Showing posts with label Russian Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russian Revolution. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVI . To what extent is that new?

 A short thread just pondering some things in the news, or the zeitgeist, that are portrayed as "new".

1.  A war between Russia and Ukraine?

This is a horrible event, to be sure, but Russia's been trying to shove itself on Ukraine since 1917, or probably well before.

Russia is really like a giant bully in its neighborhood, which is why this is important.  It's not new.  Russia grabbed Ukraine back after the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and then fought its guerrillas in the early 20s. It fought guerrillas again from 1943 into the 1940s.  Ukraine wants to be an independent state. Russia doesn't like any of the neighboring countries to have that status.

2. Adult children living at home.

This is constantly portrayed as new, but it's the historical norm due to limited resources.

It really only began to change in the 1930s, at first due to economic desperation. That trend was amplified by World War Two, and the massive economic boom after the war really changed the situation.

A constructing economy has reversed it, as it has. . . 

3.  Delayed marriage

Marriage ages have traditionally been higher than they were in the1940s to 1970s time frame.  The reason is noted above.

Related Threads:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLV. At War With Nature and the Metaphysical

Sunday, March 5, 2023

Monday, March 5, 1923. Reds.

The Soviet Union, which claimed to respect the rights of nations, delivered a protest note to Finland over Finland's negotiations with the League of Nations over Karelia, which should have been Finland's.

Soviet barbarity would later assure that it ended up in the USSR, and then later in Russia.  A general Soviet policy of Russification, which settled lands with Russians, means that Karelians, a Finnic people, are now minorities in Russian Karelia.

On the same day, Lenin wrote Stalin on a personal matter.

Dear Comrade Stalin:

You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the telephone and use bad language. Although she had told you that she was prepared to forget this, the fact nevertheless became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev. I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife I consider having been done against me as well. I ask you, therefore, to think it over whether you are prepared to withdraw what you have said and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer that relations between us should be broken off.

Respectfully yours,       

Lenin 

Lenin's wife was one Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was also a Bolshevik and very active in party affairs.  She's long out live her husband, dying in 1939, just before the start of World War Two.   


She managed to survive Stalin's purges, even intervening to attempt to save some condemned Reds.  No doubt her status as the wife of the original Red dictator insulated her from such attacks.


It's widely asserted that Nadezhda wasn't Lenin's only love interest, and that French Communist Inessa Armand was his mistress.  This is hard to prove, however, even though it is flatly asserted as being the case in many histories referencing Lenin.  They had met in France while Lenin was living there, and she came to Russia following the Revolution.  Becoming overworked in Revolutionary Russia, Lenin urged her to go to the Caucasus for a holiday, which was suffering from an epidemic and which still had armed opposition to Communism. Supposedly, Lenin was unaware of this.  She contracted cholera there and was buried in a mass grave at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, being the first woman to be accorded this dubious honor.

Igor Sikorsky, who felt Soviet barbarity, incorporated the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation in the U.S.

The state of Washington got around to adopting an official flag.

It's incredibly boring.

It's original appearance:


Still boring.

Casper read of railroads to be built, $1.00 gasoline, and the dangers of ardent wooing.




Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Thursday, October 26, 1972. "We believe that peace is at hand".

So stated Henry Kissinger publicly, and just eleven days prior to the 1972 Presidential Election.

Kissinger, Nixon and Alexander Haig at Camp David in 1972.

Nixon did not approve as he felt that Kissinger was hogging the limelight through the announcement, however Kissinger noted that the North Vietnamese had already published the text of the draft agreement.

Unbeknownst to the public, neither Nixon or Kissinger believed that the Republic of Vietnam had any chance of holding out long term against North Vietnam, and they were putting heavy pressure on the South Vietnamese, who had little faith in their abilities themselves to cooperate.

Igor Sikorsky, aviation giant and developer of helicopters, died on this day at age 83.

Sikorsky was born in Kyiv to Russian parents.  His father was an internationally known psychiatrist and his mother a physician, meaning he was born into an unusual family for the era.  He was drawn to aviation very early in his life and studied in Paris.  He worked in Paris during World War One and did not return to Russia due to the Russian Revolution, immigrating to the United States in 1919.  His first wife accordingly divorced him, as she remained in Russia with their daughter.  

Sikorsky's pioneering work in helicopters would end up being of enormous benefit to his adopted country, and his company still is a leader in heavy helicopters.

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Friday, September 16, 1921. The Russian Immigrants


Refugees, no doubt, from the horrors of the Russian Revolution and Civil War.

No names.  How did their story work out, and where are their descendants today?

Sunday, February 28, 2021

February 28, 1921. The Kronstadt Rebellion.

Sailors had been an integral part of the Russian Revolution, and indeed they'd been an integral part of revolutions in Russia, and in Europe in general.  Revolutionary left wing sailors had revolted in Russia in 1904, 1905, 1906 and most importantly, in 1917.  Indeed, in some ways the rebellion of Russian sailors in 1917 had heralded the onset of the Russian Revolution.

All of which made the uprising that started on this day in 1921 a momentous one.  On this day, Russian sailors, taking the view that the Bolsheviks had betrayed the Russian Revolution, rose up against the Communist government on the port island of Kronstadt, just off of St. Petersburg.

Communism was proving to be a disaster.  Indeed, it was such a disaster that even though the Reds had only defeated the Whites, as we now recognize that defeat, a couple of months prior, the unworkable oppressive nature of the Communist dictatorship was already apparent.  The sailors rebellion at Kronstadt was in reaction to that.

The sailors were not "White", but rather left wing revolutionaries themselves.  They were heavily influenced by a concept of localism that some regard as anarchistic, but which might be most analogous to the views of the Greens, who sought to allow individuals the greatest possible freedom in the economy and in their personal lives.  They expressed their goals in the form of fifteen published points.


These read:

Having heard the report of the representatives of the crews dispatched by the General Meeting of the crews from the ships to Petrograd in order to learn the state of affairs in Petrograd, we decided:

1. In view of the fact that the present soviets do not represent the will of the workers and peasants, to re-elect the soviets immediately by secret voting, with free canvassing among all workers and peasants before the elections.

2. Freedom of speech and press for workers, peasants, Anarchists and Left Socialist Parties.

3. Freedom of meetings, trade unions and peasant associations.

4. To convene, not later than 1 March 1921, a non-party conference of workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd City, Kronstadt and Petrograd Province.

5. To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist Parties, and also all workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors who have been imprisoned in connection with working-class and peasant movements.

6. To elect a commission to review the cases of those who are imprisoned in jails and concentration camps.

7. To abolish all Political Departments, because no single party may enjoy privileges in the propagation of its ideas and receive funds from the state for this purpose. Instead of these Departments, locally elected cultural-educational commissions must be established and supported by the state. This is the reason for the inclusion of this document in a collection otherwise devoted entirely to official publications.

8. All ‘cordon detachments” are to be abolished immediately.

9. To equalize rations for all workers, harmful sectors being excepted.

10. To abolish all Communist fighting detachments in all military units, and also the various Communist guards at factories. If such detachments and guards are needed they may be chosen from the companies in military units and in the factories according to the judgment of the workers.

11. To grant the peasant full right to do what he sees fit with his land and also to possess cattle, which he must maintain and manage with his own strength, but without employing hired labor.

12. To ask all military units and also our comrades, the military cadets, to associate themselves with our resolutions.

13. We demand that all resolutions be widely published in the press.

14. To appoint a traveling bureau for control.

15. To permit free artisan production with individual labor.

The resolutions were adopted by the meeting unanimously, with two abstentions.
President of the Meeting, PETRICHENKO.
Secretary, PEREPELKIN.

Suffice it to say, their rebellion would not be a success.  Some have noted that it hastened the implementation of Lenin's New Economic Order, but that program itself was only intended to be temporary and indeed, given Lenin's death, it certainly proved to be.

Some regard the Kronstadt Rebellion as the final practical act of the Russian Civil War.  By this point in time the Whites had been defeated in western Russia and, to a large degree, their defeat in the East was a foregone conclusion.  The rebellion, however, represented a dangerous internal threat from the left.  Had it succeeded, which it always had very little chance of doing, it would have created a more democratic left wing Russian regime, although one that was still likely to be a radical one.

On the same day, Panamanian troops halted an advance by Costa Rica in a border war that had developed between the two nations.  U.S. troops landed in Panama City to protect U.S. interest in that nation, which obviously were centered on the Canal.

France mustered troops, including colonial troops, on the German border in anticipating of occupying the Ruhr due to the failure of Germany to provide timely reparation payments.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

January 30, 1921. Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodoronova of Russia laid to rest.

