#481
After that post i emptyquoted i cant continue, i think this man panopticon may be trolling. But I dare not say I hope
#482
Didn't they come from 420chan. if so he's probably completely sincere in his cargo cult NEET understanding of political ideas
#483
I dont know what 420chan is other than mustang talked about it. Also panopticon is a cool album by catharsis from portland but the drummer is a rapist so i feel the same way i feel about this mans posts: betrayed and sad
#484
Im a socialist but as a big believer in and expert on Bird Law i cant support the USSR. The USSR lacked any coherent system of Bird Law
#485

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

I dont know what 420chan is other than mustang talked about it.



A place to smoke weed

#486
So like the walk in freezer of a restaurant? (Only true proletarian once and former food service posters will understand dis sh'd)
#487

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Im a socialist but as a big believer in and expert on Bird Law i cant support the USSR. The USSR lacked any coherent system of Bird Law



ive already mentioned some of the reasons i'd prefer rule of law over individual dictatorship (predicting when the state will inflict violence upon you and so being able to avoid it). other posters like red canadian have also said they think the purges were bad. so dont pretend this criticism is insane or irrational.

#488
Everyone here thinks the purges were bad - but get this, thats not the part of what youre saying thats dumb as fuk
#489

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Everyone here thinks the purges were bad - but get this, thats not the part of what youre saying thats dumb as fuk


then what

#490
Lol
#491

blinkandwheeze posted:

NEET



when this first showed up i waited months to look up what it meant & in the meantime i made things up based on the rest of the sentence where i would find it. Near Educated Enemy Teen. No Effort Elder Trolls. Nine Enemas, Emilio's Tired and so on, those were the days and now i can never go back there again.

#492
Near Exactly Emulating Trotsky
#493
Fun facts to blow ur coworkers minds

#1: stalin = great guy did nothing wrong
#494
Obviously Stalin did things wrong. The problem is it shouldn't be a question of "what did Stalin do wrong?" when we haven't even answered the question "What did Stalin do?" A lot of these documents we're discussing became public is like 2 decades ago, and havent been seriously looked at by more than a few dozen people - but these standards dont apply to capitalist countries. France isnt viewed as a failed capitalist project
#495
i dont see how i am the troll when all i am doing is saying what i really feel. sometimes i get angry, okay. but i am not saying things like "Everyone here thinks the purges were bad" (EmanuelaBrolandi) a few pages after someone else says "(the purge victims) were attempting to restore capitalism in the USSR" (swampman)
#496

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Obviously Stalin did things wrong. The problem is it shouldn't be a question of "what did Stalin do wrong?" when we haven't even answered the question "What did Stalin do?"



he shot a lot of people who clearly weren't attempting to restore capitalism

#497
Victims of the purges were attempting to restore capitalism in Russia and innocent people were found guilty of things they didnt do. Its not that hard.
#498

Panopticon posted:

he shot a lot of people who clearly weren't attempting to restore capitalism



I would say I have a bigger problem with you thinking the USSR was an 'individual dictatorship' then that the purges were bad. It only takes a cursory glance at affairs within the USSR to see that Stalin wasnt a dictator.

#499
Actually thinking about it the term dictator is some serious bullshit. Even calling Hitler a dictator is absurd. He ran all his actions by the Society of Friends and his political moves were nothing more than the will of certain sections of industry and finance. The correct term for pro-capitalist 'dictators' like Hitler should be Executor (of the will of the financial elite)
#500

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

"What did Stalin do?"



saved the world from teh nazbros, well him and 27mil dead comrades plus some others who didnt die

#501

tears posted:

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

"What did Stalin do?"

saved the world from teh nazbros, well him and 27mil dead comrades plus some others who didnt die



rip Voznosensky

#502

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Panopticon posted:

he shot a lot of people who clearly weren't attempting to restore capitalism

I would say I have a bigger problem with you thinking the USSR was an 'individual dictatorship' then that the purges were bad. It only takes a cursory glance at affairs within the USSR to see that Stalin wasnt a dictator.



so stalin was appointed defence minister in 1941 on the basis of... his logistical expertise? he was the best man for the job? and he was appointed field marshal in 1943 because of his experience as a general staff officer?

#503
Youre right they shoulda hired some ex white army dudes
#504
Who did vo nguyen giap murder to get to his position? An effortpost by panopticon
#505
With it's strong base in the Czarist Russian military, the communist party made a shockng move in 1943 when it passed over one of its various ex-white army commander members for a man with only guerilla warfare experience whod only been involved in winning 2 prior wars
#506

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Youre right they shoulda hired some ex white army dudes



the soviet armed forces had been training new officers for decades by that point. stalin had most of the good ones shot in the purges but there were plenty left over.

