elemennop posted:Myfanwy posted:Tsargon posted:Myfanwy posted:crustpunk_trotsky posted:Myfanwy posted:USSR was like the best government square headed slavs could ever hope for, save for some finnish warrior princes coming down from the swamps and ruling over them again. So it's good in that way
*mongolian, steppes
Do you know anything about the period when the russian area was under mongol tartar control. I have no idea if any kind of lasting cultural stuff happened, its kind amazing how runaway polish lithuanian serfs became democratic horse nomads, I don't know if anything like that happened to russian slavs
ahahahaha YOU HAVE ACTIVATED MY GRAD CARD
1. the mongol yoke was really fairly light in terms of RACE OPPRESSION AND HOLY WAR or what have you and in terms of russian peasant culture did not really effect much but *did* have a massive effect on russian aristocratic culture. for a very long time, right up until when ivan grozny conquered khazan and reversed the trend, russian princes considered themselves as successors of the great khan (ability to claim kinship with the great khan meant being able to legally claim his land) and intermarried with steppe tatars very frequently.
2. the cossacks were essentially a russian steppe cavalry auxiliary and was an even mixture of escaped slavic serfs and directly recruited tartar horsemen, who the feudal tsars would use as a deterrent against steppe raids (threatening to grant the cossack hosts the right to raid anyone who raided muscovy).That's awesome, I guess that's why russians have slanty eyes. Do you know when they started loving french culture more than anything, I know they had an alliance in the late 1800s, but it seems like all of that started a lot earlier.
The cossacks did have a few hundred years of autonomy though, and then another good period after the end of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth. It just makes me happy to see some raggedy serfs abandoning their lives of toil and becoming cool horse raiders.
I just read something about the polish nobility's attacks against the teutonic knights featuring lots of tartar mercenaries, and I was like damn. It sort of makes me wonder about the soldiery concept of loyalty, and how much it's related to mass mobilization. Sort of natural warrior societies of light horsemen never seemed to care, and the horse riding aristocracy certainly didn't. I don't know if it's an enlightenment napoleonic thing,
I know that it's always commented on how the free men of france and poland fighting for napoleon had high morale and were super happy to follow orders, while the mercenary and gunpoint criminal dregs of the prussian and other european infantries were always at risk of doing plundering or running away without officers to shoot them or torture them if captured. I don't know! But your knowledge is great and I hope to one day learn many thingswell, slavs have always been intermingling with turkic and mongol horse lords ever since the southern migrations, afaik. like there was a combined Slavic-Avar kingdom at a point.
That makes sense. That must be what Lev Gumilev and passionarity are all about
Tsargon posted:yes, because the most important reason that tsarist russia was such a shitshow (the strangling political power of the aristocracy) was essentially eliminated overnight. as such many of the modernization programs which were proposed and then aborted or sabotaged in late tsarist russia (such as witte's industrialization plan which is broadly speaking the same preobrazhensky plan which stalin adopted after he killed preobrazhensky) were able to be implemented effectively.
right. my question is more about whether the soviet period should be understood in terms of an intensification of development or striking out a different course entirely.
littlegreenpills posted:news flash everybody everywhere you go is exactly the same as everyone else; any perception you have to the contrary is your depressing urge to impose color and variety on a world made of endless fluctuations that coalesce into white, uniform noise
isnt this a good thing? isn't it our metaphysical duty, as communists and as human beings, to try and return the universe to its state of original undivided one-ness?
bonclay posted:littlegreenpills posted:news flash everybody everywhere you go is exactly the same as everyone else; any perception you have to the contrary is your depressing urge to impose color and variety on a world made of endless fluctuations that coalesce into white, uniform noise
isnt this a good thing? isn't it our metaphysical duty, as communists and as human beings, to try and return the universe to its state of original undivided one-ness?
How reactionary.
babyfinland posted:Tsargon posted:yes, because the most important reason that tsarist russia was such a shitshow (the strangling political power of the aristocracy) was essentially eliminated overnight. as such many of the modernization programs which were proposed and then aborted or sabotaged in late tsarist russia (such as witte's industrialization plan which is broadly speaking the same preobrazhensky plan which stalin adopted after he killed preobrazhensky) were able to be implemented effectively.
right. my question is more about whether the soviet period should be understood in terms of an intensification of development or striking out a different course entirely.
the obsession of the 'anti-revisionists' is punitive measures against the 'Evil' degeneration the 'striking out a different course' that the revolution after an enormously devastating world war signified. it's amazing how all the efforts to revive the spirit of pre-revolutionary Russia (like re-upholding the late Romanovs) have ended in a massive failure and demographic collapse. now it's more of a mix of soviet nostalgia and charting a new course of the fascist tendencies.