Funeral ceremony over the remains of Princess Elizabeth, sister of the Czarina and her maid, in the Russian Church of the Magdalene on the Mt. of Olives. Jan. 30th, 1921

Elizabeth of Hesse and By Rhine, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Elizabeth Feodoronova of Russia, was interred on this day at the Russian Church of the Magdalene on the Mount Of Olives.



She had been murdered on July 18, 1918 by the Communists.

She married into the Russian royal family prior to her younger sister, Alix, who became the Czarina.  Indeed, she met the future Czar Nicholas at the wedding of Elizabeth and Sergei, a Russian Grand Duke.  Sergei and Elizabeth were both deeply religious and while Elizabeth had been born Lutheran, she converted, as would Alix, to Russian Orthodoxy.  Sergei was assassinated by a Russian socialist radical in 1905 and Elizabeth did not remarry.   Reflecting her sincere religious nature, she thereafter sold all of her possessions, including her wedding ring, and became a Russian Orthodox nun.


She arrested with members of her family upon the orders of Lenin.  The Cheka murdered her and others by beating them, throwing them in a shaft, and tossing in hand grenades. When even that failed to kill them, evidenced by strains of a Russian Orthodox hymn being sung from below, the shaft was torched.

She was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1981.

Monday, January 11, 2021

January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.

Six of the seven Russian children adopted by Admiral Newton A. McCully, with their "governess" Eugenia Z. Selifanova, photographed on January 11, 1921.  

On this day in 1921, a press photographer photographed most of Admiral Newton A. McCully's adopted Russian children together with their governess who was a teenager herself.

McCully was a southern born American naval officer who had been embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attache and he was elevelted to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.  He adopted these children in 1920.


McCully obviously appreciated the East due to all of this service.  A bachelor until 1927, he married Olga Krundycher, an Estonian, in 1929 on the claim that this would provide a mother for his children, and perhaps that was his reason, although I suspect that there was more to it than that.  She was later listed as their mother on census forms, even though the McCully adoptees were not all related and came themselves from varying regions of the former Russian Empire.  She was 29 years old at the time and the marriage took place in Tallinn, Estonia at which time McCully was still a serving naval officer.  He would live until 1951, dying at age 83.  She would live until 1968 and returned to Estonia for reasons of which I am not aware (or am I aware of when that occurred).

Eugenia  Selifanova was 18 or 19 years old when this photograph was taken. She later married another Russian immigrant, about 20 years her senior, and lived the rest of her life in Dearborn, Michigan. She had two children by the marriage and died in 1952.   She's already left the family, and probably had married, but the time of Admiral McCully's marriage.  Indeed, at that time McCully's mother was tasked with minding the children when he was away on duties.

It's easy to see what became of some of the children and that they had long American lives.  I wonder if anything of their early origins and culture was retained at all, or if anything of it remains in their ancestors.

On January 11, 1921, the United States severed all further participation in foreign councils, including the council that made up the Allied powers during World War One.

Also on this day in 1921, Wyoming's legislature convened for the 1921 session, as we reported in Today In Wyoming's History: January 11:  1921.   The 1921 legislative session for Wyoming commenced.

And, in an era before Social Security, this elderly gentleman was photographed at work.
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Monday, March 9, 2020

March 9, 1920. Primaries, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Anarchists and Smoking.

On this day in 1920 the New Hampshire Primaries were held.  It was the first time that New Hampshire's primary had the "first in the nation" status and only the second time it had been held, having been established in 1916.

The top Republican vote getter was Gen. Leonard Wood, where as the top Democrat was Herbert Hoover.


Wood was a physician and career Army officer who was a close associate of Theodore Roosevelt. That was part of the reason that Wood had been bypassed for the senior command of the U.S. Army in France during World War One, but only part of the reason.  That same association, however, made him a very serious contender for the 1920 Republican nomination.


Hoover, a mining engineer by trade, had come into the public eye due to his leadership of relief efforts in Europe following World War One.  During the war and following it he'd urged that taxes be raised and he'd been a critic of the Palmer raids.  He ran on Progressive policies such as the establishment of a minimum wage, the elimination of child labor, and a forty-eight hour work week.  While he did well in the New Hampshire primary as a Democrat, that very month he switched parties and in 1928 he ran, successfully, as a Republican.

Regarding politics, elsewhere Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman met with Lenin. They were among those who had been deported several weeks prior.  Both had been born in Imperial Russia and their radicalism resulted in their being rounded up and sent back there just prior to the Palmer Raids.

In meeting with Lenin they complained about Communists treatment of anarchists and lack of freedom of the press.  Lenin told them to pound sand.  Both would later write books about their delusionment with Soviet Russia.


In some ways its hard not to regard both of them as completely delusional.

In Cheyenne, the paper noted an effort to wipe out smoking by 1925.


The New Hampshire's first in the nation status wasn't a big deal at the time and it didn't make the front page of any Wyoming newspaper on this day.

The troubles over the ratification of the Versailles Treaty, however, did.

With all this news, it's no wonder some folks felt they needed a drink.


Tuesday, May 28, 2019

May 28, 1919. Russian POWs, Stargard Germany.

Prisoners of War were not immediately repatriated after World War One.


The Allies generally repatriated their men held in Germany within a month or so, while they themselves held on to German prisoners into 1920. While that sounds cruel, in fact Germany was aflame and returning discharged German soldiers to what was already a state of slow revolution involving discharged servicemen would have not been wise, nor would it have been particularly kind to the POWs, who were at least housed and fed.


An exception for Allied POWs was that of Russian POWs.  I don't know what became of them, but they continued to be housed in Germany following the end of the war.  The country that had sent them into war no longer existed in the form it had.  Imperial Russia was gone.  Men like this probably had no strong desire to fight for the Whites or the Reds but that would have been their fate had they been immediately repatriated.  Neither Germany nor the Allies wanted them in Red arms, and there was no way to guarantee that they'd end up as loyal combatants for the Whites.


Tuesday, September 4, 2018

And in Russia. . .

U.S. troops landed at Archangel on this day, September 4, 1918. They were already at Murmansk and Vladivostok.

On the same day, the Soviets arrested and executed members of the Russian Imperial household. That is, such figures as the lady in waiting Countess Anastasia Vasilyevna Hendrikova and tutor Catherine Adolphovna Schneider.  They were executed for no good reason whatsoever.  Imperial valet, Aleksei Andreyevich Volkov, managed to escape in a hail of bullets and lived as a refugee in various locations until dying a natural death in Denmark in 1929.

People who like to romanticize the Soviets, and there are plenty, would do well to remember instances like this which demonstrate what a bunch of real bastards the Reds were.

Those members of the household executed on this day have been canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Transfiguration of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Holy Transfiguration of Christ Orthodox Cathedral,, Denver Colorado.




This is the Holy Transfiguration of Christ Cathedral in North Denver.  This Cathedral is a Cathedral of the Orthodox Church in America, a church which traces its origin to the Russian Orthodox Church after the Russian Revolution. The particular neighborhood this church is in must have been heavily Slavic at one time, as there is a Catholic Church which was built for a largely Polish population all within a couple of blocks, with a third Catholic Church nearby..  Recently I observed a Polish flag, flying with the US flag, on a Catholic school in the neighborhood, but are the area is largely Hispanic today.

There are two bodies that descend from the Russian Orthodox Church in the US today, and I frankly don't quite understand the relationship between the two, but this Cathedral in Denver reflects part of Denver's Russian Orthodox community.  The church dates to 1898.

Note:  If you follow the link to the original posting for this you can find a detailed explanation by a commentor on the organization of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

November 16, 1917: All the Distressing News. US Back in Mexico, in Combat in Europe, flag shaming in Lander, and Temptation in Philadelphia


The Laramie Boomerang correctly noted that the United States had crossed back into Mexico, but just right across the border.  This was something that the US would end up doing in a worried fashion for years, showing that while the Punitive Expedition might be over, armed intervention, to a degree, in Mexico, was not.

At the same time, the press was really overemphasizing US combat action in Europe. The US wouldn't really be fighting much for weeks and weeks.

And the on again, off again, hope that the Japanese would commit to ground action was back on again.



Meanwhile, in Lander, things were getting really ugly.  "German sympathizers" were being made to kiss the flag.

That probably didn't boost their loyalty any.


Villas expanding plans were also being noted. And, also, The Temptation Rag, a film, was being reported on, on the front page, something that takes a true scandal to occur now.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Bolsheviks issued their decree on Land, November 8, 1917.



