--- Turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
> ********************
>
> You falsely counterpose the "Russifying" of the
> Russian Revolution to
> Stalinism. Russification didn't occur entirely
> automatically. Especially in a
> one-party state, it required official expression.
> This is what Stalin gave it.
> Replacing the internationalism of the original
> Bolsheviks with an amalgam of
> vulgarized Marxism and Russian nationalism is one of
> the things that defines
> Stalinism. Such a degeneration could only have been
> prevented by the spreading of the
> revolution, a prospect that was not completely
> utopian or unrealistic, even as
> late as the Spanish Civil War.
>
First, Charles, to answer your question as to why I think the USSR felt it had to industrialize so fast:
1. Because otherwise other countries would crush it (and the Nazis would have, to, if Stalin hadn't force-industrialized).
2. Second, ideology. As we all know, in Marx, only an industrialized, developed country has the prerequisites for socialism. The USSR obviously was not an industrialized, developed country. Therefore, we have to create the prerequisites ourselves. When did the USSR declare itself to have achieved socialism -- the 1930s?
On to the second, Russification point -- I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Russian culture (and I really should have said Russian peasant culture), understood broadly, was the culture of the overwhelmingly majority of the population of the Empire, including Ukraine, especially in the parts that made a difference as far as policy was concerned (not too many Kazakhs, Uzbeks or Chechens in the Politburo). Russification in the sense of banning Ukrainian in the 30s was a different issue.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs