The Soviet Union

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat May 04, 2024 3:16 pm

October Revolution - historical balance of achievements


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Lenin May 1, 1920

In March 1919, V.I. Lenin published a short note on the occasion of the creation of the Communist International. There he says: “The only thing lasting in a revolution is what is won by the masses of the proletariat. It’s worth writing down only what has really been firmly won” [1] . Among such lasting gains, he noted the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today, a hundred years after the revolution, one can rightfully raise the question, which of its achievements turned out to be durable, were not only conquered and recorded for time, but also stood the test of time?

A hundred years after the revolution, the world is still as far from a global republic of Soviets as it was before the overthrow of the autocracy in Russia. The struggle for socialism at the end of the twentieth century suffered a serious historical defeat, therefore, with a superficial look at the history of October, it seems that it did not leave any lasting achievements, and therefore the revolution is something accidental and meaningless in the history of Russia. But that's not true.

Thinking about the intermediate results, Lenin already in November 1921 drew attention to the dual nature of the revolution in Russia. He published an article in Pravda “On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution.”

“The immediate and immediate task of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic task: to overthrow the remnants of the Middle Ages, to demolish them completely, to cleanse Russia of this barbarity, of this shame, of this greatest brake on all culture and all progress in our country.” “The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means the cleansing of the social relations (orders, institutions) of the country from the Middle Ages, from serfdom, from feudalism,” he further clarifies. From the bourgeois-democratic component, the communists are moving towards the socialist revolution itself, however, “only the struggle will decide how much we will be able to (in the final analysis) move forward, what part of the immensely lofty task we will complete, what part of our victories we will secure for ourselves. Let's wait and see" [2] .
Among the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the Russian revolution, Lenin notes the elimination of the monarchy and class system, feudal land tenure, a change in the social position of religion, the elimination of national oppression and the degraded position of women. In all these questions it is revealed that the achievements of the revolution were largely unshakable and survived the Soviet Union.

The October Revolution consolidated the republican form of government in Russia and gave the first functioning republican constitution in Russian history, adopted in 1918. Both the USSR and all the states that arose after its collapse were and are republics. Although in some post-Soviet states the popularity of monarchical ideas has increased somewhat in recent decades, the republican form of government remains unshakable. Thus, Russia and other former Soviet republics are keeping pace with global trends.

The lack of civil equality and the presence of class privileges created serious problems in the development of civil law in pre-revolutionary Russia, in particular in defining the concept of person. It contradicted the general trends of the era towards equalizing the legal status of citizens. The October Revolution abolished the estates and consistently introduced the principle of civil equality into legislation. Today, even extreme reactionaries do not dare to openly deny the principle of equality of citizens before the law. Another question is, to what extent is this principle observed in practice? But other capitalist countries of the modern world also face this problem. Here Russia and the former Soviet republics do not represent anything qualitatively special. In them, as elsewhere in the world, the principle of equality triumphed in the content of legislation. And this is also the merit of October.

The issue of women's civil rights is closely related to class inequality. The Soviet government legislated the line outlined by the Provisional Government. She introduced the principle of equal rights between women and men through all legislative acts and took a number of practical steps to eliminate actual inequality. Women began to actively participate in public life and received full and equal access to education, which allowed them to enter on an equal footing into areas of activity previously reserved exclusively for men. A woman engineer, a woman prosecutor, a woman scientist became quite commonplace phenomena, while in tsarist Russia nothing like this could be imagined. Finally, the liberation of a woman was closely related to the change in her status in the family. The new family legislation of the Soviet government laid the legal basis for the destruction of the patriarchal family and the release of women from the eternal guardianship of men. This was primarily achieved through the introduction of the right to divorce. Of course, the emancipation of women is a historically long process, as it is associated with a slow change in a whole complex of sociocultural norms, but it was the October Revolution that created adequate legal forms for this process and thereby contributed to the synchronous movement of Russia with the rest of the world. Even now, when conservatism has intensified at the everyday level and the popularity of Domostroev’s ideas has increased, no one dares to publicly challenge the basic principles of women’s position in society.

The issue of religion is closely related to the women's issue, since church marriage did not allow divorce. The status of religion in society was radically changed. Religion was separated from the state and became a private matter for citizens. Thus, Russia followed the same path taken by Western European capitalist states. To this day, the principle of separation of religion and state remains in force, although due to the growing clericalization of society, it is violated in practice in many of the former Soviet republics. For Russia, which has many religions, the principle of separating religion from the state is especially important. Ignoring it could jeopardize the unity of the country.

One of the most pressing problems in Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. - oppression of national minorities. It was closely intertwined with religious oppression under the conditions of the state religion. The Soviet government solved this problem by giving all the peoples of Russia the opportunity to independently develop their culture and create any forms of national statehood, based on their desires. As a result, some of the peoples of Russia separated from it, and some formed their own national states within Russia. So Russia became a federal state. Along with the republican structure, federalism is one of the two fundamental principles of Russian statehood, which has withstood all the political cataclysms of the 20th century. Thus, the October Revolution established a form of state unity that is still reflected in the official name of the Russian state. On January 12, 2018, we will celebrate the centenary of federalization. Of course, in respect of the rights of national minorities, there were serious deviations from the principles of the revolution; it is enough to recall the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and other peoples. However, in general, the principle of national equality triumphed.

In the field of land relations, it is necessary to consider separately both negative and positive aspects of change (the terms are used not in an ethical, but in a philosophical sense). The new forms of agrarian relations that arose after the revolution have not survived into modern times, except for certain rudiments like the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, which is still in effect in Ukraine. However, the negative side of revolutionary changes turned out to be surprisingly stable. The destroyed feudal latifundia are a thing of the past forever, and there can be no talk of their restoration.

Less obvious, but no less lasting, are other socio-economic changes of the revolutionary era: the idea and practice of state regulation of the economy, restrictions on the free market and private property for the sake of the interests of society, the development of a public consumption fund, the principle of worker participation in enterprise management, the idea of ​​planning. Of course, since then the forms and purposes of using all these ideas have changed repeatedly, but the very admissibility and possibility of their use was put on the agenda precisely by the revolution. Not all of these ideas have survived to this day in the former Soviet republics, but many of them were adopted and applied abroad, where they are used to this day. For example, works councils in Germany, which trace their origins back to the factory councils of 1919, created under the direct influence of the experience of Russian factory committees.

The influence of the revolution on social science is adjacent to this group of consequences. She firmly introduced the idea of ​​​​the possibility of purposeful influence on the development of society using scientific theories.

Finally, the revolution gave a powerful impetus to the development of labor law, the social insurance and welfare system. She introduced vacations, sick leave, collective labor agreements, pensions and many other benefits of labor legislation, for the first time extending them to all hired workers in Russia. In close connection with the development of labor law and workers' control, the trade union movement flourished. We all see the fruits of this blossoming around us with our own eyes: it was during the years of the revolution that the Higher School of Trade Unions was created, in the branch of which we have gathered now [3] .

The achievements of the revolution that have survived the last century are so numerous that it is not possible to give an exhaustive list of them in one message. In their light, the question of so-called reconciliation, which the Russian Military Historical Society has recently been pushing, looks completely different. This reconciliation is usually presented as a veiled call for the Reds to admit the futility of what they were doing. But the Reds' efforts are by no means fruitless; many of their results are of fundamental importance. Are the advocates of reconciliation willing to acknowledge this fact? If they agree, then, apparently, dialogue is possible, but if they deny this, then we are simply faced with an attempt by reactionaries to erase the historical achievements of Russian society, made possible thanks to the revolution.

We need to end the conversation about the deeds of the revolutionaries a hundred years ago with the question: what could they not do? And here I immediately remember Hegel, who spoke about the irony of history. Its essence is that historical figures do not get the results that they strived for in their activities and that they counted on. Lenin again gives us the opportunity to subtly feel this problem. In the already mentioned article for the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution, he writes that the Bolsheviks

“we resolved the issues of the bourgeois-democratic revolution casually, in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and real, proletarian-revolutionary, socialist work.” “Bourgeois-democratic transformations,” we said and we proved with deeds, “are a by-product of the proletarian, that is, socialist revolution” [4] .
As it is easy to notice now, this by-product for the Bolsheviks turned out to be the main historical achievement of the revolution. But what was essential for the Bolsheviks, that revolution could neither conquer nor record for centuries. This is the ideal of a society without exploitation, classes and the state, where the alienation of market and political institutions has been removed, where the brotherhood of people and genuine social self-government reigns, where creative work is the main content of human activity, a source of happiness and joy. The struggle for this ideal is the work of future revolutionaries.

Notes
1. Lenin V.I. Conquered and recorded // PSS. T. 37. P. 513.
2. Lenin V.I. To the four-year anniversary of the October Revolution // PSS. T. 44. pp. 144, 145.
3. The message was made at the conference “Economics, State and Law in the Great Russian Revolution of 1917”, which took place on October 28, 2017 at the Institute of Economics and Law (branch of ATiSO, Sevastopol).
4. Lenin V.I. To the four-year anniversary of the October Revolution // PSS. T. 44. P. 147.

https://kritikaprava.org/library/287/ok ... ostizhenij

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat May 11, 2024 2:14 pm

WW2: The 70th anniversary of the victory over fascism
What transformed WW2 from an interimperialist war into an anti-fascist one? Who really beat the Nazis and liberated Europe?
Harpal Brar

Monday 22 July 2019



Comrade Harpal Brar, former chairman of the CPGB-ML, speaks on the significance of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascism.

Much is written and spoken about World War 1 and World War 2, yet it is truly staggering how few people – and particularly how few British workers – really understand the causes and significance of this latter titanic struggle, in which 60 million workers lost their lives.

The imperialists of Britain, France, the USA, Germany and Japan) fought, and many millions died, to preserve and enforce the wage and colonial slavery of the capitalist class. They fought for slaves and booty, and nothing more.

And yet, by their masterful leadership, bold strategy and heroic courage and self-sacrifice, the Soviet Union and the international communist movement won world-historic victories that not only preserved the hard-won socialist nation, but brought into being a swath of socialist democracies across Europe and Asia, invigorated the anti-colonial struggle, and decisively shifted the balance of power in favour of working people on a global scale.

The victories won by the Soviet Union changed and shaped our world, and all workers should not only know this episode in our history, but should be truly proud of these earth-shattering achievements of our class, which herald the bright new world we are capable of bringing into being.

“The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is a part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods; it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie.” (Friedrich Engels, Material for the History of Ireland, 1870)

This shrewd observation of Engels’ should be kept in mind when judging:

1. the causes of the second world war;

2. the events leading up to it;

3. the role in it of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the imperialist camp, on the other hand; and

4. the results of the war.

The second world war (as indeed the first) is inseparable from imperialism, whose product it was. Tens of millions of people were slaughtered to decide which set of bandits – the Anglo-American-French or the German-Italian-Japanese – was to get what share of the colonial loot.

The only way out of the morass of imperialist wars is socialism. Therefore, the struggle against war must be inseparably connected with the struggle for the overthrow of imperialism and the establishment of socialism.

The ruling classes of the ‘democratic’ imperialist countries were complicit in the rise and strengthening of fascism. It was the crowning achievement of the Soviet people to have defeated nazism – this monstrous product of imperialism in crisis.

The Soviet victory in the second world war was a disaster for imperialism. If the first world war brought into existence the great and glorious Soviet Union, the end of the second world war led to the creation of a mighty socialist bloc, stretching from the Soviet Union through eastern and central Europe to China and southeast Asia.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bourgeoisie has gone on the rampage not only to belittle the role of the Soviet Union in defeating fascism, but also to malign the record of socialism itself.

This is particularly true of the Baltic states, Poland and, especially, Ukraine. In the last-named country, Stefan Bandera, the notorious Nazi stooge, is now honoured with statues and street names as a great fighter for national liberation – having fought not against the Nazis but against the Soviet Union!

The economic crisis of 1929 made another interimperialist war a certainty. The law of uneven development of capitalism saw to it that some countries, notably Germany, Japan and Italy, had spurted ahead in their development, but their share in terms of markets, natural resources, and avenues for investment was dis-proportionately small compared with the share that went to countries such as Britain and France.

This presentation should be compulsory viewing for every British citizen, and every worker worldwide: help spread the word!

https://thecommunists.org/2019/07/22/tv ... perialism/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu May 30, 2024 2:50 pm

Fan of Mannerheim
colonelcassad
May 30, 14:32

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In the context of the current heated discussion about the personality and views of the fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, it would be very productive to take a separate historical episode and see what this person wrote on this issue. Then evaluate his position from the point of view of both the accuracy of his forecasts (he is considered a “great thinker”!), and from the point of view of patriotic values. Even without using the methods of class analysis...

I chose the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40 as such an episode. What did Professor Ilyin write about her?

Firstly, even before the start of the conflict, this man confidently stated that the USSR would not succeed and the country would not be able to field a massive army. Because:

“Trained” millions are not trained; they are only listed on paper. And mistrust, spy mania, poor quality engineering and a general desire for radical change reign everywhere. It would be downright fatal for communists to put weapons in the hands of the masses...” (c) I. A. Ilyin. Hitler and Stalin. / 07/11/1939. / Luzerner Landbote.

Let's just state that although the Red Army had many problems, nothing like this happened. In both 1939 and 1941, the communists did not hesitate to put weapons into the hands of the masses. And the masses justified their trust.

Alas, gentlemen, even this episode clearly shows that the prophet from your Ilyin is like a bullet from a well-known substance...

Secondly, in his publications dedicated to the Soviet-Finnish war, Ivan Ilyin many times calls our country an aggressor: “It acted as an aggressor” , or “in the long, tedious struggle for world power, which began in 1917, the Bolshevik aggressor discovered a huge gap...”

In an article he wrote after the conclusion of the peace treaty, the “great Russian thinker” states:

“The Soviet state began this war as typical "aggressor". There was no talk of any claims or hostility on the part of Finland, which until the last moment demonstrated balance, correctness and even greater readiness to accommodate. It was about Stalin’s desire not to negotiate with Finland, but to defeat a small country with a swift revolutionary onslaught.”

We simply state that the “Russian patriot” Ivan Ilyin completely repeats the theses of Finnish nationalist propaganda. Although he would be ashamed not to know that objectively the roots of this armed conflict go deep into history, to 1811, when Emperor Alexander I, after annexing the Grand Duchy of Finland to the Russian Empire, for some reason transferred the entire Vyborg province to it. A territory with a mixed population, which by that time had been directly part of Russia for a hundred years.

Further, as I already wrote in the publication ABOUT THE REASONS OF THE FINNISH WAR, the following picture emerges: there is objectively a territorial problem between the two countries. But instead of establishing good neighborly relations, Finland, or rather a significant part of its ruling class after 1917:

- Demands fantastic territorial concessions from Russia;

- Organizes several armed incursions into Russian territory;

- Gives the opportunity to world powers, first Germany, then England, to station troops on their territory that can or even attack our country;

- And as a “cherry on the cake”: it encourages large-scale terrorist activities on the territory of a neighboring country;

Moreover, all this is based on the thesis put forward by the President of Finland P. E. Svinhuvud: “Any enemy of Russia must always be a friend of Finland.”

But for Ivan Ilyin it all comes down to “revolutionary onslaught” and “Soviet aggression”! This “statist” simply does not understand, or does not want to understand, that we are talking about the security of the second capital of our state, the largest industrial and cultural center.

Here his level corresponds to the most primitive anti-Soviet propaganda, above which the “deep thinker” and former resident of St. Petersburg-Petrograd, as it turns out, is simply not able to rise!

Moreover, he does not know, or pretends not to know, about the aggressive plans to create a “Greater Finland” with the inclusion of the territory of Karelia and the Kola Peninsula.

Yes, the refined liberal Pavel Milyukov, who uttered the phrase “I feel sorry for the Finns, but I am for the Vyborg province,” is a much greater patriot than Ivan Ilyin!

But our “patriot” many times admires both the bloody executioner Karl Mannerheim and the Finnish nationalists: “The living spirit of Finnish patriots wins.” Or “a real strategist spoke out against this communist “horde strategy,” stoically defending himself on the Karelian Isthmus and maneuvering with shock force on the eastern and northern borders.”

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From Ilyin's articles. From open sources

By the way, praising Mannerheim, under whose leadership Finland lost two wars (More details about the paradoxes of perception of the results of the Finnish war can be read here), did the “Russian patriot” Ivan Ilyin know about the “Vyborg massacre” https://dzen.ru/a /ZEuBXSg_tHJZVNkQ , during which many Russian people died? As a resident of Petrograd in 1918, he could not help but know this. Nevertheless...

And vice versa, here is what Ivan Ilyin writes about our army:

“So, in the Russian army, the “free soldier’s initiative”, once demanded by the old man Suvorov, is deprived of all spiritual consciousness, then instilled with fear, forcibly introduced to the dominant ideology and drowned in uncomplaining, slavish drill. Conscience and honor - the concepts of the old school - are abolished, they are replaced by hypocritical “revolutionary pathos”.

“As a result, the soldier lost the feeling of being a defender of his homeland. For neither the expropriated slave of the state, nor the internationally trained Marxist has a homeland.”

“A person who is not free and collectivized is not a warrior. Taken individually, he is a slave. In a collective, he is a horde. No machine can save where the spirit and heart fail.”


This is from the issue of “Neue Zércher Nachrichten” dated January 27, 1940.

If anyone doesn’t understand, the “great Russian philosopher” calls our ancestors slaves, a horde, people with abolished conscience and honor.
If this is not Russophobia, then what is it???

Moreover, Ilyin does not have a single drop of sympathy for our soldiers, only anger! And our deep “thinker,” when describing the course of the military conflict, trustingly repeats the myths of enemy propaganda:

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From Ilyin’s articles. From open sources

Do we need to prove to anyone that in this passage our “deep thinker” is retelling complete nonsense. Despite the fact that the battle of Suomussalmi became a tragedy for the Red Army, out of 14 thousand soldiers and commanders of the 44th division, according to various estimates, 1-1.5 thousand died, 2.2 thousand were missing, 1.5 thousand were wounded. According to their data, about one and a half thousand people were captured by the Finns.

That is, the majority of the soldiers of the 44th division fought even in the most difficult conditions. Here Ilyin is simply slandering! And on top of that, he gloats over the failure of his country!

Well, he couldn't know all the details of those events. But our thinker also demonstrates a complete lack of critical thinking!

What happens - the Finns sent the captured prisoners back to Russia... The Finnish command are complete idiots who do not understand that these soldiers will quickly be brought to their senses and sent back into battle? Does military analyst Ilyin, sitting in a warm office, even understand what he is writing about? After all, such nonsense puts him on a par with such a famous thinker of our time as Yulia Latynina!

As you know, in March 1940, the Finnish leadership still had to admit defeat and peace was concluded. But Ilyin got away with it too! Like, this is still a victory, because otherwise the Finns would all be sent to Siberia. Apparently to remove snow:

“If he had won, the fate of the brave people would have been sealed. There were rumors about plans to resettle Finns to Siberia, and they could not be considered “incredible”... But you can be sure that the heroic Finns would have suffered a cruel fate if they were defeated. And now these plans have been thwarted.”

Again, the most ridiculous lie, based at least on the fact of the creation of the Finnish government of Kuusinen, the Finnish People's Army, and then the Karelo-Finnish SSR. However, Ivan Ilyin hates our country so much that he is ready to repeat any absurdities.

Let's summarize. Citizens admirers of Ivan Ilyin, using real facts I tried to show that your idol in 1939-40:

- He put forward some fantastic forecasts, which, naturally, did not come true;

- He did not understand at all both the objective reasons for the Soviet-Finnish conflict and the national interests of our country;

- He called our country an aggressor and wished it defeat;

- He sympathized with Finnish nationalists and Russophobes, who then dreamed of seizing part of Russian territory;

- He called our soldiers slaves, without conscience and honor, without a sense of defender of the Motherland;

- He repeated all the tales of enemy propaganda, approaching it completely uncritically.

And the reason for everything was the anger and hatred inherent in Ilyin. In general, reading his works, one immediately notices that this man had absolutely no sense of humor, irony, not to mention the ability for self-irony. Just an angry, sad graphomaniac.

By the way, Ilyin’s articles often resemble modern Russophobic journalism of current relocants. Yes Yes exactly! And do you really think that this person can be called a “deep thinker” and a “Russian patriot”???

(c) A. Stepanov

https://dzen.ru/a/ZlXpeKUM9QEPpiuu - zinc

Having failed to praise the fascist Mannerheim in Russia, they took up advertising for the fascist henchman Ilyin, who praised Mannerheim. The result will be the same.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9177648.html

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 06, 2024 2:43 pm

The D-Day of the Eastern Front
June 6, 2024

While Western Allies invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, John Wight recalls the coordinated operation by the Red Army to break German resistance in Europe.

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Soviet soldiers in Polozk, Belarus, July 4, 1944; propaganda poster on right celebrates the reconquest of the city and urges the liberation of the Baltic from Nazi German occupation. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

By John Wight

Operation Bagration, unleashed by the Red Army on 22 June 1944, was the D-Day of the Eastern Front. In scope, size, scale and impact, it was a feat of arms unmatched in World War II.

Crucially, Overlord (D-Day) — which the Western Allies mounted on 6 June 1944 — and Bagration were planned and undertaken as part of a coordinated effort on the part of the Grand Alliance to break the back of German resistance in Europe. This with a determination that was equally held by the Soviets, British and Americans to force the unconditional surrender of Hitler’s Germany.

In his magisterial book Stalin’s Wars Geoffrey Roberts reveals that

“Soviet plans for Operation Bagration were closely co-ordinated with Anglo-American preparations for the launch of the long-awaited Second Front in France. The Soviets were informed of the approximate date of D-Day in early April and, on 18 April, Stalin cabled Roosevelt and Churchill to inform them that ‘as agreed in Tehran, the Red Army will launch a new offensive at the same time so as to give maximum support to the Anglo-American operation.’”

Though both operations were of immense military and strategic importance, Bagration dwarfed Overlord in scale and impact. Launched three weeks after D-Day on the third anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, it began with air attacks on enemy artillery positions and concentrations, guided by partisan units operating behind German lines. The main offensive began on 23 June along a 500-mile front, involving close to 2 million troops.

Operation Bagration was designed to effect the complete liberation of the Soviet territory from the Nazis and destroy the Wehrmacht as a serious fighting force in the East. It achieved all three of those objectives and more.

As British historian and author David Reynolds points out:

“In five weeks the Red Army advanced 450 miles, driving through Minsk to the outskirts of Warsaw and tearing the guts out of Hitler’s Army Group Centre. Nearly 20 German divisions were totally destroyed and another 50 severely mauled — an even worse disaster than Stalingrad.”

He goes on:

“This stunning Soviet success occurred while Overlord was still stuck in the hedges and lanes of Normandy.”

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Photo of Vasily Grossman published in the journal Ogonyok in 1941. (Wikipedia Commons, Public domain)

Famed Soviet journalist and author, Vasily Grossman, described with customary force and power the human toll of the Soviet offensive:

“Corpses, hundreds and thousands of them, pave the road, lie in ditches, under the pines, in the green barley. In some places, vehicles have to drive over the corpses, so densely they lie upon the ground.”

Despite the coordination of Operation Bagration with D-Day, and despite the former’s ineffable military and strategic importance, not one mention was made of it during the 75th D-Day anniversary commemorations in Northern France in 2019. Such a glaring and unconscionable omission stands as just one of many shameful examples of historical amnesia on the part of Western governments and ideologues in recent years — people more concerned with politicising history than they are with respecting it.

The valour and courage of the 156,000 troops who landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944 is not in question, nor is that of the thousands of sailors, airmen, and airborne troops who also took part in the landings. Indeed, Operation Overlord was and will likely remain the largest amphibious military assault ever mounted, and also the most successful.

In terms of its ambition, planning and the coordination of the combined military forces of the multiple nations involved, it truly deserves the place in military history that it commands. None other than Soviet leader Joseph Stalin understood the importance and achievement of Overlord, which he set out in a congratulatory telegram to Roosevelt and Churchill at the time:

“As is evident, the landing, conceived on a grandiose scale, has succeeded completely. My colleagues and I cannot but admit that the history of warfare knows no other like undertaking from the point of view of its scale, its vast conception, and its masterly execution.”

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From left: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill on the portico of the Soviet embassy during the Tehran Conference in November 1943. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Wind things forward and over seven decades on the parlous quality of statesmanship in the West, with the open violation of the spirit of the Grand Alliance between East and West enshrined in Stalin’s telegram, has never been more lamentable.

