trot [he/him]

thoughtful response

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.

In contrast, I love Maoists and MLs so much, they never ever ever ever fail at any of the above.

the new user has sent a nonsense, probably accidental report on a post! All gather in the town square for the public execution

RCP can’t stop winning just because CPB keeps embarrassing themselves on their own

Yes, but this is just the Canadian section.

That’s the point. “Unrealistic” demands that everyone agrees with yet which cannot be achieved under capitalism are good and should be made more often.

Because unlike the dumb trots, MLs and MLMs definitely always have the correct party line on everything, especially the less members they have and the more generally obscure they are, am I right?

In fact, this is why you can just choose any ML or MLM party you want, no matter how small, and engage with just that one party’s line, because they are actually all equally correct! For example, let’s say the Italian PMLI, who… support sending weapons to Ukraine?

Uh-oh, not a good look for the Stalinists!

For context - Trotsky’s own position on the Sino-Japanese War was far more reasonable:

We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane. Marx and Engels supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of the Poles against the tsar, even though in these two nationalist wars the leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at times of the feudal aristocracy…In the Far East we have a classic example. China is a semicolonial country which Japan is transforming, under our very eyes, into a colonial country. Japan’s struggle is imperialist and reactionary. China’s struggle is emancipatory and progressive…

But Chiang Kai-shek? We need have no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of China, just as Marx and Engels had no illusions about the ruling classes of Ireland and Poland. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and peasants. But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against Japan for the remainder of the independence of China. Tomorrow he may again betray. It is possible. It is probable. It is even inevitable. But today he is struggling…

But can Chiang Kai-shek assure the victory? I do not believe so. It is he, however, who began the war and who today directs it. To be able to replace him it is necessary to gain decisive influence among the proletariat and in the army, and to do this it is necessary not to remain suspended in the air but to place oneself in the midst of the struggle. We must win influence and prestige in the military struggle against the foreign invasion and in the political struggle against the weaknesses, the deficiencies, and the internal betrayal."

(Leon Trotsky, On the Sino-Japanese War, 1937)

Note the conclusion of “We must win influence and prestige in the military struggle against the foreign invasion and the political struggle against the weaknesses, the deficiencies, and the internal betrayal” - even if skeptical in the KMT being a reliable ally, completely the opposite of “never collaborating with the bourgeois KMT government”, and definitely not advocating for taking up arms against the KMT yet.

So, why did the Chinese Trotskyists have a different, incorrect position? Because they were already getting violently purged for years with the help of the KMT out of reasons initially completely unrelated to the Sino-Japanese war. They were already a fringe, beheaded tendency in China, their leaders imprisoned or dead, which is why their positions deformed in this way, and not because they were dirty Trots who just want defeat for all communism. But they sure did make a convenient bogeyman nevertheless.

half of Russian communists do too, guess the Western propaganda got them as well

Also The Moscow Times despite claiming to be Russian is online published from the Netherlands. Yeah that is about as legitimate as Putin launching a Russian version of NYT lol.

Here is a Russian source if that is a problem, saying more or less the same thing: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6480674

Maybe via the rest of lemmy?

when the cat sells you a newspaper

quit job as gulag supervisor to become pit supervisor

first day on the job, go down to the pit

it’s a gulag

Ground effect would help: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)

Same

I should have probably made it more clear that all the excerpts come from unrelated parts of the text. The one on abortion is from a section on health problems “resulting” from Soviet occupation, not from the section of the above excerpt. Nevertheless, considering the content of the rest of the report, it’s most likely implying that the act of abortion is itself a problem.

As I said, I think it serves no purpose to argue over what percentage was forced

Sure, but omitting nuance by default allows for painting a black-and-white picture of history, which helps fabricate a justification for nationalism. We hopefully all understand what that leads to and who benefits from it.

I will read it, although honestly I am not really confident about the reliability of the report so far, judging by the following (mutually unrelated) excerpts with the most interesting parts highlighted:

2. THE CHARACTER OF REPRESSIVE ACTS COMMITTED IN ESTONIA BY THE SOVIET OCCUPATION

Because of their extent and severity, the repressive measures of this period can be compared to the Jewish holocaust, which is found to have caused long-term physical and/or mental disorders to nearly all the survivors.

Abortion, which had been forbidden in the Republic of Estonia and also initially in the Soviet Union, was legalised in 1955 and grew to be a serious problem, achieving its peak in the 1970s (in 1970 there were 188.7 terminations of pregnancy per 100 live births). This problem, too, has been carried over to the independent Estonia.

But the closed character of the Soviet system hindered development. In a normal and free society, the progress would have been more rapid. … The industrious work and skills of Estonian doctors had to compensate for the technical backwardness.

Besides the damage to physical environment caused by the occupation authorities, the psychological pollution of environment should also be noted. This was caused by several measures deriving from the repressive policy:

…

• polarising and splitting the nation under the false slogan of class struggle, persecuting patriotically-minded people, especially intelligentsia, establishing a totalitarian system of persecution and denunciation;

• forcing materialism and atheism, restricting church life, prohibiting and destroying religious books, physical and moral repression of the clergy and the believers;

• abolishing of all real convictions and principles, creating of a nation- less, godless and impersonal „herd human”. As a melancholy humoristic exaggeration one might say that a new subspecies of Homo sapiens developed, a Homo sovieticus.

The frequency of self-destructive behaviour, suicides and alcohol poisonings decreased (H. Noor, 1993), religious life livened up and birth rates increased sporadically. The crises of the transitional period that followed, did not bring along such positive changes any more.

Violation and plunder of the nation’s genetic fund — by destruction, forced deportation and banishment of the healthier part of the nation, — should also be considered as a far-reaching effect of Soviet repressive policy that had lasted for decades.

All in all, it reads more like fascist-leaning propaganda than a scientific report.

Another census in 1959 showed that demographics had changed significantly - the population was ~75% of Estonian descent. I assure you that ~165 000 people did not magically change their descent in that period of time - this change was the direct result of deportations, executions, forced drafts into dictator-led armies, etc.

Assuming that the migration of every single person to and from Estonia was forced and done in deliberate pursuit of russification is a pretty major flaw in this argument. Economic migration in the rest of the USSR was common. Why do you rule that out completely for Estonia?