What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[grumbler]

The USSR was the world's 2nd industrial power at the time the Germans invaded. While Stalin certainly could not have known such a day would come when he started his "reforms", I would posit that if the USSR had not so aggressively shifted to heavy industry they may not have survived the Germany invasion.

Safe island countries like Britain or ones protected by two oceans like the United States don't have to worry about what happens if you modernize a bit too slowly, Russia did not have that luxury in the 20th century.

Now, would some alternative to Stalin have also shifted so quickly into heavy industry? Maybe. I'm not aware of any great contemporary examples of that occurring without some serious autocracy though. To some degree the countries that didn't use autocratic means to modernize were "lucky" in that they went through some of this stuff over the span of 200 years.

Countries like Imperial Japan, Russia/USSR, and China were playing a very big game of catch up, and their leaders understood the risks (to some degree) of not being able to at least make an effort towards catching up with the Western Great Powers.

I agree with this, and would add that one of the reasons Stalin won the post-Lenin political structure was that the Bolshevik leadership was rightly very paranoid about the Soviet Union's security, given what happened in the RCW.  The USSR needed heavy industry ASAP if it wanted to be able to defend itself in a hostile world.  All of the pain inflicted by the squeezing of the countryside Minsky described could be justified on the grounds that it was necessary for the USSR's survival.

[Sheilbh]

On Stalin in particular, what shaped those choices, the first two volumes of Kotkin's biography Paradoxes of Power (up to 1928) and Waiting for Hitler (28-41) are really excellent.

Not sure when the third is coming out, I think it's two years behind now - although I imagine being an American Russia scholar is probably more challenging now than it's been since the Cold War.

I don't know enough, but I think there is something to OvB's argument as grim and awful as it is - purely from the context of 1941 happens.

Edit: I'd add it's not only the RCW context for the Soviets. It is the miracle on the Vistula, Turkey forcing back the Greeks (with English backing - and Lloyd George is, in part, removed because he wants to invade Turkey after that), Manchukuo and the Kwantung Army with an unstable/non-agreed border with the Soviets - as well as all the stuff that is more in the classic "road to war" narrative for Europe.

Also with Kotkin the diary of Ivan Maisky, the Ambassador to the UK in the late 30s/early 40s is really interesting on the Soviets in the run-up to the war. Those two have certainly challenged some of my initial views (again, not an expert) on appeasement.

[Valmy]

the Bolshevik leadership was rightly very paranoid about the Soviet Union's security, given what happened in the RCW.

Ineffectual flailing? If that was the best the French, British, Japanese, and Americans would do I would feel very safe indeed.

And there is the fact that the Soviets made great use of the aid the West offered after they asked for it to help secure power.

[crazy canuck]

Once again you need to ignore the reforms that began around 1885.

It's not surprising that Russia had not yet caught up to other industrialized countries by the start of the war.  But they were developing rapidly.

They lost a major war to Japan, a country that just 30 years prior was far behind Russia in terms of modernization technologically. This was after 25 years of what you call "rapid development."

I am not sure how that contradicts what I said.  Also, you are aware of how far the Russian supply and communications lines were stretched right?  It was a war Russia should never have fought. 

And interestingly you are engaging in the kind of racism that got the Russians into trouble when they completely dismissed the Japanese as being a foe who could fight and win a war.

[Jacob]

The nature of Communism makes it more attractive in societies that have little or no tradition of democracy or liberty.

I think that is correct and entirely contrary to what Marx thought.

I'm no scholar of Communism, but my understanding is that that's what Lenin brought to the table. That a period of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to transition into "a true communist utopia".

I think Marx' theories were plenty attractive in the liberal democratic West, as evidenced by the labour and social democrat political movement which tried to achieve the communist utopia via democratic means.

In support of Otto's overall point, perhaps it is telling that Marxism largely resolved into Communist dictatorships in areas with little in the way of democratic traditions, and resolved into Social Democracy in places where democratic traditions were stronger.

[crazy canuck]

The nature of Communism makes it more attractive in societies that have little or no tradition of democracy or liberty.

I think that is correct and entirely contrary to what Marx thought.

I'm no scholar of Communism, but my understanding is that that's what Lenin brought to the table. That a period of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to transition into "a true communist utopia".

I think Marx' theories were plenty attractive in the liberal democratic West, as evidenced by the labour and social democrat political movement which tried to achieve the communist utopia via democratic means.

In support of Otto's overall point, perhaps it is telling that Marxism largely resolved into Communist dictatorships in areas with little in the way of democratic traditions, and resolved into Social Democracy in places where democratic traditions were stronger.