The notion that the men who gave their lives on D-Day, and thereafter across Europe on the way to war’s end in 1945, did so in order to give birth to a continent dependent on Washington and in fear of Moscow, is preposterous. The devastation that Russia suffered in the war, the magnitude of the losses the country incurred, demands the respect and reverence of everyone interested in drawing the right lessons from this epic struggle of world-historical importance.

A Europe liberated from fascism but divided by a Cold War afterwards reminds us that, although so much was sacrificed and won by so many during the war, so much was thrown away and lost by so few after it.

Operation Bagration and Operation Overlord should never be spoken of separately. Both were mounted at the same stage in the war by a Grand Alliance that contained within it the seeds of a future that, if had come to pass, would have justified the scale of the sacrifice needed to emerge victorious.

The last word goes to Vasily Grossman:

“Nearly everyone believed that good would triumph, that honest men, who hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice their lives, would be able to build a good and just life.”

Amen to that.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/06/t ... ern-front/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:11 pm

Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet film actress: two women of Admiral Kolchak
June 6, 21:05

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Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet film actress: two women of Admiral Kolchak

Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of Russia, is certainly the most prominent figure of the white movement. For a long time they tried to make him a hero, a knight of the “white idea” (which, it should be noted, he, a pragmatist and careerist, turned to quite late). The film “Admiral,” which was sensational in its time and contained many factual errors, tried to present Alexander Vasilyevich not only as a military and statesman, but also as a very loving person. A significant part of the film is occupied by Kolchak’s relationship with his legal wife, Sofia, and the legal wife of his comrade, Anna Timireva. However, the most interesting, as often happens, remained behind the scenes.

Alexander Kolchak married Sofya Fedorovna Omirova in 1904. She was a native of Kamenets-Podolsk, a noblewoman and a “Smolyanka” (a student of the noble “bride factory”, the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg). In 1916, Kolchak was transferred from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, where he took command of the Black Sea Fleet. Contrary to various myths, Kolchak perceived the February Revolution in a restrained and positive manner, and for a long time observed the required revolutionary ritual. Sometimes he was “ahead of the locomotive” or, if you like, “ahead of the destroyer” and tried to be “redder” than the soldiers’ and sailors’ committees. For example, the ceremonial reburial of the participants in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin took place thanks to the personal initiative of Alexander Vasilyevich. In general, Kolchak, on the one hand, showing “loyal feelings” both to the Provisional Government and to the committees, carefully watched who he would approach. While his future rival and heir, General Denikin, uses artillery to shoot recalcitrant regiments at the front, Alexander Vasilyevich maintains a wait-and-see attitude.

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And his wife, Sofya Fedorovna, becomes, as they would say now, an “activist” in the movement for the “Ukrainization” of the Black Sea Fleet. Let me remind readers that the “Ukrainization” movement, which peaked in the spring-summer of 1917, essentially consisted of the creation of purely Ukrainian units in the army and navy. Everything was sewn with white thread: Ukrainian nationalists of different colors created “military organizations” to create an army to seize power. Let me emphasize: at that time, almost all parties and movements acted in the same way: there were “military troops” of Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Muslims. By the fall of 1917, the most famous and most powerful “military unit” was, of course, the Bolsheviks.

So, Sofya Feodorovna is actively involved in propaganda work on the “Ukrainization” of the fleet. Some researchers believe that this revealed a certain rebellious, rebellious spirit of Kolchak’s wife. I tend to think differently. The correspondence between Sophia and Alexandra (both in 1917 and later) shows that Kolchak always tried to guide his wife, tell her what to do in a given situation. Most likely, Kolchak, through his wife, sought to strengthen his authority among Ukrainian nationalists (in the spring of 1917, they still modestly called themselves “autonomists”). On the basis of the Ukrainian cultural circle “Kobzar”, a whole school of propagandists was launched, in which Sofya Fedorovna took an active part.

For example, she, dressed in Ukrainian folk costume, took part in a theatrical demonstration for the Ukrainization of the Black Sea Fleet, as Yakim Khristich testifies. The supporters of Ukrainization had a reliable ally, the “supreme-persuader” Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, who, by supporting the creation of “Ukrainian regiments,” essentially began the collapse of the country. Thus, Sophia Kolchak at that time was a Ukrainian “autonomist,” that is, a nationalist. Later, in connection with her husband’s “white” career, Sofya Fedorovna will try to forget this stage of her biography. She would live a long life and die in 1956 in France.

Kolchak’s mistress Anna Timireva, as you know, began an affair with a brilliant naval officer even before the February Revolution. In 1918, when Kolchak’s wife carried out representative assignments of the Supreme Ruler of Russia in the Entente countries, Anna Timireva worked as a translator and secretary of Kolchak in Omsk. Kolchak, who became the sole dictator, launched an attack on European Russia without solving the problem of the rear. His economic and military policies led to the appearance of an entire army of partisans in Siberia. Their activities, as well as the counter-offensive of the Red Army, led to the defeat of Kolchak’s army. In the end, he was betrayed by his own benefactors and sponsors from the Entente, essentially handing him over to the Bolsheviks. We must pay tribute to Anna Timireva: she did not run away and accompanied Kolchak until his arrest. From this moment her life begins in Soviet Russia. This is not to say that she was calm. She was arrested five times (1920, 1921, 1935, 1938, 1949) and sent into exile. True, everywhere she, as an educated and well-read person, gets a job in clubs, libraries, and theaters.

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And then a very interesting story happens. Anna Timireva, who had no special merits to Soviet culture or art, suddenly in 1960 received an apartment in the center of Moscow on Plyushchikha, in the same place where her son was once registered. Further more: a collective letter was drawn up with a petition to allocate her a personal pension of 500 rubles. They say the old lady was in poverty. Just a second: the old lady then received a pension of 50 rubles. For comparison: the minimum pension for workers and employees then was 30 rubles, the maximum pension for collective farmers according to the law of 1956 was 120 rubles. Who asked for Kolchak’s secretary and mistress? According to unverified data, Andropov began the aid campaign. And the letter itself was signed, without any irony, by such great people as Sveshnikov, Gnesina, Shostakovich, Oistrakh, Khachaturian and Shostakovich. Not only that: the old lady was provided with a part-time job by being hired as a consultant at Mosfilm. So what? - you say. After all, she, being a noblewoman and an expert in pre-revolutionary etiquette, could greatly help directors. But this argument is rather weak, since many other consultants still lived in Moscow and the USSR. For example, my great-great-great-aunt, who then worked in Minsk, could have advised the same Bondarchuk no worse, because at one time she shone at balls in Kiev and Yekaterinoslav no worse than Timireva. I believe that someone needed a pretty old woman to tell the leaders of the “Thaw” that not everything is so simple in the history of Kolchak and the White movement. In general, it has been since the 1960s. in Soviet cinema, the process of ennobling the White Guards begins and what role a modest old woman with an immodest pension played in this is a topic for additional research.

Yes, it should also be said that Anna Timireva is actively acting in films, albeit in supporting roles. But where! We see her in the role of a lady who returned with Semyon Semenovich Gorbunkov from the famous cruise from the film “The Diamond Arm”, in the role of an elderly lady at Natasha Rostova’s first ball in the film “War and Peace” by Sergei Bondarchuk. She received a more serious role in the now little-known film “Can You Live” by Alexander Muratov.

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Anna Timireva died in early 1975 and was buried at the “elite” Vagankovskoye cemetery. These are the fates of the two beloved women of the failed Supreme Ruler of Russia, dictator Alexander Kolchak.

Gleb Targonsky

In the illustrations:

1. Sofia Kolchak
2. Anna Timireva (photography of the 1920s)
3. Anna Timireva (lady in black glasses) in “The Diamond Arm”
4. Anna Timireva (center) in the film “War and Peace” »

(c) Gleb Targonskiy

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 23, 2024 5:10 pm

80 years of Operation Bagration
June 21, 19:39

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Article by military history of Alexey Isaev on the 80th anniversary of Operation Bagration

80 years ago, on June 23, 1944, Operation Bagration began. Many superlative epithets can be applied to it: the largest defeat of the German army in its entire history, one of the biggest intelligence errors in the entire history of wars, the most successful actions of the Soviet Air Force against the enemy in the entire war.

However, there are two more things that make Operation Bagration unique in its kind. Firstly, it is a transition from a series of failures to brilliant success in the same strategic direction. Throughout the winter of 1943–1944, the front in Belarus practically did not move. There was a series of positional battles that did not bring success. The headquarters of the Supreme High Command demanded to reach Minsk, but it was not possible to move even to Orsha and Bobruisk. Secondly, "Bagration" had a huge influence on the movement of the entire front from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. Pulling reserves from other army groups, bypassing powerful defensive lines - all this predetermined the entire summer-autumn campaign of 1944 and the movement of the entire front. German defenses crumbled from the Baltic states to Romania.

The readiness of the Germans and the plans of the USSR

By the summer of 1944, Army Group Center numbered about 861 thousand people and occupied a front of 970 km (34% of the entire length of the Soviet-German front). At the same time, firstly, the Civil Aviation Center "Center" had only one tank division and there was not a single new Panther tank. Secondly, the 6th Air Fleet in Belarus had only 66 single-engine fighters (or 6% of the 1,051 combat-ready vehicles of this type that the Luftwaffe had). In total, the 6th Air Fleet at that time had about 700 combat-ready aircraft, including 300 bombers.

The neighboring Army Group Northern Ukraine was much stronger. There were tank divisions, Tigers, Panthers, and a more complete aviation group. The reason for this imbalance was an incorrect assessment of Soviet plans for the summer of 1944. Not only Adolf Hitler personally, but also many of his generals believed that the main blow of the Red Army would follow in Western Ukraine and Moldova.

In the winter, Soviet troops achieved success in the southern sector of the Soviet-German front; it was logical to assume that this success would be developed further.

Paradoxical as it may sound, the original plan for the Soviet offensive envisaged just such a move: a strike in Western Ukraine. This solution was proposed by Joseph Stalin with reference to the winter successes. It took a lot of effort for Alexei Antonov (then head of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Spacecraft) and Georgy Zhukov (representative of the Supreme Command Headquarters) to convince the Supreme Commander-in-Chief that the summer operations of 1944 should begin on the “Belarusian balcony.”

To carry out the operation, troops from four fronts were assembled: the 1st Baltic Front, the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts and the right wing of the 1st Belorussian Front. In total, 1 million 211 thousand people, 24 thousand guns with a caliber of 76 mm and higher, 4,070 tanks and self-propelled guns were involved in the offensive. The most powerful strike groups were assembled in the 3rd Belorussian Front (372 thousand people, 7 thousand guns and 1,810 tanks and self-propelled guns) and on the right flank of the 1st Belorussian Front (419 thousand people, 8.3 thousand guns and 1,297 tanks and self-propelled guns).

The fronts opposing Army Group Center, on the one hand, were strengthened - armies and tank corps were transferred to Belarus from other directions. On the other hand, the German command, withdrawing regiments and divisions from the Civil Aviation Center "Center" to patch up defenses in other sectors, crossed the line of reason and quantity turned into quality. The latter was expressed, for example, in the appointments of commanders. The GA "Center" was headed by Field Marshal Ernst Busch, who had experience of predominantly positional battles, the so-called infantry military commander.

There was a numerical superiority of the Soviet troops, but it was not so significant. The secret of success was meticulous preparation, and the most important component of success was long-range aviation. Soviet heavy bombers were given the task of hitting an atypical target for them - enemy artillery positions. Artillery was the mainstay of the defense of the GA "Center" in winter battles, and it was precisely this artillery that prevented success during the first months of 1944.

The idea of ​​such a massive use of the Air Force was proposed by Zhukov, who was sent as a representative of the Supreme Command Headquarters to coordinate the actions of the 1st and 2nd Belarusian Fronts (previously it was he who was the creator of successes in Right-Bank Ukraine). The plan was supported by Alexander Vasilevsky, who was responsible for the offensive of the 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic fronts.

The second factor in the success of the USSR forces was the training of soldiers and junior commanders of the Red Army formations, their training on exact copies of German defensive lines built in the rear. This made it possible to hone the attack of the enemy defense down to the smallest detail. Reconnaissance was also carried out carefully, including enemy artillery positions.

