My theory of what I don't like about Russia has always focused upon the observation that, lacking natural military defenses such as the English Channel or the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Muscovites have always sought security in gigantism, with the bad consequences that so often go along with imperialism.
But, it's worth pointing out, the neoconservative movement that has had so much influence over post-Cold War American foreign policy, with its own gigantist-imperialist tendencies, traces its origins back to a 1920s debate in Moscow over whether or not the Soviet Union was big enough for the survival of the reigning ideology. Stalin cautiously argued that the Soviet Union was adequate in size for "socialism in one country" to work for now. But the original neoconservatives' first icon, Trotsky, argued that only permanent global ideological revolution was adequate.
In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Trotsky added an appendix denouncing Stalin's policy of "Socialism in One Country:"
The reactionary tendencies of autarchy are a defense reflex of senile capitalism to the task with which history confronts it, that of freeing its economy from the fetters of private property and the national state, and organizing it in a planned manner throughout the Earth.
In Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People – presented by the Soviet of People’s Commissars for the approval of the Constituent Assembly during its brief hours of life – the “fundamental task” of the new regime was thus defined: “The establishment of a socialist organization of society and the victory of socialism in all countries.” The international character of the revolution was thus written into the basic document of the new regime. No one at that time would have dared present the problem otherwise!
Posts
88 comments:
At least Russia has known that, in recent centuries, an existential threat could only come from the west. Germany was unique in potentially facing an existential threat from both east and west.
Trotsky's criticism of Stalin on every issue was that he, Stalin, wasn't Communist enough. Trotsky denounced Stalin as a moderate and insinuated that he was a phony Bolshevik who was just going with the Bolshevik flow while secretly wanting to undermine the movement.
And Trotsky turned out to have been right! Stalin ended up turning to Russian nationalism and social conservatism during WWII and killing most Old Bolsheviks, including Trotsky himself, starting in 1937. THAT was the reason for the Cold War. If Stalin hadn't turned right on the issues of Russian nationalism and social conservatism, the people who run the West wouldn't have started the Cold War against him. And yes, it's true that Stalin never abandoned the economic tenets of Communism. That just shows you how irrelevant economics really is. Tribalism (i.e. Stalin becoming a Russian nationalist) is more important as a cause of wars (hot or cold) and in politics in general than money.
Yup, the connection between the Trotskyites and the neo con Economist WSJ Washington consensus dogma that seems to be the new overbearing dogma, is good one to make. Both are blinded, blinkered fanatics seeking word domination and the utter crushing of dissent. Both are dumb anti human and disgustingly stupid and arrogant. Both are headed for a big fall one the sheeple wake up.
Why did Stalin join the Communist movement? He was a Georgian nationalist in his youth. Koba, his early nickname which he chose himself, comes from a Georgian nationalist novel. Patriotic Georgians saw the Russian Empire as an occupier. The Communists were the most anti-Russian political force around. That attracted lots of Georgian, Polish, Latvian, etc. nationalists to them. Galician nationalists are dancing to the same tune right now.
The Communists were also into violence, and Stalin was young and hot-headed in the typical Caucasus fashion.
Non-Russian, non-Jewish Communists in Russia were a bit like Black liberals are now in the US. They aren't really liberal. They're not in that coalition for the liberalism. There can always be a revolt of the tools. It happened with Obama to a tiny, tiny extent (Chuck Hagel, the rapprochement with Iran), but with Stalin it happened big-time.
He never stopped loving Georgia. He favored it from the Kremlin with money and other means. But he kept it within the empire and gradually started identifying himself with Russian, imperial nationalism. And every nationalist is necessarily socially conservative towards the nation he loves.
Napoleon started as a Corsican (a subset of Italian) nationalist and actually fought the French in his youth, but switched to French nationalism in adulthood. He never stopped being pro-Corsica and pro-Italy in general, but the whole imperial thing ended up sweeping him up. There's a parallel there.
Stalin never became a "Russian" nationalist. He was a pure Soviet nationalist, and he used Russians as the natural building blocks for Homo Sovieticus simply because there were more of them. Stalin had no particular love for ethnic Russians, and indeed most of the leadership under Stalin was not ethnic Russian. Read your Solzhenitsyn.
Yup, just a big circle. The people who want to rule the world first tried to achieve it with the Soviet Union but were prevented by Stalin and now they are trying again using EUSUK.
If Obama thought for himself, if he was a willful rebel at heart, if he chose to revolt against the forces that brought him to power, how would we have noticed it first? He would have started a campaign against hip-hop, a campaign to replace it with something wholesome, Motown-like. Every nationalist is necessarily for wholesomeness within his own nation.
"My theory of what I don't like about Russia has always focused upon the observation that, lacking natural military defenses such as the English Channel or the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Muscovites have always sought security in gigantism, with the bad consequences that so often go along with imperialism."
The why did the English go for gigantism? Neither the Russian Empire not the USSR was ever as big as the British Empire. Why did Rome go for gigantism?
Why did Russia become huge? Because Russians were on the edge of the steppes, with empty (really hunter-gatherer) Siberia nearby. At first the closeness to the steppes was a liability. Russia was pillaged by steppe nomads. The Mongols were just the best-known nomadic group to do that. There were others.
I think that the nomads stopped being a big factor with the birth of fire arms. Once Russians overcame the Tatar nomads, the entirety of the steppe, which stretches through all of southern Ukraine and east to Mongolia, was Russian. It was a huge, mostly empty place.
