The Soviet Union

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:12 pm

Travel to communism
11/18/2021
For the anniversary of V.A. Petsukha

November 18, 2021 marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian writer Vyacheslav Alekseevich Petsukh (1946 - 2019).


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V.A. Petsukh graduated from the History Department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. He worked as a teacher in high school, then in the editorial offices of magazines. He began publishing in 1978 .

In the works of V.A. Petsukh had two main themes: comprehending Russian history and researching the character of the Russian person. Both themes allowed the author to show his main strength - dialectical thinking. He saw the merits and demerits of our compatriots and understood that our merits are a continuation of our demerits, and our demerits are a continuation of our merits. And, unlike gentlemen liberals, he considered our compatriots, with all their shortcomings, a great people.

The purpose of this article does not include a detailed analysis of the work of V.A. Petsukha. I will dwell only on the most interesting work for the communists: a small, only four pages, story " Novy Zavod ". It was published in the 6th issue of the Novy Mir magazine in 1987 .

The modern Russian man in the street, a citizen of Rooms, quarreled with his wife and rode the train aimlessly. In the morning, when he felt completely sick at heart, he got off the train at the Novy Zavod station and found himself ... in a communist society.
Immediately behind the station building, a large square opened up to him, paved with cobblestones that glistened with dew, as if the square had been wet cleaned. In general, it was clean and somehow decent around it was extraordinary. But the most remarkable thing to him seemed to him that, despite the early hour, the square was already alive: like a horse, clinking horseshoes, peasants walked up and down, women smiled at everyone they met, in some places old women were ceremoniously talking, from behind the windows a cheerful morning cough. Mostly Komnatov was amazed that what he saw on this side of the station building did not in the least resemble what he had seen on that side, as if he had accidentally walked through a magic door and suddenly found himself in some wonderful world. This world immediately came to his liking, the melancholy vanished, and an exciting expectation of surprises fell upon him.
Indeed, before he had time to enter the square, one man treated him to a cigarette, another begged for a matchbox, two called for a drink of kvass, and someone even offered to exchange shoes.
Then he was stopped by three boys. One took him by the sleeve and said:
- You, comrade, to whom did you come?
Rooms replied that he was here by accident. Then he answered the question of another boy, konopatenky, what city he was from, then to the question of who he worked for, then to the question of whether he was a celebrity, and finally had to give his honest party word that he had no habit of lying. In conclusion, the freckled one said:
- Well, since this is the case, then let us show you our sights ...
Komnatov shrugged his shoulders and agreed.
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Fragment of F. Reshetnikov's painting "Boys", 1971

And the journey began.

At first, the boys showed the sights traditional for the regional center: the grave of the actual state councilor Chekhmodurov, a chapel where, according to rumors, ghosts are found, a monument to a woman who threw herself under a train out of unhappy love. But then miracles began.
- Guys, why aren't you at school? - Rooms suddenly caught himself.
“We don’t study,” said the first.
“Well, you fill it in,” said Komnatov.
“No, we really don’t study,” confirmed the konopatenky. - We don’t want to and we don’t learn, it’s free with us. Of course, whoever wants to learn, but we do not want to.
- To tell the truth, I was taken aback by the rooms.
- Well, what are you doing then? He asked after a short pause.
- And who with what, - answered the first boy. - I, for example, read books, it's just horror, how I adore them! I am now finishing my Introduction to Latin Epitaph.
“But I don’t adore books,” said the konopatenky. - It hurts a lot of lies in them. I love all kinds of craftsmanship. My father and I know what kind of good guys ?! We will build what you want ...
- And what is your father's job? - Room interrupted him.
- He does not work as anyone, he just works - that is, you know, a specialty. Now, for example, he is building a hydrogen reactor for our power plant.
“His father is definitely a workman,” the first boy confirmed. - He, read, works for the whole plant. In the last five-year plan, he built a water supply system - in Moscow there is not even such a water supply system, but without pipes.
- Interesting! - Rooms were surprised. - But how does the water flow?
- It does not flow, - answered the caulk, - it condenses. At the same time, the salinity coefficient is practically zero.
The boys, of course, are cunning. They study and study very seriously. The book "An Introduction to Latin Epitaph" (which clearly refers to the novel by the American writer Edgar Lee Masters (1868 - 1950) "The Spoon River Anthology") in 1987 had not yet been translated into Russian. The boy reads it in English! The level of education of the boys brings to mind the famous Alisa Teplyakova , who, at the age of eight (!!!), passed the exams for the secondary school course. Or another Alice; the one from the movie "Guest from the Future".

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I.V. Shevandronova "On the Terrace", 1973

It's another matter that boys don't go to school. For children in a modern school do not study so much as suffer from foolishness. This is clearly evidenced by the example of the aforementioned Alisa Teplyakova. If a girl, even a very capable one, can pass exams for a high school course at the age of eight, then such a school is worthless.

The boys showed the house where the retired former minister settled.

When Komnatov asked why the former minister settled here, the first boy said:
- I took it and settled down. Says, I want to finally live among happy people. He says he has never met so many happy people as in the New Factory.
“Only he’s sick and tired of him,” added the konopatenky, “on every occasion he speaks:“ We must work, comrades, work for conscience, not for fear! ” Of course, they laugh at him. Well, sometimes they interrupt: they say, why bother, comrade former minister? “How why,” he says, “to create material wealth ...”. Ours are laughing again.
- Wait, - said Komnatov, - but your father is also working, so he is being ridiculed too? ...
- My father works for his own pleasure, what's so funny ... The
room felt uncomfortable. That is, he had felt uncomfortable before, but then somehow it became very uncomfortable.
A fundamental idea is expressed here, which, unfortunately, many communists do not understand. The concept of "labor" in communist society does not exist in principle. Those who work are those who enjoy the work itself. Work is not work, but something like a hobby. And, probably, not all work, which, generally speaking, does not bother anyone. Perhaps only a former minister who is being laughed at.

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When work is like a hobby

Generally speaking, communism is a socio-economic system in which the production process is carried out by public organizations in which only those who want to work and only as long as they want. As is well known, nowhere in the world is money paid for work in public organizations.

In 1986 , a new CPSU Program was adopted, which stated that communism presupposes the voluntary participation of the entire population in the production process. The fact that the concepts "voluntary" and "the whole population" are mutually exclusive did not bother the compilers of the Program. For the simple reason that they themselves did not believe in what they wrote about. This Program was made up by lively guys from the department of Academician Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev (1923 - 2004), who saw the ideas of communism in a coffin and in white slippers.

As far as I can judge, in Russian literature (both fiction and social science) the idea that communism does not imply the participation of the entire population in the process of social production was first expressed in Novy Zavod. Therefore, we have the right to consider its author not only an outstanding writer, but also a major Marxist theoretician.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet science fiction writers often described the future communist society. Let us recall, for example, "The Andromeda Nebula" by Ivan Antonovich Efremov (1907 - 1972). However, with the adoption of the concept of "developed socialism", this topic went out of fashion. But she resurrected again in the 1980s, although the word "communism" itself was not mentioned. But it meant ...

In the mid-1980s, Soviet authors produced two super-outstanding works on the communist future. These are the film "Guest from the Future" (1985) and the story "New Plant". Both works were based on the same idea - to show the Society of the Future through its children.

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Still from the film "Guest from the Future", 1984

The film "Guest from the Future" has gained immense popularity, especially among adolescents and young people. The leading role in this film, Moscow schoolgirl Natasha Guseva (born 1972), became one of the national symbols of the Soviet Union. And the story of Vyacheslav Petsukh passed almost unnoticed. Although Alisa Selezneva and the boys from the New Factory are clearly the same character, only of a different gender.

The story of V.A. The Petsukha ends with a citizen of Rooms waking up on a train that has stopped at a station called Novy Zavod. The journey to communism turned out to be a dream he had. Just like Vera Pavlovna in her time.

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Vyacheslav Alekseevich Petsukh (1946 - 2019)

The story "Novy Zavod" clearly opposed the anti-communism that was gaining strength in the second half of the 1980s. V.A. Petsukh decisively went against the dominant trend of thought. But liberal literary critics came up with a clever move: they began to interpret the story ... as a satire on communist ideology. But of course, there is no such satire in Novy Zavod. Everything is exactly the opposite. The story of V.A. Petsukha is on a par with the dreams of Vera Pavlovna described by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828 - 1889), the Andromeda Nebula novel and the film Guest from the Future. For this, the communists should say to its author "Thank you very much!"

S.V. Bagotsky

https://www.rotfront.su/puteshestvie-v-kommunizm/

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:45 pm

Sniper from the Academy of Sciences
11/27/2021
"Nails would be made of these people!"

From the editorial board
: there were many outstanding people among the fighters for the Bright Future of Humanity. Bringing this Future closer, they used all the means available to them: education, science, culture. And a bullet. Their biography is a vivid illustration of the words of Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky: “The most precious thing for a person is life. (...) and you need to live it so that it does not hurt excruciatingly for the years spent aimlessly ... "

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Morozov on vacation

The revolutionary and honorary academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Nikolai Aleksandrovich Morozov , the same Narodnik who spent 30 years in tsarist prisons , is a famous natural scientist of the 20th century, one of the founders of Russian space science. He was born in 1854 in the Yaroslavl province in the family of a wealthy landowner and a former peasant serf. At first he studied at home, then at the Second Moscow Gymnasium, from where he was expelled for freethinking, but despite this he continued to educate himself. In adolescence, he embarked on the path of national enlightenment and liberation of labor.

During the years of his gymnasium life, together with his comrades, he organized the "Society of Naturalists". The meetings were held in his room. Young people read reports, held talks, showed their collections. We thought about the high and the global.

One of Morozov's reports is indicative, which literally made a big splash:

“Based on Laplace's hypothesis, he argued that if the number of atoms in each isolated star system is limited, then the number of their combinations in space should also be limited. But from a mechanical point of view, any stellar world is reduced to combinations of atoms, and all its further life, down to the last trifles, is determined by these combinations. The same develops from the same, and in this case the history of one world system must be exactly repeated in countless other systems, past, present and future, so that in infinity of time the worlds must be replaced by worlds, like waves in the ocean. Thus, after one or another number of quadrillion years after our death, we can again find ourselves sitting in this very room and discussing these very issues, not suspecting that we have already been here and discussed all this,
(brochure L. Krukovskaya "N. A. Morozov" 1920).


The young revolutionaries of that time had not only great mental potential, but also an unbridled thirst for change.

In 1874 Morozov joined the circle of the populists-Tchaikovites and, together with his comrades, communicated with the peasants. Then he went to Switzerland to represent the interests of the organization and joined the First International.

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I.E. Repin "Gathering", 1883

The following year, Morozov returned to Russia and was arrested on suspicion of revolutionary activity. Three years later, after the trial, he was released.

After that, the revolutionary work of N.A. Morozova was illegal. He joined the organization "Land and Freedom" and became one of its leaders and the secretary of the newspaper.

In 1879 Morozov became one of the organizers of Narodnaya Volya and took part in the preparation of several attempts on the life of Alexander II . At the same time, Morozov considered terror to be a normal instrument, although his comrades were an extreme measure. Because of these disagreements, he left the organization and went abroad in 1880 , but a year later he returned illegally, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

At first, he served his sentence in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and since 1884 - in Shlisselburgskaya. There he will spend over 20 years. He fell ill with an open form of tuberculosis, and he himself, with the help of personally developed breathing exercises, defeated the disease. In 1905 , an amnesty took place, but oh, how many were served.

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Portrait of N.A. Morozova / Artist I.E. Repin / 1906

In conclusion, the future academician took up self-education. By the time of his release, he had learned 11 languages ​​and managed to write 26 volumes of manuscripts on topics from various fields, his own scientific works on astronomy, geophysics, aviation, cosmology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, meteorology, aeronautics, linguistics, history, philosophy, political economy.

After his release, Morozov tried to publish his scientific works, joined the Masonic lodge and always remembered the struggle for the freedom of the people. Since 1909 , Morozov was the chairman of the Council of the Russian Society of Amateurs of World Studies (ROLM).

In 1911 , he again went to prison, after 2 years he was released. At that time, he spent half of his life in prison.

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I.E. Repin "The arrest of a propagandist", 1892

After the revolution of 1917 N.A. Morozov continued his scientific activities, actively participated in the life of the country. He accepted the revolution positively, although he had disagreements with the Bolsheviks.

In 1918 Morozov became the first director of the Natural Science Institute. P.F. Lesgaft. He initiated the publication of natural science works, which were later highly appreciated by the leading scientists of the country and the world.

