“Stalinism” & Linguistic Bias
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- čas přidán 10. 11. 2022
- I just really felt compelled to say all these things after a big disappointment in a book I was looking forward to. Reducing an entire era of trial, error, and achievement to "stalinist regime" isn't helpful.
Books & Documents Mentioned:
Dictatorship and Democracy in the Soviet Union By Anna Louise Strong
Marxists Internet Archive:
www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...
What about Russia? An honest reply to honest questions 1936 By Anna Louise Strong
USSR 100 Questions and answers 1986 ed. By Novosti Press
The Soviet Constitution
The Soviet Dream: Work of retail trade and consumption in the 1930s By Anna E Randall
The Soviet System of Government By John N Hazard
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#soviethistory #stalin #1930s
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One time donation:
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Imagine if we routinely referred to 1930s America as “The Roosevelt Regime”
Well, Stalinism is an academic term is both Russia and Europe, which represents the new socialism interpretation made by Stalin.
And Stalin's Era is also an actual term, though idk what it's called in English. The cult of personality and ideological flushing, the architecture dominants that made the outer look of the cities new because of direct Stalin's orders, the overall spread of his administrative forces to all the fields of human interaction (a totalitarian regime, btw) is linking this historical period DIRECTLY onto his person.
@@drakoronus Damn, another idiot 😔
If you still think Stalin was a totalitarian dictator, how about you read:
1. some actual primary sources from the USSR and not some US liberal think tank
2. the mf 1936 Stalin constitution
3. any book not from the US, actually. Read any book from the USSR if you want to learn about the USSR.
@@muha0644 LMFAO AHAHHAHA, я из России и в России родился, занимался в олимпиадной сборной по истории и обществознанию, взял несколько крупных олимпиад, читал исторические сводки, официальные документы, историю СССР, мы анализировали ВСЕ конституции СССР и их дизайн, логику и отношение к ней. А ещё я фанат советского кинематографа и литературы, посмотри "Иди и смотри" или "Афоня", или почитай поэтов Серебряного века или работы "Как закалялась сталь". Now use the translaror to understand what I say, you uncultured biased whatever you are.
Ну что ж ты малыш Мухаммед удалил свой коммент? Застеснялся?
@@muha0644 В России, кстати, население признает преступления Сталина и тот очевидный факт, что он тоталитарный диктатор. Проблема только в том, что около 30% населения (в основном люди старшего поколения, которые слабо разбираются в истории и социальных науках, потому что в СССР эти дисциплины подавляли) считает, что при тоталитаризме живется лучше, врагов устраняют, всё по правилам, просто и приятно. Это тоже ложно, но уже в другой плоскости, не из изначального спора. Так что да, ты неправ во всем, в чем можешь быть неправ.
Советую тебе почитать историков СССР из 1950-1970-х, а также экономистов и социологов современной России. Хотя бы посмотреть образовательные и публицистические ролики на Ютуб на русском языке с английскими субтитрами. Парфенов, Пивоваров, Chamade!, Дудь, можешь посмотреть споры с коммунистами и сталинистами (Клим Жуков, Гоблин, Стас Ай-Как-Просто, Мятежник Джек - коммунисты-сталинисты, с ними можешь посмотреть дебаты), лол. А можешь почитать другую советскую литературу, например литературу репрессированных людей, или вовсе не художественную литературу, а документы, подписанные сталинской администрацией: документы о ГУЛАГе, лежащие в музее истории ГУЛАГа в Москве, документы о коллективизации и раскулачивании, документы о политических преследованиях и показательных казнях, документы о голоде в Поволжье и в Казахстане, документы о коррупционных схемах друзей Сталина. Просвещайся. And yeah, I ain't writing that in English, sorry. And a whole-hearted wish for you to study.
It's amazing how the western liberals and conservatives seem to know the Soviets better than they themselves.
I would say Stalin's propaganda regime was the best in history and modern Russians have a very difficult time coming to grips with Soviet history.
Russians are the #1 victim of their own KGB disinformation ☝️
@@squamish4244
Nah, the US has got the best propaganda regime. If what you say is true then USSR would still be standing due to the supposed immense power of Stalin propaganda.
Same reason most soviets would think they knew more about the US than actual Americans; each state had an entire apparatus established for the express purpose of telling them what to think of their own country and what to think about the other.
Я, который изучает историю СССР по американским каналам:
(шучу, по русским тоже)
when you think you are have no bias at all, that is when you are eating from the trash can of bias.
We often get told that we are biased and stuck in our own bubbles. And let me just say that... they are right.
But the thing about bias is that it doesn't really mean anything because everyone skews everything to their own perspective. The only difference is that we are willing to admit it.
This reminds me of Parenti's passage about the "nonfalsifiable orthodoxy" of anticommunism in _Blackshirts and Reds._ We could imagine him giving another example: If people were happy with how well their retail sector was doing, it was just because they were so accustomed to "dingy shops" with "poor-quality merchandise."
The first paragraph of the chapter "left anticommunism" is perfection
your optimism and your love for soviet history and its people is contagious
Her optimism is delusional. 1/3 was communist once WHY DO YOU THINK IT DIDNT LAST
it seems naiive and revisionist, one always remains critical, just my opinion anyways.
The thing is that bringing all the attention to a single leader, like Stalin, Mao, The Kims in NK and Castro serves a very specific ideological purpose: it denies any kind of collectivist action, or reduces it to the the masses being "brainwashed", and it furthers the myth that communism = authoritarianism and lack of democracy(as if that's not the case in the capitalist world) It also coincides with the Great Man Theory of History and meritocracy, but in a negative way. Great men can accomplish great things, but also terrible things, so there's the (fictional) contrast: Heroes like, idk Churchill and FDR (lol) and Villains like Hitler, Mao and Stalin. It's all fiction.