And Siberia was just north of the steppes. It was very sparsely populated by hunter gatherers. It would have been weird of Russia not to take it.
Basically, Russia became huge because the initially-small Russian ethnos was situated on the edge of the European world. Waste lay beyond that edge. Russians grabbed that waste and subsequently grew demographically to fill it, but not anywhere near capacity. If not for the Revolution and WWII, more of that space would have been filled with people now.
Stalin had Trotsky killed, yes, that's one good thing that Stalin did.
Explain to me somebody - Trotsky was an evil man, and his acolytes did (and are still doing) evil things - why do Trotskyites get a pass?
the original neoconservatives' first icon, Trotsky
Thanks.
But be prepared now for a biblical deluge of HATE.
PS: Could anyone explain Orwell's infatuation with Emmanuel Goldstein and Snowball?
In retrospect now, that infatuation casts a terrible pall over the entire Orwell corpus.
Unless maybe there was some underlying subtext or supersubtext or whatever which I didn't notice as a child.
Some probably think it's ironic that the neocons would be for world revolution. It's not ironic if you realize that they never changed. The switch from Communism to near-Libertrianism is immaterial. Those ideologies are twins. And economics is irrelevant anyway. Politics is all about tribalism.
The neocons are moved by the same impulses as their Trotskyist parents and Marxist (1848) forerunners. Their goals are just as global as they were then and are basically the same. The tactics haven't changed much.
So they became a bit less enthusiastic about Blacks than they used to be. It's not a big change. They never actually liked Blacks. They just used them as tools. The act of putting down one tool and picking up another does not change you as a person.
http://youtu.be/Fd4jFPj5wVg
Hollywood Left and Right
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/03/01/public-expresses-outrage-over-school-district-superintendents-663000-compensation-package/
"Then why did the English go for gigantism?"
Piraticism.
The best offence is a good defense.
http://takimag.com/article/conservatism_in_russia_and_america_steve_sailer#axzz2uiA1q0rr
On Russia's growth:
Ukrainian nationalists say that Russia was founded by colonists from the Ukraine, like America by colonists from England. It's partly true.
The original Rus' state was mostly in what's now Ukraine and Belarus. Its second-largest city (Novgorod) was in what's now Russia, but other than that modern Russia holds a small part of the original Rus' territory. Modern Ukraine holds most of it.
Much of the Ukraine was constantly raided by steppe nomads. They raped and pillaged and they took away Russian women for their own use and for sale in the Middle East. Sometimes the nomads got organized enough to collect regular tribute.
A large portion of the Rus' peasantry fled all of that by moving into the northeastern forests. To a large extent that founded Moscovite Russia. The forests were largely empty, with some Finno-Ugric peoples in them. The Rus' gradually assimilated the Finno-Ugrics. That process still isn't complete. There are little pockets of Finno-Ugric speakers in the middle of Russia to this day.
Gradually, because of peasant migration away from the Ukraine (too dangerous) and towards the northeastern forests, the center of gravity of the Rus' world shifted. Several cities vied for the opportunity to lead that new center of gravity. Vladimir and Suzdal dropped out of that fight early on, then Moscow and Tver, the remaining contenders, fought several long, feudal wars with each other over that issue. Moscow won in the middle of the 15th century.
globo-homo agenda:
hot-to-trotskyism.
"Explain to me somebody - Trotsky was an evil man, and his acolytes did (and are still doing) evil things - why do Trotskyites get a pass?"
Victim of Stalin.
Victim of your enemy is a saint.
He was also a great writer.
Interesting movie.
http://youtu.be/AeKHthb-YMM
Anonymous:"And Trotsky turned out to have been right! Stalin ended up turning to Russian nationalism and social conservatism during WWII and killing most Old Bolsheviks, including Trotsky himself, starting in 1937. THAT was the reason for the Cold War."
Actually, dear boy, I tend to think that it probably had a little more to do with Stalin establishing a massive Soviet Empire in Eastern and Central Europe (cf Iron Curtain, The).
An interesting wrinkle in the Trotskyite origins of the neocons:
"Just about the only place the neoconservative movement can’t locate Hitler is Nazi Germany. In 1943, the founding-neocon-to-be, Irving Kristol, publicly dismissed the “near hysterical insistence upon the pressing military danger,” Jacob Heilbrunn reports in his new book, “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.” While the Nazis herded Jews into the gas chambers, Kristol, then a 23-year-old Trotskyist, held fast to his conviction that the Allies were no different from the Axis in their imperialism. Kristol took this view because he was “indulging in an abstract crusade for a better world.”"
5371:"At least Russia has known that, in recent centuries, an existential threat could only come from the west."
As befits a fundamentally non-Western, Asiatic country.
5371:" Germany was unique in potentially facing an existential threat from both east and west."
More of a case of self-generating the threat from the West.
"Stalin had no particular love for ethnic Russians, and indeed most of the leadership under Stalin was not ethnic Russian. Read your Solzhenitsyn."
Watch Alexander Nevsky. It was made in 1938. It's Russian nationalist, not imperial-nationalist. Why did Stalin engage with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1943? That would have been anathema to the Old Bolsheviks whom he had killed. There was an undeniable change of tone towards the Russian ethnicity in the late 30s and during the war. Think of the first line of the Soviet anthem, which Stalin edited closely. "Great Rus' has built for all ages an indestructible union of free republics." Not even "Russia", but "Great Rus'". It was a summary of his (and Khruschov's and Brezhnev's) view of the nature of the Soviet state. Rus' is described as the creator of the whole thing. And called great. He treated the first line of the anthem not exactly as a mission statement, more like a description of how he viewed the state.
There was also his turn away from social liberalism and towards social conservatism (wholesomeness, realistic art).
There's a kernel of truth in Sailer's theories about Russians having to resort to gigantism to secure their borders, but he doesn't articulate it very well; the obvious criticism would be: what is the difference then between Russia and any continental power such as France or Germany? They don't have natural borders either. And they have often been invaded also. So why don't those countries feel a need to be defensively huge like Russia?
We must distinguish between the size of the ethnos and the size of the polity, when it comes to ethnos the sheer size of the russian culture is due to two factors: first, the abundance of huge long navigable rivers such as the Volga in those parts, which made it possible for the medieval Rus culture to cover such a wide area from Baltic to Black Sea, and second, as another commenter pointed out, they were in position to colonize the steppe and Siberia as soon as gunpowder and agricultural progress made it feasible, just like the Americans settled their own continent away from the Indians.
As for the size of the Russian polity, well all empires have always tried to be as large as they can get away with. All rulers have always been "gigantist". Therefore "gigantism" may not be an useful word to use.
That being said I think it IS true that Russian culture is uniquely paranoid about external invasions and this informs their policies. But it isn't simply caused by the lack or natural defenses or the experience of being invaded or the same would apply to France and Germany and Poland. What is it then? I think in part it might be just Slavic genetics, which makes them cruel and dominance oriented and therefore they project this on the phantom of an external invader. And in part it's the historical experience of being the sole defender of the Orthodox civilization since the fall of Costantinople, while being besieged by Muslims from the east and non-orthodox Christians from the west. In contrast Catholics, Protestants and Muslims nations all had same faith neighbours to stipulate enduring and trustful alliances with. Being alone, Russia had to be paranoid.
This paranoic feature of Russia is what inspired Stalin to move much of its vital industry as much to the East as he could, beyond the Volga, in order to be able to endure an invasion. So when the invasion came, Russia was able to survive it, having put so much land between her industrial heart and the Nazis. And this paranoia is also what inspired the Soviets to maintain their huge buffer varsaw pact empire to their West. I'm not sure about this but did the Soviet gain any net economic benefit form their satellites? I suspect that those satellites were rather an economic liability, an expensive luxury meant to make a Nato invasion more difficult. Cuba certainly was an expensive luxury meant to discourage American aggressivity. This makes the Soviet empire completely different from the British one which on the contrary was meant to extract resources from the world. And therefore Sailer in justified in using two different words for these two types of empire (gigantism versus piraticism).
"PS: Could anyone explain Orwell's infatuation with Emmanuel Goldstein and Snowball?"
Probably his experiences in the Spanish Civil War led him to be more pro Trotsky than Stalin or at least less anti Trotsky.
"...most of the leadership under Stalin was not ethnic Russian"
After the purges of 1937-1938 and until Stalin's death his government mostly consisted of the Old Bolsheviks whom he didn't purge, the few whom he considered loyal. He didn't recruit much new talent. There were very few ethnic Russians among Old Bolsheviks, the people who pulled off the revolution. It was an anti-Russian movement.
Why didn't Stalin recruit new talent? Why didn't he posthumously repudiate Lenin the way he repudiated Trotsky during Trotsky's life? That would be interesting to explore. Pretty much every Russian ruler since 1917 started by verbally condemning the previous guy. Stalin was an exception: he repudiated Leninism in deed, but not in word. I don't know why.
By the way, when I first heard Putin, early in his first presidential term, condemning Yeltsin's legacy, I thought those were just words. Didn't think it was for real. Every new boss does that, even in the corporate world. But then it gradually turned out that Putin really mean that criticism.
Those crazy suisse people will vote in another referendum on may 18th.
This time it's about a minimum wage of unbelievable 22 francs (24,8 Dollar or 18 Euro).
The elite doesn't like it!
http://www.thelocal.ch/20140226/no-to-worlds-highest-minimum-wage-swiss-economy-chief
Before their several centuries being the cowboys, the Russians spent several centuries being the Injuns. It makes a difference.
My problem with the neocons isn't that it gets us into wars or that they're aggressive, it is that spreading democracy too often comes with spreading certain cultural marxisms with regard to race, sex, and culture.
As far as certain societies being "repressive", I almost feel like this essay is an amendment to our constitution.
Repressive Tolerance by Herbert Marcuse
http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm
I don't necessarily like Russia and China, they have their own bs... but I feel like I need them to provide a buffer from our elite's bs.
OklahomaRichard
Re the Trotsky love, Christopher Hitchens was an unrepentant Trotskyist, admiring the combination of intellect and action, physical courage and charisma; and Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army and later leadership of the Left Opposition to Stalin from the 1920s on.
There were some great minds among that lot, including Stalin's preternatural cunning. Trotsky's counterpart in the Right Opposition, Nikolai Bukharin, was just as brilliant a writer. Both men were liquidated in Stalin's relentless drive to eliminate anyone who knew him back in the day, anyone who could familiarly call him Koba.
In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Trotsky added an appendix denouncing Stalin's policy of "Socialism in One Country...
Steve posted this, so he understands this point, but not everybody does, and I think it's worth spelling it out one more time.
The title of that book means that Trotsky thought that Stalin had betrayed the revolution. That he, Stalin, wasn't revolutionary enough. Trotsky called Stalin a rightist (compared to the Bolshevik mean) and himself a leftist. Trotsky's gripe with the collectivization campaign (which caused the Ukrainian famine) was that it wasn't harsh enough, that not enough grain was confiscated from the kulaks, that Stalin was coddling the kulaks while he, Trotsky, helplessly watched from exile. Trotsky's gripe with the "Socialism in One Country" slogan was that it wasn't "Socialism in all Countries."