In 1932 Morozov became an honorary academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Now he worked at the observatory of the former ROLM, which was disbanded due to suspicions of the presence of a counter-revolutionary group.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Morozov - the oldest soldier - a participant in the Great Patriotic War.

At the age of 85 , in 1939 , he graduated from the Osoaviakhim sniper courses, and when the war began, he considered it obligatory to go to the front as a volunteer, but he was refused because of his age. He could not stay idle while the enemies were on their home soil, and in 1942 he still managed to be recruited as a sniper. Only a month the academician had a chance to fight in parts of the Volkhov front. He did his job well - hunted down the enemy, made calculations on the wind and hit the mark. In just a month, he destroyed about a dozen fascists. But soon, by order of the front command, he was returned to the rear. He did not give up trying to return to the front, but to no avail. The leadership understood the value of this person for the country.

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M.I., Kalinin and N.A. Morozov

Returning to Leningrad, he continued his scientific work. Morozov was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad", the first Order of Lenin, the second Order of Lenin, the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."

On July 30, 1946 , Morozov died in Bork at his home, a house-museum was organized there.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Morozov, academician, sniper and revolutionary, left a great legacy. His writings contributed to the basis for subsequent achievements. The Russian Academy of Sciences has created the "Archive of N.A. Morozov "- 13 inventories and 135.7 thousand sheets have been digitized today and are in the public domain. A village at the source of the Neva opposite the Shlisselburg fortress on the Oreshek island is named after him .

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Information stand about N.A. Morozov in the Museum of the Shlisselburg Fortress

As the poet said: "Nails would be made of these people!"

Elizaveta Sergeeva. Leningrad

https://www.rotfront.su/snajper-iz-akademii-nauk/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:29 pm

Victory at the walls of Moscow
12/01/2021
Pages of history

December 5, 2021 marks 80 years since the start of the Red Army's counteroffensive near Moscow . This was a turning point in the Great Patriotic War and World War II in general. It turned out that the army of Nazi Germany, which was considered invincible, can be beaten. And the masses of people all over the world believed that sooner or later the fascist beast would be destroyed. Although there were still three and a half years left before the final Victory.

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Defenders of Moscow in the trenches / Archival photo 1941

I will remind dear readers of the main events of the Moscow battle.

Starting the war with the Soviet Union, fascist Germany was oriented towards a quick victory. On December 18, 1940 , Hitler signed the "Barbarossa Plan," which called for the rapid advance of mechanized troops and the defeat of the USSR within a few weeks. In January 1941, active preparations began for an attack on the USSR.

The first days of the Great Patriotic War were favorable for Germany. The surprise attack paralyzed the Soviet command and control system. in which a big mess began. Already at the end of June Minsk was taken, and in mid-July the enemy approached Smolensk. And here the enemy offensive slowed down. Partly because of the heroic resistance of the Red Army, partly because of the possibility of a strike by the Southwestern Front from the south to the rear of the advancing troops. Hitler decided not to risk it and temporarily postponed the offensive on Moscow, turning his forces against the Southwestern Front. In September 1941, the Southwestern Front was defeated.

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The tragedy of the retreat of the Red Army in 1941 in the film "The Living and the Dead", 1963

September 30, 1941Years German troops launched Operation Typhoon, the ultimate goal of which was the capture of Moscow. The operation was carried out by the forces and means of Army Group Center (commanded by Field Marshal Theodor von Bock (1880 - 1945)). Army Group Center consisted of three powerful tank formations: 2nd (commanded by the first German tankman, Colonel General Hans Guderian (1888 - 1954)), 3rd (commanded by Colonel General Hermann Goth (1885 - 1971)) and 4th (commanded by Colonel General Erich Hepner (1886 - 1944)) tank groups, 2nd Air Fleet (commanded by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (1885 - 1960)), 4th (commanded by Field Marshal General Gunter von Kluge ( 1882 - 1944)) and the 9th (commanded by Colonel General Adolph von Strauss (1879 - 1973)) combined arms armies (German combined arms armies are much larger formations than Soviet ones).

According to the operation plan, the 2nd Panzer Group should bypass Moscow from the south, the 3rd from the north, and the 4th Panzer Group, with the support of the infantry armies, should strike Moscow head-on. The main route along which it was planned to attack Moscow was the Minsk highway.

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Construction of defensive structures

On the Soviet side, the "Center" group was opposed by several fronts. These are the Bryansk Front (commanded by Lieutenant General Andrei Ivanovich Eremenko (1892 - 1970)), the Reserve Front (commanded by Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (1883 - 1973), then General of the Army Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1896 - 1974)), the Western Front ( commander Colonel-General Ivan Stepanovich Konev (1897 - 1973)). In mid-October, a reorganization was carried out, the Reserve Front was merged with a part of the Western Front and was named the Western Front (commanded by General of the Army G.K. Zhukov). The right flank of the Western Front was separated into an independent Kalinin Front (commanded by Colonel-General I.S.Konev).

The enemy offensive began on 30 September in the south. Guderian managed to quickly break through the defenses of the Bryansk Front and encircle the two Soviet armies. Oryol was taken on October 3, Mtsensk on October 8. Guderian launched an attack on Tula.

In the battles near Mtsensk, Heinz Guderian first met on the battlefield with his main rival Mikhail Efimovich Katukov (1900 - 1976), then still a colonel. In this battle, Katukov won, although his victory was not too great and could not hold back the further advance of the enemy. She only slowed down the offensive, which played a very important role in the alignment of forces during the Moscow battle. In three years, Katukov and Guderian will equal in military ranks.

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Shcherbakov Alexander Sergeevich

The State Defense Committee took all possible and impossible measures to save Moscow. The armies of the second echelon of defense, as well as newly formed divisions in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, were urgently drawn to Moscow. The construction of fortifications on the Mozhaisk line of defense (Moscow Sea - Volokolamsk - Mozhaisk - Maloyaroslavets), as well as additional fortification lines in the immediate vicinity of the capital, was accelerated. However, by the end of October, the enemy broke through the Mozhaisk line of defense both on the Kievskoye and Minskoye highways.

After the battles at Vyazma, the 3rd Panzer Group and the 9th Army, which had initially advanced along with the main part of the forces of the Center group, turned north. On October 17, Kalinin was taken. Gepner's further plan was to enter the Moscow-Volga Canal, force it and encircle Moscow from the north. And on the way, take the army of the Kalinin Front into the cauldron. However, the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops thwarted this plan.

A dangerous situation also developed on the southern flank. At the end of October, Guderian approached Thule. His plan was quite obvious, to take Tula on the move, reach the Oka in the Serpukhov area, cross the Oka and go to the rear of the Soviet troops. But for this it was necessary to go to the Oka before it freezes. A river covered with thin ice cannot be crossed by a tank army. And the bridge over the Oka, as Guderian perfectly understood, was mined. It was all about time. Guderian lost several days necessary to implement his plan in the battles near Tula. There is reason to believe that these few days saved Moscow, for which Tula received the title of Hero City. Unable to take Tula, Guderian turned east and by the end of November reached the Oka near Kashira in a roundabout way. But it was too late: the Oka froze.

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Defense of Tula

By early November, the Red Army had managed to stabilize the situation to some extent. Several armies were formed from the reserves arriving from the east and leaving the encirclement of the Red Army. 5th Army (commander Major General, future Marshal of the Soviet Union Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov (1897 - 1955) covered the Minsk direction, 16th Army (commander Lieutenant General, future Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896 - 1968)) covered Volokolamskoe highway, 33rd (commander Lieutenant General Mikhail Grigorievich Efremov (1897 - 1942)) and 43rd (commander Konstantin Dmitrievich Golubev(1896 - 1956)) the armies covered the Kiev direction, the section between the Kiev and Kharkov directions - the 49th Army (commanded by Lieutenant General Ivan Grigorievich Zakharkin (1889 - 1944)). The Leningrad sector was covered by the 20th (commanded by Major General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov (1901 - 1946) (the same)) and the 30th (commanded by Major General Dmitry Danilovich Lelyushenko (1901 - 1987)). In the rear of the Western Front, the 1st Shock Army (commanded by Lieutenant General Vasily Ivanovich Kuznetsov (1894-1964)) was preparing for a strike . All these armies were part of the Western Front (commander General of the Army Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1896 - 1974), Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky (1897 - 1968), member of the Military CouncilNikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (1895 - 1975)). The aviation of the Western Front was commanded by Lieutenant General Fedor Georgievich Michugin (1899 - 1955).

The troops of the Kalinin Front also took an active part in the Moscow battle (commander Colonel General Ivan Stepanovich Konev (1897 - 1973), Chief of Staff Major General Yevgeny Petrovich Zhuravlev (1896 - 1983), member of the Military Council Dmitry Sergeevich Leonov (1899 - 1981)) ...

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Remote air defense post. Moscow 1941

Air defense forces played an important role in the Moscow battle. They were not part of the Western Front and were subordinate to the commander of the Moscow Military District, Lieutenant General Pavel Artemovich Artemiev (1897 - 1979). The commander of the air defense forces near Moscow was Lieutenant General Mikhail Stepanovich Gromadin (1899 - 1962). An effective air defense system was able to greatly reduce the damage from enemy raids.

Among the commanders of the armies that participated in the Moscow battle, the commander of the 16th Army K.K. Rokossovsky.

His talent manifested itself already in the first days of the war. In conditions of general confusion, the 9th Mechanized Corps, commanded by Rokossovsky, acted clearly, harmoniously and decisively.

In early October 1941 K.K. Rokossovskaya managed to withdraw part of the 16th army from the Vyazemsky cauldron, on the way replenishing his army with Red Army men from other formations that emerged from the encirclement alone or in small groups. This army, reinforced by the M.E. Katukov and the division of Major General Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov (1892 - 1941) formed in Kazakhstan , took up defensive positions in the Volokolamsk direction.

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Major General Ivan Vasilievich Panfilov

At the end of November, a story about the feat of 28 Panfilov heroes, who stopped fascist tanks at the Dubosekovo junction, spread throughout the country. In the second half of November, there were several similar episodes, proceeding according to the same pattern.

On November 16, near the village of Petelino, 15 soldiers, led by political instructor P.B. Vortex destroyed five tanks. All soldiers were killed. The last surviving political instructor, who single-handedly destroyed two more tanks. He left the last bullet for himself.

On November 17, near the village of Mykanino, 17 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant V.G. Ugryumov and political instructor A.N. Georgiev was stopped by 25 enemy tanks. 8 tanks were destroyed. Killing 15 soldiers.

On November 18, near the village of Strokovo, 11 sappers, led by the platoon commander P.I. Firstov and political instructor M.A. Pavlov repulsed the attacks of the enemy infantry battalion, supported by 20 tanks. All soldiers were killed.

On November 19, near the village of Fedyukovo, 37 Kuban Cossacks, headed by political instructor M.G. Ilyenko destroyed 28 tanks. All soldiers were killed.

One of the ideas of K.K. Rokossovsky, implemented in the battle of Moscow, was to create small mobile groups of tank destroyers. The best fighters were selected to these groups, they were very well trained, the groups were given trucks that transferred the fighters to the places of tank breakthroughs, after which they immediately entered the battle. This, apparently, is the key to the battle episodes, which strongly resembled the battle of 300 Spartans in Thermopylae Gorge.

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Training session of a group of tank destroyers

Rokossovsky also had other interesting ideas that were implemented near Moscow.

In the spring of 1942 K.K. Rokossovsky was seriously wounded. After leaving the hospital, he was appointed commander of the Don Front, which played an important role in the Battle of Stalingrad. War K.K. Rokossovsky graduated with the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union and commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front.

In the early 1960s, K.K. Rokosovsky became one of the few major military leaders and the only member of the CPSU Central Committee who flatly refused to participate in the anti-Stalin campaign. And this despite the fact that in 1937-1939 he himself was in prison and was tortured. For his refusal, K.K. Rokossovsky was dismissed.

Many military experts consider Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky the most outstanding Soviet commander during the Great Patriotic War.

Later, the commander of the 5th Army L.A. Govorov. His troops lifted the blockade of Leningrad.

The military parade in Moscow on November 7, 1941 was of great importance for raising the morale of the Red Army and the Soviet people. At this parade, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1879 - 1953) made a short speech . From the parade, the troops went straight to the front.

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Parade on Red Square on November 7, 1941

The Nazi invaders began a new offensive in mid-November. On November 15, the 3rd Panzer Group began to advance along the Leningradskoye Highway from the vicinity of Kalinin. Klin was captured on November 23, Solnechnogorsk on November 24. On November 27, the enemy entered the Moscow-Volga canal, and even forced it in the Yakhroma area. The bridge across the canal was captured by German paratroopers dressed in Red Army uniforms. But the enemy failed to gain a foothold on the eastern bank.

