Реми Майснер и Клим Жуков про троцкизм

Remi Meisner and Klim Zhukov discuss Trotskyism, Menshevism, and the ideological splits in early Russian socialist movements.

Key Takeaways

Trotskyism is essentially a variant of Menshevism, representing bourgeois interests within the labor movement.
The proletariat must lead the revolution, forming alliances with other working classes, especially peasants.
The Mensheviks sought a more moderate, bourgeois-friendly approach to socialism, opposing Bolshevik radicalism.
Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory was criticized by Lenin as impractical in Russia’s socio-economic context.
Understanding early 20th-century Russian socialist splits is key to grasping the ideological battles within communism.

What the video covers

The video explores the historical context and ideological differences between Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Trotskyists within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).
Trotskyism is characterized as a form of Menshevism, representing bourgeois interests within the labor movement.
The Mensheviks are described as semi-bourgeois elements of the proletariat, including labor aristocracy and intelligentsia, who sought to moderate proletarian revolution.
The discussion highlights the split at the RSDLP's second congress, leading to the formation of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
Lenin’s view on the proletariat’s hegemony in the revolution and the role of the peasantry as allies is emphasized.
The video critiques Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution as unrealistic in a predominantly petty-bourgeois society like Russia.
Historical references include Solzhenitsyn, Krylov, and literary examples such as Professor Preobrazhensky from 'Heart of a Dog' to illustrate ideological positions.
The dangers faced by agitators during the 1930s Soviet purges are briefly mentioned.
The video also touches on the betrayal by the liberal bourgeoisie during the 1905 revolution and the challenges of land reform.
The speakers aim to clarify common misconceptions about Trotskyism and explain why it is often used as an insult without clear understanding.

Chapters

What is Trotskyism according to this video?

Trotskyism is described as a form of Menshevism that aligns with bourgeois interests within the labor movement, often criticized for its theory of permanent revolution.

How did the Mensheviks differ from the Bolsheviks?

Mensheviks represented semi-bourgeois elements and favored a moderate approach to socialism, while Bolsheviks advocated for proletarian dictatorship and radical revolution.

Why was Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution criticized?

Lenin and others criticized it as unrealistic in Russia, where the economy was predominantly petty-bourgeois, making a direct proletarian revolution without passing through bourgeois stages impractical.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Hello everyone. Greetings. Remi has come to visit us again, hasn't he? After the plague-ridden pestilence— that's right, the pestilence. We have debts, we have a lot of debts, specifically we have some Solzhenitsyn left unanalyzed, or rather, partially analyzed. Well,

Speaker A

yes, as they say, man proposes, and you know who disposes. Allah, yes, some incoming suggestions arrived.

Speaker A

Important ones, in my opinion, and not just mine—everyone is constantly throwing around the word "Trotskyist" as an insult.

Speaker A

Tro-Trotsky is bad. "Lies like Trotsky," to put it politely. Actually, there's a different word that goes first, but we won't say it. You all know it.

Speaker A

You surely know it well yourselves, I'm sure of it. If you don't know, ask your older comrades, they will explain it to you. But very few people can sensibly and clearly explain what Trotskyism actually is, what he wanted, why it's

Speaker A

bad, why he "lies like Trotsky," and what that even means—what does it mean to lie specifically like Trotsky?

Speaker A

How does he lie in some special way, you know? Like, what kind of beast is this Trotskyism?

Speaker A

Yes, in a nutshell. Listen, so Remi buckled down, fired up his brain cells, and delved into the primary sources. And now we are going to talk about this, yes, we will probably try to get the form right on the second attempt; by

Speaker A

the way, the first one didn't work out because I discovered that I had slipped into Menshevism myself while telling the story.

Speaker A

Uh-huh. Yes. In the thirties, you know, they could have really come after an agitator like that.

Speaker A

No, well, they would have pointed out your mistakes first, I'm sure. I'm just saying, it depends on the year. If it were '37, when everyone was on edge, they might have said he was promoting Menshevik ideas under the guise of lectures. And then

Speaker A

you could have ended up behind bars. We'll talk about that later. This episode is sponsored by the Operhop store.

Speaker A

Yes. So, what is it? If you had to describe Trotskyism in one word? I believe it's Menshevism.

Speaker A

It's Menshevism. Yes, absolutely correct. So, who are the Mensheviks? They are our agents of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement; how do they differ from just anyone else?

Speaker A

Could you remind us, in case someone doesn't know, although our audience is more or less well-informed, but nevertheless, what if someone is watching us for the first time and hasn't read anything at all? There was the RSDLP, the Russian Social

Speaker A

Democratic Labour Party. That was where all the leftists were together. Yes. Just like we have everyone now, the broad left.

Speaker A

A broad, wide-reaching left-wing coalition—people are always trying to get all the leftists together, to make sure they all become friends and cook something up together. Here, please, is a perfect example. It was done. All the leftists that were around, in principle

Speaker A

, they united into a rather large party. Except for the SRs. The SRs didn't join them because they were just a bunch of windbags, because the SRs were, you know, petty bourgeois.

Speaker A

They were still leftists at that moment. Yes. It's not clear then, were the Cadets leftists too?

Speaker A

All left-wing monarchists? Or something like that. So these leftists got together, and unlike the SRs, they just chattered, because the SRs were throwing bombs—doing "real work" in their opinion—while these guys just chattered. And while they were chattering, it suddenly turned out

Speaker A

they were all talking about very different things, yes, and the splits began. The SRs started chattering later, and then they had splits too.

Speaker A

Yes, they ended up with just SRs and Left SRs. And here you go, at the RSDLP congress, everyone presented their programs, so to speak. It turned out they didn't align with each other at all.

Speaker A

At the second one. Yes. At the second one. Exactly, at the second one. And they split, accordingly, resulting in the Bolsheviks—the RSDLP (b), the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks—and the Mensheviks. Well, that's clear. In the RSDLP (b), there was this

Speaker A

guy named Lenin, maybe you've heard of him. Right. And the Mensheviks had Martov, Axelrod, Martynov, all these guys, yes, of average, mediocre quality.

Speaker A

Right. But overall, if we read Ilyich, who were the Mensheviks? Their base was... As Ilyich put it, the semi-bourgeois elements of the proletariat. This means either some kind of labor aristocracy, some super-duper qualified guy named Vasya, who, thanks to his unique skills

Speaker A

, is guaranteed a job—which is the main thing for the labor aristocracy. He gets paid well, and he enjoys the boss's respect. The Mensheviks really suit him, because on one hand, he realizes their interests differ from the boss's, but on the other hand, he

Speaker A

doesn't want to fight the boss who is so kind, pays well, and even gave him a house on credit. Or the opposite, as Lenin says: "Workers who just arrived from the village, they haven't yet been imbued with these proletarian ideas of

Speaker A

the collective." That is, communism. They haven't had time to absorb them yet. Everyone still has that "my house is on the edge" mentality thriving.

Speaker A

Right. Then, you see, the intelligentsia, well, by virtue of their position. First of all, they don't really want to merge with the proletariat, because they see themselves as cleaner, and can reason that they are smarter, if you think

Speaker A

about it, and know more about life. So, all these ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat seem, well, a bit extremist to them; of course, they’re for the workers, but one must know when to stop. Well, we support the workers,

Speaker A

but we will be the ones to govern them. As Krylov wrote: you must protect the sheep, but you shouldn't entirely oppress the wolves.

Speaker A

Well, by the way, if we look at a less typical artistic figure, it’s Professor Preobrazhensky from the famous work Heart of a Dog, because judging by all his statements before the fall of the rotten Tsarist regime, he himself was very much a leftist. He

Speaker A

really dislikes the landowners. Those half-slaughtered ones, yes. He has no sympathy for them, but he respects a man, you know, who has money.

Speaker A

Yes, that’s a different story when some merchant comes in, like the sugar magnate Polozov, a decent man, right? But those pompous nobodies who say, "I have a fancy cap and a famous name, give me something because of that

Speaker A

." That idea is completely alien to him. And at the same time, he also really dislikes it when these same proletarians raise their heads above the baseboard, so he immediately suggests that a policeman should be assigned to everyone, regardless of

Speaker A

whether it’s a red cap or one with an eagle on the badge. The main thing is that everyone should have a policeman standing there. As soon as they want to sing, boom, right on the head with a club.

Speaker A

Exactly that, yes. So, on one hand, he is against the clearly bad, obsolete feudal system, but at the same time, what should the proletariat do? Ah, sweep the tram tracks, which is what they are built for, actually. Yes.

Speaker A

That's it. And clean the stables. Yes, yes, yes, exactly, yes. Clean the stables, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker A

Well, what about the Mensheviks? What are the Mensheviks ideologically? What did they disagree on, anyway?

Speaker A

With the Bolsheviks. Yes, with the Bolsheviks. And what does Trotsky have to do with all of this?

Speaker A

Well, our first question is about the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution. This is an outstanding, deeply, even Lenin-like idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat is, among other things, a special form of class alliance between the proletarians

Speaker A

and all non-proletarian working classes. And so in the struggle for communism, the proletariat must lead these classes as allies.

Speaker A

Well, first and foremost, if we are talking about Russia, that means the peasants, right? First and foremost, it is the peasants. Not all of them, of course.

Speaker A

That is, it is clear that the peasantry is differentiating, but we are fighting for the majority of the peasantry to be on our side. That is what Lenin spoke about. That is, the role, the significance of the revoluti

Speaker A

peasantry is that they are our allies. Whereas for the Mensheviks—no, for the Mensheviks—they said: "We are following Marx strictly." This is despite the fact that, by the way, they loved calling Lenin a dogmatist and all that. Yet they themselves adored

Speaker A

grabbing some quote and clinging to it. Marx said that petty-bourgeois relations give birth to capitalism.

Speaker A

Well, that means the petty bourgeoisie are our enemies. Every single one of them, so there's no need to differentiate them. In connection with this, strictly speaking, because 80%of our population are our enemies, the Mensheviks concluded that we don't need

Speaker A

a proletarian revolution at all. And moreover, it would be disastrous, besides—even if something worked out, it would all come to an end anyway, and the screws would only be tightened even more.

Speaker A

So, we need to wait until there is proper capitalism. Basically, 80%will no longer be peasants, but specifically proletarians.

Speaker A

By the way, we hear a lot of that now, that we need "proper capitalists" so they can build factories for us. Then we will have a large proletariat, and only then might we be able to show something. And, accordingly, if we take

Speaker A

Trotsky, his ideas regarding the peasantry were exactly the same. Everything we just said was written vividly and extensively by Martov and Axelrod across the board, so we wouldn't have any doubt who it was.

Speaker A

Yes. Exactly. But Trotsky—if you take his "Our Political Tasks," for example, his first major work—to him, the peasant is, and I quote, an "objective anti-socialist guarantee." There. But how does Trotsky’s position differ from that of the Mensheviks? The

Speaker A

Mensheviks say right away that that’s it, we don’t need a proletarian revolution; what’s next on the agenda is a bourgeois revolution, meaning the proletariat must follow the liberal bourgeoisie. Right. And Trotsky? No, he doesn't say that, because a revolution

Speaker A

is certainly necessary, but after the revolution, we must immediately form a workers 'government, that is, a dictatorship of the proletariat. And it's reasonable to ask, what about the 80%of the population, what happens to them? And he says, "Well, of course, we

Speaker A

won't solve the problem that way," says Trotsky. We will solve the problem when the revolution, so to speak, hits Europe. Then, with the help of our European comrades, we'll cooperativize our petty bourgeoisie and all that.

Speaker A

That's how it's done. But then again, what do we get from this? We don't say outright that the revolution isn't needed, but it follows that we have to wait for it to hit in major European countries anyway. And,

Speaker A

characteristically, the Trotskyists always said that this explosion would happen any minute. So, when we say we have to wait, we don't mean it's going to be ages. I mean, look at the statistics, look at the number of strikes and all that. So we see, it's

Speaker A

amazing, the coincidence of views, the fundamental coincidence of conclusions. Then again, this, by the way, is all the same thing . This is also all taken from the fact that they learned Marx by heart and recited it like the Bible.

Speaker A

It's not just that they take a famous work, or rather not a work, but the Address to the Communist League, yes.

Speaker A

Where Marx and Engels simply write about how the German comrades should act in a bourgeois revolution. And there, Marx and Engels write to the German comrades that, for starters, you will certainly have a period of bourgeois democracy, which you need to

Speaker A

integrate into and live under. Moreover , they are writing specifically about Germany in the 1840s, not about anything else. It's specifically for their own people on how to act in that given situation. It's not an instruction for all time. It's just

Speaker A

that the Mensheviks, they clung to this . They clung to it and said that, well, this is how it is. Marx said there must be a bourgeois democracy. Well, so, it must be, let it be then.

Speaker A

But they didn't pay attention to what Lenin pointed out, that Marx writes further. You, comrades, should try to make this period as short as possible.

