Alexander Palace Forum
Discussions about Russian History => The Russian Revolution => Topic started by: rusmila on March 16, 2011, 10:07:29 AM
-
In which month Bolsheviks started to killing aristocracy?
-
We might say that Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich was the first of the Imperial Family killed in June of 1918.
Right now I can't think of any who were deliberately killed before him. Many lost their liberty to travel and or leave the country, but quite a few were allowed to gather in the Crimea after the abdication in March of 1917 and before Michael was killed in June of 1918.
It has been said that killing Michael was a test of how the people of Russia would react to the deliberate execution of a member of the Imperial Family. There was no upheaval over it and so the execution of Nicholas and his family and Grand Duchess Ella and her group was carried out in July.
Grand Duke Paul and his group were killed in 1919 at the Fortress of Sts Peter and Paul.
-
It's important to realize that throughout the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks were very preoccupied with ridding themselves of their political opponents, that is, first banning them from politics and then outright arresting them. According to Solzhenitsyn, the arrests of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries began immediately after June 14, 1918, after these parties had been officially "excluded from all the soviets [self-governing bodies]." The first arrests of the far-leftist Socialist Revolutionaries began from July 6. The point is, even before the murder of NAOTMAA, the Bolsheviks were eliminating the political opposition, and they obviously started with those who were most vulnerable. The terror itself began soon after, but I don't know when precisely people began massacring the "aristocracy." Actually I tend to think these were local actions, for the most part, and not directed from above. The Bolsheviks had much bigger fish to fry, perhaps starting with the IF.
-
It's important to realize that throughout the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks were very preoccupied with ridding themselves of their political opponents, that is, first banning them from politics and then outright arresting them. According to Solzhenitsyn, the arrests of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries began immediately after June 14, 1918, after these parties had been officially "excluded from all the soviets [self-governing bodies]." The first arrests of the far-leftist Socialist Revolutionaries began from July 6. The point is, even before the murder of NAOTMAA, the Bolsheviks were eliminating the political opposition, and they obviously started with those who were most vulnerable. The terror itself began soon after, but I don't know when precisely people began massacring the "aristocracy." Actually I tend to think these were local actions, for the most part, and not directed from above. The Bolsheviks had much bigger fish to fry, perhaps starting with the IF.
Elisabeth, well stated. It's important to realise the"aristocracy" included hundreds or more in Russia at that time, not just the higher Romanovs and IF. Understood that way , and with Bolsheviks understood to mean more than just the most powerful figures in the Party, then the killing of the aristocracy happened relatively soon after the Bolshevik seizure of power. This was not in any organised way, because Bolshevik control wasn't completely secure, but random killings of vulnerable or "available" or particularly disliked aristocrats did start occurring as early as 1918. And the aristocracy was indeed vulnerable even immediately after the February revolution, though not solely to the Bolsheviks of course.
-
I thought, too, of the use of the word aristocracy - not Imperial Family. When I answered I expressly mention the most notable of the Imperial Family as they are most often mentioned in history books.
I actually don't know too much about the "aristocracy" and who would be in it and who was killed by whom and where.
Was there wholesale killing of the aristocracy as there was in France during their Revolution? If there was, who would have been killed and where?
From reading The Russian Court at Sea by Welch, it would seem that a good many of the lesser aristocracy were saved and transported from the Crimea with the Empress on Marlborough.
For example the Youssapovs both the senior and junior branch were on board. The only Imperial member of that clan would be Irina, Grand Duchess Xenia's daughter.
-
It's important to realize that throughout the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks were very preoccupied with ridding themselves of their political opponents, that is, first banning them from politics and then outright arresting them. According to Solzhenitsyn, the arrests of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries began immediately after June 14, 1918, after these parties had been officially "excluded from all the soviets [self-governing bodies]." The first arrests of the far-leftist Socialist Revolutionaries began from July 6. The point is, even before the murder of NAOTMAA, the Bolsheviks were eliminating the political opposition, and they obviously started with those who were most vulnerable. The terror itself began soon after, but I don't know when precisely people began massacring the "aristocracy." Actually I tend to think these were local actions, for the most part, and not directed from above. The Bolsheviks had much bigger fish to fry, perhaps starting with the IF.
Elisabeth, well stated. It's important to realise the"aristocracy" included hundreds or more in Russia at that time, not just the higher Romanovs and IF. Understood that way , and with Bolsheviks understood to mean more than just the most powerful figures in the Party, then the killing of the aristocracy happened relatively soon after the Bolshevik seizure of power. This was not in any organised way, because Bolshevik control wasn't completely secure, but random killings of vulnerable or "available" or particularly disliked aristocrats did start occurring as early as 1918. And the aristocracy was indeed vulnerable even immediately after the February revolution, though not solely to the Bolsheviks of course.
Thanks, Rodney! I do think it's a difficult question, for all kinds of reasons -- for one thing, what do we mean by the term "aristocracy"? As you say, the actual aristocracy in imperial Russia, as in Great Britain at this time, was extremely limited in number, probably only in the hundreds but definitely not in the thousands. The gentry, on the other hand, was a relatively much larger (and much poorer) group and I think suffered all the depredations of the revolution(s) of 1917, perhaps considerably more so than the actual aristocracy did -- if for no other reason than I think that members of the Russian gentry could not always afford a ticket out of the country, including all the bribes necessary to secure a safe passage.
Among the aristocracy I would certainly count such families as the Yusupovs, the Sheremetevs, the Bariatinskys, and the Golitsyns. Among the gentry -- landowning or not, because many of them had lost too much after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 to really hold on to much if any land (a roughly similar situation to that of numerous members of the French nobility on the eve of the French Revolution) -- I would count the Nabokovs, who were only minor landowners in 1917. For all that, the father of the great novelist Vladimir Nabokov of Lolita fame was a major political figure in the liberal movement in Russia before the revolution and was actually assassinated abroad, in emigration, after it, apparently by Russian monarchists. I suppose this fact alone (aside from his tremendous intellect) would account for Vladimir Nabokov's famous disdain, if not outright contempt for, both Russian communists and royalists.
But getting back to the point, I don't know enough about the aristocracy/gentry during the Civil War period to state with any certainty that the Bolsheviks began carrying out such and such murderous actions against the upper classes in such and such years. As far as my (limited) knowledge goes, most gentry and the few remaining actual aristocrats (members of the imperial family don't count, they were imperial, technically far, far above the aristocrats because they had "blue, blue blood") were arrested in successive waves by Lenin's regime beginning in the very early 1920s, and sent to concentration camps in Siberia and elsewhere. It's certainly true, however, that many people, not only of the upper classes, met violent deaths in these camps long before Stalin.
It's also true that there were many, according to the anecdotal evidence probably dozens, if not hundreds, of murders of nobles that took place during the great overall conflagration of the revolutionary year of 1917. But as I said before, I think these were mainly local, random actions, carried out by disgruntled peasants who were hungry for land and/or giving the hated landlords their ultimate payback.
-
While hardly an aristocrat, the leader of the Revolution was himself of course a nobleman since age 12. Not that it mattered much per se by that time, when nobility no longer meant exclusive privilege to control the agricultural means of production (land and serfs).
Elisabeth, by "gentry" do you mean only the landed gentry à la the Ranevskys in The Cherry Orchard or do you also include the more bourgeois element (even though to some extent technically noble) of the upper ranks of the chinovniks à la the Ulyanovs?
-
While hardly an aristocrat, the leader of the Revolution was himself of course a nobleman since age 12. Not that it mattered much per se by that time, when nobility no longer meant exclusive privilege to control the agricultural means of production (land and serfs).
Elisabeth, by "gentry" do you mean only the landed gentry à la the Ranevskys in The Cherry Orchard or do you also include the more bourgeois element (even though to some extent technically noble) of the upper ranks of the chinovniks à la the Ulyanovs?
You know, F.P., your post got me to thinking. Obviously in the case of Russia, because of Peter the Great's Table of Ranks, which conferred nobility on governmental officials who attained a certain rank, sometimes even hereditary nobility, as in the case of Lenin's father -- well, it means that the whole category of "gentry" (like that of the Russian "aristocracy") is very problematic. But I suspect that Lenin was one of those not uncommon revolutionaries who are born into the upper classes and who regard those classes as utterly deserving of destruction. Excepting themselves, of course, and certain specialists needed to bring the revolution into the modern age (e.g., engineers, other specialists in science and technology, although it would be interesting to see how many ordinary bureaucrats/honorary gentry were kept on by the Soviet regime because they performed valuable services in banks, for example, when Lenin was busy nationalizing the banks).
Even hatred has its limits, I guess, when it comes to the actual practice and preservation of power.
-
It's also true that there were many, according to the anecdotal evidence probably dozens, if not hundreds, of murders of nobles that took place during the great overall conflagration of the revolutionary year of 1917. But as I said before, I think these were mainly local, random actions, carried out by disgruntled peasants who were hungry for land and/or giving the hated landlords their ultimate payback.
1917 should be considered the Year Of Darkness in Russian history, considering what it ushered in. The peasents wanted the land, and ended up losing it to Lenin and his band of murderers.
Where have you been, Elisabeth. These discussions have been dead without you.
-
It's also true that there were many, according to the anecdotal evidence probably dozens, if not hundreds, of murders of nobles that took place during the great overall conflagration of the revolutionary year of 1917. But as I said before, I think these were mainly local, random actions, carried out by disgruntled peasants who were hungry for land and/or giving the hated landlords their ultimate payback.
1917 should be considered the Year Of Darkness in Russian history, considering what it ushered in. The peasents wanted the land, and ended up losing it to Lenin and his band of murderers.
Where have you been, Elisabeth. These discussions have been dead without you.
Thank you, Tim. I know we have often been at odds in these discussions, for that very reason I appreciate so much your kind words.
It's true that 1917 despite its auspicious beginnings became a dark year for Russia and its former empire, but as we know, many and very much darker years were yet to come.
-
Thank you, Tim. I know we have often been at odds in these discussions, for that very reason I appreciate so much your kind words.
You're welcome.
-
Elizabeth, it is indeed good to see you back.
Your answer about the: Yusupovs, the Sheremetevs, the Bariatinskys, and the Golitsyns. is indeed what I was looking for. I knew that the actual Imperial Family was quite small, but, aside from Yusupovs (both senior and junior branch) who left on Marlborough, I couldn't think of other names.
Were these "noble" or "aristocratic" families targeted for murder as were the Romanovs the way that the French aristocracy was target during the French Revolution?
-
Were these "noble" or "aristocratic" families targeted for murder as were the Romanovs the way that the French aristocracy was target during the French Revolution?
Actually, I think it was the other way 'round: The French Revolution was principally a political revolution, against "tyranny" and "taxation without representation"*, much like the American Revolution. (Minus the nationalism, at least until the new-founded republic started to fight its neighbouring tyrants.) The Russian Revolution turned into a Marxist one, in which the annihilation of the whole "class of exploiters" was the goal. In principle the revolutionary French republic never executed nobles per se, just "traitors to the republic".
* It just dawned on me how the 19th century indeed lived by this principle: Those who didn't pay taxes were indeed disenfranchized. (E.g. the Prussian three-class franchise and the similar system which Christian IX used to govern Denmark against the majority in the lower chamber of parliament.)
-
The Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal were instituted immediately after the execution of the King. The Reign of Terror, during which the ruling faction ruthlessly exterminated all potential enemies, of whatever sex, age, or condition, began in September of 1793 and lasted until the fall of Robespierre on July 27, 1794: during the last six weeks of the Terror alone (the period known as the "Red Terror") nearly fourteen hundred people were guillotined in Paris alone. The Convention was replaced in October of 1795 with the Directory, which was replaced in turn, in 1799, by the Consulate. Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor in May of 1804.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist7.html
Many people went to the guillotine. And being considered even slightly "noble" would bring one to death.
I don't ever recall reading that anything close to this kind of terror happened in Russia during 1917 through 1918.
By late July, the spirit of popular sovereignty had spread throughout France. In rural areas, many commoners began to form militias and arm themselves against a foreign invasion: some attacked the châteaux of the nobility as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" ("the Great Fear"). In addition, wild rumours and paranoia caused widespread unrest and civil disturbances that contributed to the collapse of law and order.
-
Many people went to the guillotine. And being considered even slightly "noble" would bring one to death.
Estimates place the number of French nobles in 1789 at somewhere between 140.000 and 300.000. Of the ca. 40.000 who lost their lives during the Great Terror under 10 % were nobles. Most of the victims were average folks charged with hoarding, evading the draft etc. Was the low numbers of noble victims due to the massive emigration of nobles (tens of thousands) or nobles not being targeted per se?
Source of numbers: Wikipedia and other online sources. Would love to see numbers from more reliable sources.
I don't ever recall reading that anything close to this kind of terror happened in Russia during 1917 through 1918.
Good point.
-
Just by browsing the Internet you come across references to several scholarly articles claiming that the noble death toll during the French Revolution was rather negligible in the overall picture. A respected authority on French nobility, François Velde, gives these numbers on his site, Heraldica: (http://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/noblesse.htm#numbers)
"In 1789, there were 17,000 to 25,000 noble families, and estimates of numbers of individuals range from 80,000 (many contemporary estimates) to 350,000. Chaussinand-Nogaret finds 110,000 to 120,000 nobles, for 1/4 of which nobility had been acquired during the 18th c.(25,000 families, of which 6,500 ennobled, about 1,000 by letters and the rest by office). I would tend to believe him, rather than the 300,000 figure. The population of France was 28 millions, so that's 0.4% of the population. Nowadays, there are about 3500 families of noble origin, of which about 3000 from before 1789. Not that the Revolution itself is to blame for the losses: only 1200 nobles were tried and executed during the Terror, and maybe 30,000 to 40,000 emigrated, almost all of whom returned eventually."
That also means that there were tens of thousands of nobles who remained in France and survived. It was the estates of the emigrés which were nationalized (and for which they were compensated with "le milliard aux émigrés" upon the Restoration.) The nobles who remained might indeed have benefitted from the Revolution, by being able to buy nationalized noble and church lands at liquidation sales. (Unlike the Soviet Union, the French Republic was not Socialist and did re-sell nationalized property.)
-
I don't ever recall reading that anything close to this kind of terror happened in Russia during 1917 through 1918.
The Russian Reign Of Terror lasted from 1918 to 1991.
-
The Russian Reign Of Terror lasted from 1918 to 1991.
Or at least untill the death of Stalin and the de-Stalinisation that followed throughout the 1950s.
-
In my reply 3 ,I referred to 'hundreds' of aristocrats but I was just being conservative. Thousands of individuals would have been more like it. Also, iin Russia, even with its system of "tchin", and elsewhere where there was an aristocracy, the term 'aristocracy' doesn't lend itself to a precise definition. It's often equated,including by me, with other terms, namely 'nobility' or even ' gentry', though the latter in English has a connotation of "bourgeoisness(wd?) lacking in most conceptions of aristocracy. The OED is surprisingly unhelpful in distinguishing between the"aristocracy' and the "nobility" in a political sense.
But for the purpose of answering Rusmila's topic question, the simple answer is : As soon as the Bolsheviks could; the destruction of inherited (or unworked-for) privilege was a precondition of a proletarian state. The aristocrats were the easiest targets and the first to be targeted for destruction. But by Stalin's time, that definition was diluted (or expanded) to mean any peasant farmer with a little cultivated land and a couple of pigs, a horse or two, or a few sheep or the occasional field hired hand to help with the harvest.
,,
-
First let me say that I think Fyodor Petrovich is correct to state that the French nobility were not the social class that suffered most during the revolutionary terror. As I recall, that class was the peasantry. The same was true of the October Revolution in the long run.
In my reply 3 ,I referred to 'hundreds' of aristocrats but I was just being conservative. Thousands of individuals would have been more like it. Also, iin Russia, even with its system of "tchin", and elsewhere where there was an aristocracy, the term 'aristocracy' doesn't lend itself to a precise definition. It's often equated,including by me, with other terms, namely 'nobility' or even ' gentry', though the latter in English has a connotation of "bourgeoisness(wd?) lacking in most conceptions of aristocracy. The OED is surprisingly unhelpful in distinguishing between the"aristocracy' and the "nobility" in a political sense.
Here reading a lot of English literature stands one in good stead... Going by Regency and Victorian writers, I would say that there is a definite distinction between the aristocracy and the gentry. Both social strata belong to the nobility, but the aristocracy represent the oldest, most established and esteemed families; they are usually titled and usually very large landowners, thus wealthy as well. Whereas yes, the gentry is more on the cusp of the upper middle class, middling to small landowners to clergy with no real land to speak of at all.
But for the purpose of answering Rusmila's topic question, the simple answer is : As soon as the Bolsheviks could; the destruction of inherited (or unworked-for) privilege was a precondition of a proletarian state. The aristocrats were the easiest targets and the first to be targeted for destruction. But by Stalin's time, that definition was diluted (or expanded) to mean any peasant farmer with a little cultivated land and a couple of pigs, a horse or two, or a few sheep or the occasional field hired hand to help with the harvest.
It's actually my impression that Lenin hated the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry as much if not more than the nobility. He saw them all as exploiters of the working class. He infamously referred to the intelligentsia as "s**t" and railed against merchants and grain-hoarding peasants as "insects" worthy only of being stamped out. He was basically just full of hate, much like Hitler.
For me it's difficult to sort out local actions against "class enemies" (necessarily, in Lenin's view, "counter-revolutionaries") from Lenin's own directives from on high. There doesn't seem to have been any real order to the process, until the early 1920s, when it's obvious that, for example, a lot of nobles got rounded up on the orders of the central government and pushed into the recently established concentration camps. During the civil war, of course, many "class enemies" were simply rounded up and shot out of hand, in the spirit of bloodthirsty reprisal. But again, these victims were not only nobles, they were also and no doubt more preponderantly merchants and better-off peasants.
I think the war on the peasantry during collectivization under Stalin was not by any stretch of the imagination a "dilution" of previous class warfare, on the contrary, as you term it, it was an "expansion," indeed, a major intensification of it. The peasantry suffered far more than the nobility under the communists because they were more than 80 percent of the population; moreover, in 1917 most of them weren't literate, much less educated and politically astute. After all, almost all of the nobility who could afford it, and even many who couldn't, got out of revolutionary Russia when the going was good. The vast majority of the peasantry had little choice but to stay and suffer the consequences.
-
Here reading a lot of English literature stands one in good stead... Going by Regency and Victorian writers, I would say that there is a definite distinction between the aristocracy and the gentry. Both social strata belong to the nobility, but the aristocracy represent the oldest, most established and esteemed families; they are usually titled and usually very large landowners, thus wealthy as well. Whereas yes, the gentry is more on the cusp of the upper middle class, middling to small landowners to clergy with no real land to speak of at all.
I would say that aristocracy means the big movers and shakers, those with real poltical clout and influence as individuals, not only as a group. As individuals, the gentry only had local influence. In Britain, in the rural counties before the extension of the franchise, the distinction was well illustrated by the right to a seat in the House of Lords and the right to elect representatives to the House of Commons.
(Perhaps those members of the gentry who were elected to parliament also should be included in the aristocracy, so as to leave the option open for high-end members of the landed gentry like Mr. Darcy of Pemberley in "Sense and Sensibility". Of course yeoman farmers with the right to vote but still working their own farms would not be gentry, although they might entertain gentile aspirations.)
In Britain it's very hard to define "nobility". In pre-Revolutionary France and even more Russia there were strict definitions of "nobility" but a noble could be anything from an influential aristocrat at court who owned vast tracts of land to a poor provincial nobody.
-
That was the tragic thing of the Russian Revolution. Those that started it, the peasants and workers, really wanted a change, they were hoping for democracy. Unfortunately for them, Lenin and his thugs hijacked the revolution and the Russian people got 74 years of tyranny a million times worse than any Tsar.
Stalin slaughtered more people in his 30 year reign than any previous ruler ever did. Even Ivan The Terrible comes across as a playground bully when you put him next to Stalin.
-
That was the tragic thing of the Russian Revolution. Those that started it, the peasants and workers, really wanted a change, they were hoping for democracy.
You sure about that? I think the peasants wanted all the land, the workers wanted a human existence and both groups wanted an end to the stupid war. The franchise to the Duma was already remarkably democratic for a country that had been an autocracy just a decade earlier. (Especially so before Nicholas and Stolypin's coup in 1907, when they severely restricted the peasant and worker votes in favour of the economical elites.)
-
I think the peasants wanted all the land, the workers wanted a human existence
And they got neither in the end. Those poor fools didn't know when they were well off. No doubt Stalin soon showed them what a mistake the revolution had been, if any were left once he was through, that is.
-
I think the peasants wanted all the land, the workers wanted a human existence
And they got neither in the end.
The peasants lost out big time, both in terms of disposession, famine and genocide. The workers' lot improved considerably. And the war did end.
Those poor fools didn't know when they were well off.
Tell that to anybody working 12 hours a day, living in a slum and existing solely on boiled cabbage.
-
Tell that to anybody working 12 hours a day, living in a slum and existing solely on boiled cabbage.
As opposed to being mass slaughtered or marched off to gulags in Siberia. The idea of the revolution was supposed to make things better, not worse.
-
Tell that to anybody working 12 hours a day, living in a slum and existing solely on boiled cabbage.
As opposed to being mass slaughtered or marched off to gulags in Siberia.
What's the difference between life in a gulag and conditions like those above?
-
There was one, they weren't prisoners. In a gulag, you were there until you died, or we're shot for the hell of it (because the guards were bored that day and wanted to do some target practice).
Dude, let me save you some trouble. If you're trying to convince me that Russia was better under the Communists than it was under the Tsar's, don't bother. It wasn't, it was a million times worse. It would be like trying to convince me that Germany was better under Hitler than it was under the Kaiser, not gonna happen.
-
There was one, they weren't prisoners.
What is liberty worth, if you're hungry? Don't you think living a half-human existence in a slum which you know you'll probably never escape from feels like being imprisoned?
In a gulag, you were there until you died, or we're shot for the hell of it (because the guards were bored that day and wanted to do some target practice).
Horrible, yes, but I think the child mortality of slums is a more effective killer.
Dude, let me save you some trouble. If you're trying to convince me that Russia was better under the Communists than it was under the Tsar's, don't bother. It wasn't, it was a million times worse. It would be like trying to convince me that Germany was better under Hitler than it was under the Kaiser, not gonna happen.
Huh? Unless you were Jewish, Gypsy, homosexual, physically or mentally handicapped or a Communist, life in Hitler's Germany was better than life in the Kaiser's Germany, although the difference wasn't that enormous, because Wilhelminian Germany was one of the world's most progressive societies in its day and the conditions for workers in the Third Reich has been somewhat exaggerated. (Studies show that wages didn't rise that much, but job safety increased heavily, and after the Depression that was what people wanted above all.)
The same goes for Russia: Unless you were killed for some more or less arbitrary reason in Stalin's genocides or were some extremist who valued liberty over life, life in the Soviet Union was better, i.e. more free from wants, for the majority than life in the Russian Empire.
I do feel it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges, because the welfare states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the very things that made them good, came with a horrendous, genocidal price attached. All the worse because it was arbitrary and unnecessary. But in many ways this issue probably highlights modernity itself: Whereas in the 19th century it wouldn't have mattered much if you had been born in Europe or Africa, your life was likely to be short and brutish anyway, it today makes all the difference whether you're born in the First or the Third World, just like it made all the difference whether you were born a Jew or an Aryan in Nazi Germany, or you were a model comrade or an "enemy of the people" in the Soviet Union. In these societies, the blessings of modernity came with a huge cost.
NB these observations are based on the Benthamian, utilitarian concept of "the greatest possible happyness for the greatest number of people". One would hope that the fact that this happyness came with the price of the lifes of millions of fellow citizens would reduce it, but so little is man's empathy with his fellow man (especially those he doesn't know) that it doesn't seem like these societies were less happy, or more civilized western societies are more happy for it.
-
whether you were born a Jew or an Aryan in Nazi Germany, or you were a model comrade or an "enemy of the people" in the Soviet Union. In these societies, the blessings of modernity came with a huge cost
The price was way too high in my opinion. How many millions died in those two horrible regimes? Too many.
-
You asked who would value freedom in abject poverty over any other kind of life?
Try the American Patrick Henry. Remember his famous words; "Give me liberty or give me death!" ?
Also in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was the concept of death before dishonor which we have managed to lose and/or forget in the 20th and 21st century. Actually we probably lost it after the Great War, sometime during the 1920s.
I do believe that once the people of Russia experienced the "freedoms" of the Revolution, they probably believed that they hadn't gained anything, just a change of masters and the old masters (the tsars) were probably slightly more gentle than the new.
I think I would prefer living in poverty and the concept of freedom rather than being sent to a Gulag with the certainty of no freedom.
And aren't some of our cherished freedoms simply illusions that we live with in order to keep us from going mad knowing that we truly have no control in our lives and no matter what we want someone else is always going to be in charge?
-
Elisabeth, the "dilution" I spoke of was not in the Bolshevik' class warfare but in their definition of aristocracy. Their class warfare and hatred knew no bounds and indeed expanded in intensity pretty much from the start and in an organised fashion beginning at least from the time of their victory in the Civil War. I may have spoken too loosely in using the expression 'diluting the definition of aristocracy'.
What I meant to suggest was that , though obviously not aristocrats, almost any non-workers or non-soldiers (at first) were considered enemies and parasites (nice term) by the Bolsheviks. In a nation of over 100 million people, the vast majority of them peasants, and in which true proletarians , generally urban factory workers, were a tiny fraction ,well that leaves a hell of a lot of enemies.
And you're right the real aristocracy were not the only target for destruction by the Bolsheviks. I'm glad you cited Lenin's characterisation of the imtelligentsia as s**t. He certainly made no secret of it.
I also recall his order, after noting the flagging enthusiasm of some of the comrades for murder and mayhem, to "hang 100 priests and leave their bodies hanging as an example to Bolshevik opponents.
Just as sort of an aside, in reality and as was understood by the even halfway politically astute at the time ,the aristocracy weren't remotely the real problem for either the Bolsheviks or any revolutionaries after Feb. ,1917. They were at most a few thousand, discredited, demoralised, disunited and on the run. Their murders, as typically for the Bolsheviks, were more a matter of vengeance and class hatred than of even the slightest material or political advantage.
-
Elisabeth, the "dilution" I spoke of was not in the Bolshevik' class warfare but in their definition of aristocracy. Their class warfare and hatred knew no bounds and indeed expanded in intensity pretty much from the start and in an organised fashion beginning at least from the time of their victory in the Civil War. I may have spoken too loosely in using the expression 'diluting the definition of aristocracy'.
What I meant to suggest was that , though obviously not aristocrats, almost any non-workers or non-soldiers (at first) were considered enemies and parasites (nice term) by the Bolsheviks. In a nation of over 100 million people, the vast majority of them peasants, and in which true proletarians , generally urban factory workers, were a tiny fraction ,well that leaves a hell of a lot of enemies.
And you're right the real aristocracy were not the only target for destruction by the Bolsheviks. I'm glad you cited Lenin's characterisation of the imtelligentsia as s**t. He certainly made no secret of it.
I also recall his order, after noting the flagging enthusiasm of some of the comrades for murder and mayhem, to "hang 100 priests and leave their bodies hanging as an example to Bolshevik opponents.
Just as sort of an aside, in reality and as was understood by the even halfway politically astute at the time ,the aristocracy weren't remotely the real problem for either the Bolsheviks or any revolutionaries after Feb. ,1917. They were at most a few thousand, discredited, demoralised, disunited and on the run. Their murders, as typically for the Bolsheviks, were more a matter of vengeance and class hatred than of even the slightest material or political advantage.
I am in complete agreement with you, Rodney. I mean, I didn't take your expression "dilution" as anything more than an off-the-cuff remark, you greatly qualified it when you said that the Bolshevik terror against different social classes "expanded" under Stalin. I was just trying to hone in on the specifics, for the sake of our readers, who might be confused by our thinking out loud, which this type of instant posting greatly encourages (I "think out loud" all the time here, myself, much to my dismay).
The quote about the priests is all too true. Yes, I think most of these murders were perpetrated by people full of hatred, hatred enflamed by Bolshevik ideology. I won't say Marxist ideology, because I don't believe Marx ever envisioned, much less intended, such horrors to break out in the name of his ideas. And indeed, as far as I can tell, the Bolsheviks represented a significant departure from Marxism itself. I would even say that they were a sort of spontaneous mutation, except that they were so well adapted to the peculiar circumstances of Russian history and civilization at the time. They adapted and thrived, as it were.
-
I do feel it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges, because the welfare states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the very things that made them good, came with a horrendous, genocidal price attached. All the worse because it was arbitrary and unnecessary. But in many ways this issue probably highlights modernity itself: Whereas in the 19th century it wouldn't have mattered much if you had been born in Europe or Africa, your life was likely to be short and brutish anyway, it today makes all the difference whether you're born in the First or the Third World, just like it made all the difference whether you were born a Jew or an Aryan in Nazi Germany, or you were a model comrade or an "enemy of the people" in the Soviet Union. In these societies, the blessings of modernity came with a huge cost.
NB these observations are based on the Benthamian, utilitarian concept of "the greatest possible happyness for the greatest number of people". One would hope that the fact that this happyness came with the price of the lifes of millions of fellow citizens would reduce it, but so little is man's empathy with his fellow man (especially those he doesn't know) that it doesn't seem like these societies were less happy, or more civilized western societies are more happy for it.
Your remarks remind me very much of a book I just read, by an American historian of Nazi Germany and a German sociologist, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany, an Oral History. The authors, Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, first surveyed and then interviewed people (both Jewish and Gentile) who lived through the Third Reich, primarily in cities like Berlin, Cologne, and Dresden. (Of course, many of the German Jewish survivors of the Holocaust landed in the United States and South America, where they were also interviewed.) To my mind, the most interesting points of this study, really the first of its kind, are:
Most German Christians did not feel afraid under the Third Reich. They were aware that they had to watch what they said, certainly. But they were also very much aware that unless they were outright opponents or "racial enemies" of the regime, they were for all intents and purposes safe from the Gestapo and SS, even if they occasionally stepped over the line, legally speaking. Most German Gentiles surveyed and interviewed were children, teenagers, and young adults under the Third Reich and recalled these years as exceptionally happy ones, before the Allied bombing raids began; even though they were aware that people around them, such as Jewish neighbors and communists, were disappearing into concentration camps, they didn't view this as affecting them in any significant way.
Extrapolating from survey data, at least a third of German Christians (according to the German author of the book) or even at least half of German Christians (according to the American author) knew that German Jews, and by extension European Jews, were being systematically murdered by Hitler's regime. Officers and ordinary soldiers, businessmen, railroad officials and other civil servants who visited or served on the eastern front brought back copious tales of the atrocities to their families and trusted friends. Hence the common expression, "Watch what you'll say, or you'll go up the chimney." The idea that most Germans "didn't know" is probably a myth.
So F.P. is right, I think, most people will put up with the most egregious crimes against humanity, as long as they are not threatened themselves and the quality of their overall life--economically and materially speaking--improves. It's depressing, but this scenario fits in with everything I've read about the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin (mass social mobility for some, massive suffering for the rest). With the important proviso that in Stalin's USSR, one in four families were directly and adversely affected by either collectivization or the Great Terror (i.e., relatives became "enemies of the people" and suffered the accordingly dire fate). That is a much, much, much higher number than you find among German Christians under Hitler, most of whom seem to have only known victims of the system indirectly and remotely, as mere acquaintances or neighbors.
-
There is a saying, it goes something like this.
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
They came for the Gypsies, and again I didn't speak, for I wasn't a Gypsy.
They came for the crippled, the weak, the malformed, and again I stayed silent.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
-
There is a saying, it goes something like this.
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
They came for the Gypsies, and again I didn't speak, for I wasn't a Gypsy.
They came for the crippled, the weak, the malformed, and again I stayed silent.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
This statement is very famous but is usually misquoted, I think even in museums. The original statement was made by Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor who initially made a lot of compromises with the Nazi regime, only to regret them bitterly later on. He wrote:
First they took the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they took the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then it was the trade unionists' turn, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they took the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came and took me, there was no one left who could have stood up for me.
(Niemöller, quoted in Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power [London and New York: Penguin Books, 2005], pp. 232-233.)
Niemöller spent the war in concentration camps in Germany like Sachsenhausen and Dachau, where he was subjected to the usual beatings and humiliations. He was lucky: he survived. Evans notes that what is most extraordinary about his famous post-war statement is that nowhere does Niemöller mention the Catholics. Nor, would I add, does he mention the physically and mentally disabled Germans who were euthanized by the Nazi regime.
-
I wasn't sure I had the exact quote, thanks Elisabeth.
-
Yes, I think most of these murders were perpetrated by people full of hatred, hatred enflamed by Bolshevik ideology. I won't say Marxist ideology, because I don't believe Marx ever envisioned, much less intended, such horrors to break out in the name of his ideas. And indeed, as far as I can tell, the Bolsheviks represented a significant departure from Marxism itself. I would even say that they were a sort of spontaneous mutation, except that they were so well adapted to the peculiar circumstances of Russian history and civilization at the time. They adapted and thrived, as it were.
Dear Elizabeth:
I'm not sure that I completely agree with your possibly benign view of Marxism. It is true that the Bolsheviks adapted Marxism to the agrarian society they dealt with (after all Marx thought that Russia was too backward to be ripe for revolution) but the essence of Marxism, "Class Warfare" was inherent in his ideology and was certainly exploited by the Bolsheviks (and when Stalin got a hold of it personlized and taken to its logical extreme). It is interesting to note that in 1920 in the Crimea immediately after the exodus of the Whites the Bolsheviks under Bela Kun required everyone to "register". The questions on the "Anket" included whether one was noble, educated, fought with the Whites or the Reds, etc. and in accordance with instructions from Moscow over 100,000 people were shot depending on their backgrounds (Trotsky famously said that he would not set foot in the Crimea until the last of the bourgeois was liquidated) despite Frunze's promises of safety. In fact, it was Marx's dubious contribution to philosophy that he reduced humankind to mere statistical "facts" buffeted by economic forces all in the interest "scientific materialism". As Stalin once was reported to have said, "the death of a child is a tragedy, the death of a million children is a statistic." And so, once mankind was reduced to a statistic everything was permissable, regardless of the toll in human suffering.
Regards,
Petr
-
Dear Elizabeth: I'm not sure that I completely agree with your possibly benign view of Marxism. It is true that the Bolsheviks adapted Marxism to the agrarian society they dealt with (after all Marx thought that Russia was too backward to be ripe for revolution) but the essence of Marxism, "Class Warfare" was inherent in his ideology and was certainly exploited by the Bolsheviks (and when Stalin got a hold of it personlized and taken to its logical extreme). It is interesting to note that in 1920 in the Crimea immediately after the exodus of the Whites the Bolsheviks under Bela Kun required everyone to "register". The questions on the "Anket" included whether one was noble, educated, fought with the Whites or the Reds, etc. and in accordance with instructions from Moscow over 100,000 people were shot depending on their backgrounds (Trotsky famously said that he would not set foot in the Crimea until the last of the bourgeois was liquidated) despite Frunze's promises of safety. In fact, it was Marx's dubious contribution to philosophy that he reduced humankind to mere statistical "facts" buffeted by economic forces all in the interest "scientific materialism". As Stalin once was reported to have said, "the death of a child is a tragedy, the death of a million children is a statistic." And so, once mankind was reduced to a statistic everything was permissable, regardless of the toll in human suffering.
Regards,
Petr
Dear Petr,
I understand your concerns, and let me be the first to assure you, I don't claim to have any "answers." I just think that the Bolshevik ideology is called "Marxism-Leninism" for a reason. Whereas in places like Germany Marxism led to the creation of such very benign political movements as the Social Democrats, in Russia it eventually led to the formation of terrorist revolutionary groups like the Socialist Revolutionaries (in their worst manifestations) and the Bolsheviks (they were always the worst manifestation, as far as I can see, in their insistence on their "elite" role as the revolutionary vanguard, and in their quite literal interpretation of the concept of class warfare -- I have little or no patience with apologists for the so-called humane Bolsheviks like Bukharin-- make no mistake, by the end of the Russian civil war all these men had blood on their hands, and massive amounts of it).
But that said, even American revolutionary rhetoric led to excesses. Most notably in France. There the Age of Reason and Enlightenment gave way very quickly to the Age of Revolutionary Terror. Yes, men like Thomas Paine were very courageous and in many respects admirable individuals but they also left behind a lot of extremely inflammatory writings and speeches. There's such a thing as moderation. I think, in general, that Americans were very fortunate that their "founding fathers" were not in fact men like Paine (much less Robespierre or Danton) but men like George Washington and James Madison. Moderates and pragmatists, in other words. Not extremists, and certainly not haters.
-
Petr
I understand your concerns, and let me be the first to assure you, I don't claim to have any "answers." I just think that the Bolshevik ideology is called "Marxism-Leninism" for a reason. Whereas in places like Germany Marxism led to the creation of such very benign political movements as the Social Democrats, in Russia it eventually led to the formation of terrorist revolutionary groups like the Socialist Revolutionaries (in their worst manifestations) and the Bolsheviks (they were always the worst manifestation, as far as I can see, in their insistence on their "elite" role as the revolutionary vanguard, and in their quite literal interpretation of the concept of class warfare -- I have little or no patience with apologists for the so-called humane Bolsheviks like Bukharin-- make no mistake, by the end of the Russian civil war all these men had blood on their hands, and massive amounts of it). But that said, even American revolutionary rhetoric led to excesses. Most notably in France. There the Age of Reason and Enlightenment gave way very quickly to the Age of Revolutionary Terror.