intensification of development is definitely one of the end-results, but there was many new flights developed from revolutionary programme and its side-effects that wouldn't have necessarily developed from its pre-revolutionary kernel (such as the schools of psychology and the development of public space, for example, which are two elements absolutely indicative of a transformation of social relations)
Crow posted:babyfinland posted:Tsargon posted:yes, because the most important reason that tsarist russia was such a shitshow (the strangling political power of the aristocracy) was essentially eliminated overnight. as such many of the modernization programs which were proposed and then aborted or sabotaged in late tsarist russia (such as witte's industrialization plan which is broadly speaking the same preobrazhensky plan which stalin adopted after he killed preobrazhensky) were able to be implemented effectively.
right. my question is more about whether the soviet period should be understood in terms of an intensification of development or striking out a different course entirely.
the obsession of the 'anti-revisionists' is punitive measures against the 'Evil' degeneration the 'striking out a different course' that the revolution after an enormously devastating world war signified. it's amazing how all the efforts to revive the spirit of pre-revolutionary Russia (like re-upholding the late Romanovs) have ended in a massive failure and demographic collapse. now it's more of a mix of soviet nostalgia and charting a new course of the fascist tendencies.
intensification of development is definitely one of the end-results, but there was many new flights developed from revolutionary programme and its side-effects that wouldn't have necessarily developed from its pre-revolutionary kernel (such as the schools of psychology and the development of public space, for example, which are two elements absolutely indicative of a transformation of social relations)
its odd if the most significant effect of the revolution on the historical trajectory of russian society were the cultural programs implemented in service to the allegedly more fundamental economic project, but in light of the agamben i've been reading it sort of makes sense to me to view the economic revolution as having taken the place of the sovereign exception (i.e. the one outside the law who protects the law) so that while the economic development simply intensified in its course, the other realms of society were subordinated to this "new" sovereign whose change of gravity warped their orbit
babyfinland posted:Crow posted:babyfinland posted:Tsargon posted:yes, because the most important reason that tsarist russia was such a shitshow (the strangling political power of the aristocracy) was essentially eliminated overnight. as such many of the modernization programs which were proposed and then aborted or sabotaged in late tsarist russia (such as witte's industrialization plan which is broadly speaking the same preobrazhensky plan which stalin adopted after he killed preobrazhensky) were able to be implemented effectively.
right. my question is more about whether the soviet period should be understood in terms of an intensification of development or striking out a different course entirely.
the obsession of the 'anti-revisionists' is punitive measures against the 'Evil' degeneration the 'striking out a different course' that the revolution after an enormously devastating world war signified. it's amazing how all the efforts to revive the spirit of pre-revolutionary Russia (like re-upholding the late Romanovs) have ended in a massive failure and demographic collapse. now it's more of a mix of soviet nostalgia and charting a new course of the fascist tendencies.
intensification of development is definitely one of the end-results, but there was many new flights developed from revolutionary programme and its side-effects that wouldn't have necessarily developed from its pre-revolutionary kernel (such as the schools of psychology and the development of public space, for example, which are two elements absolutely indicative of a transformation of social relations)its odd if the most significant effect of the revolution on the historical trajectory of russian society were the cultural programs implemented in service to the allegedly more fundamental economic project, but in light of the agamben i've been reading it sort of makes sense to me to view the economic revolution as having taken the place of the sovereign exception (i.e. the one outside the law who protects the law) so that while the economic development simply intensified in its course, the other realms of society were subordinated to this "new" sovereign whose change of gravity warped their orbit
What? There were huge effects on Russian society because of the economic programs. Just the massive shift from agriculture to industry, huge increases in literacy, jumps in life expectancy in fairly uniform distributions, and women's inclusion in the formal economy. The fact that certain capitalist nations have achieved the comparable results does not mean that the course of Eastern development would be able to achieve the same--as we can see in the hundreds of failed capitalist states. You cannot separate the "intensification of development" from the new vector of direction.
elemennop posted:The fact that certain capitalist nations have achieved the comparable results does not mean that the course of Eastern development would be able to achieve the same--as we can see in the hundreds of failed capitalist states.
lol
also i dont think it should be taken for granted that russia was destined for some sort of stagnant feudal society forevermore, it had a burgeoning industrial sector and had begun to make colonial inroads to the south, all of which was in fact simply intensified with the new regime
good book that compares the ivan the terrible period and the stalinist period as 'pure' expressions of western european cosmopolitianism, either in the renaissance or the enlightenment. (thx jools)
babyfinland posted:are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but ok
Ironicwarcriminal posted:yup, a while ago though
yeah i need to get around to it, it seems like its pretty much The Book to Read on the ussr
babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:
babyfinland posted:
are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but ok
i don't defend all of the ussr's treatment of its satellite states (i am a serb after all), but you can't really compare the amount of extraction of the western colonial powers and the ussr. i mean, just restricting ourselves to the numbers, the british empire was extracting from populations several orders of magnitude larger than itself, whereas even the Tsarist state was forced to mostly exploit its own populations.
elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:
babyfinland posted:
are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but oki don't defend all of the ussr's treatment of its satellite states (i am a serb after all), but you can't really compare the amount of extraction of the western colonial powers and the ussr. i mean, just restricting ourselves to the numbers, the british empire was extracting from populations several orders of magnitude larger than itself, whereas even the Tsarist state was forced to mostly exploit its own populations.
yeah i just dont see that as such a radical break. primitive accumulation is primitive accumulation, i dont see what national boundaries have to do with it.
its an interesting thing to note for sure but i dont think that it merits the claim that the bolshevik revolution engendered a markedly divergent mode of industrial development
but then again so did FDR lol
An expert on the Taliban's modern habits and practices, Antonio Giustozzi asserts a controversial point about the role of violence and coercion in state building, which also happens to be relevant to liberal interventionism. Liberal interventionism's dominant discourse dangerously neglects the role of coercion and the monopoly of violence in the countries it purports to aid. Many scholars assume that a functional liberal state can emerge from a settlement between warring parties, especially if the agreement is characterized by political inclusiveness and a social contract. Yet similar post--Cold War deals have exposed the fallacy of such logic.
Giustozzi contends that a key flaw lies in the confusion over the specifics of state formation and state building. In his view, completely different "rules of the game" apply in each scenario. Naked coercion is a key component of state formation, and very few states have been formed without recourse to it. In contrast, the history of state consolidation after initial formation reflects a taming of violence and a sophisticated method of managing it.
The Art of Coercion introduces a new framework for analyzing the role of security in its broadest sense, particularly its place in state formation and state building. While focusing largely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century examples, Giustozzi discusses instances of coercive power throughout history, ranging from its use in the Carolingian empire to South Africa's Boer War, and from China's Warring States period to Emiliano Zapata's Mexican Revolution. He scrutinizes the role of armies, guerilla bands, mercenaries, police forces, and intelligence services, exploring why some coups fail while others succeed and how the monopoly of violence decays over time.
babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:
babyfinland posted:
are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but oki don't defend all of the ussr's treatment of its satellite states (i am a serb after all), but you can't really compare the amount of extraction of the western colonial powers and the ussr. i mean, just restricting ourselves to the numbers, the british empire was extracting from populations several orders of magnitude larger than itself, whereas even the Tsarist state was forced to mostly exploit its own populations.
yeah i just dont see that as such a radical break. primitive accumulation is primitive accumulation, i dont see what national boundaries have to do with it.
its an interesting thing to note for sure but i dont think that it merits the claim that the bolshevik revolution engendered a markedly divergent mode of industrial development
well, for one, the soviet model increased life expectancy (and other GOOD stuff) throughout industrialization, and it's true for its satellite states as well (admittedly to lesser degrees). whereas when looking at the western powers, if one included the welfare of its colonial subjects, it's a lot less favorable.
elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:
babyfinland posted:
are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but oki don't defend all of the ussr's treatment of its satellite states (i am a serb after all), but you can't really compare the amount of extraction of the western colonial powers and the ussr. i mean, just restricting ourselves to the numbers, the british empire was extracting from populations several orders of magnitude larger than itself, whereas even the Tsarist state was forced to mostly exploit its own populations.
yeah i just dont see that as such a radical break. primitive accumulation is primitive accumulation, i dont see what national boundaries have to do with it.
its an interesting thing to note for sure but i dont think that it merits the claim that the bolshevik revolution engendered a markedly divergent mode of industrial developmentwell, for one, the soviet model increased life expectancy (and other GOOD stuff) throughout industrialization, and it's true for its satellite states as well (admittedly to lesser degrees). whereas when looking at the western powers, if one included the welfare of its colonial subjects, it's a lot less favorable.
all that says to me is that the soviet state was then a more pure expression of modern governmentality, the biopower state, management of bare life, etc. and so on *flicks nose*
babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:babyfinland posted:elemennop posted:
babyfinland posted:
are you saying that industrial development is some kind of universal stage of civilization that exists after agrarianism and that western states tend towards it naturally while the despotic east needs the kind of voluntarism and coercion that the bolsheviks provided
no, i'm just not convinced the development that occurred in western capitalist countries can be universally reproduced since it's not being funded by colonial extraction. not that there aren't counter examples like singapore, taiwan, and south korea. but for the most part, they were subsidized by the imperial powers and under strong central control.
i dont see how the ussr breaks substantively with that mold but oki don't defend all of the ussr's treatment of its satellite states (i am a serb after all), but you can't really compare the amount of extraction of the western colonial powers and the ussr. i mean, just restricting ourselves to the numbers, the british empire was extracting from populations several orders of magnitude larger than itself, whereas even the Tsarist state was forced to mostly exploit its own populations.
