December 30th, 1922:
A day which, in conjunction with the October 4 years prior, would define the rest of the 20th Century. The Declaration on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, were on this day ratified.
The purpose of these documents was clear: The unification of what was up until then, separate republics, founded in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and ensuing Russian Civil War, that saw the exhausted Entente powers send waves of troops to rescue the White Army from the rebellion, all in vain.
Another purpose was the adoption of the idea of the "Permanent Revolution", and that the acts of the Bolsheviks could not and would not be confined to the USSR alone--- an idea that would just a few years later, be erased from the country by the illegitimate tyrant Stalin.
It also included the clause of this union being voluntary, with the Socialist Republics maintaining the right to secede at their own will, a clause whose interpretation would ultimately be the union's demise nearly 7 decades later.
Lenin was still in control of the USSR in 1922, but his health was rapidly deteriorating. He had already suffered a stroke earlier in the year and believed he would be unable to attend the 12th Congress of the Communist Party, coming up in 1923. He therefore began drafting up the last writing of his life, which would become known as Lenin's Testament.
In these writings and letters, he rejected the bureaucracy that he was already well aware Stalin was in the process of forming...
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
...whilst praising Trotsky for his leadership and defense of the Revolution:
Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. (Central Committee of the Soviet Union) on the question of the People's Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.
Lenin was deeply concerned with the growing rift in the party between Stalin and Trotsky, as well as the fear of the "Great-Russian" ethnical dominance present under the Tsar, which would harm minorities in the union such as Ukrainians and Georgians, leading to the clause of right to secession for their protection.
In particular, he became increasingly blunt and harsher with his comments against Stalin, who had begun acting abusive against the representatives of Georgian ethnicity (rather ironic to his origins):
“...the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is.”
...
“I think that Stalin’s haste and his infatuation with pure administration, together with his spite against the notorious ‘nationalist-socialism’, played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles.”
It continues, leading to Lenin openly advising others of the Central Committee to consider Stalin's removal before he got too much power:
Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail.
But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, it is not a [minor] detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.
In time, of course, the last acknowledgement proved it could not be more accurate. Following this writing, Lenin began to turn to Trotsky for help against Stalin, writing in this letter to his 2nd in command:
Top secret
Personal
Dear Comrade Trotsky: It is my earnest request that you should undertake the defence of the Georgian case in the Party C.C. This case is now under ‘persecution’ by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite to the contrary.
I would feel at ease if you agreed to undertake its defence. If you should refuse to do so for any reason, return the whole case to me. I shall consider it a sign that you do not accept.
Stalin would also receive a letter from Lenin, with no remorse in his tone:
You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the telephone and use bad language. Although she had told you that she was prepared to forget this, the fact nevertheless became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev.
I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife I consider having been done against me as well.
I ask you, therefore, to think it over whether you are prepared to withdraw what you have said and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer that relations between us should be broken off.
Lenin would suffer another stroke 4 days after writing the letter, March 9th, 1923, ending his active political career. He would die less than a year later, on January 21st, 1924.
With the symbol of the Revolution out of the way, Stalin acted without hesitation, banning Lenin's Testament from the Thriteenth Congress, then the USSR all together. It would not be revealed to the Soviet people until 1964, 11 years after Stalin's death.
At the time, people did not understand the scope of what the division in the Communist Party would mean for the country, though it would become evident soon enough:
On Stalin's side, total control of the USSR would be his for 24 years, during which he would oversee the persecution of ethnic minorities, the most famous event of which being the Holodomor famine against the Ukrainian people, and cement his contemporary image in the victory against Germany in The Great Patriotic War. His legacy was so corrupted that even the bureaucrats that followed him had to take measures to erase his image from the Soviet legacy, though the damage was already done, and would lead to the collapse of the country in December 1991, just days shy of the country's 70th birthday.
On Trotsky, the Left Opposition would be formed in October 1923, and would fight against Stalin's growing power until its purging and explement from the country. Trotsky would continue his fight in exile, founding the Fourth International, and not resting in carrying on Lenin's final political struggle until he reached his death bed following the fatal act of a Stalinist Assassin.
What is the meaning of this in modern context? A lot of things: The danger of war, political organizations with no solution to the issues of the day, but rather plenty of options to make it worse, the growing danger of fascism across the world (Germany I'm talking to you), it goes on.
I will never know if you will ever take these words seriously over "reliable news sources", but spare at least the time to take what these other sources are saying, and not take them at their word, even after basic comparison: add extra thought. Analyze what these events mean, using historical context. I might just sound like some daft Language Arts teacher here, but it is only in these actions that we can really piece together the meaning of these happenings, and what could be done to mend the wounds of them. And, if you peer hard enough, perhaps you will see for what it is worth:
The goals of the Bolshevik Revolution, for what they were meant to be.
Replies
The Romanovs were a failed leadership. They starved more people than even Stalin, and with no ethnical preference. They dragged Russia into a war that saw it beaten terribly by Japan, and then even worse by the Central Powers. The Romanovs had proven incompetent and didn't deserve to rule any longer.
Ignoring the fact that there are members of the Romanovs that survived, leaving the monarchy intact would pose the constant risk of them rising back up from the inside. The same was believed by the French during their revolution, which is why Louis XVI was guillotined after trying to escape the country. Leaving the old authority was dangerous, even in exile. The children, perhaps, could have had better, being stripped of their titles and taught to be comrades- but those already firm in their beliefs of the Tsardom could not be allowed to live.