It's rather depressing that people hold these very dehumanizing ideas about millions of people without even realising it, just because it is "common sense". I think if people questioned everything we see as "common sense", the world would make a whole lot more sense.
Thanks for the video! it was very informative as always. I'm looking forward to more reviews of books like this one.
It’s not really so much that those populations under authoritarian regimes were brainwashed as much as they were simply resigned to the status quo and saw it as too difficult or too dangerous to change things. I heard it was a common saying in the USSR that, “A good Soviet citizen listens to everything the government tells him, and privately believes none of it.”
I'm a trainee history teacher. When I brought up Churchill killing millions of Indians in the Bengal famine, this teacher told me "it is wrong to judge history by today's standards". Wtf I was not using today's standards- I was using the standards of the Indians in early 1940s! The audacity of her- a Brit telling me (my grandparents lived in India at the time) I'm wrong to judge perpetrators of mass murder against my people. If I ever see that teacher moralising about other historical travesty's involving mass murder and starvation, I'll say "it's wrong to judge history by today's standards."
@@rosserjake True. Even the British imperial agents in India at the time were pleading for aid and were saying the famine was a threat to the empire’s honor. Churchill gets a lot of defense because of his zeal against the Nazis, but it doesn’t change the fact that he failed India.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 Even contemporary sources by Westerners such as Will Durant, JT Sunderland et al were critical of British attrocities in India. Her charge of me being anachronistic is absolutely ridiculous. It's not like a group of people in 2008 randomly decided "oh what Churchill did in 1943 wasn't very nice". There was condemnation of his actions at the time of them occuring. Funnily enough, victims of starvation and mass murder don't seem to like such things- even in the 1940s! If a Jewish person were to criticise Hitler for his crimes against Jews, I wonder if that same teacher would say "it's not right to judge history by today's standards". Absolute lunacy.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." - Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
"17. Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity." - Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847.
You know what it looks like? It looks like you haven't read anything.
Saying "wasn't real socialism!!1!" only makes you look an idealist and a dogmatist.
I find that academia loves to create fancy scary words for things that threaten their class interestes. I'm doing a masters degree in clinical psychology and most of the time I am not alowed to openly discuss economical or social factors in regards to mental illness. In the few moments I was allowed to be critical of capitalism, I wasn't allowed to propose any alternatives, and more often than not I was met with a sarcastic comment about the USSR or Venezuela from the professors. I apologise for rambling and straying from topic, but this whole discusion frustrates me to no end. Thank you for the great video
As a poor person who struggles with mental illness -- depression, anxiety and ADHD, per my armchair self-diagnosis -- the phenomenon you describe is why I've been reticent to talk with doctors about this stuff. They don't want to solve the MATERIAL problems of people like me or, charitably, they know they are powerless to do so. Instead, they whip out a notepad and dispense pills, as with my father, mother and brother...and even those shits cost money!
Of course, even with the alleged "universal" health care system here in so-called Canada, mental health therapy is for all intents and purposes nonexistent unless or until someone really loses their shit (e.g. suicide attempt, violence towards others, schizophrenia, etc.), at which point they're basically incarcerated in a hospital room, possibly with more and/or more powerful drugs.
@@fun_ghoul how would you want a therapist to fix your material conditions?
@@RedLucarian i can't speak for him but i think the critique is that the doctors and therapists wouldn't have as many patients if our communities took care of each other to begin with. I think a lot of blame goes to insurance companies but also to doctors who push fake theories, pills, and treatments and all those who uncritically follow along
The psychologizing of class struggle is a serious problem. It sometimes seems as though the entire field of psychology was created to combat historical materialism.
@@RedLucarian For a start, they could acknowledge material reality instead of pathologizing my entire experience so that it more closely matches the absolute GARBAGE they learned in a university for $150,000. Basically, what Григорий said.
Of course, it doesn't sound much like you want an answer...maybe you have a future in mental health "care"!
"Once again I repeat that I am not an impartial, objective critic. My judgments are nourished by my ideals, my sentiments, my passions. I have an avowed and resolute ambition: to assist in the creation of Peruvian socialism. I am far removed from the academic techniques of the university."
-Jose Carlos Mariategui on the Author's note of Seven Essays on Peruvian Reality
It's more intelectually honest to admit your biases than to hide them in "objectivity" when it's clearly obvious it's still bias instead of plain statements without connections to your experience reading or understanding them.
Indeed, "neutrality" is a bourgeois myth erected as a bulwark against proletarian doubt in capitalists, their regimes and institutions.
It is really a relief, as someone from the US, to see someone examine primary sources from this era. Going through history classes during primary education here, you always have the vibe you're not getting the full story, but the route to getting it is totally opaque. These vids are very enlightening
Thank you for your videos and your information about Soviet Life and your book reviews. As someone who is very interested in Soviet Society and wrote some books and articles about Soviet Union in the Stalin Era (published by some minor German marxist publisher), i know how biased Western Lterature can be. Sometimes I think the Western Scholars did not read the primary sources they cite or try to disagrre with them to get pubished...
I mean I'd have to agree! I have an extremely hard time getting anything published because of my positive bias. Sometimes I feel like it would be so much easier if I critique things instead, but I won't. And my opportunity suffer because of that.
Grüße! :D
what have you published. i would be curious to read it.
This is very obvious in military history. I mean germans seem to think, to this day, that they won WW2 from barbarossa all they way to Berlin. The same with english and the hundred years war
@@LadyIzdihar
Are there any small things you cover during the Stalin time period, like hobbies, chores, activities? Positively covering small things people enjoyed could *possibly* allow non-Russians to be eased into a more broader understanding of the people and culture of the time.
(unless you've already tried that, in which case, all the best.).
It was literally this western bias against the Soviet Union, that I didn’t pursue a study of history on the USSR. Sucks, but I don’t think you can escape this type of language about this subject in academia.
Your channel deserves so much more attention, comrade.
Thank you so much 💖😭 that's very kind of you to say
seriously!!!!!