On November 30, the Germans captured the village of Krasnaya Polyana near the modern Sheremetyevo airport. It became the closest settlement to Moscow occupied by the enemy. The capital was less than 30 km away.

On December 2, 1941, the enemy offensive against Moscow from the north and northwest was finally stopped.

On December 1, the enemy launched an offensive along the Kiev highway, but he was also quickly stopped.

The defensive part of the Moscow battle is over. On December 5, Soviet troops launched an offensive.

Preparations for the offensive began in mid-November. On November 15, the State Defense Committee decided to create shock armies, reinforced with tanks and artillery and designed to break through enemy defenses. In the Western Front, the 1st Shock Army was created (commanded by Lieutenant General V.I.Kuznetsov), but they did not have time to fully replenish it by the time the offensive began.

The first, with the forces and means of the 29th (commander Ivan Ivanovich Maslennikov (1900 - 1954)) and 31st (commander Vasily Aleksandrovich Yushkevich (1897 - 1951)) armies, began to attack the Kalinin Front. Kalinin was released on December 16.

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Newspaper of the Kalinin Front "Forward to the Enemy" / Issue of December 17, 1941

On December 6, the 1st shock and 30th armies began to attack in the northwestern direction from Moscow. Their offensive was supported by the 16th and 20th armies. The enemy was driven back from the Moscow channel. And he began to retreat along the Leningradskoye and Volokolamskoye highways. On December 11, the 5th Army began to advance.

On December 6, an offensive began on the southern flank. It was carried out by the forces and means of the 10th Army (commander Lieutenant General, future Marshal of the Soviet Union Philip Ivanovich Golikov (1900 - 1980)) and the 1st Cavalry Corps (commander Major General Pavel Aleksandrovich Belov (1897 - 1962), who is considered the last Great Cavalry in history).

December 7 was released Venev , December 11 - Stalinogorsk (now Novomoskovsk), December 13 Wedge , December 20 - Volokolamsk , December 26 - Naro-Fominsk , 30 December - Kaluga , January 2 - Borovsk , January 20 - Mozhaysk . But the Soviet troops failed to advance further.

On December 16, Hitler issued an order prohibiting the unauthorized withdrawal of troops from their positions. But he was pretty often ignored. And, often, the enemy just fled.

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The Nazis captured near Moscow

Hitler blamed the generals for the defeat near Moscow. On December 19, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch (1881 - 1948), commander of the ground forces, was removed from his post and dismissed. The Fuehrer assumed the fulfillment of his duties. And the commander of the "Center" group, Field Marshal von Bock, was relieved of his post with the provision of a long leave to improve his health. All this caused discontent on the part of the generals, some of whom had thoughts that they did not really need the Fuhrer. Some of them (von Kluge, Hepner) in 1944 took part in the conspiracy against Hitler.

The Battle of Moscow finally buried Germany's hopes for a quick victory. The war became protracted. And in a protracted war, Germany had no chance of victory. However, such a course of events was predicted by the outstanding Soviet military theorist Alexander Andreevich Svechin (1878 - 1938) even before the war . And in early June 1941, Moscow schoolboy Lev Fedotov (1923 - 1943), whose diaries were published after the war.

In the course of the Moscow battle, the mass heroism of the Soviet people, and not only the military, was manifested. A partisan movement flared up behind enemy lines. Among the Heroes of the Soviet Union, who died heroically near Moscow, there were two schoolchildren: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1923 - 1941) and Alexander Chekalin (1925 - 1941).

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Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is being led to execution

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Monument to Alexander Chekalin

About half a million Soviet people died in the battles near Moscow.

The Battle of Moscow became a good school for the Red Army, its officers and generals. In this battle, such outstanding military leaders as G.K. Zhukov, L.A. Govorov, I.S. Konev, K.K. Rokossovsky, V.D. Sokolovsky. In the future, they will become Marshals of the Soviet Union.

“We were opposed by an army that in its combat qualities was far superior to all other armies that we had ever encountered on the battlefield,” wrote the German general Gunther Blumentritt (1892 - 1967) about the battle near Moscow.

In the spring of 1965 , Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky (1897 - 1968), who served as chief of staff of the Western Front during the Moscow battle, applied to the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a petition to award Moscow the title of Hero City. This petition was respected.

S.V. Bagotsky

https://www.rotfront.su/pobeda-u-sten-moskvy/

Google Translator

*******************************************************************************

Deja vu all over again?

Russia FM: NATO Military Equipment Piles up Near Russian Border

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday sternly warned NATO against deploying its troops and weapons to Ukraine, saying it represents a red line for Russia and would trigger a strong response. | Photo: Twitter @NewsHour

Published 30 November 2021 (15 hours 25 minutes ago)

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement revealing that over 50 NATO reconnaissance aircraft and drones are being detected near the country's borders every week. Addressing the allegations of Moscow “escalating” the situation on the Ukrainian border, the ministry outlined that the Russian actions are “of a purely defensive nature.”


On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister (FM) Sergei Lavrov noted that NATO is piling up significant military equipment on Russia's border. While in a press conference with his Brazilian counterpart, Lavrov also said that Moscow is considering the possibility that Kiev might engage in some kind of "military venture" which would pose a threat to Russia."

"President Putin spoke about this on 18 November… he stressed that we do not need conflicts, but if the West cannot hold Ukraine back, but, on the contrary, encourages it, of course, we will take all the necessary steps to ensure our security" Lavrov said. He added that for a while," "the West has been provoking Ukraine — and not only Ukraine" — to take "anti-Russian actions."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed "serious consequence" in the event of "renewed Russian aggression" in Ukraine. Blinken had earlier arrived in Riga to meet his Latvian counterpart and attend the Meeting of NATO Ministers.

Referring to Russia's "massing of troops" near the Ukrainian border, Blinken described it as "unusual," adding that any escalation by Moscow would be met with "grave concern" by the United States military.

At the same time, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg contributed to the controversy on Tuesday by alleging that the movement of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine is "unprovoked and unexplained."


Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke on Tuesday, expressing Moscow's concerns regarding the military drills taking place near the Russian border, which include military exercises that have not been scheduled." "Russia is also experiencing certain concerns about the fact that large-scale exercises are being conducted near its borders, including unplanned ones, as was the case quite recently in the Black Sea," Putin said at the VTB Capital Investment Forum "Russia Calling."

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement revealing that over 50 NATO reconnaissance aircraft and drones are being detected near the country's borders every week. Addressing the allegations of Moscow" "escalating" the situation on the Ukrainian border, the ministry outlined that the Russian actions are "of a purely defensive nature."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0019.html
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:33 pm

Destruction of the Soviet Union: a crime without statute of limitations
December 16, 2021 United Communist Party of Russia

Statement of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party of Russia (OKP) in connection with the 30th anniversary of the unconstitutional liquidation of the USSR in December 1991.

In December 1991, the largest state on the planet, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first ever socialist state of workers and peasants, disappeared from the political map of the world.

In the context of the general crisis of Gorbachev’s “perestroika” policy, few people paid attention to the blatant violation of all conceivable and inconceivable constitutional procedures during the “dissolution” of the united socialist homeland. In its swiftness, it resembled either the shameful flight from the sinking ship of the completely bankrupt political elite of the “perestroika-reformers” headed by President Gorbachev, or the finale of a carefully planned action designed to put an end to the history of Soviet socialism, which was played out like clockwork before the eyes of the disoriented and disorganized Soviet people.

There is no doubt that at the time of the proclamation of “perestroika,” Soviet society needed changes, but at every turn the rational renewal of the country on the basis of socialism was opposed by voluntarist innovations in the spirit of the convergence of the socialist and capitalist systems. Thus, instead of scientifically grounded improvement of the Soviet command-distribution planning system, experiments were imposed on society to introduce capitalist market mechanisms into the socialist economy with the orientation of the entire national economic complex of the country towards the priority of profit, and, consequently, the formation of a system of consumer relations.

This, in turn, created fertile ground for manifestations of individual and collective egoism, the shadow economy, the social differentiation of Soviet society — shameful social phenomena that discredited Soviet socialism in the eyes of the working people. Obvious failures in the ideological sphere and the transformation of the ruling Communist Party of Soviet Union from the political vanguard of society into a bureaucratic mechanism of government led to the depoliticization of communists and non-party people, to people’s disbelief in the proclaimed slogans and ideals, and contributed to the growth of social apathy and cynicism.

Taken together, the above circumstances and phenomena contributed to the formation of conditions for internal counterrevolution, expanded its social base, thereby facilitating the subversive activities of the forces of international reaction and anti-communism against the USSR and the socialist bloc. The policy of “perestroika,” designed to eradicate these tendencies according to Gorbachev’s assurances, carried out without a proper systematic approach, by the empirical method of trial and error, quickly moved from the stage of renewal of socialism to its actual dismantling. The events of August 1991 removed the last barriers to the forces that openly advocated the elimination of the socialist system and the Soviet Union itself, which makes us speak not so much about the spontaneous disintegration of the system, but about completely controlled and clearly coordinated processes.

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In honor of the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s 1941 anti-Nazi counter-offensive near Moscow, representatives of the United Communist Party and other left organizations laid flowers at the “Moscow – Hero City” monument Dec. 6. Photo: OKP

It is important to recall an extremely important circumstance, which proves in the most irrefutable way that the liquidation of the USSR was neither a historical accident, nor a natural consequence of the economic “bankruptcy of the system,” as both “systemic” and “non-systemic” liberals like to say today. At the time of the signing of the unconstitutional “Belovezh Accords” [Dec. 8, 1991] and the resignation of Soviet President Gorbachev, practically all the top political and military leaders of the USSR were in the “Matrosskaya Tishina” pre-trial detention center facing charges in the case of the so-called “State Emergency Committee.” [This refers to the failed August 1991 attempt to block the counterrevolution by administrative measures. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/w ... 10829.html]

In their absence, the entire operational leadership of the largest state on the planet passed to the “Russian center” in the person of President of the RSFSR Yeltsin and the leaders of the “democratic” Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, which from the standpoint both of the the law and common sense was more like a creeping coup d’etat. The purpose of the latter was the final usurpation of the highest power in the RSFSR by the “group” of President Yeltsin, who by that time had entered into an open conspiracy with the national-separatist forces, which had seized key leadership posts in most of the union republics of the USSR.

No less strange and clearly contrary to common sense was the very justification by the president of the Soviet Union of his own decree to resign from his high powers: “Due to the current situation with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.” This wording was voiced in Gorbachev’s address to the nation on Dec. 25, 1991, that is, exactly 17 days after the separatist “Belovezh” conspiracy between the heads of three subjects of the USSR [Russia, Ukraine and Belarus], as a result of which its participants announced the “termination” of the 1922 Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. And this despite the fact that the USSR was founded by at least four subjects, not three, and since the adoption of the first Constitution of the USSR in 1924, the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR ceased to be an independent legal document, becoming an integral part of the Basic Law of the Union State (that is, in the “Belovezh” putsch, a document that had no direct legal force for a long time was “terminated”).

But more importantly, the actions of the three “Belovezh” signatories grossly contradicted the results of the March 1991 referendum on the preservation of the USSR, in which 76.4% of citizens strongly supported the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, despite this, Gorbachev chose to “wash his hands” and not darken the celebration of the “victors” – on the afternoon of Dec. 25 (before Gorbachev’s announcement of resignation) at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Yeltsin’s henchmen pushed through the decision to remove from the official name of Soviet Russia the reference to soviets, the socialist nature of its socio-political system, and in the evening, just 38 minutes (!) after Gorbachev’s statement, the state flag of the Soviet Union was hastily lowered from the main flagpole of the Kremlin, replaced by the “democratic” counterrevolutionary tricolor.

The Presidium of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party is convinced that such actions could not be the result of a historical “accident,” just as they were not historically inevitable, of which both the direct initiators and ordinary pogromists of the USSR are trying to convince us. The deliberate, primitive anti-Sovietism, which has long since set the teeth on edge, which even thirty years after the liquidation of Soviet socialism and the USSR regularly breaks through in the speeches of the main plenipotentiary representatives of the ruling political class in the country, best refutes any fabrications by opponents of the Soviet project about its alleged historical failure.

In conditions when, according to most of the main development indicators – from the economy to culture to healthcare — the present “post-Soviet” Russia, as well as any other former republics of the Union, have not reached the level of the last year of the existence of the USSR, such fabrications of the current “effective managers” cannot be explained by anything other than a political inferiority complex. That is why their complex is now and then compensated for either by strictly dosed state anti-Sovietism and anti-communism, or – when it is politically expedient — by the cynical flirtation of representatives of the oligarchic regime with symbols of the great Soviet past.

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The Presidium of the Central Committee of the OKP, noting the unconditional positive shift in public sentiment in Russia towards leftist ideas, the Soviet project and the USSR, at the same time strongly disagrees with the attempt to turn such symbols and ideas into harmless icons to comfort the exploited. We are convinced that just as the very creation of the Soviet Union was the result of a real correlation of social and class forces of a particular historical period, so its potential for revival will also be due solely to the real struggle for the socialist reorganization of reality, which will be waged by the working masses themselves, both in today’s Russia, and in any other now separated “post-Soviet” country.

The history of the destruction of Soviet statehood and the USSR, which ended exactly thirty years ago with the signing of the criminal “Belovezh Accords” and the no less criminal stance of President Gorbachev, is the clearest proof that one material force can be overturned only by a force similar to it, while law or constitution is nothing more than a reflection of the will of this or that ruling class in society. Exactly thirty years ago, in December 1991, such a force was on the side of the liquidators of the USSR and, as such, the subsequent denunciation (termination) of the “Belovezh” conspiracy, undertaken by the parliamentary opposition majority of the State Duma of the Russian Federation in March 1996, did not and could not change such an anti-socialist balance of forces in Russia or any other “post-Soviet” republic.

The era begun by the criminal demolition of the Soviet Union has been going on for three decades, and it can only be interrupted by a radical change in the balance of forces in modern Russian society. However, such a change is clearly not achieved by the mere “return” of Soviet passports or even “Soviet citizenship” alone. That is why the first step towards a real revival of the USSR is the return of property and power to the hands of the working majority in each of the states of the once united socialist space, the Sovietization and socialization of these states as a decisive condition for the new socialist integration of peoples.

The USSR is the future, but we need to fight for this future today!

Vladimir Lakeev
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party

Source: United Communist Party http://ucp.su/category/news/1610-razval ... -srokov-d/

Translated by Greg Butterfield

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... mitations/

*************************************

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New Year postcard Grandfather Frost brings New Year gifts to the enemies, Solomon Samsonovich Boim, Issued by of the Political Administration of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, 1941, Collection of the National Library of Russia, source: the National Electronic Library (https://rusneb.ru/catalog/000200_000018 ... l_2087526/)
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:32 pm

‘We are still living in the shadow of the defeat of the USSR’
December 23, 2021 Dmitry Strauss

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The Labor Russia movement rallied on Moscow’s Red Square against the counterrevolutionary policies of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, Nov., 7, 1991. Photo: Labor Russia

The following interview with Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield was originally published by the website Ukraina.ru as part of a retrospective series on the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Dmitry Strauss: On Dec. 30, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation, marking the end point in the history of the USSR. What were you doing in those days, what were your political views? Did you support the process of the disintegration of the USSR or were you against it?

Greg Butterfield: In 1991 I was a young communist activist. I had moved from the U.S. Midwest to New York City a year before. I was working as the assistant to Marxist theoretician and organizer Sam Marcy, who had recently written a critical analysis of Gorbachev’s “perestroika” program and its likely consequences. At this time Marcy was beginning to gain attention within the international communist movement as one of the few serious Marxist critics of Gorbachev and his treacherous collaboration with U.S. imperialism. So I was very fortunate as a young activist to help Marcy with research for his articles at that critical moment in history. It was a great learning experience.

Beginning in August 1991, when the State Emergency Committee attempted to halt the worst of the counterrevolutionary “reforms,” through Boris Yeltsin’s first visit to the U.S., and then the “Black October” events in Moscow in 1993, our comrades organized many street protests and educational meetings in New York, San Francisco and other cities. We picketed the Russian Mission to the United Nations to protest the arrests of the State Emergency Committee members, the banning of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Pravda, and later the massacre of the defenders of the House of Soviets. I participated in all of the New York actions.

Thirty years later, I’m proud that I was on the right side of history in defending the Soviet Union and socialism.

DS: What do you think about the current situation in so-called post-Soviet states?

GB: The destruction of the USSR was the greatest setback for the global working class since the crushing of the Paris Commune. The burden of that defeat has fallen hardest on the peoples of the former Soviet countries. We know about the calamitous events of the 1990s, when the life expectancy of people in Russia and other Soviet lands fell at the fastest rate in history outside of wartime. We watched as the tremendous achievements of Soviet industry, built up by the common effort of the workers, were sold off piecemeal or allowed to crumble to dust. And workers and professionals educated under socialism were forced to emigrate and sell their skilled labor for low wages in the West.

Today, none of the post-Soviet states has come close to achieving the economic and living standards of Soviet times. A few people have gotten very rich, many have fallen into poverty, and most workers struggle on the edge of disaster – just like in every capitalist country. Some of the post-Soviet states have become neocolonial subjects of U.S. imperialism and the European Union. Those that have tried to maintain their independence are subject to sanctions, constant threats of war and “color revolutions.”

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Boris Yeltsin. Graphic: Labor Russia

DS: Thirty years after the disintegration of the USSR, there is a new geopolitical conflict between the USA and Russia fighting for their hegemony in the world. China and the European Union actively participate in this process. Do you think these processes are somehow related to the disintegration of the USSR or not? If you think they are related, then in what way?

GB: Absolutely! The conflict between the U.S.-NATO and Russia, and that between the U.S. and China, are a direct result of the USSR’s destruction.

Russia inherited the nuclear defense capabilities built up by the Soviet Union. Once the new oligarchic capitalist class of Russia got to its feet – with the first election of Vladimir Putin – they believed they could be recognized as an equal by Washington and the European imperialists. They thought they would be welcomed into the club. But this was not the case. The imperialists, particularly in the U.S., did not want to open up space to the Russian novices; they wanted only to continue the neocolonial relationship that existed under Boris Yeltsin.

In my view, modern Russia is not an imperialist power, despite the pretensions of some of its political elites. The idea that Russia is an existential threat to the U.S. is a myth built up by the West for purposes of expanding NATO and getting public support for new military adventures. But the Western ruling classes actually see the Russian Federation the same way they see the smaller post-Soviet states – as a potential source of raw materials and cheap labor.

In 1992, that is, immediately after the dissolution of the USSR, a Pentagon policy document was published by the New York Times. It explained that the long-term U.S. perspective was to prevent the rise of any new competitor at the level of the Soviet Union. In particular, in the cases of China and Russia, the policy would be to work toward breaking up these large states to make them easier to control politically and to digest economically. For 30 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, this outlook of the U.S. ruling class has not changed.

Today, we see how this imperialist outlook is leading inevitably toward a new large-scale military conflict – one that could quickly engulf the whole world.

DS: The collapse of the USSR led to the creation of the so-called unipolar world, which lives according to the patterns defined by the U.S. government. From your point of view, what is positive and what is negative in this unipolar world system?

GB: I can’t think of any positive qualities of this situation. The U.S. unipolar system has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of the world.

The USSR, despite its political shortcomings from a revolutionary viewpoint in the post-Lenin era, was nevertheless a bulwark of the global people’s movements – of workers, of national liberation struggles, of civil and human rights everywhere. The very existence of this socialist powerhouse that united many nationalities in peaceful common work was a tremendous argument in favor of socialism. It helped to force capitalist countries to raise the living standards of workers and grant civil rights. It provided material and diplomatic support to anti-colonial struggles and governments that wanted to be independent.

In contrast, U.S. unipolar rule has meant the fall of living standards and loss of rights for the working class and oppressed people in both rich and poor countries. Here in the U.S., we have suffered three decades of setbacks to union rights, voting rights of Black people, the basic rights of women and other oppressed groups. Every worker in the world was materially harmed by the destruction of the USSR, whether they realized it or not, and we continue to be harmed by it today.

Since the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, there have been several bright spots that show the struggle for socialism is destined to reemerge. But up to now these are still premonitions of future victories. We are still living and struggling in the shadow of the USSR’s defeat.

DS: Based on your personal experience, in the last two decades, why have there been so many wars? What is the force that generates them? Why hasn’t the world become more harmonious, more humane and more compassionate since the collapse of the USSR?

GB: The U.S. ruling class promised workers a “peace dividend” after the destruction of the Soviet Union. This never came to pass, and never could.

Capitalist imperialism, as Lenin explained so eloquently more than a century ago, is constantly driven to war to expand its markets and redivide the world. For decades the power of the USSR was a check on this unbridled imperialist war drive. Without the giant socialist state to reckon with, the imperialist war drive was unleashed, leading to the unprecedented “endless wars” from the invasion of Iraq with Gorbachev’s cooperation in 1991 up to this day.

It does not take any special understanding of Marxism to see that the level of U.S. aggression today toward Russia and China will inevitably lead to a new and devastating world war – unless the global working class is able to stop it by revolutionary means. This war drive is completely connected to the destruction of the world climate and the resurgence of fascist tendencies around the world. Our foremost task as revolutionaries is to build the movement to defeat them.

DS: Finally, are there any other topics that I may have missed and you consider to be important about the collapse of the USSR?

GB: I would like to take the opportunity to draw attention to the antifascist struggle of the people of the Donbass republics since 2014. Their ongoing fight against the U.S.-Ukrainian forces of reaction is a bright red star shining in the former Soviet lands. The tremendous sacrifices of people in Donetsk, Lugansk, and inside Ukraine itself, show that the Soviet people can and will win again.

Source: Ukraina.ru

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... -the-ussr/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 31, 2021 3:54 pm

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The Red Flag will Rise Again: 30 Years Since the Dissolution of the Soviet Union
December 30, 2021
By Nikos Mottas – Dec 26, 2021

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It was thirty years ago, on December 26, 1991, when the red flag with the sickle and hammer was lowered from the Kremlin.

It was then, during the cold days of December, when the first socialist state of the world, the homeland of the world’s proletariat, bent under the weight of the counterrevolution. Four days before, on December 22nd, the leaderships of three of the largest Soviet republics had decided the dissolution of the USSR, while the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had been outlawed on summer of the same year.

The events of December 1991 didn’t come as a surprise. The forces of opportunism had already dominated the CPSU in the 1980s. It was a process which officially began in 1985 with Perestroika and reached its peak in 1989-1991. However, the roots of the counterrevolution can be traced back, in a series of revisionist-opportunist decisions taken at the CPSU’s 20th Congress in 1956.

In December 1991, the homeland of the heroic bolsheviks, the homeland of Vladimir Lenin andJoseph Stalin, the homeland of General Zhukov, Yuri Gagarin and Dmitri Shostakovitch, the homeland of the Soviet people became loot in the hands of the Russian bourgeoisie, of the oligarchs who emerged from the leadership of Perestroika. Even the opinion of the Soviet people (in the referendum of March 17, 1991, 76% of the voters supported the existence of the USSR) was blatantly ignored by the perpetrators of the counterrevolution.

The immense social achievements of the USSR were succeeded by illusory promises by the new capitalist Russian government for- supposedly- more democracy, for more social freedoms and for a free-market economy which would improve the people’s lives. The so-called “shock therapy”, which included several policies of economic liberalization during the 90s, had multiple negative effects in people’s lives: rapid increase of social inequalities, destruction of the socialist welfare state, extreme increase of poverty for the working class, decrease of the life expectancy rate, resurgence of nationalist claims between former soviet republics and the emergence of economic oligarchs as actual rulers of the new capitalist Russian state.

Thirty years after the counterrevolution in the USSR, the majority of the Russian people- especially the older generations- think that life under Socialism was better. The restoration of Capitalism brought an unprecedented barbarity in almost every sector of public life; a barbarity which benefited the few and aggravated the situation for the majority.

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“The Soviet red flag is no longer waving in the domes of the Kremlin. Its lowering sealed with a dramatic and symbolical way the end of the 74-year old course of the first socialist state in the world. For a moment the clocks indicators remained motionless, marking the critical moment. The hearts of many million workers in all over the world stopped beating, weighting the magnitude of the loses”.

– Rizospastis daily (KKE newspaper), 28 December 1991.


According a Levada Center survey published in December 2018, two out of three Russians (66 per cent) expressed regret over the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A year earlier, in 2017 a still hefty 58% of Russians said that they regret the fall of the USSR. In March 2016, a survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Center (VTsIOM) showed that more than half of Russians (64%) would vote to maintain the Soviet Union if a new referendum would be held. This figure increases from 47% among those 18-24 to 76% among respondents age 60 and more.

Back in 2013, a survey by Russia’s Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) had indicated that 60% of Russians think that the life in the Soviet Union had more positive than negative aspects.