[/quote]
Dear Elisabeth: I won't deny that revolutions often (and I would argue inevitably) lead to excess (we see that today) but I was addressing Marxism for what Marx/Engels intended it to be: a prescription for the economic advancement of mankind, a goal that the Bolsheviks wholeheartedly embraced and which formed the core of their ideology. In keeping with the industrial revolution and the scientific advances characterizing the mid 19th Century Marx and Engels believed they could apply "scientific principles" to society to reorganize it to produce heaven on earth. But in their view that first required that society be reduced to several identified classes and then that those classes had to be liquidated in favor of the state before the fruits of Marxism could be realized. This differs markedly from both the American and French Revolutions and the ideals they professed. In fact in the American Revolution it was all about individual liberty, the antithesis of the statist approach taken by Marx and Lenin. As was pointed out elsewhere in the French Revolution the actual number of nobles that were executed was not that great and by and large that was the only "class" targeted by the Terror. In fact, many of the Revolutionaries could be deemed to have been bourgeois (Robespierre was a lawyer after all) and the French Revolution never engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the intelligentsia, bourgeois shop keepers and well to do peasants that the Bolsheviks did. By and large the Terror was motivated more by revenge and self-interest clothed in a romantic notion of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" rather than as a expression of a coherent socioeconomic philosophy based upon pseudo-scientific principles (which is not to downplay the revenge and self-interested elements of the Russian Revolution human nature being what it is). As I pointed out in my earlier post Marxism and its application represented a turning point in how one should regard the path to progress, moving from individual rights to the collective. And as I will always maintain the effects of World War I cannot be discounted on the way western civilization dealt with the individual by making life so cheap and, frankly, worthless. Happily, the worm has now turned and the words du jour on the lips of the left are "human rights", a good but unfortunately tardy result.
Regards,
Petr
-
Dear Elisabeth: I won't deny that revolutions often (and I would argue inevitably) lead to excess (we see that today) but I was addressing Marxism for what Marx/Engels intended it to be: a prescription for the economic advancement of mankind, a goal that the Bolsheviks wholeheartedly embraced and which formed the core of their ideology. In keeping with the industrial revolution and the scientific advances characterizing the mid 19th Century Marx and Engels believed they could apply "scientific principles" to society to reorganize it to produce heaven on earth. But in their view that first required that society be reduced to several identified classes and then that those classes had to be liquidated in favor of the state before the fruits of Marxism could be realized. This differs markedly from both the American and French Revolutions and the ideals they professed. In fact in the American Revolution it was all about individual liberty, the antithesis of the statist approach taken by Marx and Lenin. As was pointed out elsewhere in the French Revolution the actual number of nobles that were executed was not that great and by and large that was the only "class" targeted by the Terror. In fact, many of the Revolutionaries could be deemed to have been bourgeois (Robespierre was a lawyer after all) and the French Revolution never engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the intelligentsia, bourgeois shop keepers and well to do peasants that the Bolsheviks did. By and large the Terror was motivated more by revenge and self-interest clothed in a romantic notion of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" rather than as a expression of a coherent socioeconomic philosophy based upon pseudo-scientific principles (which is not to downplay the revenge and self-interested elements of the Russian Revolution human nature being what it is). As I pointed out in my earlier post Marxism and its application represented a turning point in how one should regard the path to progress, moving from individual rights to the collective. And as I will always maintain the effects of World War I cannot be discounted on the way western civilization dealt with the individual by making life so cheap and, frankly, worthless. Happily, the worm has now turned and the words du jour on the lips of the left are "human rights", a good but unfortunately tardy result.
Regards,
Petr
Dear Petr, I'm not arguing with you at all that Marx was fundamentally wrong in his historical assessments, or that Marxism didn't represent a fundamental rupture with the past. All I am saying is that like Freud, Marx paved the way to a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at things. Just as without Freud, we would not have the professional field of psychology as we know it today, just as without Marx we would not have had the Social Democrats or even the academic study of social history, which has greatly deepened our knowledge of both Russian and Soviet history.
For me, every truly fundamental book has good and evil writ large in its pages, otherwise as human beings we would not return again and again to these very same pages... Look at the Old Testament, perhaps the most fundamental text of all texts, and tell me that it doesn't violate its own precepts all the way through. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" -- well, the ancient Hebraic tribes, according to the OT itself, massacred other tribes en masse, including every last child and infant. Yet few would argue that the Judeo-Christian ethos was or is in and of itself evil.
So while I agree that Marxism replaced absolute values with conditional ones (conditional on historical and economic circumstances, conditional on social class), and that Marx himself was fundamentally wrong in all his predictions of the future path of humanity, I don't agree that everyone reading his philosophy necessarily comes away with the desire to do evil, e.g., to massacre anyone with a bigger bank account. That's putting it pretty crudely, but I hope you understand what I mean. Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers. I'm sure that Judeo-Christianity and other religions are ultimately "responsible" for as many, or almost as many, deaths in the last several millennia as Marxism was in the 20th century.
-
Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers
Rush Limbaugh said something along the lines that a few Communists should be put in museums, so the world would never forget these people and what they stood for.
-
Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers
Rush Limbaugh said something along the lines that a few Communists should be put in museums, so the world would never forget these people and what they stood for.
Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.
Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
-
Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.
Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
Nice post, and very much to the point. Westerners often overlook the massive benefit Commuism delivered to THEM in holding capitalism in check. Without the fear of western nations in turn "going Bolshie" if they didn't it is highly unlikely that any capitalist nation would ever have acceeded to the creation of a welfare state.
I am afraid that it seems to me that there is something of an idiotic "we won" attitude at large in the west since the fall of communism, which is starting to produce some nasty effects in terms of the way that governments - and their sponsors - behave. This is very noticeable in Britain and the U.S., but also in Sarkozy's France to a degree. As an agnostic, I don't want to live in a country enslaved to the infallibility of the Market any more than I want to live under Stalin. :-)
-
"the infallibility of the market' is that the "they are too big to fail" train of thought that brought about the US government now owning (in the guise of taxpayers) part of General Motors and other big banks and insurance companies?
-
"the infallibility of the market' is that the "they are too big to fail" train of thought that brought about the US government now owning (in the guise of taxpayers) part of General Motors and other big banks and insurance companies?
Sorry, Alixz, I don't quite catch your drift, are you arguing that the US government is becoming more socialistic? And if so, exactly why would that be a bad thing, since the government is quite possibly the only force propping up the economy at this point? As it was back in the early 1930s, I might add, when last this country faced a recession of this magnitude. And yet we didn't go all communist back then, and undoubtedly we won't go all communist now, either.
-
[Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
Dear Elizabeth: I don't think very many people would argue with the premise that social justice is an admirable goal. But as Ross Perot used to say, "the devil is in the details." I think it is a falicy to believe that any western democratic government can be characterized today as a capitalistic economic system in its purest laissez faire sense. Over one hundred years of social welfare policy in varying degrees have tempered what the left would criticize as the more unattractive characteristics of such a system. On the other hand, experience has shown that a purely socialist system is not a very good allocator of economic resources since there is no real price/value recognition mechanism which yields to inefficiency and distortions in supply. Hence, in the old Soviet system there would be over supplies of brassieres when there was no sausage in the stores, a typical failing of a command and control economic system. The European countries are not really purely socialist in the Marxian (or even classic socialist) sense, far from it. In general the means of production are not in state hands (Maggie did alot in the UK to undo what Clement Atlee wrought). And certainly, there is nowhere near the coercive state control which charaterized the Communist system in Russia (the "Leninist" component of "Marxism/Leninism"). So, as always, the Aristotelian mean is the best. We need the rule of law to provide a level and fair playing field to temper the excesses of capitalism but at the same time minimize the intrusive power of the state which has the tendency to trample human rights and distort the economy. I posit that Marxism/Leninism which saw the state as saviour tilted much to far in the wrong direction with dire and tragic results for millions.
By the way, I don't believe that Marx was responsible for creating social democratic movements in Europe. Those were well established before he came along. In fact, I believe one could argue that he did more harm than good by influencing those social democratic currents to move in a direction which was much harsher premised as his philosophy was on class warfare.
-
The problem with a lot of right wingers is that they think Socialism and Communism are the same thing, when they aren't.
The big difference is that Socialists believe in freedom and democracy, they can be voted out. Communists, on the other hand, once they're in, they're IN. The only way to get them out is to overthrow them.
-
TimM, was your source for the Niemöller quote perhaps American (or even Rush Limbaugh), since it failed to mention not only Communists and Social Democrats, but also trade unionists? :-)
Rush Limbaugh said something along the lines that a few Communists should be put in museums, so the world would never forget these people and what they stood for.
Either is Rush Limbaugh himself too ignorant or he presumes his audience to be so ignorant as to not know that there is a museum with a very prominent dead Communist on the Red Square, with the most evil Communist's (Stalin's) grave right next to it.
(Yes, I know Lenin's mausoleum was built as a monument in honour of him, but everything can be a museum of horrors to someone: The Kremlin will offend anti-tsarists, St. Basil's Cathedral will offend atheists, GUM will offend the anti-capitalists and I'm sure someone can make themself offended by the State Historical Museum too, it is after all an official definer of history itself! Heck, as much as I'm fascinated by them, I'm offended and horrified by the Pyramids, wondering what kind of charismatic "divine" leader could exploit people's muscle power for something as pointless as that! Mubarak certainly seems like Mr. Nice Guy compared to the Pharao Kheops!)
And really, his statement is so wonderfully right-wing American in all its simplicity, focusing on the individual instead of the collective, when it was the collective thinking that was the double-edged sword of Communism (I.e. "This class is the people and can overthrow the state if it unites." and "All other classes should be exterminated like vermin".)
Yesterday I watched the Oscar-winning Danish movie "Pelle the Conqueror", about the wretched life of the rural proletariat in Christian IX's Denmark. Great movie, highly recommended and when you watch it, remember that conditions were many times worse in Russia!
-
Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.
Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
Nice post, and very much to the point. Westerners often overlook the massive benefit Commuism delivered to THEM in holding capitalism in check. Without the fear of western nations in turn "going Bolshie" if they didn't it is highly unlikely that any capitalist nation would ever have acceeded to the creation of a welfare state.
I am afraid that it seems to me that there is something of an idiotic "we won" attitude at large in the west since the fall of communism, which is starting to produce some nasty effects in terms of the way that governments - and their sponsors - behave. This is very noticeable in Britain and the U.S., but also in Sarkozy's France to a degree. As an agnostic, I don't want to live in a country enslaved to the infallibility of the Market any more than I want to live under Stalin. :-)
It was this post from Janet Ashton that I was asking about.
-
[Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
Dear Elizabeth: I don't think very many people would argue with the premise that social justice is an admirable goal. But as Ross Perot used to say, "the devil is in the details." I think it is a falicy to believe that any western democratic government can be characterized today as a capitalistic economic system in its purest laissez faire sense. Over one hundred years of social welfare policy in varying degrees have tempered what the left would criticize as the more unattractive characteristics of such a system. On the other hand, experience has shown that a purely socialist system is not a very good allocator of economic resources since there is no real price/value recognition mechanism which yields to inefficiency and distortions in supply. Hence, in the old Soviet system there would be over supplies of brassieres when there was no sausage in the stores, a typical failing of a command and control economic system. The European countries are not really purely socialist in the Marxian (or even classic socialist) sense, far from it. In general the means of production are not in state hands (Maggie did alot in the UK to undo what Clement Atlee wrought). And certainly, there is nowhere near the coercive state control which charaterized the Communist system in Russia (the "Leninist" component of "Marxism/Leninism"). So, as always, the Aristotelian mean is the best. We need the rule of law to provide a level and fair playing field to temper the excesses of capitalism but at the same time minimize the intrusive power of the state which has the tendency to trample human rights and distort the economy. I posit that Marxism/Leninism which saw the state as saviour tilted much to far in the wrong direction with dire and tragic results for millions.
By the way, I don't believe that Marx was responsible for creating social democratic movements in Europe. Those were well established before he came along. In fact, I believe one could argue that he did more harm than good by influencing those social democratic currents to move in a direction which was much harsher premised as his philosophy was on class warfare.
I agree that the Aristotelian mean is best. That's why I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater as far as Marx is concerned, or for that matter Freud (and some of the things Freud wrote about women writers are so misogynistic it takes one's breath away). I don't agree with you that the social democratic movement was much in evidence, much less strong, before Marx. It's pretty clear that Marx & Engels gave social and political progressives not only their theoretical framework but also their modus operandi back in the latter half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century.
Marx was -- is -- also not clear cut when it comes to "class warfare," remember. What he called it was "class struggle" (a much more ambiguous and potentially merely descriptive term). Moreover, he was apparently at odds with Russian revolutionaries who believed that Russia was ripe for a socialist revolution, just as he was at odds with French revolutionaries earlier. Dealing with his French followers he famously said, "if this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist."
-
Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.
Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.
Nice post, and very much to the point. Westerners often overlook the massive benefit Commuism delivered to THEM in holding capitalism in check. Without the fear of western nations in turn "going Bolshie" if they didn't it is highly unlikely that any capitalist nation would ever have acceeded to the creation of a welfare state.
I am afraid that it seems to me that there is something of an idiotic "we won" attitude at large in the west since the fall of communism, which is starting to produce some nasty effects in terms of the way that governments - and their sponsors - behave. This is very noticeable in Britain and the U.S., but also in Sarkozy's France to a degree. As an agnostic, I don't want to live in a country enslaved to the infallibility of the Market any more than I want to live under Stalin. :-)
Janet and Elisabeth, I completely agree with you. Btw this goes for the Netherlands as well.
-
[I agree that the Aristotelian mean is best. That's why I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater as far as Marx is concerned, or for that matter Freud (and some of the things Freud wrote about women writers are so misogynistic it takes one's breath away). I don't agree with you that the social democratic movement was much in evidence, much less strong, before Marx. It's pretty clear that Marx & Engels gave social and political progressives not only their theoretical framework but also their modus operandi back in the latter half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century.
Dear Elizabeth: I'm not sure that one "throws the baby out with the bath water" when one disavows Marx. I also disagree that social democratic movements were not in evidence before Marx. I believe the revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe, the development of labor unions and even Proudhon in France were evidence of social democratic movements which had nothing to do with Marx (in fact he was a critic of both the 1848 revolutions and Proudhon as you may know). Rightly or wrongly Marx tends to be held up as a hero for the left when in my view history has shown that the Emperor had no clothes and whatever theoretical framework he gave progressives was deeply flawed. Also, progressive movements in various countries developed along their own indigenous national lines. I think the IWW and the progressive movement of Robert LaFollette had more to do with the New Deal in the US than Marx ever did (and to much better effect).
As for Freud, that's a more ambiguous legacy in my view. Clearly by bringing an organized analytical approach to the study of mental disorders he broke new ground and opened an avenue to treatment which I believe has helped many. But by the same token, Freudian analysis has much too often been misused to excuse conduct and has led to moral relativism and situational ethics (a hop step and jump to "the end justifies the means") at the price of individual responsibility. I find it interesting that in the modern world psychiatry has increasingly moved to pharmacological treatment. It's hard to find a true Freudian analyst these days who doesn't write prescriptions. Apart from Freud's attempt to classify and categorize behavior I often think that the Father Confessor does as much good, at much less cost and with the added benefit of granting divine absolution.
-
Dear Elizabeth:
Obviously my views on Marx probably go too far in denigrating his impact (most likely because I detest what was done in his name by Communists and not only in Russia but in Cuba, China and elsewhere as well). However, to the contrary I ran across an edition of The Communist Manifesto (Penguin Classics 2002) with an Introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones which does a good job in placing Marx in context in a post-Soviet, post-industrialized and globalized world and certainly supports your view of his importance in many respects.
I also find it interesting how both Marx and Freud attempted to use a "scientific" analysis of their respective areas of interest. In many ways I find it characteristic of a 19th Century faith in the then rapid development of the scientific method, a manifestation of the displacement of religious faith by secularism. Darwinism culminating in the elimination of the conception that man was created in God's image replaced by humanity being buffeted by immutable economic forces and primal urges in the face of which it stands helpless. I simply rebel against this deterministic view of life, devoid of compassion, kindness, beauty and hope. I'm getting old.
-
I posted this elsewhere, but I think I'll post it here too. It fits with the dicussion.
A century and a half ago, Karl Marx gave birth to a monster. This monster rampaged through the 20th Century. Wherever the monster went, death and misery followed in its wake. Millions of people, centuries old traditions, the monster consumed them all. The monster had one ruling dictum: Everyone and everything must be the same. To be different was a threat, and the monster would tolerate no threats. When the monster was finally slain in the twilight years of the 20th Century, the horrors it had inflicted were there for all to see. The monster is gone, the monster is dead, may we never see its like again.
-
Dear Elizabeth:
Obviously my views on Marx probably go too far in denigrating his impact (most likely because I detest what was done in his name by Communists and not only in Russia but in Cuba, China and elsewhere as well). However, to the contrary I ran across an edition of The Communist Manifesto (Penguin Classics 2002) with an Introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones which does a good job in placing Marx in context in a post-Soviet, post-industrialized and globalized world and certainly supports your view of his importance in many respects.
I also find it interesting how both Marx and Freud attempted to use a "scientific" analysis of their respective areas of interest. In many ways I find it characteristic of a 19th Century faith in the then rapid development of the scientific method, a manifestation of the displacement of religious faith by secularism. Darwinism culminating in the elimination of the conception that man was created in God's image replaced by humanity being buffeted by immutable economic forces and primal urges in the face of which it stands helpless. I simply rebel against this deterministic view of life, devoid of compassion, kindness, beauty and hope. I'm getting old.
Dear Petr, I am also getting old, *sigh*. That's the way of things. And as I get older I get considerably more tolerant. When I was a college student I couldn't stand the emphasis on social history that was the tendency among American historians of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. I really rebelled against it. I remember in one class somebody gave a report in which he mentioned that tens of thousands of Soviet citizens thronged the streets of Moscow during Stalin's funeral, trying to see the dictator in the flesh one last time. I remarked (off the cuff as usual) "They wanted to make sure he was dead." My professor turned around and looked at me. She smiled. So you see, even the strictest Sovietologists were not without a sense of humor, or a sense of perspective.
In this forum I have often argued strenuously against Marxism, following my own instincts on the one hand and historians like Martin Malia on the other. And I was also extremely anti-Freud, for all the reasons you cite, and then some, when I was younger. But now that I'm advancing in years, I am beginning to see the contributions to humanity of these great minds. I mean, okay, let's face it -- Freud was an artist of genius. You're absolutely right, not a scientist for all his claims, not by a long stretch. But an artist almost on par with someone like Dostoevsky, in the breadth and depth of his imagination. So as much as I deplore many of his statements and much of his influence, I nevertheless believe that ultimately, he influenced our culture for the better...
About Marx, I am not so confident, because I do not see him as an artist so much and of course, you're right, like Freud he did aspire to be a scientist, and he was completely wrong about so many things. You are no doubt correct, too, about the growth of progressive social and political movements long before Marx ever hit the scene. And you do right to remind me that I find Marx's replacement of absolute values with conditional ones (based on changing circumstances, such as history, class, etc.) highly disturbing. So, as I said before, I don't have any answers. I just think that both Freud and Marx offer, at their best, a new way of examining and learning about things. At their worst, of course, they encouraged and still encourage the dogmatic and the fanatic to tighten their hold on humanity "in the name of science," and always of course "for our own good," with often lethal results.
-
One has to wonder what Karl Marx would have thought of Communism as it was practiced. Would he have been horrified and said: "That's not what I wanted!" Or would he have been pleased that his writings allowed monsters like Joseph Stalin and Nicolae Ceausescu to take power.
-
One has to wonder what Karl Marx would have thought of Communism as it was practiced. Would he have been horrified and said: "That's not what I wanted!" Or would he have been pleased that his writings allowed monsters like Joseph Stalin and Nicolae Ceausescu to take power.
Dear Tim, remember that Marx was a nineteenth-century gentleman. I have no doubt he would have been absolutely appalled by the horrors perpetrated in his name. No one could envision such horrors in that historical era. In some sense they were all a bunch of Chekhovian characters spinning utopian daydreams for the future.
-
The monster had one ruling dictum: Everyone and everything must be the same. To be different was a threat, and the monster would tolerate no threats.
This sounds a lot like a combination of the two dictums that shaped modern Denmark, the Nordic Social Democracy voted the most happy country in the world:
- At faa skal have for meget, og færre for lidt - That few shall have too much, and fewer too little. (By N. F. S. Grundtvig, who was to post-absolutist Denmark what Marx was to the Soviet Union and who interestingly, just like Marx, was married to aristocrats.)
- Du skal ikke tro du er noget.....Du tror måske ikke at jeg ved noget om dig? - Do not think you're anything special...... You perhaps don't think I know anything about you? (The Law of Jante aka Tall Poppy Syndrome, as formulated by its critic Aksel Sandemose, who was to modern Denmark what Solzhenitsyn was to the Soviet Union.)
-
Except in Denmark, it wasn't a death sentence to be different.
-
Except in Denmark, it wasn't a death sentence to be different.
Quite right. Perhaps the lithmus test as to whether this pursuit of equality/conformity would lead to genocides and gulags or the most happy country on Earth?
-
"the infallibility of the market' is that the "they are too big to fail" train of thought that brought about the US government now owning (in the guise of taxpayers) part of General Motors and other big banks and insurance companies?
No; it's more the train of thought which (now) blames the government for the collapse in the first place, and argues that the answer to the failure of deregulation is yet more deregulation, stripping workers of their rights and demonising government as stifling enterprise.
-
[quote author=Petr link=topic=16451.msg481062#msg481062 date=130082223
As for Freud, that's a more ambiguous legacy in my view. Clearly by bringing an organized analytical approach to the study of mental disorders he broke new ground and opened an avenue to treatment which I believe has helped many. But by the same token, Freudian analysis has much too often been misused to excuse conduct and has led to moral relativism and situational ethics (a hop step and jump to "the end justifies the means") at the price of individual responsibility. I find it interesting that in the modern world psychiatry has increasingly moved to pharmacological treatment. It's hard to find a true Freudian analyst these days who doesn't write prescriptions. Apart from Freud's attempt to classify and categorize behavior I often think that the Father Confessor does as much good, at much less cost and with the added benefit of granting divine absolution.
[/quote]
I, too, am getting old, but I find myself less tolerant than more. I think it is because I have less time to overlook annoyances and sloppy thinking.
I agree with this analysis of Freud's teachings as a way to excuse conduct. And there is now nowhere that someone can go for therapy without also having to go to someone who either prescribes or is referred to someone who prescribes. We are all being given "happy" pills. If one can not deal with the realities in life, then one needs pharmacological help.
I have been complaining about the moral relativism and situational ethics for years and I also see it at the price of individual responsibility. Never having been to a confessional, I do see the benefit of being able to talk to someone who is not judgemental (except where the laws of the respective church are concerned) and who can offer solutions without prescribing drugs.
But to me, the current social need for everyone to be the same in their thinking and their likes and dislikes has brought about a repression of individualism and a dampening down of the fires of righteousness. The need to express those thoughts in our own words and in our own way has resulted in many an explosion of anger and outrage which, because it has been repressed by our "anger management" society requirements erupts in a bigger explosion than it otherwise would have.
-
I, too, am getting old, but I find myself less tolerant than more. I think it is because I have less time to overlook annoyances and sloppy thinking.
I agree with this analysis of Freud's teachings as a way to excuse conduct. And there is now nowhere that someone can go for therapy without also having to go to someone who either prescribes or is referred to someone who prescribes. We are all being given "happy" pills. If one can not deal with the realities in life, then one needs pharmacological help.
I have been complaining about the moral relativism and situational ethics for years and I also see it at the price of individual responsibility. Never having been to a confessional, I do see the benefit of being able to talk to someone who is not judgemental (except where the laws of the respective church are concerned) and who can offer solutions without prescribing drugs.
But to me, the current social need for everyone to be the same in their thinking and their likes and dislikes has brought about a repression of individualism and a dampening down of the fires of righteousness. The need to express those thoughts in our own words and in our own way has resulted in many an explosion of anger and outrage which, because it has been repressed by our "anger management" society requirements erupts in a bigger explosion than it otherwise would have.
I beg to differ, Alixz. If you look at recent mass shootings in the United States -- whether in Colorado or at Virginia Tech -- what's most striking is that the perpetrator was completely, certifiably, and moreover, quite obviously INSANE. Look at the police photo of the Colorado shooter and tell me this guy isn't totally off his rocker. Are you seriously arguing that this person was/is not in need of medication, that his was "just" an explosion waiting to happen because of the "repressions" of our "anger management society" -- ? -- As opposed to an explosion waiting to happen because adequate mental health care is not a priority in this country? Especially for the severely mentally ill, who tend to be indigent, and thus without any kind of medical insurance. They're usually homeless as well, and more often victims of violence than perpetrators of it.
It's now a proven scientific fact that schizophrenia, for example, is a brain disease. If left untreated it causes incalculable suffering, not only to the schizophrenic, but also to his family and potentially, his community. There is no known cure but at least the illness can be managed now with the proper medications. The same goes for other serious mental illnesses, such as depression and bipolar disorder. Brain scans demonstrate that these illnesses actually exist, they are not a product of some (post-)Freudian desire to escape responsibility. Moreover, they are often fatal if left untreated, because sufferers are likely to kill themselves (would you really describe suicide as just another escape from responsibility?).
Of course, I agree that this society is over-medicated and reliant on "happy pills," as the cliché goes. But that's because the Worried Well and their indulgent doctors think that they are entitled to be happy. That's one of our God-given, inalienable rights as Americans: "the pursuit of happiness." I remember back in the early 1990s, Russian friends would tell me, laughing, that they thought this idea was so typically American. No other country on this planet thinks that being happy all the time is "normal." As the great poet Osip Mandelshtam told his wife during the height of the Terror under Stalin, when she wanted to kill herself, "So who ever promised that you would be happy?" Being happy is the exception, not the rule, to the human condition. We are happy momentarily only -- relative to the full span of our lives -- e.g., when we pass a test, when we land a good job, and most especially when we fall in love. But it is only Americans who believe that we DESERVE to be happy, ALL THE TIME.
