who heres likes the russian Revolution

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it rules


some question was the dictorship of the proletariet chaterised by as much opression as the autocracy that came before it

all thoght lenin was going to get rid of democrartic centralism when the tumoil has finished stalin keep it

trotsky concept of Permanent Revolution would have provoked a war with the capitalist countrys
and because trotsky factions was comprised of "left"comminists they thoght no treaty could be made with a capitalist country as can be with burakin,s attide during the brest livtosk treaty

In my opinion the communists are the worst scum on the face of the earth.
Do you have any idea how many milions of Russians died because of the communist regime ?
Man your disgusting.

man i don,t like lenin or stalin they were a distorian of marx ideals

if your inrested in nazis u don,t have to like em

Bart21: Have you any idea how many native americans where killed by the colonists; 8 million if i remember right.

I think history in general is very interesting and shadowstate; please ignore bart21, he has no right to tell you what you can or can't be interested in. Human is history is filled with death, slavery and rape. All our hands are dirty. Now; i believe that the change from a monarchy to communism did very little to change the basic political landscape. People where still being opressed. My knowledge ends mostly ends here.

Lol!


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Same difference.

If you knew your facts you would know that Stalin alone was responsible for the millions of deaths in Russia; well he and his most trusted toadies.

Educate yourself if you want to know what you are talking about; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
And also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism in particular.Stalin was paranoid, murderous, and perverted Lenin's ideal regime due to his power-hungry paranoia.

I'm not saying he idn't do some good things for Russia, but it is hard to justify the murder of millions for advanced industrialism, no matter how badly needed.

Hey, like the guy said, just because you're interested in something doesn't mean you agree with it. I am interested in Marx right now because of the influence he's had on the world, but I think Marx is an idiot. I am interested in WWII and the SS and Hitler, but I find the ideals espoused by the man and his followers to be extremely unpalatable. I find the Russian revolution fascinating because of the idea behind it and the reactions of the world to it, not to mention to the consequences because of it. It is an interesting case study on human nature, and no matter how many people say that communism as espoused by Marx has never been practiced in the world (I think they call it "command planned economies"), you can see how silly Marx is for discounting human nature just because he doesn't agree with some aspects of it. And have you read the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital? C-R-A-Z-Y. But it is relevant and interesting simply because it has had such a huge impact on the world.

And I would read MORE than just wikipedia's entry on either subject.

The topic is interesting. The ideal sounds great. Whether communism worked practically is a question that seems to be answered by the roaring capitalist economies present today. Maybe the part about communism that could be taken away and still be applied today is the non-sectarian nationalism combined with a political philosophy.

Exemplifying the substance of my statement that soviet nationalism was non-sectarian: that old soviet poster has an arab, an african, and an asian...

To claim that communists are the worst scum of the earth requires more than pointing to the soviet union. It requires attacking the moral philosophy behind communism or the practical aspects in a more sophisticated way. Really though, it is better to not make moralistic emotionally charged statements at all as even though according to some moral philosophies you are absolutely correct we cannot assume that everyone will follow that same philosophy.

What precisely is your reference about Lenin "going to get rid of "democratic centralism." It was on V.I. Lenin's orders that's Russia's first democratic government, the moderate socialist government of Alexandre Kerensky, was overthrown by force of arms of a small number of men. The revolution is a lie, and the communists later staged the even so it could be filmed (later to be repeated many time in totalitarian societies).

The "turmoil" I assume was bloody civil war, brought largely on by Lenin and his colleague's own barbaric policies. Lenin promised the minority nationalities independence and then once they took him up on the offer promptly stabbed them in the back. These people, as well as the Russians themselves were savagely oppressed (on a level never seen before even if the worst days of the Tsars) by his personally lieutenants such as Iosef Stalin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Leon Trosky, and others. Lenin, a believer in Marxian economics, attempted to eliminate money from his economy completely and assumed that the state could simply order farms to produce crops to the government directly at a set level. This produced horrible famine, but still Lenin punished farmers to get the results he wanted. Eventually he had to give out and allowed for some moderation is his "New Economic Policy" (which was dismantled by Iosef Stalin).