Now replace socialism with "democracy". They don't mean actual democracy by this. They've just overthrown an elected government in the Ukraine, and they've done that in other countries before.
The point is that they're spreading this thing, which they're mischaracterizing as democracy, worldwide. Through revolution. Nothing has changed.
I think Ukraine should be split up so the ethnic groups can stop fighting. It would be nice then if the two resulting nations could be independent and have self-determination.
However, since true independence is not likely, I believe the influence of the EU/USA (global liberalism) is worse than the influence of Russia.
Very true. The Neo-Cons (I prefer Neo-Conmen) blindsided much of the American public by adding the word "conservative" to their name. Neo-Left or Soviet-Left would be a much more appropriate name.
I've come to believe the Trotskyites matter a lot. I don't think we're going to be able to figure out the history of our side of the old Iron Curtain and the current West without having a look at them. It's clear now that Trotsky himself gave his followers the green light to switch their efforts over to using the USA rather than the USSR as their centre of operations. Trotsky laid out his views on the matter in the in the March 23, 1935 edition of Liberty Magazine, a middlebrow, mass-circualtion American magazine. In a piece entitled "If America Should Go Communist":
Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians. In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants. This, in addition to your technical equipment and your wealth, is the greatest asset of your coming communist revolution. Your revolution will be smoother in character than ours; you will not waste your energies and resources in costly social conflicts after the main issues have been decided; and you will move ahead so much more rapidly in consequence.
and...
The average man doesn’t like systems or generalities either. It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.
....
You are prepared to do this as is no other country. Nowhere else has the study of the internal market reached such intensity as in the United States. It has been done by your banks, trusts, individual businessmen, merchants, traveling salesmen and farmers as part of their stock-in-trade. Your soviet government will simply abolish all trade secrets, will combine all the findings of these researches for individual profit and will transform them into a scientific system of economic planning. In this your government will be helped by the existence of a large class of cultured and critical consumers. By combining the nationalized key industries, your private businesses and democratic consumer cooperation, you will quickly develop a highly flexible system for serving the needs of your population.
This system will be made to work not by bureaucracy and not by policemen but by cold, hard cash.
"If America Should Go Communist"
That was written circa 1934. What happened to all those followers of Trotsky in the years since? I think the old CIA, National Review types thought they were using these anti-Stalinist, pro-interventionist Trotskyites while the Trotskyites were sure they were using them. Who was right? I have my guess.
"Then why did the English go for gigantism?"
Piraticism.
Steve, if you please, privateering. If you're going to break the law, do it nice and legal. Everyone seems to know that today! And get to tell romantic stories to the Queen, not live like a scurvy dog in some tropical hell hole.
Sea Dogs
"Daniel said...
Stalin had Trotsky killed, yes, that's one good thing that Stalin did."
Indeed - best use of a pickaxe ever. The evil bastard had it comin'.
"Explain to me somebody - Trotsky was an evil man, and his acolytes did (and are still doing) evil things - why do Trotskyites get a pass?"
Now, that..........is a real mystery.
Regarding global expansion, unlike Trotsky, Stalin was always cautious and short term present focused. During the early '20s it wasn't yet feasible for Russia to gobble up its neighbors. First thing was to solidify Soviet power over Russia proper.
Post-WW2, however, Stalin saw his opportunity and seized via treaty most of Eastern Europe.
So he ultimately listened to Trotsky's advice and implemented it when the opportunity and situation was favorable to do so.
Charles Krauthammer - whom, based on the air-time they alot him, Fox News has apparently identified as the most significant figure in world history since Jesus Crist - is on NRO's "The Corner" pooh-poohing Obama's weak response to Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
Well, what the hell is Obama supposed to do? Since the neo-cons succeeded in fomenting a coup in Ukraine and installing Don Knotts as it's prime minister, Russia is now worried that we will push NATO right up to their border - a hostile provocation that we would never put up with ourselves if the shoe were on the other foot. Why is it that a small group of people with hostile race-memories of Russia are allowed to determine our foreign policy toward that country? One would think that someone with a cool head would step back and say: Yeah, there were pogroms, there were the Black Hundreds. Get over it. We're not going to war over your (our) ancient ethnic grievances.
>>>Daniel said...
"""Stalin had Trotsky killed, yes, that's one good thing that Stalin did.
Explain to me somebody - Trotsky was an evil man, and his acolytes did (and are still doing) evil things - why do Trotskyites get a pass?"""
The answer is obvious. Leon Trotsky's real name was Lev Davidovich Bronshtein.
Is it clear now?
Gosh, wonder why he changed it. Stalin kept his real name.
"My theory of what I don't like about Russia has always focused upon..."
That's the thing about Americans: they're never quite sure why they dislike Russia, but darned if they aren't going to come up with something.
It's Herman Hesse's aphorism about disliking what one perceives in oneself. The theory of neoconservatism as a heretical Trotskyite excrescence on American republicanism isn't exactly wrong, but you've got to leave a lot out to deny a tradition of imperialism in a country that grew from a collection of beach-hugging colonies into a continent-spanning juggernaut. None of us has any time for liberal butthurt about the Mexican War (for instance), but how can one deny that it was an exercise in imperialism?
Every country that's done its turn as a world power has its imperial tradition. There's just no other way you get that big; the world isn't empty enough and never has been.
I don't think Muscovite "gigantism" is of the same type as Trotskyism, which seems rooted in diasporic Jewish messianism, not in Russian tradition.
"THAT was the reason for the Cold War. If Stalin hadn't turned right on the issues of Russian nationalism and social conservatism, the people who run the West wouldn't have started the Cold War against him."
Wait, so the Jews were behind anti-Communism now?
Anti-semite!!!!
Japan represented an existential threat from the east in the late 1930s. Zhukov fought the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in Mongolia in 1939, and the Russians kept significant troops on alert in the Far East until they realized the Japanese were invading south into the Pacific. At that point, the Russians pulled troops from Siberia to face the Germans.
Stalin only turned to nationalism and traditionalism as flags of convenience when Russia was reeling from the German invasion. He reined in the NKVD commissars a bit, brought back some of the old Army traditions, etc. Once victory was assured, he reverted back.
As for social conservatism, Hitler was the one who thought a woman's place was in the home. Stalin's women were building tanks (and a few were flying fighter planes).
The Polish leader Józef Piłsudski needs to get an honorable mention here. He started the Polish-Soviet war by attacking Bolshevik Russia and led Polish and Ukrainian troops as far east as Minsk and Kiev.
“Piłsudski pursued, with varying degrees of intensity, two complementary strategies, intended to enhance Poland's security: "Prometheism", which aimed at breaking up, successively, Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union into their constituent nations; and the creation of an Intermarum federation, comprising Poland and several of her neighbors.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Pi%C5%82sudski
"Pilsudski’s vision of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-denominational federated republic is more appealing to modern tastes. Pilsudski’s vision of a polity based on loyalty to a state apparatus and a set of abstract values is widely shared in contemporary elite circles, particular those overlapping with the EU, UN, and other supra-national institutions. Diversity and tolerance are now held up as core principles to build a modern political community upon. Pilsudski treated Poland’s minorities with respect during his dictatorship, only insisting that they swear loyalty to the Polish state."
http://zenpundit.com/?p=31680
Perhaps the US/EU/UN is more Neo-Pilsudskist than Neo-Trotskyite.
Maybe even Putin can be put into that camp as well. Razman Kadyrov said that "Chechens are "a part of multiethnic and multi-religious Russia" and live "in friendship with all peoples."
Interesting fact about Pilsudsky, he went to school together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky
Steve, it is wrong historically or currently to think of an ocean or river as a natural defensive barrier. Mostly, it has been particularly for Britain, a natural highway for its enemies to invade.
Romans, Saxons and Angles and Jutes, Normans, and constant Viking incursions all came by water. Indeed the Danelaw was literally the part of England ruled by the Danes.
And the Vikings in particular were unstoppable. They could get anywhere there was a draft as little as 18 inches, and appear anytime. Winter or Summer, Fall or Spring. They could range as far south as Gibaltar, and as far north as the Orkney Islands.
Indeed Britain (and the Netherlands) overseas Empires resembled that of the Vikings. Geographically separate, accessible and unifed by water.
If you have considerable seapower and your enemies don't, you can appear pretty much anywhere on the coast. A small, coherent, highly skilled nation thus can punch far above its weight. Even the mighty Persian fleet assembled to crush the Athenians and Spartans were destroyed nearly totally by the much outnumbered Athenians because mass in naval affairs is less important than skill and unity of command.
If anyone cares to read "Empire of Blue Water," Spain in the 1500 and 1600's kept Britain and the Netherlands and France out of the New World, the British and Dutch responded by piracy. For which the Spanish had no real answer anymore than the Saxons, Normans, Castillians, French, Germans, Russians etc. had either during the Viking era. Even the considerable and mostly still extant forts the Spanish constructed were of little help; the British and Dutch would venture overland to attack from the landward side and the Spanish were outnumbered and lacked initiative as Madrid had to approve nearly everything.
Anon, Obama would as a Black nationalist embrace hip-hop and rap, because they are angry, very Black, and very Nationalist rejections of White behavior in favor of keeping it real and dominance. Dominance over White forms of behavior and being the baddest warrior on the planet.
Of course Europeans have generally held in contempt the whole warrior ethos preferring the ground-pounding soldier or skilled naval operator who kills not as part of unique and individual courage but as part of a job like cutting down wheat or shipping goods over the water.
But Black identity for better or worse entails complete rejection of White paths to power such as cooperation, and technology, and nerdy guys dreaming up atomic bombs. In favor of personal Alpha male dominance. Which works just until it catastrophically fails.
Last add -- in defeating Hannibal and Carthage in the Second Punic War, Rome did not do so by defeating Hannibal in the field. Instead they built, quite unexpectedly, a massive navy and denied the Carthaginians the ability to resupply Hannibal whom they remained unable to beat in Italy.
Thus, Hannibal's army starved to death, aided by the scorched earth policy of Fabian. Which btw would have been moot had the navy been able to land supplies. [The Romans were able to block attempts to resupply via the Alps, no other general the Carthiginians had could pull off another surprise crossing much less with supplies.]
In possibly its greatest battle for survival the Roman Republic did the unexpected, built a navy able to challenge Carthage's navy.
Re: Gigantism
The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was a giant, and so was imperial Russia/Soviet Union. Sweden tried to become a giant too, invading as far south as Ukraine.
The thinking in Eastern Europe was either we become a giant or our neighbor becomes a giant. The pygmyism of interwar Europe didn't end well for the pygmies either.
