"Yes, Bolsheviks initiated peace talks and this proves that they were pro-war. No, I will not elaborate." Why are you pretending like it was not the Bolsheviks that tried to pull Russia out of the war? Sure, the decision to reject the treaty was idiotic, but the peace talks and even Brest-Litovsk, for all of it's harshness were due to the Bolsheviks trying to end the war, not prolong it.
Yes, it was idiotic, and that is what I condemn them for. They were not willing to accept peace on the terms initially offered, so they were compelled to make peace on even harsher terms. I merely note that this does not make them different from the Provisional Government.
Yeah, it was a bit hard to exterminate the opposition for Kerensky and the boys because most of the Army WAS the opposition. I wonder why didn't he get a medal for NOT gassing the fucking leftists, that's a lot to ask for already. Hey what did Denikin and Kornilov do when oh shit oh fuck
Yes, I rather agree. The primary fault of the Provisional Government was in fact its weakness: unlike the left or the right, it was not willing or able to simply shoot the opposition, to repeat my previous words. There's in fact a rather interesting school of thought that the Kornilov Affair was in fact caused by mixed messages due to Kerensky chickening out on both sides of the matter.
Ayy there we go, when the REAL democracy got it's hand on an army it did what it did best - exterminate the jews. Freedom and liberty, baby 
What about our boy, one country, one nation, one Supreme Leader Kolchak do?
Of course, these are both White generals. None of these people were represented in the Provisional Government, except Kornilov as Commander in Chief from July to his arrest in August for treason. I'm puzzled what this has to do at all with the democratic credentials of the Provisional Government. People like Denikin, Kolchak, Iudenevich, Wrangel, and especially Kornilov only rose to civil as well as military power because the Bolshevik coup afforded them a political vacuum that they could fill. I don't blame Lenin for that; it was merely a consequence of his actions, but neither I don't ascribe to Kerensky or the Provisional Government the sort of virulent anti-Semitism that the Whites would later exhibit. That was the fruit of a century of systematic indoctrination that in its most recent form to that era was traceable directly to Nicholas I (who imbibed it from childhood from his nanny Jane Lyon), but existed in older streams long before: another cursed fruit of the tsars' poisoned tree.
Ah yes, Bolsheviks, the famous advocates of national pride. Got anything else than poorly aimed mockery, like evidence?
...
So, uh, if you're suggesting Lenin and the boys only turned on the war effort when it suited them, then you must talking of different Lenins and different boys because that just is wrong.
It's the cynicism of the people who desire power who fulfill their desires: in this case, the transformation of Russian society along modern lines. They did not seek peace leading in because, as the quotes you posted indicate, they thought the war the best way to topple the tsarist government, and that this would be the best outcome. Having accomplished this, their goal then became to consolidate power in their own hands, first by discrediting the provisional government that replaced the tsar, then by eliminating the democratic opposition when it suited them, and at the end of all of this, by securing power in their own hands. I only ascribe to Lenin the willingness to adopt measures similar to those he was historically willing to take, as in the declaration that all military actions needed to be authorized by the soviets (Order 1 of the Petrograd Soviet); attempting to offer decisive proof of his planned course of action had the Provisional Government adopted a different policy would be difficult without a time machine. In case you aren't content with your own quotes, I'll add these two exhibiting his willingness to secure the means of change before finishing the change, regardless of the methods used, and to discard tools should they prove unfitting.
Lenin, 6 November 1917, personal letters
"Seizure of power is the point of the uprising; its political task will be clarified after the seizure"
Lenin, 22 December 1917, Pravda
"If in a burst of enthusiasm the people has elected a very good parliament...then we ought to make it a long parliament, and if the elections have not proved a success, then we should seek to disperse parliament not after two years but, if possible, after two weeks."
Ultimately, though, the proof in the pudding regarding any outbreak of pacifism is in the Caucasus, in the destruction of the nascent governments of Central Asia and less successful attempts in the Baltic and Finland, and most prominently, Poland from 1918-1920 (though formal war began with a Polish invasion in 1919). It is not the act of a singlemindedly peace-minded leader to pursue the Polish war to the finish, but rather the power of a leader with the willingness to recognize what fights they can win and what fights they cannot, and the readiness to fight the former while avoiding the latter. I don't particularly care for the kind of foreign aggrandizement their policies represented, but I do respect the political judgments involved if not the...let us term it the overestimation of their own military prowess that so infected the Sovnarkom in the wake of their victory in the Civil War.
Aye mate you might be mistaking bolsheviks for anarchists. Marxist-Leninist thought didn't require the immediate dissolution of the state. I can't really respond to this with anything else but "try again with a more appropriate strawman".
No, this refers to the major actual sentiment of the time and one of the key issues the Provisional Government stumbled on in my opinion. Most rural Russians did not and would not have cared about any of those things I derided in that half-quote, so long as the Provisional Government governed. What they cared about were matters of life or death to them: food to eat and the right to the lands they worked as tenants for absentee landlords. Where Kerensky stumbled was on insisting that any solution, temporary or permanent, to the open question of land reform had to wait for the Provisional Government to convene a constitutional convention, form a constitution, and create a permanent government, and many others from Lenin to Chernov* disliked him for it. The rural peasants did not care to wait for the Constituent Assembly; they were doing it in their own time and at their own pace, and used the land committees set up by Provisional Government for their own ends. A constitution, as Lenin later proved, is merely a slip of paper, though I do take some quiet amusement in the fact that even as the expropriations continued without central government, they did in fact often take certain forms that could be taken for legality without any particularly strenuous ex post facto justification: frequently handled by village or volost assemblies, with popular involvement, and often permitting landowners that did not resist a plot that could be worked without hired labour, and even with documentation attesting to the land transfers, albeit often signed under implied or explicit duress.
*As an aside, Chernov was not particularly revolutionary for a Social Revolutionary compared to compatriots like Spiridonova, as illustrated by the famous demand that one riotous crowd made of him to "take power when it's offered you, son of a bitch", but even he retained immediate expropriation as a core part of the SR platform. He attempted to moderate himself for his political allies in the Provisional Government, but he also authorized the peasant communes to take over any land that was "poorly utilized." This attempt led to a bit of humiliation when he found his attempt at a unilateral land reform summarily countermanded by Tsereteli, but in truth, it likely would have only been a rubber-stamp on a situation that was already generally in effect through wide swathes of . He politically survived the fall of the Provisional Government to chair the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks briefly assembled only to suffer his final political death when they decided an SR democracy did not suit their desires and he had to flee into exile, but this is perhaps preferable to Spiridonova's more literal death after bouncing in and out of prison under both Lenin and Stalin.Never said otherwise, (this time I'm not actually trying to insult you) are you sure you haven't misread my post?
Check the posts I was referring to: I was referring to MetalSlimeHunt outright arguing that the October Revolution was justified as overthrowing the tsars. That's the entire reason I posted in the first place. I wouldn't have continued this derail if you hadn't insulted me, and I'll cut it off here, but I will note this: not everyone who disagrees with you in any matter is, as you put it, "intentionally wrong." Politeness does not reflect on the person you address, but the person who is or is not polite themselves. It is not a particularly onerous burden. That said, I'll certainly leave you with what you refer to as your own smug self-satisfaction if that is what you prefer; I'd prefer an honest exchange of views to one in which you decide you're talking down to crude and mean-minded peasants. That, not your political positions, is what I find disagreeable; I don't mind if people disagree with me, so long as they respect the possibility that I'm disagreeing with them for honest reasons and not out of any sort of pettifoggery.
Author
Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4223478 times)