Well, the more serious question here is "what was the alternative?" That is very far from clear. The immediate alternative was probably the SR's, who, after all, won the Duma election of December, 1917, the one that Lenin overturned. It is very far from clear what kind of a regime they would have run, if they had been in charge. They probably would have given the land to the peasants, and maybe that would have been nice. But they were also violent authoritatrians and very likely would have offed a bunch of their political opponents. Hard to say how they would have dealt with the Whites, who would have come after them too.
Maybe a continued Kerensky regime would have been better, but it is hard to say. The Kadets? Not likely they would have lasted. Very likely an alternative would have failed to defeat the Whites and one would have had Denekin or some other equivalent of the military dictators who ran Central Europe between the wars. Maybe such a dictator would not have helped Hitler as much as Stalin did. OTOH, maybe he would not have resisted him as vigorously either.
In any case, I fear that Russia would have faced a lot of dead, no matter who came out on top of the turmoil of the late teens and early 20s in Russia. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Chuck0 <chuck at tao.ca> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Friday, December 17, 1999 11:09 AM Subject: Re: "Experiment" (was Re: Great Cockburn/St. Clair piece on Seattle)
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> The USSR indeed failed, but it wasn't an "experiment" in the sense of
>> putting ideas into practice under laboratory conditions. Perhaps those
who
>> are hostile to historical materialism can't accept the idea that the
>> revolution isn't an "experiment," so they can't understand failure
either.
>
>I was using the word "experiment" in the sense that the Soviet Union has
>been called a "socialist experiment." I guess this is in keeping with
>the silly notion that socialism is "scientific."
>
>> Left up to anarchists, the Russian revolution would not have happened,
and
>> the USSR wouldn't have come into existence. Perhaps anarchists think
that
>> it would have been better had the USSR never existed.
>
>I think it would have been better if the USSR had never existed. I think
>the millions who were killed by Stalin and other Soviet leaders would
>agree with me. It's a damn shame that the Russian revolution was taken
>over by assholes like Lenin and his cronies. But anarchists aren't
>surprised by this. This is why we don't work with authoritarian
>communists who would shoot us in the back as soon as they take over.
>
>--
>Chuck0
>
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>