LeninWalksTheWorld

I agree, German kids could have resisted, there was the White Rose and shit, and let's not forget the thousands of leftists thrown into the camps. It's not like people didn't know what they were doing was wrong, they just didn't want to take the risk of opposing the regime like the peers did. And to forgive them, punishes those who did resist. That's why Nazi collaborators deserve a swift execution along side the true believers.

No way government bureaucracy moves that fast. It's for some cold war guy

This is a fed free post. If you're a fed, you have to leave.

Well Gorby purged the military leadership of the "hardliners" (actual communists) before he started his reforms. He really thought the left would be a bigger threat than the radical liberal opposition.

He also drastically slashed the military budget and conditions for the soldiers were already poor in the late 80s. The conscription system had been corrupted and many conscripts were abused and used as slave labor. Cutting the budget made these problems worse, and then the Warsaw Pact collapsed and the army lost all their foreign allies.

So by the time stuff starts really falling apart, the Red Army is left disillusioned and directionless. They try to intervene a few times but accomplish little more than shooting some protesters and making everyone angrier. Gorbachev meanwhile refuses to lead, and instead focuses his attention on blaming his subordinates and firing more "hardliners". When the August Coup happens, again Gorby refuses to take leadership or even a stance on it at all, and what's left of the army isn't willing to risk a massacre on behalf of, let's be honest, a desperate last ditch attempt to regain control of the situation.

Afterwards, many soldiers could make chaos very lucrative for themselves by becoming gangsters or running drugs/arms. The death of a nation is so tragic.

Well Gorby sort of had a plan, but it was a terribly naive one. He really thought the liberals would be cool with him being a social democrat, but nope, step aside loser. All or nothing.

For Yeltsin and his cronies, the lack of planning was part of the benefit, they didn't want any of the former bureaucrats or factory directors to be part of the process at all. They just gave every citizen worthless "privatization vouchers" that would entitle you to shares in the new private enterprises but they immediately lost all value because of the economic disaster they caused. Oh and they were unlimitedly transferable, so 90% of people just sold them for cash so they could keep eating. Those who were already rich or had political connections to the new government bought them all up and volia- nearly instantaneous economic oligarchy. All the achievements of October, swept away :lenin-rage:

Probably was Aldrich Aims, he's is one of the best known American double agents and passed a bunch of lie detectors. He did it for money though so he's not as cool as the Cambridge Five in my opinion.

Kendall Myers is his wife Gwendolyn were very based however. They worked for the state department and passed secrets to the Cuban government for 30 years out of ideological loyalty.

According to a "law enforcement official", they were "true believers" in the Cuban system.[11] The United States federal affidavit quoted a diary entry by Kendall Myers as saying, "I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit",[11] and referred to Fidel Castro as "one of the great political leaders of our time."[13] Other entries quoted reference a comparison of health care in the United States and healthcare in Cuba, and "complacency about the poor" in the United States.[11]

Unfortunately they caught him and he is now locked up at ADX Florence supermax facility, where they put all the terrorists.

It allowed them to intercept ships to check if they were slave trading. While they were inspecting the ship, the British officers could use the pretext to find other things wrong, ie smuggling, piracy, desertion, ect. Then they could seize your property or arrest you in some cases. Sort of like how American cops can use a busted taillight to pull you over, then arrest you if he find drugs during that.

The navy did also free a significant number of slaves this way too so it wasn't just an abuse of power, but it also signaled to everyone that Britain was the dominant naval power in Europe now.

While this was not the sole reason, it should be noted that English anti-slavery laws gave their navy a pretext to board and search vessels for "inspections". With the UK quickly becoming the world's dominant naval power, this gave them lots of power over foreign shipping and trade, especially in the Atlantic.

I'd agree generally. One of the most difficult obstacles for global communists to overcome in the last century is that Stalin tied the project of building communism (globally) with the national interests of the USSR. A lot of communists obviously didn't feel very comfortable with letting internationalism take a back seat to just always supporting Moscow and let the capitalists do the whole "reds are traitors who want to sell out their nation" propaganda a lot more effectively. The Sino-Soviet Split is another example of this, where Russian national interests won out over international solidarity.

Though about Bukharin, I can't say for sure how things would have turned out if he and the Right Opposition came out on top in the power struggle. I really like Bukharin personality, he seems like a good guy, smart too. Things like collectivization would have been more "relaxed" under him than Stalin definitely, and he probably would have been able to just bribe the peasant kulaks into cooperating rather than going full class liquidation on them like Stalin. I bet Bukharin economy would have likely been really impressive if it was allowed time and space to develop since he seemed to understand in a Marxist sense that Russia didn't get the benefit of prior capitalist accumulation and could do more to address that than just brute forcing the problem with massive, labor-intensive projects like Stalin did (with terrible health and safety regulations as well)

The major issue is that you still have the fuckin Nazi invasion happening in the 1940s, and without Stalin's aggressive campaign of industrialization it's possible a Bukharinist USSR just gets rolled over and genocided if that slower paced industrialization campaign means a weaker war economy. Things got pretty close a few times even with a hard ass like Stalin in charge. Plus to be fair in that global situation, stoking nationalism against foreign invaders does make sense even if it's not strictly communist.

That's one of the modern arguments modern Russians like to use to defend Stalin at least. They say "Bukharin would have dragged out collectivization until the 1950s, so we would have lost the Great Patriotic War and all died." But whose to say WW2 even goes the same way with Bukharin running things. It's possible Bukharin's more "lenient" leadership could have convinced the west to actually negotiate collective security agreement against Nazi Germany in good faith. Then the Nazis could be stopped at Sudetenland if something like the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty was taken seriously.

historical possibilities of that period of time are really fascinating

I agree, think stuff like the Leningrad Affair was incredibly stupid on Stalin's part. Like bruh you're gonna die soon anyway maybe don't purge thousands of your most popular cadres? Those guys would have been useful a few decades down the road.

Party should have thanked Stalin for his service throughout the 30s and 40s and then forcibly retired him post war in favor of Malenkov. Instead they let his brain melt which gave the Khrushchevites an opportunity to trash his entire legacy for a little temporary popular support, all while compromising the greater ideological project.

Hindsight is 20/20 and all though, and sticking with Stalin till death for stability's sake probably looked like the best option at the time after the most destructive war in human history

Soviet Storm: WW2 in the east is pretty cool

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwGzY25TNHPC_SsXFcIH-ba0nWuNbHOM6

These guys also make great weekly videos about WW2, "in real time"

https://youtu.be/TRvzqDzgmPQ

"He will never combine the pleasure of grilling with the pleasure of riding a train" :cereal1:

The RailGrill: :grillman: :grill: :train-shining: :cereal2: