Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”
Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.
Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?
I am referencing your knee-jerk “both sides” rhetoric that pops up instead of even acknowledging the point I’ve made.
The ones I have already corrected you on, such as the Black Army “overperforming”. It performed as well as any guerilla group under circumstances favorable to guerillas of the time, i.e. with sufficient support from the peasantry. Given how dramatically it ultimately failed, and its many faults, this is really a romantic characterization that doesn’t do justice to anyone involved. Did they really overperform? How well “should” they have performed? Such ahistorical romantic characterizations, along with backstabbing narratives, are the main theme of “anti-Marxist” mythologies among self-proclaimed Western anarchists.
This is the problem with internet Bolsheviks you envision yourself as Central Committe members in 1949 at the height of the glory of the Soviet Union, at the height of being able to plug your ears because for once the people have seen that the ends justified the means but only temporarily.
I was born in the Soviet Union. My great grandparents and grandparents generation were the generations that was made whole on the Bolshevik promises. My grandparents not so much by the time they were 25 thanks Kruschev. By the time my parents generation was born it was obvious they were locked into a future that would be worse for their children. And the party did nothing, the party would try to ride this out through the classic democratic centralism and ends justify the means. They plugged their fucking ears.
Does that sound familiar to a party who considers themselves “the good guys” who has been plugging their ears to the needs of the working class? Who has consistently been berating the people, that its the people who failed them and not the party that could fail. A party that has failed to achieve any significant long term wins for the people in 20+ years? A party that has completely failed for generations because its refusal to read the actual political circumstances on the ground?
In a bizzaro universe you are acting like a Fedayeen for the Democratic Party who lives overseas. You’re acting like my parents generation, the jeans generation of the Soviet Union. Who think that America is paved with gold, and jeans, and rock and roll music. A reality that soon was snuffed out for the majority of them who could immigrate. They jumped from a crumbling empire that ultimately did not listen to its own people to another crumbling empire that ultimately did not listen to its own people.
In short you can take your little “Western anarchist” slurring and shove it. You’re filling in all of the gaps with your imagination. I have real life experience of the Soviet Union. I learned Soviet History through out my whole life on both sides of the wall. I’ve stood in bread lines comrade, have you? I had extended family who were party members, did you? You can post all you want, but the reality is that the majority of online Bolsheviks would have been anti-Bolshevik immediately after graduating high school, because their principal would have hated their annoying ass, and he was a party member, and he could decide if your career trajectory was to go test into an institute or to work the mines or the fields or the factories.
Listen the Soviet Union warts and all helped a lot of people, it also hurt a lot of people, it was a country, like every country it has problems and it does bad shit and it doesn’t listen to its people. It’s not a magical wonderland. You would not have been a Central Committee member, you’re too gullible. Your clinging to Bolshevik party line history about the Civil war literally proves it.
First off the Blacks did overperform. The Whites were comprised of an officer class and trained traditional soldiers that were supplemented with commoners. The Reds were lead by one of the greatest logisticians to ever grace this fucking earth. Trotsky literally created a traditional European army out of the mud. He brought in specialists to head up officer classes. He was so good at recreating a traditional army that the commonors who made up the Red Army’s ranks fucking hated it. That’s what lead to the Military Oppositoon. What was the Black Army in comparison? Makhno gave guns to whoever showed up and said figure it out. And they fucking did.
Not only that but the Whites military capacity was literally donated from European powers. The Reds after throwing human waves at the Entente in the East literally just rolled through all those places. The Reds had a resource and supply chain victory over both Armies before the war began because they held Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Blacks in comparison had no capacity. Hualiapole was an industrial town sure, but for agricultural machinery.
The Black Army was the weakest in military strategists, trained soldiers, resources, industrial capacity, industrial knowledge, and geographically they were positioned between two opposing fronts. It’s fair to say they overperformed.
As far backstabbing narratives you plainly do not read history. The Reds broke the Starobilsk agreement. And this was after the Bolsheviks sold out Ukraine to the Central Powers, and the Maknovists took back Huliaipole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik–Makhnovist_conflict#Surprise_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno#Anti-Bolshevik_rebellion
Your desperate need to have everyone bend the knee to a Party reading of Bolshevik history is insane.
I set my conditions for engaging and you seem uninterested in honoring them. Namely, that you reply to what I actually say and not go off in straw men instead, which is clearly just a pattern of dishonest guessed-at sectarian insults.
Please do your best to engage in good faith and in a comradely way.
If you want to talk about dishonesty and engaging in good faith and in a comradely way, it’s purely dishonest and in bad faith to present an ultimatum to me as if you’re the leader of a struggle session. If you’re going directly asking me to recuse “false histories” that you clearly do not know yourself and attempting to browbeat me into a position where Bolsheviks could do no wrong you’re not really engaging in a comradely way, you are simply being a debate bro.
I have said multiple times I’m not here to debate historical recriminations. I am willing to collaboratively learn from the mistakes of the past, but this discussion is pointless if you think the Bolsheviks were perfect.
You seem to be unable to not simply make things up on my behalf. I do, actually, get to decide when something is not worth my time and set my own conditions on reading or replying to what you say.
Since this is 3 times in a row I’m not gonna expect a change. Let me know if you change your mind, but otherwise I won’t be replying.