However, at the last moment, it seemed that everything might fall through. Bad weather was not conducive to aviation operations. However, well-trained pilots managed to cope and, on the night before the start of the operation, carried out precise strikes on enemy artillery positions.

Particularly noteworthy was the use of superior air forces, which operated on a previously unknown scale and suppressed our artillery for hours, which was practically defenseless against non-stop bombing and assault attacks. Thus, the main weapon of defense at the decisive moment was put out of action.
From the report on the actions of the German 9th Army,

the Wehrmacht never recovered

Having knocked his main argument out of the hands of the enemy, Soviet troops successfully broke through the defenses, which had held out for many months. Tank corps rushed into the breaches (there were more of them than the Germans). The only German 20th Panzer Division then rushed about Bobruisk between two strike groups and was expectedly defeated. As a result, the cities of Vitebsk and Bobruisk were surrounded, and two gaps gaped in the formation of the Wehrmacht in Belarus.

The main forces of the Civil Aviation Center "Center" were forced to retreat to Minsk. The retreating columns were destroyed from the air in bottlenecks and at crossings. In summer and good weather, air raids became most effective. The breakthrough of two Soviet tank corps to Minsk completed the matter. On July 3, 1944, Minsk was liberated, and an encirclement ring was formed east of the capital of Belarus. The "boilers" collapse quickly.

The German command was forced to withdraw reserves from other directions. The new commander of Army Group Center, Walter Model, tried to build a new front by blocking a kind of “corridors” in the Belarusian forests, Nalibokskaya Pushcha and the Pripyat region. However, his plan failed. In mid-July, the armies of the left wing of the 1st Belorussian Front near Kovel went on the offensive. The result was a breakthrough to Warsaw and another “cauldron”, the encirclement of German troops near Brest.

At the cost of colossal efforts and losses, the Wehrmacht managed to contain the Soviet offensives along the borders of East Prussia, on the Narew and Vistula. But bridgeheads had already been captured on the Vistula, which in the winter of 1944–1945 became a springboard for the attack on Berlin.

During Operation Bagration, 17 German divisions were completely destroyed, 50 lost more than half of their strength. The human losses of the German army in Belarus are estimated at 350 thousand people, of which about 150 thousand were captured. The restoration of the front after the disaster in Belarus required the German command to transfer 46 divisions from other directions with their weakening. This led to the fact that soon the entire German group from Narva to Chisinau collapsed under the blows of other fronts.

The Wehrmacht never recovered from the crushing blow of Bagration. There was less than a year left before the end of the war

(c) Alexey Isaev

https://tass.ru/opinions/21153101 - zinc

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Residents of Dagestan collected 25.7 million rubles for the front
June 23, 12:57

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Residents of Dagestan are actively donating to help the front. 1944.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9223277.html

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******

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY NOBODY REMEMBERS
ON JUNE 18, 2024 BY PATRICK ARMSTRONGIN HISTORY, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE

On this day, 18 June, in 1935, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed. The two sides agreed that the German Navy’s total tonnage would be fixed at 35% of the Royal Navy’s tonnage. Not, when you think about it, a very intelligent agreement from London’s perspective. One of the causes of the First World War had been British concerns about the size of the German Navy and yet where did they think this one-third-as-big navy would be based? Obviously in the North Sea; the British, with their world-wide empire, would have most of their ships elsewhere, In short, London was agreeing that the Germans could have near-parity in the waters closest to it.

But worse. The agreement was the first violation by a great power of the Versailles conditions and had been done without consultation with any of Britain’s allies. It was the first, and therefore legitimating, agreement made by a great power with Hitler’s Germany.

(Unless you count Poland as a “great power” as the Polish government certainly did. It had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany eighteen months before. A French diplomat remarked that he saw a repetition of a pattern of Polish history: overestimate your power, step too far, be divided up by your neighbours.)

Soon after Hitler’s takeover in Germany, Moscow (which is to say Stalin) understood four things: 1) there was no possibility of returning to the previous good relations (Rapallo) 2) Hitler was a threat to all around him 3) Hitler would break any agreement as soon as he felt strong enough to 4) the only possible response was an alliance/coalition/agreement of Germany’s neighbours to block him. This became the Soviet Union’s principal foreign policy; as a Soviet diplomat put it to a French colleague, Soviet policy was very simple: “It is dictated by the fact that all that reinforces Germany we are against, and all that reinforces France, we are for”. Soviet diplomats were dismayed when they told their interlocutors that Hitler had plainly stated his intentions in Mein Kampf and received flippant answers like that’s just a ten-year old book and nobody ever does what he said he would when he gets in power. A ten-year old book given to every newlywed couple and soldier; definitely not something to ignore.

Many agreed with Stalin – President Roosevelt for example, in conversations with Litvinov, even proposed a US-Soviet non-aggression pact. In the UK in particular, the affable Soviet Ambassador, Ivan Mayskiy had found agreement on these four points with Robert Vansittart, the senior civil servant in the Foreign office, with Lord Beaverbrook, the powerful press baron, and even with the arch anti-Bolshevik Winston Churchill. Mayskiy discussed the world situation with the three many times, agreeing that the biggest threats to peace were Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia and that the coalition proposed by Moscow was the only hope of avoiding another great war. But Vansittart did not make policy, Beaverbrook could only push the line in his newspapers and Churchill was very far from power. Similar attempts in France failed, despite the support of General Weygand and other important officials, because of the instability of French politics and the effective opposition of Pierre Laval. And Poland was a constant worry: how close to Hitler was it getting? The smaller countries weren’t going to move without France or Britain. But many people in many countries agreed with Stalin and were working towards an anti-Hitler coalition.

The Anglo-German agreement was a shock to these hopes. London had given recognition to Hitler’s coup d’etat, made a bad agreement with him, ignored its allies and tossed Versailles overboard. Encouraging to Hitler and dismaying to his opponents.

Following his policy of pushing another step while professing eternal peace, Hitler re-occupied the Rhineland, demilitarised by Versailles, in March 1936. London and Paris did nothing and, once again, Hitler’s assessment proved out. How much did the naval agreement make him think he had the measure of London’s firmness of purpose? Do you think he would have done it had there been a USSR-France-UK plus Romania and Czechoslovakia alliance?

And, just as Stalin predicted, Hitler repudiated the naval agreement in spring 1939 along with the 1938 Munich agreement on Czechoslovakia and the 1934 pact with Poland. Moscow continued with its efforts to create an anti-Hitler force but with less and less hope. The final flicker was the abortive Anglo-French-Soviet military talks in late 1939. Giving up, Stalin accepted Hitler’s offer, signed a pact with him and the overconfident Poland was again eaten by its neighbours. (“‘We do not fear, [Józef Beck, Polish Foreign Minister] was reported to have said, [in 1934] ‘attacks on the part of Germany’.”)

The stock Western story remembers to forget this. Instead the story is 1) Munich (and for the neocons the time is always September 1938 and the place is always Munich) and 2) Hitler and his soulmate Stalin allying. Even so, every now and again the corporate media forgets to forget it: “Stalin ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact'”. And here we have a perfect example of the customary “forgetfulness”: for this historian the Soviet-German clock stopped in early 1933 and started up again in late 1939 :
The Rapallo Era ended nine months after Hitler assumed power in 1933 and, at his orders, the secret facilities closed one by one. While mistrust pervaded Soviet-German relations over the next six years, ties were never completely severed, Johnson writes. In spring 1939, both Stalin and Hitler proved open to renewing cooperation and in August, the country’s two foreign ministers signed a treaty of nonaggression, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Evidently we’re supposed to believe that absolutely nothing (well, a teensy-tiny bit of “mistrust” if you insist) happened in Soviet-German relations over nearly seven years. (But to fill in the gap would spoil the simple story of Hitler, Munich, Stalin-Hitler wouldn’t it?)

“History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” Hitler could have been stopped.

Once again I am indebted to Michael Jabara Carley’s work. I have just read his Stalin’s Gamble. This, the first in a trilogy, details the dismal story from Hitler’s coup until early 1936. Because of his three decades of labours in the archives of the principal countries, he has seen the notes taken by everyone of every meeting and diplomatic event; he can therefore tell us all sides of the issue It’s a dismal story because, hard as it may be for many in the West to accept, Stalin’s take was completely accurate. All his four points, which he had formulated by the end of 1933, came true. And the tragedy is that the foreign officials who agreed with him could never quite push their countries over the finish line. And so the alliance that could have deterred him never happened and only in the disaster of a great war did it eventually fo

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 25, 2024 2:30 pm

About the non-round date June 22
June 24, 21:12

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To the non-round date June 22

This is still “the day of mobilization ( https://chadayev.ru/blog/socialnoe/2009 ... -na-front/ )”, more than anything else. Mobilization then saved, in a broad sense, both people under arms and enterprises to produce what the front needed.

June 22, 1941 teaches that not everything that was hoped for “works” or works as expected. Here are 45 mm guns, enough for a mobplane, there are a lot of them, it doesn’t seem to be a problem area at all. But the losses of the guns themselves and the factories that produce them, and alas, by the winter of 1941-1942. they are becoming a terrible shortage. At the same time, German tanks of the latest production series with a 50-mm forehead do not attack.

Or the launch of raw T-34s and KVs. Objectively damp, but only in the summer of 1941 they did not break against the enemy anti-tank guns like glass glasses thrown against a wall. They become the backbone of the armed forces.

The expensive-bakhato solution with Tokarev self-loading, objectively advanced and ahead of the rest, turns out to be inapplicable for a mass army with the most reduced training. The mass of personnel simply cannot operate such rifles.

Failed naval programs and concepts of use. It would be better to convert the Krasnoye Sormovo plant into tanks in 1940.

But the main question is “Were you ready for war?” in the annex to June 22, 1941, it still has a positive answer. The USSR was strategically ready for war. Strange as it may sound. A sufficient number of industrial enterprises, including beyond the Moscow meridian, that could be mobilized. Internal stability of the state. Hundreds of thousands of cars and tens of thousands of tractors that can be mobilized. Availability of capable candidates in the armed forces.

Could you have prepared better? They could. For the same gunpowder and explosives. But real life is like this.

No one is actually safe from a sudden attack. You need to be prepared strategically and have something to mobilize. In all aspects. This is the main lesson.

(c) Alexey Isaev

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 27, 2024 4:14 pm

"Commander"
June 25, 21:53

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I watched a good biographical film “Commander” dedicated to the founder of the Alpha special forces of the KGB of the USSR.
The film reflects some milestones in the biography of Gennady Zaitsev, starting from childhood and ending with the famous operation to free the hostages in Mineralnye Vody.
The path from working at a factory after seven years of school to the rank of major general in the special services is shown.



The film is quite complimentary to the USSR - no stink about the “Bloody Gabnya”, membership in the party is shown as an honor, questions of the Stalinist period are presented through the thesis “It was necessary”, work at the factory is shown as worthy of real people, the role of the USSR in the creation of Israel was mentioned, the accent on the portrait of Felix Edmundovich in the office, etc. A couple of times the authors almost reached the level of production dramas of the Brezhnev period.
Well, perhaps in a couple there are careerists-partocrats, but such people were castigated even in Soviet times. Otherwise, the authors were able to refrain from attacking the USSR, to which Gennady Zaitsev gave most of his life. It is also worth remembering that in 1993, Alpha, commanded by Zaitsev, refused to carry out the order to storm the White House. Which also says a lot about Zaitsev.


Documentary about Gennady Zaitsev.

It’s a pity that they didn’t spend so much time on the history of the creation of “Alpha”, getting away with only small episodes, although this would certainly have added completeness to the film.
The editing also seemed controversial, where the 80s alternated with Zaitsev’s flashbacks, as a result of which the film sags a little in the middle.
But in general, the operation to free the hostages itself is shown in an interesting and tense manner, even taking into account the fact that we know how it all ended.
As a result, it’s quite a good domestic film, after watching which there are no negative emotions. There is only a slight feeling that it could have been done even better using such historical material.

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Well, these are the figures that should be popularized in the country. Including in the movies.

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 28, 2024 2:31 pm

JV Stalin: Trotskyism or Leninism?

Josef Stalin’s decisive answer to the lies about October 1917 that Trotsky began to peddle straight after Lenin’s death in 1924.