Help iv been cloned
Subbed. Yep. Im a simple man. Folks who speak of history from a materialist view gets my enthusiastic support. 👍
It's always disappointing when a book which should have been a historical descriptor of a niche topic is clearly used as an ideological bludgeon.
Greetings, Lady Izdihar. Would you consider making a video about childrens books in the USSR ? I'm russian myself and I talk to my american friends often. It always saddens me when they just instantly assume all the children media in my childhood was propaganda and brainwashing.
Moidodyr certainly was. A propaganda of personal hygiene.
@@nihilismful "незнайка в солнечном городе" и особенно "незнайка на луне" вполне себе тянут на пропаганду. Вообще, чем ближе к концу СССР, тем более "человечной" становилась детская литература. Всё-таки от "мальчиша-кибальчиша" до простоквашино большой путь пройден.
You said you don't like to get political but boy would I love to hear your thoughts on Trotsky and others who had very critical analyses of Stalin.
Gonna sound absurd to a certain degree but this is why I am inevitably going to learn Russian simply to have access to actual first hand resources. Can say learning French (which is well a lot fucking easier for an English speaker let me acknowledge this) has already opened up an entire nother world of history. Specifically regarding post-colonialism and the Algerian war of independence which to be honest until I began learning French, I knew little about. And this is after 1 year of learning French on my own. Can only IMAGINE what it would be like to learn a language with less political influence or association like Arabic or Russian or mandarin may open your eyes too, because even for French seriously WOW. And this is the language of the colonizer. Spanish will probably be next but yeah, eventually Russian someday. I want resources on the Soviet economy.
Yeah especially since Putins regime closed all the centres concerning soviet crime research and registration (one of them gor Nobel peace prize this year)
If you do learn Spanish, they sell a lot of very cheap, high quality vintage books about communism, Marxism and everything URSS in Cuba! (You can also learn a lot more about cuban socialism, if that's is of your interest ;) )
Good luck in your future endeavours)
Per Grover Furr, a lot of the most contentious (READ: Stalin) stuff is in places whose access is tightly controlled, like the Harvard library and the Russian Federation national archives. Even so, he would surely commend you for insisting upon primary source documentation! ✊🚩🛠️
Hi i share your goal of learning Russian, i can only imagine the wealth of knowledge that is untranslated.
By the way if you do begin to learn Spanish and want someone to practice conversation i could help you.
Spanish is my mother tongue (Mexico) so let me know if you are interested.
Either way i wish you the best in your learning adventures.
I have been into revolutionary politics the last 15 years and I still catch myself struggling with internalized bias towards former socialist regimes. Your insights and confidence really help me in the process of unlearning all these crap.
Thank you for your work! If you can find it in English (I doubt so, the original is in Italian, but why not try) one of my professors wrote a very interesting book titled "C'era una volta l'URSS: 70 anni di storia culturale sovietica" (Once upon a time there was the USSR: 70 years of cultural soviet history). It gives a wide understanding of the Soviet era and for this it is extremely long (and the chapter are divided in specific years), but it's a beautiful volume. Keep up the good work! ❤️🔥
Credo il titolo sia "quando c'era l'URSS"
Wow what a pleasant, lovely surprise it was, is, to stumble across your channel. For once Utube recommended something interesting in my feed. I was immediately hooked from the moment i heard you speaking so passionately, eloquently and with deep knowledge and understanding of the subject. I must admit i rather liked your “ticked off” Tik Tok reaction to the book, i found it endearing. I am now subscribed and look forward to more of your informative and immensely watchable videos. Thank you. Solidarity Comrade.
Thank you for this video and channel. Both of my grandpas was a diehard commie. One successfully returned from Nazi captivity (he was a sailor). The second before the war was actually expelled from the Communist Party, he fought in the Soviet-Finnish and the entire Soviet part of World War II from 1941 to 1945. Both experienced a huge traumatic experience. But because of the positive that was in Soviet society in the 20s and 30s, I believe they preserved and carried their ideals through this horror and pain. That grandpa, who was expelled from the Party, then joined it again, already at the frontline, when this in his position meant literally less than nothing and he could be killed at any moment without using "party privileges".
The USSR had collective leadership.
The USSR was fascist
@@jj4l bruh, read the definition of each, fascism and communism, and it's obvious the USSR was not fascist. Fascism is their #1 enemy. Authoritarian? Yes. But not all authoritarian are fascists.
This video just appeared in my recomended, and damn im so happy i came across your video and channel! Really making me want to learn more about the soviet union!
@Zal-Zhurk yea i saw her aswell on that but didnt look at her work for some reason? Glad i found it in my recommended because now im reading USSR 100 questions and answers because of her :D
I follow you on tiktok, what a pleasure it is to have longer videos! Your aesthetics are impeccable
damn, your video was randomly suggested to me and I gotta say its so good. Thanks a lot for your work comrade! You're awesome! We really need more people like you to revive through social media the only path to actual freedom.
My understanding was that the main difference between Lenin and Stalin was that Lenin introduced preestablished industrialisation techniques used in Germany and partially in Russia, while Stalin established a novel industrialisation method copied by Mao and other socialist countries. That's what I see when I see stalinism used
also girl ignore the mfs online who discredit your intellegence when you speak on political science I would be beyond interested to hear your thoughts on soviet politics !
I mean honestly I don't personally enjoy talking specifics of political structure as much as I enjoy talking about history, life, and material/ visuals of the USSR
So I'd rather speak in what brings me joy and gets me excited!
@@LadyIzdihar understandable i truley enjoy your historical content and as an Eastern European, I really respect that you try to humanize former eastern bloc countries :) I think it would be really cool if you made some videos about fashion and how you make your style, especially as a hijabi revolve around soviet history ! you inspire me to dress like u
I am SO glad I've found your channel. Looks like great content. Subscribed!
