I am not going to comment much on the May 5 protests in Russia because I have already done so many times before and there is nothing new or interesting about this one.
There were a few thousand people in Moscow. To repeat the obvious for the nth time, this is:
- Not any more than during any other protest in 2017.
- An order of magnitude lower than in 2011-12.
- Basically an irrelevancy in a city of 15 million.
The only thing I personally found interesting and telling is the slogans of the opposition: “Not Our Tsar“.
Not “down with the dictator,” or even “no to fascism” or something similarly liberal.txt, but precisely the anti-monarchic overtones.
This rhetorical background was set up by Navalny himself, who billed the event as a protest “against monarchy”. This approach seems to have been long in the works – for instance, in a TV interview back in 2017, he described Putin as a “reactionary” with an obvious sense of distaste in his tone.
I don’t know why Navalny picked this approach. Most likely he really does feel that way. And/or he might want also want to extend his appeal to sovoks and Stalinists by adopting the Soviet discourse about the evils of Tsarism.
Incidentally, do you know who predicted this?
That’s right, The Unz Review’s most commonly translated foreign author, Egor Kholmogorov:
And yet the Red people are still stuck in their polemics about Gaidar and Chubais. For instance, take the issue of creeping separatism in Tatarstan. It is impossible to solve it from a neo-Soviet position, because it was Lenin who created the Tatar ASSR and accomodated the Sultan-Galievs. The Ukraine, which demolished all its Lenin monuments, was his beloved child. In reality, regardless of which question we consider, appeals to the Soviet experience are block brakes on our future progress. It is either a false alternative to the liberal solution, or it is the liberal solution. Therefore, it is of no surprise that we are hearing increasingly Bolshevik overtones in the rhetoric of our liberal cliques, for example, in the matter of anti-clericalism. The Zyuganov era of traditionalist-friendly Communism is coming to its inevitable end, and is becoming displaced by a new era of Communist liberalism, which is hostile to the Russian traditional values that are held in equal contempt by both liberals and conventional Communists.
It might be a good thing, though. By tying virulently Russophobic neoliberal globalism to virulently Russophobic sovok – two sides of the same coin – Navalny might succeed in flushing all that scum down with him. In that case, we wish him the best of luck.
Not Our Tsar
Is same as Not Our President.
Liberals are colonial coolies of Anglo West।।
Anglo faggotry + Jewish money = Liberals
But your Imperator.
https://orig00.deviantart.net/abfe/f/2009/276/e/2/russian_tsarist_poster_by_edthomasten.jpg
This Liberal-Bolshevist convergence seems similar to the hagiographic descriptions of communist theory that Marx’s 200th birthday has sparked in Europe and the Anglosphere.
It really is quite unnerving how normalised seeing leading Western newspapers, top politicians and diplomats, academics, etc. praising communism and communist ideology has become.
I wonder how many of these worshippers of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky would survive living under an actual Bolshevist dictatorship?
I don’t think the two ever diverged in the first place, (((liberalism))) and (((bolshevism))) were natural allies in WW2 and they were allies in the post Western world of academia and the mass media.
They have to go where the votes are. Leftish vague associations with ‘social issues’ has at least some electoral base. Although socialist parties have abandoned actual social policies like higher wages, better jobs, pensions etc…, those are perennial favorites among some voters.
The liberal globalists have nothing. Their policies attract very few voters and most liberal supporters are the people we see in the media, and a few academicians, bankers and political government employees. There is no ‘liberal’ electoral base, only noisy advocates with media monopolies.
To exist they need allies: identity groups, minorities, old ladies with charitable impulses, angry Antifa types. Why not Bolsheviks? Modern liberal nihilism appeals to Bolshevik iconoclastic furies. They are natural allies. Liberals don’t have many choices, nobody likes them. They own the institutions, but their support is very low. How long can they ‘win elections’ by managing the electoral process with silly stunts (like Macron), ever present new-faces that promptly turn into old-faces? They need the Bolshevik, quasi-Marxist voters, it is a natural alliance. And the anti-nationalist, anti-European identity is the only thing that binds them.
In Russia liberals have dropped to their natural low state of 5-10%. That’s where they would be in the West if they would lose the media and institution control. To prevent that we might see a lot of Bolshevik Antifa types unleashed on the society. The globo-liberals are becoming quite desperate.
Hey, Bolshevik dictatorship wasn’t all bad. At least it wasn’t bad for everyone.
If you had Jewish ancestry, you could become a member of the managerial elite, and lead a fairly comfortable life. You could become a comissar, and be the one doing mass killing – that’s basically Jewish wet dream, mass slaughter of goyim.
It’s funny how Navalny’s protests in Russia received top coverage in Western media (once again), and even US department of State used the occasion to take a jab at Putin’s legitimacy
https://twitter.com/statedeptspox/status/992834229863141376
By contrast, protests in France, occuring on the day, were almost completely ignored, eventhough there were 140.000 people participating.
It should not be surprising. The most powerful party of the world is a communist party.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-05/05/XxjwshE007058_20180504_CBMFN1A002_11n.jpg
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/05/06/world/asia/06china-marx/04china-marx-1-jumbo.jpg
http://www.dw.com/image/43373175_303.jpg
While there were plenty of appeasers and fellow travellers of Communism during the period of the Soviet Union’s existence there were also Liberal opponents of Soviet expansion such as Harry Truman and Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson who had a significant influence on state policy.
Of course, this raises the question of how much the Cold War was simply a fight between two anti-white branches of Communism: Jewish Trotskyite ‘Permanent-Revolutionism’ and Stalinist/Post-Stalinist Eastern ‘Conservative’ Bolshevism.
In China it feels a lot more symbolic; for all the paeans to Marx and pictures of Marx-Engels-Stalin-Mao I am not afraid of a genuine communist lunatic coming to power in the celestial empire.
In contrast, I fear that Western glorification of communism is much more sincere and at least a significant part of the people praising Marx today would approve of trying to create a oh-so-glorious classless utopia in the modern era.
People do not follow or take seriously Marxist theory in the Western world. In fact, they have an attitude where they say ‘he has some interesting ideas, but went wrong here and here’ (which is fatal for this systemically hermetic theory – it doesn’t survive rejection of any individual parts).
In Russia and China, the ideas of Marx still have some existing political influence, although receding a little each year, and which will continue to be reduced with the newer generations.
As for Navalny’s slogans. Of course it makes sense on a personal level. Navalny has a history of corruption, but as the ‘small timer’. His main thing for years has been about corruption by the important people, and this work is obviously motivated by jealously relating to his personal circumstances. His opposition is not based on democratic values, but on professional and economic jealously (a much stronger kind of motivation).
https://twitter.com/mr_scientism/status/992819851537379328
If it is considered China has very little soft-power, relative to its economic size, then in some future decades, you could imagine historical materialism seen as one angle for them to market in the West, re-exporting its own prophecies, but with China seen as a kind of final and inevitable stage in history.
If they would commission some talented people to re-write the ideology a little. For example, China is now the ‘factory of the world’ in the negative sense, so they could to rebrand this the ‘working class of the world’, etc.
