I think it’s difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that the Russian Revolution brought to the working people.
I think it’s difficult for us today to fully grasp the hope that the Russian Revolution brought to the working people.
Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled. And the process killed literally millions -- some from outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement.
Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural societies can be very conservative. And things had been slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century. Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that could easily have gone the other way and saved the institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations of improvements.
So... depends.
Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won WWII at the cost of Russian lives.
I’m one of those people who see China as a bigger threat to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented divisions between Russia and China. It would have been possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as well be considered a single entity. I think the west overestimated its strength, and even now with the posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it appears that the West doesn’t understand that warfare has forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would have woken people up to that reality but somehow we’re holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable.
I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway. I much prefer the Chinese way of fighting with ‘high tech overproduction’ and wish we could ‘fight back’ with our own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it, especially since the alternative is massively destructive.
On top of that, China has its own problems--demographic and economic. Russia cannot help China solve them so China is happy to see Russia bleed and slowly descend into the inevitable chaos once the Russian economy collapses. Xi will be happy to carve out a part of Russia for himself once an opportunity presents itself. Although how much more of a really backwards population and barren land he needs is a open question.
Your reading of what's driving Western support for Ukraine is completely wrong here. They're not simply doing it to "give Russia a bloody nose" for its own sake. They certainly don't mind if that's what Russia gets out of it. But that's not the key objective in itself.
On the flip side: "fermenting divisions between Russia and China" is just fantasy, as at the moment U.S. is really quite inept in regard to such influence. It has no clue how to do that effectively (and any efforts it did take in that direction would most likely be moot and/or backfire).
I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway.
Okay, multipolar world, whatever.
But what it really comes down to is this: the only way to have "avoided war" (after 2014) would have been to simply give Russia what it wanted -- recognized sovereignty over significant chunks of territory (most likely at least as much as it's sitting on now), combined with permanent limits on Ukraine's own sovereignty (in terms of its ability to enter treaties).
If you think this would have been (or still would be) an astute course of action -- you might as well come out an say so.
It is hard to discuss this with people because it appears to me that most people are divorced from reality of the war. The framing of it has been warped and anyone who strays from the NAFO line is somehow an apologist. I hate this war and I hate the wars that it seems we’re on the precipice of starting with China and Iran and world will be much worse off when that happens.
It's possible of course, but it's also speculative, and the window for that option is long since closed -- once Putin grabbed the Crimea and then the LNR/DNR, the "neutrality" bid fell from the table.
In any case he's been quite consistent about maintaining whatever regions he's currently occupying (and likely then some, according to the most recent formulations).
So if we're to buy peace now by just giving him what he wants -- that (or some approximation thereof) is what he'll be demanding. In any case it seems extremely unlikely he'd accept a neutrality-only bid by this point.
For a while it looked like Ukraine was turning the tide and they were told then not to negotiate for peace because they didn't have to - wait for an even better negotiating position. So they're told don't negotiate when you're loosing and don't negotiate when you're winning which approximate boils down to don't negotiate. Many things are possible when the alternative is losing a hugely destructive war. I.e. these things were and still remain on the table. Sure, Ukraine's not getting their land back unless they win the war but how likely is that to happen anyway.
Knowing Ukraine before the war there was already a huge Ukraine vs Russia ethnic divide that was being made worse by the Ukrainian government passing anti-Russian laws. I see Putins objectives as bringing ethnic Russians back into the fold and establishing a buffer zone. I think if a real Russia-NATO conflict broke out Russia out of necessity would turn to nukes pretty quickly - so I see this Russia-Ukraine war as less of a war of a conquest and more of a way to avoid nuking their Russian Ukrainian cousins if a full scale Russia-NATO war was to break out. They would have less qualms nuking West Ukraine as there are fewer cousins in the west so that would be free to be part of NATO.
There is the premise that Russia would not honor such an agreement of neutrality and I don't agree with that premise for a raft of reasons. If the premise that an embolden Putin will go on a concurring rampage I would have to disagree with that as well for another raft of reasons.
I don't have time to go into the whole history of it now - but I think an outcome where Ukraine splits in two where West Ukraine is a neutralized entity or absorbed into their surrounding NATO countries would have been and is still possible. Yes that would mean NATO on Russia's boarder but there is already a huge NATO boarder on Russia - that wasn't the problem.
I was looking to move to Ukraine in 2020 because I think it's a lovely country and Lviv is a lovely city. Very cheap where I could exist cheaply and spend my time reading books. It's a very corrupt country which does keep prices down but makes business difficult - but since my source of money is foreign I could effectively hide my wealth and avoid attracting attention. I decided against it because I did expect this war to break out as people were not taking Russia's warnings seriously. They had a lot of 'fixer-upper' housing that looked like they were already bombed, the housing was cheap but the problem is if you turn up with a bunch of money to fix the housing you're going catch the attention of the corrupt mobsters. I think Lviv would be an even nicer city if governed by Poland as it has been before in the not so distant past.
For Ukraine, they need to win by such a severe margin that Russia doesn't even think to lick its wounds, rebuild its strength, and try again.