But, it's worth pointing out, the neoconservative movement that has had so much influence over post-Cold War American foreign policy, with its own gigantist-imperialist tendencies,
Where?
Wait, so the Jews were behind anti-Communism now?
Whichever possible history best serves the cause of The Narrative.
The future is known - it is the past which is always in doubt.
"Once victory was assured, he reverted back. "
Not true. His new attitude towards Russians, towards the Orthodox Church, towards morality remained after the war and was kept by Khruschov and Brezhnev.
None of us has any time for liberal butthurt about the Mexican War (for instance), but how can one deny that it was an exercise in imperialism?
The Mexican war was not about imperialism. If it were, we would have stayed in Mexico after conquering them and made them part of our so-called empire. The Mexican War was about competing nations claiming dibbs on one of the last, relatively empty tracts of land in North America.
The Mexican claim to those territories was no better than the Spaniard's who stole it from the original hunter gatherers. And the fact that we only inherited a few thousand Mexicans with the territory is testament to their tenuous claim. If we had wanted an empire, it would have made more sense to conquer Mexico and subjugate its millions under our rule. We did not want that. We wanted the empty land. Had Mexico populated the American Southwest with millions of people, we'd never have taken it. Additionally if we were really interested in empire, we'd have taken Canada and not given up after a few feeble attempts.
It's really a stretch to like modern neo-cons with Trotsky. Now if you want to like neo-lib's to Trotskyism you have a better case. The American voters will not countenance another invasion along the lines of Iraq or Afghanistan. That part of the neo-con playbook has been removed. Look at the reaction to Obama's wish to intervene in
Syria.
Steve, stay well back from the lunatic fringe brink.
" Both men were liquidated in Stalin's relentless drive to eliminate anyone who knew him back in the day, anyone who could familiarly call him Koba."
The Old Bolsheviks whom Stalin eliminated were scum. They were the authors of the Revolution, of Red Terror and of the Civil War. The people who grieve for Old Bolsheviks are just bad people. There were no redeeming qualities in that movement. You didn't become an Old Bolshevik without some blood on your hands. They'd done to many others what Stalin ended up doing to them.
The switch from Communism to near-Libertrianism is immaterial. Those ideologies are twins.
Absolutely! Both reduce humans to faceless, fungible worker/consumer units. Libertarians merely allow a bit more latitude on piling up a few earthly goods.
"The American voters will not countenance another invasion along the lines of Iraq or Afghanistan. That part of the neo-con playbook has been removed."
Unfortunately I don't share such certainty on this. If Romney won, he might have already bombed Iran AND Syria. Maybe sent special forces to Syria. The next administration could well resume these adventures.
Claiming Mexico etc - leaving aside the demographics of the region, extending the USA as far south as Panama looks good on a map. A tiny defensible strip of land to keep the the latino horde at bay.
Trotsky speaking English. Another filmed speech here.
If nothing else, Trotsky is a bottomless source of comic irony.
The "internationalist" Trotsky was afforded refuge in a series of highly nationalist nations: Turkey, France, Norway, Mexico.
He ends up the guest of a couple of cartoonists-- so bad they managed the feat of offending the taste-deprived Rockefellers-- in a tony suburb of the most ludicrously nationalistic capital anywhere. His last communistic act was to cuckold his host.
Another graffitist-- excuse me, muralist-- attempts, with some buddies, to kill him. Then a Catalonian-- bad taste in art being a consistent thread here-- managed to finish him off with, not he-man proletarian ice tongs, but the thoroughly bourgeois sporting good the ice axe.
The village where he died is a sister city of Arlington County, Virginia. Across the river in Bethesda, great-granddaughter Nora Volcov is America's only federally recognized legal marijuana grower.
Okay let's see:
Stalin's NKVD caused the Holodomor which very few people know about because of the actions of the neocons who were created by Stalin's enemy Trotsky who never used the term neocons who were created by Leo Strauss.
"Both men were liquidated in Stalin's relentless drive to eliminate anyone who knew him back in the day, anyone who could familiarly call him Koba."
http://youtu.be/IoMnATYnRWE
"The Old Bolsheviks whom Stalin eliminated were scum. They were the authors of the Revolution, of Red Terror and of the Civil War."
It's all relative. The 'good Germans' who plotted against Hitler had served him loyally when the war was going good.
"I don't think Muscovite "gigantism" is of the same type as Trotskyism, which seems rooted in diasporic Jewish messianism, not in Russian tradition."
Gigantism is hardware power of quantity. It is obvious. It is Goliath and Leviathanish.
Trotskyism is software power. Less emphasis on raw power and more on spreading the micro-seeds of the revolution for them to germinate and grow all over. It's like David slinging many stones over the borders.
Trotsky was ruthless and never one to restrain from using power. But he had a keen mind and tirelessly formulated new strategies and policies to spread the revolution.
(His great mind got the better of him. He spent too much time reading and writing about all sorts of stuff while Stalin was creating a machine like Richard Daley). http://youtu.be/11_oVlwfv2M?t=15m21s
But Trotsky's internationalism had a pragmatic element. He was really focusing on Germany than anything else. He despised Russians as lazy and useless. He thought Germany had to be won over to communism for communism to have an industrial base.
Stalin thought Russians could be whipped into shape to build a giant industry. He was right--though at huge human cost.
As a non-Russian, he worked with many non-Russians to gain power over Russia. But once that was accomplished, he instinctively understood that he needed to be seen as a Russianish leader of the Russians. So, he purged many non-Russian communists--
Jews, Latvians, Poles, etc--and filled their posts with Russians. Smart move.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/
The Trotsky-Stalin was a dispute over personal power and means not ends.