I think you should have mentioned Kruschev and Trotsky. While both never used the term "Stalinism" or any words similar to it, it's thanks to them that they propagated the ideas of Stalin having a cult of personality.
So I was just reading up on some Stalin history stuff and decided to comb biographies for a change. Found some interesting ones. One I'm looking at suggests the CCCP majority around 1937 started revisionism. It states that Stalin's opponents push for the cult of personality to use against him later. In an interview with Lion Feuchtwanger in 1937 Stalin himself says as much.
Also when Lion asked about the poor busts of him everywhere some of what Stalin said was, "Alien elements, careerists, are attached to any party that wins. They try to defend themselves on the principle of mimicry - they exhibit busts, write slogans that they themselves do not believe in. As for the poor quality of the busts, this is done not only on purpose (I know it happens) but also out of an inability to choose. For example, I saw portraits of me and my comrades on the May Day demonstration: similar to devils. People carry it with delight and do not understand that portraits are not good. You cannot issue an order for good busts to be exhibited - well, to hell with them! There is no time to do such things, we have other things to do and worries, you don’t even look at these busts…”
Kinda rough translation.
I mean... They named a city STALINGRAD... there is irrefutable proof that there was a cult of personality. Now it's worth pointing out WASHINGTON D.C and WASHTINGON (the state) in the USA. So it's not like cults of personality only existed in the Soviet Union. Now there are Leninist youtubers who say "Stalin was actually very much against the cult of personality and it was Kruschev that principally pushed it and then capitalized on it after Stalin's death." But... That sounds to me like Octavian ("Augustus" Meaning "Enlightened" ) Caesar saying "What?! Emperor!? No no no, I'm not an Emperor. I am just a very respected citizen and the senators all respect my wisdom! There's nothing more to it than that!"
Stalin absolutely totally dominated the Soviet leadership and wound up being the focal point. In truth the Soviet system probably was unworkable without a figure like him. After his death nobody was able to amass that kind of control, so when the Soviet Union wanted to cyberize in the 1950s the Army couldn't be made to share it's computer technology (some of the best in the world) with the civilians because that would mean sharing power. None of the civilian leaders could agree on who would be in charge of (and gain the power from) the program to cyberize the economy and it all fell apart due to infighting. By the mid-late1970s there was no longer the political capacity for centralized economic planning. By the 1980s civilian leaders were carving the economy into their personal fiefs for profit. IN 1991 this became formalized as they carved the union up politically as well as economically. Without the Stalin figure, brutal or not (jury is still out on that one) the Soviet Union drifted apart as the party members carved it up for their own personal benefit.
Yeah, but the main point is that in USSR, class struggle remained.
Between workers who care about entire class, and workers who yet have remains of bourgeoisie morale and primarily care about personal benefit (up to trying to become capitalists).
First class have got significantly weaker and lower in numbers during WW2 due to, well, death.
Second have started to replace the first in the party, installing Khrushchev and turning the Soviet democratic power into a suggestion.
Hi there.
YT's faulty algorithm advised your video, and here I am. I duly subscribed, looking forward to watching more of your interesting output.
However, things didn't go as smoothly on Instagram, where an attempt to follow your account was firmly refused with the following warning: "We restrict certain activity to protect our community".
Further confirmation that you are on the right track.
Keep up your good work, comrade. :)
Thx tovarisch. Do you have any reccomendation on books about stalin and the soviet era? Not the level of grover furr, which doesn't have peer review.
Especially italian or engliah book.
Please don't become too discouraged by negative comments, especially on TikTok; they are all desperately coping with their own cognitive dissonance. ❤
Also, capitalist state-sponsored trolls are a thing. The more dangerous the message is to P**ky, the more apt you are to see them flinging...uh, let's say "invective"! 🐵💩
5:23 You know, you're gonna hurt the feeling of this guy in his gaming chair who self-proclaimed as "Taliban Stalinist" lmao😂
Loving your priceless Soviet history content so far, lady. Keep it up!❤️🥰
Stalinism was a thing. The term she uses to refer to Stalin’s ideology “Marxism-Leninism” was invented by Stalin. Describing it as Stalinism is just being intellectually honest. That’s why his opponents in the party described it as such.
@@chanegunits not a whole ideology on its own. Like with marxist leninism lenin used marxism and applied it to under developed societies and the concept of a vanguard party also comes from him and both these things became the main points on which many communist states like cuba, china, Vietnam were founded. Stalinism initself is not much of an ideology but a way of governance. The main ideological point is essentially just a response to trotskyism and his ideas of a permanent revolution.
i absolutely love your work and i'm so happy you're out here doing it. the USSR is so unfairly maligned and demonized to such a degree that the people who lived within it cease to be even seen as human or having their own will or inner lives, unless those specifically prop up american hegemony in some way. as someone who's been wanting to learn more about the culture and lives of the people who lived in the first socialist projects it's been a struggle to find any sources in english that will even try to talk about the soviet union in anything but a purely negative light. i started learning russian as a way of getting a better understanding and it's been pretty wonderful, i continue to be inspired every day by the songs and art and films and spirit of the soviet people! that being said my russian is still pretty basic so i'm really thankful you're doing this work to give real context and understanding to westerners poisoned by cold war propaganda!! thank you for all that you do & your book pdf scans!
I love that Cheburashka behind you; nice job, by the way!
The "Grover Furr anti-Stalin paradigm" is absolutely real. It's really sad.
On your nickname: #spacetitanx
Thank you once again for the video. I'm very glad to have found this channel and I hope your kind soul can one day weather any annoying comment that comes your way.
Beautiful distinction between power and authority
Finding your videos and channel was a beautiful discovery ... شاكر!
