#281
http://bit.ly/1Jzhh7M
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was pol pot better or worse than stalin?
#282
mt.real
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he ate way more dudes, so obviously better
#283
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Panopticon posted:

blinkandwheeze posted:

Panopticon posted:

this argument is fundamentally duplicitous.

how do you miss the point here so completely? i argued that moral arguments toward communism are fundamentally duplicitous to the extent that rely on idealist presuppositions. however i spent several paragraphs just now explaining that the end of exploitation or the liberation of man are not necessarily moral propositions. that's the entire basis of what i'm saying

i suppose one can also end exploitation and liberate mankind accidentally while pursuing knowledge like "how many polish officers can one soviet major-general shoot in a month"



Alright but Poland deserves every humiliation that ever happens to them. They're an essentially cowardly, opportunist, and evil nation.

Now, the ethnic cleansing of the Caucasus peoples is a much stronger case against Stalin, not to mention the intra-party killings.

#284
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Don't talk shit about my friend Stanislaw Lem.
#285
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A little tidbit id once read which i was inspired to retrace as its related to Stalin and also tangentially to the excelerationism discussion we've been having in the recent usaia politics threads or as a rhizzone meme in general:



Apparently this practice was well reported. Some party members who objected to the Ezhovshchina just thought theyd bog down the system with baseless accusations and nonesense but in the panic of the era and the fear by party officials who felt as if they would be targetted if they didnt follow up on any reports of misbehavior or 'trotskyism,' many of these innocent people were expelled neways.

But also: less people were expelled in 37 than in 35 so it probably wasnt that bad right guys?

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()

#286
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Before panoptocon or some other trot wrecker tries to dispute my cold hard facts

A chistka literally 'sweeping', is what would technically be called a purge in our parlance (29, 33, 37) - the proverka was a reorganizing of party records and not technically a purge

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()

#287
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i think party membership numbers are less interesting than the state repression.

for example, the insanity of the soviet state killing senior party members (who fought in the civil war to establish the soviet union) on charges of collaborating with german and british agents to restore capitalism. what a joke.
#288
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The numbers for prominent 'Old Bolsheviks' who lived to the 30s to be killed by police operations is less than 50. The number (edit: lost in membership due to all causes including natural death etc.. not just expelled) in the mid-late 30s who joined before 1920 is about 50,000

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()

#289
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EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

The numbers for prominent 'Old Bolsheviks' who lived to the 30s to be killed by police operations is less than 50. The number expelled in the mid-late 30s who joined before 1920 is about 50,000



i think the former is more interesting than the latter.

#290
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Probably because youre a liberal pigdog informer
#291
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no, more because capital punishment is in and of itself quite a barbaric thing, and inflicting it upon people for little more than being on the wrong side of a debate spits in the face of the idea that human beings are inherently valuable

if you don't believe humans are inherently valuable, you have no business being a socialist
#292
hi
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DKjUyyoPYwc
#293
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Panopticon posted:

no, more because capital punishment is in and of itself



Oh i see whats going in. Youre a swede or some sort of scandinavian arent you?

#294
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Every swede is socialist but hates the ussr and somehow brings up executions 'because sweden banned them in 1919 and its barbaric' but rly because theyre butthurt about how ussr strongarmed the return of the white army officers to russia where they were executed instead of staying in sweden to be groomed by the swedes capitalist masters for their eventual return to a capitalist russia.

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()

#295
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They should have thrown them a dinner party instead
#296
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W/r/t 'rule of law' and the death penalty:



Note: Oct of '37
#297
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the implication of the first sentence is that they didn't usually tell their subjects about changes to the law, which is pretty much the opposite of rule of law

anyway i'm british
#298
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I think the implication is that changes to laws werent usually announced out of the blue by the central committee in a special announcement. As in it was an unusual step to temper execution fervor by party organs in provincial areas. As far as i know "they didnt publish any laws" has no foundation in reality but clearly you want to have a certain viewpoint and nothing will make you reconsider no natter how little base in reality your engrained opinions have

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()

#299
Dont Mess With Sucess
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That paragraph from "origins of the great purges" is in the context of various organs trying unusual measures to prevent chaotic executions, first the press wrote against over-prosecution of leaders, then the soviets made an unusual proclamation to try and give alternatives to the death penalty, then Stalin made "one of his rare Olympian announcements, which esoterically condemned radical excesses"
#300
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EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

I think the implication is that changes to laws werent usually announced out of the blue by the central committee in a special announcement. As in it was an unusual step to temper execution fervor by party organs in provincial areas. As far as i know "they didnt publish any laws" has no foundation in reality but clearly you want to have a certain viewpoint and nothing will make you reconsider no natter how little base in reality your engrained opinions have



if the law is changed, one would expect the changes to be publicised. i am just going by what it says in your source. it says this was unusual. i don't know why your source says it was unusual. it's your source.

