I come from a long line of killers on my mom's side - Cossacks, military men - and don't like the romanticizing of violent repressions, "Lenin wuz right," "Stalin was no big deal," etc. I believe this legacy is important to consider, because the world is headed for a crisis.
One of my relatives presided over executions in Crimea. Before our family archive was stolen (another long and awful story), I read some of his letters, and his daughter's recollections of the man he was. I am not going to say it broke him. But he lived with the horror every day.
In the U.S., we are experiencing unsustainable inequality - to say nothing of the world as a whole. Many people are searching for a way out. Stalinism can be seductive in this context. Lenin's legacy even more so. "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, har har!"
We can consider the Soviet "omelet" through various perspectives. Personal recollections, stories passed through time, can be just as important as scholarly works. I was born in the USSR and bristle when dumb people try to lecture on "what I am" as the result.
Did the USSR achieve much? Sure. Absolutely. First man in space. First woman in space. The Soviet military bravely fought Nazi Germany (in spite of Stalin being a brutal, piece-of-shit commander OK w/ unnecessary losses & w/ rape as no big deal, as opposed to a war crime).
Soviet women were the toughest bitches around (witness the patriarchal backlash against them once the USSR fell). Stalin-era architecture was cool. Propaganda art was gorgeous. Education was prioritized. Even the AK is a freaking work of art. NONE of that makes repressions OK.
Stalin AND Lenin (yes, Lenin, the darling of your anti-bourgeois progressive kaffeeklatsch) built a prison. Lenin started it, Stalin made it oh-so-much-worse. The insult is that the prison was built with beautiful ideas in mind. Why did they fail? Because of mass violence.
I have no patience for violence as something abstract, theoretical, etc. I live with a legacy of violence and was raised in a household where it was never sugarcoated. The sound of screaming over the sound of bones being crushed - that's how granddad categorized war, for example.
Now imagine killing people who are helpless and tied up. Those are the memories passed down to me from Crimea. "Eliminating class enemies" sounds so badass, right? Is it badass to put a bullet through the head of an immobilized, likely random victim?
As I say, we're headed for a crisis. I think everyone can feel it. Rampant, growing inequality after relative prosperity in the U.S. is just one threat to national security (racism is another). We should all be searching for a way out - Lenin's tactics & Stalin's lunacy ain't it.
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