For Russia… well, it's really about Putin. And he dares not show any sign of weakness, which would include ceding the "loss" of the territory which he has officially claimed to recognise as part of Russia.
The EU has several ex-Soviet and ex-Warsaw-pact states which openly regard a Russian victory to be an existential threat (as in "we're next"); this would remain the case regardless of what happens with NATO. But NATO does also exist, and even if the USA leaves the UK has a significant arms industry that would come in addition to that of also-EU members like France.
I don't think China cares beyond the degree to which it might take focus away from whatever it is they want to do. They seem to be quite content to rapidly ramp up their industrial capacity and general economic output, be the world's factory and hypermarket.
The west collectively is, I think, worried about escalation precisely because of the nuclear option. Our leaders want Russia to leave Ukraine in peace and recognise its sovereignty, while also itself remaining stable as it does so… which I don't think is possible, but I'd like it to be (and what do I know anyway, I'm software engineering, not international geopolitics).
Personally I suspect that the Russia nuclear arsenal is in a bad state: the main armed forces at the start of the invasion were terrible because they weren't expecting to not need to have to do more than show up, and similar logic applies to nukes.
But!
1) One small nuke is enough for a high-altitude EMP to cause severe issues.
2) I wouldn't want to risk an entire country on a dice roll.
This is a rather condescending attitude which assumes the Ukrainians have no agency over their situation, and are just doing what their Western puppet masters tell them to do.
I was looking to move to Ukraine in 2020 because I think it's a lovely country and Lviv is a lovely city. Very cheap where I could exist cheaply and spend my time reading books. BTW it'd be an even nicer city if it were governed by Poland.
Please don't, as you plainly don't respect the country or the people living there.
If you'd prefer to live under Polish administration, try Wrocław.
In life we must deal with reality, the strong do what they can and the weak endure what they must. Most of us don’t get to live life from a constant position of strength and must be able to negotiate from a position of weakness which involves picking the least bad choices. The West has enjoyed an extended period of being able to negotiate from a position of strength and unfortunately the West isn’t strong enough to keep things that way. Weakness is dangerous, I wish the West was stronger, but I must deal with reality.
Sounds more like you're (uncritically) accepting the narratives put out by various sources in regard to events of the time.
I think better choices could have been made
That's very different from what you said initially.
You didn't say that the Ukrainians "decided" not to negotiate for a cease fire (meaning, to accept Putin's demands for recognized sovereignty over the occupied regions).
What you said (twice, for emphasis) was that they "were told not to".
As if they are simply incapable of making such decisions for themselves, and just do what their Western handlers tell them to do.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/lenin-and-the...
Churchill was too late "Its (Munichs appeasement) reverse side was an unwillingness to cooperate with the USSR against Nazi Germany"
They prefered Hitler to Stalin.
"Winston Churchill, then a backbench Tory MP, insisted that without an alliance with the USSR, France and Britain could not help their allies or would-be allies in Eastern Europe"
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Fiasco_The_Anglo-Franco-...
It was mutual, by the way. Stalin (or one of his generals?) said "even with the devil you may walk to the end of the bridge". That is, to them the west was the devil, and they were using the west just like the west was using them.
And that's not evening counting the USSR's millions "resettled" in ethic operations, with about a 20%-25% death rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths under the czars.
Russia during the czarist era suffered severe famines about one each 11 years, and the death toll was on the order of millions, all happening while Russia exported grains [1]. It could be argued that the modernization happened in the post-revolutionary Russia prevented new famines after some time, despite the initial drawbacks caused by revolutionary changes. It would be very difficult to do a proper land reform with a regime backed by a rural nobility.
Post-revolutionary France was Napoleon causing somewhere between 3.25 million and 6.5 million deaths across Europe. Then back to the monarchy, so very little net change from pre-revolutionary France, except for all the dead bodies.
But I agree with your first sentence. Any real revolution will cause a great deal of death. Can you build back something enough better to be worth all that? For many revolutions, the answer is no.
The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.
Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.
Which I think applies to people who think communism will somehow save them from their predicaments.
Communism has that special something that destroys the soul. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t seen it or talked to those who have lived it. The attempt at the impossible in creating the ‘new man’ free of greed in combination with a secret police that pits friends against friends, family member against family member such that all personal relationships are voided.
I get that our current system of ‘capitalism’ is more of an oligarchical corporatism than ‘true capitalism’ and is really failing people. But communism is not the answer because it’ll be the same oligarchs in charge and there will be far fewer ways to escape them. I understand that ‘true communism’ would obviate the need for greed and corruption but in trying to get there from here by crossing a river of blood in an continuous revolution it’s far more likely to get stuck in the corrupt communism state which is far worse than our current corrupt capitalism state.
FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not allowed to legally leave.
> Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.
It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.
well that's an understatement
Plus, it wasn't even the Communists who deposed the Czar. He was already gone after the February Revolution, 7 months before. The main contribution of the Communists to the cause was to spend the next two decades committing mass murder and achieving mass starvation.