just saw it and was obliged to share
Laos: Have the monarch's son join your communist group and elect him as president :phomvihane-banter: :gigachad:
It's funnier if you imagine it as a once American-backed leader using a filter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHh17dTSoN4
Marx, on Nap I and Nap III: “first time a tragedy, second time a farce.”
Puyi: “I became emperor and abdicated three times.”
I guess they kept him partly for the lols
Nicholas abdicated. He and his family were executed simply because the bolsheviks did not want them to fall into the custody of the white army and used as a propaganda chess piece. They had planned a public trial for Nicholas in the capitol but found that transferring the family was too risky.
the bolsheviks did not want them to fall into the custody of the white army
No such army was riding to the rescue. It was because the Czech legion was approaching the area by train, and the Czechs had no interest in a hostage rescue. All they wanted was to GTFO of Russia. Which they did, eventually, by Vladivostok.
The Bolshevik execution of the tsar, the family, and the servants was a very rushed and botched thing.
They wanted a public trial like with the French monarch, that would have possibly only targeted Nicholas and Alexandra, but the civil war was still happening and the Czechoslovak Legion was closing in on Yekaterinburg. Nobody really is 100% sure what happened but the consensus is that somebody on the central committee maybe Lenin, contacted the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg and ordered the execution because it was too risky to try and smuggle the family out, and they didn't want them falling into the hands of the white army as a "live banner" since most of the country was still rural peasantry who had a personal religious and political reverence for the tsar and his family, even if they preferred the economic program of the Communists. The Bolsheviks if i recall denied executing the Tsar and his family until the mid 20s because they rightly understood that it was bad PR among the religious conservative elements of the peasants as well as internationally. Contrary to how people people online talk about it today, a lot of the world still had a very bourgeois-inspired morality and they get disturbed at the killing of women, children and servants even if they were part of a parasitic reactionary royal entourage. If you kill a handful of people with names and faces, it's a tragedy. If you kill a million it's a statistic. The human mind is often bad at judging the real impact of events like that. They see the killing of the royal children and the servants as visceral and gross even if, in the larger civil war it was merely a drop in an ocean. If you doubt this ask why the soviets spent so many years denying it happened. It wasn't the fog of the civil war either. The central committee was aware almost as soon as it happened and the knowledge circulated among them. I think frankly the Soviet approach to the situation was the least effective of all 3. But it also wasn't the first option they wanted either. It was a very "shoot from the hip" approach that was done during a chaotic moment in a civil war. Not trying to start a struggle session over it, that's just my take.
the Czechoslovak Legion was closing in on Yekaterinburg
The Czechs weren't pulling off a hostage rescue, they were trying to escape the war by going to the other end of Russia by train. (Which they did - a fascinating story in and of itself.) But the Bolsheviks could see nothing else. It's a good example of putting yourself in your enemy's shoes and assuming the enemy would do the worst possible thing you can think of, instead of actually thinking about what your enemy would realistically do. It's a recurring bad habit in some overly politically consumed people. The name for the phenomenon is "psychological projection".
The Czechoslovak Legion would align with American interventionists, which kinda makes the Bolshevik concerns warranted. Already Masaryk president of the national council had declared the legion to be part of the French army. Entente powers had already taken to financing them. The Soviets agreed to let them get to Vladivostok in March if they disarmed, but in May the legion refuted the terms of the agreement and revolted. Once this happened they had further direct support from the Entente and Americans, as well as support for Menshevik governments. French officers directly aiding them. They had overthrown the Bolsheviks in Vladivostok in June 1918. They did not bumble their way across the Trans-Siberian Railway, they captured cities actively. July 6th they declared Vladivostok an Allied Protectorate. The Tsar is killed on the 17th of that month.
There is no "psychological projection" is seeing people who broke a treaty and handed cities over to your enemy and foreign powers as your enemies. There is nothing "overly politically consumed" in seeing a force that is actively killing your soldiers and taking territory as a hostile force. They DID take Yekaterinburg.
It seems your timeline is messed up. They had gotten to Vladivostok already, and had begun to go by train west across Russia which is how they reach Yekaterinburg. Based on another comment you made it seems you are confusing the initial reaching of Vladivostok and conflating it with the one in 1920. Those are different events. Don't accuse others of projection when you got the series of events wrong
The Czechoslovak Legion would align with American interventionists
U kidding me? All they wanted was to get the hell out of Russia. That's why they fought their way over the entirety of Russia, all the way to Vladivostok.
The Soviets agreed to let them get to Vladivostok in March if they disarmed, but in May the legion refuted the terms of the agreement and revolted.
