I don’t think Lenin would have liquidated the party to the point that it became powerless to push back against the growing power of the bureaucracy, which I think is one reason why the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. I think Stalin did a lot of good actually, but liquidating (mostly kill, but sometimes just expel, sure) the majority of party members serving in positions of authority was pretty bad, both morally and in terms of the long term health of socialism in the USSR; and not something I think Lenin would have done. I think Lenin would have ended the NEP and collectivized agriculture at some point, but not in the manner or timescale that Stalin did (I think Lenin would have listened to Bukharin on those issues). Of course, that said Lenin and Bukharin probably don’t industrialize fast enough to stop the Nazis in WWII (imo the best argument in favor of Stalin) so idk.
This is my hot take and it's about as close as I'll veer to an anti-communist position but I'm on the soft end of believing that the USSR faced off against so many problems internally and externally that it probably wasn't going to survive in the long run.
You can call me a determinist or accuse me of taking Simone Weil too seriously (although I arrived at this position before I came into contact with Weil's thought, for whatever that's worth) but I just don't really see how the USSR could have sustained itself while also overcoming the obstacles that were in its way because each obstacle required a certain response and that response would have major consequences for the future of the USSR which would bring about new obstacles that would (arguably) inevitably become more intractable and in order to overcome them it had to make major compromises or to completely reverse course on certain things (which would either have either required immense foresight and political will to achieve or the opportunity to reverse/change course was already foreclosed upon by previously made choices).
I don't engage with this sort of speculative thinking very much because it's unbecoming of a materialist but you have problems like the need to centralise and modernise agriculture in the USSR vs the need to liquidate the kulaks vs the need to prevent the famine, as an example.
Imo you maybe get to pick two of those three options. But if you don't liquidate the kulaks then you risk counter-revolution from below, so you have to do that and you have to do that ASAP.
But if you do liquidate the kulaks then the people who are, at that point, the largest force for organising agricultural production is also taken off the board and you need to redevelop a new structure for organising agricultural production and as much as kulaks were selfish scumbags, they had a vested interest in their little fiefdoms being as productive as possible in order to profit as much as possible. This is where I hit the limits of my knowledge (and I'm not sure if there's any research out there on this) but I suspect that they held the best knowledge on farming practices for their local areas at the time (aside from the weird orthodox superstitions where crops wouldn't be planted or harvested prior to certain religious observances). When you take out the kulaks, you need to reorganise agriculture and you run the risk of things becoming anarchic and you lose the positive conservative forces that had stabilised agriculture up until that point (for better or worse) because now everyone is suddenly contributing their two cents on what should or should not be done and you have to find the right people with the right ideas and put them into leadership positions with the hopes that not only their ideas are right for the conditions but that they'll somehow thrive as a leader in their community. And you're probably coordinating all this via sporadic telegrams from the Central Committee to Secretary Kosior who is then issuing directions to party cadre who are doing their best to implement these policies while administering tracts of land the size of France using goddamn bicycles.
It's a pretty cursed situation to be in and it's almost destined to be a comedy of errors until the bugs get ironed out.
But if you coopt the kulaks and use them as the force for modernising agriculture then you give them a lot of additional power which risks them using that against your revolution (and they would have) except with extra political and economic clout that you afforded them then they would have been much more likely to at least critically undermine the entire revolution (and it would have) if not to overthrow it entirely but also then you face the backlash from disaffected masses of the low peasants who you promised better conditions to after the revolution and all yet you've done is to provide the kulaks with better whips and so you are likely going to cause a counter-revolution from that angle as well (and it would have).
The same can be said for the NEP men, the political strife from within the party both in the early days and in the twilight of the USSR, the purges, the rapid industrialisation, the need for heavy industry vs the demands for dispensing treats, and of course WWII amongst plenty of other problems.
It was like expecting the party to thread a series of needles but all in one go with no do-overs. At some point you're going to miss, whether it's by the force of bad luck, bad information, a bad call, malicious actors, or the necessity to course correct in the here and now to continue forward in the present which has the unintended consequence of fucking things up (potentially irreparably) later on etc.
I'm glad that I won't ever find myself at the helm to face that sort of situation. Fuck that.
This is an awesome analysis and I agree 100%. I’ve thought to myself before, it’s like the Soviets were playing a video game on Expert mode without ever having played the game before. They had to face impossible problem after impossible problem and I think they did well given the challenges they faced. I do take solace in the fact that for the first few centuries of capitalism, there were all sorts of failed revolutions. Changing the world is an incredibly slow process that is faced with both successes and defeats.
While I might be critical of someone like Stalin, I generally don’t find myself judgmental about a lot of the things he gets criticized for (except for the Purges, I think that was an own goal and not helpful and not something I just say in hindsight). There were so many problems they had to face, I know I would have fared a lot worse in those situations.