#507
Which ones
#508
zhukov, timoshenko, rokossovsky

comedy option: grigori kulik, whom stalin kept from the chopping block for his fine work opposing the introduction of the t34 and the ppsh subgun
#509
So youre upset about who got promoted to what degree? Zukhov for example was a member of the politburo and held an extremely high military rank. The politburo commanded the civil war and Stalin had been involved in doing so since the USSR was created
#510
i am upset stalin was able to dictate who held high military rank
#511
See thats my point - what reason do you have to think he dictated that other than that he was 'elected' and you know he was a dictator?
#512
Panop you have said you want a rule of law to prevent abuse of power etc. But you have not said what a socialist rule of law would be. You have simply restated bourgeois laws and then denied that the law has a class character. Marx and Engels have plenty of work on why this is an absurd notion as does Lenin, though obviously Pashukanis is the Marxist 'law guy'. Rather than try and explain yourself you started posting dumb strawmen and obviously trolling because you were dealing with something you're not an expert in. That's fine, you're allowed to say "I do not know enough about jurisprudence to understand what the class nature of law is" but you're not allowed to not listen to anyone else and flail around.
#513

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

See thats my point - what reason do you have to think he dictated that other than that he was 'elected' and you know he was a dictator?



everything i have read on the matter says stalin controlled senior military promotions. if you have better sources on who promoted whom, post them

eg moscow to stalingrad, earl ziemke



Edited by Panopticon ()

#514
Here is the thing about Stalin. He was paranoid. However, I think it's best not to deride him too strongly for it, since in his case the whole (western capitalist) world was out to get him, and his paranoia led to the destruction of Nazism. What's more, by the time of the purges, he'd already experienced ridiculously destructive wars aimed at destroying the Soviet Union, as well as domestic forces that would do insane damage to the economy and themselves merely to weaken the Soviet Union against foreign enemies.
A far better target for anti-Stalinism would be the role he played in the Spanish civil war, weakening the revolution there to prevent Britain and France from siding with Hitler. Once again though, one has to put it in the context of his life and the times. There were powerful elements in both countries who would rather support Hitler than him, and the Soviet Union, in his mind, could hardly survive against all those forces again aligned against it.
The Russian civil war, and even the Paris commune, are illustrative of the importance of class war. In both cases, enemy countries that were fighting incredibly destructive wars, decided at the first emergence of class struggle that, actually our differences aren't that bad, and we should work together to crush this. It's the most dramatic about-face I've seen in history. What's more, the same thing has happened multiple times during revolutions, where formerly bitter enemies like the petit bourgeois and the aristocracy align once the workers get a bit too ambitious.
In the context of the purges, you had a powerful foreign enemy, that was re-arming and increasing it's bellicosity towards the Soviet Union. From Stalin's perspective, it was probably safer to go too far, then not far enough. Are there many examples of people within the Soviet Union who tried to weaken it from the inside during the war? Compared to the Civil war I'd have to say no.
#515

babyhueypnewton posted:

Panop you have said you want a rule of law to prevent abuse of power etc. But you have not said what a socialist rule of law would be. You have simply restated bourgeois laws and then denied that the law has a class character. Marx and Engels have plenty of work on why this is an absurd notion as does Lenin, though obviously Pashukanis is the Marxist 'law guy'. Rather than try and explain yourself you started posting dumb strawmen and obviously trolling because you were dealing with something you're not an expert in. That's fine, you're allowed to say "I do not know enough about jurisprudence to understand what the class nature of law is" but you're not allowed to not listen to anyone else and flail around.



i have explained why i think saying law has a class nature is a meaningless buzzword. you haven't addressed any of my specific points, you have just written off the argument as trolling.

#516
Yes, that is a page of military promotions and dates and someome saying Stalin Did It that you posted
#517

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Yes, that is a page of military promotions and dates and someome saying Stalin Did It that you posted



post a better source.

#518
Do we have letters in stalins hand authorizing military promotions? How did he decree an officers promotion each time he did it?
#519

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Do we have letters in stalins hand authorizing military promotions? How did he decree an officers promotion each time he did it?



i don't think it's reasonable to ask me to provide primary sources in russian. i think it's reasonable for me to ask you for a secondary source with an opposing view, however.

#520
That "source" page you screenshotted is a list you could find in wikipedia and a dude saying "stalin made all this shit up as he went along dreaming up his vision to be barely worse than hitler"