Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[DGuller]

Yes, of course, theoretical rights and practical reality are two different things in authoritarian countries.  But the fact that republics could in theory leave the union without it automatically being an insurrection made a big difference.

Where did it make a big difference? That a collapsing inept SU didn't intervene when it could not had even if it wanted to? No.

the USSR was a dictatorship of thugs and gansters like pretty much all Russian regimes have been in history. Thinking its written law or pretentions amounted above the ultimate law of fist is naive in the extreme

It made a difference because there was no haggling over which parts of USSR broke up into which entities.  Republics were the units that had the right to secede, so those were the entities that became new countries.  It didn't bypass the warfare entirely, but it could've gone so much worse than it did.

[Razgovory]

This was all part of their ideology.  It seems to us difficult for us to believe that the Red Terror was for the good of the people, but communists actually believed that.  It was simply a bad ideology.  They were certainly the most ruthless, violent, and extreme form of Marxism, but that is probably why they ended up in power rather then the Socialist Revolutionaries.  They honestly believed that sacrifice now would pay dividends in the future.  This was true, but the cost was so high as to make us to recoil in revulsion.  Particularity since other countries got better results with much less brutality.  Keep in mind though, that other countries payed high costs (or more often made others pay the cost), for the benefits of Industrialization.  Slave labor provided raw materials for the early textile industry, conquest brought captive markets to imperial powers and famines that could have been prevented ravaged places in Europe, Asia and Africa due indifferent governments.

You can make the same argument that the fascists of roughly the same era really believed their policies were best for the volk.

Both groups were made up of mean "losers" of society who were rather brutal in keeping themselves in power once they grabbed it.

I certainly believe that they believed in what they were doing.  There is a long tradition of looking for "psychological" reasons for the great crimes of the 20th century.  Nobody wants to believe that so many people died for so such stupid things.  Somehow people are comforted by the idea that these great criminals acted because of some character defect: Greed, or Sexual dysfunction or chronic shyness, or whatever.  I guess we can at least relate to this.  But the sad fact is that people like Stalin killed people because he really believed that it was the for the best of their country.

[DGuller]

I guess we can at least relate to this.  But the sad fact is that people like Stalin killed people because he really believed that it was the for the best of their country.

Agreed.  Stalin was the ruthless CEO of a restructuring company, who had to make some difficult decisions and survive office politics.  Only the company was an entire country, and getting fired or laid off meant something different.

[Malthus]

I certainly believe that they believed in what they were doing.  There is a long tradition of looking for "psychological" reasons for the great crimes of the 20th century.  Nobody wants to believe that so many people died for so such stupid things.  Somehow people are comforted by the idea that these great criminals acted because of some character defect: Greed, or Sexual dysfunction or chronic shyness, or whatever.  I guess we can at least relate to this.  But the sad fact is that people like Stalin killed people because he really believed that it was the for the best of their country.

Only if you define "best for their country" as "keeping himself in power".

If you read how Stalin killed those around him, it is pretty clear he did it to remove potential rivals and to terrorize those who remained, quite regardless of how that would screw up the country. This proved to be a problem initially when it came to the war - being a craven lickspittle, as it turns out, is not a good prescription for being a good general ... so Stalin had to ease up (he made sure to purge his successful generals after the war was over, though).

Ditto with massacring people generally. Often the point of terror was to create terror, and to ensure that others were implicated in the process and so to destroy their capacity to oppose the regime. Example: establishing "quotas" of people to liquidate (that is, the nember to kill was decided in advance; the alleged crimes were determined afterwards!). 

[DGuller]

Only if you define "best for their country" as "keeping himself in power".

One doesn't prevent the other, even if these two things come in conflict.  You can have a vision that you really want to implement, and have zero patience for those who disagree (not to mention those who you suspect may plot to take your job).  Yes, being heavy-handed like that in office politics almost always makes the organization less effective, but that doesn't mean that the leader is just there for the sake of staying there.

[Malthus]

Only if you define "best for their country" as "keeping himself in power".

One doesn't prevent the other, even if these two things come in conflict.  You can have a vision that you really want to implement, and have zero patience for those who disagree (not to mention those who you suspect may plot to take your job).  Yes, being heavy-handed like that in office politics almost always makes the organization less effective, but that doesn't mean that the leader is just there for the sake of staying there.