-
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
Voltaire.
Applies both to the Make-me-happy-NOW attitude and the creation of a Communist utopia at all costs.
-
American's are not told that they have a right to be happy.
The correct quote is "life, liberty and the "pursuit" of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-
I've found the progression of thought about, or the evaluation of Marx and Marxism, really revealing. In other words, notice how Marx has been viewed from his own time to now. In his prime he was a thinker, writer and would-be revolutionary. After the publication of "Das Kapital" and the"Communist Manifesto" he rightly drew attention as a political theorist and philosopher , both from the more literate and enlightened and from existing and threatened bourgeois and monarchist European states. The public at large basically didn't know him from Adam.
After his death, those who pursued his cause llike Lenin , Plekhanov , and other selfidentified Marxists, gave Marxism a greater 'identity' in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, but he was still obscure in the larger world, and virtually unknown to the proletariat. With the Bolshevik coup and the triumph of Communism in Russia (Soviet Union), it was now marxism-Leninism that was the official dogma by which those claiming authority measured themselves and each other. You didn't want to be a "deviationist" from the Party line.
In the 1920's and1930's , even in the non-Communist or anti-communist West, Communist true believers fought over who was the most authentic Marxist. (Trotsky was, and caught an ice ax in the head; Stalin wasn't but ruled a quarter century and died more or less in bed).
Roughly post-Stalin, Marx and Marxism were of interest almost sol;ely in academia, especially in the West. And there Marxism was still numero uno in the universities. The man in the street was sweating Soviet Communism, but not actually Marxism (Who actually reads Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto?)
In recent times Marxism is just not thought about, let alone understood (though maybe it should be). Thankfully, even the prevailing political correctness no longer completely protects Marxism. I relatively recently heard Marx called a crackpot, and I think that was quite on the money.
If people's largescale historical memory of the past century and a half could be erased (just a thought experiment, if you'll bear with me) and there had been no Karl Marx or Marxism as a famous person and ideology, his theories introduced under a different name would still not sell.
-
OK now let's try to have some fun and tie this together. What would Freud have said about Marx (I don't believe Freud ever analyzed him)?
Marx, from what I've read, was not a very cuddly character. He was always arguing with everyone (certainly with anyone who disagreed with him). He even had a contentious relationship with Engels who helped support him (constantly sending him carping letters asking for money). Not too nice as a family man either or so I believe. So for you Freudians out there was Marx a supreme egotist, one who so believed in the correctness of his theories that self-doubt never crept into his consciousness and what does that say about his thinking process. To the contrary, were his dogged, stubborn, self-absorbed efforts the hallmark of genius (regardless of whether his theories proved correct). In some perverse way he could be viewed as a romantic, the starving artist in the garret who sacrifices everything to feed his obsession. Likewise, another towering figure on the mid-19th Century, Wagner, also exhibited some of the same character traits. Marx's attempts to create a single unified economic theory with all the answers reminds me of Einstein's efforts with respect to general relativity and his effort to create the unified field theory and Emil Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) who together with Marx and Max Weber is credited with being the principle architect of modern social science who believed that "... sociology would not only discover "apparent" laws, but would be able to discover the inherent nature of society" (cf., Wikipedia). Again, I find this a 19th Century weltanschauung, the confident thought that everything, including society, could be reduced to a set of unified principles that answered all and that can be grasped by mankind. The end of the 20th Century, on the other hand, seems to me to have introduced an element of doubt, cynicism and introversion, creating greater interest in the self and perhaps the thought that life was not as simple as one would like. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the reaction to the horrors perpetrated during the last Century by followers of Marx (a somewhat eclectic and nonlinear holistic thought) strike me as examples of where modern thought has also gone. Is the battle between religion and secularism we now see (viz., the Taliban) a manifestation of these two conflicting world views? Is "Big Government" vs. the "Tea Party" (i.e., the state versus the individual) the opposite poles of the sole political choices available to us or merely evidence of a loss of faith in the power of institutions to solve all ills? Is the Big Bang evidence of the starting point of a scientific explanation for "everything" or does it confirm the Thomistic belief in the need for a "Prima Causa".
I'm afraid I have drifted from the original question of when did the Revolution start, unless one believes that the Revolution was an expression or culmination of an egotistical 19th Century world view that mankind has all the answers and can create heaven on earth simply by the proper application of certain "scientific" principles disregarding the inherent fallibility of mankind.
-
American's are not told that they have a right to be happy.
The correct quote is "life, liberty and the "pursuit" of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Please, please note, Alix, I did not say that the Founding Fathers told Americans that they would or should be happy all the time. I actually quoted them to the effect that "the pursuit of happiness" is a God-given right. It's modern-day, post-World War II Americans who think that this phrase somehow automatically translates into the right actually to be happy all the time, the so-called American dream. Although I have to say, even "the pursuit of happiness" is a very Western idea (and one I'm not knocking, by the way, I just think it's probably less conducive to overall contentment for all of us ordinary human masses than the idea put forth by most religions that most of the time, as human beings, we suffer -- hence, every single moment of happiness comes as the exception, not the rule, and moreover, as a moment of epiphany. Whereas Americans tend to think, Oh, I should be feeling this way all the time. It's my chemistry that's to blame if I'm not).
-
In the 1920's and1930's , even in the non-Communist or anti-communist West, Communist true believers fought over who was the most authentic Marxist. (Trotsky was, and caught an ice ax in the head; Stalin wasn't but ruled a quarter century and died more or less in bed).
Actually, Rodney, this isn't at all true. Trotsky was a Stalinist before Stalin because Stalin basically STOLE all of Trotsky's ideas about the industrialization and collectivization of the masses, as well as the state's leading role in determining what was and was not permissible in all the cultural fields. Trotsky was not a true Marxist, any more than those French revolutionaries I mentioned before were "true" Marxists.
Roughly post-Stalin, Marx and Marxism were of interest almost sol;ely in academia, especially in the West. And there Marxism was still numero uno in the universities. The man in the street was sweating Soviet Communism, but not actually Marxism (Who actually reads Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto?)
This is also not really true, Rodney. Think about it. When was the Cuban revolution and when were people like Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra most influential in Latin America? For that matter, you're neglecting to look at other Third World nations, most notably China under Mao, but also countries in Africa like Ethiopia. I assure you, Marxism-Leninism, whether interpreted by Stalin (borrowing heavily from Trotsky) or not, remained extremely influential until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That's when the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist dream really exploded (or imploded, to speak more precisely).
In recent times Marxism is just not thought about, let alone understood (though maybe it should be). Thankfully, even the prevailing political correctness no longer completely protects Marxism. I relatively recently heard Marx called a crackpot, and I think that was quite on the money.
If people's largescale historical memory of the past century and a half could be erased (just a thought experiment, if you'll bear with me) and there had been no Karl Marx or Marxism as a famous person and ideology, his theories introduced under a different name would still not sell.
Again, I think you are somewhat confusing Marxism with its later interpretations by people like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao. The original writings are far more subtle and open to different interpretations, as all great writings are. Hence their enduring appeal. Believe me, Marxism continues to be influential not only in (remarkably successful) socialist countries like those in Scandinavia, but also in American, Canadian, and Western European academia, where Marxist theory has shed considerable light on the field of social history, which only really emerged in the 1960s. Although this "revisionist" school has recently given way to a "post-revisionist" school, it's still clear that even post-revisionists are heavily influenced by social history. The emphasis in Soviet and Russian studies now is not nearly so much on social history but on cultural and intellectual history. But even there, social historians of the 1960s-1980s made invaluable contributions in opening up previously unperceived paths of inquiry and interpretation.
-
OK now let's try to have some fun and tie this together. What would Freud have said about Marx (I don't believe Freud ever analyzed him)?
Marx, from what I've read, was not a very cuddly character. He was always arguing with everyone (certainly with anyone who disagreed with him). He even had a contentious relationship with Engels who helped support him (constantly sending him carping letters asking for money). Not too nice as a family man either or so I believe. So for you Freudians out there was Marx a supreme egotist, one who so believed in the correctness of his theories that self-doubt never crept into his consciousness and what does that say about his thinking process. To the contrary, were his dogged, stubborn, self-absorbed efforts the hallmark of genius (regardless of whether his theories proved correct). In some perverse way he could be viewed as a romantic, the starving artist in the garret who sacrifices everything to feed his obsession. Likewise, another towering figure on the mid-19th Century, Wagner, also exhibited some of the same character traits. Marx's attempts to create a single unified economic theory with all the answers reminds me of Einstein's efforts with respect to general relativity and his effort to create the unified field theory and Emil Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) who together with Marx and Max Weber is credited with being the principle architect of modern social science who believed that "... sociology would not only discover "apparent" laws, but would be able to discover the inherent nature of society" (cf., Wikipedia). Again, I find this a 19th Century weltanschauung, the confident thought that everything, including society, could be reduced to a set of unified principles that answered all and that can be grasped by mankind. The end of the 20th Century, on the other hand, seems to me to have introduced an element of doubt, cynicism and introversion, creating greater interest in the self and perhaps the thought that life was not as simple as one would like. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the reaction to the horrors perpetrated during the last Century by followers of Marx (a somewhat eclectic and nonlinear holistic thought) strike me as examples of where modern thought has also gone. Is the battle between religion and secularism we now see (viz., the Taliban) a manifestation of these two conflicting world views? Is "Big Government" vs. the "Tea Party" (i.e., the state versus the individual) the opposite poles of the sole political choices available to us or merely evidence of a loss of faith in the power of institutions to solve all ills? Is the Big Bang evidence of the starting point of a scientific explanation for "everything" or does it confirm the Thomistic belief in the need for a "Prima Causa".
I'm afraid I have drifted from the original question of when did the Revolution start, unless one believes that the Revolution was an expression or culmination of an egotistical 19th Century world view that mankind has all the answers and can create heaven on earth simply by the proper application of certain "scientific" principles disregarding the inherent fallibility of mankind.
Sorry if I sound facetious (I hope I don't) but I think the entire late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth represented a ceaseless, self-destructive quest on the part of a very confused humanity for a new religion to replace the old ones (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.). Effectively all the old faiths had been destroyed by Darwin. Anyone educated, much less intellectual, found it very hard if not impossible to believe in the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man, the pearly gates, etc. etc., after reading The Origin of the Species. Hence Bolshevism, communism, fascism, Nazism, to name the most obvious secular religions of the modern age. And now of course there is Al-Qaeda, which wants to bring back the medieval Muslim caliphates (it thinks! in actuality someone like Bin Laden would be completely horrified by the level of religious and ethnic tolerance that was regarded as the norm in such places at this time in history).
-
Before I write this, I want to be sure that everyone knows that I am not in anyway judging or making fun of those with deep religious convictions.
Since I am agnostic and do not believe in those deities who preach suffering as a way to salvation, I find it abhorrent that so many think it is the norm to be unhappy most of the time and happy only at specific points in our lives. When they are unhappy it is "God's will". When they are happy then "God moves in mysterious ways". (If they truly believe that it is God's will then they should not be suing everything that moves into their path of existence.)
One of the reasons that I am agnostic is that I cannot believe that there is one omnipotent being who wants me to suffer in order to be redeemed enough to be brought into His/Her presence after death.
I am not saying that I expect to be blissful everyday, but at least not so frustrated that I feel I am "herding cats" as I wade through the various stupidities that I am assaulted with daily. (You will have to forgive me. I just got off the phone after trying to make an appointment at the UConn Health Center. It was like pushing macaroni up hill. I was told that I couldn't do so many things, that I am not sure I will ever get the appointment. I am so unworthy.)
I was told when I was very young (and I am sure that there is someone of note who originally said this) that if there were no God, Man would invent one to keep himself from going mad. I have also heard it said that we do not need to bow to anyone or anything to justify our existence.
I agree that Darwin cracked open the myths of creationism and left the population of the late 19th and early 20th centuries rudderless. Religion was a balm to those who found no answers and suddenly that balm was not soothing anymore. Perhaps they did then try to replace that old religion with "Bolshevism, communism, fascism, Nazism, to name the most obvious secular religions of the modern age".
But more wars have been fought in the name of religion than for any other reason. That now includes the terrorism that is now being used by Muslim extremists.
Even, to get back to topic, the Russian Revolution was a form of religious war as the Bolsheviks banned organized religion as part of their new better way of life.
Who said that "Religion is the opiate of the masses"? It is often attributed to Karl Marx.
However, it was also used in various forms by Guy DeBord: The spectacle is a permanent opium war which aims to make people identify goods with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws.
