I actually agree with you, except that Cyrillic does not have a letter J. The letter in question is E. :)
I also am not sure that describing the Bolsheviks as internationalist is right (although they did use the word). They were more supranationalist, believing that national differences would eventually disappear in the new Soviet man, who would not be Tatar or Jewish or Russian or Ukrainian, but just Soviet.
----- Original Message ---- From: James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tue, February 2, 2010 2:30:07 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already!
When Lenin asked Trotsky to lead the Red Army, Trotsky was at first unwilling, fearing that Russian (and others) would not follow a Jew. Lenin's answer was that if the Red Army was so beholden to anti-semitic prejudice then it would fail anyway. The Red Army did pretty well under Trotsky, as it turned out.
Later, as the initial successes ran into the ground, Stalin and other Soviet leaders played the patriotic Russian chauvinst card to rally a defence against Hitler. Also, as Trotsky argued at the time, Stalin played on anti-Semitic prejudices to defeat the opposition and the older bolsheviks.
So, yes, I am sure that Chris is right that the internationalist outlook of the bolsheviks, circa 1917-1923 was reversed, leading eventually to persecution, and an unhealthy primordialisation of ethnic origins. That is the outcome of the defeat of the Russian revolution, and its descent into national pettiness. as Trotsky said at the time, the deal with Great Russian chauvinism would end with the disintegration of the Soviet Union along national lines - a pretty good prediction, if he did underestimate the timescale.
On the grander scheme, Lenin was right, if the Russians failed to shake off their anti-Semitic prejudices, they, as well as Jews in the USSR, would pay the price. Milions of Russian and other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union sacrificed to Stalin and the bureaucracy's crackpot dictatorship demonstrate as much. When they stamped a 'J' on Teodor Shanin's papers, the Soviet authorities were really telling him and us that they belonged to the past. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk