04-07-2022, 03:13 PM
I have a different explanation of Russia's Monster Crisis that began during World War II and ended only with the death of Stalin. World War II shook the shaky social and economic structure of Imperial Russia, causing the collapse of the Romanov dynasty only to establish a feeble democracy that could not get its act together (it had no chance) while losing a war. Lenin's Bolsheviks took over, signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk that consigned much of the western part of what had been Imperial Russia to the Central Powers. Lenin believed that proletarian revolutions would make Russian defeat irrelevant as pro-Soviet regimes would pop up in Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, and the Caucasus region. He was right about Ukraine and the Caucasus region. He was wrong about the rest.
Lenin's cranky economics failed, so he had to make concessions to NEP (New Economic Policy) that allowed some measure of capitalism in Russia. Cutthroat Stalin prevailed as Lenin died, and he established the most complete tyranny since at least that of the Pharaohs. There would be no individual initiative -- only terror in a perverse manner of socialism that looked more like serfdom than any Marxist ideal. NEP would be rescinded, agriculture would be collectivized at great loss of life among what had been freehold peasants, and then came the Great Purge. The Great purge stalled only because it ran out of potential victims.
Then of course came the reset of the Crisis with Operation Barbarossa/World War II/the Great Patriotic War. I see two abortive trends toward a 1T. So one gets a trend smashed by a return of Crisis. I see three waves of Crisis in Russia and the Soviet Union. Thirty-year Crises are possible when the leadership is perverse, reckless, and cruel.
Lenin's cranky economics failed, so he had to make concessions to NEP (New Economic Policy) that allowed some measure of capitalism in Russia. Cutthroat Stalin prevailed as Lenin died, and he established the most complete tyranny since at least that of the Pharaohs. There would be no individual initiative -- only terror in a perverse manner of socialism that looked more like serfdom than any Marxist ideal. NEP would be rescinded, agriculture would be collectivized at great loss of life among what had been freehold peasants, and then came the Great Purge. The Great purge stalled only because it ran out of potential victims.
Then of course came the reset of the Crisis with Operation Barbarossa/World War II/the Great Patriotic War. I see two abortive trends toward a 1T. So one gets a trend smashed by a return of Crisis. I see three waves of Crisis in Russia and the Soviet Union. Thirty-year Crises are possible when the leadership is perverse, reckless, and cruel.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.