What was exactly “Russian” on Russian monarchy? Why shall Russian nationalist prefer 1/64 Russian Czar over 1/4 Russian Lenin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia#Ancestors
Do Russian monarchists believe that Russia prospers best when it is ruled by Germans?
Although Mr Karlin is not a monarchist, he is on record that German influenced rulers, such as Putin and Catherine the Great, have been best for Russia. Makes sense: Germans are famous for their organisational genius.
You do know Lenin was a fervent opponent of ‘Great Russian chauvinism’, right?
The Romanov dynasty may or may not have committed mistakes in its final days but at least they never tried to intentionally dismember their own nation and create artificial famines in their own land.
Practically every dynasty in Europe had continent-wide blood ties, yet many of them still reigned their country with distinction.
Would you prefer an ethnically pure Russian who is a ethno-masochist of the highest order à la Angela Merkel or Tony Blair as leader instead?
In Russia liberal political parties couldn’t collectively muster 15% in Duma elections, even when they had a total media control. There is a certain kind of liberal degeneracy, which is innate to Western society, but absent in the Russian society. Most liberals in Russia are either Jewish or have some Jewish blood in them, i.e. they are not even Russian.
If you want to know what liberal base looks like go on reddit.com. There are literally millions of them, and they can’t all be banker/media types.
Navalny’s a foil whether he’s witting to it or not. He’s Putin’s Liberal Straw Man. He would have been long dead by now if he wasn’t.
You make a great case for Russia’s ultimate, and inevitable, return to Monarchical Feudalism after a brief experiment of foisted & forced National Collectivism. The culture of Russia is that of slavery. Russians exist to be slaves, hence Slavs.
I don’t see Russians as strong & intelligent as you Russian propagandists present them. I see them as weak, resigned and hopeless. They are beyond despair.
They’re The Walking Dead.
Putin is likened to a malevolent Tito cobbling together an ill-fitting former Soviet diaspora that has more fault lines than Hawaii and California combined. Those fault lines will be exploited and ripped open in due time. Putin, I think, is only human afterall, and his time is running out. There will be no one to fill his shoes when he finally expires and like Yugoslavia when Tito expired, so too will Russia go.
It’s just a matter of time.
I have to chuckle at how passionately you repudiate the Soviets. We wouldn’t even be talking about Russia and you would not be an author at this blog if not for the incredible achievements of the Soviets in industrializing Russia and eliminating illiteracy. The Soviets transformed, quite literally overnight, a largely feudal society of unevolved and unenlightened peasant slaves who ultimately were the first in space. It was an incredible feat, something Tsarist Russia never could have or would have accomplished. And yet you and your fellow propagandists here wipe that away with a smug wave of your arrogant hands.
Russia’s done, it just doesn’t know it yet.
Time is on my side. Yes it is.
“final and inevitable stage in history”
You foresee China returning to imperial stagnation then?
And which side is that exactly? You sound like a cuckservative, so it means your loyalty lies to with the hard left regimes of USA, UK, France, Germany, etc. All of these are very rapidly turning into non white nations, so time is anything but on your side.
I understand the argument for monarchy in the abstract, but it is hard for me to understand it in the context of the evidence available today.
How many countries with kings are in good shape, in a conservative sense? Japan, maybe. Even with so many abdications and revolutions, it seems like there are still loads of pozzed royals in Europe today. Harry is even miscegenating. Of course, the major royal houses of Europe being cousins didn’t prevent WWI either. Some even think it contributed.
Are we talking absolute monarchy? Well, Nepal was basically that. Of course, that’s Nepal. Same might be said for Saudi Arabia. But China has a relatively high IQ, and their last dynasty was arguably pretty bad. Meanwhile, some people think the Japanese emperor was very involved in the planning for WW2. Then there are historical examples like Ivan the Terrible.
In my view, any new monarchy would have to have a strict breeding program. Marriages would not be formed on the basis of lineage, but based on the required traits being present. Successors would be chosen on a merit basis, not based on who was born first.
As an alternative explanation you might entertain the thought that perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Russia was literally starving under liberal rule while the West has thrived in an economic sense. When Germany was starving under liberal rule, it elected Hitler. But since the 1950s the Germans have been affluent, and they usually attribute it to liberal rule, which started shortly before.
So why is liberalism so appealing as an idea then, and why are conservatives so hapless in their efforts to stop it? Is it because liberalism taps into the Id that makes it so hard to contain?
It was not liberal rule, but rule by social democrats and conservatives.
It was the latter who elected Hitler in order to resolve the situation and keep social democrats and communists down.
Well, if you feel like nitpicking, let’s not forget that Yeltsin or Navalny are/were not really liberal either.
The Germans’ perception at the time was that they were under liberalism. They perceived that the economic difficulties were results of the liberal democratic system and felt that they had to choose from two (or rather three) alternatives: Marxism (which was really two, communism and social democracy) and extreme nationalism. They chose the latter.
The ones who did actually choose was the German (conservative) elite.
It is not surprisingly that these greedy people chose extreme nationalism.
I have to say this comparison between Russia and Germany doesn’t make much sense to me. Germany is a Western society with a strong indigenous liberal tradition. The Nazis didn’t seize power via democratic election, Hitler with assistance from Hindenburg staged a bloodless coup.
You talked about the genetic superiority of Russian voters over German voters. You suggested that the fact that Russian liberals couldn’t get more than 15-20% when they had the media and government on their side is proof of this. Can you perhaps tell me how much votes German liberals got when people were starving in a liberal system? People chose the Marxist parties, and the National Socialists. Even the liberal party renamed itself the State Party (Staatspartei), and distanced itself from liberalism.
How Hitler grabbed power is immaterial to all this.
It’s immaterial to the topic at hand (though of course you’re wrong in that the conservatives’ first choice would have been their own nationalist party instead of Hitler, so the German people did, in fact, influence the outcome; also “extreme nationalism” is not about the greed of its supporters), which was how stupid or smart Russian vs. German voters were.
Fun fact: outright liberal parties are doing poorly in the West. It’s usually nominally conservative or nominally social democratic parties which overwhelmingly get the votes, plus an increasing share of nationalists.
I know you’re a stupid troll, but I must specifically thank you for so concisely (if inadvertently) demonstrating the essential equivalence between sovok and Russophobia.
The DNVP? They cooperated with the NSDAP and were even part of Hitler’s government.
They were not that dissimilar from Nazis.
It is if the alternative is Marxism.
Putin is relatively liberal, even by today’s Western standards – so it’s kind of irrelevant this comparison to Hitler and Putin, or between the 1990s and Veimar Germany.
Putin substitutes for two-party system, by sometimes playing liberal, sometimes playing conservative.
He sometimes literally describes himself and says “I am a liberal”. In other initiatives, he becomes quite conservative.
He keeps a liberal community working inside the Kremlin for decades.
So a large proportion of this camp is appropriated by the state, and another part falls outside and becomes opposition.
As for his actual policies – it is generally down the center of most Western political spectrum. So the policy is generally more measured and sensible, without the extremism in many Western countries, or the short extreme swings (that you see between Trump and Obama). However, the lack of change-over between two parties (having one trying to substitute for two-party system) obviously has not great sides.
An interesting alternative, and perhaps more competent policymaker, would be Lukashenko – but then the horse he rides is probably a lot easier to control.
This is correct. Putin is also on record telling Kholmogorov that he is a nationalist.
He tries to be all things to all people. That said, I do not think he has ever called himself a Communist.
For some reason I can’t edit this post now (wtf?), even a minute after posting it. I was writing while distracted by something else at the same time – apologies for some grammatical mistakes.
I can’t speak for Europe or Russia, but in the UK and America we are seeing a real schism in the left wing or “liberal” camp. It has gotten to the point where it isn’t even totally clear what left wing means anymore.
The first group are the neoliberals. In the UK they are just called Blairites. Their platform can be summed up as LGBT, Muslims, immigrants, pro-business, pro Wall Street (I don’t know what the UK equivalent of that is), anti Russia and pro American/Western hegemony (but not necessarily, as some of their critics claim, pro war). This group is supported by the government and media elites along with the donors and in both countries have an absolute dominance of the party machine, even though in the case of the UK their hated opponent has taken control of Labour.
What is underappreciated about the neoliberals is how much they absolutely hate their left wing Bernieite/Corbynite opponents. US/UK neoliberals hate Bernie/Corbyn infinitely more than they hate Trump/May.
As for the Bernie/Corbyn types, their issues are similar except that they are anti business and anti Wall Street. Although they are regarded as pro Russia, that isn’t really true for the rank and file; rather the Bernie/Corbyn elites are extremely pro Russia while the typical Bernie/Corbyn supporter is more just neutral.
Corbyn was able to succeed in taking over Labour because most UK minorities are non black, and non-black-non-whites love socialism (and the UK Muslims like Corbyn’s anti Israel stuff). Most non whites in the US Democratic primaries, however, are black and American blacks HATE socialist whites/Jews. Bernie gets criticized by the neoliberals for doing poorly among “people of color”, but he actually won the Asian vote, the Muslim vote and the Latino vote. It’s just that he got absolutely stomped in the much more important black vote and that did him in.
But anyway, I don’t think these two groups can co-exist long term. The neoliberals will only tolerate the Bernies and Corbyns as vote serfs, they will never accept being led by them. Labour MPs have been trying to overthrow Corbyn for years and if Corbyn ever does actually win an election, I think that Labour will ultimately just split. As for the US, if and when a Bernie type wins the nomination for the Democratic party, a huge chunk of Dems will either not vote, vote 3rd party or even back the Republican. Even if the Republican is Trump or somebody like him.
The British equivalent of Wall Street is the City (of London)
It’s a personality type which listens to two sides of a debate, and will usually agree a little with both sides. It’s a useful leadership skill.
The attitude also can be used a form of charm for appropriating different factions.
Probably America would benefit from this kind of leadership, as a centralizing influence.
The problem is if you ask ‘what does he actually believe’? – and the answer probably exactly the same, a somewhat inconsistent mix of beliefs, as the policies that we see.
It matters because Hitler’s coup in Germany was an accident of history that does not in any way parallel Russia’s political development. If Hitler was never born, there would be no Nazi regime in Germany. If Putin was never born, some other silovik would be consolidating Russian state after 2000.
You seem to be drawing a clear distinction between Marxist and liberal parties in pre-war Germany, but how useful it is really, within the context of this conversation? IMHO, the votes that went to Marxist and liberal parties should be added, since you have to be a degenerate to vote for either of them.
Except even worse, because the City enjoys extraordinary legal and tax privileges inherited from ancient times.
Nicholas II hated St Petersburg for not being “Russian” enough for his tastes and privately toyed with ideas like moving the capital back to Moscow or restoring the Patriarchate. The contrast between this and Lenin or any other revolutionary bitching and moaning about “Great Russian chauvinism” speak for themselves.
The Neoliberals and the mainstream Left are objective allies, in the Marxian sense. Both are in favour of free trade, open borders, World Government and the rest. The Neoliberals are doing what their paymasters, the owners of the Corporations, want: lots of cheap labour from 3rd World immigrants and a world order that frees them from nation state control and permits them complete autonomy.
The mainstream left want to dissolve the people and create a new one, one which will be completely loyal to the party of welfare – the left. The Left fantasize they will be in power forever.
Of course, they’re both wrong. Once they become large enough, 3rd World minorities will support parties that are of and for them. This can be seen in Holland, where a Turkish Islamic Party got elected in the recent election,
Karl Marx is irrelevant. If the Neoliberals want to praise an irrelevance, so be it.
Last totally free German election:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_November_1932
Nazis won. So Hindenburg had them form a government.
Some people toss the word “coup” around too easily.
His later consolidation of power was not democratic (though probably with the consent of most Germans, or with more support than opposition) but he originally came to power as a result of an election.
Not surprised to see the resident Ukrainian whitewashing the Nazi dictator. Totally not surprised.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbU3FqWXUAMAggl.jpg
How on Earth is that whitewashing Hitler?
If anything, it is “blackwashing” the Germans. Though I’d sooner describe it as presenting a legitimate historical interpretation.
German Russophiles are among the best:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfried_Strik-Strikfeldt
A missive on the Russian Liberation Army:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/
Excerpt –
“Many exiled Russian Whites like Denikin saw the threat posed by Nazi Germany, while also understanding the complex development of how some Russians like Andrey Vlasov were willing to become nominally allied with Nazi Germany. (Vlasov’s situation involves a lengthy study, that includes some differences between pro-Russian Germans like Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt and the extreme Nazi racialists, whose beliefs had the upper hand in Germany).”
A somewhat similar development existed in the West during the Cold War period and thereafter. Anti-Communist/anti-Russian advocates, as opposed to anti-Communist/pro-Russian individuals and left leaning anti-Russian elements, as well as those who don’t fall into any of these categories.
The Germans in WW I smartly used Lenin. The WW II racialist extremism prevalent in Germany, prevented a somewhat similar (stress somewhat similar) scenario from greatly developing.
For much of its existence, the Russian Liberation Army was very much restricted by the Nazis, who were apprehensive about supporting an anti-Communist Russian force that favored a strong Russia. Realizing that the Nazis were going to lose the war, in addition to not liking the way they were treated, this Russian Liberation Army turned against the Nazis.
This WW II era Russian movement doesn’t have anywhere near the level of negative baggage as the Croat Ustasha, Galician Ukrainian UPA, Hungarian Arrow Cross and Romanian Iron Guard, among some other movements of that period.
They lost 2 million votes since the previous election.
You are talking about the guy who was responsible for several presidential governments.
He could have ignored the NSDAP, just as he was willing to ignore the SPD.
He claims that the Nazis had more democratic legitimacy than they actually had during the fateful time.
Yes, they had the relative majority in the parliament, but in order take over democratically they would have needed an absolute majority. Their electoral underperformance in the last free election shows that it was far from certain that they could achieve that.
He could have, but arguably it would have been undemocratic, just as it was undemocratic to form presidential governments previously.
In any event, this has nothing to do with how pozzed or not German voters were when they were starving to death under a seemingly liberal system with a predominantly liberal press. They didn’t vote for liberals.
Asking the leader of the biggest party to form a government was democratically 100% legitimate. Said leader then forming a minority government with presidential help was less democratic, but still within the law. Then going on and introducing a dictatorship was highly undemocratic.
But it’s important to note that Hitler did nothing out of the ordinary until the Reichskristallnacht, and even there not because of the number of victims but because of the violent and lawless character of what happened.
However, it’s obvious that as he steered the country into a genocidal war, his policies had nothing whatsoever to do with the will of the people.
Well, then Russian voters are also pozzed, because then you need to add the communist vote to the liberal vote in the 1990s.
The Marxist parties weren’t liberal at the time. Especially not liberal in the pozzed sense.
Three of my grandparents had been Social Democrats and trade unionists in the 1930s (in Hungary). You had to be a worker to vote for them. In Hungary, the least educated workers drifted towards the far-right Arrow Cross Party (which by the way resembled the socialist wing of the NSDAP a lot), but not my grandparents. The Social Democrats remained strong among the printing press workers (the most educated ones), and in general among the more educated workers.
https://twitter.com/DIorioNathaniel/status/992924961462419457
The thing is previous presidential governments did not destroy German democracy.
The NSDAP did.
Well, then there’s the question of Hitler governing by presidential decree, including the decree on the state of emergency. This was definitely not democratic. Basically Hitler’s government as a minority government started out as a presidential government, not that much different from the previous governments. It was a little more difficult to have a Reichstag no confidence vote against it.
Many of the most prominent members* of the Arrow Cross left it between 1941 and 1944, as did most of the intellectuals who supported it. It obviously lost most of its electoral support (people realized that they were pro-German and that Germany was losing the war). In 1944 the Germans refused to support it until August or September, when they realized that Horthy was planning to betray them and that they needed a force capable of a coup. The Arrow Cross still had some organization, but its militia formed hastily on October 15-16, 1944, was swelled by criminals let out of prisons (who were given an amnesty if they were willing to join the militia). This led to chaos, Arrow Cross militia members were thus either criminals or very young working class youths from the least educated parts of the working class, but the Germans by that time had no alternative. In any event, the rest of the far right (including the majority of the previous governing party which continued to have a parliamentary majority based on the 1939 election, as they held no election in wartime) continued to support the Arrow Cross government (the majority of whose members were from other parties or just experts), because a surrender to the USSR was anathema to them. But they were mostly busy organizing their personal flight to Western Europe and beyond.
*Mind you, they usually joined the governing party (which had drifted to the far right as a result of our alliance to Germany) or some other far right parties.
“Arrow Cross” was the coolest name for a party ever.
“Iron Guard” was one of the gayest. Too try hard. This supports my theory that Romania is just a poor man’s Hungary.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/46787893/
Yes, but they still had the largest number of votes and no force had more votes.
Nazis got 33.1% of the vote.
In 2017 Merkel got 32.9% of the vote.
In your or Felix’s world, does this mean that she is chancellor because of a coup?
This is the difference between Bolshevism in Russia and Nazism in Germany. Russians were victims of Bolshevism, Germans were responsible for Nazism.
(though, as Reiner will point out,there were no more free elections so actions in the late 30s and 40s were not so clearly German wishes).
They won the election, with a higher % of votes than Merkel got in 2017.
It is not a “coup” for the president to ask them to form a government, nor is it a “coup” if they form a minority government with another party.
Sorry if that reality sucks for you.
Sure, but the lack of widespread resistance to his policies by the German people (unlike in the case of the Russians vis a vis Bolshevism – millions of Russians were killed in order for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their rule) suggests that there was widespread consent to what he was doing. Because there were no elections or polls we don’t know exactly how many Germans went along with it, but we can guess by the people’s behavior that very many did.
Undemocratic does not necessarily mean against the will of the people, when many of the people have been fed up with democracy.
Because the Bolsheviks started out in an insane manner before consolidating power and gaining legitimacy. So not comparable.
Correct. Since Nazis kept going off the rails until reaching 100% apocalyptic mode by early 1942 (total war against the rest of the world, genocide against Jews and in a somewhat less murderous manner Slavs, total oppression and economic exploitation for everyone else under their control), it can be said that what the Germans voted for was not nearly as insane as what happened, which is somewhat different from the Bolsheviks, who were already insane by the second half of 1918, barely a year within coming to power.
Regarding Russian culpability (or the lack thereof) for Bolshevism, I think Orlando Figes mentioned that at least in European Russia the peasantry immediately behind the front lines almost always supported the Bolsheviks, because they feared that the Whites would take back the lands they took from the landlords during the “land reform.” He cites it as one major reason why the Reds won the civil war. (I think he mentioned at least one major battle, perhaps around Tula, where the Reds won due to this.) There were others, of course, like interior lines of communication, or controlling the major population centers and thus industry, also the families of Czarist officers (“military experts”) and thus having most military talent on their own side.
But I would say Russians were not entirely blameless for the Bolshevik power grab. They might be somewhat less culpable than Germans, who, again, were not fully to blame. (Of course neither Russians nor Germans entirely foresaw or understood what was going to happen, and what the alternatives would mean. In fact, probably most people’s understanding of such things was poor, just as it is today.)
I think it’s somewhat difficult to assign such historical culpability to entire peoples. People often make poor choices, especially when facing novel situations (modernity, revolution, new forms of government after the fall of a monarchy, etc.), and especially under circumstances which they don’t understand (which is to say, in any political situation).
Culpability of elites is different, not only because they are smarter, but also because they enjoy the privileges when things are good, and so should take responsibility when things go south.
It’s comparable because it points to culpability: the Russian people were in essence taken hostage by the Bolsheviks. The German people voted the Nazis into power.
Bolsheviks from the beginning had to keep a terror regime to stay in power. Germany was much less repressive (towards ethnic Germans), and there was little resistance. Even when Germany was pogromming Jews and invading its eastern neighbors.
There is little comparison.
I think a big difference why Russians are often less blamed for Bolshevism is that Bolshevism obviously harmed Russians a lot despite being victorious, while Nazism only harmed Germans because it lost the war.
Merkel is still chancellor because she managed to forge an absolute majority in the parliament by allying (once again) with the SPD.
Hitler just broke the system after being appointed by the president without having a majority in the parliament backing his government.
The fact that Bolsheviks needed terror from the outset is only the result of two factors:
1) Bolshevik insanity was front-loaded, while Nazi insanity was back-loaded. The Nazis first built up legitimacy by raising living standards and expanding the borders and defeating France, and it took a lot of time and disasters to use it all up. They also first built up a strong bureaucratic police state. As opposed to the Bolsheviks, who started out by being totally insane in their first year already. They didn’t yet have a stable police state, nor any semblance of legitimacy, so they had to resort to terror from the get go.
2) Bolshevik insanity was directed at (some) Russians. Actually, they had designs on the property of the majority of the population (anyone with any property), so that a lot of people had a strong incentive to resist the Bolsheviks. The Nazis, on the other hand, never had any intention of expropriating any Germans. Except those who actively resisted them. So the motivation to resist Nazis was way lower.
See, it’s possible to explain without assuming the moral superiority of one people over the other. I don’t think it makes much sense to judge people living short and brutish lives a century ago with no benefit of hindsight. How much wiser are people voting for the Iraq War or the multicultural dystopia or gay marriage or hate speech laws? Ultimately, these will prove the undoing of our whole civilization.
And if she had formed a minority government would that have been a coup in your world?
His party had the most votes by the German people and his coalition had the largest % of any possible coalition at the time (42.5% of seats). The other possibilities (SPD + Communists, or SPD + Centrum) would have had even fewer seats. This his becoming Chancellor was democratic and represented the will of the German people, as embarrassing as it is for them to admit.
Sure. My only point was that Germans chose the Nazis, Russians didn’t choose the Bolsheviks. The details you provide are accurate but don’t contradict that.
If you qualify it by two points:
1) it was only a relative majority of Germans
2) it obviously implies no moral superiority of Russians
You might also reflect on the point about peasants supporting the Reds behind the frontline. Where it actually mattered, in the civil war, the Russians seemed to support the Bolsheviks wherever it made a difference.
One can make similar oversimplified statements with opposing moral implications:
Russians still worship the mass murderer Stalin, whereas Germans don’t respect Hitler.
Agree. And one could be more detailed and blame the German Protestants. Bavarians and Rhinelanders didn’t vote the Nazis into power.
Disagree. When people vote someone to power they should be held accountable for their choice. When they do not, they are not. We do not blame the passengers on the planes for 9-11. Neither should we blame the Russian people for Lenin or Stalin.
Of course Nazis did terrible thing later, long after elections ceased. I suppose blaming Germans for the concentration camps is not fair. But Hitler was clear that he hated the Jews and supported their persecution, and that he wanted to adjust eastern territories, so the German voters get some blame for that. And the fact that there was no widespread resistance certainly suggests that there was a lot of consent for his later actions.
Is this a historical consensus? IIRC peasants were mostly opposed to the Bolsheviks or indifferent to them. They may not have wanted the landlords to return, but they seemed to support the SRs, rather than Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks had urban prole support. In Tambov the Bolsheviks used poison gas against peasants.
Somehow I seem to remember that exactly this same discussion has already taken place here before…several times in fact.
Relative culpability of Germans for Nazism/of Russians for Bolshevism seems to be something of an evergreen as a discussion topic (though not on the same level as “Ukraine – fake nation or real?”).
How so? The popular in Russia Putin involved himself in the creation of a commemorative venue honoring the victims of the Stalin era period. The upcoming Victory Day holiday overwhelmingly honors Russian and Soviet non-Russian WW II heroism as opposed to honoring Stalin.
Volgograd hasn’t been renamed Stalingrad.
The Nazis lost the war and faced an occupation that included de-Nazification. The USSR/Stalin was on the winning side. Hence, the reason for why pro-Stalin kooks appear to be (at least out in the open) a greater number in Russia than the pro-Hitler variant in Germany.
As I wrote, it was an oversimplified statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/26/for-russians-stalin-is-the-most-outstanding-figure-in-world-history-putin-is-next/?utm_term=.afe1648b8409
There was also this (wow, already ten years ago…):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/4000381/Josef-Stalin-named-among-greatest-Russians-in-nationwide-TV-vote.html
When they had such a programme on German tv, they disqualified any Nazis (and I assume East German commies as well) from being nominated, which I thought pretty lame.
And that is the problem right there, worshiping weak leaders means you are a weak people. Turks/Mongols/Americans/Chinese really don’t care how many people Ataturk/Ghengis Khan/Lincoln/Mao butchered, by not respecting Hitler they end up respecting the likes of Merkel and are welcoming their own genocide.
Communist ideology is a secretion of liberalism. “All men are created equal” was said before Marx.
The Russian Tsars did not hate Russia and Russians as Lenin did. None of them worked to erase her past and culture as the Kalmyk-Jew mongrel and his ‘Khazar’ gang did. The ‘German’ Tsars had become Orthodox to be able to rule a profoundly Orthodox people. Lenin pulled down churches and murdered priests and monks along with the Orthodox people.
Be wary of what polls suggesting a Russian fondness for Stalin by once again noting:
the popular in Russia Putin involving himself with a venue commemorating the victims of Stalin era persecution
Volgograd not being renamed Stalingrad
how the May 9 Victory Day is mostly celebrated in Russia as a victory of the Russian and non-Russian Soviet peoples, as opposed to honoring Stalin as some great genius.
He’s obviously not Russian or from the region. All your arguments against ‘Sovoks’ boil down to name calling, strawmen or deliberate ignorance of the facts. You are a Westerner who happens to speak Russian.
Was there widespread Russian resistance against Stalin between 1928-41? I wasn’t aware of this.
I thought (but your links to widespread Russian resistance movements 1928-41 will change that, of course) that widespread resistance in a dictatorship was a sign of a lack of a stable and efficient police state. Also that the regime was targeting vast sections of the population. German people were only targeted by the Nazis if they actively resisted, which didn’t exactly make them motivated to resist. Russians, on the other hand, could easily be targeted by the Bolsheviks even if they didn’t care for politics or Bolsheviks at all, because politics and Bolsheviks cared for them. All these people (who were targeted by the Bolsheviks anyway) were extremely motivated to fight.
Obviously, the Nazis started out by building a strong police state before they started doing anything overly insane.
They voted for the SRs, because they didn’t understand the SR position (which was mostly a legal and drawn out process of land reform; also, a drawn out process of peace negotiations), and they just wanted a land grab and an immediate peace. Which happened to be the Bolshevik position. In practice this meant that there were many examples of peasants and soldiers not quite understanding the difference, or voting for the SRs, but then not supporting the SR rebellion against Sovnarkom and instead fighting for Sovnarkom with the Red Guards or Red Army. The SRs seemed very popular by the portion of votes they received. They quickly became an irrelevance, because what could they promise the uneducated peasants, constitutional reform and free and fair elections? An independent judiciary? The Bolsheviks had already given them all the land available… So the SRs had to rely on former Czarist soldiers, who then proceeded to remove them. They became irrelevant by 1918, because the peasants got what they wanted from the Bolsheviks.
That, too. But it’s not like the peasants opposed the party which gave them land. Until, of course, it dawned on them that under the Bolsheviks life was going to be worse than under the Czars, land or no land. But it didn’t happen until after 1919.
You are talking about 1921. It’s like, in 1945 there were Germans who rose up in arms against the Nazi government. By 1921 even the dumbest peasants had figured out that the Bolsheviks were really worse than basically anyone else. But of course the peasants, being peasants, had no chance against the intelligently led, cruel and disciplined Red Army troops. The Whites had a chance in 1918-19, but then the peasants mostly supported the Reds near the front line or at best were indifferent to them, because they feared the Whites would take away their land. (By the way it was a colossal political failure by the Whites, as General Wrangel recognized all too late in the Crimea.) I think it’s pretty much the consensus view that while the peasants weren’t exactly committed Bolsheviks, they feared the Whites (who they thought would take away the land from them) more than the Reds, and so gave the Bolsheviks crucial support behind the front lines, while the Whites usually encountered hostility. The Whites had to fight in a hostile country, the Reds in a more or less friendly one. The Red Army also found it easier to find volunteers than the White Army.