The Bolsheviks issued the first of their significant decrees on this day in 1917, even though they were not really in control of the country.  The Decree on Land read as follows:
Peasant Mandate on the Land
"The land question in its full scope can be settled only by the popular Constituent Assembly.
The most equitable settlement of the land question is to be as follows:
(1) Private ownership of land shall be abolished forever; land shall not be sold, purchased, leased, mortgaged, or otherwise alienated.
All land, whether state, crown, monastery, church, factory, entailed, private, public, peasant, etc., shall be confiscated without compensation and become the property of the whole people, and pass into the use of all those who cultivate it.
Persons who suffer by this property revolution shall be deemed to be entitled to public support only for the period necessary for adaptation to the new conditions of life.
(2) All mineral wealth ? ore, oil, coal, salt, etc., and also all forests and waters of state importance, shall pass into the exclusive use of the state. All the small streams, lakes, woods, etc., shall pass into the use of the communes, to be administered by the local self-government bodies.
(3) Lands on which high-level scientific farming is practised ? orchards, tree-farms, seed plots, nurseries, hothouses, etc. ? shall not be divided up, but shall be converted into model farms, to be turned over for exclusive use to the state or to the communes, depending on the size and importance of such lands.
Household land in towns and villages, with orchards and vegetable gardens, shall be reserved for the use of their present owners, the size of the holdings, and the size of tax levied for the use thereof, to be determined by law.
(4) Stud farms, government and private pedigree stock and poultry farms, etc., shall be confiscated and become the property of the whole people, and pass into the exclusive use of the state or a commune, depending on the size and importance of such farms.
The question of compensation shall be examined by the Constituent Assembly.
(5) All livestock and farm implements of the confiscated estates shall pass into the exclusive use of the state or a commune, depending on their size and importance, and no compensation shall be paid for this.
The farm implements of peasants with little land shall not be subject to confiscation.
(6) The right to use the land shall be accorded to all citizens of the Russian state (without distinction of sex) desiring to cultivate it by their own labour, with the help of their families, or in partnership, but only as long as they are able to cultivate it. The employment of hired labour is not permitted.
In the event of the temporary physical disability of any member of a village commune for a period of up to two years, the village commune shall be obliged to assist him for this period by collectively cultivating his land until he is again able to work.
Peasants who, owing to old age or ill-health, are permanently disabled and unable to cultivate the land personally, shall lose their right to the use of it but, in return, shall receive a pension from the state.
(7) Land tenure shall be on an equality basis, i.e., the land shall be distributed among the working people in conformity with a labour standard or a subsistence standard, depending on local conditions.
There shall be absolutely no restriction on the forms of land tenure ? household, farm, communal, or co-operative, as shall be decided in each individual village and settlement.
(8) All land, when alienated, shall become part of the national land fund. Its distribution among the peasants shall be in charge of the local and central self-government bodies, from democratically organised village and city communes, in which there are no distinctions of social rank, to central regional government bodies.
The land fund shall be subject to periodical redistribution, depending on the growth of population and the increase in the productivity and the scientific level of farming.
When the boundaries of allotments are altered, the original nucleus of the allotment shall be left intact.
The land of the members who leave the commune shall revert to the land fund; preferential right to such land shall be given to the near relatives of the members who have left, or to persons designated by the latter.
The cost of fertilisers and improvements put into the land, to the extent that they have not been fully used up at the time the allotment is returned to the land fund, shall be compensated.
Should the available land fund in a particular district prove inadequate for the needs of the local population, the surplus population shall be settled elsewhere.
The state shall take upon itself the organisation of resettlement and shall bear the cost thereof, as well as the cost of supplying implements, etc.
Resettlement shall be effected in the following order: landless peasants desiring to resettle, then members of the commune who are of vicious habits, deserters, and so on, and, finally, by lot or by agreement.
While Russia was a very heavily rural and agricultural country, the Bolsheviks were an urban party that had little grasp of rural issues. While Russia did have very real land distribution problems, the solutions to them proposed by the Communists would prove to be massively unpopular with the peasantry.  Communist struggles with the peasantry would be an enduring feature of early Communism and would be solved through heavy oppression.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Blog Mirror: Victims of Communism Centennial Commemoration

The October Revolution Commences, October 25, 1917 (Old Style Russian Calendar)


 The cruiser Aurora, which fired a signal shot during the October Revolution Petrograd action, to the extent there was any.