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All the myths about Trotsky’s leading role in the October Revolution, his closeness to Lenin and Leninism, and his military genius originated not from general acclaim but from Trotsky himself. Meanwhile, his ‘ideas’, such as they are, have long ago been shown to be anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary in the extreme, albeit dressed up in the language of the ‘ultra-left’ and ‘ultra-revolutionary’. Today, Trotskyism is entirely an instrument of the bourgeoisie in our movement, its organisations backed directly and indirectly in myriad ways by the imperialist state machineries.
Josef Stalin

Friday 28 June 2024

The following important speech was made by Comrade Josef Stalin to a meeting of communist trade unionists in November 1924 and published in the Soviet daily Pravda later the same month.

*****

Comrades, after [then head of state Lev] Kamenev’s comprehensive report there is little left for me to say. I shall therefore confine myself to exposing certain legends that are being spread by [Leon] Trotsky and his supporters about the October uprising, about Trotsky’s role in the uprising, about the party and the preparation for October, and so forth.

I shall also touch upon Trotskyism as a peculiar ideology that is incompatible with Leninism, and upon the party’s tasks in connection with Trotsky’s latest literary pronouncements.

The facts about the October uprising
First of all about the October uprising. Rumours are being vigorously spread among members of the party that the central committee as a whole was opposed to an uprising in October 1917. The usual story is that on 10 October, when the central committee adopted the decision to organise the uprising, the majority of the central committee at first spoke against an uprising, but, so the story runs, at that moment a worker burst in on the meeting of the central committee and said:

“You are deciding against an uprising, but I tell you that there will be an uprising all the same, in spite of everything.” And so, after that threat, the story runs, the central committee, which is alleged to have become frightened, raised the question of an uprising afresh and adopted a decision to organise it.

This is not merely a rumour, comrades. It is related by the well-known John Reed in his book Ten Days [That Shook the World]. Reed was remote from our party and, of course, could not know the history of our secret meeting on 10 October, and, consequently, he was taken in by the gossip spread by people like [the Menshevik Nikolai] Sukhanov.

This story was later passed round and repeated in a number of pamphlets written by Trotskyites, including one of the latest pamphlets on October written by [the zionist Nachman] Syrkin. These rumours have been strongly supported in Trotsky’s latest literary pronouncements.

It scarcely needs proof that all these and similar ‘Arabian Nights’ fairy tales are not in accordance with the truth, that in fact nothing of the kind happened, nor could have happened, at the meeting of the central committee. Consequently, we could ignore these absurd rumours; after all, lots of rumours are fabricated in the office rooms of the oppositionists or those who are remote from the party. Indeed, we have ignored them till now; for example, we paid no attention to John Reed’s mistakes and did not take the trouble to rectify them.

After Trotsky’s latest pronouncements, however, it is no longer possible to ignore such legends, for attempts are being made now to bring up our young people on them and, unfortunately, some results have already been achieved in this respect. In view of this, I must counter these absurd rumours with the actual facts.

I take the minutes of the meeting of the central committee of our party on 10 (23) October 1917. Present: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Uritsky, Dzerzhinsky, Kollontai, Bubnov, Sokolnikov, Lomov. The question of the current situation and the uprising was discussed. After the discussion, Comrade Lenin’s resolution on the uprising was put to the vote. The resolution was adopted by a majority of ten against two.

Clear, one would think: by a majority of ten against two, the central committee decided to proceed with the immediate, practical work of organising the uprising. At this very same meeting the central committee elected a political centre to direct the uprising; this centre, called the political bureau, consisted of Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov.

Such are the facts.

These minutes at one stroke destroy several legends. They destroy the legend that the majority on the central committee was opposed to an uprising. They also destroy the legend that on the question of the uprising the central committee was on the verge of a split.

It is clear from the minutes that the opponents of an immediate uprising – Kamenev and Zinoviev – were elected to the body that was to exercise political direction of the uprising on a par with those who were in favour of an uprising. There was no question of a split, nor could there be.

Trotsky asserts that in October our party had a right wing in the persons of Kamenev and Zinoviev, who, he says, were almost social democrats. What one cannot understand then is how, under those circumstances, it could happen that the party avoided a split; how it could happen that the disagreements with Kamenev and Zinoviev lasted only a few days; how it could happen that, in spite of those disagreements, the party appointed these comrades to highly important posts, elected them to the political centre of the uprising, and so forth.

Lenin’s implacable attitude towards social democrats is sufficiently well-known in the party; the party knows that Lenin would not for a single moment have agreed to have social-democratically-minded comrades in the party, let alone in highly important posts.

How, then, are we to explain the fact that the party avoided a split? The explanation is that in spite of the disagreements, these comrades were old Bolsheviks who stood on the common ground of Bolshevism. What was that common ground? Unity of views on the fundamental questions: the character of the Russian revolution, the driving forces of the revolution, the role of the peasantry, the principles of party leadership, and so forth.

Had there not been this common ground, a split would have been inevitable. There was no split, and the disagreements lasted only a few days, because, and only because, Kamenev and Zinoviev were Leninists, Bolsheviks.

Let us now pass to the legend about Trotsky’s special role in the October uprising. The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. These rumours are being spread with exceptional zeal by the so-called editor of Trotsky’s works, Lentsner.

Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the party, the central committee and the Petrograd committee of the party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisations in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising.

I am far from denying Trotsky’s undoubtedly important role in the uprising. I must say, however, that Trotsky did not play any special role in the October uprising, nor could he do so; being chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he merely carried out the will of the appropriate party bodies, which directed every step that Trotsky took. To philistines like Sukhanov, all this may seem strange, but the facts, the true facts, wholly and fully confirm what I say.

Let us take the minutes of the next meeting of the central committee, the one held on 16 (29) October 1917. Present: the members of the central committee, plus representatives of the Petrograd committee, plus representatives of the military organisation, factory committees, trade unions and the railwaymen. Among those present, besides the members of the central committee, were: Krylenko, Shotman, Kalinin, Volodarsky, Shlyapnikov, Lacis and others, 25 in all.

The question of the uprising was discussed from the purely practical-organisational aspect. Lenin’s resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 20 against two, three abstaining. A practical centre was elected for the organisational leadership of the uprising.

Who was elected to this centre? The following five: Sverdlov, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Bubnov, Uritsky. The functions of the practical centre: to direct all the practical organs of the uprising in conformity with the directives of the central committee. Thus, as you see, something ‘terrible’ happened at this meeting of the central committee, ie, ‘strange to relate’, the ‘inspirer’, the ‘chief figure’, the ‘sole leader’ of the uprising, Trotsky, was not elected to the practical centre, which was called upon to direct the uprising.

How is this to be reconciled with the current opinion about Trotsky’s special role? Is not all this somewhat ‘strange’, as Sukhanov, or the Trotskyites, would say?

And yet, strictly speaking, there is nothing strange about it, for neither in the party, nor in the October uprising, did Trotsky play any special role, nor could he do so, for he was a relatively new man in our party in the period of October. He, like all the responsible workers, merely carried out the will of the central committee and of its organs.

Whoever is familiar with the mechanics of Bolshevik party leadership will have no difficulty in understanding that it could not be otherwise: it would have been enough for Trotsky to have gone against the will of the central committee to have been deprived of influence on the course of events. This talk about Trotsky’s special role is a legend that is being spread by obliging ‘party’ gossips.

This, of course, does not mean that the October uprising did not have its inspirer. It did have its inspirer and leader, but this was Lenin, and none other than Lenin, that same Lenin whose resolutions the central committee adopted when deciding the question of the uprising, that same Lenin who, in spite of what Trotsky says, was not prevented by being in hiding from being the actual inspirer of the uprising.

It is foolish and ridiculous to attempt now, by gossip about Lenin having been in hiding, to obscure the indubitable fact that the inspirer of the uprising was the leader of the party, VI Lenin.

Such are the facts.

Granted, we are told, but it cannot be denied that Trotsky fought well in the period of October. Yes, that is true, Trotsky did, indeed, fight well in October; but Trotsky was not the only one who fought well in the period of October.

Even people like the left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who then stood side by side with the Bolsheviks, also fought well. In general, I must say that in the period of a victorious uprising, when the enemy is isolated and the uprising is growing, it is not difficult to fight well. At such moments even backward people become heroes.

The proletarian struggle is not, however, an uninterrupted advance, an unbroken chain of victories. The proletarian struggle also has its trials, its defeats. The genuine revolutionary is not one who displays courage in the period of a victorious uprising, but one who, while fighting well during the victorious advance of the revolution, also displays courage when the revolution is in retreat, when the proletariat suffers defeat; who does not lose his head and does not funk when the revolution suffers reverses, when the enemy achieves success; who does not become panic-stricken or give way to despair when the revolution is in a period of retreat.

The left Socialist-Revolutionaries did not fight badly in the period of October, and they supported the Bolsheviks.

But who does not know that those ‘brave’ fighters became panic-stricken in the period of Brest, when the advance of German imperialism drove them to despair and hysteria? It is a very sad but indubitable fact that Trotsky, who fought well in the period of October, did not, in the period of Brest, in the period when the revolution suffered temporary reverses, possess the courage to display sufficient staunchness at that difficult moment and to refrain from following in the footsteps of the left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Beyond question, that moment was a difficult one; one had to display exceptional courage and imperturbable coolness not to be dismayed, to retreat in good time, to accept peace in good time, to withdraw the proletarian army out of range of the blows of German imperialism, to preserve the peasant reserves and, after obtaining a respite in this way, to strike at the enemy with renewed force.

Unfortunately, Trotsky was found to lack this courage and revolutionary staunchness at that difficult moment.

In Trotsky’s opinion, the principal lesson of the proletarian revolution is ‘not to funk’ during October. That is wrong, for Trotsky’s assertion contains only a particle of the truth about the lessons of the revolution.

The whole truth about the lessons of the proletarian revolution is ‘not to funk’ not only when the revolution is advancing, but also when it is in retreat, when the enemy is gaining the upper hand and the revolution is suffering reverses.

The revolution did not end with October. October was only the beginning of the proletarian revolution. It is bad to funk when the tide of insurrection is rising; but it is worse to funk when the revolution is passing through severe trials after power has been captured.

To retain power on the morrow of the revolution is no less important than to capture power. If Trotsky funked during the period of Brest, when our revolution was passing through severe trials, when it was almost a matter of ‘surrendering’ power, he ought to know that the mistakes committed by Kamenev and Zinoviev in October are quite irrelevant here.

That is how matters stand with the legends about the October uprising.

The party and the preparation for October
Let us now pass to the question of the preparation for October.

Listening to Trotsky, one might think that during the whole of the period of preparation, from March to October, the Bolshevik party did nothing but mark time; that it was being corroded by internal contradictions and hindered Lenin in every way; that, had it not been for Trotsky, nobody knows how the October Revolution would have ended.

It is rather amusing to hear this strange talk about the party from Trotsky, who declares in this same preface to Volume III that “the chief instrument of the proletarian revolution is the party”, that “without the party, apart from the party, by-passing the party, with a substitute for the party, the proletarian revolution cannot be victorious”.

Allah himself would not understand how our revolution could have succeeded if ‘its chief instrument’ proved to be useless, while success was impossible, as it appears, ‘by-passing the party’.

But this is not the first time that Trotsky treats us to oddities. It must be supposed that this amusing talk about our party is one of Trotsky’s usual oddities.

Let us briefly review the history of the preparation for October according to periods.

1. The period of the party’s new orientation (March-April)

The major facts of this period:

1.the overthrow of tsarism;
2. formation of the provisional government (dictatorship of the bourgeoisie);
3.the appearance of soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies (dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry);
4.dual power;
5.the April demonstration;
6.the first crisis of power.

The characteristic feature of this period is the fact that there existed together, side by side and simultaneously, both the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry; the latter trusts the former, believes that it is striving for peace, voluntarily surrenders power to the bourgeoisie and thereby becomes an appendage of the bourgeoisie.

There are as yet no serious conflicts between the two dictatorships. On the other hand, there is the ‘contact committee’. [1]

This was the greatest turning point in the history of Russia and an unprecedented turning point in the history of our party. The old, pre-revolutionary platform of direct overthrow of the government was clear and definite, but it was no longer suitable for the new conditions of the struggle.

It was now no longer possible to go straight out for the overthrow of the government, for the latter was connected with the soviets, then under the influence of the defencists, and the party would have had to wage war against both the government and the soviets, a war that would have been beyond its strength. Nor was it possible to pursue a policy of supporting the provisional government, for it was the government of imperialism.