Russian peasants didn’t
Well, many other peoples wished for the adjustment of borders and disliked the Jews (or were willing to overlook pogroms). I have heard of a mythical people (allegedly doesn’t even exist, as many will assure me even on these pages, so what do I know), called the “Ukrainians,” who participated in lotsa pogroms around 1917-21 (that was not the only time they did so, actually), and who also wished for significant border changes (which would’ve required a major war probably) during the 1920s and 1930s. They also hailed invading Nazi soldiers as liberators.* Have you heard of this people?
*For which they must be held responsible, even if they had no way of knowing what Nazis would do later. They were willing to overlook the well-known fact that Nazis hated Jews, or that they had just started a great European war.
Another discussion is whether Volga Tatars are white or not, with pictures of famous or less famous Tatar women (occasionally men). If you uploaded this picture to Stormfront, and asked them that you wanted to marry this girl, but were unsure if she was white, what would they answer?
There are a few others like that.
My favourite one of those programmes was in Portugal where Salazar won best and worst Portuguese
Some examples:
Vichuga Uprising:
https://libcom.org/history/1932-vichuga-uprising
16,000 workers took over a town. It was one of very many such strikes and uprisings throughout various parts of the USSR.
Collectivization of course also involved resistance.
Nothing of that scale occurred in Nazi Germany.
Moreover, massive desertions and welcoming of German troops also is a form of resistance. I don’t recall crowds of Germans welcoming Allied troops as liberators from Nazi terror, or German troops surrendering en mass to the Allies as soon as they had the chance. But Soviet people did these things. Soviet government even had to have special troops that would shoot in the back Soviet soldiers who tried to surrender. Only when it eventually became that Nazis were even worse, did the Soviet people resist ferociously. But the initial reaction tells us what they thought about the Soviet government who had captured them.
When the Nazi regime fell, hundreds of Germans committed suicide. Did hundreds of Soviets commit suicide directly in response to the fall of the Soviet regime?
All of this strongly suggests that Russians, Ukrainians, etc. were not willingly under Soviet rule, while Germans were willingly under Nazi rule.
As for repression – Nazis did not need to be as repressive towards Germans as Soviets were towards Russians because Nazis were much more popular in Germany than Soviets were in Russia. Nazis ruled with the support and consent of the German people. Soviets held Russians and Ukrainians hostage.
Can you provide links for mass peasants volunteering to fight for the Reds?
Ukrainians didn’t vote for pogroms, and antisemitism wasn’t part of the platform of the Ukrainian parties that won the 1917 elections (they actually cooperated with Zionists), nor of the interwar Galician parties who won the Ukrainian vote (UNDO dominated ethnic Ukrainian politics of the 1920s and 1930s; it mostly cooperated with Jewish groups against Poland in terms of minority rights, although its focus on Ukrainian cooperatives drove Jewish merchants out of business).
Ukrainians welcoming German troops had been starved to death by the millions prior to the German invasion, and there were no other troops ending the Soviet regime.
Germans voting Nazis into power did not have 1% of the excuse to bring Nazis to power, as Ukrainians had to welcome German troops kicking out the Soviet regime. Yours is a very silly comparison.
That happened mostly in the eastern parts of Germany, and there were reasons for that which can’t just be reduced to support for Nazism and despair over its defeat (hint: it has something to do with the war crimes committed by Soviet forces and the things that happened during the flight/expulsion of Germans from the eastern territories).
It’s true that there was a large element of consensus to Nazism and I don’t want to minimize German responsibility in this regard. But Nazi Germany did become increasingly repressive at the home front as well, especially during the later years of the war…e.g. there really were cases of Germans being executed for telling jokes about Hitler (I assume reiner tor has data about such things since he knows the relevant literature much better than me).
And there’s more than one way of holding a people hostage…starting a world war in which the alternatives are between supporting the current regime and unconditional surrender to an enemy coalition whose most prominent member was Stalin’s Soviet Union is one imo.
I usually don’t try to get involved in such discussions, since I’m obviously biased and can’t quite see the point after all those years…but I do get the impression that you’re very committed to this notion of German collective guilt not least because it’s necessary as a justification for Poland’s annexations of German Eastern territories. Not that this is of much relevance today since the issues are long-settled, but for an alleged non-nationalist you sure do a lot of special pleading for the interests of the groups you identify with.
That’s obvious nonsense. Ukrainians welcoming German in Western Ukraine, which until 39 was under the rule of Poland. In Eastern Ukraine (where, according to the modern propaganda of the Ukrainians “had been starved to death”), the Germans had no support.
It was a joke about aboriginal Caucasian blondes.
If about the Tatars you can post on the forum of American racists this photo, https://students.kpfu.ru/sites/default/files/2017-10/_MG_7041.jpg
writing that it was your group (in University of Arizona).
But you want to change the University, because you think there are too many “color” students in your group.
The Id is a term from Freud’s theory that is not in use anymore in psychology. In modern psychological research, the trait associated with political liberalism is Openness to experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience
They would not apply to study at the university in the first place, as even with all those maidens, they would have been too scared to apply due to the hilarious front cover of the university website.
https://i.imgur.com/wTtbYhd.jpg
And thumbnail choice of video
And until 1941 was ruled by the Soviets, who murdered 10,000s of people and deported 10,000s more.
LOL, you think it was propaganda that millions of central and eastern Ukrainians were starved to death.
North of Azov sea early in the war:
http://www.mourningtheancient.com/truth-ukraine-o-25v1up19.jpg
One can read memoirs of those times. Peasants saw the hated Soviet authorities flee, saw some kind of crosses on the German military, naively hoped they were being liberated by Christians. Indeed, the weeks after the Soviets fled and before the Nazi administrators came in were a kind of respite; regular German troops were often decent.
Yes, this was a big factor not the only one. There were many cases of hardcore Nazis who killed themselves rather than not live under National Socialism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_suicides_in_1945_Nazi_Germany
Well,m Germans did not surrender en mass to the western powers either. They didn’t throw the Nazis out as the Americans approached, or refused to fight the Americans as many Soviet people refused to fight the Germans in the beginning.
I’m just pointing out the fact the Germans voted the Nazis into power and didn’t seriously resist them afterward.
In contrast, Russians never voted Soviets into power, there was widespread terror necessarily to maintain power and resistance/desertions. Only in Khrushchev’s time and later could one say that the Soviet people consented to Soviet rule (and even then – they sold it out easily when the chance came)..
Of course they did, the Americans and British took vast numbers of Germans prisoner (many more than the Soviets iirc), not least because lots of Wehrmacht soldiers in 1944/45 tried to get as far west as possible and be taken pow by the western powers, not the Soviets. German resistance in the west was quite weak compared to what was going on in the east. The Volkssturm didn’t fight that much in the west, whereas in the east there actually were scenes of Hitler youths attacking T-34s and the like.
