9k:RD/ Nikolai Bukharin (49,57)
Main entry
- Nikolai Bukharin / ニコライ・ブハーリン [1] -> he quit, but there's not a better range to put him in
- Nikolai Bukharin -> he arguably died a Stalinist, when you see the quotes below.
The hope of the world
- he is the hope of the world / Stalin was the hope of the world / I must say that Feuchtwanger did not get at the core of the matter. He stopped half way, not everything was clear to him; when, as a matter of fact, everything is clear. ... you cannot do what Feuchtwanger does in relation to Trotsky in particular, when he places him on the same plane as Stalin. ... For in reality the whole country stands behind Stalin; he is the hope of the world; he is a creator. (Bukharin) [2]
- All the people lined up behind Stalin (Krupskaya) [3]
A vast black quagmire
- a vast black vacuity / For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because ... when you ask yourself: "lf you must die, what are you dying for?" — an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die unrepented. ... And when you ask yourself: "Very well, suppose you do not die; suppose by some miracle you remain alive, again what for? Isolated from everybody, an enemy of the people, in an inhuman position, completely isolated from everything that constitutes the essence of life..." ... everything personal, till the personal incrustation, all the rancour, pride, and a number of other things, fall away, disappear. ... The logic of this struggle led us step by step into the blackest quagmire. And it has once more been proved that departure from the position of Bolshevism means siding with political counter-revolutionary banditry. (Bukharin)
Nikolai Bukharin + Trotskyism could never be true = a vast black vacuity. - why would that masochist let himself be broken / the specifically modern malady which makes such repentant intellectuals radically change their opinions and renounce in a masochistic and exhibitionist manner their own testimony, becoming champions of a cause quite contrary to that which they began serving with great fanfare (Breton) [4]
Nikolai Bukharin + Why drop out of Trotskyism? = this.
a vast black vacuity + Why drop out of Trotskyism? = this. - why would that masochist let himself be broken -> an important thing to note here is that Breton never had to endure the harsh conditions of a Third World country that result in consequences for all a country's citizens if the government doesn't make them all do exactly what the First World wants (generally, using up the world's resources and churning out wealth in order to prevent war and all actions against the law). today, Dengism commits "atrocities" mostly to appease the First World, so it follows that some unclear fraction of the things Stalin's government did happened for the same reasons. and Stalin was definitely preferable to Deng, because he actually believed in developing Soviet civilization through skipping over capitalism to the era of socialism rather than just treating transition to capitalism as the goal of Marxism. it's all too easy to be "anti-Stalinist" because you don't actually believe in skipping capitalism and are fine with letting capitalism run free over the earth so countries can dominate each other and treat each other as superior and inferior races, all to make getting to Trotskyism easier. so if you're going to take a stance against Stalin what you have to do is recognize that the world's populations are plural and in physical contradiction almost trying to kill each other just because they're populations of living breathing organisms, and then you have to find a way that the necessarily plural populations of the world can come together into a greater object without breaking down their defenses against each other [yes, primarily defenses against the bourgeoisie] or creating an elite center of theorists that has to exert control over everyone else just to manage that baseline state of plural populations competing against each other. crack that problem and Trotskyism actually starts to look credible.
Related
- thank god they didn't beat me / When a liberal is abused, he says, 'Thank God they didn't beat me.' When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn't kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay (Lenin 1906) [5]
- thank god they didn't beat me -> that is both very funny and sadly a mood
you see it in small ways all the time with things like The People's Forum being glad not to be imprisoned for free speech after everyone for years and years already going out of their way not to "look Communist". it's a little frightening to remember that in the Russian Empire, yeah, that was literal.
but. in a different context I can highly sympathize with people in the early Soviet Union determining Stalin was so much better than the monarchy despite various problems with the CPSU just because for the first time in a long time the laws were mostly reasonable and they actually wouldn't be punished if they followed the rules. sometimes... I just want reality to give me a rest and I want nothing else.
Ideologies or fields
- / modern Stalinism (2020s)
- / early Trotskyism
- / Trotskyist secret operations
- / Liberal-republicanism
Wavebuilder combinations
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