Under the new conditions of the struggle, the party had to adopt a new orientation. The party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation. It adopted the policy of pressure on the provisional government through the soviets on the question of peace and did not venture to step forward at once from the old slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the new slogan of power to the soviets.

The aim of this halfway policy was to enable the soviets to discern the actual imperialist nature of the provisional government on the basis of the concrete questions of peace, and in this way to wrest the soviets from the provisional government. But this was a profoundly mistaken position, for it gave rise to pacifist illusions, brought grist to the mill of defencism and hindered the revolutionary education of the masses.

At that time I shared this mistaken position with other party comrades and fully abandoned it only in the middle of April, when I associated myself with Lenin’s theses. A new orientation was needed.

This new orientation was given to the party by Lenin, in his celebrated April Theses.

I shall not deal with these theses, for they are known to everybody. Were there any disagreements between the party and Lenin at that time? Yes, there were. How long did these disagreements last? Not more than two weeks.

The city conference of the Petrograd organisation (in the latter half of April), which adopted Lenin’s theses, marked a turning point in our party’s development. [2]

The all-Russian April conference (at the end of April) merely completed on an all-Russian scale the work of the Petrograd conference, rallying nine-tenths of the party around this united party position. [3]

Now, seven years later, Trotsky gloats maliciously over the past disagreements among the Bolsheviks and depicts them as a struggle waged as if there were almost two parties within Bolshevism.

But, firstly, Trotsky disgracefully exaggerates and inflates the matter, for the Bolshevik party lived through these disagreements without the slightest shock.

Secondly, our party would be a caste and not a revolutionary party if it did not permit different shades of opinion in its ranks. Moreover, it is well known that there were disagreements among us even before that, for example, in the period of the third Duma, but they did not shake the unity of our party.

Thirdly, it will not be out of place to ask what was then the position of Trotsky himself, who is now gloating so eagerly over the past disagreements among the Bolsheviks.

Lentsner, the so-called editor of Trotsky’s works, assures us that Trotsky’s letters from America (March) “wholly anticipated” Lenin’s Letters From Afar (March), which served as the basis of Lenin’s April Theses.

That is what he says: ‘wholly anticipated’. Trotsky does not object to this analogy; apparently, he accepts it with thanks.

But, firstly, Trotsky’s letters “do not in the least resemble” Lenin’s letters either in spirit or in conclusions, for they wholly and entirely reflect Trotsky’s anti-Bolshevik slogan of “no tsar, but a workers’ government”, a slogan which implies a revolution without the peasantry. It is enough to glance through these two series of letters to be convinced of this.

Secondly, if what Lentsner says is true, how are we to explain the fact that Lenin on the very next day after his arrival from abroad considered it necessary to dissociate himself from Trotsky?

Who does not know of Lenin’s repeated statements that Trotsky’s slogan: “no tsar, but a workers’ government” was an attempt “to skip the still unexhausted peasant movement”, that this slogan meant “playing at the seizure of power by a workers’ government”? (VI Lenin, Letters on Tactics, April 1917)

What can there be in common between Lenin’s Bolshevik theses and Trotsky’s anti-Bolshevik scheme with its ‘playing at the seizure of power’? And what prompts this passion that some people display for comparing a wretched hovel with Mont Blanc? For what purpose did Lentsner find it necessary to make this risky addition to the heap of old legends about our revolution of still another legend, about Trotsky’s letters from America ‘anticipating’ Lenin’s well-known Letters From Afar? [4]

No wonder it is said that an obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy.

2. The period of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses (May-August)
The major facts of this period:

1.the April demonstration in Petrograd and the formation of the coalition government with the participation of ‘socialists’;
2.the May Day demonstrations in the principal centres of Russia with the slogan of ‘A democratic peace’;
3.the June demonstration in Petrograd with the principal slogan: ‘Down with the capitalist ministers!’;
4.the June offensive at the front and the reverses of the Russian army;
5.the July armed demonstration in Petrograd; the Cadet ministers resign from the government;
6.counter-revolutionary troops are called in from the front; the editorial offices of Pravda are wrecked; the counter-revolution launches a struggle against the soviets and a new coalition government is formed, headed by [Alexander] Kerensky;
7.the sixth congress of our party, which issues the slogan to prepare for an armed uprising;
8.the counter-revolutionary conference of state and the general strike in Moscow;
9.[General Lavr] Kornilov’s unsuccessful march on Petrograd, the revitalising of the soviets; the Cadets resign and a ‘directory’ is formed.

The characteristic feature of this period is the intensification of the crisis and the upsetting of the unstable equilibrium between the soviets and the provisional government which, for good or evil, had existed in the preceding period. Dual power has become intolerable for both sides. The fragile edifice of the ‘contact committee’ is tottering. “Crisis of power” and “ministerial re-shuffle” are the most fashionable catchwords of the day.

The crisis at the front and the disruption in the rear are doing their work, strengthening the extreme flanks and squeezing the defencist compromisers from both sides. The revolution is mobilising, causing the mobilisation of the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution, in its turn, is spurring on the revolution, stirring up new waves of the revolutionary tide.

The question of transferring power to the new class becomes the immediate question of the day.

Were there disagreements in our party then? Yes, there were. They were, however, of a purely practical character, despite the assertions of Trotsky, who is trying to discover a ‘right’ and a ‘left’ wing in the party. That is to say, they were such disagreements as are inevitable where there is vigorous party life and real party activity.

Trotsky is wrong in asserting that the April demonstration in Petrograd gave rise to disagreements in the central committee. The central committee was absolutely united on this question and condemned the attempt of a group of comrades to arrest the provisional government at a time when the Bolsheviks were in a minority both in the soviets and in the army. Had Trotsky written the ‘history’ of October not according to Sukhanov, but according to authentic documents, he would easily have convinced himself of the error of his assertion.

Trotsky is absolutely wrong in asserting that the attempt, “on Lenin’s initiative”, to arrange a demonstration on 10 June was described as “adventurism” by the ‘right-wing’ members of the central committee. Had Trotsky not written according to Sukhanov he would surely have known that the 10 June demonstration was postponed with the full agreement of Lenin, and that he urged the necessity of postponing it in a big speech he delivered at the well-known meeting of the Petrograd committee (see minutes of the Petrograd committee). (Speech on the cancellation of the demonstration, 11 (24) June 1917)

Trotsky is absolutely wrong in speaking about ‘tragic’ disagreements in the central committee in connection with the July armed demonstration. Trotsky is simply inventing in asserting that some members of the leading group in the central committee “could not but regard the July episode as a harmful adventure”.

Trotsky, who was then not yet a member of our central committee and was merely our soviet parliamentary, might, of course, not have known that the central committee regarded the July demonstration only as a means of sounding the enemy, that the central committee (and Lenin) did not want to convert, did not even think of converting, the demonstration into an uprising at a time when the soviets in the capitals still supported the defencists.

It is quite possible that some Bolsheviks did whimper over the July defeat. I know, for example, that some of the Bolsheviks who were arrested at the time were even prepared to desert our ranks. But to draw inferences from this against certain alleged ‘rights’, alleged to be members of the central committee, is a shameful distortion of history.

Trotsky is wrong in declaring that during the Kornilov days a section of the party leaders inclined towards the formation of a bloc with the defencists, towards supporting the provisional government. He, of course, is referring to those same alleged ‘rights’ who keep him awake at night.

Trotsky is wrong, for there exist documents, such as the central organ of the party of that time, which refute his statements. Trotsky refers to Lenin’s letter to the central committee warning against supporting Kerensky; but Trotsky fails to understand Lenin’s letters, their significance, their purpose.

In his letters, Lenin sometimes deliberately ran ahead, pushing into the forefront mistakes that might possibly be committed, and criticising them in advance with the object of warning the party and of safeguarding it against mistakes. Sometimes he would even magnify a ‘trifle’ and ‘make a mountain out of a molehill’ for the same pedagogical purpose.

The leader of the party, especially if he is in hiding, cannot act otherwise, for he must see further than his comrades-in-arms, he must sound the alarm over every possible mistake, even over ‘trifles’.

But to infer from such letters of Lenin’s (and he wrote quite a number of such letters) the existence of ‘tragic’ disagreements and to trumpet them forth means not to understand Lenin’s letters, means not to know Lenin. This, probably, explains why Trotsky sometimes is wide of the mark.

In short: there were no disagreements in the central committee during the Kornilov revolt, absolutely none.

After the July defeat, disagreement did indeed arise between the central committee and Lenin on the question of the future of the soviets. It is known that Lenin, wishing to concentrate the party’s attention on the task of preparing the uprising outside the soviets, warned against any infatuation with the latter, for he was of the opinion that, having been defiled by the defencists, they had become useless.

The central committee and the sixth party congress took a more cautious line and decided that there were no grounds for excluding the possibility that the soviets would revive. The Kornilov revolt showed that this decision was correct.

This disagreement, however, was of no great consequence for the party. Later, Lenin admitted that the line taken by the sixth congress had been correct. It is interesting that Trotsky has not clutched at this disagreement and has not magnified it to ‘monstrous’ proportions.

A united and solid party, the hub of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses – such was the picture presented by our party in that period.

3. The period of organisation of the assault (September-October)
The major facts of this period:

1.the convocation of the democratic conference and the collapse of the idea of a bloc with the Cadets;
2.the Moscow and Petrograd soviets go over to the side of the Bolsheviks;
3.the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region; the Petrograd Soviet decides against the withdrawal of the troops; [5]
4.the decision of the central committee on the uprising and the formation of the revolutionary military committee of the Petrograd Soviet;
5.the Petrograd garrison decides to render the Petrograd Soviet armed support; a network of commissars of the revolutionary military committee is organised;
6.the Bolshevik armed forces go into action; the members of the provisional government are arrested;
7.the revolutionary military committee of the Petrograd Soviet takes power; the Second Congress of Soviets sets up the Council of People’s Commissars.

The characteristic feature of this period is the rapid growth of the crisis, the utter consternation reigning among the ruling circles, the isolation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and the mass flight of the vacillating elements to the side of the Bolsheviks. A peculiar feature of the tactics of the revolution in this period must be noted, namely, that the revolution strove to take every, or nearly every, step in its attack in the guise of defence.

Undoubtedly, the refusal to allow the troops to be withdrawn from Petrograd was an important step in the revolution’s attack; nevertheless, this attack was carried out under the slogan of protecting Petrograd from possible attack by the external enemy. Undoubtedly, the formation of the revolutionary military committee was a still more important step in the attack upon the provisional government; nevertheless, it was carried out under the slogan of organising soviet control over the actions of the headquarters of the military area.

Undoubtedly, the open transition of the garrison to the side of the revolutionary military committee and the organisation of a network of soviet commissars marked the beginning of the uprising; nevertheless, the revolution took these steps under the slogan of protecting the Petrograd Soviet from possible action by the counterrevolution.

The revolution, as it were, masked its actions in attack under the cloak of defence in order the more easily to draw the irresolute, vacillating elements into its orbit. This, no doubt, explains the outwardly defensive character of the speeches, articles and slogans of that period, the inner content of which, none the less, was of a profoundly attacking nature.

Were there disagreements in the central committee in that period? Yes, there were, and fairly important ones at that. I have already spoken about the disagreements over the uprising. They are fully reflected in the minutes of the meetings of the central committee of 10 and 16 October. I shall, therefore, not repeat what I have already said.

Three questions must now be dealt with: participation in the pre-parliament, the role of the soviets in the uprising, and the date of the uprising. This is all the more necessary because Trotsky, in his zeal to push himself into a prominent place, has ‘inadvertently’ misrepresented the stand Lenin took on the last two questions.

Undoubtedly, the disagreements on the question of the pre-parliament were of a serious nature. What was, so to speak, the aim of the pre-parliament? It was: to help the bourgeoisie to push the soviets into the background and to lay the foundations of bourgeois parliamentarism.

Whether the pre-parliament could have accomplished this task in the revolutionary situation that had arisen is another matter. Events showed that this aim could not be realised, and the pre-parliament itself was a Kornilovite abortion.

There can be no doubt, however, that it was precisely this aim that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries pursued in setting up the pre-parliament. What could the Bolsheviks’ participation in the pre-parliament mean under those circumstances? Nothing but deceiving the proletarian masses about the true nature of the pre-parliament.

This is the chief explanation for the passion with which Lenin, in his letters, scourged those who were in favour of taking part in the pre-parliament. There can be no doubt that it was a grave mistake to have taken part in the pre-parliament.