It is great to see a different viewpoint, especially from someone so passionate and interesting. When I learnt about Stalin's policies compared to those of Lenin or Trotsky etc, the one thing that came up was 'socialism in one country'. This was the idea of getting it right in Russia first, which was certainly more practical than Trotsky's belief in world revolution. Does this count as 'Stalinism'? As you mentioned, the USSR was such a vast landmass with so many different peoples that it is sloppy thinking to make one size fits all. Also, you mentioned things being taken down? Is this because it is pro socialist or because we are expected to believe CIA taling points that Russia is an evil country?
To answer your terminal question even tho you weren't asking me (sorry!), both.
I am still figuring out where I fall, definitely a marxist leninist, and I find myself agreeing with trotsky, especially in the modern world, I think in the coming decades a global revolution is going to become more and more practical, and more necessary with our brethren in the third world already seeing catastrophic climate change-related events. and I feel that's what is going to take to get anything done. Western countries are far too powerful, to overthrow one at a time, and in the third world the west will try is very best to stop any attempt at socialism, so I think in our lifetime, soon even, we'll have a real opportunity to have a wave of revolution, as I think trotsky puts it. I just think achieving revolution, and then socialism in the modern world is going to look very different than it did in the 20th century
No it isn't because Stalin didn't even come up with the concept - it was first formulate by Nikolai Bukharin and the right current of the VKP(b) which later became known as the "right opposition". Stalin didn't have a concrete ideology per say, in that while he was a communist, he didn't really have his own "-ism", at least during his rise to power, with him and his "centre" faction trying to compromise with all the different ideological currents in the part leading to a hodgepodge of concepts and ideas.
The 5-year plans were directly taken from Trotsky and the "Left Opposition". Socialism in one country was borrowed from Bukharin and the "Right Opposition". The subjugation of the parties of the Comintern to the interests of the VKP(b) was done under Zinoviev and merely continued by Stalin. It was these pragmatic compromises and mix of ideas that would be carried out under Stalin's rule, which would be termed by Western historians as "Stalinism", which demonstrates how flawed it is to try to characterize it as the brainchild of one man.
@@timurnurzhauov1917 Very true, Stalinism is for the most part a western scare word. Stalin furthered Marxism-Leninism, but he was not singlehanded.
And Trotsky was proved correct, that taking a national road to socialism, only leads back to capitalism.
Try reading the WSWS site, which is a Trotskyist Website, it has extensive articles on the USSR, its history and an in-depth analysis of Stalinism (which was a nationalist reaction against socialist internationalism).
They say stalinist too much, that we can't understand if it is american, or trotskyist propaganda lol
The pitfalls of praxis
Is the Hazard book good/factual? I picked up the 4th edition and I am rolling my eyes a lot. And I'm only on chapter 2.😅
I absolutely love your Cheburashka!;) Thanks for your work. Good luck with everything.
This is a fantastic video. I stopped talking to people about the state socialist experience with people who aren't familiar with socialist theory and practice because it is a thankless task trying to cut through misconceptions and propaganda and bias. Keep making videos please
Эм что такое государственный социализм ?
@@user-os3rb7qw9q it’s when anarchist mad
@@morgancody6752 Then you don't know what capitalism is or anything about the economic relations of the USSR.
@@morgancody6752 Wrong. You don't understand capitalism. And silly bean is not an argument.
@@morgancody6752 and the USSR was largely democratic, with more democratic structures than most western countries. Maybe learn Soviet history and political structure first
first time seeing this channel, I'm already subscribed :)
Assalaamualaikum sister❤ Great content. Subbed!
I dont really have much to add but i just wanted to say i appreciate your content
Thank you for yet another great video. As an anarchist and yiddishe Bundist, I will always have my fundamental disagreements with the USSR and Marxism-Leninism, but to critique something you must first actually understand what it is. Too many of my anarchist comrades don't work nearly as hard as they should on deconstructing the anti-communist propaganda that is fed us throughout our lives. We must have a balanced understanding of the USSR, Marxism-Leninism, and the propaganda surrounding it to fully understand contemporary communist movements and organisations, and why we disagree on the things we do. Keep up the good work ✊
FUCK ANARCHISM
@@phoneticalballsack why?
@@radicalrazel9156 Anarchism has NEVER worked. Meanwhile communism HAS worked and has lifted millions out of poverty.
@@phoneticalballsack Minor Anarchist experiments have seen some success in modern times, along with proto-anarchistic societies being found throughout history, but yes, you are correct in that modern Anarchism has not seen large-scale success yet. But there was a time where Marxism was untried, and had only seen a handful of failed attempts. Should the Bolseviks not have risen up in the Russian Empire, because communism hadn't worked yet?
@@radicalrazel9156 Marxism-Leninism is a science. Lenin already knew communism would work. So communism has never been "tried", it was implemented knowing that it could already provide a high quality of life for its people.
Previous Marxist experiments like the Paris Commune were not as dialectically developed as Lenin's Russia. And it shows that even under circumstance where Marxism is implemented perfectly, without the dictatorship of the proletariat and without the necessity for strict enforcement of communism it still couldn't exist. Now, how long a society was able to function through the socialism phase before being overcome by capitalist forces? Some Marxist "socialist" states have existed for decades but stood no chance against the rise of capitalist armies. Couldn't the same happen in the US? A strong powerful anarcho-communist nation could theoretically survive for years, but as we saw in the revolutions of Russia and China, both great Insurrections were necessary before a genuine communist system could be established. The rise of despotic Tsar Nicholas and the bloodthirsty warlords assisted the revolution enormously; the ruthless military of Chiang Kai-Shek and British, Japanese and American imperialism were forces that anarchists can't fold. If such a communist community of American anarchists exists, how do we bring them to a point where Bennie Smith, Chevron and Halliburton discover that supporting communism is bad for business?
Thank you for the video! Your videos are so thoughtful and I really appreciate the perspectives and stories you highlight.