The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat belongs to Marx.  Lenin's contribution (if you want to be charitable) is parting with the Marxist historical determinism which required an advanced capitalist society first.  Marx thought that was required for two reasons.  First, he understood that it was only a capitalist society which could create the productive outputs that would be necessary for communism.  And secondly he thought that communism could only result from the internal inconsistences of an advanced capitalist society. That is what dialectical materialism was all about.

Marx was vague about how the transition from a capitalist to communist society would occur, and a short lived dictatorship of the proletariat was a bit of a hand waive to explain the transition.

What you might be suggesting is Lenin seized on that notion to explain why it was possible to go from a largely agrarian peasant based economy to a communist state.  But as Minsky so eloquently (as usual) explained, that was always going to end in misery and exploitation.

[Sheilbh]

I'm no scholar of Communism, but my understanding is that that's what Lenin brought to the table. That a period of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to transition into "a true communist utopia".

Yeah I think ideology is key but the ideology isn't generic communism or Marxism, it is Marxism-Leninism - and that is the theory of every Communist state that existed in the 20th century, as far as I'm aware. Although particularly modified by Stalin and Mao especially. I think the democratic centralist, vanguard element that Lenin adds are really, really important - I think they're key to the Bolsheviks, I think they're still key to the CCP today.

I think the other bit that is really distinctive to Lenin's theory is around imperialism which I think is relevant to Russia but perhaps also its appeal in anti-imperialist struggles more generally. Basically he argues that imperialism transforms Marx's analysis from being about a society to operating on a gloabl scale. It creates, for want of a better word, globalised capital which supports extraction and exploitation in colonised parts of the world, while accruing the returns in the metropole. It is also the final stage for capitalism because it has globalised its economic system, but this means the revolution won't start in a developed region like England or Germany (though as a society they may have gone through the stages of capitalism) because the accruing wealth from imperialism allows their workers' conditions to be ameliorated. Instead it will start with the exploited workers and peasants of the colonised, extractive bits of the world as on a global scale they are the exploited of the capitalist system in imperialism. While Russia wasn't a colonised state but was similar - it was a recipient of massive amounts of international capital for extraction and exploitation, it was workers and peasants, it wasn't part of the metropole that created an "aristocracy of labour" at home.

I think Marx' theories were plenty attractive in the liberal democratic West, as evidenced by the labour and social democrat political movement which tried to achieve the communist utopia via democratic means.

In support of Otto's overall point, perhaps it is telling that Marxism largely resolved into Communist dictatorships in areas with little in the way of democratic traditions, and resolved into Social Democracy in places where democratic traditions were stronger.

I think there's a risk of this reading backwards from what we know happened. Particularly after 1917 a lot of what those parties are doing is positioning themselves in relation to the Soviets.

There are lots of arguments within the European left pre-war, but there are absolutely revolutionary and insurrectionary sides. Lenin's position isn't really that different (except on imperialism) from Karl Kautsky who's the great theorist of the German SPD which is the largest party in the Reichstag and the most influential left party in Europe. That position isn't universally accepted, there are those who already believe in an ameliorationist/reformist position and those who take a more insurrectionist stance.

WW1 splits the left forever and destroys the genuinely internationalist, cross-border European left - and it then happens again in response to the Russian revolution. Kautsky, whose position on revolution was the same as Lenin's pre-war, takes the view that the crisis in Russia was not "the crisis" which is what produces a Soviet dictatorship.

Obviously that then happens again after WW2 when the world is immediately restructured on Cold War lines. Hypotheticals are impossible but it certainly feels like the emergence of communist revolutions in Europe were possible in at least France and Italy in the immediate post-war - but forestalled because of the Cold War.

I'm always a little reluctant to buy into sonderweg explanations and I think you end up getting dangerously close to pondering the depths of the Russian soul And on sonderwegs it does beg the question of where Germany is on that? Pre-WW1 it has the most powerful and most influential left in Europe, including over Russia - the anomaliiese really are the UK, France, Italy and Iberia. The SPD and Lenin's view on revolution is broadly the same until the revolution happens - I think it's the fact the revolution happens, that Lenin acts that changes or clarifies things not the cultural impact of liberalism on their actions, if that makes sense?

[Solmyr]

Once again you need to ignore the reforms that began around 1885.

It's not surprising that Russia had not yet caught up to other industrialized countries by the start of the war.  But they were developing rapidly.

They lost a major war to Japan, a country that just 30 years prior was far behind Russia in terms of modernization technologically. This was after 25 years of what you call "rapid development."