The idea that Stalin was a "Russian nationalist" is insane. He recognized that the best path for World Revolution was to USE Russia as springboard.
The switch from Communism to near-Libertrianism is immaterial. Those ideologies are twins. ---anon
Well, that would explain why FDR's best counties were Barry Goldwater's a mere 20 years later. The men were twins.
Politics is all about tribalism.
So all that talk of "freedom of association" was just hot air, that no one really believed. It was certainly received that way!
Jared Taylor admitted he couldn't support anti-miscegenation laws in good faith because he really did believe in freedom of association. You've just thrown dear old Jared into the ideologue camp-- no wonder you're anonymous.
Stalin kept his real name. --anonymous
Did somebody really say this? Can anyone remember a more ignorant statement in the comments? Please tell me this is a plant…
"Then why did the English go for gigantism?"
They did it because they simply could. All they had to deal with were extremely primitive savages in Africa and slightly less primitive savages in the Americas. Asians were rich and comparatively advanced but neither did their armies have the kind of discipline the British and the British trained natives had, nor the level of technology. It was so much easier for the Brits to expand outside Europe than in Europe (except the Irish). Easier conquering and ruling the Zulus, Malays, Marathas, Mughals, the Bedouin rather than Germans and Dutchmen.
As far as the British Empire sucking out resources, by the early 20th century, nations like India were already not that profitable anymore, Britain's trade was primarily with the U.S.A and the nations of Europe. India stopped mattering much. How many poor Indian peasants could afford British goods anyway? That is why when the British left India, India remained poor and Britain remained rich while Hong Kong under the rule of the Brits was much much richer than India.
http://www.friesian.com/british.htm
"The Trotsky-Stalin was a dispute over personal power and means not ends."
Means determine ends.
Trotsky was about revolution. Stalin was about power. This meant Stalin was cautious - which is bad for a revolutionist in a hurry - and it meant over time Stalin would become more conservative as a way of cementing his power.
.
"what is the difference then between Russia and any continental power such as France or Germany? They don't have natural borders either. And they have often been invaded also. So why don't those countries feel a need to be defensively huge like Russia?"
They did: Charelmagen, HRE, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser, Hitler. They weren't quite big enough on their own to successfully make the jump to gigantic.
"Stalin kept his real name. --anonymous"
"Did somebody really say this?"
I took it as a joke.
"Mountain Maven said...
It's really a stretch to like modern neo-cons with Trotsky"
No, it is not a stretch. It is a simple fact. Irving Kristol, for example, one of the original neo-conservatives, whom Michael Harrington so-dubbed when he invented the term, was a trotskyist. As were a number of the others, though not all. Neo-conservatism has a history, and that history is not irrelevant.
"The Mexican War was about competing nations claiming dibbs on one of the last, relatively empty tracts of land in North America. The Mexican claim to those territories was no better than the Spaniard's who stole it from the original hunter gatherers. And the fact that we only inherited a few thousand Mexicans with the territory is testament to their tenuous claim."
The 1850 census found only about 170,000 people living in the territories we took from Mexico. About half of California was already English-speaking, as we're virtually all of the 11,000 people living in Utah. Mexico had virtually no people living in the area, and had not even tenuous control over the land.
Neo-Trotskyism: globalism, open borders, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and subjucating the supremacy of national law to "international norms" (i.e., those of leftist countries, not Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. - see Ruth Bader Ginsburg for more on that).
The Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine has undermined national unity and has caused the country to split in half. This whole episode only serves to support those of us who oppose multiculturalism, multilingualism, and open borders. Sooner or later, large ethnic minorities will work to undermine their host countries - not if, but when.
"...while Stalin was creating a machine like Richard Daley"
When Harry Truman got to know Stalin, he wrote that he reminded him of an Irish-American machine politician that he, Truman, worked for in the beginning of his career.
How much of this traces back to the New Testament injunction to preach the Gospel to all the nations of the world, or even the Abrahamic prophecy in Genesis that in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. That Marx resembled an Old Testament prophet and his vision was a kind of inverted Christianity -- these points have been made many times in the past.
What we think of today as the secular ideals of the Englightenment -- human equality, political and economic liberty, justice as equity -- have their historical origins in the Bible and are grounded in the Hebraic conception of a universal God who is "the just judge of the earth," whose write runs everywhere, and who is not respecter of persons. This is easily the most influential idea in Western intellectual history, even though we don't usually think of it in those terms.
The notion that these ideals of freedom, justice, and equality were a product of pure reason back in 18th century Europe is self-evidently incorrect -- at least if you accept Hume's dictum that you cannot derive an ought from an is.
But back to the main point: I suport the liberalization of the whole world. I just think we should do it by example, though diplomacy, and by leveraging the economic might (through trade sanctions, tariffs, control of the international banking system, etc) to enforce civilized norms both between and within all nations.
Sanctions can work -- just look at how Iran was begging for mercy before we recently eased off. Even China can be brought into line -- though it might take centuries. (Hint, Christianity is a subversive force in China; we should encourage it.)
This is the guy that Truman compared Stalin to.
"He [Trotsky] was also a great writer."
No, not exactly. He, like Marx, was a brilliant Ashkenazi intellectual. The Ashkenazi intelligentsia, once they left Judaism behind, have oten been mesmerized (blinded?) by intellectual brilliance. Not just Trotsky and Marx, but Freud (an out and out fraud) and by many lesser examples as well.