The same kind of nostalgia for the USSR exists also in other former Soviet republics, like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan etc, where the policies of monopoly capitalism have swept away any social privileges achieved by the working class people during Socialism.

The various apologists of capitalism, who advocated the famous concept of the “End of History” in the beginning of the 90s, have already been refuted. Despite the fact that the counterrevolutionary events in the USSR and Eastern Europe significantly deteriorated the correlation of forces internationally, it becomes clear that Socialism is relevant and necessary. The impasses of rotten capitalism, which creates crises, poverty, unemployment, misery and wars, consist a solid proof that nothing has end.

The people, the working class in all over the world must organize their counter-attack, to strengthen the bastions of resistance against capitalist exploitation and imperialist barbarity and create the preconditions for the ultimate victory of Socialism.

No, History did not end in December 1991. The red flag, with the sickle and hammer, will rise again.


Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-red-flag ... iet-union/

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 22, 2022 3:55 pm

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Lenin’s Socialism – From the Perspective of the Future: Some considerations
Originally published: LeftEast by Tamas Krausz (December 21, 2021 ) | - Posted Jan 21, 2022

LeftEast was a cosponsor of an online conference on non-capitalist mixed economies from June 23–26 2021. Co-sponsors of the conference included the Karl Polanyi Center, Eszmélet Journal, Social Theory College in Budapest, Polanyi Institute, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, Institute of Political History Social Theory Research Group, The Study Group on Global Labour History and Social Conflicts–IHC Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Left East, Institutul pentru Solidaritate Socială, Working Group for Public Policy, Helyzet, Fordulat, CriticAtac, Transform Europe, and the International Karl Polanyi Society. A selection of the talks has been published by the Eszmélet Foundation in a special issue of Eszmélet (2021), entitled “In Need of Alternatives: Problems and Issues of Non-capitalist Mixed Economies”. We offer our readers the chapters of this volume as a special series on LeftEast, which will be published on Wednesdays of the following weeks. This week we publish Tamás Krausz’ study on Lenin’s concept of socialism.

Introduction

There is a great variety of theories and discussions on the views of V. I. Lenin on socialism as well as on his revolutionary praxis, which often leads to chaos and intellectual-theoretical confusions. The present paper seeks to clarify some contested issues.1

Lenin’s theory of socialism directly derives from the views of Marx and Engels, and it is manifest in his famous work, The State and Revolution.2 Marx and Engels’ theory on socialism was so important for Lenin that he never gave it up, not even in the period of war communism, when for a short time he thought that the measures of war communism could accelerate the transition to socialism.

It is obvious that the revolutionaries, including Lenin, had to change their views after the victory of the revolution, when they had to face a changed and unforeseen political-historical situation: after a bloody civil war and a Western military intervention, the Soviet Union was alone and had to navigate under very unfavorable, “objective” circumstances.

The Key Historical Problem of Socialism in Soviet Russia
Lenin outlined the whole problem of socialism through the historical development of relations of property and production, according to which the new socialist ‘communal society’ comes into being in Russia and in the semiperiphery (Krausz 2020). Based on Marx’s theoretical tradition, Lenin’s interpretation of socialism outlined a higher form of communal ownership, direct control over workplace through the soviets of workers, the first historical ancestor of which was the Paris commune closely watched by Marx.

When following Marx, Lenin posited his own “three-step” concept in his State and Revolution–in which socialism, as the “lower phase” of communism, is preceded by a “transitional period”–he could not have known that the Russian Revolution would end up being isolated. As a result, theoretical socialism as a practical issue had to be put off the agenda and history moved toward the possibility of socialism in its peculiar Russian form, something he had wanted to avoid.

Thus, theoretical considerations and practical possibilities came into inevitable conflict already on the second day of the October Revolution. Taking a long term view of history, all great conflicts and contradictions have been rooted in this fact in one way or another. Lenin was conscious of the fact that “Russian backwardness” (its semi-peripheral development) facilitated the cause of the revolution, but it hindered the realization of socialism.

Most scholars agree that Soviet development has to be cut up into different periods based on economic-political criteria. The three periods following the October Revolution were the following: “market economy” that characterized the period until spring-summer 1918, the war communism of 1918–1920, and the “state capitalism” of the New Economic Policy (NEP) from March 1921 onward. These periods shaped Lenin’s thought. At this point we need a short digression on the history of socialist history.

The Conceptual Origins of Socialism
In the first half of the 1890s, Lenin, contradicting Mikhailovsky in his What the “Friends of the People” Are, rejected all dreamy visions of socialism (LCW, Vol. 1, 129–332). He made it clear that Marx’s work never painted any detailed prospects for the future: it confined itself to analyzing the present bourgeois regime, to studying the dynamic trends of development of capitalist social organization.3

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a young man from Simbirsk was 24 years old when he arrived at the clear exposition-interpretation of an alternative to capitalism; and it was a very important result especially if we consider that until now we still have no other, theoretically consistent alternative to capitalism.

Above all and very early Lenin outlined the whole problem of socialism through the historical development of ownership. In his analysis the new communal society appears in modern history after the dissolution of ancient communities. It was a higher form of communal ownership, the manifestation of new “individual property”:

The abolition of ‘individual property,’ which since the sixteenth century has been effected in the way indicated above, is the first negation. It will be followed by a second, which bears the character of a negation of the negation, and hence of a restoration of ‘individual property,’ but in a higher form, based on common ownership of land and of the instruments of labour. Herr Marx calls this new ‘individual property’ also ‘social property,’ and in this there appears the Hegelian higher unity, in which the contradiction is supposed to be sublated (aufgehoben–a specific Hegelian term) (LCW, Vol. 1, 169).

Therefore, socialism as a philosophical and historical possibility has its inception with the beginning of modern capitalist society in the form of primitive capital accumulation. Lenin cited Marx at length on individual property coming into existence again, which now meant the shared ownership of the tools of production (see also Krausz 2015, 313). That is, the “labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community” on a socialist basis, as a “community of free individuals”:

Capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and nourished along with, and under it. Concentration of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated (LCW, Vol. 1, 169 and 171–172).

In the first volume of Capital Marx goes on like this:

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production (Marx, 1887 C1, Ch 32).

So Lenin interpreted the developments of modern capitalism on this theoretical basis. The Taylorist system–without its initiators knowing or wishing it–is preparing for the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalizing all social labor. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, telephony–all provide thousands of opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organized workers and make them four times better off than they are today. And these workers’ committees, assisted by workers’ unions, will be able to apply these principles of the rational distribution of social labor when the latter is freed from its enslavement by capital (LCW, Vol. 20, 154). Based on experiences from colonialism to the First World War, Lenin already knew that there is no such boundary or limit in the process of capitalist reproduction and in general, the process of the endless accumulation of capital, which could automatically lead to the collapse of capitalism. The 1917 October Revolution would have had no meaning if the workers and peasants had not seized the ownership of workplaces and means of production, including land, through their Soviets.

Transitional Period: From Market Economy to War Communism

Central to Lenin’s thinking after October 1917 was how to preserve the hard-won power of the soviets. In practice this was never separate from the power of his party, which saw it as the political condition upon which continuing soviet power depended. He surveyed the practical possibility of communal-socialist proletarian ends from this point of view. The contradiction, which strained the tortuous daily battles for survival and keeping to the goals, increasingly placed the discrete problems of the so-called transitional period to the forefront. Such was the mass of problems he confronted at the first congress following the October Revolution. There, he drew attention to the particularity of their revolution: the situation was misrepresented to make believe that some wanted to “introduce” socialism in Russia by decree, without considering the existing technical level, the great number of small enterprises, or the habits and wishes of the majority of the population; and, over and above, what Lenin underlined many times, the fact that 80% of the population was illiterate.

In his pamphlet, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, published as a Pravda insert on 28 April 1918, Lenin once again raised these same questions, and gradually formed his own position in light of the new situation (LCW, Vol. 27). The reason he attributed such grave importance to the difficulties caused by the “chaotic” situation was that “the military party, tempted by Russia’s momentary weakness… may gain the upper hand at any moment” in the West (LCW, Vol. 27, 237). He intended to establish a concrete economic alternative to market-dominated production in an “anarchically built capitalist society” and the “spontaneously growing and expanding national and international market” system, but which had not yet overstepped the limitations of the existing “mixed market economy” (LCW, Vol. 27, 238). True, he had already advocated “the strictest and universal accounting and control of the production and distribution of goods.” Since he spoke about “setting up an extremely intricate and delicate system of new organizational relationships,” whose realization was not merely a technical matter, it is natural that he did not envisage a complete and immediate termination of all market relations as “time is needed” to “convince the people” and “deepen the consciousness.” Lenin concluded that capitalism as a sector would have to remain standing. He said that “If we decided to continue to expropriate capital at the same rate at which we have been doing up to now, we should certainly suffer defeat,” and elsewhere that “the expropriation of the expropriators” is easier than introducing a new system. He believed that the Red Guard attacks on capital had drawn to a close and the period of “utilising bourgeois specialists by the proletarian state power” had begun (LCW, Vol. 27, 246, 248). He even strayed from every theoretical premise and declared unequivocally that these specialists must be engaged in the service of the new regime with “high remuneration.” Lenin described this “winning over the ‘stars’ of the intelligentsia” as a “step back” and a “partial retreat” when compared with socialist equality (LCW, Vol. 27, 248–250). In the same breath–and with great prescience–he spoke of a certain and inevitable corruption of this system, the weakening of its moral fiber as a sort of natural concomitant of the “market economy.” “The corrupting influence of high salaries–both upon the Soviet authorities (especially since the revolution occurred so rapidly that it was impossible to prevent a certain number of adventurers and rogues from getting into positions of authority…) and upon the mass of the workers–is indisputable.” Yet he never found a convincing solution to this contradiction, always thinking in terms of “socialist” and “proletarian” consciousness and its persuasion, because they had not been able to establish “comprehensive control and accounting,” and had “fallen behind with the socialist reforms.” “We have introduced workers’ control as a law, but this law… is only just beginning to penetrate the minds of broad sections of the proletariat” (LCW, Vol. 27, 254).4 Essentially, the expansion of state regulation to capitalist production and turnover of goods (to the cooperatives as well) may become a fundamental question regarding financial and market conditions in the “transition leading to socialism”. In The Impending Catastrophe, he drew a clear line between state control of the bourgeoisie and the expropriation of private property that applied to the bourgeoisie, even arguing against expropriation in this specific case:

If nationalisation of the banks is so often confused with the confiscation of private property, it is the bourgeois press which has an interest in deceiving the public. … Whoever owned fifteen rubles on a savings account would continue to be the owner of fifteen rubles after the nationalisation of the banks; and whoever had fifteen million rubles would continue after the nationalisation of the banks to have fifteen million rubles in the form of shares, bonds, bills, commercial certificates and so on. (LCW, Vol. 25, 330)

The purpose of nationalization was to oversee financial and economic processes, the actual collection of personal income taxes, etc. Lenin contrasted reactionary-bourgeois regulation to revolutionary democratic regulation, with bottom-up control, with whose limitations he soon came face-to-face. He had already stipulated that the construction of the most modern heavy industry would require state-of-the-art technical-technological progress, to apply “much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total amount of goods turned out, or to the amount of work done by the railways, the water transport system, etc., etc.” Lenin thought that the feasibility of socialism depended on the successes that could be achieved in the field of “combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism” (LCW, Vol. 27, 259). Apart from the cooperation and competition of economic sectors and modes of production, Lenin also spoke about the “competition of communes,” and etched out its moral driving forces more clearly than its material and economic bases. In contrast to the “allowances” made to market and financial conditions and the “bourgeois cooperatives,” the “socialist state can arise only as a network of producers’ and consumers’ communes, which conscientiously keep account of their production and consumption, economise on labour, and steadily raise the productivity of labour, thus making it possible to reduce the working day to seven, six and even fewer hours” (LCW, Vol. 27, 259).

Lenin had taken note of this, and by the spring of 1918, famine ravaged the cities. In fact, a political turn was outlined in May 1918, leading from a state-supervised mixed market economy to a dictatorship of state subsistence that swept spontaneously toward war communism. The latter, in the beginning, was determined and validated by the internal armed counterrevolution and interventionist military attacks.

NEP Versus War Communism: The State Against Capitalism for the Survival of Socialism as an Alternative

Left unexplained was that the matter does not simply rest on state power, for in war communism the state as a military force of authority, as a “deterrent to class enemies through dictatorial” power, acted as the mainspring of the economy. This had no roots in any form of Marxist theoretical tradition from Marx’s own time, and even contradicted his period’s idea of socialism. Lenin was not so naïve as to identify war communism with “complete socialism,” for he continued to believe that “as long as workers and peasants remain, socialism has not been achieved” (LCW, Vol. 30, 506). Lenin’s real theoretical mistake in 1919–1920 was that he overestimated the possibilities of socialization, of social supervision within the framework of nationalization, and underestimated the inveteracy of the market and money in a regulating role, a fact he later recognized. The “atmosphere” of the epoch, the romantic attitude towards the civil war, was also expressed in war communism’s compulsory egalitarianism.