I am not sure how that contradicts what I said.  Also, you are aware of how far the Russian supply and communications lines were stretched right?  It was a war Russia should never have fought. 

And interestingly you are engaging in the kind of racism that got the Russians into trouble when they completely dismissed the Japanese as being a foe who could fight and win a war.

Japan was also stretched pretty thin in that war, Russia just happened to break first because of the 1905 revolution.

[Josquius]

Yeah, the Russo - Japanese war was hardly a equal fight. The famous tale of the Russian navy sailing around the world et al.

It's closest comparison wouldn't be the Franco-Pruussian war or anything like that but the Boer War. Big European power fighting in the far flung reaches of its empire.

Also let's not forget it was a heavily naval war. Featuring Russia. It was never going to be where they shine.

HOWEVER I wouldn't over estimate how far behind Japan was before it's reopening. It developed a lot in isolation and wasn't completely ignorant of modern technology. It had an excellent system of national bureaucracy, and communications.

With Russias modernisation... I get the impression it had more in common with china's modernisation than Japan's. A lot more lopsided and focussed on trying to keep so many of the flawed core elements of the country in place.

[crazy canuck]

Once again you need to ignore the reforms that began around 1885.

It's not surprising that Russia had not yet caught up to other industrialized countries by the start of the war.  But they were developing rapidly.

They lost a major war to Japan, a country that just 30 years prior was far behind Russia in terms of modernization technologically. This was after 25 years of what you call "rapid development."

I am not sure how that contradicts what I said.  Also, you are aware of how far the Russian supply and communications lines were stretched right?  It was a war Russia should never have fought. 

And interestingly you are engaging in the kind of racism that got the Russians into trouble when they completely dismissed the Japanese as being a foe who could fight and win a war.

Japan was also stretched pretty thin in that war, Russia just happened to break first because of the 1905 revolution.

No, it's the other way around. The 1905 revolution started in part because of the losses Russia was incurring in its war with Japan. Russia didn't break because of the revolution. The final battle was in March 1905, in which Japan committed the while of their land forces and destroyed the Russian army.  That is what broke the Russians.

[The Minsky Moment]

The USSR was the world's 2nd industrial power at the time the Germans invaded. While Stalin certainly could not have known such a day would come when he started his "reforms", I would posit that if the USSR had not so aggressively shifted to heavy industry they may not have survived the Germany invasion. . .

Now, would some alternative to Stalin have also shifted so quickly into heavy industry? Maybe. I'm not aware of any great contemporary examples of that occurring without some serious autocracy though. To some degree the countries that didn't use autocratic means to modernize were "lucky" in that they went through some of this stuff over the span of 200 years.

Counterfactuals are tricky.  A USSR or alternative regime that pursued a different economic strategy would not only have different economic outcomes but it would have had to be a different kind of regime and a different kind of society, and that in turn would have had many different complex interactions with the international scene.  One of the reasons that the fascist powers were able to rise with such ease and obtain the benefit of appeasement was the fear of Soviet ambitions for spreading Communist revolution and agitation.  Germany in particular exploited differences between the USSR and the West, fanning fears of Bolshevism to extract concessions and appeasement from the democracies while doing secret deals with the USSR to facilitate German rearmament.  A different regime type in Russia might have resulted in a very different international structure, one may have been (or may not have been) better situated to contain Germany.

One also cannot assume that a different regime structure would not have generated similar levels of effective industrial output by 1941.  Russian heavy industry output in the 1913-15 period was respectable and growing at a rapid rate.  One of the reasons the growth figures for the two Five Year plans look so impressive is that industrial production cratered in the disasters of civil war and War Communism.  A different regime with a different approach from 1920 on could have established a more secure foundation for growth.  A centrally directed focus on heavy industry doesn't necessarily outperform a more balanced program, even measured by industrial output.  The PRC is a glaring example - the top down focus on steel production in the 1950s, inspired by the Stalinist example - failed utterly.  But within 20 years of initiating agricultural reforms and policies favorable to light industry, the PRC became a heavy industrial superpower and ultimately produced more than half the world's steel output.

Finally, even if we assume that an alternative regime would not have kept pace with Stalinist iron and steel output, it presumably would have avoided other horrific blunders like wiping most of the army's leadership on the dawn of conflict with the Nazis.  That steel built a lot of T-34s, but at the cost of many other side effects that negatively impacted Soviet military effectiveness.

[Admiral Yi]

The Georgia trial will be televised.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYw1BpSJJGM

Rudy's Georgia mug shot.

[Solmyr]

They could have just used this one

[Caliga]