History of the Gulag: From Collectivization To the Great Terror

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Originally posted by BetterRed:
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Whatever you say, Cueball. I was addressing the issue of Allied intervention inside Russia. If you look into the article I posted, you'll notice that Korean labourers came into Russian Far East after it became Russian land. To clarify, it would be the local Siberian tribes and maybe the Chinese who could hold claim to the land.

BTW, Cueball I would talk more about this stuff, but I gathered from other thread taht your PM box is always full. [/b]

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I was really only using the Koreans as an example, I even said other Asian minorities to be more inclusive. The main thrust of the point is really that the idea that the Eastern USSR was, or even now, is integral to traditional Russian or Slavic territory is very dubious.

So when we talk about the Russians being in a purely defensive posture vis the multiple post-revolution invasions, we are being a little to tidy with our analysis, I think. I think much of the post Rovlutionary re-assertion of Czarist imperial borders was really just Soviet reassertion of Russian imperailism.

The war beteween Japan and Russia, post-revolutionary or otherwise at the begining of the 20th century arguably has more of the flavour of the powerful divying up the spoils, rather than one side or the other justly defending their traditional territories from outside agression.

Though I agree the Russians really were in the defensive posture vis the Japanese themselves, all the way through to Khalin Gol.

PS PM me if you like, if it doesn't work, leave a note elsewhere on the board. It is not [i]always[/i] full but often is.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I have. Its laughable.

If any one has a tidy analysis of the Balkans it is you, actually. Firstly because, at the point at which the Balkan states begin to evolve clear nationalist movements at the begining of the 19th century, all are more or less are starting at ground zero.

Trying to paint Serbia as a Balkan hyper-power asserting its inexonerable will over the rest of the Balkans is patently absurd, for a number or reasons. Among which is the fact that Yugolzvia comes into existance at the will of the Paris Peace conference and is an act of your cherished "international community." It is also not simply and imposition, but something supported by numerous factions within each community. And in fact up until Radic's assassination by Serb ultra-nationalist was supported by the Croat nationalists of the Hrvatska Peasant Party, and whose main point of contention was not Croatias inclusion in a greater Slavic republic but his opposition to it being a consitutional monarchy led by a Serbian King (Karadjordevic.)

If anything the suprior power in pre-WW1 Balkans is actually Bulgaria, and this is the reason that every single one of its neighbours went to war with it in 1912, breaking up the anti-Ottoman alliance.

Further, the second rendition of Yugolsavia, that of Tito in the post-WW2 era, came into existance as an affirmation of the Federalist position pf Radic supported by most Croat nationalists. It is not a mere political anomaly that Tito was a Croat. So post WW2 Yugoslavia is really the reacreation of the previous country ammended to be a Federalist state along the lines of that propsed by Croats under the Yugoslavian constitutional monarchy, and also comes about as a result of the throwing off of the German war occupation, not as an act of agressive military campaigns of Serbs against Bosniaks, Croats and Montenegrans.

So, in fact, while Soviet dominance in Siberia and the Caucuses comes as a reassertion Czarist right of conquest, the borders of Yugoslavia were [i]mainly[/i] created as [i]political solutions[/i] resulting from the need to create national structures to replace those of the imperial powers which previously ruled the region -- Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.

In fact the only military, campaigns conducted by Serbs (other than those of the early 90's) in contested regions happened during the war against the Ottomans in 1912 in the region in Macedonia where the allies Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia all cooperated in divying up the Ottoman territories of Macedonia, and also of course against Bulgaria, after the collapse of the anti-Ottoman alliance, in order to redistribute the spoils of the anti-Ottoman campaign.

There was no campaign against the Croats or Bosniaks or Slovenes, as these territories were all included in Yugoslavia as part of the poltical solution devised by the League of Nations.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
[b]So when we talk about the Russians being in a purely defensive posture vis the multiple post-revolution invasions, we are being a little to tidy with our analysis, I think. I think much of the post Rovlutionary re-assertion of Czarist imperial borders was really just Soviet reassertion of Russian imperailism[/b]

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Well we can be sure imperialism didn't die with the Tsars considering the 20 some odd countries armies and mercenaries representing every interest from British royalty to the Tsar's former personal guards to Cossacks & White Russians to Japanese imperialism to pox Americana to Kaiser Wilhelm and mercenaries, who continued to dream of world domination after defeat in 1918 and marauding willy nilly through Russia at the time. There was nothing tidy about it.

Imagine mercenaries and imperialist armies from over 20 nations intervening in the American civil war to prop up the Confederacy.

And the west thought they were going to hack off pieces of China for themselves with backing Chiang Kai Shek who fled to Formosa with the bank of China and imperial treasures after murdering 10 million Maoists and Chinese in general.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Imagine mercenaries and imperialist armies from over 20 nations intervening in the American civil war to prop up the Confederacy.

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Yes, or imagine someone preventing Russia from asserting domination over Latvia!

Obviously, "propping up" Latvia would be wrong, since Russia could easily dominate the Latvians!

But of course, this example isn't analogous to Cuebby's discussion of Siberia, because that is in the EAST of Russia, where Latvia is in the WEST!

Back to manicheanism for you guys, I guess.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
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[b]In general,[/b] especially when speaking of the Caucuses and the east, the fact is that the USSR came together as the reassertion of the right of imperial conquests of the Czar.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ][/b]

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The USSR came together after the Red Army and Russian people liberated Stalingrad, Leningrad, and Kracow and began laying railway track to Berlin every inch of the way. Remember that FDR gave American companies liscence to do business in Germany during Hitler's military buildup while simultaneously cutting off aid to Jewish refugees and then later, refused Stalin's calls for a second front against the Nazis. So the Czar was way out of the picture well before that time.

I believe Hitler idealized the return to a Kaiser-led Germany himself. And he mentioned something about expanding into Russia to create living space.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I thought you might have at least recongized that I discussed the Serbiab conquest of Kosovo in the 1912 war, and that your bringing up the situation of the Kosovars was merely a repetition of what I said, but said tendentiously and with a dint of sacntimonious sarcasm.

People please try and keep your sentences a bit smaller and simpler! I am new to all this info and I'm having trouble with the comprehension. thanks. Otherwise how can I hope to pass the test on Friday?

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Southlander ]

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Southlander ]

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There is an unexplained contradiction in the analysis offered by both the old Cold War anticommunists and the reconstructed Stalinists. On the one hand, they ascribe to Marxism a rigid determinism, which, they claim, is the theoretical source of the attempt of the Bolsheviks to impose an unworkable antimarket utopia upon Russian society. But then, these bitter opponents of "determinism" resort to the most extreme determinism in their interpretation of post-1917 Soviet history, which they explain as the inexorable outcome of the unfolding of Bolshevik ideology. Every episode of Soviet history, we are told, arose inevitably out of the October Revolution. After depositing Lenin at the Finland Station in April 1917, the train of history, commandeered by ruthless Marxists, moved along a single track that led to the debacle of 1991, with preprogrammed stops at the Lubyanka and the Gulag Archipelago.

[url=http://www.wsws.org/history/1995/oct1995/glasgow.shtml]WSWS[/url]