And also by the Marquis de Sade:
This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom
And also by Charles Kingsley: We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order
-
I agree that Darwin cracked open the myths of creationism and left the population of the late 19th and early 20th centuries rudderless.
Yeah, people whose parents had believed in fairies, trolls, witches, the Wild Hunt, goblins, leprechauns, water horses, black devil dogs and a lot of other subterrestrial and supernatural spirits not mentioned anywhere in the Bible, LOL! Not even mentioning the more exotic appearances of "folk Catholicism" with questionable Biblical basis. (In Norway, for example, the publication of "On the Origin of Species" came only a generation after the official state suppression of the last remnants of the Catholic pilgrimages by sick miracle-seekers to holy shrines with "sweating crucifixes" etc.)
-
I am agnostic
That means you haven't decided, right?
-
I am agnostic
That means you haven't decided, right?
Agnostic doesn't exactly mean "haven't decided". It's more to the effect that if one is agnostic they are skeptical about the existence of a God but do not say there is/is not in total certainty, as they believe it is not provable.
-
Agnostic - to me - means disbeliever.
Atheist - to me - means unbeliever.
-
In the 1920's and1930's , even in the non-Communist or anti-communist West, Communist true believers fought over who was the most authentic Marxist. (Trotsky was, and caught an ice ax in the head; Stalin wasn't but ruled a quarter century and died more or less in bed).
Actually, Rodney, this isn't at all true. Trotsky was a Stalinist before Stalin because Stalin basically STOLE all of Trotsky's ideas about the industrialization and collectivization of the masses, as well as the state's leading role in determining what was and was not permissible in all the cultural fields. Trotsky was not a true Marxist, any more than those French revolutionaries I mentioned before were "true" Marxists.
Roughly post-Stalin, Marx and Marxism were of interest almost sol;ely in academia, especially in the West. And there Marxism was still numero uno in the universities. The man in the street was sweating Soviet Communism, but not actually Marxism (Who actually reads Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto?)
This is also not really true, Rodney. Think about it. When was the Cuban revolution and when were people like Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra most influential in Latin America? For that matter, you're neglecting to look at other Third World nations, most notably China under Mao, but also countries in Africa like Ethiopia. I assure you, Marxism-Leninism, whether interpreted by Stalin (borrowing heavily from Trotsky) or not, remained extremely influential until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That's when the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist dream really exploded (or imploded, to speak more precisely).
In recent times Marxism is just not thought about, let alone understood (though maybe it should be). Thankfully, even the prevailing political correctness no longer completely protects Marxism. I relatively recently heard Marx called a crackpot, and I think that was quite on the money.
If people's largescale historical memory of the past century and a half could be erased (just a thought experiment, if you'll bear with me) and there had been no Karl Marx or Marxism as a famous person and ideology, his theories introduced under a different name would still not sell.
Again, I think you are somewhat confusing Marxism with its later interpretations by people like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao. The original writings are far more subtle and open to different interpretations, as all great writings are. Hence their enduring appeal. Believe me, Marxism continues to be influential not only in (remarkably successful) socialist countries like those in Scandinavia, but also in American, Canadian, and Western European academia, where Marxist theory has shed considerable light on the field of social history, which only really emerged in the 1960s. Although this "revisionist" school has recently given way to a "post-revisionist" school, it's still clear that even post-revisionists are heavily influenced by social history. The emphasis in Soviet and Russian studies now is not nearly so much on social history but on cultural and intellectual history. But even there, social historians of the 1960s-1980s made invaluable contributions in opening up previously unperceived paths of inquiry and interpretation.
Elisabeth, my statement about who was the most authentic Marxist, Trotsky, or Stalin? should better have said "more authentic" (that ol ' comparative/ superlative problem). Neither was a true Marxist, of course, but I think Trotsky was more so. He was closer to Lenin (half of the Marxism/ Leninism formulation) both personally and temperamentally. Stalin's appeal for Lenin was less his theoretical strength than his greater ability than Trotsky to consolidate the Soviet state appararus.
As for the influence of the Cuban revolution and the Castros and Che Guevara in Latin America, I think the appeal there was less Marxism than this: Castro was the most popular and chararismatic revolutionary in the world at that time, having fairly recently thrown out the despised Battista, an American puppet (among leftist rebels it doesn't get much better than that)Plus, there were those weapons ,funding ,and experienced Cuban trainers. If you're a poor group of Latin American rebels, these things are more critical to your success than pure Marxist theory.
The same applies to Castroite/Cuban influence in Africa, only more so. There, in Angola and Mozambique, Castro was also throwing in almost fifteen thousand regular Cuban Army soldiers.
Moreover , on both continents, if Marxism was thought to be the appeal,, then these budding revolutionary movements were doomed to failure. Marxist theory foresaw proletarian revolutions succeeding against societies in an advanced state of industrial capitalism. Mozambique, Angola, indeed most of Africa, even Peru, Bolivia, and Nicaragua need not apply.
Again, in all these places, whether Second or Third World, revolutionary movements developed for the usual reasons, most notably a desire to rid themselves of despotic or corrupt oppressors, and to escape the hopelessness and poverty of their daily lives. Communist revolutions however wrongly, were seen as the model . I don't think either the leaders of those movements, or even less so their generally uneducated followers in their masses, knew very much of or cared about Karl Marx.
,
-
Before I write this, I want to be sure that everyone knows that I am not in anyway judging or making fun of those with deep religious convictions.
Since I am agnostic and do not believe in those deities who preach suffering as a way to salvation, I find it abhorrent that so many think it is the norm to be unhappy most of the time and happy only at specific points in our lives. When they are unhappy it is "God's will". When they are happy then "God moves in mysterious ways". (If they truly believe that it is God's will then they should not be suing everything that moves into their path of existence.)
One of the reasons that I am agnostic is that I cannot believe that there is one omnipotent being who wants me to suffer in order to be redeemed enough to be brought into His/Her presence after death.
I am not saying that I expect to be blissful everyday, but at least not so frustrated that I feel I am "herding cats" as I wade through the various stupidities that I am assaulted with daily. (You will have to forgive me. I just got off the phone after trying to make an appointment at the UConn Health Center. It was like pushing macaroni up hill. I was told that I couldn't do so many things, that I am not sure I will ever get the appointment. I am so unworthy.)
I was told when I was very young (and I am sure that there is someone of note who originally said this) that if there were no God, Man would invent one to keep himself from going mad. I have also heard it said that we do not need to bow to anyone or anything to justify our existence.
I agree that Darwin cracked open the myths of creationism and left the population of the late 19th and early 20th centuries rudderless. Religion was a balm to those who found no answers and suddenly that balm was not soothing anymore. Perhaps they did then try to replace that old religion with "Bolshevism, communism, fascism, Nazism, to name the most obvious secular religions of the modern age".
But more wars have been fought in the name of religion than for any other reason. That now includes the terrorism that is now being used by Muslim extremists.
Even, to get back to topic, the Russian Revolution was a form of religious war as the Bolsheviks banned organized religion as part of their new better way of life.
Who said that "Religion is the opiate of the masses"? It is often attributed to Karl Marx.
However, it was also used in various forms by Guy DeBord: The spectacle is a permanent opium war which aims to make people identify goods with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws.
And also by the Marquis de Sade:
This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom
And also by Charles Kingsley: We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order
You seem determined to misunderstand me, Alix. Where have I ever expressed religious convictions? Why do you think I favor religion over the secular? I am about the most agnostic person you can imagine, I am so agnostic I can't even stand going to church, except for the weddings of my best friends (in which case it's a duty of friendship). The only reasons I am NOT an atheist are because 1) I hate the proselytizing and self-righteousness of atheists, who put born again Christians to shame in these particular areas; and 2) I would like to believe there's an afterlife for those I love who have passed away. I can't say there is an afterlife, with a god or without one, because my rational mind says there isn't. My heart, however, tells me there might very well be one... Well, I mean, what do we as human beings actually know of any existences beyond our own limited selves? We apparently have a horrible time of it just trying to imagine what it is like to be a mentally ill homeless person in this land of milk and honey.
You know, when I bring up arguments like those of my Russian friends or for that matter the great poet Mandelshtam (who was Jewish but not exactly an observant Jew) about the nature of human happiness, I am merely (MERELY! ha, atrocious word) making an intellectual argument. I don't quite understand why you always take my posts so infernally literally. It's as if you are determined to find me either a born again Christian or a Jew for Jesus or some kind of communist. Actually in political terms I'm completely center-- as befits a member of the American middle class -- albeit an independent, any and every candidate has to earn my vote. Which means, I can't abide the Sarah Palins of the world any more than I can abide the anarchists or the communists or that matter the proselytizing neo-Marxists in academia, or for that matter, sometimes even the Joe Bidens (no word play intended) in the new administration.... basically because to my mind they're usually wrong. Almost invariably completely dead wrong. And a lot of them (like Palin and Biden) are total idiots to boot.
However, that does not mean that I have lost faith in the American system or the American way of life. Au contraire, mon frère, or should I say, ma soeur. I think this is the best country (aside from Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Scandinavia, etc., etc., basically most of the European Union) to ever grace the planet earth. And... ooh, have you heard, naughty, many of these nations have partially or even mostly socialist governments?!? Horrors!
-
Elisabeth, my statement about who was the most authentic Marxist, Trotsky, or Stalin? should better have said "more authentic" (that ol ' comparative/ superlative problem). Neither was a true Marxist, of course, but I think Trotsky was more so. He was closer to Lenin (half of the Marxism/ Leninism formulation) both personally and temperamentally. Stalin's appeal for Lenin was less his theoretical strength than his greater ability than Trotsky to consolidate the Soviet state appararus.
As for the influence of the Cuban revolution and the Castros and Che Guevara in Latin America, I think the appeal there was less Marxism than this: Castro was the most popular and chararismatic revolutionary in the world at that time, having fairly recently thrown out the despised Battista, an American puppet (among leftist rebels it doesn't get much better than that)Plus, there were those weapons ,funding ,and experienced Cuban trainers. If you're a poor group of Latin American rebels, these things are more critical to your success than pure Marxist theory.
The same applies to Castroite/Cuban influence in Africa, only more so. There, in Angola and Mozambique, Castro was also throwing in almost fifteen thousand regular Cuban Army soldiers.
Moreover , on both continents, if Marxism was thought to be the appeal,, then these budding revolutionary movements were doomed to failure. Marxist theory foresaw proletarian revolutions succeeding against societies in an advanced state of industrial capitalism. Mozambique, Angola, indeed most of Africa, even Peru, Bolivia, and Nicaragua need not apply.
Again, in all these places, whether Second or Third World, revolutionary movements developed for the usual reasons, most notably a desire to rid themselves of despotic or corrupt oppressors, and to escape the hopelessness and poverty of their daily lives. Communist revolutions however wrongly, were seen as the model . I don't think either the leaders of those movements, or even less so their generally uneducated followers in their masses, knew very much of or cared about Karl Marx.
Hi, Rodney. I knew if I got into an argument with you, you'd rise to the challenge. I do so love a good argument!
Actually I think you might be mostly correct in what you say. I simply don't know enough about Castro and Che Guevarra to argue that they read Marx (although it seems more than likely to me, indeed, 99.9 % likely, that Castro at least read Marx, in the original Spanish translation!), all I am arguing is that they were heavily influenced by Marxism-Leninism, that is, Marxism as interpreted by Lenin and his legitimate--or illegitimate (depending on your political weathervane)--successor, Stalin. I think it's pretty obvious that most communist regimes after Stalin, in the developing world (whether it be China, North Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia, Cambodia, etc.) followed the basic Soviet line, which was pretty much the Stalinist interpretation of the Marxist-Leninist line. Which meant collectivization of agriculture and the subordination of the entire culture/civilization to the demands of the state. After all, after the death of Stalin, when Mao was contemplating the collectivization of agriculture in China, various Soviet experts who were on the scene strenuously argued against it -- precisely because they had seen the devastating consequences of such a radical step in their own country. Mao went ahead anyway, despite all the warnings, and caused possibly the worst famine in recorded human history. He was, apparently, a true believer, if not in Marx (although I am positive that, like Castro, he had read Marx), then in Marxism-Leninism(-Stalinism) and the primacy of the revolutionary vanguard, i.e., the Communist Party, above all other social groups and classes in the nation.
You have a good point about charismatic leadership. I think charismatic leadership is not necessarily indicative of extremism, but it is, shall we say, typical of extremism. I think extremist groups -- whether they are on the far right or the far left -- almost always have to have a charismatic leader to put them over to the masses, to make them a popular political movement as opposed to merely a marginal one.
-
Anyone educated, much less intellectual, found it very hard if not impossible to believe in the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man, the pearly gates, etc. etc., after reading The Origin of the Species. Hence Bolshevism, communism, fascism, Nazism, to name the most obvious secular religions of the modern age. And now of course there is Al-Qaeda, which wants to bring back the medieval Muslim caliphates (it thinks! in actuality someone like Bin Laden would be completely horrified by the level of religious and ethnic tolerance that was regarded as the norm in such places at this time in history).
