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?

  • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    19 days ago

    They were fucking socialists. They came in with paratroopers and tanks to kill socialists. It was not a lib revolution, I dont have a problem with dead CIA puppet libs, this was socialists who wanted autonomy. This is why a lot of anarchists can’t stand tankies.

    Edit: List the things the USSR did wrong. It existed for seventy years and covered eleven time zones, so there’s no way, even if they were the best ever, that its gonna be a short list. If it is a short list, consider that you might be rationalizing and covering up and lying to cover the fuckups of an empire thats been dead probably longer than you’ve been alive, and most of the pieces have been to war with other pieces since. Why? Its dead and gone, you sound like how libs sound after throwing an election. Let’s do a post mortem so we can do better next time, let’s dig deep into the fuckups and fucking learn from fucking history. There were cool parts too! And let’s learn from those too! But you can’t take either in isolation, that’s not honest, and its not useful.

    • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      19 days ago

      They were fucking socialists

      So was the USSR in 1986 applying Perestroika and Glasnost, and look where that led them. Many more socialists died as a consequence of the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc than as a consequence of USSR actions.

      I dont have a problem with dead CIA puppet libs, this was socialists who wanted autonomy

      Yes, that’s the US State Department version. Seeing how almost literally all countries that have taken these liberalisation policies have ended in Capitalism as a consequence (except possibly China depending on who you ask, and Cuba possibly might be on the way to that), I find it hard to believe that it would have brought the result of happier socialism for everyone.

      Feel free to answer if you really mean that you want me to make a list of USSR L’s, but I think it’s not a stretch to say that Marxist-Leninists usually know as much of the repressions and bad stuffs in the USSR as any other flavour of socialists

      • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        19 days ago

        I’m saying if you can’t see their fuckups, if you buy all the cope, you aren’t really learning much from their successes either, and this is just masturbating to an idealized past.

        There are socialist regimes, even centralized ones close to your ideology, that have not failed, that still exist, that have a better record of being on the right side of history. I dont have a ton of interest arguing the minutiae of a shitty dead empire that could have been really really fucking cool. Why the fuck do any of you never talk about them?

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          19 days ago

          Please excuse me, which socialist country has a better record of being on the right side of history than the Soviet Union?!

          if you can’t see their fuckups

          I’ll try and make you a list of the bigger ones IMO later or tomorrow. Again, I don’t expect many people to know more about such issues than Marxist-Leninists, who are famously obsessed with the USSR.

          • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            19 days ago

            I don’t actually care, its just an exercise to see if youre delusional by checking roughly how many. Do it, but for yourself. Remember the people you love might be great, but they also suck. Remembering one without the other is not respecting their memory.

            Cuba in particular, as far as nation States, tends to be on the right side of things earlier than most. I’m not interested in discussing it at present.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              18 days ago

              Cuba

              would not exist as a socialist state without the USSR and (though this may only be historical contingency) Krushchev, doing the only other correct thing he did besides rolling tanks on Hungary

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  5·
                  18 days ago

                  I don’t know what makes you think I didn’t. I saw a bunch of vague moral pronouncements and then you refusing to clearly answer questions. For that reason along with the fact that I really want to waste less of my time in internet arguments, I have no interest in the broader discussion here.

                  I just felt it would be helpful perspective that every existing socialist state (well, idk about Laos) and some of the historical ones owe(d) their existence to the victory of the Bolsheviks. I think that the subsequent progress made by states like Cuba should be understood as part of a historical progression that the USSR was a positive forbear in.

                  • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    1·
                    18 days ago

                    They owe their existence to the victory over the czar, which was a coalition of many many left groups. The Bolsheviks were there, but they were one small group among many during the revolution.

            • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              19 days ago

              I’m going to note that you are very reluctant to actually elaborate on many of your points, including which socialist projects have a better record of being on the right side of history. Seriously, how many can you name other than Cuba and East Germany?

    • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      19 days ago

      Ah, famous socialist cardinal József Mindszenty.

      With Czechoslovakia it’s a bit more muddled, but looking at Gorbachev who was at first “we’ll do socialism a bit better” and then “we are ceding power to capitalists now”, I’m sceptical it wouldn’t do something similar.

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          15·
          19 days ago

          the imperialism of the USSR?

