[lbo-talk] March 4

[Chris Doss]

BTW I did not "rave" about it. I stated that it had a high level of growth and a literacy program and was not a dystopia, not that it was super-awesome hell-on-wheels sweetness-and-cake or even marginally good. The Tsarist government had been attempting to economically modernize the country within the framework of the autocracy for about 80 years (200 years if you want to go back to Peter), which is why they let Das Kapital past the censors (because the Official Marxists supported the government's modernization program, because you have to have capitalism before you can have socialism, unlike the populists and anarchists that the government viewed as the real threat). They were not complete idiots and were very aware that they were lagging far behind their main competitors in Europe.
 

----- Original Message ----

----- Original Message ----
From: Joanna <123hop at comcast.net>

Chris raving about pre Bolshevik Russia

The reason the Bolshevik revo succeeded with not much blood spilled, until the civil war was seeded by western powers, is because the soldiers came back from the war barefoot and hungry and found a starving population. Read Tolstoy, read Chekhov, read Dostoevsky, read Gogol -- I know you have. They describe a Russia ripe for revolution.

Joanna
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