And yet you still have some intellectuals who do come to believe in that good old time religion. I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis as a prime example (also was it Auden or Waugh (or both) who became Catholic, I forget). Without seeking to excuse the actions of the more extreme religious Fundamentalists, including Al-Qaeda, aren't their beliefs merely an expression of a natural desire for an antidote to the philosophically unsatisfying life we seem to lead. The gratification of the senses which seems to be the hallmark of our Century doesn't appear to satify mankind's desire for something more, or as that old song goes "Is that all there is?" Something like gorging on Chinese food, it leaves you empty when you are done because by definition it's transitory and all those "isms" can't get the job done because they never really answer the eternal questions. All those young people who join Hare Krishna groups or become Moonies seem to be searching for something which contemporary society can't provide them but in a strange way their search is a hopeful sign. As Big Daddy said in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (in a bow to the late lamented Elizabeth Taylor) all we see is MENDACITY around us which, at heart, characterizes all those sad secular philosophical attempts which promise to replace the divine and merely give us more misery.
-
Anyone educated, much less intellectual, found it very hard if not impossible to believe in the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man, the pearly gates, etc. etc., after reading The Origin of the Species. Hence Bolshevism, communism, fascism, Nazism, to name the most obvious secular religions of the modern age. And now of course there is Al-Qaeda, which wants to bring back the medieval Muslim caliphates (it thinks! in actuality someone like Bin Laden would be completely horrified by the level of religious and ethnic tolerance that was regarded as the norm in such places at this time in history).
And yet you still have some intellectuals who do come to believe in that good old time religion. I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis as a prime example (also was it Auden or Waugh (or both) who became Catholic, I forget). Without seeking to excuse the actions of the more extreme religious Fundamentalists, including Al-Qaeda, aren't their beliefs merely an expression of a natural desire for an antidote to the philosophically unsatisfying life we seem to lead. The gratification of the senses which seems to be the hallmark of our Century doesn't appear to satify mankind's desire for something more, or as that old song goes "Is that all there is?" Something like gorging on Chinese food, it leaves you empty when you are done because by definition it's transitory and all those "isms" can't get the job done because they never really answer the eternal questions. All those young people who join Hare Krishna groups or become Moonies seem to be searching for something which contemporary society can't provide them but in a strange way their search is a hopeful sign. As Big Daddy said in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (in a bow to the late lamented Elizabeth Taylor) all we see is MENDACITY around us which, at heart, characterizes all those sad secular philosophical attempts which promise to replace the divine and merely give us more misery.
Well, agnostic that I am, I tend to agree with you, Petr. My favorite poet, Osip Mandelshtam, seems initially at least to have had a rather difficult relationship with religion. As I said, he was not by any stretch of the imagination an observant Jew, and yet there are Jewish and Christian themes and motifs throughout his work. He seems to have regarded himself as merely one heir among many of the immeasurable treasure trove of Judaeo-Christian culture, which he sought to preserve for future generations in Russia, despite the Bolshevik Revolution (which at one time he believed in, but quickly grew disenchanted by).
Waugh did become a Catholic (no comment), but Auden I think was simply Christian in the way that Mandelshtam who was Jewish by birth and spirit was also a Christian at heart (both Jewish and Christian, apparently he never had a conflict with that particular aspect of religion, and please, please don't interpret this as meaning he was a Jew for Jesus, quite the contrary, he saw the two religions as equally important, mutually complementary and enhancing).
Here is a short poem by Auden about tyrants like Hitler and Stalin:
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
(1939)
-
I would like to believe there's an afterlife for those I love who have passed away. I can't say there is an afterlife, with a god or without one, because my rational mind says there isn't. My heart, however, tells me there might very well be one... Well, I mean, what do we as human beings actually know of any existences beyond our own limited selves?
Well, the concept of an Afterlife and ghosts predate all the major religions we know today. Who knows, maybe there is something and, as the religions took shape, they incorpoarted it into themselves. Each adding their own ideas, of course.
We humans can't be so arrogant to think we've unlocked all the secrets of the universe.
-
Don't forget that the Church once was the sole voice, in a desert of brutality, misery and oppression, of the message that now spouts forth from every pop culture loudspeaker: "All you need is love." Lady Gaga is just the most recent, perverted and muddled version of the New Testament. But the more pornographic popular culture becomes, mistaking sex for love, the more it is perhaps a reflection of "scientific atheism" - humanity reduced to biology? (Of course capitalism also plays a huge part here, as sex is one of the few expressions of love that can be sold, at least as an instant product.)
In a culture so saturated as ours with the message that love is the solution of everything, it's just natural to believe in a religion whose core thesis is that so greatly did God love the world that he gave His only son, that every one who trusts in him may not perish but may have the life of ages. (Our gratification-centred culture does of course overlook the element of sacrifice in this, an element that was of enormously more significance to people in more tested times.)
The Soviet Union was also a thoroughly atheist, unchristian society in the sense that it proclaimed: Faith, hope and love alone is not necessarily going to get you to paradise / utopia / the American Dream. Only scientific Marxist-Leninism will. There was no hope and "someday, over the rainbow...." "crap" in the Soviet Union. There was "progress", measured in 5 year plans!
-
Elizabeth - I am sorry. I am not replying to your statements. I hope that we can keep up this lively discussion (at which you and Petr and Feodor are much more learned that I) without again confusing the issue of who is talking to whom.
Most of the time it is Feodor who I am talking to.
Also, when I defined Agnostic - it was to TimM.
I will have to make things more clear.
I did, though, think you had said that suffering was more common than joy and that joy was reduced to only a few times in our lives. That was why I said that I don't believe in those deities who preach suffering as way to salvation.
My way to agnosticism was paved by the church system that believes in a full offering basket before it believes in succoring tormented souls.
I have yet to find a church that wants its members to join before giving out the "offering" envelopes. They even gave them to a 3 year old, as my son was when I thought that he should begin his religious experiences in "Sunday School" and then make up his own mind while he grew. Of course, 22 years ago, I was still thinking that I could be wrong (and of course I still could be) and I should let him come to terms with religion with input from those who were believers and who might still have something to say to me that I might understand.
Feodor is right that belief in the "after life" predates modern religion. The Egyptians, of course, believed in an after life.
But the start of the Russian Revolution or any other popular upheaval in the 20th or now the 21st century is the main topic of this thread.
It looks like Syria joined the "pack" today. The President of Syria has asked his ministers to stop down as did Mubarak in Egypt only last month.
-
I don't want to proselytize but since this Forum deals mostly with things Russian and since this thread seems to have wandered into religious thickets I thought I would direct you to this site (turn up your speakers) for your entertainment and, who knows, edification .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrdz-UJbVXQ&feature=related
You may have heard the apocryphal story of how Russia was converted to Christianity but once you listen to what's on this site you will understand. It is said that Prince Vladimir of Kiev when he decided to convert his people to Christianity sent out delegations to Rome and to Constantinople and when they returned those that went to Constantinople told the Prince that at the services they attended in St. Sophia they heard the voices of angels. So Russia became Orthodox. The hymn celebrates the Veneration of the Cross which is one of the services held during lent in preparation for Easter (and as it so happens it took place this past weekend). I've always believed that to truly understand the Russian soul you must delve into Russian liturgical music. Of course, the piece celebrates one of the glories of Russian choral and operatic singing the Basso Profondo (Boris Godunov springs to mind). Actually Youtube has a good selection of pieces by Chaliapin and various contemporary Bassos singing various hymns and litanies. I find it spiritual having grown up in the Church and singing in Church choirs all my life but my wife complains its all too dirge like and depressing. But I think it's still better than listening to the International at party meetings. So there you are different strokes for different folks.
-
Feodor is right that belief in the "after life" predates modern religion
Uh, wasn't I the one that made that comment? Or did he beat me to it and I just didn't see it.
-
I am not sure now and since I am in the posting section, I can't look back to find out. But I was only making the point that this discussion is quit interesting and learned and that responses were getting tangled.
One of things that is truly uplifting in many a religious service is the choir.
It may be one of the things that I miss the most since my period of disbelief began.
As a child, I sang in the Youth Choir in our church and I did dream of someday singing in the adult choir. But the beautiful music (written by those who believe) did not off set the constant begging of the church for money from the church congregation.
I remember when I walked away from organized religion (not yet agnostic - just ticked off) my reason was that God could be worshiped in any of the beautiful places He had created not just in the man made churches that were always crying "poor". And those who cried poor had no idea of what truly poor was as I have since discovered.
-
Feodor is right that belief in the "after life" predates modern religion
Uh, wasn't I the one that made that comment? Or did he beat me to it and I just didn't see it.
No, it was you. It's just Alixz thinking the world of me. :-)
-
As we all know that I do! ;-)
-
Don't forget that the Church once was the sole voice, in a desert of brutality, misery and oppression, of the message that now spouts forth from every pop culture loudspeaker: "All you need is love."
And the Inquisition.
-
I've never been part of organized religon myself. I don't need Big Brother telling me what to believe in. As I said, I my own personal beliefs and that is good enough for me.
-
I would like to believe there's an afterlife for those I love who have passed away. I can't say there is an afterlife, with a god or without one, because my rational mind says there isn't. My heart, however, tells me there might very well be one... Well, I mean, what do we as human beings actually know of any existences beyond our own limited selves?
Well, the concept of an Afterlife and ghosts predate all the major religions we know today. Who knows, maybe there is something and, as the religions took shape, they incorpoarted it into themselves. Each adding their own ideas, of course.
We humans can't be so arrogant to think we've unlocked all the secrets of the universe.
Hi, Tim. I think actually the ancient Hebrews did not believe in an afterlife, everything was dust and ashes after death, no one lived on except in their descendants and in tradition. I believe to some extent this is the same belief that most Jews, Reformed and Orthodox, hold to this day. It seems to me quite a mature understanding of things. I'm not saying it's true, mind me. It just seems the most in tune with what we now know about our limited biological span on this earth.
Alix, please don't mind me mouthing off. I was in a bad mood the other day, and was no doubt taking things personally. I do, however, believe that much (not all, or even most) of life is suffering, and the more we as human beings struggle to ignore or entirely throw off suffering, the more it finds us. I mean, let's face it, we're mortal beings. We have to confront terrible things happening to good people all the time (what was that, anyway, but the entire history of the 20th century in the Western world?), we have to confront illness and death not only in our own lives but also and probably more importantly, in the lives of those we love.
-
I don't want to proselytize but since this Forum deals mostly with things Russian and since this thread seems to have wandered into religious thickets I thought I would direct you to this site (turn up your speakers) for your entertainment and, who knows, edification .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrdz-UJbVXQ&feature=related
You may have heard the apocryphal story of how Russia was converted to Christianity but once you listen to what's on this site you will understand. It is said that Prince Vladimir of Kiev when he decided to convert his people to Christianity sent out delegations to Rome and to Constantinople and when they returned those that went to Constantinople told the Prince that at the services they attended in St. Sophia they heard the voices of angels. So Russia became Orthodox. The hymn celebrates the Veneration of the Cross which is one of the services held during lent in preparation for Easter (and as it so happens it took place this past weekend). I've always believed that to truly understand the Russian soul you must delve into Russian liturgical music. Of course, the piece celebrates one of the glories of Russian choral and operatic singing the Basso Profondo (Boris Godunov springs to mind). Actually Youtube has a good selection of pieces by Chaliapin and various contemporary Bassos singing various hymns and litanies. I find it spiritual having grown up in the Church and singing in Church choirs all my life but my wife complains its all too dirge like and depressing. But I think it's still better than listening to the International at party meetings. So there you are different strokes for different folks.
Well, I couldn't agree more, Petr. I adore Russian Orthodox church music, so many thanks for the link and the additional references. My own personal favorite is "Vespers" by Sergei Rachmaninov. Incredibly beautiful. But like you, I also love Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov," not least for its many religious under(and over)tones. My dream is that I will someday see and hear this opera live, in person.
I will, with your forbearance, expand upon the story of the Russian nation's conversion to Christianity in 988 A.D. According to legend (as related by the historian Nicholas V. Riasanovsky) the Russian ruler and his advisors rejected Islam "because it prohibited alcohol--'for drink is the joy of the Russian'--and Judaism because it expressed the beliefs of a defeated people without a state" (A History of Russia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 38). According to Riasanovsky, in practical, politically pragmatic terms, "Vladimir and his associates chose to become the Eastern flank of Christendom rather than an extension into Europe of non-Christian civilizations" (ibid.). For example, at this pivotal time in European history the Orthodox Byzantine Empire was waxing in power, influence, and geopolitical importance, whereas the former mightiness of the Judaic Khazar kingdom on Russia's southeastern flank was already rapidly waning, and soon to be entirely wiped out.