World News

3315 readers

111 users here now

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml

sovietsnake@lemmygrad.ml

ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml

ComradePupIvy@lemmygrad.ml

Zyuganov warns of revolution due to faltering Russian economy (archive.ph)

submitted 2 weeks ago by fire86743@lemmygrad.ml to c/worldnews@lemmygrad.ml

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Conselheiro@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And this is probably also what Zyuganov is thinking.

Then he should've said any of that. He's the leader of the CP, not a twitter user limited by character count.

For the simple question of what he should've said, he shouldn't have framed the 1917 revolution to solve these problems in the negative. It doesn't take too much in rhetoric skills to denounce the issues, but side with the people rather than the government. Though again I'm willing to believe that this is could be a translation and legal issue.

In fact, I found the speech transcript and read it through machine translation. And he seems to be doing exactly what I said with this "Victory Program".

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/243204.html

Here's a much longer report on that Victory Program.

https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/243374.html

I took issue with one particular line, as it betrays a "democratic socialist" kind of revisionism. Of course, this is the part Western Media will pick up on, rather than the rest of the party program, as it screams "Russia falls tomorrow". However, it is to its core a demsoc program.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

Interesting context. I'm very curious now what the exact translation is. Machine translation that I get says:

The president recently gathered the government. I have not seen such a sad and so alarming meeting for a long time. He had to hear from you, from representatives of the party of power, why we are again falling into the financial and industrial crisis. But I never heard a clear answer to this question. And we have repeatedly warned you: with this course, the economy will inevitably fail. The first quarter is marked by an obvious fall. And no serious specialist today does not believe that at least symbolic growth will be achieved at least at the end of the year. Everyone states stagflation and recession. If you do not urgently take the necessary financial and economic measures, if you do not adjust the course in principle, then in the autumn we can expect what happened in February 1917.

We have no right to repeat it! Therefore, it is necessary to take into account historical experience and make long-term urgent decisions.

Like this part in particular, I wonder what it's like in Russian, in context:

We have no right to repeat it!

Because in English, that could have multiple meanings. It could mean things like: "it is illegal to repeat it", "it is a failing on our part to repeat it"/"it is wrong of us to allow ourselves to reach a point where we would have to repeat it", "it is wrong of us to repeat it". The last one would be the most revolution-adverse as a matter of fundamentally opposing revolution even if necessary, but is that actually the meaning?

I tried prompting an LLM about it, which I'm aware is not to be taken at face value, but as perhaps a corroborative piece of information. Noting that I did not state my view on it, only asked for its interpretation of that line in the context of the previous paragraph, and that I first asked it to translate that part of the speech, which it did with similar results to Google Translate. The interpretation from it:

the best interpretation is that the speaker is making an urgent, almost desperate appeal to the conscience of the decision-makers. They are arguing that the stakes are so high, and the historical lesson so clear, that failing to act decisively would be a grave and inexcusable dereliction of duty, a moral crime against the nation they are meant to serve. It's a powerful attempt to shame or compel the authorities into action by framing their choice in stark, historical, and ethical terms.

This more or less syncs up with how I'm inclined to take it in context. That he's not trying to say "revolution bad", but rather, "it would be shameful if the Russian people have to repeat it because you do such a poor job of ruling."

If anyone who is bilingual in Russian and English can weigh in though, that would be nice.