They would have been slaughtered if they had laid down their arms.
They were used as a tool of the Entente powers until they wised up. The Allied governments were willing to fight to the last Czech.
They got to Vladivostok already. Again you are flat out crushing the timeline down for an argument. They fucking captured the city in question at the end of June 1918. They then fought their way back the _other way, capturing Yekaterinburg. They acted as an allied army. July 6th when they declared Vladivostok an Allied protectorate, Wilson ordered US intervention and called for 12,000 Japanese troops to land there to support them, which Japan would.
The head of the National Council Masaryk said this on July 27th, 10 days after the Tsar was killed (though not knowing that had occurred)
The Czecho-Slovak Army is one of the allied armies, and it is as much under the orders of the Versailles War Council as the French or American Army. No doubt the Czecho-Slovak boys in Russia are anxious to avoid participation in a possible civil war in Russia, but they realize at the same time that by staying where they are they may be able to render far greater services, both to Russia and the Allied cause, than if they were transported to France. They are at the orders of the Supreme War Council of the Allies.
That makes them an enemy of the Bolsheviks, and thus an ally to the white armies and interventionists. There is no debating that fact. The legion arrived a week after the execution, thus if they'd taken the city like they did, the custody of the Tsar would be in the hands of forces "as much under the orders of the Versailles War Council as the French or American Army". That vindicates the Bolshevik view right there. within 10 days of the execution the army you are saying was not a white army and "all they wanted was to get the hell out of russia" was declared an army of the Entente.
So which is it? They are a tool of the Entente or they had no motives or reason to serve the interests of the Whites and Entente?
You keep repeating the same shit right out of an r/historymemes post about how badass they are, not bothering know the timeline of events or reality going on. You want your romantic tale, but that tale runs up against the Romanovs being in a city about to fall to enemies of the Bolsheviks. Calling that objective fact "psychological projection" is ludicrous. You cannot earnestly say
U kidding me? All they wanted was to get the hell out of Russia. in response to them fighting alongside American Intervention when that's literally what they did. they went back west to fight the Bolsheviks. That's not a theory, that's not presumption, that's historical fact. They had already gotten Vladivostok BEFORE they took Yekaterinburg
June 13th the white russian provisional Siberian government in Omsk is formed, with Stanislav Čeček commander of the first division in the Legion giving this order
...Our detachment – a vanguard of Allied Forces, our only goal – to rebuild anti-Germany front in Russia in collaboration with Russians and our allies..
Over a month prior to the Tsar being executed. So open collaborators with the White Army seized every major city along the Trans-Siberian railway and then marched on Yekaterinburg, and you seriously wanna say it was "psychological projection" to think that that might end up with the Tsar back in the hands of forces aligned with the white armies?
Most of them assuredly wanted to get home more than anything, but that does not change the very real fact of what they did and what their actions assisted. The Whites took back territory and set up Allied protectorates and provisional governments in Siberia due to their actions, actions which they followed up by marching west from Vladivostok in order to secure the whites Russia.
As for disarmament, their own National Council told them to follow orders, this came after they had fights with Hungarian loyalists in their ranks and several Legionaries got arrested. The Legion chose to break their orders, not only that, they took Vladivostok anyways and didn't leave. If that was all they wanted, they could have left, they stayed and killed more Bolsheviks and established Allied administrations.
Good on them for eventually deciding to go back and GTFO, as well as handing Kolchak over to the Red Armies, but that came after the 1919 Red Army counteroffensive, in 1920. You can empathize with them and find them cool all you want, but that doesn't make the Bolsheviks looking at objective reality "psychological projection"
@kristina Is there anything you wanna add or correct from a Czechoslovak position?
I'd have to talk to my grandma but I'm pretty sure they were reactionary volunteers that bailed out when shit got tight. I'll call her in a bit. I do remember reading about a handful of the commanders siding with the Nazis when they invaded and were put ontrial
I did find that some defected to the soviets/joined the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in Russia, which was, well what the name implies, the Czech communists based in Russia. I know the writer Jaroslav Hašek was one such figure.
I'm sure some of them were good but a lot of the leaders don't inspire confidence. Grandma said as much
But if not the communists, who else would do us a favor and execute Chris Matthews in the middle of Central Park?
I'll never understand people who oppose the French revolution; or at least I'll never understand people who think going to war with poor foreign countries (and all the horrors that entails for the people living there) for the sake of 'bringing democracy' would oppose the revolting French (although if their argument is that the French are still revolting I wouldn't blame them).
40,000 people dead = Oh no, a tragedy! Democracy was a mistake!