This is the thing about modern scholarship on the USSR. We finally have academics that use primary sources rather than "rumor, conjecture and speculation" ie. Robert Conquest. But these modern liberal academics (Getty, Naumov) will cite accurately sources which demonstrate achievements of the Soviet system and undermine cold warrior narratives, but then immediately after that they will just assert "but that's bad actually." Either they are afraid of being called communists or they are so inculcated that they need to put even positive things in a negative light, it's probably a combination of both tbh. I literally spoke to a boomer the other day at a protest who said "everything you're saying is a no brainer, but it can't happen because communism is scary to people." When you demonize something enough that all people know about it is that it's "demonic" apparently that becomes the primary obstacle rather than any real disagreements that people have.
You're making my brain feel better.
It sounds like the writer can't seem to admit that there was anything at all that the Soviet Union did right, without practically screaming, "BUT WE DID IT BETTER! SOCIALISM BAD! SOCIALISM BAD! MURICUH!"🇺🇲
I’ve decided to try to make as objective of a study of the Soviet Union/Socialism as I can. In the past I used to be very much against Socialism, then very much for it (I even became a newsboy for a short lived radical newspaper) and in both times I let prior ideological convictions cloud what sources I decided to investigate, and let me dismiss things I didn’t like without further inquiry. Recent resurgences of Lysenkoism in academia (and its attempts at penetrating natural science) have made me become very wary of when I am searching for facts to support my position rather than forming a position based on the facts. I have always been an Atheist, so the Socialist philosophy of Dialectical Materialism has been my favorite point of study, as I also very much love science.
Try reading the WSWS site , which has an extensive array of articles on the USSR and Stalinism.
Do you talk about that flag behind you in TikTok in any video? It's my first time seeing your channel and it got me curious!
Also, excellent video! Thanks for taking the time to make it.
Your channel is a gold mine of empowering knowledge and good will. I'm sure that for every bigot out there trying to get under your skin, there will be 1000 of us learning from your honest effort. Love from Brazil!
Very good content, as always Comrade.
Completely besides the point but I had an extremely similar, maybe the exact same head scarf one right now.
I use it as a shawl however hope it's not disrespectful I never knew what that purpose was. I assumed it was just a shawl.
This is a Russian Pavlovo Posad shawl, it's used for many many reasons! To keep your shoulders warm or your head!
@@LadyIzdihar thank you i was concerned there for a bit.
Great video! Keep up the great work!
I understand what you're getting at when you say Stalinism isn't a thing as you'd prefer to use Marxism Leninism, but there is obviously a difference between someone like Che Guevara who wanted an almost immediate transition to communism in Cuba and third world socialism vs Stalin who maintained an authoritarian state and wanted to create a somewhat mixed economy where the Soviet Union profited from its trade with third world countries to their detriment. The Marxist Leninists of the third world have very little in common with Stalin, and even someone like Brezhnev or Kruschev is quite different from Stalin given the heavy censorship and inflexibility of certain aspects that were central to his economic ideas as well as his total rejection of the NEP and the persecution of its supporters as the bourgeoisie. Stalinism may not be a fully technically developed political theory but it is useful in describing a set of characteristics that characterise a certain time period where party power was more centralised in the hands of Stalin and Molotov, and where the previous independence of the other nations was slowly chipped away at. A lot of people throw it out the window completely, say it's Marxism Lrninism, and everyone else is actually dumb because they clearly haven't read the theory but this still ignores the importance and utility of the term in historiography. I don't think that's exactly what you're doing because I know you're coming from a good place but I think that you are forgetting that it has a purpose in history books beyond just promoting western imperialism. Scholars of the revisionist school like Sheila Fitzpatrick who are often criticised for being too kind to the Soviet Union (she also lived there for a while to access their archives) as well as the later synthesis school agree on this. Yes, Stalin's period was long and varied but it normally trended towards greater centralised power for the party in Russia and the power in that party was centralised in an increasingly small circle around him with a certain set of economic and Conservative social policies. It is not useless.
Also you're right in saying that a lot of things were failed experiments rather than evil conspiracies as the west makes them out to be eg. Collectivisation that resulted in the holodomor - the general consensus being that this was not a genocide - but you also seem to make out as though the very present and severe repression during the stalinist years (those from 1937 onwards especially) were just...not really that bad? Or there at all? The material conditions of urban people improved compared to under the czar but a lot of their social lives were worse than under Lenin or the early years after Lenin's death and you seem to ignore this. Shostakovich literally had to apologise for just making music Stalin didn't like because by his later years the suppression had become so extreme. This seems a bit like "focusing on the positives" gone too far to me. Not all of this throughout his entire reign was done by Stalin himself - he was only one person - but as I said before throughout his time it became increasingly centralised in his smaller circle and he became increasingly detached from his own people and revolution. And remember that the Bolsheviks themselves were a MINORITY in the revolution who eliminated the other factions. And also you mention the party membership as a way of bolstering the idea of popular support for the party - members of the army were automatically members of the party so that's a bit deceptive to say the least.
I enjoyed the video, I like the thesis at the heart of it, but I think you should do some research on historiography and how to research history if you're going to read up so much on a very controversial period of history especially to debunk the arguments of others. I don't know if you have a background in history but if not I'd recommend reading The Modern Researcher by Barzur and Graff because it's fairly comprehensive but doesn't fall into the trap of being two academics just patting themselves on the back for too long. Also to address what you said about universities earlier, that can be true in some universities but not in others. It really just depends on the country and university and that's unfortunate because it makes it super difficult to discern who's being genuine and who's not. One thing that is useful about a formal background in history is that you learn how to critically analyse sources/historiography which most people who do not study history - even those who read tons of history books - often times don't do. So it's a mixed bag. My college in Ireland is good for that but my year in seville sent me to one backward ass college because of the way they'd set up their system.
Thank you for expressing that so well
And I kinda want to read "the modern researcher" now even though I don't work in history. Hope she sees this.