War communism’s focus was on the consolidation of the new military-power hierarchy under civil war conditions, even though it simultaneously exacerbated the economic situation. Meanwhile, Lenin held that socialism, as a system that had reached completion, would only be composed of voluntary associations of economically productive communities organized from below. It was still a state, though, for “there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie” in order to defend the “equality of labor” and public property (LCW, Vol. 25, 471). Lenin differentiated between state and social-community property even at its inception; before the introduction of war communism, he believed that the productive classes would themselves have to create socialist conditions.

Just as war communism was not the application of a theory, neither was the NEP the experiment or exercise of one. The Soviet government implemented both war communism and the NEP under pressure of concrete circumstances, requirements, and needs–without foreseeing its internal or international effects. In both cases their ideologies–the theoretical justification of the “systems”–were developed either parallel to their introduction, or as a follow-up (though war communism incorporated a number of elements from German war economic policy, and the NEP included elements from the “market economy” of the winter and spring of 1918). The NEP meant substituting militarized production–including the ration system, strict state distribution, and the compulsory appropriation of grain–with money and market conditions, reinstituting free trade and introducing taxes in kind. Often forgotten is that, at the same time, the partial reinstatement of capitalist conditions entailed a general social transformation, a restructuring of social classes and groups, and a change in their relationships.

The introduction of a market economy and “workers’ democracy”–also proved to be a contradiction that could not be bridged. Significant segments of the laboring masses became tired of the sacrifices they were called upon to make and were demanding a “loosening of the bolts,” but very few were in possession of the skills required for direct democracy. Lenin later expressed the necessity of the NEP, neatly and self-critically summarizing it at the 11th Party Congress in the spring of 1922: “We must organize things in such a way as to make possible the customary operation of capitalist economy and capitalist exchange, because this is essential for the people” (see Lenin’s speech at the 11th Congress in March 1922, LCW, Vol. 33, 279).

State Socialism Versus State Capitalism

With the ascent of the NEP, the question of socialism in Lenin’s thinking was broadened by new elements and hypotheses. He made it clear that he was unwilling to become subject to his own party’s propaganda, and he differentiated conceptually between the NEP period and socialism. The NEP came to be defined as an unpremeditated “transitional phase” within the transitional period. Lenin consciously took precautions not to make the same mistake, made during war communism, of attempting to give the conditions of the “war economy” legitimacy in socialist theory. Lenin had indeed made state capitalism central as part of the transition after the spring of 1918, but in a structured manner. The concept had an immediate political meaning. The Soviet state gave preferential treatment to organized large-scale capital and market-oriented state property rather than anarchic private property, the uncontrollably chaotic economy of the petit bourgeois (25 million small estates in place of a single large one!). The grounds for this were that “a capitalism overseen by the state” was the only solution for an “ordered retreat,” and only state capitalism could replace bureaucratic war-communist centralism, which had also begot chaos. Of course Lenin called this a “retreat” compared with theoretical socialism; in concrete terms, he spoke about a step forward from the practice of economic policy under war communism. Just as he had described the transitional period’s state as a “bourgeois state” without a bourgeoisie, he spoke about a state capitalism without a bourgeoisie coming into being as a consequence of the NEP, as long as (and along with other developments) “the state enterprises will to a large extent be put on a commercial, capitalist basis” (LCW, Vol. 42, 376).

For Lenin, Kronstadt and the peasant revolts (notably, the Antonovshchina) showed that war communism was dead. This was how the “pure form of state capitalism,” which the Soviet government needed to function, came to be considered the opposite of war communism. Lenin marked out the purpose of the NEP in one of his last writings, On Cooperation: “to lease out concessions. In the prevailing circumstances, concessions in our country would unquestionably have been a pure type of state capitalism” (LCW, Vol. 33, 472). For Lenin, as he himself stressed, “the practical objectives were always of primary importance,” and so he could only experiment with a theory that also reinforced the practical objective. Now what was essential to him was precisely that a special type of capitalism had come into being in Russia, one previously unknown to history:

It was important for me to show the continuity between ordinary state capitalism and the unusual, even very unusual, state capitalism to which I referred in introducing the reader to the New Economic Policy (LCW, Vol. 33, 472).

The concept of state capitalism is used in two senses here: on the one hand as a sector of a mixed market economy. On the other it is a term from formation theory denoting the economic method and arrangement for the transitional period and seen as a phase of it. It is a type of “state capitalism,” in quotes, that cannot be found in “any textbooks,” “nor in the writings of Marx and Engels”: “On the question of state capitalism … our press and our Party make the mistake of dropping into intellectualism, into liberalism; we philosophize about how state capitalism is to be interpreted, and look into old books. But… not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism” (Speech at the Eleventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), LCW, Vol. 33, 277–278; Krausz 2007).

As early as in 1918, Lenin suggested that he used the term “state capitalism” for the relations of the transitional period. “State capitalism would be for us, and for Russia, a more favorable form than the existing one. … We did not overrate either the rudiments or the principles of socialist economy, although we had already accomplished the social revolution. On the contrary, at that time in 1918 we already realized to a certain extent that it would be better if we first arrived at state capitalism and only after that at socialism”(LCW, Vol. 33, 420). It is not accidental that it caused a great upheaval amongst Marxists, when–following Tony Cliff–the term of state capitalism was transferred to the description of state socialism, which was established after the Stalinist turn.5

The Theory of Socialism and Its Practical Possibilities

Lenin’s speech at the 11th Party Congress stressed in particular that during the NEP period Russia would develop in the framework of a multisectoral mixed economy, in which the various forms of economy compete, and mobilize different social forces: “When I spoke about communist competition, what I had in mind were not communist sympathies but the development of economic forms and social systems” (LCW, Vol. 33, 287). These various forms–small proprietors, the state capitalist, state socialist, and self-governing cooperative sectors–formed a system of market economy, which meant that the direct realization of socialism as a system was taken off the practical political agenda. In other words, the goal was the survival of socialism as a sector. Lenin’s theory of socialism is compatible with this coherent structure, in which each social-economic sector was composed of further subsectors and organizational forms of production and consumption. This multisectoral system came to a halt with the turn promoted by Stalin, which swept away the sectors of both market capitalist and direct communal forms of production. State socialism came into being in 1929–1933 as a system derived from well-known historical circumstances. Then people started to call it socialism as the 1936 Constitution declared it.

During the 1920s the special characteristic of direct communal ownership and production was realized either in the form of voluntary associations or by way of state mediation, though only in a small fraction of agricultural and industrial units or fields. Lenin focused much of his attention at the end of his life on “self-governing” and “cooperative socialism”–the historical possibilities of an economic system built on direct democracy–which he called “islands of socialism.” The significance of the experiments with cooperatives was of immense importance to Lenin, because “this political power owns all the means of production, the only task, indeed, that remains for us is to organize the population in cooperative societies. … Socialism … will achieve its aim automatically” (On Cooperation, LCW, Vol. 33, 467–475). Though the NEP had been “made to last,” Lenin never removed socialism from his agenda, even under circumstances of market restoration.

This was even though he knew that thinkers and politicians who had been nursed by the market and state looked down upon cooperatives, even “from the standpoint of transition to the new system by means that are the simplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant.” He knew that incorporating the whole population into voluntary cooperatives of production and consumption would take a longer historical period to realize–precisely because of the absence of the cultural-civilizatorial preconditions–and yet he insisted on posing this problem.6 The exact relationship between cooperatives and socialism that Lenin had in mind becomes clear in the light of his whole approach, the complete and coherent system of his thoughts.

The cooperatives, as he wrote, are the products of capitalism; they are “collective capitalist institutions” in which the future of socialism can be glimpsed. Producers have the opportunity to shape the cooperatives in their own image in the course of a revolutionary reform of state power, similarly to how in the NEP, “when we combine private capitalist enterprises … with enterprises of the consistently socialist type … the question arises about a third type of enterprise, the cooperatives, which were not formally regarded as an independent type differing fundamentally from the others.” He spoke about the possibility of coexisting state socialist and cooperative socialist enterprises, though a differentiation between the two forms of cooperative, state and self-governed, would soon come about (LCW, Vol. 33, 472–473). By the mid-1920s, nearly 10 million people had been pooled into state-organized and state-subsidized consumer cooperatives. Lenin marked out explicitly that a shift must be made from the interpretation of socialism previously reached (war communist, state powered, and politicized) to the position of “cooperative socialism”.

Now we are entitled to say that for us the mere growth of cooperation … is identical with the growth of socialism, and at the same time we have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism. The radical modification is this; formerly we placed, and had to place, the main emphasis on the political struggle, on revolution, on winning political power, etc. Now the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organizational, ‘cultural’ work. I should say that emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a world scale (LCW, Vol. 33, 474).

A direct replenishment of needs had the advantage of presenting internal needs and “potential output” that could be calculated in advance, without employing an office to do such work. The most comprehensive modern theory of socialism has been published by István Mészáros (2018), entitled Beyond Capital, who ties his work on capital to the theoretical fundamentals of Marx and Lenin, and links his concept of socialism not to the concepts of market production, but both looks for and defines these concepts beyond the market and the state–“beyond capital,” in short. After Stalin’s death, “dogmatics” and “revisionists” in each communist party made a compromise in order to retain power. Later, at the time of the change of regime the former “revisionists,” now as liberals, represented and formed the ideological mainstream of the market-capitalist restoration.7

Lenin’s theory of socialism and the main direction of his political activity was targeted at the gradual delinking from the “capital system”. In East European state socialism, instead of the renaissance of self-governing, cooperative socialism, it was the power of capital that came back with its semi-peripheral characteristics. Lenin’s ouvre, representing and working out specific historical experiences, remains actual until we realize socialism, since there has been no other relevant alternative to capitalism over the last centuries. There is “only” one question remaining: how do we evaluate current attempts, what kind of socialism would be viable in replacing capitalism and how to bring it about? Whether to promote the second or updated edition of state socialism–or to take the direction of self-governing socialism, the culture of workers’ councils, forms of cooperatives leading to the self-defense and self-organization of the working people. For me it is crystal clear that Lenin would certainly insist on the latter variant.

Bibliography
Krausz, Tamás 1996a: A szovjet thermidor [The soviet thermidor]. Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó.

Krausz, Tamás 1996b: An ahistorical political economics. Reviewed work: Socialist Systems by János Kornai. Social Scientist 24, 1–3 ( January–March 1996), 111–127.

Krausz, Tamás 2005: ‘Stalin’s Socialism’–today’s debates on socialism: theory, history, politics. Contemporary Politics 11/4 (2005), 235–238.

Krausz, Tamás 2007: A szocializmusvita jelenlegi állásáról [On the current position of the debate on socialism]. In: Krausz, Tamás–Szigeti, Péter (eds), Államszocializmus: Értelmezések–viták–tanulságok [State socialism: Interpretations–debates–lessons]. Budapest: L’Harmattan–Eszmélet Foundation, 122–144.

Krausz, Tamás 2015: Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Montly Review Press.

Krausz, Tamás 2017: Lenin e la rivoluzione d’Ottobre. Introduzione. In: Stato e rivoluzone. Edizione del centenario con un saggio introduttivo di Tamás Krausz su Lenin e la rivoluzione d’Ottobre. Trauzione di Lila Grieco. Roma: Piccola Biblioteca Donzelli, 7–64.

Krausz, Tamás 2020: Lenin on global history and the global historiography on Lenin. RussianStudiesHu 2020. doi.org

Krausz, Tamás–Szigeti, Péter (eds) 2007: Államszocializmus: Értelmezések–viták–tanulságok [State socialism: Interpretations–debates–lessons]. Budapest: L’Harmattan–Eszmélet Foundation.

LCW = Lenin, V. I. 1960–1970: Collected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, Vols 1–45.