Is there any practical difference? By those criteria, there is no way to tell if a boss is self-serving. I think it is better to look at whether what he did was directly contrary to the interests of the entity he was supposed to advance - and if that is the criterion, clearly Stalin fails (even assuming that the "entity" is the state as a whole, and not its individual inhabitants).

[Razgovory]

Yes, of course, theoretical rights and practical reality are two different things in authoritarian countries.  But the fact that republics could in theory leave the union without it automatically being an insurrection made a big difference.

Where did it make a big difference? That a collapsing inept SU didn't intervene when it could not had even if it wanted to? No.

the USSR was a dictatorship of thugs and gansters like pretty much all Russian regimes have been in history. Thinking its written law or pretentions amounted above the ultimate law of fist is naive in the extreme

It made a difference because there was no haggling over which parts of USSR broke up into which entities.  Republics were the units that had the right to secede, so those were the entities that became new countries.  It didn't bypass the warfare entirely, but it could've gone so much worse than it did.

I agree.  The laws of the Soviet Union had long been mockery of real law because of the party.  It wasn't powers of the state that held the Soviet Union together, it was the party,  This was of course intended.  It gave the impression of constituents states having real power.  In the 1980's when the party was being weakened by Gorbachev's reforms it weakened the mortar that held the whole Union together.  When the power of the party was broken prior to the Union treaty vote power fell naturally to constituent states and their citizens and whole Union fell apart along the legal fault lines.  I think this is why it came as such a surprise when the whole thing fell apart so quickly (and why the collapse is so misunderstood today). Everyone assumed that the State was supreme when the State was simply a set of organs controlled by the party.  I don't think many in the West understood the importance of the party, and a lot of people in the Eastern Bloc didn't appreciate it's importance.  To the causal observer it seemed redundant at best, parasitical at worst.  Western military planers were often mystified that "politics" was a major component of Soviet military doctrine.  From a Western observer it seems absurd. This was the hand that guided the military.  Without it, the army was pretty much directionless as was demonstrated in the Coup attempt and the first Chechen war.

[Syt]

Oops.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34479873

Syria crisis: Russian missiles 'fell on Iran'

Four Russian cruise missiles fired at Syria from the Caspian Sea landed in Iran, unnamed US officials say.

It was unclear whether the missiles caused any damage, they said.

Russia's defence ministry has declined to comment. On Wednesday, Russia said it had launched 26 cruise missiles at targets in north and north-west Syria.

The news came as Nato renewed assurances to defend its allies in view of the "escalation of Russian military activities" in Syria.

Nato is boosting its response forces to be able to deploy troops speedily.

Moscow denies Western accusations that it has mainly targeted opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, insisting its strikes have hit the infrastructure of the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups.

IS militants have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

The Russian air strikes had "weakened" IS, Syrian Army Chief of Staff Gen Ali Abdullah Ayoub said on Thursday, enabling the army to start a "big attack" to retake towns and villages.

Heavy fighting was reported in areas of Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces, where a coalition of rebels that includes the Nusra Front operates.

Government-backed troops had moved into the key Ghab plain area, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

[Razgovory]

Only if you define "best for their country" as "keeping himself in power".

One doesn't prevent the other, even if these two things come in conflict.  You can have a vision that you really want to implement, and have zero patience for those who disagree (not to mention those who you suspect may plot to take your job).  Yes, being heavy-handed like that in office politics almost always makes the organization less effective, but that doesn't mean that the leader is just there for the sake of staying there.

Is there any practical difference? By those criteria, there is no way to tell if a boss is self-serving. I think it is better to look at whether what he did was directly contrary to the interests of the entity he was supposed to advance - and if that is the criterion, clearly Stalin fails (even assuming that the "entity" is the state as a whole, and not its individual inhabitants).

Well yes.    We can gather that he was very sincere in his beliefs and not just a self serving bandit king by the fact he didn't rob the country blind.  He wasn't like some third world dictator and kept a vast amount of money in Swiss bank accounts.  He honestly believed that he was the only one who could save the Soviet Union.  In his old age who often treated his subordinates with contempt claiming that the Western Powers would out maneuver them once he was gone.  I don't think ever realized that he created a situation where competent successors had long ago been murdered, and his surviving minions lacked the initiative or brains to be good leaders.

