I just discovered that Radical Reviewer believes the western account of the 1932 Ukranian famine, and I could not be more disappointed.

  • volkvulture [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    In no way is Arshinov’s biased effusive Makhno fanfic infallible or completely credible

    Lucy Parsons lived during the time and visited Russia in this period. She published this scathing dismissal of Goldman in 1922 a year before Arshinov's book was published... making Parsons' writing even more of a primary source lmfao

    • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oh she visited Russia, that's fine, she was probably very well versed in life there then.

      "What i use = actual primary infallible sources with very credible information

      What you use = Anticommunist slander"

      • volkvulture [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        yes, she was... at least far more than the elitist radlib Goldman was

        "It is to be regretted that Emma could not have visited Sparrow’s Hill, and seen there the thousands of children, boys and girls, robust and rugged, rosy-cheeked and beautiful in their remarkable collective exercise. Or have spent days at Pushkino, or some of the many hundreds of similar communities throughout Russia, where the summer homes of the bourgeoisie are turned into children’s colonies. At one of these homes I saw between forty and fifty of these little tots just after their bath, romping and frollicking, laughing and full of glee, a sight that would please the heart of almost any man or woman. Too bad that Miss Goldman could not have visited the Moscow River within the environs of the city, where on summer days anyone could see the naked boys and girls at play enjoying a plunge in the water. She should have met the children that Mary Heaton Vorse had temporarily adopted while here. Little Demitrus and his friends would have been other laughing children to her credit. It is a great loss to think that she did not visit Children’s Town. There the babes are learning, as they do in play, the advantage of association and solidarity. It is possible that Miss Goldman might have learnt, even from the little ones, that rules of order, discipline and self-government are the essentials of a socialised community. Miss Goldman would mention in the same breath men of such splendid character and attributes as Lunaraharsky and Gorky, comparing them with that crooked little politician, Judge Linsay, who conducted the juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado, and who only by the efforts of the officials of the Western Federation of Miners was prevented from sending little boys, who for delinquency were dealt with in his court, to work in the beet fields of Colorado, there to take the place of Russian emigrants who seasonally migrated from industrial centres for that work."

        sounds like Arshninov and Emma just have a touch of Russophobia lol, which isn't really all that surprising considering

        again, I notice you don't quote from any of these works, and still aren't bringing much to bear here other than personal sideways remarks & temperamental deflection

        • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
          1·
          4 years ago

          Emma Goldman the Russophobe russian.

          "What i use = actual primary infallible sources with very credible information

          What you use = Anticommunist slander"

          • volkvulture [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            she was born in an Orthdox Jewish family in modern day Lithuania, but keep deflecting lmfao

                  • volkvulture [none/use name]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    she is listed as a Jewish-Lithuanian most places I read about her. She was taught within Prussian education system to hate Russia and admits in her anti-USSR screed that "My Russian at this time was halting"

                    and I was more speaking about the Ukrainian Arshinov's hint of Russophobia in his writings, recall that I said I detected a HINT. Also Emma Goldman similarly takes quite a dismissive attitude toward Bolsheviks despite her also admitting they fed orphaned children & did much in the way toward righting the wrongs of the Tsarist period.

                    Goldman literally admits to growing up hating Russia and Russian culture "Under the discipline of a Germanschool in Königsberg and the Prussian attitude toward everything Russian, I had grown up in the atmosphere of hatred to that country. I dreaded especially the terrible Nihilists who had killed Tsar Alexander II, so good and kind, as I had been taught. St. Petersburg was to me an evil thing"

                    Though she admits to growing spiritually in later years, and through all her talks & history as an activist appears to take stands for these nations from a Western vantage, Emma just can't seem to hide her elitism & underhanded dismissal of USSR & Russian attempts to socially & economically & politically address its own issues

                    "I began to suspect that the reason for much of the evil was also within Russia, not only outside of it.But then, I argued, police officials and detectives graft everywhere. That is the common disease ofthe breed. In Russia, where scarcity of food and three years of starvation must needs turn mostpeople into grafters, theft is inevitable."

                    "After showing us about, Zorin invited us to the Smolny dining room. The meal consisted of goodsoup, meat and potatoes, bread and tea--rather a good meal in starving Russia, I thought. "

                    I suspect she never really outgrew some of her kneejerk Russophobia from her childhood

                    what's important today is how these historiographies are used to demonize USSR/communism generally and Russia specifically.

                    Makhno is often lifted up by Ukrainian nationalist historians and his name invoked in their desperate attempts to demonize Soviet history.