Perhaps the only thing I can agree with, while not appreciate, is your understanding of Trosky's own violent history and tendencies. Some people incorrect think of Trosky of some sort of alternate "peaceful Communist" and this is not the case. I wish to know however, and I wish to know honesty: Why would such wars be a good thing? With all the deaths that Communist (and their cousin the fascist and national socialists) have caused in the twentieth century, and with the knowledge that they had this is how they STARTED, why would you want to export them by means of war? I mean Marx's own prediction regarding industrialization in England (and he seemed to somewhat admit this late in life) failed to live it's course. Lenin's predictions failed. His policies resulted in disaster. What is the point?



Really, Hans_Solo. How many people did Franklin Roosevelt order murdered? How many did Churchill order murdered? Did they go over their names, and casually sign their signature to hundreds of thousands of death warrants? How many did they send to slave labor camps? To die slowly, with their families so far away.

Roosevelt and Churchill allied with Stalin. Stalin was a butcher. They did it to beat another butcher. They could only beat one. Had they done what Churchill wanted in 1918-19 and toppled Lenin's newborn regime the century may have been far less bloody. But it didn't and so this like this simply had to happen.



There was nothing "ideal" about Lenin's regime which is why people where so desperate to leave it. It was incredibly oppressive most notably to those who owned just a tiny parcel of land, and understandably they rose up:



The point about Stalin is also misguided. His industrialization was partially achieved via slave labor (which you admit), but it was used in an incredibly inefficient top-down manner that effectively destroyed the long-term Soviet economy. Additionally, his foreign policy bungles (brought on by his aggressiveness) kicked off the Second World War in Europe and ate up much of that industrial potential. To top it off, his brutal record (as well as the war) as ruler gave rise to the hardening of Russian persona, and the consequential sharp decline of the birth rate. Stalin's regime was, in the long term, a disaster for Russia.

[quote="Awesomelyglorious"To claim that communists are the worst scum of the earth requires more than pointing to the soviet union. It requires attacking the moral philosophy behind communism or the practical aspects in a more sophisticated way. Really though, it is better to not make moralistic emotionally charged statements at all as even though according to some moral philosophies you are absolutely correct we cannot assume that everyone will follow that same philosophy."[/quote]

I will agree that to say "communists are the worst scum of the earth" is too simple. However I believe that political philosophy of communism (or any political philosophy that says: We must not have a representative process in which the people themselves have any representation, or more dangerously: X group must be literally destroyed because they are the enemy) is inherently dangerous, at least if that point of view is held by a sizable portion of people. This would include not only, but Marxist-Leninism, but National Socialism, Fascism, Islamism, if someone supports the government style of rather unique Proletarian-Capitalism that is in China (although there is still alot of state control there), ect...

EDIT: One thing is worth noting. I am sure I would note agree with much Mikhael Gorbachev would have to say. However, he is clearly different from Brezhnev. And Gorbachev is a clearly different from Khrushchev. And Khrushchev was a hell of a lot more moral then Stalin, despite his cozying up to him during the war. Krushchev, despite his toughness in Eastern Europe (which included killing defected spies, and initiating the Cuban Missile Crisis), was somewhat of a reformer at home. It was this, and the Missile Crisis, which got him kicked out. In fact, it may have been signs of major reforms from Beria (the rapist murderer of all people) that got him killed, or perhaps it was just people worried about there necks.

So yes, there are differences between one Communist and the next (just like everything else). Zhao Ziyang was the general secretary of the communist party in China at the time of the Tianamen Square massacre and he wanted to TALK TO THE DEMONSTRATORS (as to most of the military chiefs of the time). He lost his job and spent the rest of his life (he died in 2005) under house arrest.

