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He also knows better than to offer the grossly simplistic (at best) analogy of 1917 and 1991.
I do not think it is coincidental that Cohen (and Wallerstein) are both people quite sympathetic to Bolshevism, circa 1917. Cohen's book on Bukharin, which made his reputation, while very good, plays the good Bolsheviks vs. Stalin who hijacked the noble project meme to the hilt. Cohen's dream of a socialist state run by a single party, ideally with popular support, if not, well, false consciousness and all that, died, and he can't quite get over it.
Not sure that the analogy is quite so simplistic, either, as far as describing the enormous social and economic fracture that both periods represent, fractures which were purposefully caused by a ruling elite, in the former case by ideological zeal, in the latter by the more typical animating principal of elites everywhere, greed. New orders completely wiping out the old, and real people suffering as a result.
Your comment on Wallerstein and Cohen and their sympathies to a certain idea of what bolshevism meant is duly noted, though I expect that you see this as something of a negative, something which discredits their argument. I'd prefer to let the argument stand on its own two feet without impugning the motives of the arguer, myself. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
To what extent can these numbers be trusted? -- Fighting my own apathy..
See Marek's reference, below, to subsequent result in Ukraine on independence. Numbers varying widely here, newly Democratic institutions are undoubtedly more fragile than longstanding ones. That's true everywhere. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
If a person whose political ideal was the empire is lamenting its demise, then that fact is relevant. Just as it will be relevant in a few years time when neo-cons adopt the incompetency dodge while praising the noble, mismanaged Iraq project, lamenting its failure, and stressing the negative sides of the American withdrawal. (And for the record, the Bolsheviks in their early period killed far more people, using far more indiscriminate violence than the Americans in Iraq. So the analogy is a bit unfair to the neocons.)
The neo-con to bolshevik analogy is fair at root, I think. In my view, while there was clearly far more indiscriminate loss of innocent life in the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, we have to also contend with the historical context - general war in Europe, an absolutist monarchy overthrown, a resulting civil war. These are mitigating, or at least explaining, circumstances.
The neo-cons have no such mitigating circumstances and, what's more, the ideological basis for their thesis of spreading progress is disputable at best. Far less so in 1917.
(A better analogy though might be 1789...) The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
As for the favorite revolutionaries, suspect the attitudes were colored by the times, which were not the best of times for average Russians by any means, generalized war in Europe or no. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
My point about their admiration for the Committee of Public Safety is that the mass murder and torture of real, 'objective', and thoroughly imaginary enemies was a feature, not a bug. Analogizing some more, the Bush-Cheney executive branch power grab was not simply an ad hoc stumbling in reaction to 9/11, but rather the use of 9/11 as an excuse to do what they had long wanted.
Following your most excellent analogy re Bush and co. further, let's assume an environment where divine right of CEOs continue to flourish, as usualy via the barrel of a gun, where conscription returns to supply to grist for their wars, and where real people not only start getting hungry, but starving as well while the neolib emperors play mpegs of violin concertos in their McMansions.
I suspect in that environment, there will be more than a few who deem peaceful, democratic change to be a less than satisfactory route of redress. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
The non-violent moderate ones, of course ;)
Happy people, you mean. People who aren't always waiting for death, destruction, misery, or revenge...
Let's make some more! Let our shagging be between minds, birthing clever, intelligent, witty humans, who know how to look after each other...don't have points to score or moves, well they have moves aplenty, working their angle...I'm butting in, but I haven't met the violent, radical wing of ET yet, I was wondering if you could drop some hints...point me in that direction...you know, just to see if it's as bad as they say it is... Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
But you do have a problem of seeing radical revolutionalism in people that, in reality, is far from it in their opinions. (Or so it seems to me at least.) Seriously, I can't think of any hard left people being regulars at this site.
The bits of a VTSIOM's survey published in yesterday's newspaper Izvestia in the article connected with some aspects of the Russian-Belorussian relationships (see www.izvestia.ru) somehow contradict Mr Cohen's words.
Answering the quiestion In which country/union of coutries would you like to live?
30 % chose the answer 'only in my own country' (Russia, that is) appr.22 % would love the Russia-Ukraine-Belorussia-Kazakhstan's Union 20 % chose rebuilt old Soviet Union 14 % prefer EU 12 % would live in SNG (Union of those 9 republic)
And where's that large majority? I've seen enough surveys to get the trend of decline in popularity of the USSR.
And there is definite support for the thesis a majority of Russians thought the disintegration was avoidable, example here (and I'd point out the unlikeliness that a Western marketing research firm would have an interest in producing such a result, quite the contrary).
Similar results on attitudes about the Bolshevik revolution. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Well, if you like to count this way, you even may improve your per cent, adding those 14 % who'd love to live in EU (which definitely represent a union of some sort too!) and even some other 2 % who 'don't know' so you'll easily get the striking 70 per cent so that Mr Cohen would be pleased with your statistics.
;-)
(- Many adults in the Russian Federation recall the Bolshevik movement in a positive light, according to a poll by the Yury Levada Analytical Center. 30 per cent of respondents think the 1917 October Revolution opened a new era in the history of the country...) --- I am not even counting my self as a leftist but I think I can understand this after all they / we learned about "ROW capitalism" that they have been served (and Europe passed like century ago or so and USA is getting back to as we speak). I wonder what nice opinions those 39 millions of Americans that live in poverty can express about capitalist system of "free country" that they live in. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
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