Speaker A

That is, the sooner the better. You participate in it strictly until this petty-bourgeois democracy completely discredits itself. And we will talk about the democratic one later. Well, that is, strictly speaking, the Leninist idea of democratic dictatorship. So, the democratic

Speaker A

dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry, which the Mensheviks mocked so relentlessly. Well , basically, that was the worker-peasant power that we had; true, later it became a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it was still called worker-peasant, because the peasants

Speaker A

were still there, you see. But the Mensheviks rejected this idea entirely. Well, because, you know, our peasantry is supposedly completely counter-revolutionary. Trotsky rejected this idea, essentially under the same pretext. There you go. And, again, each from their own perspective. Some were

Speaker A

supposedly on the right, while others were from a position of ultra-leftism. I mean, it’s quite interesting how Trotsky mocked this Leninist idea, like "ha-ha-ha, so we're going to build socialism with the peasant, are we?" And how Martov was praising Trotsky at

Speaker A

the same time, saying, well, he may be too far left, but he really got under Lenin's skin here. Lenin, he says, is a well-known utopian with a little utopia in his pocket. He says he hit the nail right on the head with that one. Hit

Speaker A

the nail right on the head. Interestingly, the Mensheviks praised Trotsky very highly the entire time.

Speaker A

What else should we consider? And it is from this very same incorrect assessment of the peasantry's role that both the Mensheviks and, subsequently, Trotsky derive their views. Like the denial of the possibility of building a socialist society in one single country

Speaker A

. Under the same pretext. The Mensheviks write, "How can you, when you have this mob of petty bourgeoisie there?" And, typically, Trotsky also writes that this petty bourgeoisie must inevitably confuse the proletariat and knock it off its class course. I mean,

Speaker A

for some reason, they apparently considered the reverse influence of the proletariat on the petty bourgeoisie impossible. And it's just like how, for some reason, the bourgeoisie so easily makes these petty bourgeois run their errands. Without giving them anything,

Speaker A

without even promising them much, yet they just keep running their errands. Why the proletariat wouldn't be able to do the same is unclear. This descends into some kind of complete fatalism for them.

Speaker A

Well, they proceeded from comparing the mass of the peasantry in Russia with the mass of the proletariat. Clearly, the peasants were significantly more numerous.

Speaker A

And so, look, here is what we get. Our country has 87%of its population as peasants. That is, a petty-bourgeois element in the countryside. In reality, a peasant, if he is not a farmhand, a rural proletarian, has a petty-bourgeois farm. That is quite

Speaker A

natural. So, this means our economic base is so predominantly petty-bourgeois that, in theory, how could one even talk about a proletarian revolution if your primary economic base is petty-bourgeois? No, first you have to turn them all into big

Speaker A

bourgeoisie, and then, once everyone has been proletarianized, except for the big bourgeoisie, only then— only then would we make the leap, but that would be God knows when. When they criticized Lenin, by the way, they were formally—note that, formally—

Speaker A

completely correct, but they left out a very important point that Lenin had derived and consistently substantiated, scientifically proving the inequality between city and countryside using major historical examples. That is, because the city is simply more developed than the countryside, the

Speaker A

city will always, one way or another, lead the countryside. No matter where. It could be a feudal city leading a feudal countryside, or a bourgeois city leading a petty-bourgeois countryside.

Speaker A

Well, the same goes for a proletarian city leading a petty-bourgeois countryside, relying on the rural proletariat, of which there were plenty . And what’s more, they— well, here Stolypin certainly helped Lenin out. That’s where Stolypin helped Lenin, who, with his reforms,

Speaker A

created so much of this rural proletariat all at once, that, well, and even more so, very embittered, and extremely embittered, embittered specifically at the Tsarist government, which promised to improve things but essentially ruined them, yes.

Speaker A

Right. And here, of course, Martov, Axelrod, and Trotsky—as they say, they really blundered. Well, it’s not even that —if you take Lenin’s position on the peasant question, I mean, last time I accidentally veered into Menshevism.

Speaker A

That’s when Stalin got the only reprimand of his party career because he didn’t orient himself in time, so let’s just explain how Lenin saw the whole situation. So, before the Tsar was overthrown, Lenin had the idea of a

Speaker A

democratic dictatorship. Meaning us, the petty bourgeoisie, together with the rest. Because the entire petty bourgeoisie already needed to get rid of the "Tsar-Father," since the peasantry was already in full force.

Speaker A

Both the kulaks, the middle peasants, and the poor. They didn’t really need the Tsar-Father.

Speaker A

The Tsar-Father. No, well, most importantly, not the Tsar-Father— he’s far away—the most important one is the landlord.

Speaker A

That is, naturally, yes. Right. So, everyone would be absolutely in favor of driving the landlord out. That was Lenin’s idea.

Speaker A

And who wouldn’t be in favor, besides the landlords themselves? Hell if I know. As for the liberal bourgeoisie, who even back in the 1905 revolution and before—Marx wrote about this, that they acted the same way in Germany in the 1840 s—as soon as they see in

Speaker A

this bourgeois revolution that the rabble, well, like Professor Preobrazhensky sees that Sharikov, when he got a voice, uses it not just to...

Speaker A

praise his masters, saying, "Oh, you're so great, oh, you're so kind." But he also starts demanding things, saying, " Register me," and, "I'm entitled to my 16 square meters," or whatever he wanted. And so, essentially, that's when our liberals instantly turn into

Speaker A

reactionaries. In short, the liberal bourgeoisie will betray you. We understood this back in 1905: as soon as they see that democracy isn't just about taking land from the feudal lords , but also about raising someone's wages, they run back to the feudal

Speaker A

lords with open arms: "What, guys? You completely misunderstood us.""We’re not actually against you at all." That is why we must paralyze the instability of the liberal bourgeoisie. But how do we paralyze them? Lenin says: "Through our alliance of the proletariat with

Speaker A

the peasantry." And, by the way, if we look a bit further ahead in time beyond Lenin, things Lenin didn't quite live to see, we know that the liberal bourgeoisie doesn't just know how to run back to the monarchists, even when those

Speaker A

monarchists can't be brought back because the liberal bourgeoisie is already in power. They immediately strike up a friendship with the monarchists. And those very monarchist, Black Hundred-style organizations become the infantry for the fascists.

Speaker A

We saw this in both Italy and Germany. It played out exactly as if it were scripted. And they even started claiming that they had invented fascism themselves. Yes.

Speaker A

Yes. Or pay us, and Lenin checked everyone, saying, "Excuse me, you fascists." Yes, they were the "white knights." Only they were Orthodox, so ours was more potent and substantial. There. But that’s not the point. So, the point is that we paralyze the instability of

Speaker A

the liberal bourgeoisie and together we overthrow the Tsar. Right, so we did that, right? And now we’re celebrating, saying we have a democratic dictatorship, land committees are already gathering, the revolution is triumphant. And then, comrade Lenin arrives from abroad and

Speaker A

gives everyone a scolding. Then you bring in Comrade Stalin, saying, "What kind of democratic dictatorship are you talking about?" You guys don't feel the pulse, so to speak. Everything is already over. What do you mean it's over? It only just began. He says: "

Speaker A

Well, did you read Marx carefully?""He says all this fuss with petty-bourgeois democracy. It only lasts until they discredit themselves." Did all your land committees agree to wait for land until the Constituent Assembly? That is , they revealed their class nature to

Speaker A

the fullest extent possible. Who in our villages actually has the ability to calmly wait for anything right now?

Speaker A

Obviously. Who, hell, only the kulaks can, because even the middle peasants can't anymore. And that means that’s it. So, this petty-bourgeois democracy has shown who it sides with in the village. And instead of covering this in our party newspapers, Comrade Stalin

Speaker A

was reprimanded for it, and Kamenev, though it seems Kamenev was the senior, but Comrade Stalin also got it for not catching on, because here, the liberal bourgeoisie, that's the former liberal one. Cross out the word liberal, yes, just the bourgeoisie now. And they are

Speaker A

now our main enemy, just like the feudal lords used to be. So, they must be overthrown. And we need to paralyze the instability not of those, but of the middle peasants. Because they are the mass sitting there, damn it,

Speaker A

waiting to see who wins. And how do we paralyze their instability? By an alliance with the rural poor, not the farmhands, because the farmhands are ours by default. They are rural proletarians, and they have no one else in this life but us. But he says the

Speaker A

situation is different here. Lenin says the situation here is different, because right now, if we don't urgently introduce socialist transformations, the middle peasants will likely start dying of hunger too. Exactly. So, for them, socialist reforms are now a

Speaker A

question of survival. So, they’ll like this whole thing too. Also, they will really like that we are giving out land right now, immediately. Because even after the Decree on Land, if you read Romanov, the kulaks were still trying to stall. Well, rather, what was

Speaker A

taken from the landlords. Good. Well, start plowing right now. "Let's wait," they say, "maybe next season when things are sorted, otherwise we'll plow and sow, then they'll take it away, why bother," and all that. And in the meantime, the representatives arrive at

Speaker A

the Soviets and ask: "Well, are you satisfied?""Well, seems like it.""And did you divide the inventory?""Well, how did we divide it?" Well, somehow it ended up with the wealthy folks. See, when he says the livestock, yeah, the livestock also took up residence with

Speaker A

the rich. It seems it likes the rich. There. And then our main slogan on the peasant question changed again, when you see, well, you see, initially our petty-bourgeois democracy showed which side it was leaning toward, straight toward the bourgeoisie. But it turned

Speaker A

out there were the Left SRs. Maybe they would express that socialist tendency that Lenin had found among the peasantry, and which neither the Mensheviks nor the Trotskyists wanted to see at all. That a peasant has a kulak face, but also the face of an

Speaker A

honest worker, whom our very own Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky admired, and in general, everyone who wrote about peasants, because in reality, despite the fact that the kulak was always the top man in the village and ran everything, there was actually very

Speaker A

little honor in that throughout. And there was no positive connotation to that word. No, a kulak face is a kulak face. It basically means a community-eater right away.

Speaker A

Well yeah, there "Mir" means the community, not "mir" in the sense of the absence of war. "Mir" is the community, meaning a devourer of the community.

Speaker A

Well yeah, it wasn't the Bolsheviks who called him that; it was his fellow villagers around the 19th century. And even in their verdicts and mandates, they clearly distinguish between "us" and " the kulaks" as separate, hell, communities. They even write about them

Speaker A

as different groups. There. So there. So you see what kind of differentiation there is. And then, we mean, we are already with these middle peasants, whom we previously paralyzed, their instability. There. And now that's it, we are pushing to build socialism. So,

Speaker A

in an alliance, which is again Leninist , in an alliance with the middle peasant. This is again what Lenin, even in his lifetime, I think, managed to discuss with Trotsky and argue about at the congresses, that the current middle

Speaker A

peasant is not what the middle peasant was in our capitalist society, or even more so in the feudal one. The current middle peasant. Why, actually, shouldn't we play along with this age-old peasant dream that you work on your own land and live decently.

Speaker A

Actually, those were the simple dreams of the Russian peasant, that you would work as you do, and they didn't even want tractors, just that you would plow the land and not starve to death while doing it. Is there any way to do that?

Speaker A

But is it actually possible? Which, again, is what Uspensky suggested to them—that you need an artel, just an artel. Well, yes.

Speaker A

No, that's what the domestic peasantry had been dreaming of since at least Ivan II. When they really started being enserfed, for some reason, they immediately started dreaming that it was better before. Right.

Speaker A

It used to be better, yes, that’s a well-known theme about how it was better before. There. But nevertheless, in Uspensky's time, you see, that was the thing. Why didn't these ideas gain popularity? Well, because of...

Speaker A

Everyone's wealth is unequal. I mean, you see, if you and I join an artel, and you are richer, it means you contribute more. And if you contribute more, maybe you'll want a better share.

Speaker A

And if you have a bigger share than me, then what the hell do I need an artel for? Does that make sense? And everything ran into that. Lenin says: " We'll just overcome that." How will we overcome that? We'll show those middle

Speaker A

peasants 100,000 tractors. And we'll say that the tractors will work for the commune. And he says: "Seeing 100,000 tractors, I tell you, the majority of the middle peasants will immediately vote for the commune." Which is, in fact, what ended up happening.

Speaker A

Grew with a false start. There. And again, these Leninist ideas were opposed on one side by the Mensheviks, and on the other by Trotsky . Only Trotsky covered up the same Menshevik ideas with ultra-revolutionary rhetoric about this revolutionary upsurge. He saw it in

Speaker A

advanced countries. He saw it happening right then and there. Well, you know, as always, that was the style he developed from his very first works.

Speaker A

The main idea isn't really stated; it’s implied, you see? He says that because we can't overcome this petty-bourgeois element, we therefore cannot build socialism in a single country, you see? And what follows is interesting—what are we supposed to

Speaker A

build, then? Well, it's known that you either have socialism or capitalism. So, we'll build capitalism. Understand?

Speaker A

Right? So, it turns out if we can't build socialism, that means we won't build it. Well, right, we're not going to build what's impossible to build.

Speaker A

Meaning, don't sow what definitely won't sprout. So, it turns out we have to surrender to the capitalists. And at that time, the Mensheviks from abroad had already shown their true colors in 1917. They really did show them.

Speaker A

Well, not all of them; some Mensheviks stayed in Russia and even worked for the Soviet government and others. Right , and that is once again characteristic of the habits of the Trotskyists. Back then, they had this sort of legal wing.

Speaker A

These like Menshevik-Internationalists, something like that. Right. And there was an illegal one. For appearances, they would regularly denounce each other. They would say, " We are the extremists, we want nothing to do with them, ugh, they’re cozying up to the White Guards," while at the

Speaker A

same time they were sending a delegate from their own brigade to meetings with those White Guards, you know? And this one is exactly the same. You see, they even stopped calling themselves Mensheviks. You could, you see, for a

Speaker A

while voice those Menshevik ideas under the guise of Trotskyism, until at the 15th Congress they said, "No, please don't voice them in that form either." The ideas are the same; actually, nothing has changed for you.

Speaker A

Yes, in general, it must be said that Menshevism and Trotskyism are all varieties of the same movement from long ago. It’s called opportunism, that is, appeasement. First it was the legal Marxists, the Bernsteinists and others, then the economists, then the

Speaker A

type of "hidden" economists, that is the Mensheviks, and then the hidden Mensheviks and Trotskyists. And, strictly speaking, then for some reason , you see, they just disappeared.

Speaker A

Apparently, the petty-bourgeois tendency was eradicated in our party. And that was it, talk started that our party is a monolith, dammit, solid through and through. Again, they forgot what Grandfather Lenin, and Marx and Engels said, or I don't remember who it

Speaker A

was. Liebknecht said it. No, no, it was Luxemburg. No, no, I don't think so.

Speaker A

About what? That a party strengthens itself by purging its ranks, you understand? Right, that was Rosa Luxemburg, I think . I think it was Lassalle. Well, all right, that's not the point. It's a good thought: if your party is alive,

Speaker A

this tendency will inevitably grow in one form or another. It must exist within you, and you must fight against it. If you are not fighting it right now, it just means that some disagreements are being swept under the

Speaker A

rug. And then our monolithic party, where everyone votes unanimously, suddenly orchestrates the year 1991 and surprises everyone. Well, at first she tried to stage a ninety-first year back in the thirties.

Speaker A

Well yes, yes, that is what I was talking about. The same thing all over again. First, they kicked them out of the legal field entirely, and it seemed like everything became monolithic. We had Comrade Stalin in charge of

Speaker A

everything. And then suddenly it turns out that someone is not in favor or Comrade Stalin has already lost his mind. One way or another, right? We just traced how the ideas of the Mensheviks coincide with the ideas of

Speaker A

Trotsky. Which is why, at the Fifteenth Congress, they were finally expelled from the party, and that was explicitly written down for them.

Speaker A

That Trotskyism is a specific form of Menshevism. There. And therefore, these Trotskyist ideas are incompatible with remaining in the ranks of our party. So , what exactly was the old man Trotsky doing from about 1924 to 1927? It was

Speaker A

continuous disruptive activity, if you want to be honest about it. And indeed, he himself screamed in connection with this that it was a trampling of democratic norms. And all that sort of thing. But, damn it, if he only wanted

Speaker A

to talk nonsense, to just talk nonsense . He was naturally engaged in disruptive work. I mean, he incited people not to carry out Central Committee decisions, you see? He demonstratively refused to perform the work or the duties that the party had

Speaker A

assigned to him. He just said, "No, I won't.""I will do whatever I want." And he incited others to do the same. The last straw was when they persuaded the Komsomol members in Leningrad. The Leningrad Komsomol sent a message to

Speaker A

the Central Committee. "We will not carry out your decision." No. And what is characteristic, Lenin wrote about this in his old work, a letter to a comrade. He writes right there to a comrade—I can't recall right now, I

Speaker A

think he was writing to a great organizer from the working class who unfortunately died of TB. That's not the point. He just writes regarding the Mensheviks: "What is this? Why do they say that the Central Committee decided wrongly, or the congress decreed

Speaker A

incorrectly? Why do we even gather congresses if people have gathered, excuse me, under the threat of prison?

Speaker A

This wasn't just some casual thing like today where you just get together. And even today, try getting everyone to travel to one city. But back then, they could literally jail you for that. And why did we elect this Central Committee

Speaker A

under the threat of prison if we are not going to listen to it? Why have this congress if we just go back on what we agreed to later? This comrade writes, it was agreed that the congress would appoint the editors to our

Speaker A

central organ. Instead, the minority, you see, something... for the newspaper, you mean, right? Instead, the minority along with Plekhanov, they are arranging something among themselves and deciding something . Like, no, we'll appoint this one, and this one, and this one. Then why have

Speaker A

these resolutions at all? No, this is, strictly speaking, the main idea of the Mensheviks and Trotsky. And it shouldn't be, right, that's how it should be. No one owes anyone anything, you see, some Central Committee is going to impose something on someone.

Speaker A

This is yet another coincidence, by the way. What did they agree on? Trotsky and the Mensheviks regarding their view on intra-party discipline. Exactly.

Speaker A

Well, in our party, for those who don't remember, I'll remind you, the principle of democratic centralism was preached, right?

Speaker A

That is, everything is built around a center. But if you have democratically voted for that center, then centralism kicks in. Meaning you must carry out the decisions of the body that you yourselves elected. If you categorically dislike them, that is,

Speaker A

it's just completely unacceptable, then re-elect them, right, prove that these ones are better, at least in words, present your arguments, prove they are better, elect them, and again, comply, because it's impossible for the party to live in a state of

Speaker A

congress and vote on every issue. And in general, that just cannot be. But first the Mensheviks, then the Trotskyists, they interpreted this very principle of democratic centralism quite freely and broadly.

Speaker A

Well, they essentially interpreted it as democracy being when everyone does what they like. Trotsky writes directly :" To me, democracy—or rather, discipline—I only need it so that I can fight for what I consider right. " There. If I no longer consider it right

Speaker A

, well, then that's it. Meaning discipline can go to hell. Yes, let it perish. Yes, let such discipline perish . Because otherwise, we'll end up with barracks-style discipline. This is what Lenin was talking about, that this is usually characteristic of intellectuals

Speaker A

—a sort of aristocratic anarchism. An intellectual. By their very position, an intellectual is something of a loner . And he says they should learn from the workers how to work in a team. This is the phrase of Lenin's that Trotsky

Speaker A

clings to and starts in on. Why don't you read what Marx writes about factory discipline? It is barracks-style. Lenin wants to turn the whole party into a barracks. It's quite telling, the way he attacks Lenin, it really brings to

Speaker A

mind exactly what he wrote about Comrade Stalin, that he’s a dictator who crushed all initiative and forces everyone to vote for him. By what means ? Are you saying you can't get anyone to vote for you yourself? Well, in

Speaker A

general, what was the essence of Menshevism? The essence of Menshevism is that it's also intermediate, right? The essence of Menshevism is to make the labor movement convenient and acceptable to the bourgeoisie. If you think about what Trotsky was doing at

Speaker A

first, denying the need for a disciplined, organized party here. Then what else did he deny later on? They were very successful at denying everything. Then he pushed for factions , yes. Yes, what’s characteristic is, this isn't specifically about

Speaker A

Trotskyism, but specifically about Trotsky. We know Trotsky was originally a categorical opponent of Lenin's ideas, and he wasn't a member of the Bolshevik Party. But when it became clear that the Bolsheviks were in the saddle and moving confidently toward taking power,

Speaker A

Trotsky immediately showed up there and became a Bolshevik. They took him in. They warmed him up.

Speaker A

Essentially found him in a dumpster. Well, I like how it’s written about them in Wikipedia. Back then he had a little group, the Inter-District group.

Speaker A

And he, again, was like," We are the elite, so we aren't with anyone. "And someone wrote that they were sitting like, how was it put, damn, it was so well said, something like a magnificent assembly of generals without armies.

Speaker A

Yes, they were just such great generals . Generals, wow. But they could never manage to staff an army. And that’s despite the fact that, by the way, in his first work," Our Political Tasks, " Trotsky ribs Lenin a lot, saying that

Speaker A

intellectuals—well, what could they possibly understand about proletarian affairs? And Trotsky understood proletarian affairs so well? No, he basically pushes the idea that as long as the party is mostly made up of these little intellectuals, Lenin can get by with

Speaker A

his absurd ideas, but once the real proletariat arrives, trained by us in Marxist science, then they won't stand a chance. And what’s characteristic is that later, when the" Lenin Enrollment "took place and 100,000 proletarians joined the party, you’d

Speaker A

think Trotsky would be dancing with joy that now we can finally kick all the scoundrels out. But no, he’s unhappy again, claiming that illiterate cattle have arrived. They don't understand anything about Marxism; they will vote however their bosses tell them to. In

Speaker A

short, the Mensheviks tried in their own way to make the labor movement acceptable. Trotsky was doing the exact same thing. As I said, Trotskyism is simply a further stage in the development of this opportunism. They try—and their difference from simple

Speaker A

bourgeois parties is that they try—to work with our class from within our own movement, you see, by being inside it.

Speaker A

If we look at it this way, what were Trotsky's main ideas, and who can be called a Trotskyist? Well, the most central one, perhaps, is their idea about the total counter-revolutionary nature of the entire petty bourgeoisie.

Speaker A

That is probably the most important idea. It’s not just about how to determine whether a person is truly a Trotskyist or if they, I don't know, have just watched some movies about" bloody Stalin "and don't really know history yet. You just need to ask them,

Speaker A

first of all, about their views on the peasant question—that is, on the question of the petty bourgeoisie—and then, their views on organizational matters. That is, do you believe you should do what the Central Committee says, if you have a Central Committee

Speaker A

in your party, or should you not? Or should everyone do as they please? Exactly. Well, by and large, what else did Trotsky have? Permanent revolution.

Speaker A

Permanent revolution. I was just about to shout: when will we get to the permanent revolution?

Speaker A

Well, again, and the idea that Russia is a bundle of firewood that needs to be thrown into the fire of the world revolution. Yes, that’s a famous phrase, but who the hell knows when he said it or on what

Speaker A

occasion he said it. No, I regularly run into people in conversations who say," But he said that... " and this is, of course, even with my complicated attitude toward this character, when he said something like that, everyone usually struggles to provide

Speaker A

proof. I can't find the source. It's clear that someone either made it up, or simply ripped a phrase out of context and, as usual, swapped some words around or something like that.

Speaker A

I can't find the trail. We have found many of these vile traces. Like, this writer said this, or that writer said that. About Lenin or about Stalin, for example, but where this stuff about the bundle of firewood came from, I just

Speaker A

can't find it. Where did it even crawl out from? Yes. No, I have a suspicion: in the film" July 6, "well, Lenin says something like that there, and he says it, naturally, in the opposite sense— that our socialist fatherland is like a

Speaker A

living child, and you are suggesting we throw it into the furnace. He's upbraiding those SRs during those debates on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Speaker A

There. Although, in reality, he didn't say that. No, well, it's just some movie, God, you know, we...

Speaker A

Well, no, I’m saying, maybe they took it from there somehow. That’s not excluded. We have good cinema, and as is well known, it’s the most important of the arts. That is why it happened that the version of the

Speaker A

Battle on the Ice shown to us by Sergei Eisenstein somehow made its way into school textbooks. Well, yes.

Speaker A

Well, damn it, well, you know, see... Sergei Eisenstein and a school textbook —one is an artist, and the other is, after all, some kind of scholarly work, a school textbook. And no, look, they are teaching it based on the Battle on

Speaker A

the Ice. In the end, the Battle on the Ice is hell. Well, yes. Yes. So, permanent revolution, or else we would have veered off to the side.

Speaker A

Yes, permanent revolution. Well, that’s that same jump, damn it, over the petty bourgeoisie. Actually, no, that isn’t Trotsky’s idea at all, for that matter. It’s from Marx himself, from the same Address of the Central Committee to the Communist

Speaker A

League. That’s where he writes about bourgeois democracy, saying that the shorter that period is, the better—it depends on you, he says. And he says, whenever possible, he says, we generally need to make the revolution continuous—that is to say, permanent.

Speaker A

No, Lenin called this idea ridiculously left-wing. Well, because, how else can you call it if we are jumping over the petty bourgeoisie in a country that is 80%made up of the petty bourgeoisie? So , kind of no. Uh, Lenin believed that

Speaker A

all these flip-flops of Trotsky's— from the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, then in the middle, then back to the Mensheviks—were a reflection of his personal vacillations. Then, of course, damn it, under Comrade Stalin, when...

Speaker A

Well, the situation was like this: you know, you have a friend, you've been friends for a long time, you hang out together, and once you had an episode —you all went mushroom picking, made some soup, and you see him chopping up

Speaker A

toadstools. You barely noticed it, right? Well, back then they said," Hey you, you sieve. "And I'm like," Watch what you're doing, be more careful. " And then, like 10 years later, he got busted for trying to put potassium

Speaker A

cyanide into someone's coffee, you know . And when he got caught doing that, his past blunders started surfacing.

Speaker A

Yeah. And that mushroom incident was suddenly viewed in a different light. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all.

Speaker A

Yeah. That's how it is. And here, yes, maybe these weren't just waverings, because actually, when you study it, you get the distinct impression that Trotsky was a Menshevik special project from the very beginning. Even in his first works, like" Our Political Tasks,

Speaker A

"there is clearly an attempt to create an image that, besides the Mensheviks, there is another force in the party.

Speaker A

Well, besides the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, there's another force. It’s a significant one, because he keeps writing:" We, we. "At the same time, he doesn't categorize himself as a Menshevik. And yet, his attitude toward the Mensheviks is much better.

Speaker A

It’s quite obvious. I mean, you know, it creates an impression that things aren't as clear-cut as they say, where this is the minority and that is the majority. No, you see, among the majority there are many who actually

Speaker A

respect them. Uh what else can we take from him? He called, when he had already left the USSR and was living in Mexico, cozying up to the Americans. He called Stalin and the Stalinist USSR not a communist, that is, not a socialist power, but

Speaker A

actually an imperialist power, because instead of a bunch of bourgeois there is one collective super-bourgeois .

Speaker A

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's clear: the Bolshevik party, which owns everything and extracts surplus value from the workers , exploits them just the same. So, since it turns out to be a mega-monopoly, a mega-monopoly, it means it is the most imperialist power

Speaker A

of all imperialist powers in the world. Just look at the USA, look at how many bourgeois there are, how many of those corporations. Imperialism is, undoubtedly, the merging of banking and financial capital. But here, there is only one bank, and look at that, only

Speaker A

one owner. So, well, it's clear: the Stalin company, it means it's one country, a whole corporation, which means they are imperialists. This was a direct idea that, by the way, is still pushed by some misguided comrades I meet on the

Speaker A

street, passing out brochures and newspapers—they still promote this very idea. It is directly the idea of Trotsky in his final years, during his last years of life there, yes, as Comrade Stalin aptly put it. They have already lost all their ideas. It wasn't

Speaker A

about ideas anymore, but about finding some kind of justification for yet another atrocity, just to create the appearance that we are, so to speak, decent guys. Yes, that was toward the end. Regarding this very idea of the USSR as an imperialist power. It is, of

Speaker A

course, a false idea, or rather, the idea of the USSR as an imperialist power. It is a false idea. Why?

Speaker A

Isn't it natural? Ah, well, just literally in a nutshell, because we’ve brought it up now and laughed, but we haven't said why it’s wrong. Literally in a nutshell. Lenin once gave, well, perhaps not a definition, but a sort of metaphor.

Speaker A

Although, it could be called a definition, too. Yes, I suppose it could. It's no metaphor at all. turned to the benefit of society.

Speaker A

Yes, a monopoly serving the interests of the whole society is socialist. Because, yes, the surplus product was, of course, extracted, since under socialism the alienation of labor is much lower, but it still takes place.

Speaker A

But that commodification is weakened, but it still takes place. The commodity form remained. Commodification is weakened, but the commodity form remained. But at the same time, look, the surplus product went into public consumption funds, not for expanding exploitation or

Speaker A

increasing the consumption of the masters of this very surplus value. So, it was...Yes, we had a country-wide monopoly, yes, undoubtedly. A monopoly.

Speaker A

We had one bank, didn't we? Well, mostly one. But there were no bankers. There were no bankers, and consequently , no one...

Speaker A

there were no speculators, no profiteers. No one used surplus value to intensify exploitation—that is, to extract even more surplus value—or to fuel unlimited personal consumption.

Speaker A

And that means it’s no imperialist power at all; it’s all very easily verified. Well, yes. Oh, yes. This is one of the later ideas, yes, of Trotsky. This is precisely an assessment of...

Speaker A

the path taken, an assessment of the Soviet Union. Yes. What’s characteristic is that you read all these NKVD indictments, claiming they were in cahoots with the fascists, singing the same tune, and you think," Damn, that’s a bit of an

Speaker A

exaggeration, in cahoots with the fascists. "But then, you read what Hitler’s analysts were writing about the Soviet Union, and it’s roughly the same thing, yes—that everyone there is terrified of this tyrant. And that no one would fight, that who would

Speaker A

go to war for this? Actually, you wonder, where did they get that, even writing it into Operation Barbarossa?

Speaker A

Where did they get the idea that a coup would happen in two weeks? And then you read Trotsky, and Trotsky hints directly, saying: for example, there was a bombing in Spain, meaning there was a blackout, everyone was sitting in

Speaker A

the dark, and he says when they turned the lights back on, they looked and there were already slogans written on the walls, like:" Long live Trotsky! "" Down with Stalin and Hitler. "There.

Speaker A

And he says, if we were to have a blackout in Moscow right now, our guys would write a lot of interesting things there too. Maybe even, he says, something even tougher. Well, in that vein, you know? And then you read

Speaker A

Hitler, saying that, apparently, there will be a coup in two weeks. And you read the analysis in Trotsky, that they won't last more than two weeks no matter what, because who is going to fight for Stalin? Nobody will fight for

Speaker A

him. Very interesting. And by the way, Trotsky was sent packing, but the Trotskyists remained.

Speaker A

Therefore, Hitler, or rather his intelligence, slightly underestimated the level of control in the party. That is, as we know, there wasn't even an attempt at a coup, but the Trotskyists remained. Trotskyist ideas objectively survived. And we see how he himself

Speaker A

wrote again, it’s unclear for him when people say that Trotskyists are being imprisoned. Well, it's like, these aren't mine, these aren't mine, but at the same time he says that he does have them. He even hints that he

Speaker A

also has an underground. That is how he writes. No, it is reasonable, actually. How else could it be? If he writes that his idea is the purest communism currently in existence, then it would mean that when he was kicked out, his

Speaker A

ideas turned out to be unnecessary. That would be strange, wouldn't it? So, there must be active people involved.

Speaker A

Yes. Yes. So, we analyzed the permanent revolution, yes, we figured out what it is.

Speaker A

We analyzed it, right? Yes. By the way, regarding the permanent revolution, however negatively we feel about Trotsky, a permanent revolution does not mean that the revolution must happen according to Trotsky. Like it started and goes on forever, continuously. No, Trotsky certainly

Speaker A

didn't say that. He just didn't quite understand that very message of Marx correctly. Yes, well, judging by everything, judging by everything, he understood it all correctly. I mean, I...I, I’m more, yeah, I’m more inclined toward the Stalinist viewpoint, that he, that

Speaker A

he, yeah, understood everything perfectly well, that there...well, because there are so many episodes in his works where he clearly understands absolutely everything perfectly, but at the same time pretends he didn't. Just like that. And it's continuous, too.