          Incorrect term. Call it hegemonism if you want, or geopolitical interventionism, but not imperialism. The USSR did not engage in economic imperialism in any stretch of the word, not within itself, not with neighbouring countries, not with third parties. It was a source of raw materials for the Eastern Bloc which it traded within COMECON on exchange for industrial goods at approximately international market prices* (i.e. applying unequal exchange to itself in favour of COMECON countries), it supplied aid in the form of industrial development to poor third countries on exchange for local goods, many times those produced by the newly formed industries (instead of supplying aid in the form of loans for raw material extraction and expecting a return in hard currency with interest rates)… It’s really impossible by any stretch of the word “imperialism” to apply it to the USSR.

          *after the mid-50s

    • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      18 days ago

      The Soviet invasion of Hungary was good and based and one of the few correct things Khrushchev did. It’s worth bearing in mind the uprising in Hungary coincided with Israel, France and UK’s attack on Egypt.

      It was a mix of a popular uprising against Khrushchevs faked “secret” speech about Stalin which enabled the fascist elements (paid, armed and trained by US and UK) of Hungarian society to gamble their chance on getting rid of socialist rule.

      Fascists marked Communists homes with a white cross and those of jews with a black cross for extermination squads:

      The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of these days, said that! the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

      Andre Stil, editor-in-chief of the French Communist newspaper, LHumanite, arrived in Budapest on November 12. He toured the city and conferred with many Communist and other survivors of the days of White Terror. His account is substantially the same as the reports sent in by Times and Tribune and Commonweal and Commentary and U.S. News and Life and Politika eyewitnesses, fascistic mass murder reminding one of the Berlin days of 1933—and the Budapest days of 1919. Thus:

      After the tortures, those who were still breathing were hanged Even dead people were hanged. The corpses of those hanged were in such a state that many could not be recognized. The trees in Republic Square still bear the traces. These corpses, in all parts of their bodies, were bored through with bayonet thrusts, assailed by kicks, tom by nails, covered with expectoration…

      (Herbert Apheker, The Truth About Hungary, p.220)

      CIA sent terrorists to Hungary under the RED SOX program (Horthy here was the leader of the Hungarian fascists under 23 years of fascist rule in Hungary until Soviet liberation).

      “The CIA sent RED SOX/RED CAP groups in Budapest into action to join the Freedom Fighters and to help organise them… Radio Free Europe, and the RED SOX/RED CAP groups encouraged the rebels.” Often since denied, this was something known at the time to those in the know. For example, on November 10 1956, the FBI tapped a conversation between Pagie Morris and Jay Lovestone. Morris said “I know the whole thing… Do you remember when I said to you that it was criminal to incite a revolution and a rebellion, and not to follow it through? … Well, the Wisner crowd incited it… And the Horthy crowd has been in it… That Radio Free Europe is the crowd that’s behind it.”

      (James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence, by Michael Howard Holzman, pp. 150-160)

      The CIA chief in Vienna recalled that these “were very sad days” – we sat powerless on the sidelines watching the Soviets preparing to crush the revolution.

      (ibid)

      Weapons were British and American

      Some of the weapons used were American, and others almost certainly British. Mr Smith says MI6 and the CIA had buried arms caches in the woods around Prague and Budapest for use by “stay-behind” parties or fifth columnists in case of war.

      (MI6 trained rebels to fight Soviets in Hungarian revolt, The Independent)

      Hungary, in 1954, was considered a “weak spot” of the Soviet Union according to US committee ’

      Again on New Years day, 1954, the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate released a study, through its chairman, Senator Alexander Wiley which spoke of “accumulating tensions” and mounting “sabotage and underground activities” in Eastern Europe and referred in particular to Hungary as being the most tender spot - the "weakest link

      (Truth About Hungary p.112)

      The mid-1950s were regarded by the British and the United States as the last chance to challenge Soviet dominion over eastern Europe. The Eisenhower administration had been elected on a platform of “liberating” the Soviet satellite states, but in the 10 years since the Allied victory in Europe, the Soviet Union had strengthened its hold over the central and eastern part of the continent.

      USA was planning on WW3 with Soviet Union in 1943 (2 years before WW2 ended) whilst the British - at war with Hungary at this time “looked on at favour of Horthy” (Horthyism was the brand of fascism in Hungary in power for 23 years prior to Soviet liberation which was only more and more influenced by Nazism as the alliance with Austria and Germany deepened during that period and was to be the main fighting force in 1956)

      By April 3, 1943, the editors of The Nation, in discussing “Russia After the War,” warned that many of the rich insisted on the inevitability of World War III—a “thought entertained by powerful forces in the United States which fear any modification of property relationships and are made uneasy by the possible existence of a powerful and successful collectivist state in the world.”

