Under Stalin, there were terrible dislocations -- the Volga Germans, for example, were simply uprooted and sent East after the war. They tried that with the Jews too -- they were an official Soviet nationality, established a Jewish republic in the steppe, but it didn't work. Too many Jews, too scattered about, couldn't gathet them up in one place like the Volga Germans.
Yeah, well attractiveness of a police state compared to some alternatives. As Hobbes suggested based on his own experience, civil war is the least attractive alternative. An effective police state at least gives you order. Liberal democracy's best, but that's not really in the cards in Russia, is it? What they have now is an effective police state that pretends to be a liberal democracy and is lapsing into civil war around the edges. A lovely mess altogether.
jks
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> >Following Stalin's view of the National Question,
> they
> >gave the nationalities a lot of authority in their
> own
> >republics. In the Muslim republics they liberated
> >women
>
> But that contradicts national autonomy. And the
> Soviets mixed up
> nationalities via migration, no? Sounds like a mix
> of autonomy and
> internationalism.
>
> > and gave them real authority by treating them
> >equally or better, winning the support of half the
> >population. The other half (the men) they kept
> quiet
> >by providing minimal but actual work and marginally
> >adequate cradle-to-grave services. Finally, they
> ran a
> >fairly efficient police state, rarely losing
> control
> >enough to let things escalate to guerilla warfre.
>
> You make a police state sound attractive, in this
> instance.
>
> Sometimes I really miss the USSR.
>
> Doug
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