Speaker A

Again, no deadlines are set there. How long? Half a year, a year. Like Lenin himself said about his dictatorship, damn it, how long it would last, who the hell knows. It turned out to be less than a month; it depends on the

Speaker A

situation. And his alliances, by the way, with Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin, yeah, by the way, that's also a trick of the Mensheviks, again, which , apparently, they pulled off with Trotsky at first. Well, like, when we aren't pushing toward our goal as a

Speaker A

single front, you know, but you're making your own group, and I'm making mine. And we have different front lines : there's some August bloc, damn it, by Trotsky, for Bolsheviks who don't like the Bolsheviks, but don't want to join

Speaker A

the Mensheviks on the other hand. Or someone broke away from the Mensheviks and they still want to be part of our movement, but Lenin is too radical for them. And hey, there's a place to go, you see? We're catching, you know, both

Speaker A

those who broke away from the Mensheviks and those who could potentially flee from the Bolsheviks.

Speaker A

Just an extra little group. And we have Zinoviev and Kamenev, how should I put it, I read a wonderful book Zinoviev wrote about Trotskyism, where he actually broke it down very well, by the way, with quotes and examples. Why

Speaker A

Trotskyism is just the same as Menshevism? He did that exactly a year before hooking up with Trotsky and starting to fight alongside him on the same front. That too, he liked it, yeah, you see? No, I mean that there's

Speaker A

no way you can say they didn't understand something. They understood perfectly well what kind of person he was and what his ideas were, really.

Speaker A

And the fact that after exposing him so skillfully, they joined forces with him to march together, well, everything about their political character is clear, really. Guys, they were already in doubt. And when did Ilyich say that?

Speaker A

Back in October of '17, he already said that we don't even need a strike-breaker in the party. And later, by the way, even in his final messages, he mentioned that we remember that episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev. He

Speaker A

said that was clearly no accident. Not an accident. That they... Well, when they took that article to the Menshevik newspaper— characteristically to the Mensheviks— saying that our party is preparing an uprising, and we are against it. And the main thing is, they didn't just do

Speaker A

something so treacherous, they then had the nerve to act all innocent and say," What did we do? "" We just wanted to express our opinion. "Blah-blah-blah in the press, damn it. After which, Lenin said that these jackals should be

Speaker A

kicked out with a dirty broom. They weren't kicked out. They weren't. That goes to the point that Lenin was a dictator, and then Stalin was a dictator, and they just did whatever they wanted. Like Tsar Ivan the Terrible, in fact.

Speaker A

Yes. This is, by the way, a common sort of narrative. Respect, and so on. It even pops up among admirers of Comrade Stalin." That's right, well done. "" He decided to have everyone shot. "" And he just went and shot them. "

Speaker A

Uh...No, this, you see, that kind of thing... Yes. That he decided to shoot everyone and did it. That didn't even work under Ivan the Terrible. It doesn't happen that way. Even an absolute monarch...

Speaker A

Probably didn't even work under the Pharaohs. Yes, even an absolute monarch..." absolute "is a colorful epithet, a metaphor for a high concentration of power. But look at Ivan the Terrible; he had more authority than Stalin.

Speaker A

Let's put it this way: definitely much more authority than Stalin. Nevertheless, there was so much he had to account for.

Speaker A

Look at 1556. Specifically, the capture of Kazan. Yes. Yes. He got sick and almost died. All his boyars refused to swear allegiance to his infant son.

Speaker A

They were already writing off their dear Tsar. And... the oath to the heir. They all refused.

Speaker A

Ivan the Terrible was lucid at the time , conscious of it all, saw everyone, and recovered the next day. Instantly, damn it.

Speaker A

So, let's ask: who did he execute after that? No one. And... look, until 1500, he didn't have such an opportunity.

Speaker A

Until 1565, he tolerated all that clique until, during a scandalous investigation into military corruption, he discovered that Vladimir of Staritsa was preparing to seize Moscow while the Tsar was away in Livonia. A coup, that is. And only after that, in 1565,

Speaker A

that's when the mass repressions, pogroms, massacres, and so on and so forth began. Well, can you imagine, for 11 years he couldn't deal with these people. Although, you'd think, if the Terrible really had the power attributed to him, he would have

Speaker A

recovered and the very next day all those boyars would be on stakes. Here the party, damn it, also, damn it, spent about the same amount of time, interestingly enough. It just endured and endured. First, disruptive behavior , then underground activities, then

Speaker A

appeals to the non-party crowd, right there at the May Day demonstration. Then all these Ryutin platforms, where it was stated in plain text that they needed to kill, and all of this was endured and endured. I also like how

Speaker A

they always talk about Ryutin, as if it were the youth or students, that they were dissatisfied. What youth? They were all, damn it, pushing forty or over forty.

Speaker A

They were youth, about the same age as me. Yes. And half of them were veterans, damn it, and the other half were shell-shocked and crazy.

Speaker A

Yes. Well, actually, again, after that stunt by Zinoviev and Kamenev, where they essentially ratted out their comrades-in-arms, I think, for example, the SRs would have just shot them, most likely, or hanged them. Well, the SRs didn't mess around, right? Those who

Speaker A

gave up plans like that, you can't even imagine what kind of democracy it was, if they managed to keep their high-ranking positions after that.

Speaker A

And with all that, how long they put up with it. And they apologized once, twice—every time they were caught doing something, they apologized. Sorry .

Speaker A

Yes, sorry, we won't do it again. Yes, just like after Trotsky, saying the devil made them do it, that they got caught up with him, and they don't even know why they ran to him.

Speaker A

Well, this brings us to the question of whether we had a dictatorship of Lenin first, and then a dictatorship of Stalin. It didn't exist.

Speaker A

It didn't, indeed. It didn't exist even formally. And it certainly didn't exist in essence.

Speaker A

There wasn't even a physical possibility to set up any kind of dictatorship. We, I mean, we...

Speaker A

had one dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or rather, later the working class, when the proletariat as a class ceased to be.

Speaker A

The peasants were slowly starting to turn into agricultural workers by then. Exactly. Back in those years.

Speaker A

Well, I think we've covered everything. Wonderful. Yes, we talked a bit, I think we brought some clarity, or maybe , just maybe, we got a bit more confused, who knows. That happens too, unfortunately, but if we did cause any

Speaker A

confusion, we'll clear it up, yes. Thank you. Yes, thanks for a great conversation, yes.

Speaker A

And we will definitely continue about Solzhenitsyn next time, when, I hope, incoming circumstances like Trotsky won't bother us anymore. And you too.

Speaker A

Thank you everyone. Bye.

Topics:TrotskyismMenshevismBolsheviksRussian Social Democratic Labour PartyLeninRussian RevolutionProletariatPeasantryPermanent RevolutionSoviet History

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