Thank you for this comment; you are evidently knowledgeable about the subject. I absolutely agree that the stalinist period, as in the period of stalin's rule, was quite varied. However, one consistent thread is the marked change in foreign policy, having domestic repercussions. In a slight rebuttal: as Marxism is a project of disestablishing the state structure in any given country through the arming of the proletariat and violent overthrow of the ruling class, the essential idea of the Stalinist foreign policy is that of "socialism in one country", which is a departure from both marx and lenin as it purposefully and indefinitely sustains the state structure. To that extent, the regime of Stalin did have a consistent ideological through-line, which can establish the basic ideology of what we can call "stalinism"; that is- mainly a consolidation of central power, forced deportation and imprisonment for the purpose of ethnic confusion in subservice of the national project, and an idea of the ever-expanding global socialist state without any concrete plans to later dissolve the state structure
I've noticed that there's an entirely separate vocabulary that people are expected to use when talking about "bad countries", for lack of a better term. "Regime" instead of "government", "mandate" instead of "law", "ruler" instead of "president", etc. It's so prevalent that I think many people aren't even doing it purposely anymore.
Camps as opposed to prisons
@@matheusvillela9150 ГУЛАГ - Главное управление исправительно-трудовых лагерей where “лагерь” stands for “camp”, thats their own terminology
@@nasiknosik "Camp" isn't a word inherently more authoritarian than "prison", but the trauma of the nazi extermination camps, which were later (dishonestly) compared to gulags lead to the word being associated with authoritarianism and genocide. Which is why America, which has forced labor and the largest incarceration rate and prison population in the world, loves to say their enemies have "prison/concentration camps" as opposed to prisons like any other country.
@@matheusvillela9150 whataboutism to it's finest
"President," at least, refers to a specific type of ruler, as opposed to a prime minister, chancellor, monarch, etc. I wouldn't say the words "president" and "ruler" are interchangeable, and the word "ruler" doesn't necessarily have the same sort of negative connotation as "regime."
I just found you, that was a great video. I had no idea you were the one who were on DeProgram. I should have subscribed to you back then. Keep up informing and making great content, comrade!
I deeply respect your work. I do a very similar thing with my work about Ancient Canaan, which is so often derided and disrespected on account of the strong Judio Christian bias that has pervaded even in Academia
Could you do a video on good books on the USSR in the 1930's like what was life like ?
Thank you for making this video.
This is an issue I've been encountering quite often recently - and it significantly hinders my ability to find credible books on topics which interest me.
A couple days ago, for example, I started reading a book on the history of Communist Czechoslovakia by Kevin McDermott and it almost seemed like the author himself was not aware of his biases.
Apart from using the term 'Stalinist' 102 times, the book is littered with sentences such as:
_"Stalin’s repeated protestations of non-intervention in Czechoslovak internal affairs were not completely disingenuous"_
...where the author goes to great lengths to avoid using the word "honest" in regards to Stalin.
Or this paragraph:
_"Upward social mobility for hitherto disadvantaged groups was a particularly noteworthy aspect of ‘Stalinisation’ with hundreds of thousands of ‘traditional’ work ers moving into non-manualadministrative jobs to be replaced by even more ‘new’ workers from largely non-proletarian backgrounds. It seems reasonable to conclude that these beneiciaries of the sys tem formed a solid, if not permanent, social base of support for the regime."_
...which makes providing opportunity for disadvantaged groups sound like a manipulative tactic employed to gain support.
The lingistic bias is just so obvious once you start noticing it and it pains me to have to be so careful about choosing the books I read.
You look so pretty and your voice sounds nice and it's AWESOME for somebody to FINALLY ACKWLEDGE that EVERYTHING has bias!
Ikr she's so pretty and engages the subject matter so beautifully, I'm simping dude
Here from the deprogrammed, and I'm here to stay. You're criminally underrated!
I think one of the hardest things for me to process as an American is the separation of Authority from Power. One of the biggest reasons being, here in the West, the two are wielded as methods of oppression as though they're the same thing.
I started following the channel a little while ago but I'm delighted. On the Internet there are few people who honestly talk about the Soviet Union, unfortunately. Especially with all the anti-communist propaganda in the western media. Congratulations for the great content, greetings from Brazil.
I've read similar biased books about the Soviet Union. There's mostly really bad scholarship being done in America, especially in the field of legal research and law.
Over 99% of legal research in the US is aimed at justifying and protecting the power and authority of capital.
So excited to come across your channel. I've been studying up on Marx/Lenin/Trotsky and found this vid fascinating. I love learning about Soviet/Russian history. Such a fascinating country.✌️✊
Lenin and Trotsky were horrible human beings once in power.
It was forbidden and punishable by death to study Trotsky in the period she is talking about.
If you had studied Trotsky you certainly wouldnt find this video great
If you had studied Trotsky you certainly wouldnt find this video great
@@chanegun and for a good reason.
I didn't know you had a CZcams channel. New subscriber ❤
Just found your channel today and It's so refreshing to hear somebody push back against this anti-materialist bs
I have a bunch of books of first hand accounts of the early USSR and other periods which I don’t have any time to read and I think some of them would be of great use to you if you don’t have them or internet access to them, if you ever do a PO Box thing I would definitely send them to you, let me know I guess
I hope to open a PO box soon!
Sempre é muito agradável ouvir você Lady Izdihar! Abraço fraterno do Brasil !
Fico muito feliz de ver outros brasileiros que tambem partilham do conhecimento que esse tipo de vídeo traz. Izdihar é de fato uma pessoa muito agradável e informativa!
Que belo encontrar outros brasileiros aqui. Saberiam me informar a linha de pensamento dela? Se é mais marxista-leninista, trotskysta ou maoista, pois ajuda bastante saber a linha de pensamento que ela se baseia mais
Rather than videoing the book which produces unclear shaky iphone footage, it might be a better Idea to do a voice-over on a screenshot of text rewritten from the book.
Awesome video comrade i learned alot!
Just found your channel, holy shit, this is FANTASTIC CONTENT. Insta-subscribe.
Love your video
Wonderful video! Many thanks!
On z-library it's still up if one accesses through TOR. ;)
Stalin was a philipino who spoke portugese it’s true i read it on wikipedia
extremely based.
But when people talk about 'Stalinism' they are not talking about an academic theory or concept.
They are talking about what Stalin did in power.
So movements where there is a single strong man leader and it is considered not mentally healthy to defy him, and old fashioned thinking is considered 'a threat to the revolution' would be regarded as Stalinist.
thanks to my friend Schlatski for sharing this video
What a great first piece to find! Subbed and added to my 'would like to support' list
I just discovered your channel but the way you combine socialism, islam and feminism is very mesmerizing and pretty unique, keep up the good work.
Loved your piece. You are excellent laying down your arguments.
Answers to your questions at 2:56. We were a week late on rent despite me, my spouse, and our roommate all working full time (I and my roommate work overtime). I haven't (yet) had to steal groceries but have many memories of watching my mom steal groceries for us. My city has tents of homeless people in different places all over.
I just found your channel by accident and subscribed to it immediately. Thanks, comrade 😉
As someone who also researches Soviet history with an emphasis on the cultural side of things (in my case, classical music), I can agree with you on some points here, such as the use of "Stalinism" being more properly applied to the time period, culture, and policies during Stalin's time in power, as opposed to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. I also appreciated the fact that you acknowledged your own biases; however, my one issue with this video is that while I understand you want to bring the more positive side of Soviet history to your audience's attention, by understating the atrocities that took place in the 1930s as simply "things that didn't work out," you also portray an incomplete picture of the realities of the time period to your audience. I'm not saying you have to explicitly focus on things like the Purges, Holodomor, and collectivization campaigns, and the positives of the 1930s are just as important to discuss, but dismissing the brutal negatives as simply failed experiments also detracts from a nuanced discussion of the time period, just as much as solely focusing on them does.
Perhaps I used the wrong wording. My intention isn't to dismiss anything.
You can be autocritic, but not autofagic. The liberals have already a lot of "critic" about the CCCP, we cannot focus on the mistakes, specialy when we are not in power, there is a lot of anticomunismo propaganda, we have to focus on the good things. The chinese have the possibility to bem autocritic, and they mostly are.
@@CWFpresentes You can focus on the good things while also acknowledging that the bad things were, well, bad. That's just good historical practice.
@@LadyIzdihar No problem; thanks for your response!
Extremely based answer. I feel very wary when someone dismissed these things as expirements that failed often times people who say this want to excuse what happened or make it seem not that terrible. Not saying she wants to do that per se but viewers should take this into account the next time she makes a video
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on linguistic bias!
New favorite channel
Western narratives tend to be very annoying and repetitive. They have a set of assumptions and "facts" that use to describe the whole period. For example in discussions on housing in the USSR and Socialist states. They go constantly on how small and dreary and dehumanizing Soviet housing was. In contrast with what Capitalist housing? lol.
Then you see some videos and pictures of actual Soviet built apartments and I always end thinking: for someone like me that under Capitalism won't ever be able to own anything and stop renting, I could really use one of those apartments. lol
Keep the great work and don't be discouraged. There's still comrades out there that appreciate your work and need it. Subscribed.
That's so true. I swear, it's almost like introspection itself is outlawed over here because every time our media decries another country, it's practically guaranteed that we're doing something similarly reprehensible, or even worse. Goes without saying but I'm from the US.
Western capitalists all come back to one point. They know they have a corrupt system that gives people the shaft in their work, in their housing, in their health care, in their education. But what they all point to is "look how many consumer goods we have, how big our homes are, and how big our cars are." I mentioned this in my own reply to this wonderful video, but its true. They practically know that capitalism is a screwup system that fails every few years, but they just insist that's how we have such immense consumer goods as the reason to keep this disaster train moving. Its time leftists exploit this charade of reasoning. Its easy to have immense consumer goods when you oppress so many nations of the Earth into producing for you, blockading other systems from buying everything from bananas in central America to clothing in Bangladesh and ensuring the world's capitalist class countries get the benefit. Its time for a system that works for everyone, not the wealthy and well connected private ownership class.
As in contrast to Eastern narratives that are toooootally nuanced and un-biase.
Yoi do know this doesn't make much sense right? Yes the West propagated against Communism because the saw ot as a major threat jut as much as the UdSSR vetted against Capitalism. It made sense in the historic context and seeing as all the previous UdSSR states like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and DEFINITELY Ukrain do not want to relive the Soviet experience does show how much the regime did not work.
Not saying that the US is better but if I have to choose an overlord I will definitely choose the one with an intact democracy.
That's why it's near time for socialism in the west. The USSR was a fascistic regime that brutally suppressed its population. We need to do better and stop soviet-shipping.
your videos are so good, we need more critical analysis like this
Excellent, keep it up, education for the unknowing on the toughest topics is what we need now desperately in the information war before the Empire continues to wane and the war heats up in the West
My cats constantly complain that "This is like living in a Stalinist regime" when it comes to how many dinners they get at night. The answer is one comrades. It has always been one.
I understand your notion that Stalinism is not a thing in political theory. And i agree the term is used with political motive. But i think it does exist in practice. I do think Stalin moved away from marxist leninist views in his actions, even though he himself might not have contributed to marxist leninist theory. I think it is similar to the term neoliberalism. Which in political theory it means that the government interferes at least as possible in the market. But in practice it is actually charaterized by subsidies and bailouts to companies.
You are bringing very necessary views on how to analyze the Soviet Union, and on questioning the dominant narrative in the capitalist centre. Thank you for your work.
Thank you for the book recommendations
Where's that red flag/banner/tapestry behind you on your Tiktok??
I need to know girl!
Tell me.
Also, hugs from Brazil, comrade.