yeah i just dont see that as such a radical break. primitive accumulation is primitive accumulation, i dont see what national boundaries have to do with it.
its an interesting thing to note for sure but i dont think that it merits the claim that the bolshevik revolution engendered a markedly divergent mode of industrial developmentwell, for one, the soviet model increased life expectancy (and other GOOD stuff) throughout industrialization, and it's true for its satellite states as well (admittedly to lesser degrees). whereas when looking at the western powers, if one included the welfare of its colonial subjects, it's a lot less favorable.
all that says to me is that the soviet state was then a more pure expression of modern governmentality, the biopower state, management of bare life, etc. and so on *flicks nose*
well, if you say so, but if you want others to understand you, you're going to have to explain yourself and define your terms a bit more
elemennop posted:well, if you say so, but if you want others to understand you, you're going to have to explain yourself and define your terms a bit more
getfiscal posted:also maybe building huge industrial cities with gigantic factories and dams and shit instead of a bunch of light factories was not efficient? evidence: the huge struggle to undo that under every post-stalinist leader?
If I didn't work on questionable infrastrucutre you decry while you were making your name on S.A. I'd be working in the dark. I don't get political points for being an idealist, I have to do the best I can with what I have.
getfiscal posted:catpee posted:
obviously planning worked pretty well for a while
{citation needed}
World War 2, bIATCH
getfiscal posted:let's imagine the russian economy had the bolsheviks not risen to power. hmm first well we don't have the civil war which killed off the entire industrial working class and made stalinism necessary in the first place. then maybe we don't have the lost decade of terrible soviet management. then maybe not the huge decrease in real wages that made huge scale development possible. also maybe seven million ukrainians would still be alive which might help a bit with the ol' war effort in world war 2. if germany would have gone to the extreme right for fuck all reason if there werent' a bolshevik dictatorship anyway.
why do you think the nazis came to power because of ~*Stalin*~ rather than because of the German economy being fucked due to WW1 and the '30s crisis? Stalin didn't create or puppetmaster the German communists and the German people didn't vote for the KPD for no reason.
Hitler would've planned on conquering eastern europe anyway since they were dirty slavs and germany needed lebensraum to become a true superpower like the US. see: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336382466&sr=8-1
babyfinland posted:Crow posted:the obsession of the 'anti-revisionists' is punitive measures against the 'Evil' degeneration the 'striking out a different course' that the revolution after an enormously devastating world war signified. it's amazing how all the efforts to revive the spirit of pre-revolutionary Russia (like re-upholding the late Romanovs) have ended in a massive failure and demographic collapse. now it's more of a mix of soviet nostalgia and charting a new course of the fascist tendencies.
intensification of development is definitely one of the end-results, but there was many new flights developed from revolutionary programme and its side-effects that wouldn't have necessarily developed from its pre-revolutionary kernel (such as the schools of psychology and the development of public space, for example, which are two elements absolutely indicative of a transformation of social relations)its odd if the most significant effect of the revolution on the historical trajectory of russian society were the cultural programs implemented in service to the allegedly more fundamental economic project, but in light of the agamben i've been reading it sort of makes sense to me to view the economic revolution as having taken the place of the sovereign exception (i.e. the one outside the law who protects the law) so that while the economic development simply intensified in its course, the other realms of society were subordinated to this "new" sovereign whose change of gravity warped their orbit
But the patterns that I described, new fields of psychological therapy and public spatial relation, are not simply taylorist continuation of prerevolutionary economic development, but positionally 'New' trajectories of economic development, particularly in regard to social relations which mediate economic realms. So how to explain this 'economic exception' which warped the sort of taylorist automaton relation between parts, into something like the Vygotsky school of psychology which gave rise to a voluntarist, Activity theory of individuated worlds. That seems to me a different flight that deserves consideration apart from Western capitalist development.
discipline posted:elemennop posted:well, for one, the soviet model increased life expectancy (and other GOOD stuff) throughout industrialization, and it's true for its satellite states as well (admittedly to lesser degrees). whereas when looking at the western powers, if one included the welfare of its colonial subjects, it's a lot less favorable.
the thing about life expectancy as an indicator of wellbeing in a population is that it is really really really easy to raise life expectancy. you basically need listerine and a handbook on how to deliver babies, not necessarily an industrial sector.
well considering most measures of life expectancy don't include deaths in childbirth (iirc), and the fact that there's a considerable disparity in life expectancy between developing countries, then it's not quite trivial. i mean, i agree it's mostly a question of distribution of antibiotics, hygienic products, and food, but that was just one example i was providing, and considering that the life expectancy in russia still hasn't rebounded back to USSR-era levels, it's particularly damning of the current systems.
