From the book “Stalin” the seminal work of Historian Domenico Losurdo

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The US that had a couple hundred years of head start

    tsarist russia wasn’t a barren patch of dirt, they’d also collected a bunch of capital from imperialism, it was certainly behind the US or germany in the 1890s but not so severely as to constitute ‘hundreds of years’ of development. the bolsheviks actually in large part came from and used a genuine industrial proletariat, in contrast to China which had to have a much higher reliance on the peasantry. let’s not muddle our narratives of communist development here

    • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The Russian Civil War from 1917-1922 created massive destruction with millions of casualties, together with great famines that were partially caused by petty bourgeoisie destroying their stock. The bourgeoisie would rather burn down the country rather than having the communists have them. That was why Lenin had to introduce NEP because supplies and goods were in such shortage that they could barely get their economy going.

      Stalin said in 1931:

      We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.

      Socialist industrialization was what saved the world from Nazism.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        that Stalin quote is a perfect support for what i said, thanks!

        i’m urging against exaggeration, i’m not ignorant of the civil war & challenges of industrialization