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Know the difference. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Weird, I was under the impression that the purges happened after Lenin died. Can ghosts lead a purge?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#Industrial_workers

Do also take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election

And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Revolutionary_Party

Selected quotes:

The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants.

In the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly held two weeks after the Bolsheviks took power, the party still proved to be by far the most popular party across the country, gaining 37.6% of the popular vote as opposed to the Bolsheviks' 24%. However, the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly in January 1918 and after that the SR lost political significance. (...) Both wings of the SR party were ultimately suppressed by the Bolsheviks through imprisoning some of its leaders and forcing others to emigrate.

Following Lenin's instructions, a trial of SRs was held in Moscow in 1922, which led to protests by Eugene V. Debs, Karl Kautsky, and Albert Einstein among others. Most of the defendants were found guilty, but they did not plead guilty like the defendants in the later show trials in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and the 1930s.

Note that these guys won the elections because they were the actually existing socialist movement in Russia and had been for decades. Lenin only led the government instead of them because he had the organization to overthrow the Mensheviks, not because the Bolsheviks were a better representative of socialism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's not true at all. The Mensheviks wanted to cooperate with the bourgeoisie and were therefore a bad representation of socialism. Lenin formed the Bolsheviks because the Mensheviks were being stupid. The country was also fractured after the revolution and many groups of counter-revolutionary groups were trying to overthrow the barely formed government. Meanwhile famines were ravaging the country. Understanding the historical context of Russia in 1917 and the economic struggles the people were dealing with is very important to understanding why things happened the way they did. Looking at the aftermath of a revolution where everyone is vying for power and killing each other doesn't automatically make the winner of that power grab the bad guys.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How about you read anything of what I've sent you and you realize that I'm not talking about the Mensheviks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It was many factions. I'm just saying all of them were trying to have third revolutions while the people starved to death. At some point, revolutions end with a unifying government that isn't trying to murder each other. Lenin was not the villain you're painting him to be.