Well in that case, let's just canonize Stalin and Mao at the same time -- if we're going down the road of moral relativism, then the topics of "what crimes did person X commit?" are entirely subjective and therefore pointless.
I know next to nothing about Mao and I don't really care for Maoism or the man himself from what I do know about it. Stalin absolutely should be reconsidered, as much of the West's "information" about him is false or misleading. Attentive scholarship will prove this.
Anyway, I didn't say he was a saint, I said he did what he had to do given the extremes of the situation. It sucks, but so did the situation, and the advancement of freedom is in the end more important than the lives of people actively fighting against that freedom.
Perhaps, though he didn't condemn Yakov Yurovsky whatsoever (unless you want to count a promotion to a comfortable position as some sort of slap on the wrist).
So you admit to mis-characterizing the information? Or were you wrong and you just looked it up?
Lenin, as well as Stalin after him, purposefully prevented food distribution from going to areas that he thought was politically rebellious in order to weaken their resolve.
I can think of no instance of Lenin doing this.
This happened after the civil war was over and there was enough food for everybody.
The only time there was "enough food for everybody" was in 1926, and even that argument is scant at best. It was the continuing food deficit that prompted Stalin to start forcing collectivization in 1928, after the dismal failure of 1927, when high prices encouraged many well-to-do peasants to eat all the food they produced rather than sell it to the cities in the north.
(The question remains, though, as to why the Soviet leadership should receive a comfortably nutritious lifestyle if Marxism is intended to be classless. Seems like the very definition of class warfare.)
Marxism is a political theory. Socialism is it put into practice. The Soviet leadership wasn't particularly "well off" as you characterize; they didn't live a luxurious lifestyle by any means. And, of course, I'm sure you're aware of the concept that the leadership of a country is more "valuable" so to speak than some muzhik in Tatarstan. They weren't anarchists, after all.
No, I have not read it, and I am indeed basing this citation off of a second-hand source. If I am incorrect or taking it out of its intended context, then please set me straight. If I get the time I will try to acquire the biography and skim through it.
I would be extremely surprised if Service cited as absurd a figure as that as he is generally more honest about things than certain other Russian "historians." I will check my copy of it.
It doesn't, hence why I purposefully added the word "intentional."
So why would you lump unintentional starvation deaths with supposed "intentional" ones, unless you were trying to inflate the number that Lenin was supposedly responsible for?
For one, I see no reason why peaceful opposition to the Reds (not counting the soldiers and terrorists in this category, obviously) should be executed.
And how many "peaceful" opposers to the Revolution were killed? Do you know? Or are you just speculating based on your gut?
Did the West ever suppress any ideologies? Did the Provisional Government not suppress Tsarist organs and movements before the Bolsheviks did?
Was freedom too much of a burden for the Soviets?
To them, there was no room for freedom of speech in as dire a situation as the Revolution was. Freedom meant the right to encourage counterrevolution, which is quite easy with an ignorant muzhik, just feed him a few simple lies and he can turn against his patrons like *that.* Apparently this is also true of us Americans as well...
Tell me, was Lenin justified in authorizing the Soviet war against Poland in order to spread the revolution to them?
I think Lenin was justified in authorizing the Red Army to repulse the Polish imperialist invasion, absolutely. Or can socialist nations now not defend themselves?
And in this sense, do you deny that Lenin was indeed very similar to Robespierre?
Of course not, for reasons stated above.
Two, the term "counter-revolutionaries" is irritatingly vague. As Lenin himself admitted that the masses were uselessly uneducated, he could've theoretically defined every single peasant in Russia that didn't initiate their own communions as counter-revolutionary for not being enthusiastic communists
Except that he didn't. So there must've been a more concrete definition of counter-revolutionary. I suspect that it had something to do with actively working against the Revolutionary movements and attacking the Bolshevik organs. You know, like trying to assassinate Lenin, or blowing up supply trains, or destroying all the public records before surrendering the building to the Reds, or distributing lots of alcohol to Red Guards and troops on duty.
. It wasn't useful to his interests to do so, but the point remains.
No it doesn't. You have no point.
And if you think I'm grasping for straws at this point, I point out that the Soviets had no interest in explicitly defining who exactly their enemies were; probably because that would jeopardize their self-given justifications for their mass executions,
Mere speculation. You have nothing to back any of this up.
I would respect this statement, if you didn't immediately follow it with:
Ah, so you don't like it when your bias is exposed? But then who does?
I'm not a "paladin of capitalism," nor does that in any way discredit my point. Even many modern Marxists try to draw distance from Leninism because they thought it was a failure, not just capitalism.
Like whom? I can think of a few laymen, but they distance themselves from him only in some respects, and only then because Lenin is perceived to be wrong by the public, not because he actually was. Which is not to say he was right about everything, since he certainly was mistaken about several things.
Beyond that, I'm not even sure I would call myself a capitalist; though I'm certainly not a Marxist.
I didn't say you were a capitalist. I said you
defended capitalism, which is just as bad.
Its very simple; you can claim to occupy whatever gray area you wish but when the battle lines are drawn there are only two groups: reactionaries and revolutionaries. If you do not stand for the Revolution then you are against it.
Does that discredit me? So long as I can reasonably defend my arguments, I see no reason why it does.
When you reproduce anti-communist mishmash like what you have thus far, and purposefully misrepresent the facts, then yes, it does and should hurt your credibility, at least on the subject at hand.
So exiling people to hellish prisons is not as bad as cementing your own political authority? Fascinating.
And what hellish prisons did Lenin send people to? The "prison camps" in those days had eight hour shifts, decent lodging (for Russia, anyway), and the prisoners got effing paid. This is hardly a Stalinist GULAG camp we're talking about.
Though this is a bit beside the point, as I'm curious as to how you can call this a "grievous crime" while defending the Leninists, who did the exact same thing.
This is why you are not credible. The only people "repressed" by the Socialist regime were the 5% of population who as robber barons, capitalists, and counterrevolutionaries who were rightfully so.
Perhaps you will quibble about the difference between "imperial ambitions" and "class liberation," though I have difficulty making this distinction, seeing as how Lenin was quite glad to destroy Poland's liberty (which it spent over 100 years trying to acquire) in the interest of his socio-economic goals.
What the flying crap did Lenin do to Poland's liberty? How about the liberty of Belarus and Ukraine, which Poland sought to destroy when it started that war? I can think of no imperial ambitions by the Soviet Union or Revolutionary Russia. Ever. Socialism
cannot be imperialist, because it does not conquer to extract wealth from other countries or make new markets for itself. It is contrary to the very definition of socialism to call it such. Unless you want to make the laughable accusation that the Bolsheviks were not socialist...
Not necessarily because absolute monarchy is an inherent crime. It could've been because they just really personally despised Nicholas. (I don't blame them.) Not that this was certainly the case, though it might've been.
How does that disprove what I said?
And no, I don't think it was "just because of Nicholas." This was by no means the first revolution or rising up in Russian history.
Nonetheless, the Poles that participated in the several anti-Romanov rebellions probably weren't very happy to be invaded by the Reds, so your point is moot.
I don't think the Ukrainians and Belorussians were happy to try and be forced into a Polish-led federation by force of arms. Or are Kiev and Minsk Poland's by divine right?