I don’t want to explain away German responsibility, but how do you even imagine something like this could have been possible? The only way to end Nazi rule would have been a military coup, which was tried in July 1944 and failed. It’s of course true that very substantial numbers of Germans did support the regime right until the end, but the idea that some collective uprising could have been possible under the conditions of total war is fantasy (and such an uprising didn’t happen either in the Soviet Union in 1941).
Which I didn’t deny, though imo you’re exaggerating the point. I don’t see why the contrast should be that surprising though, it’s not surprising that an extreme nationalist regime like Nazism that committed most of its crimes abroad under wartime conditions generates more loyalty than a communist regime which for ideological reasons caused the deaths of millions of its own citizens in peacetime. I don’t see how one can claim though that the Bolsheviks just held the Russian people hostage, as if there hadn’t been substantial parts of the population which supported Bolshevism. The NKVD wasn’t exactly a small organization – and while its size may show that terror was necessary for the maintenance of the regime, it also shows that there were lots of people willing to work for it.
This is an empty picture. If it were necessary to German propaganda, the same images would be done in the Warsaw ghetto. The real indicator-in Eastern Ukraine (everywhere where it was possible) against Germans there was a guerrilla war.
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/varjag2007su/78328555/596656/596656_800.jpg
But there was no guerrilla war against Soviet troops
Well, the joke is not about the University and about the Tartars (the black guy from advertising – clearly not Tatar)
I’m not discussing the final month or two of the war but when there was still a struggle…like when the Western allies were marching through France or Italy. The German military didn’t melt due to mass surrenders, as did the Soviet one.
Per wiki, in early 1945 – 200,000 Germans were captured by the Western allies (out of 1 million troops), compared to 2.3 million Soviet troops captured/missing in 1941 (out of perhaps 5 million on the German front). About 4 times as many Soviets surrendered than were killed in combat in 1941; in early 1945 against the Western allies it was about the same number Germans killed as surrendered. Germans fought hard against the western Allies in the Battle of the Bulge, Ruhr, etc.
Well, what did the Italians do to the Fascist regime as the Americans came in? What did the Poles attempt as the Soviet forces came in?
In the USSR there was a huge scale of surrenders and German troops were often welcomed by locals. While the Germans did indeed fight less desperately against the Western allies than against the Soviets, they still did not in general behave like a people eager to be liberated from a government they hated and didn’t want.
I agree with you that it isn’t surprising at all. I am surprised by those that doubt this.
In the 1917, probably their high point in terms of popularity (because they didn’t yet start repressing people), Bolsheviks got 24% of the Russian vote, compare to 40% for SRs. Bolsheviks won only in the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow (I think), and among soldiers on the western and northern fronts (the ones on the southern front voted for the SRs)
Nazis plus their coalition partners were at around 40%, winning all of the non-Catholic parts of Germany.
American Airline Fight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon had 5 terrorists and 59 non-terrorists on it. So 8% of the people on the plane were able to terrorize and totally control the other 92%.
In the case of Russia it was perhaps more like 20% (Bolsheviks plus sympathizers) terrorizing and controlling the rest. Not an insignificant percentage but clearly a minority, to a much greater extent that in the case of Nazis in Germany.
Guerrilla war in the very beginning? We are talking about the first few weeks or so, before the Nazi administration began persecuting the people. The first reaction by many of the people were – “we are free from the Soviet nightmare.”
Maybe that’s the perception in the US…from the German point of view all those battles in the west are minor, unimportant afterthoughts which don’t compare at all to the war in the east.
The Italian case proves my point, Mussolini wasn’t deposed by some popular uprising, but by elements within the regime, quite a few of whom had a dubious record as well (Badoglio can be considered a war criminal given his record in Abessynia). Poland was a simple case of resisting against foreign occupation, so therefore not comparable.
That’s your interpretation, as far as I know quite a few Germans did welcome the Americans as “liberators” from the Nazis and their war…it’s just that the Americans with their strong notions of collective guilt found such claims implausible and regarded them as craven opportunism.
Anyway, the discussion is kind of pointless imo…I’ve basically said what I wanted to say. Maybe reiner tor will chime in again, he knows WW2 literature better than me anyway.
Yes guerrilla war against Germans in Eastern Ukraine was from the very beginning. But there was no guerrilla war against the retreating (in 1941) red Army
Not by the regular locals but by embedded NKVD and Communist activists left behind, and others parachuted in. In 1941 numbers were small (estimated at about two thousand out of a population of 30 million). Typical example commander Timofei Strokach – Russian guy from Astrakhan, NKVD member found himself behind enemy lines.
Soviet troops just deserted on their own as Soviet rule melted away and locals cheered.
Once when I stayed in a German flat, I found on the bookshelf a pamphlet published by the US military for US soldiers occupying Germany, warning them how although the average German might seem normal and well-meaning, they were really all brain-washed Nazis and not to be trusted. A short internet search has not turned up this pamphlet, but it was quite interesting to read.
In the beginning the partisans were mostly red army soldiers separated from the main forces. They were of different origin, but there were many Ukrainians among them.
It’s just nonsense. Of course desertion existed, but “melting” the Red Army is the wet dream of the German generals. Dreams not come true.
Soldiers from Eastern Ukraine fought in the red army. But soldiers from Eastern Ukraine ready to fight for the Germans (not to Rob and kill civilians, but to fight) didn’t exist.
Those also.
Do you think this is accurate?
“At the end of June 1941, immediately after the Germans crossed the Soviet border, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (see Communist Party of the Soviet Union) ordered Party members to organize an underground on occupied territories. In 1941 underground cells sprang up in a few Ukrainian cities, but most Party members ignored the order. The first partisan detachments appeared in Chernihiv oblast and Sumy oblast. They developed out of M. Popudrenko’s and Sydir Kovpak’s underground groups, which were joined by small army units that broke through the German encirclement of the Soviet forces east of Kyiv. It was only in the spring of 1942, when these partisans established a radio link with Moscow and received special reinforcements dropped by parachute, that they began to show some activity. Apart from two other partisan detachments, which sprang up at the end of 1941 and were quickly wiped out by the Germans, one (500 men) in the Nykopil and Kryvyi Rih regions and the other (400 men) in the eastern Dnipropetrovske region, there were no other Soviet partisans in Ukraine at the time. A significant partisan movement developed by the spring of 1942 in occupied Belarusian and southwestern Russian territories, where 80 percent of the Soviet partisan activity was concentrated. In Ukraine, Soviet partisans achieved a significant strength only in mid-1943.”
They weren’t given the chance. They were put into POW camps and starved to death.
You’re probably right. Funny how the people pushing communism usually (1) have little, sometimes from lack of ability and/or lack of effort, and expect to be given property forcibly taken from others, or (2) have plenty of material resources and have the naive illusion that the new communist State won’t take THEIR property.
People who are not beset with mental illness, extreme violent envy (the poor communists), or the expectation that they will rule the rest of us and not lose their own property and comfort (often more “educated” and wealthier types) typically do not support communism.
But China’s regime, quite properly, favors its own race of people and its own language and culture. They are not universalists, communist or otherwise.