Marx, Karl 1875/1972: Critique of the Gotha Programme. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Marx, Karl 1887: Capital. First English edition of 1887. 4th German edition changes included as indicated; with some modernisation of spelling. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Mészáros, István 2018: Beyond Capital. Toward a Theory of Transition. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Tamás Krausz, born 1948, is a historian and university professor at the Eötvös Loránd Universität in Budapest. His research deals, in the first place, with the history of the Soviet Union up to the Second World War, with the history of Bolshevism and with the lives and careers of Lenin and Stalin. More recently, he has published about “controversial questions in the history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century”, and the “concealed genocide”, perpetrated amongst others by Hungarian occupational troops in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. His monumental work Reconstructing Lenin. An Intellectual Biography has been awarded the German Memorial Prize, after an English translation had been published in 2015. Krausz is a key figure in the anti-capitalist left in Hungary. In the years 1988/89, he participated in the founding of the Association of the Left Alternative (Baloldali Alternatíva Egyesülés), an organisation of several hundred intellectuals, which aimed at the realisation of the socialism of self-government. This, according to Krausz, “was not a seemly naïve association but a moral community”. Supported by, amongst others, the members of this organisation, Krausz became one of the founders of a political platform within the Hungarian Socialist Party, which definied itself as anti-capitalist and anti-Stalinist, and later took on the name Association of the Left (Baloldali Tömörülés). Between 1989 and 2009, Krausz was the deputy chair of this inner-party platform. In April 2009, he left the Hungarian Socialist Party. The most robust initiative in the creation of which Krausz, together with some friends, took a leading role, proved to be the quarterly magazine for social and cultural critique »Eszmélet«. This magazine, which has been published since 1989, is Hungary’s only journal for Marxist theory. Since its beginning, Krausz has been an editor of the paper.

Notes:
1.↩ I used the following works in writing this paper: Krausz 1996a; 2005; 2007; 2015. In this short paper I cannot reflect on the huge and excellent literature on Lenin, I can only refer to some of it, e.g. Lars Lih, Paul LeBlanc, H. Tickin, V. Loginov, and Alternativi, the monthly from Moscow, and several other Marxist sources from all over the world. Due to constraints in length I do not discuss here the debates between Soviet leaders and other currents.
2.↩ About the importance of this small book, see Krausz 2017.
3.↩ The most important work of Marx that draws out the outlines of socialism, is the
Critique on the Gotha Programme (Marx 1875/1972).
4.↩ It is worth noting that the notion of “consciousness” not only implies moral content but also knowledge itself, and understanding long-term interests.
5.↩ There is systematic critique of the state-capitalist interpretation of socialism in Hungary as well. See Krausz–Szigeti 2007.
6.↩ “The cooperatives must be granted state loans that are greater, if only by a little, than the loans we grant to private enterprises.” (The cooperative order as socialism.) “But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP.” On Cooperation, LCW, Vol. 33, 469–70. See on this my review of Kornai: Krausz 1996b.

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 25, 2022 2:38 pm

Important Clarification by the Union of Soviet Officials on the US/EU Imperialist Aggression against Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 24, 2022

Editorial Comment: The Union of Soviet Officers clarifies some points of Putin’s speech when he discredits the successes of the USSR, the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet power, which saved Russia from collapse and colonization. In addition to attempts to blame the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the escalation of the conflict in the Donbass on Lenin – it is a distortion of history. They warn that the communists, followers of Marxism-Leninism, have nothing to do with Gorbachev’s team and Perestroika that dismantled Soviet socialism, the national state and revived Ukrainian fascism. As long as the USSR existed, until Brezhnev, the different republics were stable territories, harmonized within the Union, including Ukraine and its Donetsk region let us not forget.

They warn that “Russia has no chance to resist the imperialist attack in the absence of a basis for the consolidation of society, which is possible only if the government fully meets the needs of the people. The solution of these tasks requires the immediate cessation of privatization of state property, the accession of our country to the WTO, the imposition of monetary experiments and the transition to the path of socialist construction.”

– Alba Granada North Africa


Statement of the Union of Soviet Officials

The attempts of the Ukrainian puppet regime to unleash a full-scale war against the Donbass with the support of Western imperialism forced the state leaders of the Russian Federation to implement the proposal of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk. For eight years, the Communists insisted on taking an appropriate step, emphasizing its importance in terms of ensuring the protection of the inhabitants of Novorossia from the Bandera terror. Any delay in recognizing the independence of Donbass would undoubtedly untie the hands of the Ukrainian authorities and push them to commit large-scale war crimes against the Russian world. Therefore, the long-awaited complementation of the Communist Party’s idea is worthy of approval. However, this is no reason for complacency and for nurturing illusions about a change of course on the part of the authorities.

The support for state sovereignty by the DNR and LNR is an important but isolated episode. In reality, the ruling regime is determined to continue with a policy that delivers Russia to the slaughter of world “globalism”, contributing to the extinction of the national identity of compatriots. President V.V. Putin’s speech on the issue of the situation in the Donbas leaves no doubt about it. Having approved the idea of recognizing the independence of Novorossia, he once again made statements discrediting the exploits of our ancestors, the successes of the USSR, the policy of the Communist Party and Soviet power, which saved Russia from collapse and colonization. Attempts to take responsibility for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, for the escalation of the conflict in the Donbass on V.I. Lenin are not just a distortion of history.

The truth is that it was the experiments of the Provisional Government that contributed to the unraveling of the spiral of disintegration processes, which reached its peak in the autumn of 1917. Moreover, the “Februaries” did everything possible to make the dismemberment of Russia a reality, as Kerensky admitted in 1953 during a conversation with French journalists. And only the Bolsheviks managed to solve the large-scale task of reunifying the Russian lands, realizing this not on the basis of imperial dictates, but on the basis of the ideas of equality, justice and internationalism. Speaking in the future of the unitary nature of the socialist state, V.I. However, Lenin emphasized the importance of uniting at the initial stage “the great Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants” on the principles of federalism.

Lenin in his “Letter to the Ukrainian workers and peasants on the occasion of the victories over Denikin” emphasized the desire of the Russian and Ukrainian workers to form a voluntary union of nations based “on full confidence, on a clear consciousness of brotherhood. unity, on completely voluntary consent.” The solution of such a momentous task, plus the need to broaden the social base of the revolution in the republics, dictated the necessity of certain concessions in their favor. Otherwise, the task of reunifying our state (and, consequently, creating the prerequisites for successfully countering the onslaught of Western imperialism) would have remained unresolved.

At the same time, we cannot ignore Vladimir Putin’s words about the decisions made by the Communist Party during the “perestroika” years that contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Equating Gorbachev’s team with the followers of Marxism-Leninism, which dismantled Soviet socialism, the nation state, completely changes everything from a sick head to a healthy one. Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev in the “dazzling 90s” admitted in retrospect that they were motivated by the motives for the destruction of the Soviet model of economic and political development. And the communists have absolutely nothing to do with it!

At the same time, silence about the responsibility for the death of our Motherland, Yeltsin and his accomplices in “Democratic Russia”. It is well known whose efforts were dragged through the decisions of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR on the declaration of state sovereignty of Russia, on the termination of tax transfers to the budget of the USSR. Everyone knows for sure who in early 1991 not only expressed solidarity with the atrocities of Russophobes and anti-Soviets in the Baltic Soviet republics, but also threw mud on the Armed Forces of the USSR, the KGB for trying to turn their backs. of the political heirs of the “forest brothers”. We know who, grossly ignoring the desire of the people expressed in the referendum of the entire Union to live in one country, signed in Belovezhye in favor of the United States a criminal act on the liquidation of our state. However, in honor of Boris Yeltsin, the authorities are building and maintaining centers at the expense of budgetary funds. At the same time, those who saved our Motherland from the death of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin are being massively compromised. And this, of course, completely betrays the mentality of the ruling regime.

All of the above are by no means random events. A country that is financially and economically dependent on Western imperialism, a country whose “elite” launders stolen capital abroad and, as a result, becomes controlled by foreign governments, is by definition incapable of pursuing an independent foreign policy line. Russia has no chance of resisting imperialist attack in the absence of a basis for the consolidation of society, which is possible only if the government fully meets the needs of the people. The solution of these tasks requires the immediate cessation of privatization of state property, the accession of our country to the WTO, the imposition of monetary experiments and the transition to the path of socialist construction. The current oligarchic government never implements these ideas because of its class interests. Therefore, only the union of the people of Russia in the struggle against the comprador course, against the capitalist dictatorship will save our country from destruction.

The future belongs to socialism!

Via The Common -23/02/2022

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/02/ ... t-ukraine/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 28, 2022 2:38 pm

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Reform vs Revolution in Russia 1917
Originally published: Red Flag on April 18, 2022 by Josh Lees (more by Red Flag) (Posted Apr 27, 2022)

In October 1917, revolutionary Russian workers, supported by millions of peasants and soldiers, succeeded in overthrowing capitalist rule and replacing it with their own democratic structures of power. Exploited masses have risen up in rebellion throughout history. But in Russia, for the first time, they actually took control of society, created a government based on democratic workers’ soviets (councils) and, at least temporarily, routed the capitalist state.

They immediately set about pulling Russia out of the slaughter of World War I, liberating the oppressed nationalities under the Russian empire, implementing workers’ control of production, distributing land to the peasants and scrapping sexist laws and customs. The workers’ success inspired a wave of revolutions elsewhere.

But this victory was far from inevitable. The revolutionary Bolshevik Party was the only party that argued for workers to take power. By October 1917 it had around 250,000 members and had won significant support beyond its ranks. But just six months earlier, it was supported by only a small minority.

The two other left-wing parties vying for the allegiance of the working class, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, opposed the workers seizing power. They argued for moderation, patience and above all for the working class to subordinate itself to Russia’s capitalists and the Provisional Government that ruled in their interests. Had these forces not been defeated, workers’ power in Russia would not have been achieved.

The existence of a sizeable revolutionary party in Russia, the Bolsheviks, was crucial to the revolution’s success. And such a party existed as a result of important debates that were had well before the revolution. The willingness of the Bolsheviks to split from the conservative arm of their movement years in advance meant that, when the decisive moment came, they were able to mobilise a layer of workers who could understand the political debates, combat the influence of the reformists and liberals, and fight for a revolutionary strategy.

In the nineteenth century, much of Europe was undergoing industrialisation, which brought with it the rapid expansion of the urban working class, the development of a mass workers’ movement and the spread of socialist ideas. Russia, however, lagged behind. By 1900, around 85 percent of the population still lived in the countryside and depended on agriculture for their livelihoods. Serfdom had been abolished only in 1861, and the country was still ruled by the tsarist autocracy.

Marxist ideas were pioneered in Russia from the 1880s onwards, initially by tiny handfuls of persecuted, often exiled, intellectuals. Although the Russian working class was still only a small minority of the population, by the 1890s, industry was growing rapidly. Soon, masses of textile workers and metalworkers in huge factories, with appalling conditions, started striking and organising, and the influence of Marxism began to spread.

In about 1895, Vladimir Lenin and others founded the Saint Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. Lenin was soon arrested and imprisoned for his efforts. While in prison, an impressive textile workers’ strike that the League had helped to organise took place in 1896. Lenin is said to have smuggled out a manifesto for the strike, written using milk and an inkwell made of bread, which he could swallow when the prison guards came around. “Today, I have eaten six inkpots”, said one of his letters.

This summed up the state of the socialist movement at the time. Under conditions of severe repression, a multitude of tiny, atomised Marxist circles of middle-class intellectuals, students and workers proliferated, but were constantly broken up by arrests and exile. The fate of the first congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, in 1898, was typical—it brought together just nine delegates, five of whom were arrested within a month.

Moreover, there were divergent views on the way forward for Russian socialism. For example, the socialist manifesto at the 1898 congress was written by an intellectual called Peter Struve. He was one of those Russian “Marxists” against whom Lenin would soon be polemicising as really just a bourgeois liberal who liked to employ some Marxist verbiage. Struve’s version of “Marxism” had very little to do with workers’ revolution and socialism, and mainly emphasised that the development of capitalism was both inevitable and progressive.

Later in life, Struve explained, “Socialism, to tell the truth, never aroused the slightest emotion in me, still less attraction”. Not exactly the person you want writing your socialist manifesto! Struve would soon become a leading advocate of the interwoven currents known as Legal Marxism, Economism and Revisionism, all of which found a political home in the Mensheviks. What were these currents?

Essentially, they were the compromising right wing of the socialist movement. They were influenced by the arguments of Eduard Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Party, who at this time was “revising” Marxism to argue for a parliamentary road to socialism instead of class struggle and revolution. In Russia, there was no parliament, just tsarism, so Russian reformism took different forms—some constrained themselves to the very limited publishing activities and ideas legally allowed by the tsar (hence “Legal Marxism”). This overlapped with Economism, which was about limiting the kinds of demands and arguments socialists put to workers, in particular the demand to overthrow tsarism. This became theorised and justified by the Economists, who said that workers were really interested only in bread and butter demands anyway, not deeper theoretical and political questions.