[Razgovory]

Oops.

Well they are labeled "best use by 1987".

[DGuller]

Oops.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34479873

Syria crisis: Russian missiles 'fell on Iran'

Four Russian cruise missiles fired at Syria from the Caspian Sea landed in Iran, unnamed US officials say.

It was unclear whether the missiles caused any damage, they said.

Russia's defence ministry has declined to comment. On Wednesday, Russia said it had launched 26 cruise missiles at targets in north and north-west Syria.

The news came as Nato renewed assurances to defend its allies in view of the "escalation of Russian military activities" in Syria.

Nato is boosting its response forces to be able to deploy troops speedily.

Moscow denies Western accusations that it has mainly targeted opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, insisting its strikes have hit the infrastructure of the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups.

IS militants have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

The Russian air strikes had "weakened" IS, Syrian Army Chief of Staff Gen Ali Abdullah Ayoub said on Thursday, enabling the army to start a "big attack" to retake towns and villages.

Heavy fighting was reported in areas of Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces, where a coalition of rebels that includes the Nusra Front operates.

Government-backed troops had moved into the key Ghab plain area, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Iran?  They must've taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

[Malthus]

Well yes.    We can gather that he was very sincere in his beliefs and not just a self serving bandit king by the fact he didn't rob the country blind.  He wasn't like some third world dictator and kept a vast amount of money in Swiss bank accounts.  He honestly believed that he was the only one who could save the Soviet Union.  In his old age who often treated his subordinates with contempt claiming that the Western Powers would out maneuver them once he was gone.  I don't think ever realized that he created a situation where competent successors had long ago been murdered, and his surviving minions lacked the initiative or brains to be good leaders.

Amassing a secret fortune a la third-world-dictators only makes sense if there is somewhere to flee to and enjoy one's ill-gotten gains - a French Riviera or somewhere of that sort. This possibility did not exist for Stalin. If he ever gave up (or was forced out of) power, he was a dead man, and there was nowhere on this planet he would be safe.

What's the point of piling up trinkets when he owned the whole damn empire? Moreover, it's pretty clear he was "in it" because he relished the exercise of power, not for material wealth.

[Razgovory]

What evidence do you have that he didn't actually believe in what he did?  He certainly said he did, and revolutionary was not exactly the natural path to power.  His ruthlessness and paranoia were already aspects of his personality long before he came to power, they were qualities he acquired by being hard scrabble revolutionary.

[Malthus]

What evidence do you have that he didn't actually believe in what he did?  He certainly said he did, and revolutionary was not exactly the natural path to power.  His ruthlessness and paranoia were already aspects of his personality long before he came to power, they were qualities he acquired by being hard scrabble revolutionary.

The fact that he just invented stuff to have people killed, even though it went directly against the interests of the nation he purported to lead, stikes me as being evidence.

Obviously he's never going to *say* "I don't believe in any of this shit, I'm only out for power no matter who I kill or what I destroy". If you are waiting for such a statement, no-one would ever qualify.

[DGuller]

What evidence do you have that he didn't actually believe in what he did?  He certainly said he did, and revolutionary was not exactly the natural path to power.  His ruthlessness and paranoia were already aspects of his personality long before he came to power, they were qualities he acquired by being hard scrabble revolutionary.

The fact that he just invented stuff to have people killed, even though it went directly against the interests of the nation he purported to lead, stikes me as being evidence.

Obviously he's never going to *say* "I don't believe in any of this shit, I'm only out for power no matter who I kill or what I destroy". If you are waiting for such a statement, no-one would ever qualify.

I think you're stretching it.  It is the nature of politics that it lowers the efficiency of the organization as a whole, by putting personal ambitions in conflict with organizational goals.  No matter whether the organization is a corporation or a country.  It is true that if you're a ruthless leader, your #1 goal is to stay in power regardless of what other objective it will conflict with.  That doesn't mean that there is no #2 goal.  Nothing that you mentioned really counters the theme that Stalin was a leader with a vision and a particularly destructive approach to boardroom politics.