Yesterday I ran this item:
Lex Anteinternet: October 24, 1917. Lenin declares the Communists t...: Lenin and Trotsky sacrifice Russia to an alter of Marx while revolutionary soldiers and sailors look on in this Russian anti Bolshevik ca...
Today the revolution that Lenin argued should commence, did.  The Petrograd Soviet had of course planned the matter and action commenced early on this day in Petrograd when Red Guard took key positions in the city.  The city's garrison mostly joined the insurrection soon thereafter.  Holdout units in the Winter Palace eventually gave up or returned to their barracks. The entire matter, taking a little over a day, was largely bloodless.  Even the cruiser Aurora, whose sailors joined the uprising, only fired a single blank shot. 

The achievement was momentous indeed, but not the dramatic street fight depicted in later Soviet propaganda.

Not that the impact wasn't very real.  Kerensky proved unable to rally forces to his cause, the republican government collapsed, Russia went into civil war as it went out of World War One.

Monday, November 6, 2017

October 24, 1917 (Old Style Russian Calendar). Lenin declares the Communists to be in revolt against the Russian Provisional Government

Lenin and Trotsky sacrifice Russia to an alter of Marx while revolutionary soldiers and sailors look on in this Russian anti Bolshevik cartoon.

And the one of the worst events in history commenced, followed by the unleashing of forces hat can only be described as evil, whose repercussions are with us today.

First, Lenin's words, acting upon the Bolshevik Central Committee's decision the prior day that "an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe."
I am writing these lines on the evening of the 24th.  The situation is critical in the extreme.  In fact it is now absolutely clear that to delay the uprising would be fatal.
With all my might I urge comrades to realize that everything now hangs by a thread; that we are confronted by problems which are not to be solved by conferences or congresses (even congresses of Soviets), but exclusively by peoples, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed people.
The bourgeois onslaught of the Kornilovites show that we must not wait.  We must at all costs, this very evening, this very night, arrest the government, having first disarmed the officer cadets, and so on.
We must not wait!  We may lose everything!
Who must take power?
That is not important at present.  Let the Revolutionary Military Committee do it, or "some other institution" which will declare that it will relinquish power only to the true representatives of the interests of the people, the interests of the army, the interests of the peasants, the interests of the starving.
All districts, all regiments, all forces must be mobilized at once and must immediately send their delegations to the Revolutionary Military Committee and to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks with the insistent demand that under no circumstances should power be left in the hands of Kerensky and Co.... not under any circumstances; the matter must be decided without fail this very evening, or this very night.
History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, the risk losing everything.
If we seize power today, we seize it not in opposition to the Soviets but on their behalf.
The seizure of power is the business of the uprising; its political purpose will become clear after the seizure....
...It would be an infinite crime on the part of the revolutionaries were they to let the chance slip, knowing that the salvation of the revolution, the offer of peace, the salvation of Petrograd, salvation from famine, the transfer of the land to the peasants depend upon them.
The government is tottering.  It must be given the death-blow at all costs.
The government at that point was the Russian Provisional Government, which had replaced the Imperial government and which was ruling, as a tottering democratic body, until a more perfect democratic one could be organized.  Democracy was new to Russia and the body was beset by extreme forces of all types.  Its' head, Karensky, was himself a Socialist and relatively radical and so the sometimes held concept the Communist minority (the Bolsheviks were a minority within a minority) were rebelling against the Czar or the Whites is erroneous.

 Red Guards at Vulkan factory in 1917.  Some of these men, as with many Red Guards early on, had only recently been in the Russian Imperial Army and perhaps the army of the Provisional government, which was basically disintegrating.  The Red Guards would form the first units to fight for the Communist in the Civil War, but Red reverses lead to the establishment of the Red Army in 1918 which was organized and lead by Leon Trotsky.

The Bolshevik coup that resulted set in motion un-imagined forces of destruction and murder and, like Communist revolutions ever after, that violence would not only be visited upon their opponents but also their allies.  In spite of Lenin's words that what replaced the existing Provisional Government didn't matter, to the Bolsheviks it very much did and in the end not only would non Communist become the victims of a Red Terror, but also other radical Socialists and Leftists of all stripes.  Violence in the name of a revolutionary cause was to be unparalleled until the Communists took control in China, where Mao managed to claim the title of bloodiest modern dictator.

 Lenin and Trotsky with soldiers of the Red Army.