The effect of all this was to shift the socialist movement to the right, to neglect any serious attempt to win workers to revolutionary politics and instead to leave the working class under the sway of Russian liberalism, i.e., the supposedly “progressive” industrialists, bankers and landlords. Following this to its logical conclusion, Struve soon went on to formally abandon Marxism and co-found the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Kadets, in 1905.

This question, about the role of the capitalists in the coming struggle against tsarism and the consequent tasks of the working class, would end up being central to a split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

The second congress of the party, held in 1903, came after years of organising efforts and political arguments on the part of Lenin and many other leading Marxists. A re-formed Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, on a more solid footing, was the result.

But the congress also gave rise to a new split, with the party dividing into two factions, the Bolsheviks (meaning majority) and Mensheviks (minority). At the time, the issues at stake were not totally clear, and it was the Mensheviks, not Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who drove the split by refusing to accept the democratic decisions of the congress. It was around this time that many of the myths about the supposedly authoritarian Lenin were invented, by Mensheviks who were bitter about being in a minority. The underlying issue that precipitated the split was to do with the nature of the coming revolution in Russia and the role of the working class in it.

Many of the features associated with modern capitalism in the rest of Europe did not exist in backward Russia. In particular, while the capitalist class was firmly in control of the state apparatus in most European countries, in Russia they had to deal with the anachronism of tsarism, in which official political power still resided in an all-powerful monarchy, the interests of which didn’t always align exactly with the capitalists’ own. This desire for a more modern, efficient state that could better facilitate capitalist development led to oppositional, liberal currents in the Russian bourgeoisie and among their hangers-on in the middle-class intelligentsia.

This in turn led some socialists to argue that the Russian capitalists were a progressive force, and that they were destined to lead a revolution against tsarism as their French counterparts had done in the French Revolution of 1789. In addition, they argued, Russia was not ready for socialism, and a long period of capitalist development would be required first. Therefore, the role of the working class was to ally with the bourgeoisie, to push them forward where necessary, but to remain subordinate to their leadership.

As a leading Menshevik, Axelrod, put it, “Our attitude to the liberal bourgeoisie is defined by the task of imbuing it with more courage”. Furthermore, the working class would “be falling into a fateful blunder” if it pushed too hard to assert its demands independently of these bourgeois liberals, since it would cause them to “recoil” from the struggle and force them into the camp of reaction and tsarism.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks had a very different approach. Russia’s capitalists, they pointed out, were tied to tsarism by a thousand threads, and utterly dependent on it. Above all, they would much prefer to stick with the tsar rather than risk unleashing a popular struggle of workers and peasants that would threaten their profits and their control over the factories and the land. The situation was very different from the French Revolution, when the working class was so underdeveloped that the capitalists had less to fear from unleashing popular uprisings in the course of toppling the monarchy. In Russia, when push came to shove, the capitalists would side with the tsar. The days of the capitalists playing any progressive role were long gone (as Marx had argued as early as 1848). Therefore, the struggle against tsarism had to be led by the working class, against the capitalists, not with them. The workers would find allies in the struggle, but these would not be the treacherous bourgeois liberals, who after all depended for their profits on exploiting the workers, but would come from among the millions of oppressed peasants yearning for land and freedom.

This fundamental split defined the struggle between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks right up until the revolution in 1917. The Menshevik position led them repeatedly to adopt a craven approach to Russia’s capitalists and their chief liberal representatives in the Kadet party. When Russia’s capitalists whipped up nationalist hysteria and cheered on the Russian empire in World War I, profiting from the slaughter while workers and peasants died and starved in their millions, the Mensheviks prevaricated while the Bolsheviks mounted a strident anti-war campaign.

After the tsar was toppled by a worker and soldier rebellion in February 1917, the Mensheviks sought to hold the working class back, arguing that the soviets, which had sprung up all over Russia as the democratic organising bodies of people power, should remain a loyal and subordinate pressure group to the capitalist, unelected Provisional Government.

The revolution demanded “Peace, land and bread”. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries claimed to support these demands, but opposed the only means of obtaining them, the overthrow of capitalism. And so, desperate to maintain their alliance with their bourgeois allies, they ended up supporting the war, opposing strikes and land seizures, restoring the control of the tsarist generals over the rebellious soldiers, repressing the Bolsheviks, disempowering the soviets and eventually joining in government alongside the capitalists. Kerensky, the Social Revolutionaries leader and head of the Provisional Government by September 1917, even plotted a military coup with tsarist General Kornilov to crush the revolution once and for all.

These betrayals caused workers to desert the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in droves, convinced now of the Bolsheviks’ arguments. The Social Revolutionaries split into a right wing and a left, with the left now supporting the Bolshevik call for the soviets to take power, reflecting the coming to fruition of Lenin’s hopes for the rebellious peasantry to follow the workers’ revolutionary lead.

The behaviour of Russia’s liberals and reformists was not an anomaly. It had happened before, and has been repeated throughout the century since. Capitalism is the cause of war, inequality, poverty, oppression and misery. Those who imagine they can oppose these things without overthrowing the system itself end up adapting to that system, absorbing its logic and becoming its lackeys.

https://mronline.org/2022/04/27/reform- ... ssia-1917/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue May 03, 2022 2:05 pm

Academician Strakhov and the struggle against the destruction of domestic science
05/03/2022
To the anniversary of the scientist

May 3, 2022 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding Soviet researcher in the field of geology and geophysics, a leader in the fight against the destruction of domestic science in the 1990-2000s, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists Vladimir Nikolaevich Strakhov (1932 - 2012) .

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Academician Vladimir Nikolaevich Strakhov

V.N. Strakhov is an academician in the second generation. His father, Nikolai Mikhailovich Strakhov (1900 - 1978) was a major geologist. In 1953 he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

As a teenager, Volodya Strakhov went on geological expeditions with his father. Volodya's other hobby was mathematics, which he began to seriously engage in after a serious injury that chained him to bed for several months. All this determined the choice of profession. In 1955 V.N. Strakhov graduated from the Geophysical Faculty of the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. G.K. Ordzhonikidze, from 1959 until the end of his life he worked at the Institute of Physics of the Earth of the USSR Academy of Sciences named after O.Yu. Schmidt (IFZ).

The Institute of Physics of the Earth of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established in 1955 as a result of the division of the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences created by Otto Yulievich Schmidt (1891 - 1956) into several institutes. In 1993, some more scientific organizations were attached to the Institute of Physics of the Earth and it became known as the Joint Institute of Physics of the Earth (JIPZ) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1989 V.N. Strakhov was the director of the IPE Zemlya RAS, and in 1993-2002 he was the director of the OIPZ RAS. In 1987 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1992 - an academician.

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Scientific interests of V.N. Strakhov were associated with the development of mathematical methods for the analysis of geophysical and geological-geographical data, the development of gravitational and magnetic methods for prospecting for minerals.

The main problem that interested Vladimir Nikolaevich was as follows. Under the Earth there is some kind of massive geological body that generates magnetic and not only magnetic anomalies. How to determine its shape and establish its boundaries based on the results of ground-based measurements in different places. To solve such a problem, a very serious mathematical apparatus is required, which V.N. Strakhov.

V.N. Strakhov published in 1955. He defended his Ph.D. thesis "On the theory of analytic continuation of two-dimensional potential fields" in 1962. In 1972, Vladimir Nikolaevich defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences on the topic "Some applications of functional-analytical methods in the theory of interpretation of gravitational and magnetic anomalies."

In his memoirs, V.N. Strakhov divided his scientific activity during the Soviet era into three periods:

The first period (1955 - 1965) is associated with the development of methods for deciphering the contours of two-dimensional geological bodies that generate magnetic and gravitational anomalies. 50 papers have been published on this topic.

The second period (1966 - 1977) is characterized by work on a wider range of geophysical problems using a fairly complex mathematical apparatus. About 100 papers have been published in this direction.

The third period (1977 - 1988) was associated with the development of methods for reconstructing the shape of three-dimensional geological bodies according to magnetic and gravitational measurements. More than 200 papers have been published on this topic.

V.N. Strakhov actively collaborated with many researchers not only in Moscow, but also in different cities of the USSR. Under his leadership, a seminar was held at the IPE, which held regular, first two-day, and then three- and four-day sessions, to which researchers from different cities of the USSR came. In essence, the seminar turned into a small, periodically held scientific conference.

V.N. Strakhov was an opponent in the defense of more than 160 dissertations. This is a lot.

In 1993 V.N. Strakhov achieved the creation of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This service included seismic and geophysical stations, as well as a computer processing center for geophysical data. In the same 1993, on the initiative of V.N. Strakhov, the International Scientific Conference "Geophysics and the Modern World" was held.

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Logo of the Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences

In 1992 V.N. Strakhov created the journal Science and Technology in Russia, of which he was editor-in-chief until 2002.

In the USSR, science was in demand, but the forces that came to power after 1991 did not need it. Funding for scientific research was drastically reduced, research institutes began to close and merge. The financial situation of scientific workers worsened. They say that in one respected university, an optional vocal course was introduced for students, which gained great popularity. For the students understood that a scientific worker with a good command of vocals was served more in electric trains.

In 2006 , Russia spent $3 billion a year on science, and the US $178 billion .

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The consequence of all this was the mass emigration of young and not too young researchers from the country. In liberal circles, it was said almost openly that Russia does not need to have its own science, because it is an underdeveloped country, and should remain so in the future.

Many researchers, mostly of the older generation, took a sharply negative view of what was happening and began to organize themselves to fight for the revival of Russian science. Vladimir Nikolaevich Strakhov became the informal leader of this movement.

Academician V.N. Strakhov refused government awards three times ( 1992 , 1999 , 2002 ). He organized hunger strikes three times (in 1996-1997 ), the immediate reason for which was the non-payment of salaries to his employees.

To support impoverished scientists V.N. Strakhov organized free lunches for them at his Institute. To finance these lunches, deductions from contractual work to the directorate fund were increased, which caused dissatisfaction among scientists working on contractual topics.

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Academician V.N. Strakhov holds a protest hunger strike

As you know, in the civilized countries of the West, charitable organizations feed the poor and the homeless with free meals. And in Russia, such dinners were fed to scientists, some of whom had doctoral degrees. I think that many employees of the IPE RAS recalled the well-known poem by Joe Hill (1877 - 1914) " The road for soup is long, the line is long ... ".

V.N. Strakhov was objectionable to many, both within the walls of his Institute and outside these walls. In October 2002, opponents of V.N. Strakhova organized a meeting of the labor collective, on the agenda of which was the question of trust in the director. A significant part of those present voted against the director, after which V.N. Strakhov resigned as director and moved to work in another organization - the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he returned to the IPE as a chief researcher.

V.N. Strakhov became one of the initiators of the conference of scientists convened in June 2001, at which it was decided to create the "Movement for the Revival of Domestic Science". Vladimir Nikolaevich Strakhov was elected chairman of this movement. He held this post until the end of his life. Currently, the Movement is headed by mathematician, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Sergeevich Kashin (b. 1950).

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Chairman of the "Movement for the Revival of National Science" B.S. Kashin

Among the responses of right-wing circles to the creation of the “Movement for the Revival of Russian Science”, an article by Valery Valeryevich Panyushkin (b. 1969) in the Kommersant newspaper should be mentioned . To be honest, I am not in a position to adequately comment on this text. Weak modern language!

“ You are not an academician, but shit ,” investigator Khvat told the arrested academician Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887 - 1943) . This style of dealing with men of science has been successfully adopted by some modern liberals.

It is impossible not to recall how the wife of Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921 - 1989), Elena Georgievna Bonner (1923 - 2011), in 2010, proposed dispersing the Academy of Sciences.

Academician V.N. Strakhov never hid his communist views. Nevertheless, he believed that researchers with different political views, as well as researchers indifferent to politics, should be involved in the struggle for the revival of Russian science.

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Protest against the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences

And also V.N. Strakhov wrote poetry:

I'm not a poet, but a mathematician
And I calculate integrals,
So that a driller in any attempt to
open Scottish ore.

And therefore, poetry is a joy,
To make it easier to live,
So that in rhymed sorrows
I could whine a little.


Collection of poems by V.N. Strakhova was published published in 2006. In 2009 V.N. Strakhov published his memoirs "My life and my affairs".

Observing Russian political life, Vladimir Nikolaevich said that it convincingly confirms the hypothesis that man did not come from a monkey, but from a pig.

Vladimir Nikolaevich Strakhov passed away on November 30, 2012 . Before the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2013, he did not live ...

S.V. Bagotsky

https://www.rotfront.su/v-n-strahov-i-b ... rusheniya/

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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