#301
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Cant tell if bad troll or legitimate moron
#302
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EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Cant tell if bad troll or legitimate moron



if that's how you feel why did you cite him?

#303
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Panopticon posted:

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Cant tell if bad troll or legitimate moron

if that's how you feel why did you cite him?

You need to learn to read kiddo

#304
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your source seems to believe the letter of the law counted for a lot less than the power struggle between stalin and the local authorities, so that must be why he said it was unusual. no doubt he is an anti-communist liberal informer

#305
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Panopticon posted:

your source seems to believe the letter of the law counted for a lot less than the power struggle between stalin and the local authorities,



Where are you getting this from?

#306
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http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mbaker/cshs522/GettyMassRepressions.pdf
#307
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No i mean wtf are you talking about in the text i quoted
#308
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i am reading from another work by the same author, because it doesn't have great chunks eaten out of it by google books
#309
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If Obama got on TV today and announced that weed was legalized in all fifty states, toke up bros, would you think 'I don't remember Obama talking about laws before. This exceptional event proves the US government must lack the organs to publish and disseminate it's own laws and regulations. How barbarous!'? No because that would be a silly conclusion reached through several leaps of logic.

This is what I was getting at earlier; I can't necessarily prove you wrong since I am not that well read when it comes to Soviet-jurisprudence-and-publishing-circa-1930-40, but you aren't either! Interpreting a English secondary source in a completely ridiculous manner, and then standing on a pedestal and saying that no True Communist Could Support Such A Brutal Regime is just throwing history away so you can get the satisfaction of being So Right when others are being So Crazy!!

#310
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S. V. Kosior complained that thousands of religious believers were attending religious-political "events" to cynically praise Stalin for their new rights.

lmao
#311
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Similarly when Stalin spoke out against the radicals who were doing all the executing and proposed the democratic "Stalin Constitution" everyone thought this meant an end of collective farming and ppl started confiscating land from collective farms for their own use lol
#312
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scrree himself alluded to the interplay between centre and periphery and its importance over mere laws on page 1

Scrree posted:

im reading Bloodlies: The Evidence that Every Accusation Against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Is False and ive got some hot news from grover furr

in the context of letters and orders by the soviet politburo during the Ezhovshchina, english scholars of soviet history have traditionally translated the word Limity, meaning limits, to the english word Quota


#313
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Yes there was obviously a "conflict" between center and periphery based in the co diyions in the USSr which made uniform application of the law by central powers impossible. No one denies this its why the purges happened
#314
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Ah yes, NKVD Order #447, truly the smoking gun of Stalin's Terror, where he personally sent orders detailing target quotas for arrests and executions.

eh, seems there's a small mistranslation, instead of minimum quota it actually says maximum quota, or actually it just says limit.

but but but the limits were REALLY quotas because every knew they were! that's why they were so easy to raise, only requiring the personalty approval of the head of the NKVD, Ezhov.

So, NKVD Order #447; an order sent from the Politburo detailing the limits on the number of arrests and executions, only to be raised with personal approval of highest police authority in the government.

its easy to see how that sentence and the first mean effectively the same thing, there is definitely no misinformation being spread by publishing the first, there is no change of intent from translating the word 'limit' to the word 'quota', and english scholarship of the soviet union is definitely not a poisoned pool
#315
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lol fucked up if true (it is)
#316
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This from the post '92 Getty article
#317
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In Smolensk, archival research shows an approved limit of 4,000, but local authorities are known to have shot 4,500 and continued shooting victims even after the November 1938 decision ordered them to stop. They simply backdated the paperwork and continued shooting. First Secretary blinkandwheeze Simochkin in Ivanovo liked to watch the shootings and was curious about why some of his subordinates chose not to.
#318
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Panopticon posted:

In Smolensk, archival research shows an approved limit of 4,000, but local authorities are known to have shot 4,500 and continued shooting victims even after the November 1938 decision ordered them to stop. They simply backdated the paperwork and continued shooting. First Secretary blinkandwheeze Simochkin in Ivanovo liked to watch the shootings and was curious about why some of his subordinates chose not to.



Damn you Stalin!!

E: Smolensk was one of the most notoriously corrupt / messed up parts of the whole Party organization

#319
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Shoot Panopticon u dumb as heck
#320
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even a cursory google search shows english scholars claiming лимит is the "russian word for quota" but that is the word for limit, the russian word for quota is квота