It would be a mistake, however, to think, as Trotsky does, that those who were in favour of taking part in the pre-parliament went into it for the purpose of constructive work, for the purpose of “directing the working-class movement” “into the channel of social democracy”. That is not at all the case. It is not true.

Had that been the case, the party would not have been able to rectify this mistake “in two ticks” by demonstratively walking out of the pre-parliament. Incidentally, the swift rectification of this mistake was an expression of our party’s vitality and revolutionary might.

And now, permit me to correct a slight inaccuracy that has crept into the report of Lentsner, the ‘editor’ of Trotsky’s works, about the meeting of the Bolshevik group at which a decision on the question of the pre-parliament was taken. Lentsner says that there were two reporters at this meeting, Kamenev and Trotsky. That is not true. Actually, there were four reporters: two in favour of boycotting the pre-parliament (Trotsky and Stalin), and two in favour of participation (Kamenev and Nogin).

Trotsky is in a still worse position when dealing with the stand Lenin took on the question of the form of the uprising. According to Trotsky, it appears that Lenin’s view was that the party should take power in October “independently of and behind the back of the soviet”. Later on, criticising this nonsense, which he ascribes to Lenin, Trotsky “cuts capers” and finally delivers the following condescending utterance:

“That would have been a mistake.” Trotsky is here uttering a falsehood about Lenin, he is misrepresenting Lenin’s views on the role of the soviets in the uprising. A pile of documents can be cited, showing that Lenin proposed that power be taken through the soviets, either the Petrograd or the Moscow Soviet, and not behind the back of the soviets.

Why did Trotsky have to invent this more than strange legend about Lenin?

Nor is Trotsky in a better position when he ‘analyses’ the stand taken by the central committee and Lenin on the question of the date of the uprising. Reporting the famous meeting of the central committee of 10 October, Trotsky asserts that at that meeting “a resolution was carried to the effect that the uprising should take place not later than October 15”.

From this it appears that the central committee fixed 15 October as the date of the uprising and then itself violated that decision by postponing the date of the uprising to 25 October. Is that true? No, it is not. During that period the central committee passed only two resolutions on the uprising – one on 10 October and the other on 16 October. Let us read these resolutions.

The central committee’s resolution of 10 October:

“The central committee recognises that the international position of the Russian revolution (the mutiny in the German navy, which is an extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of the world socialist revolution, and the threat of [a separate] peace between the imperialists with the object of strangling the revolution in Russia) as well as the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and co to surrender Petrograd to the Germans), and the fact that the proletarian party has gained a majority in the soviets – all this, taken in conjunction with the peasant revolt and the swing of popular confidence towards our party (the elections in Moscow), and, finally, the obvious preparations being made for a second Kornilov affair (the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the dispatch of Cossacks to Petrograd, the surrounding of Minsk by Cossacks, etc) – all this places an armed uprising on the order of the day.

“Considering, therefore, that an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe, the central committee instructs all party organisations to be guided accordingly, and to discuss and decide all practical questions (the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the actions of the people in Moscow and Minsk, etc) from this point of view.” (Meeting of the central committee of the RSDLP(B), 10 (23) October 1917)

The resolution adopted by the conference of the central committee with responsible workers on 16 October:

“This meeting fully welcomes and wholly supports the central committee’s resolution, calls upon all organisations and all workers and soldiers to make thorough and most intense preparations for an armed uprising and for support of the centre set up by the central committee for this purpose, and expresses complete confidence that the central committee and the soviet will in good time indicate the favourable moment and the suitable means for launching the attack.” (Meeting of the central committee of the RSDLP(B), 16 (29) October 1917)

You see that Trotsky’s memory betrayed him about the date of the uprising and the central committee’s resolution on the uprising.

Trotsky is absolutely wrong in asserting that Lenin underrated soviet legality, that Lenin failed to appreciate the great importance of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets taking power on 25 October, and that this was the reason why he insisted that power be taken before 25 October. That is not true. Lenin proposed that power be taken before 25 October for two reasons.

Firstly, because the counter-revolutionaries might have surrendered Petrograd at any moment, which would have drained the blood of the developing uprising, and so every day was precious. Secondly, because the mistake made by the Petrograd Soviet in openly fixing and announcing the day of the uprising (25 October) could not be rectified in any other way than by actually launching the uprising before the legal date set for it.

The fact of the matter is that Lenin regarded insurrection as an art, and he could not help knowing that the enemy, informed about the date of the uprising (owing to the carelessness of the Petrograd Soviet) would certainly try to prepare for that day. Consequently, it was necessary to forestall the enemy, ie, without fail to launch the uprising before the legal date.

This is the chief explanation for the passion with which Lenin in his letters scourged those who made a fetish of the date – 25 October. Events showed that Lenin was absolutely right.

It is well known that the uprising was launched prior to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. It is well known that power was actually taken before the opening of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and it was taken not by the congress of soviets, but by the Petrograd Soviet, by the revolutionary military committee. The congress of soviets merely took over power from the Petrograd Soviet.

That is why Trotsky’s lengthy arguments about the importance of soviet legality are quite beside the point.

A virile and mighty party standing at the head of the revolutionary masses who were storming and overthrowing bourgeois rule – such was the state of our party in that period.

That is how matters stand with the legends about the preparation for October.

Trotskyism or Leninism?
We have dealt above with the legends directed against the party and those about Lenin spread by Trotsky and his supporters in connection with October and the preparation for it. We have exposed and refuted these legends. But the question arises: for what purpose did Trotsky need all these legends about October and the preparation for October, about Lenin and the party of Lenin?

What is the purpose of Trotsky’s new literary pronouncements against the party? What is the sense, the purpose, the aim of these pronouncements now, when the party does not want a discussion, when the party is busy with a host of urgent tasks, when the party needs united efforts to restore our economy and not a new struggle around old questions?

For what purpose does Trotsky need to drag the party back, to new discussions?

Trotsky asserts that all this is needed for the purpose of ‘studying’ October. But is it not possible to study October without giving another kick at the party and its leader Lenin? What sort of a ‘history’ of October is it that begins and ends with attempts to discredit the chief leader of the October uprising, to discredit the party, which organised and carried through the uprising?

No, it is not a matter here of studying October. That is not the way to study October. That is not the way to write the history of October.

Obviously, there is a different ‘design’ here, and everything goes to show that this ‘design’ is that Trotsky by his literary pronouncements is making another (yet another!) attempt to create the conditions for substituting Trotskyism for Leninism.

Trotsky needs ‘desperately’ to discredit the party, and its cadres who carried through the uprising, in order, after discrediting the party, to proceed to discredit Leninism. And it is necessary for him to discredit Leninism in order to drag in Trotskyism as the “sole” “proletarian” (don’t laugh!) ideology.

All this, of course (oh, of course!) under the flag of Leninism, so that the dragging operation may be performed “as painlessly as possible”.

That is the essence of Trotsky’s latest literary pronouncements.

That is why those literary pronouncements of Trotsky’s sharply raise the question of Trotskyism.

And so, what is Trotskyism?

Trotskyism possesses three specific features which bring it into irreconcilable contradiction with Leninism.

What are these features?

Firstly. Trotskyism is the theory of ‘permanent’ (uninterrupted) revolution. But what is permanent revolution in its Trotskyist interpretation? It is revolution that fails to take the poor peasantry into account as a revolutionary force. Trotsky’s ‘permanent’ revolution is, as Lenin said, “skipping” the peasant movement, “playing at the seizure of power”.

Why is it dangerous? Because such a revolution, if an attempt had been made to bring it about, would inevitably have ended in failure, for it would have divorced from the Russian proletariat its ally, the poor peasantry. This explains the struggle that Leninism has been waging against Trotskyism ever since 1905.

How does Trotsky appraise Leninism from the standpoint of this struggle? He regards it as a theory that possesses “anti-revolutionary features”. What is this indignant opinion about Leninism based on? On the fact that, at the proper time, Leninism advocated and upheld the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.

But Trotsky does not confine himself to this indignant opinion. He goes further and asserts: “The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay.” (See Trotsky’s Letter to Chkheidze, 1913)

As you see, we have before us two opposite lines.

Secondly. Trotskyism is distrust of the Bolshevik party principle, of the monolithic character of the party, of its hostility towards opportunist elements. In the sphere of organisation, Trotskyism is the theory that revolutionaries and opportunists can coexist and form groups and coteries within a single party.

You are, no doubt, familiar with the history of Trotsky’s August bloc, in which the Martovites and Otzovists, the liquidators and Trotskyites, happily cooperated, pretending that they were a ‘real’ party.

It is well known that this patchwork ‘party’ pursued the aim of destroying the Bolshevik party. What was the nature of “our disagreements” at that time? It was that Leninism regarded the destruction of the August bloc as a guarantee of the development of the proletarian party, whereas Trotskyism regarded that bloc as the basis for building a ‘real’ party.

Again, as you see, we have two opposite lines.

Thirdly. Trotskyism is distrust of the leaders of Bolshevism, an attempt to discredit, to defame them.

I do not know of a single trend in the party that could compare with Trotskyism in the matter of discrediting the leaders of Leninism or the central institutions of the party. For example, what should be said of Trotsky’s ‘polite’ opinion of Lenin, whom he described as “a professional exploiter of every kind of backwardness in the Russian working-class movement”? (Ibid)

And this is far from being the most ‘polite’ of the ‘polite’ opinions Trotsky has expressed.

How could it happen that Trotsky, who carried such a nasty stock-in-trade on his back, found himself, after all, in the ranks of the Bolsheviks during the October movement? It happened because at that time Trotsky abandoned (actually did abandon) that stock-in-trade; he hid it in the cupboard. Had he not performed that ‘operation’, real cooperation with him would have been impossible.

The theory of the August bloc, ie, the theory of unity with the Mensheviks, had already been shattered and thrown overboard by the revolution, for how could there be any talk about unity when an armed struggle was raging between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks? Trotsky had no alternative but to admit that this theory was useless.

The same misadventure ‘happened’ to the theory of permanent revolution, for not a single Bolshevik contemplated the immediate seizure of power on the morrow of the February Revolution, and Trotsky could not help knowing that the Bolsheviks would not allow him, in the words of Lenin, “to play at the seizure of power”.

Trotsky had no alternative but recognise the Bolsheviks’ policy of fighting for influence in the soviets, of fighting to win over the peasantry. As regards the third specific feature of Trotskyism (distrust of the Bolshevik leaders), it naturally had to retire into the background owing to the obvious failure of the first two features.

Under those circumstances, could Trotsky do anything else but hide his stock-in-trade in the cupboard and follow the Bolsheviks, considering that he had no group of his own of any significance, and that he came to the Bolsheviks as a political individual, without an army? Of course, he could not!

What is the lesson to be learnt from this? Only one: that prolonged collaboration between the Leninists and Trotsky is possible only if the latter completely abandons his old stock-in-trade, only if he completely accepts Leninism.

Trotsky writes about the lessons of October, but he forgets that, in addition to all the other lessons, there is one more lesson of October, the one I have just mentioned, which is of prime importance for Trotskyism. Trotskyism ought to learn that lesson of October too.

It is evident, however, that Trotskyism has not learnt that lesson. The fact of the matter is that the old stock-in-trade of Trotskyism that was hidden in the cupboard in the period of the October movement is now being dragged into the light again in the hope that a market will be found for it, seeing that the market in our country is expanding.

Undoubtedly, Trotsky’s new literary pronouncements are an attempt to revert to Trotskyism, to ‘overcome’ Leninism, to drag in, implant, all the specific features of Trotskyism. The new Trotskyism is not a mere repetition of the old Trotskyism; its feathers have been plucked and it is rather bedraggled; it is incomparably milder in spirit and more moderate in form than the old Trotskyism; but, in essence, it undoubtedly retains all the specific features of the old Trotskyism.

The new Trotskyism does not dare to come out as a militant force against Leninism; it prefers to operate under the common flag of Leninism, under the slogan of interpreting, improving Leninism. That is because it is weak.

It cannot be regarded as an accident that the appearance of the new Trotskyism coincided with Lenin’s departure. In Lenin’s lifetime it would not have dared to take this risky step.

What are the characteristic features of the new Trotskyism?