1,000,000 people dead, many displaced into countries that despise them = We have done our duty and given those people salvation,
nothanks needed (also get those brown people away from me, ew)In case it's not obvious, I really hate libs
The clumsy translations of untranslatable Chinese is a dead giveaway.
Eh, Henry Puyi wasn't the monarch and hadn't been for decades. He was overthrown in 1919 when he was still a child, and China was a republic thereafter. Puyi was a weak man who did whatever people told him to do. He didn't escape in time when the Soviets invaded Manchuria but would have been turned over even if he had made it to Japan. Mao gave him the job of street sweeper in front of the Forbidden Palace, his former home. Just in case anyone doesn't know, socially street sweeper is the lowest job in China. It's just below street vendor and white monkey English teacher. So it was Mao rubbing it in, and Puyi accepted it because he was just that kind of man.
was a weak man
i would say maybe weak leader but I wouldn't call someone a "weak man" for "doing what people told him to" when all of those people had guns and/or a willingness to do a murder on you
And yet refuting that was one of the main points of his rehabilitation.
Written testimony from certain selected survivors, who had defied the Japanese and Manchukuo authorities and paid for their resistance through torture, was now read out. Each ended with a call for retribution. 'The Japanese and Chinese traitors must repay their blood debt. Avenge our murdered families!'
The intended lesson was this: Pu Yi had invariably excused his past actions on the grounds that there was no way he could have opposed the Japanese. Now here were humble Manchurian workers, farmers, housewives and children who _had dared defy the Japanese and Manchukuo oppressors.
From The Last Emperor by Edward Behr.
And yet shithead calling me a Japanese collaborator defender literally posited in his post that Puyi was merely a figurehead since 1919
Which way western man, figurehead whose life is dependent on appeasing those actually in power, or actual monarch capable of resistance if only he weren't a "weak man"
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I am not defending shithead here. That statement is fucked and should be removed.
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Those are not the only options. He didn't have to be an actual monarch to be capable of resistance. That's the point of the above quote, people with no power and no hope of succeeding fought back, so why couldn't he? Puppet or not, useless or not, he chose to continue being a puppet for these monsters and he himself earnestly viewed himself as being a coward and collaborator. He still went along with them, he still provided a figurehead, whether refusal would have changed anything or not, he still chose to do so, which is something Pu Yu himself viewed as wrong and criminal
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Eh, Henry Puyi wasn’t the monarch and hadn’t been for decades. He was overthrown in 1919 when he was still a child
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You literally posit that he was a figurehead from birth
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go fuck yourself
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You left out the middle of the story where he accepted the position of puppet ruler of Manchukuo from the Japanese and was complicit in their administration, even if he was only doing what advisors tell him.
Protip: bring this up to stock bros.
"Look you can say a lot of things about Mao, but forcing the emperor of China to work as a gardener was pretty based."
You have to say "based" and you have to specifically call him "the emperor of China" - that's probably the most important part of the script because it makes you more relatable to these turds. Anyway, drop that line in any thread about hedge funds fucking over retail investors and it will get attention. I doubt I've converted anyone to communism, but I have witnessed a lot of "holy shit, maybe Mao wasn't all bad" sort of moments. I know getting libs to admit Mao was cool isn't exactly praxis, but it makes me feel good so I am going to keep doing it.
He voiced his support for the Communists and worked as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. The role brought Puyi a degree of happiness he had never known as an emperor, though he was notably clumsy.
From 1963 onward, Puyi regularly gave press conferences praising life in the People's Republic of China, and foreign diplomats often sought him out, curious to meet the famous "Last Emperor" of China.
In an interview with Behr, Li Wenda told him that Puyi was a very clumsy man who "invariably forgot to close doors behind him, forgot to flush the toilet, forgot to turn the tap off after washing his hands, had a genius for creating an instant, disorderly mess around him". Puyi had been so used to having his needs catered to that he never entirely learned how to function on his own.
He tried very hard to be modest and humble, always being the last person to board a bus, which meant that on one occasion he missed the ride, mistaking the bus conductor for a passenger. In restaurants he would tell waitresses, "You should not be serving me. I should be serving you."
During this period, Puyi was known for his kindness, and once after he accidentally knocked down an elderly lady with his bicycle, he visited her every day in the hospital to bring her flowers to make amends until she was released.
Yes, he was, Funny enough, that was the only time in his entire life he wasn't being used as a puppet by someone or some nation.
Sounds this whole "re-education" thing is really not that bad lel
Dennis Skinner on what to do with the royal family https://youtu.be/27_uWz069XM (1:32)