General ("President") Anwar Sadat of Egypt made peace with Israel knowing very well it could get himself killed, and it did. His history didn't suggest he would do it. I am trying to figure out if Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas, who has plenty of blood on his hands as well, may be willing to do the same thing. Some of his moves have been rather strange for someone with his history. However only time will tell.

The only problem is that many modern communists are not pro-totalitarian so therefore your attack isn't upon communists so much as it is upon totalitarian governments. Ultimately any attack on communism will have to either claim that totalitarianism is necessary for the economic control required by communism or attack the economic control itself as being immoral or dangerous. "Communists are the worst scum of the earth is too simple" but as well, using the soviet union alone to attack communism will not work unless effort is made to show that the soviet system is the only possible communist system or that other attempts at it will fail for some reason of their own.

I put a Lenin quote in my comment but didn't provide a citation. [Nicolas Werth, "A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union," in Stéphane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism (New York: Harvard University Press, 1999) p. 72

This is a fair critique of my statement. Not all remain communists are totalitarian, and for the call for the destruction of the democratic order. Indeed the Communist Party USA currently, while their basic ideology (link) remains on the fringes of American politics, has adopted Gorbachev-type reforms in not calling for the all-out annihilation of the democratic process. The same party previous to the collapse of the Soviet Union had backed a coup of Gorbachev by hardliners, which was understandable at least from a tactical point of view. Gorbachev's democratic reforms risked bringing people into office that would cut off the money being sent to keep the CPUSA functioning. Gorbachev did it himself after the coup failed.

(For the record, every other Communist party (and variant), and all but one of the socialist (and variant) third parties that is listed on the solid Politics1 (link) website appears to be rather violent in it's outlook. One note however: The Socialist party with the most members by far is, and has been, staunchly democratic for years [it is the party of Eugene Debs]. You are really dealing with parties with limited influence on American society, and this includes some autocratic and racist right wing parties as well. There is one party, The Worker's World Party (link), which is Stalinist in it's outlook (it is supportive of the regime of Kim Jong Il in North Korea) which organizes the International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. This group was the primary group which set up numerous massive marches of anti-war demonstrators (doubtlessly without many participant's knowledge) throughout the United States in the run up and shortly after the beginning of the Iraq War.

Now I should probably actually address your critique rather then just babble on . Yes, I think there is something inherent about Marxist economics that increases the risk of a totalitarian society. This is not to say someone who calls himself a communist. Gorbachev called himself a communist, but he failed to understand what being a communist required (and judging from him bizarrely stating out of character that he should have been "tough" like Putin he may be understanding that now). When Gorbachev made his reforms include democracy, he assumed that the people would thank him by giving him legitimacy, and he was wrong. Instead, the people decided that weren't big fans of eighty years of famines of bread lines nor the party and economic system they identified it with.

The problem with communism is it's so utopian. Their ideas cannot be met* without serious economic disaster (serious: can you seize all the major industries without economic problems?) causing citizens to voting them out of office (assuming it was allowed to get to that point). In a country like the United States, many if there ideas would be found unconstitutional even by the most liberal of courts. Then again a communist party has never won a fair election on more then a plurality vote of around 35% (witness the victory of former communist Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua).

*Well, actually they cannot be met at all, but that is another debate.

Since all the societies dedicated to the Marxist ideals have ended badly, or having to change direction in large measure (a Vietnamese government official once told an American visiting Hanoi: "You couldn't level Hanoi, but communism did."), I am curious how precisely communism in an open free society would be achieved.

It wouldn't have to be Marxism or anything. Israel has many a kibbutz and and the successful ones are hardly in the Marx's tradition. Then again replicating them on a large scale without any force?

joe mcarthy is great i wish we had one to get rid of them in warshingtun. i hate commies... they are socialists and socialists are murders. some one claimed nationalist are bad, well zionist ones are..death to zionists! especially christian zionists!

russian nationalism! russian pride! russian power! russia forever!! ! to the motherland!

I find calling for the deaths of people very disturbing.