      Specifically, in terms of Eastern Europe, as Doreen Warriner writes: “In 1944 all the anti-Soviet elements in the Balkan capitals believed that America and Britain would invade the Balkans after the defeat of Germany,” (cited work, p. 21n.).
      Leigh White, an American correspondent in the Balkans, writing in 1944, commented upon “the disreputable dynasties (there) of which our Metternichs of the State Department and Foreign Office are apparently so enamored” (cited work, p. 459). The distinguished English historian, Professor A. J. P. Taylor, in his introduction to the Memoirs of Michael Karolyi, declares that: “Even in the Second World War, when Hungary was an enemy state, and democratic Hungarians, one might have thought, our only friends, the British Foreign Office looked with favour on Horthy, Kallay and the rest, while Michael Karolyi was held at arm’s length.”

      (Herbert Apheker, The Truth About Hungary, p.71)

      Americans gravitated toward the fascist elements in Hungary at the end of WWII

      When I left Italy in the Summer of 1945 (writes Mr. Riegel), talk of an inevitable war with Russia was fashionable with the Catholic Right and the small cynics who know the answer to everything. Arriving in Hungary, I found this same inevitability of war an article of general faith, intensified by a heritage of Nazi propaganda and wishful thinking.

      He found, in agreement with all other observers—the testimony of some of whom has been offered on earlier pages—that … fascism and para-fascism, with their off-shoots of anti-Semitism and clerical reaction, are still strong forces in the country.”

      These forces gained encouragement from the American officials, for in Mr. Riegel’s words: “The Americans gravitate toward the most dubious elements remaining in Hungary, the remnants of the gentry, industrialists, the higher clergy, and the motley assortment of fascists and opportunists.”

      (ibid p. 73)

      NATO furnished support to the fascistic elements of the Horthy fascists with:

      The Mutual Security Act (of 1951) has as its stated aim, “to maintain the security and promote the foreign policy and provide for the general welfare of the U. S. by furnishing assistance to friendly nations in the interest of international peace and security.” To this was added an amendment, introduced by Representative Charles Kersten (R., Wis.) and approved by the House (and the Senate and signed by President Truman in October) in the following form, appended to the above:

      and for any selected persons who are residing in or escapees from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, or the Communist- dominated areas of Germany and Austria, or any other countries absorbed by the Soviet Union, either to form such persons into national elements of the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or for other purposes, when it is similarly determined by the President that such assistance is important in the defense of the North Atlantic area and of the security of the United States (Congressional Record, August 17, 1951, vol. 97, p. 10261).

      (ibid p.95)

      credit to /u/JoeysStainlessSteel

      • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        18 days ago

        Ah yes, the other thing that very easily makes me fuel my grudge against the USSR, the complete and utter revision of the 1956 uprising in Hungary based on one book written by an american and the fucking independent article where the second part of the quote (“But he added: “There is no evidence that this was specifically sparked by MI6 because there was another series of events””) is ALWAYS cut out for some reason.

      • trot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        18 days ago

        I’ll help urmums401k@hexbear.net out here. We can summarize the first quote as follows:

        information coming from the provinces

        eyewitnesses I won’t name

        As for the rest, the CIA/MI6 possibly contributing (note: it would have happened either way - the material reasons why people went on general strike/took up arms would still be there) to the start of the uprising does not serve as evidence for much other than confirm the obvious fact “the USSR and NATO were geopolitical enemies”. It’s akin to saying China abandoned socialism by 1969 because of this, or that Lenin was a “german agent”.

        Yes, the uprising in reality did not have a single coherent ideology: some were libs, while others (most) were workers with actual grievances against the bureaucracy, who were forming workers’ councils (e.g. Greater Budapest Workers’ Council) and demanding direct workers’ control of industries. Though note: none of the prominent participating organisations made any calls to return to capitalism, and the said workers’ councils were the only ones that persisted for months after the military intervention, until the leaders were all arrested. Even if we suppose that the initial leaders of the movement were sponsored by the West, that soon stopped being the case because the leading organisations obviously changed.