I think your live camera is a little fuzzy. Check to be sure the connection is not being hacked by our cookies, even though there's no way they're doing that.
My man NRI justifying the murder of an entire family men women and children and then doesn't understand why people don't like communism.
Also claiming that the royal family had to die for the revolution to survive is absolute bullshit as in China the last emperor was put in prison, sat out his sentence and was allowed to live the rest of his life, and I don't see no Qing Dynasty flags waving over Beijing anymore
But that's part of communism: living in your own twisted little reality where all those who could in theory take a stand against the ruling party has to have their entire fucking bloodline wiped out.
I could say the same to you about Capitalism. It's a twisted reality of its own that thinks continued subjugation won't come back to bite it in the ass. Alright, murdering the whole family was a step too far, there is not one country in history that didn't do something that it shouldn't have done, and there was more than obviously a better alternative.
But that one fact can't be used to destroy the entire narrative. If that was our mindset we might as well abandon democracy because it can put someone in power that may not be nice to everyone.
What I don't understand is how you can't look at something wrong done by an organization and think "maybe instead of immediately writing them off as evil, maybe we could DO SOMETHING BETTER?" You have lost your ability to think critically because of mass information, and our modern, rotten, collapsing society is the result humanity is reaping right now.
You just explained why the USSR failed, so I can only compliment you. To elaborate,
Stalin in a nutshell. The Bolsheviks were aiming for a Proletarian Democracy, not a crackpot dictatorship. Stalin took every moral the Revolution had and turned it on its head. That's why I speak so harshly against him- it was treason to the Revolution, to Lenin, and at the farthest degree, Marx and his ideology itself.
Economic mismanagement has been the result of the government simply failing to put the money where it matters: Welfare, construction, education, etc. The USSR, like most modern countries, direct funding into weapons instead of help for the people. If money was directed into projects actively helping the people, then it would be worth something. The government is the one that needs the power to do that, though to ensure that's what it's doing, it needs oversight by the people.
Revolution does not come from above, indeed. A central government, while necessary for such a society to exist, must be at the complete mercy of the people, far more so than the United States government for a potential reference. Political opposition is a difficult topic, especially considering the society we envision is one of only one political road. The key to fixing that would be multiple views within the party, and civil debate to find the optimal method. Other political views cannot be destroyed but cannot be allowed to threaten the state either. As long as the government remains under popular control at all times, then freedom of speech, individual rights, and human rights shall all be protected as needed.
The idea of productivity stems from the natural human desire for compensation. In Capitalism, obviously this compensation is money. But look at our society: is this "compensation" really getting the general public much? We could all agree that while prices and interest rates are going up, what isn't going up are wages. Incentives such as money in Socialism are not removed but reworked to give the people the ability to lead normal lives. If you want my idea of it, all necessities for survival and life in the modern age are given: Housing, food, water, and electricity/internet, and public transportation. Everything else must be worked for. A human should live not off of work for someone else, nor for work from others, but from one's own work and theirs alone, including cooperation with comrades in working towards an ever-better world.
Democracy is just as vulnerable to tyranny as Communism or Socialism are (The Republican Party has proven that quite well), and that furthers the idea that only the people can stop tyranny; not any party or government without their guidance or approval should succeed. The failures of 20th century Communism were as simple as people breaking promises. Therefore, it's simply a matter of closer popular monitoring to ensure these promises are kept in the 21st.
What a long argument
I have stated time and time again:
THE SOVIET UNION WAS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STORY.
Yes, Lenin made very dumb choices in his time as the leader. Overturning that election was dumb- had the Social Revolutionaries made poor choices the Russian people would deal with it themselves or then call on the Bolsheviks to their aid. The firing on the streets of the civilians and secret police are the start of what made the USSR into the totalitarian disaster it ended up being. It in a sense only went backwards there, being no different from the Tsardom before it.
Oh, and don't you go about listing the Soviet war crimes without listing those of America (Since you used Wikipedia for whatever reason, right back at you): United States war crimes - Wikipedia
And British: British war crimes - Wikipedia
And French: Category:French war crimes - Wikipedia
And Australian, on behalf of my main source of news (yeah it's biased, I am aware of that. But it acknowledges it and constantly has rebuttals against all other viewpoints): Australian war crimes report points to history of military atrocities and coverups - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)
And German: German war crimes - Wikipedia
And the Russian Federation: Russian war crimes - Wikipedia
From the Invasion of Ukraine on both sides: War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine - Wikipedia
Japanese: Japanese war crimes - Wikipedia
People's Republic of China (But don't give me the Uyghur crap, there isn't sufficient evidence to prove such is even happening, including from documents leaked and released.): Category:Chinese war crimes - Wikipedia
South Korea: Category:South Korean war crimes - Wikipedia
North Korea: Category:North Korean war crimes - Wikipedia
India: Category:Indian war crimes - Wikipedia
Iran: Category:Iranian war crimes - Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia: Category:Saudi Arabian war crimes - Wikipedia
The list goes on. Every country in history has committed a war crime if they were in a war. In that sense war itself is a crime, and it always will be.
You CANNOT refer to one country or state whilst ignoring the others; that removes all forms of context to the world, without which we can't properly discuss why the USSR was flawed.
But to sum up this, what you need to get over is the thought process of tagging individual actions or events to an entire idea. What a man does, does not define what his relatives or friends do- it may impact them, but it is not the sole factor.
The actions of any previous figure may have altered or tarnished Communism and/or Socialism, but that does not permanently define what it is. That is only defined by the future, and what we as the modern human race can do to amend their mistakes.