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Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

A significant reason why Stalin was able to successfully rise to power and why the Bolsheviks were able to secure total power is because of foreign violence and interference.

When all major foreign powers say that they wish for the destruction of your country and would openly prefer you to go back to more suffering, support for monsters like Stalin increases.

Equally, when the threat of invasion is as high as it was for the USSR from Britain and the US, a lot of money and power is invested in the military.

It's very possible that if it wasn't for massive foreign interference neither Stalin nor Trotsky would ever have been able to gain much power (both of them got their power from military conflict mainly, Stalin even moreso), the NKVD never would have gotten nearly as much funding, Lavrentiy Beria would probably have been put against the wall, and so on.

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You completely dodged the question and tried to change the subject, so I'll ask it again: If they had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

They did not have a wonderful society. It was very deficient in many ways. I didn't argue that point because we agree. The point I'm arguing is whether or not the USSR could have had a better society if it wasn't for US and other foreign intervention, and the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Exactly! They can't even consider the possibility it seems because they don't want to even consider it. Its almost as entrenched as what some might call faith that the US was superior to the USSR and if you even suggest the idea of anything else you are downvoted because you are the bad guy for even considering it.

GP: They did not have a wonderful society. It was very deficient in many ways. I didn't argue that point because we agree.

You: Exactly!

Glad you also agree with my comments, then.

You're the one that replied to

>The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general.

thus implying disagreements. Since neither of us have contradicted such a statement, either you've been replying hors-sujet or you were just trying to show agreement, right?

Huh?

Lol we didn't agree mate but way to try and take a quick win by "selectively" ignoring the parts you don't want to quote.

> Lol we didn't agree mate

Your comment says otherwise.

No, my comment agreed with the idea that the US is the most significant factor responsible for what happened in the USSR.

Yes, it's always someone else's fault when Communist policies inevitably fail and murder millions.

Does that also apply when Capitalist policies have inevitably failed and murdered millions? The civil war actually was the bloodiest war in the US's history no? Was that not a failure of capitalism? Was the great depression not a failure of capitalism?

It takes a profoundly ignorant view of historical facts to blame Stalin and Trotsky on foreign interference.

It takes a profoundly ignorant view of historical facts to ignore the immense pervasiveness of foreign interference in the Russian Civil War.

The mere presence of the Bolsheviks as a dominant force was due to foreign interference, as the Germans installed him and his friends in an attempt to destabilize the Russian Empire.

Trotsky's growth in authoritarianism, when he was previously a moderating force, started with the opportunistic German attacks at the fleets of the Red Army, and of course his rise to power from a middling figure to a preeminent Bolshevik was only made possible by German incitement of the Bolshevik movement to begin with.

Even Stalin's justification for power was based on (justified) appeals to centrally planned heavy industries, whose main motivation was military power which was necessary to to threats of invasion.

It is clear to anyone that both Stalin and Trotsky would have had much, much less power if they weren't able to justify centralization on the necessity to resist foreign agression, beyond that the consolidation of the Bolsheviks to begin with was a German plot.

To claim all of this was based on foreign interference is revisionism without foundation, ignoring the agency of the Russian people and its tragically flawed and corrupt leadership/aristocracy. The Germans did not create or even influence the conditions that led to the Russian civil war or the various abortive revolutions prior to the one in 1917; beyond helping Lenin get back to Russia from Switzerland there is a shocking lack of evidence of any direct support (just in case you are trying to suggest the "Kaiser's gold" theory, there is no evidence of significant monetary support in either German or Russian records.) Considering the fact that Russia was a participant in WW1 at the time it is naive to assume they as disinterested or uninvolved, but the Germans did not create Lenin or any of the other committees and factions involved.

You cannot just sweep across decades of internal Russian conflict and paint it with such a broad and quite frankly misinformed brush. Every European nation was involved to some extent, but none had the influence you claim nor did any create any of the central characters in this story.

Is your position that the only possible result of the Russian Revolution was Stalin and the Holodomor?

The phenomena of revolutions turning authoritarian because of an outside enemy attempting to destabilize is in no way unique to the USSR. It's a pattern you see all across the world. It's what gets a movement that was opposed to even the concept of a standing army because of the centralization of power and the risk that brings to the largest standing army.

The Germans didn't create Lenin, but they fundamentally changed the course of the Rebellion against the Tsar by sending him back to Russia at that precise time. They had an intent in doing so that was realized.

So you are saying that foreign powers had no influence whatsoever on the internal political situations in Russia, or that is was a mix of factors? You do admit that they helped Lenin get back to Russia at least. If Lenin never helps get back, does he ever rise to that level of power?

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