The rest of the world would be justified, recently, in thinking that no Americans can be trusted even if they seem reasonable and civilized. That’s embarrassing and alarming to me as an American.
Many Americans are no less brainwashed, no less ill-informed, than loyal Nazi or Soviet Communist “Citizens.”
Well yes, at least it’s better for russians than when they’re ruled by psychotic inbred Jews with a desire for revenge and control (bolsheviks).
Yes, and also because a german can be fined or jailed for praising hitler, while I don’t think that happens to russians who praise Stalin.
Yes this accurate
“According to the Central Committee of KP (b)U, on October 1, 1941 in areas of the USSR there were 738 guerrilla groups and 191 diversionary group in which there were 27,6 thousand fighters according to lists. … Actions of guerrillas of Ukraine caused noticeable concern of the opponent. … W. von Reichenau (commander of the 6th army in army group “South”), in its orders (October — November 1941) demanded from his subordinates to publicly execute all captured partisans and accomplices of the guerrillas, and burn their homes . In early November 1941, (according to the Directive of General Friderici) was burned Ukrainian village Baranivka of the Mirgorod district, Poltava region, part of its inhabitants were shot.”
“Партизанская война на Украине. Дневники командиров партизанских отрядов и соединений. 1941–1944”
That is guerrilla war against Germans went in Ukraine from the very beginning
The Germans used the Western Ukrainian ustashs. But in Eastern Ukraine there were no ustashs, but there was a guerrilla war against the Germans.
That’s not principled resistance. You spin resistance to cutting one’s living standards into some kind of principled resistance against the regime. (For example Kaganovich could hold speeches to the angry workers, at least those who didn’t participate in the strike.) There was very little principled resistance to Bolshevik rule. The problem people had with it is that it dispossessed them or cut their living standards. Since the Nazi government did it to a much smaller extent than the Bolshevik government (actually, German living standards were on the rise until the war), the expectation is to be much less numerous or smaller scale strikes and protests in Nazi Germany. And so it was: the many hundreds or thousands of strikes (often led by former communists or trade unionists) usually just involved a few dozens of workers. Their demands were less modest, though: living standards kept rising until the war, so workers demanded raises instead of no cuts. But it was not principled opposition either.
You’re spinning a resistance against dropping living standards into the moral superiority of Russians. I don’t think it’s tenable.
Well, German Reader already mentioned a few points, like war crimes against German civilians, on the base of which Germans feared systematic reprisals. They also simply feared Bolshevism being instituted – they had no way of knowing that the DDR would be milder than 1930s USSR. (Even the USSR would become milder later on…) They also feared “Jewish revenge,” something which your beloved Bavarian Catholic peasants were discussing in 1942 (and overheard by Gestapo agents).
On the other hand, I know of at least one Russian who committed suicide, Marshal Akhromeyev:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Akhromeyev
It must be noted that Russia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and it jumped to higher values than before right around the time of the fall of communism. Also, it was not combined with a loss of a war. Many of the German suicides were by patriotic Germans who who killed themselves out of desperation after seeing the great national catastrophe, combined with the almost total destruction of German cities, the disappearance of Germany as a country, mass rape of women, etc. It was a bit more apocalyptic than the disappearance of the USSR.
Richard J. Evans addressed that issue at length.
Facts:
I’m unaware of “mass peasants volunteering to fight for the Reds,” so I cannot provide links for this.
However, it’s a fact that Whites found it difficult to find volunteers, and so at the height of their success in 1919 (when they were threatening Tula and thus Moscow I think), their numbers were dwindling – they were unable to replace losses. While the Reds had much less problems with replacing their losses. I guess most of the difference came from the cities, but it’s not like peasants were eager to fight for the Whites.
It’s also a fact that peasants usually feared losing their land (which they had taken from the landlords by force during the lawless “land reform” in the first few months after the revolution), and so were unfriendly to Whites and friendlier to Reds in the immediate vicinity of the frontline. (Of course they didn’t like the Bolsheviks either, so as soon as the Whites were far away, they stopped supporting the Reds. But it mattered very little.) For example grain requisitioning was easier when there was a danger of White takeover. This was important, because it was easier to feed the Red Army than the White Army. Once the fighting receded, requisitioning became much harder (peasants started a passive and later active resistance – to protect their own grain, not out of some principled opposition), but then the Reds could employ massive violence.
Probably because like in Russia, the parties were led by educated intellectuals. But someone was committing mass pogroms at the time, and no one was stopping them. (I think Petlyura actually tried to stop them, but he couldn’t get traction with it – I guess stopping pogroms wasn’t that popular at the lower levels.)
I fail to see the massive Ukrainian moral advantage over Germans.
You are using similar arguments which are used against Apartheid South Africa vs. the corrupt tribal dictatorships in other African countries. “See, they actually made a law to discriminate against blacks and favor whites, while Siad Barre never made a law to favor the Marehan!” Well, yes, because blacks are disorganized and lawless and don’t care for laws at all, while Afrikaners were organized and cared for laws, so they needed the laws to discriminate against other tribes. Ukrainians were disorganized and so never had to put into writing any incriminating evidence of their anti-Semitism, but at times they were at least as eager as Germans to participate in violence against Jews.
Not in Western Ukraine.
You are exaggerating. Germans might have suspected the Nazis would start some pogroms, but didn’t have a way of knowing about the mass murder of Jews. But by early 1941, the Nazis were actually committing mass murder (not yet the holocaust), killing tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. Since the borders weren’t hermetically sealed even in early 1941 (some Poles fled to Hungary from the German occupied areas through Soviet territory even during that time), it’s hard to see how Western Ukrainians hadn’t heard rumors about it. Given their rampant hatred of both Poles and Jews, they didn’t care. They cared more about their own fate, which – they hoped – would improve.
I don’t blame Ukrainians for not caring about the fate of Jews and Poles, but obviously they weren’t opposed to Nazism (or Bolshevism) on some principled humanrightist stance, but simply because they were bad for them personally or as a nation.
How do you expect Germans to care for the fate of others, when Ukrainians didn’t care either? Why do you think one has a huge moral responsibility (justifying mass expulsions and ethnic cleansings against them, including against children), while the other has no agency and is just reacting to bad things done to it by others?
That mostly happened in encirclement battles. Non-encircled troops rarely surrendered on either side.
As someone has already mentioned, Soviet troops were noted for their reluctance to surrender early on, for example the resistance at the fortress in Brest was noted by the Germans.
German troops didn’t surrender when they thought captivity would mean almost certain death (and perhaps torture), which was often the case on the Eastern Front. Also, the Germans saw enough of Soviet communism to fear it, and they also saw enough of what their own side was doing to fear reprisals.
By the way, Richard J. Evans mentions that in the Rhineland in early 1945 German farmers occasionally attacked German troops or were cussing at them for still fighting. This had a very negative effect on German troops’ morale. The farmers obviously just wanted the war to end finally. Most Germans probably agreed with the joke (“Enjoy the war! The peace will be more terrible…”), or just feared the Nazis (who still held power and had the terror apparatus at their disposal, shooting tens of thousands of Germans in the last months of the war).