Solid common sense, as exemplified by such figures as Adam Smith or William James, is just isn't as entertaining.
Of course this is a gross exaggeration and their are plenty of secular Ashkenazis -- probably a majority -- who fully appreciate the saner sorts: Milton Friedman and Irving Kristal, to name two of my favorites.
But then you've got loud mouth hyper-egotists like Paul Samuelson who come in and blind their opponents with sheer brilliance and basically trash an entire academic discipline. MIT should de-fund its economic department -- would do our country a world of good.
In my humble opinion of course. I may be wrong!
dearieme said...
Before their several centuries being the cowboys, the Russians spent several centuries being the Injuns.
What was that amazing film made about medieval Russia sometime in the mid 1970's? I caught a fragment of it on Turner Classics a few months ago and the segment on the Tartar rule and the one after it were some of the most powerful moments in modern film I've ever seen. Anybody know the name of it? It was only screened once in communist times, is now considered a classic.
Anonymous said...
"My problem with the neocons isn't that it gets us into wars or that they're aggressive, it is that spreading democracy too often comes with spreading certain cultural marxisms with regard to race, sex, and culture."
Well, yeah, maybe. But my main problem with them is that they are so politically NAIVE!
Anonymous:
"Trotsky's gripe with the collectivization campaign (which caused the Ukrainian famine) was that it wasn't harsh enough, that not enough grain was confiscated from the kulaks, that Stalin was coddling the kulaks while he, Trotsky, helplessly watched from exile."
How much of this do you suppose was sublimated anti-Gentilism, taking revenge for the perceived anti-Semitism of the Ukranians back during the great revolt centuries before? None of these Ashkenazis knew much about the real history of their ancestors in Eastern Europe (e.g., the so-called arenda system). Instead they embibed a steady diet of memories of past persecution handed down by their Torah-blinded rabbis.
In my opinon of course. I may be wrong.
" Olearius said...
Re: Gigantism
The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was a giant, and so was imperial Russia/Soviet Union. Sweden tried to become a giant too, invading as far south as Ukraine.
The thinking in Eastern Europe was either we become a giant or our neighbor becomes a giant. The pygmyism of interwar Europe didn't end well for the pygmies either."
Or to generalize, history is little more than a story of warring states in a relentless competition for power. Not just in Europe, but in Asia, North and South America, anywhere once civilization began.
In my humble opinion of course. I may be wrong!
Anonymous said...
"None of us has any time for liberal butthurt about the Mexican War (for instance), but how can one deny that it was an exercise in imperialism?
The Mexican war was not about imperialism. If it were, we would have stayed in Mexico after conquering them and made them part of our so-called empire. The Mexican War was about competing nations claiming dibbs on one of the last, relatively empty tracts of land in North America.
The Mexican claim to those territories was no better than the Spaniard's who stole it from the original hunter gatherers. And the fact that we only inherited a few thousand Mexicans with the territory is testament to their tenuous claim. If we had wanted an empire, it would have made more sense to conquer Mexico and subjugate its millions under our rule. We did not want that. We wanted the empty land. Had Mexico populated the American Southwest with millions of people, we'd never have taken it. Additionally if we were really interested in empire, we'd have taken Canada and not given up after a few feeble attempts."
Very good points! Ne'r so well expressed.
"Anonymous said...
The switch from Communism to near-Libertrianism is immaterial. Those ideologies are twins.
Absolutely! Both reduce humans to faceless, fungible worker/consumer units. Libertarians merely allow a bit more latitude on piling up a few earthly goods."
I would put it a little differently. Communism is an attempt to establish justice without liberty. Libertarianism is an attempt to establish liberty without justice.
Both tend towards tyranny and inequality. Wby? Because it turns out that liberty and justice are correlative: you can't have one without the other. Sort of like what Hemingway said about men and women: you can with them and you can't live without them.
That's why politics are and always will be so interesting.
What was that amazing film made about medieval Russia sometime in the mid 1970's? I caught a fragment of it on Turner Classics a few months ago and the segment on the Tartar rule and the one after it were some of the most powerful moments in modern film I've ever seen. Anybody know the name of it? It was only screened once in communist times, is now considered a classic.
Alexander Nevsky?
"Charelmagen, HRE, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser, Hitler. They weren't quite big enough on their own to successfully make the jump to gigantic."
Most European states were surrounded by foreign settled territory and/or water. Russia had steppe and hunter-gatherer wastes, a relative emptiness, to its east. So it eventually expanded into that giant emptiness. Hitler tried to expand into already-settled territory. And he was trying to pull off something far bigger than a traditional conquest where only the elites change. He wanted population replacement. That's been very rare with settled societies. It's much easier to do to hunter-gatherers or nomads, who are always far less numerous per square mile than farmers.
"What was that amazing film made about medieval Russia sometime in the mid 1970's?"
I think you're talking about "Andrei Rublev." Great movie.
"What was that amazing film made about medieval Russia sometime in the mid 1970's?"
I would guess Andrei Rublev.
More evidence of the "long march through the institutions" by the 68ers, crypto-Trotskyites, neocons etc:
Barack Obama: Russia on 'wrong side of history' in Ukraine
"Wrong side of history", that's a very Marxist concept isn't it?
Other people have noticed the rise in popularity of this phrase and have even made a graph of it:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/wrong-side-of-history-is-on-right-side-of-it.html
Notice how it only took off in the 1980s, when the 68ers and neocons started to have jobs with serious influence.
Post a Comment