I don’t think Lenin would have liquidated the party to the point that it became powerless to push back against the growing power of the bureaucracy, which I think is one reason why the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. I think Stalin did a lot of good actually, but liquidating (mostly kill, but sometimes just expel, sure) the majority of party members serving in positions of authority was pretty bad, both morally and in terms of the long term health of socialism in the USSR; and not something I think Lenin would have done. I think Lenin would have ended the NEP and collectivized agriculture at some point, but not in the manner or timescale that Stalin did (I think Lenin would have listened to Bukharin on those issues). Of course, that said Lenin and Bukharin probably don’t industrialize fast enough to stop the Nazis in WWII (imo the best argument in favor of Stalin) so idk.
This is my hot take and it's about as close as I'll veer to an anti-communist position but I'm on the soft end of believing that the USSR faced off against so many problems internally and externally that it probably wasn't going to survive in the long run.
You can call me a determinist or accuse me of taking Simone Weil too seriously (although I arrived at this position before I came into contact with Weil's thought, for whatever that's worth) but I just don't really see how the USSR could have sustained itself while also overcoming the obstacles that were in its way because each obstacle required a certain response and that response would have major consequences for the future of the USSR which would bring about new obstacles that would (arguably) inevitably become more intractable and in order to overcome them it had to make major compromises or to completely reverse course on certain things (which would either have either required immense foresight and political will to achieve or the opportunity to reverse/change course was already foreclosed upon by previously made choices).
I don't engage with this sort of speculative thinking very much because it's unbecoming of a materialist but you have problems like the need to centralise and modernise agriculture in the USSR vs the need to liquidate the kulaks vs the need to prevent the famine, as an example.
Imo you maybe get to pick two of those three options. But if you don't liquidate the kulaks then you risk counter-revolution from below, so you have to do that and you have to do that ASAP.
But if you do liquidate the kulaks then the people who are, at that point, the largest force for organising agricultural production is also taken off the board and you need to redevelop a new structure for organising agricultural production and as much as kulaks were selfish scumbags, they had a vested interest in their little fiefdoms being as productive as possible in order to profit as much as possible. This is where I hit the limits of my knowledge (and I'm not sure if there's any research out there on this) but I suspect that they held the best knowledge on farming practices for their local areas at the time (aside from the weird orthodox superstitions where crops wouldn't be planted or harvested prior to certain religious observances). When you take out the kulaks, you need to reorganise agriculture and you run the risk of things becoming anarchic and you lose the positive conservative forces that had stabilised agriculture up until that point (for better or worse) because now everyone is suddenly contributing their two cents on what should or should not be done and you have to find the right people with the right ideas and put them into leadership positions with the hopes that not only their ideas are right for the conditions but that they'll somehow thrive as a leader in their community. And you're probably coordinating all this via sporadic telegrams from the Central Committee to Secretary Kosior who is then issuing directions to party cadre who are doing their best to implement these policies while administering tracts of land the size of France using goddamn bicycles.
It's a pretty cursed situation to be in and it's almost destined to be a comedy of errors until the bugs get ironed out.
But if you coopt the kulaks and use them as the force for modernising agriculture then you give them a lot of additional power which risks them using that against your revolution (and they would have) except with extra political and economic clout that you afforded them then they would have been much more likely to at least critically undermine the entire revolution (and it would have) if not to overthrow it entirely but also then you face the backlash from disaffected masses of the low peasants who you promised better conditions to after the revolution and all yet you've done is to provide the kulaks with better whips and so you are likely going to cause a counter-revolution from that angle as well (and it would have).
The same can be said for the NEP men, the political strife from within the party both in the early days and in the twilight of the USSR, the purges, the rapid industrialisation, the need for heavy industry vs the demands for dispensing treats, and of course WWII amongst plenty of other problems.
It was like expecting the party to thread a series of needles but all in one go with no do-overs. At some point you're going to miss, whether it's by the force of bad luck, bad information, a bad call, malicious actors, or the necessity to course correct in the here and now to continue forward in the present which has the unintended consequence of fucking things up (potentially irreparably) later on etc.
I'm glad that I won't ever find myself at the helm to face that sort of situation. Fuck that.
This is an awesome analysis and I agree 100%. I’ve thought to myself before, it’s like the Soviets were playing a video game on Expert mode without ever having played the game before. They had to face impossible problem after impossible problem and I think they did well given the challenges they faced. I do take solace in the fact that for the first few centuries of capitalism, there were all sorts of failed revolutions. Changing the world is an incredibly slow process that is faced with both successes and defeats.
While I might be critical of someone like Stalin, I generally don’t find myself judgmental about a lot of the things he gets criticized for (except for the Purges, I think that was an own goal and not helpful and not something I just say in hindsight). There were so many problems they had to face, I know I would have fared a lot worse in those situations.