from where Semenov could draw manpower for subsequent formations.
Moving further along the railway, the advanced enemy units shot down the Red Guards' outpost and captured the station. Buryat.
Seeing that Chita was in danger, the regional Soviets and Central Siberia hurried to provide assistance to the Daurian front. The Transbaikal regional executive committee transferred all power to the military-revolutionary headquarters. The workers of Transbaikalia unanimously stood up in defense of Chita. Red Guard detachments of railway workers began to arrive at the front in the Adrianovka area. Readings 1st, Art. Khilok, miners of the Chernovsky and Arbagarsky mines. Former Hungarian prisoners of war organized an international Red Guard detachment. The Aleksandrovsky plant sent a detachment of 300 fighters led by P. N. Zhuravlev, who later became the leader of the partisan movement in Transbaikalia and the first commander of the East Transbaikal partisan front. The villages of Unda also sent their detachments - 400 soldiers, Lomovsky - 250, Nerchinsk and Nerchinsky Plant - 360, Aksha - a company of Red Guards. Workers from the Chita railway workshops equipped an armored train for the Daurian Front.
The violent mobilizations and bullying of the Semyonovites caused the growth of the partisan movement among the peasantry and the poorest Cossacks. In the villages and villages of Kurunzulai, Onon-Borzya, Lozhnikovo, Kudarino, Nizhne- and Verkhne-Goryunino and Oldonda, on April 17, the first partisan cavalry regiment of 680 sabers was formed. On the 20th of April, the villages of Kopun, Zorgol and the Gazimursky plant deployed their detachments with a total number of up to 1,400 people. These detachments united into the Kop-Zor-Gaz brigade.
At the beginning of May at the station. Red Guard detachments from the Amur region and from Siberia (from Omsk), equipped with artillery, began to arrive in Adrianovka. The 1st Far Eastern Socialist Detachment, formed from sailors, loaders and port workers from Vladivostok, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, also arrived. The detachment numbered up to a thousand fighters and had artillery. The detachment was led by experienced Bolsheviks V.A. Borodavkin and M.I. Gubelman. With the arrival of all these units, it was decided to go on the offensive. The offensive plan was developed by the commander of the Daurian Front, Sergei Lazo, together with the chief of staff, former lieutenant of the Amur Military Flotilla V.I. Radygin. The plan provided not only for the release of Art. Tin, but also the complete extermination of enemy personnel at the crossings of the Onon River. The troops were supposed to launch an offensive at dawn on May 15 in order to take their starting position in the area of the station by the end of the day. Mogoituy. The decisive blow was supposed to be delivered on May 16.
Having launched the offensive on the morning of May 15, the advanced units drove the enemy out of Buryatskaya and deployed near Mogoituy. After a two-hour battle, the White Guards were thrown back to the southeast by an encircling column from the south. Having suffered defeat at Mogoituy, Semenov decided to take the initiative into his own hands at all costs. To do this, he intended to give two battles: the first - in the area of the station and the village of Aga, the second - near the station. Tin. By fighting near Aga, Semenov wanted to gain time to evacuate property from the station. Olovyannaya, release forces, replenish them and give a decisive battle in the Olovyannaya area. Taking advantage of the hidden location of the village of Aga, Semenov, by the evening of May 15, concentrated a large detachment here, which was supposed to launch a sudden flank attack on the Red Guard units.
The side detachment of the Red Guards, having stumbled upon the Semenovites at Aga, retreated. This forced the command of the Soviet detachments to postpone the transition to a general offensive at the station. Tin, but the enemy’s plan to strike the flank of the Soviet troops was thwarted. The main forces of the Red Guards arrived and defeated the Semenovites at Aga. After the defeat at Aga, Semenov tried to pull all his troops to the area of the station. Tin, to organize resistance here. But with a quick advance and a simultaneous attack on the enemy’s center and flanks, the troops of the Daurian Front inflicted a new defeat on the Semyonovites and threw them back across the Onon River. On the morning of May 18, the Far Eastern Socialist detachment captured the station. Tin, where he captured a lot of weapons, ammunition and equipment left by the enemy during a hasty retreat.
After the loss of Olovyannaya, Semenov intended to gain a foothold on the right bank of the Onon River, occupying heights favorable for defense. The difficulty of the Soviet offensive was that they had to cross the Onon River, which was constantly under enemy fire, without any means of crossing. Concentrating their forces to the Onon River, the troops of the Daur Front went on the offensive on May 27. Despite strong machine-gun and artillery fire, the Red Guards began crossing the Onon along a destroyed railway bridge, which attracted the attention of the Semyonovites to this section.
At the same time, a detachment of Red Guard cavalry swam across the Onon 15 km north of the railway bridge and went behind enemy lines. This bold maneuver decided the fate of the Semyonovites. Having abandoned everything that they managed to take out of Olovyannaya - artillery, machine guns and the wounded, they hastily retreated to the station. Matsievskaya. The troops of the Daurian Front began to pursue the Semyonovites and on July 19, after a fierce battle, captured the station. Matsievskaya.
Having retreated to the Manchurian border, the remnants of Semenov’s detachments entrenched themselves in the area of the 86th and 87th patrols. Taking advantage of the proximity of the border and the support of the reactionary Chinese authorities, the Semenovites made from time to time forays into Soviet territory. The difficulty of eliminating them was that when Soviet troops attempted an offensive, they immediately went abroad. To eliminate the Semyonovites, Lazo at the end of July 1918 organized a combined detachment of several hundred of the 1st Argun Cossack Regiment and the International Detachment. The combined detachment was given the task of taking advantage of the darkness of the night to get into the enemy’s location and, having surrounded it, destroy it. This task was successfully solved. One dark July night, the Red Guards silently approached the enemy camp and, using bayonets and rifle butts, eliminated most of the White Guards. The surviving Semyonovites abandoned all their property and fled to Manchuria. Semenov, tearing off his shoulder straps, ran first. By morning there was not a single bandit on Soviet territory. On July 27, troops of the Daurian Front occupied the station. Manchuria. With the Chinese delegation sent for negotiations, Lazo entered into an agreement under which the Chinese authorities pledged to disarm the Semyonovites and no longer allow them to cross the Soviet border. The Chinese authorities did not fulfill this obligation under pressure from the Japanese and American imperialists . “Bloody Gabnya” found the former ataman Semenov on the territory of Manchuria and in 1946 hanged him for all his crimes.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8992728.html
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."