1. On the question of ‘permanent’ revolution. The new Trotskyism does not deem it necessary openly to uphold the theory of ‘permanent’ revolution. It ‘simply’ asserts that the October Revolution fully confirmed the idea of ‘permanent’ revolution.

From this it draws the following conclusion: the important and acceptable part of Leninism is the part that came after the war, in the period of the October Revolution; on the other hand, the part of Leninism that existed before the war, before the October Revolution, is wrong and unacceptable.

Hence, the Trotskyites’ theory of the division of Leninism into two parts: prewar Leninism, the ‘old’, ‘useless’ Leninism with its idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, and the new, postwar, October Leninism, which they count on adapting to the requirements of Trotskyism.

Trotskyism needs this theory of the division of Leninism as a first, more or less ‘acceptable’ step that is necessary to facilitate further steps in its struggle against Leninism.

But Leninism is not an eclectic theory stuck together out of diverse elements and capable of being cut into parts. Leninism is an integral theory, which arose in 1903, has passed the test of three revolutions, and is now being carried forward as the battle-flag of the world proletariat.

“Bolshevism,” Lenin said, “as a trend of political thought and as a political party, has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the whole period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it was able to build up and to maintain under most difficult conditions the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.” (‘Left-Wing’ Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920, Chapter 2)

Bolshevism and Leninism are one. They are two names for one and the same thing. Hence, the theory of the division of Leninism into two parts is a theory intended to destroy Leninism, to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism.

Needless to say, the party cannot reconcile itself to this grotesque theory.

2. On the question of the party principle. The old Trotskyism tried to undermine the Bolshevik party principle by means of the theory (and practice) of unity with the Mensheviks. But that theory has suffered such disgrace that nobody now even wants to mention it.

To undermine the party principle, present-day Trotskyism has invented the new, less odious and almost ‘democratic’ theory of contrasting the old cadres to the younger party element. According to Trotskyism, our party has not a single and integral history. Trotskyism divides the history of our party into two parts of unequal importance: pre-October and post-October.

The pre-October part of the history of our party is, properly speaking, not history, but ‘pre-history’, the unimportant or, at all events, not very important preparatory period of our party. The post-October part of the history of our party, however, is real, genuine history. In the former, there are the ‘old’, ‘prehistoric’, unimportant cadres of our party. In the latter there is the new, real, ‘historic’ party.

It scarcely needs proof that this singular scheme of the history of the party is a scheme to disrupt the unity between the old and the new cadres of our party, a scheme to destroy the Bolshevik party principle.

Needless to say, the party cannot reconcile itself to this grotesque scheme.

3) On the question of the leaders of Bolshevism. The old Trotskyism tried to discredit Lenin more or less openly, without fearing the consequences. The new Trotskyism is more cautious. It tries to achieve the purpose of the old Trotskyism by pretending to praise, to exalt Lenin. I think it is worthwhile quoting a few examples.

The party knows that Lenin was a relentless revolutionary; but it knows also that he was cautious, that he disliked reckless people and often, with a firm hand, restrained those who were infatuated with terrorism, including Trotsky himself.

Trotsky touches on this subject in his book On Lenin, but from his portrayal of Lenin one might think that all Lenin did was “at every opportunity to din into people’s minds the idea that terrorism was inevitable”. The impression is created that Lenin was the most bloodthirsty of all the bloodthirsty Bolsheviks.

For what purpose did Trotsky need this uncalled for and totally unjustified exaggeration?

The party knows that Lenin was an exemplary party man, who did not like to settle questions alone, without the leading collective body, on the spur of the moment, without careful investigation and verification. Trotsky touches upon this aspect, too, in his book. But the portrait he paints is not that of Lenin, but of a sort of Chinese mandarin, who settles important questions in the quiet of his study, by intuition.

Do you want to know how our party settled the question of dispersing the Constituent Assembly? Listen to Trotsky:

“‘Of course, the Constituent Assembly will have to be dispersed,’ said Lenin, ‘but what about the left Socialist-Revolutionaries?’

“But our apprehensions were greatly allayed by old Natanson. He came in to ‘take counsel’ with us, and after the first few words he said:

“‘We shall probably have to disperse the Constituent Assembly by force.’

“‘Bravo!’ exclaimed Lenin. ‘What is true is true! But will your people agree to it?’

“‘Some of our people are wavering, but I think that in the end they will agree,’ answered Natanson.”

That is how history is written.

Do you want to know how the party settled the question about the Supreme Military Council? Listen to Trotsky:

“‘Unless we have serious and experienced military experts we shall never extricate ourselves from this chaos,’ I said to Vladimir Ilyich after every visit to the staff.

“‘That is evidently true, but they might betray us …’

“‘Let us attach a commissar to each of them.’

“‘Two would be better,’ exclaimed Lenin, ‘and strong-handed ones. There surely must be strong-handed communists in our ranks.’

“That is how the structure of the Supreme Military Council arose.”

That is how Trotsky writes history.

Why did Trotsky need these ‘Arabian Nights’ stories derogatory to Lenin? Was it to exalt VI Lenin, the leader of the party? It doesn’t look like it.

The party knows that Lenin was the greatest Marxist of our times, a profound theoretician and a most experienced revolutionary, to whom any trace of Blanquism was alien.

Trotsky touches upon this aspect, too, in his book. But the portrait he paints is not that of the giant Lenin, but of a dwarf-like Blanquist who, in the October days, advises the party “to take power by its own hand, independently of and behind the back of the soviet”. I have already said, however, that there is not a scrap of truth in this description.

Why did Trotsky need this flagrant … inaccuracy? Is this not an attempt to discredit Lenin ‘just a little’?

Such are the characteristic features of the new Trotskyism.

What is the danger of this new Trotskyism? It is that Trotskyism, owing to its entire inner content, stands every chance of becoming the centre and rallying point of the non-proletarian elements who are striving to weaken, to disintegrate the proletarian dictatorship.

You will ask: what is to be done now? What are the party’s immediate tasks in connection with Trotsky’s new literary pronouncements?

Trotskyism is taking action now in order to discredit Bolshevism and to undermine its foundations. It is the duty of the party to bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend.

There is talk about repressive measures against the opposition and about the possibility of a split. That is nonsense, comrades. Our party is strong and mighty. It will not allow any splits. As regards repressive measures, I am emphatically opposed to them.

What we need now is not repressive measures, but an extensive ideological struggle against renascent Trotskyism.

We did not want and did not strive for this literary discussion. Trotskyism is forcing it upon us by its anti-Leninist pronouncements. Well, we are ready, comrades.

(see notes at link, character limitation.)

https://thecommunists.org/2024/06/28/ne ... -leninism/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 02, 2024 3:04 pm

Mikhail Zhedyaev or how the "Red Father" joined the party
colonelcassad
July 1, 19:57

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Mikhail Zhedyaev or how the "Red Father" joined the party

In the collection "New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century" there is information about one priest from the Perm province: "Zhidyaev Mikhail. Priest. Service: Perm province, Kungur district, village of Kochuvakhino. Death: 1918. Execution. Place: Perm province, Kungur district, village of Kochuvakhino. Shot outside the village." The reader may think that the priest was shot by the Reds or Greens. But this is not so. The compilers of the collection shamefully kept silent about the circumstances of Father Mikhail's death.

Let's start with the fact that his last name is not Zhidyaev, but Zhedyaev, and the village is called Kochebakhtino. Mikhail Sergeevich was born on May 23, 1873, and graduated from school at the church parish. Probably, his special attitude to the aspirations of the common people was influenced by the fact that he came from a peasant family, either middle or poor. There were few opportunities to get ahead in life, and Zhedyaev followed the church line. It is curious that he graduated from school at 23, which means he was a persistent person. In 1909, after working as a psalm-reader, he was ordained a deacon. In 1911, he became a priest. The priest was sent to different villages of the Okhansky and Permsky districts, until in 1914 he ended up in the relatively small village of Kochebakhtino (63 households, 294 people). Zhedyaev supervises the construction of the Ascension Church and raises his six children.

Mikhail Sergeyevich welcomed the February Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II with approval (this, by the way, was the official position of both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Synod), and he did not say anything bad about the October Revolution either. In the summer of 1918, committees of the poor, or kombeds for short, were created throughout Russia and in the Kungur district in particular. In essence, these were the main organs of Soviet power in the countryside, which were in charge of the most important issues: from mobilizing peasants into the Red Army to distributing food among the poor and confiscating surplus grain from kulaks. It should be noted that the peasants in Kochebakhtin did not support this initiative. They had to send a special agitator from Kungur, who, however, did not count on success. However, Father Mikhail, who enjoyed unquestioned authority among the peasants, spoke at the meeting. He declared that the kombed should be elected, and the Soviet government was the only protector and assistant to the peasants. Unfortunately, no recordings of this speech have survived (most likely, no one made them). It would be very interesting to read how the priest, in support of his theses for the Soviet power, refers to the Holy Scripture.

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In general, after this, Mikhail Sergeyevich turned into a freelance agitator for the Poor Committees and Soviet power. The priest even joined the party. Unfortunately, I was unable to find information on whether he combined party work and church service, but I believe that in those days, it was possible. He traveled around the district, agitated for the Poor Committees, and during the retreat of the Red Army in the fall of 1918, he did not want to evacuate and remained in the territory occupied by Kolchak's men. Apparently, Zhedyaev hid in the forest, perhaps he participated in partisan activities. For example, priest Yevgeny Osipovich Kvalery from the Altai province fought in the Ust-Mosikhinsky partisan detachment in 1918-1919, according to his memoirs, he was well oriented in the dense forest and shot very accurately. After the Civil War, he was the chairman of the district executive committee.

Be that as it may, someone informed Kolchak's men where Father Mikhail was hiding. Kolchak's men led the beaten and naked Mikhail Sergeyevich for several kilometers to Kochebakhtin. It was thirty degrees below zero. On the outskirts of the village, after being tortured, he was shot and thrown into a pit. Judging by the fact that nothing was subsequently known about Zhedyaev's wife and children, they were also killed.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mikhail Sergeyevich was remembered, articles were written about him, and the place of his execution was marked with a special sign. What brought Father Mikhail to the camp of supporters of Soviet power? He was from a peasant family and never forgot his roots. And he was not alone. Thousands of priests accepted Soviet power after October 1917. Some abandoned their careers and became Soviet employees, workers, and Red Army soldiers. In the memoirs of Oka Gorodovikov, an associate of Semyon Budyonny, we can read about a former priest who proudly served in the baggage train of the First Cavalry Army. But some became ardent supporters of the Soviet regime, continuing to be priests and even monks.

In the memoirs of the White Guards, we also find many episodes of executions of such "red priests" by the White punitive forces. During the rebellion in Izhevsk, the priest Dronin, who sympathized with the Bolsheviks, was shot. Deacon Anisim Reshetnikov was shot by the Kolchakites. In the White Guard Roman Gul, we read about a priest who acted as a commissar. In 1918, in Rostov, a priest was shot who publicly preached reconciliation between the Whites and the Reds and (the White Guards could not stand this) an end to pogroms and robberies. In 1919, in the village of Bolshekureyny in the Kurgan district, several peasants and a priest were shot on suspicion of helping the Red partisans. His wife, two daughters, and a worker, who had been raped beforehand, were also shot. A number of sources indicate that the division commander, General Kruglevsky, whose officers carried out this massacre, was allegedly removed from command. However, he led the division out of encirclement, then took command of another. He was killed during the flight of the Whites in 1920 near the Dauria station.

By the way, the Whites did not hesitate to hang anti-Soviet priests, for example, in 1919, General Pokrovsky hanged priest Kalabukhov, a supporter of the independence of the Kuban Cossack region. It is curious that after Kalabukhov's hanging, the Kuban Diocesan Council obsequiously forbade Kalabukhov (who had already been hanged at that time) to perform the duties of a priest.

As for the "red" priests who suffered from the white terror, their number is certainly less than the number of priests who suffered from the red terror. Nevertheless, it is too early to put an end to the comparative study. How many former priests and monks accepted the Soviet power, how many priests did not openly oppose the Reds with agitation, and sometimes with machine guns (there was such a thing), and how many sat in neutrality: this still needs to be studied.

The revolution of 1917 split the Orthodox Church, among other things. Some sided with the majority of workers and peasants, and some even organized a crusader movement (we'll talk about that next time).

(c) Gleb Targonskiy

https://vk.com/targonskiy?w=wall-10116318_5055%2Fall - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9239787.html

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

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