Comments on: It was ninety years ago today

By: Annakova

Annakova — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:45:40 +0000

“Savouring” gave it away.

You have to give up favorite words.

By: Annakova

Annakova — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:44:21 +0000

Damn, I should work for the CIA and get paid.

KGB was harder. ))

By: Annakova

Annakova — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:38:29 +0000

Who’s a Russophile then, Sir Henry?

By: Sir Henry Casingbroke

Sir Henry Casingbroke — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:42:37 +0000

Well, the point I was making is that a specialist cadre such as the one we are talking about was small, comparatively speaking, in relation to the size of the movement as a whole, and 20,000 would make them rather busy. Kaplan was apparently a “sole trader” and not part of a squad, although she did make bombs as part of a unit in earlier days. She was arrested when a bomb went off in the “lab” (injuring her eye) and did a bit of time in Siberia. She was a hard case. After shooting Lenin she could have shot through but allowed herself to be arrested. This too was part of the modus operandi – to go down fighting, not quite suicide but close. This supports your “genuine” assertion. So, Katz, we are not in any major disagreement and I can get back to savouring the delights of my new CD, Lunatico, by the Gotan Project.

By: Katz

Katz — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:55:47 +0000

Not all SRs went around armed looking for a target.

So? A well-organised party in an authoritarian state would be ill-advised to recommend that all its cadres become terrorists. Take the Provisional IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, etc., etc., as examples of this tendency to specialise. The point is, that the SRs maintained a terrorist cadre.

Like I said, I was surprised by the figure as well. I’ve done a little research on it since last evening, but haven’t found any corroborative info.

Also, SR were not Social Revolutionaries BUT SocialIST Revolutionaries. They can be considered well to the left of the Bolshevist clique and appeared very genuine about carrying out a revolution, whereas Leninism swapped one authoritarian state for another, moreover, one that became increasingly authoritarian, interventionism notwithstanding.

Again, so? You’re only ‘genuine’ about revolution in a violent situation if you are left holding the gun, or it is prised from your dead hands.

By: Sir Henry Casingbroke

Sir Henry Casingbroke — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:41:48 +0000

Just two things: Katz, just because Pipes was a right-wing Bolshie hater and spawned a Neo-Con, does not mean – ipso facto – he is wrong, even if it was in his interest to quote those figs, as you point out, because it suited his line. I find 20,000 hard to credit and I have no line to push. The SR hit squads, of whom there weren’t that many, were a special group of (self-decribed) terrorists within the SR. Not all SRs went around armed looking for a target.

Also, SR were not Social Revolutionaries BUT SocialIST Revolutionaries. They can be considered well to the left of the Bolshevist clique and appeared very genuine about carrying out a revolution, whereas Leninism swapped one authoritarian state for another, moreover, one that became increasingly authoritarian, interventionism notwithstanding. Workers became no better off. The “bread for all” slogan is ironic in view of the fact that just before he got popped by Feiga (1918), Lenin was stopped by another woman demanding a stop to bread being confiscated from people in the city by armed “revolutionaries”. Lenin’s guards throught that Kaplan was another “petitioner”.

By: Katz

Katz — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:30:59 +0000

All this mutual frottage over how nasty the Bolsheviks were would produce some light as well as frictional heat were the frotteurs to demonstrate just how much purer than the driven snow were the Bolsheviks’ opponents during 1917.

If it could be demonstrated that the alternative leaders of Russia were upholding the high principles and practices of Millsian liberalism, or anything vaguely similar to it, then perhaps their moral outrage may be to some retrospectively useful purpose.

For example, long before the Bolsheviks were in any position to mount a challenge to the Provisional Government, in July 1917, Kerensky sent his bovver boys in to wreck Bolshie headquarters and to attempt to assassinate Lenin and other leading Bolshies.

Lenin was still on the run the morning of the October seizure of power.

Or is there a special rule that anti-Bolshie violence is always ok — the retrospective moral judgement of history clause?

By: wbb

wbb — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 01:21:48 +0000

Paul Norton – are not your 2nd point and your 3rd point contradictory? If the bourgeois left was too weak to hold sway in its own right, then how could it have ever got in the lead of the workers and peasants in coalition?

By: Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:53:47 +0000

Or to quote Uncle Vladimir:

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory

By: professor rat

professor rat — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:45:40 +0000

Thanks Sir Hanky.
We are getting ahead a bit with the attempted assassination because 1917 needs close attention. Some of the more important events for mine include the use of Imperialist German money to hire Polish and Lettish mercenaries. Certainly the red fascists were being Internationalist at this stage.
Also of vital importance is their disguising and cloaking operations.
Adopting the popular slogans such as ,’ All power to the Soviets’ for example. This could be seen as early ‘ promise them anything’ and ‘ fistful of dollars’ campaign promises. Cheap rhetoric used to gain political advantage…works in every country.
Then there was the ‘ State and revolution’ left turn. More cheap rhetoric used for getting rid of Kerenskyist democracy then discarded like so much campaign promises fodder.
Finally the creation of the CHEKA by Lenin and Trotsky. You don’t need right wingers like Pipes and Conquest to find out this stuff either.
There are plenty of contemperaneous libertarian and democratic socialist sources as well as the fatal words from the fithy mouths of the red fascists themselves.
‘ Whatever it takes’ Stalin-Lite was poised at the end of 1917 to drive a dagger into the heart of the social revolution.