In Russia, of course, the coup was far from unopposed and the country would descend into a bloody civil war which would drag on into a protracted doomed guerrilla war almost until the eve of the 1930s.  Poland, the Baltic States and Finland would leave Russia's grasp. The Ukraine attempted to but its geographic position and nature prevented that from occurring and it would be subjected to a horrific man made famine in the 1930s.  Poland would be invaded in the 1920s but threw the Soviets back, until the invasion was accomplished in league with Nazi Germany in 1939 and then completed in 1945. The Baltic States would see their independence go down due to World War Two as well although Baltic guerrillas would keep up a Quixotic effort until the late 1940s, as would some Ukrainians who attempted to use the vacuum of World War Two for the same purpose.  Only Finland would really remain free of the Communist grasp, of the former Russian Empire regions.

 Volunteer troops of one of the numerous anti Soviet Russian armies, not all of whose troops were volunteers by any means.  Poor coordination was a major factor in the defeat of the Whites who suffered greatly in that area in comparison to the Reds.  In spite of their lack of coordination, they very nearly won the Russian Civil War early on, even though they lacked any clear political goal other than defeat of the Reds.

Communism, of course, would ultimately fall.  The East Germans would attempt it first, oddly given the German role in the absolute horror of World War Two, staging a rebellion in the form of a civil insurrection in 1953, which met with Soviet armed reaction.

A Soviet T-34/85 tank in East Berlin, 17 June 1953. Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F005191-0040 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Hungary would follow in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968.   But none of these efforts would prove to be successful.

Destroyed Soviet armor in Budapest, József körút a Corvin (Kisfaludy) köznél. Harcképtelenné tett ISU-152-es szovjet rohamlövegek, a háttérben egy T-34/85 harckocs CC BY-SA 3.0.  File:József körút a Corvin (Kisfaludy) köznél. Harcképtelenné tett ISU-152-es szovjet rohamlövegek, a háttérben egy T-34-85 harckocsi. Fortepan 24854.jpg

The first cracks in the Communist edifice occurred as early as Lenin's administration when he was forced to allow capitalism in the country on a limited basis, due to the abject failure of Communist socialism.  Stalin simply brutalized the country into economic progress, focusing on huge projects that at least were possible to organize and industrialization of what had been largely agricultural nation.  Following Stalin various Soviet leaders would attempt reforms, all of which were unknowingly and slowly headed towards liberalization.  It was Poland, however, which would set the end in motion by the legalization of Solidarity, a trade union that functioned as a political party.  Solidarity, representing Polish working men and basing its views on Catholic Social Teaching (Solidarity is a principal of Catholic Social Teaching) would force semi free elections in Poland in 1989 and the Soviets did not react.  The Czechs quickly followed with the Velvet Revolution.  The Russians themselves followed in 1991, which saw a last ditch hard core effort by the holdout Communist to once again stage a coup. That one failed.

Today only North Korea, and perhaps Laos, are left as true Communist states. A couple of other countries claim to be, but they've evolved so far beyond it that, whatever they are, they really aren't Communist. China and Vietnam provide examples of that.  Communism, while still a darling concept of Western left wing hipsters who don't know what it every stood for, is really dead.  But the evil it unleashed in the world continues on in numerous ways, both political and social.  That destructive force will be with us for years to come.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Soon to be a gigantic mess. . . .

Sunday Oregonian, June 3, 1917: "Far-off Vladivostok celebrated the Russian revolution. It was reported later that the people of Vladivostok had revolted against the provisional government of Russia, but this was denied from Petrograd."

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Georgian Orthodox Church declares its resumed autocephaly.



 Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Kyrion II, who was elevated to that role upon the Georgian Orthodox Church declaring autocephaly in 1917.  He'd returned from monastic exile to assume that role.  He was murdered by an unknown assailant on June 27, 1918, and his murder remains a mystery to this day.

On this day in 1917, the Georgian Orthodox Church restored its autocephalous (self-governing) status within the Orthodox family of Apostolic churches.

This is likely a somewhat complicated story, and I'm not familiar with it, but it seems that it had been autocephalous since 1010, however, in 1811 it was put under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, with there being a great deal of protest about that in the Georgian community. 

Following the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II, the Georgian Bishops unilaterally restored autocephaly on this date. In spite of the obvious stress the Russian Empire was under, the Russian Orthodox Church did not accept this.  Oddly enough, in spite of enduring two decades of Stalinist repression of the most severe varieties, it was Stalin who ordered the Russian Orthodox Church to recognize its independence in 1943, at which time Stalin was easing up on the churches in an effort to gain the support of every element of Soviet society in the face of the German invasion.