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Found this on /r/neoliberal. They are now in alternate history copium mode (i.imgur.com)
submitted 6 years ago by weshallovercum@hexbear.net to c/the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net
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[–] CatherineTheSoSo@hexbear.net 0 points 6 years ago (3 children)

Yeah, but Stalin also purged a whole bunch of competent military people and I'm not convinced most of them were some sort of traitors.

[–] JoeySteel@hexbear.net 0 points 6 years ago* (last edited 6 years ago) (2 children)

Na the CPSU ruthlessly purged the government and armed forces of their fifth column. It's wild to me that European country after European country collapsed in the face of Nazi aggression due to Nazi sympathisers creating a fifth column in France/Czechoslovakia/Poland/Norway and the Netherlands fell overnight in some cases. France lasted 6 weeks before the Vichy government were collaborating.

But somehow the Soviets wouldn't have had a fifth column susceptible to Nazism despite that form of fascism basically originating from the White Guardists and Black Hundreds who lynched jews and hated Communism and a lot of those White Guardists would still be in the Soviet military 20 years later on the eve of ww2

But nah, lol, the Moscow trials were somehow "subjects of torture" despite the fact the trials of 37 and 38 knew they would face a firing squad (after all of the 36 trial were executed) so why would they lie?

We know now that it took US military 18 months of torture to get some reliable information from a prisoner of war. Yet apparently the Soviets can torture a confession spanning hundreds of pages, admitting to some things they were charged with and denying others without leaving a physical mark on them as they were trials open to the worlds press and diplomats. All within a few days or weeks. Not to mention the Ambassador of the US, Joseph Davies (trained as a lawyer), would write extensively on the trials being legitimate after witnessing them with his own eyes (after hearing the rumours of them being show trials.)

I’m not convinced most of them were some sort of traitors.

The grandson of an officer who was executed in the purge and always had believed he was innocent read the transcript of his Grandfathers in 2000 as he was a Colonel in the Russian army and could be trusted to read it in the reading room. Which was classified under Kruschev and remained so until 2018 to the public. His Grandfather was linked to tukhachevsky. After reading theTranscript he came away convinced Tukhachevksy, his Grandfather and the rest of the officers were guilty.

“My grandfather and Tukhachevsky were friends. And grandfather was on the judicial panel that judged both Tukhachevsky and Eideman. My interest in this case became even stronger after the well-known publications of procuror Viktorov, who wrote that Iakov Alksnis was very active at the trial, harrassed the accused. . . . But in the trial transcript everything was just the opposite. Grandfather only asked two or three questions during the entire trial. But the strangest thing is the behavior of the accused. Newspaper accounts claim that all the defendants denied their guilt completely. But according to the transcript they fully admitted their guilt. I realize that an admission of guilt itself can be the result of torture. But in the transcript it was something else entirely: a huge amount of detail, long dialogues, accusations of one another, a mass of precision. It’s simply impossible to stage-manage something like this. . . . I know nothing about the nature of the conspiracy. But of the fact that there really did exist a conspiracy within the Red Army and that Tukhachevsky participated in it I am completely convinced today.”

–Colonel Alksnis (Elementy, 2000)

My conviction that Tukhachevsky and his colleagues were simply forced to incriminate themselves under torture was seriously shaken, because judging by the transcript, they gave their testimonies quite sincerely. After reviewing the transcript of the process, I came to the conclusion that there was still a “military conspiracy”, or something like that, in the Red Army.

https://diplomaticpost.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/15/the-moscow-trials-colonel-viktor-alksnis-read-the-tukhachevsky-transcript-and-came-away-convinced-he-was-guilty/

[–] Rev@hexbear.net 0 points 6 years ago* (last edited 6 years ago) (1 children)

Ah yes Alksnis who sat on the tribunal that sentenced Tukhachevsky. So basically a traitor judging a traitor according to you. Traitors all the way down, right? Forget that the ones purged were actually the ones who built up the Red Army to become the formidable fighting force that it was, going into the war. Forget that Voroshilov himself (a commited Stalin toady) vehemently criticized the purges as being instrumental in causing the horrific loses on the Soviet side during the Winter War. Forget that literally none of the high profile names mentioned were ever White Guardists in their military career, having immediately sided with the Bolsheviks after the revolution, nay were even highly decorated heroes of the Civil War who upheld the fledgling Soviet Republic literally at a great personal risk to their lives when it was at its most vulnerable. That these people would become turncoats at the apex of their personal power, prestige and security in a state at the apex of its power and prosperity at that point in its history is nothing short of ridiculous. The mental gymnastics Stalinists have to go through in order to justify wanton censorship, sabotage of whole branches of science, fostering a culture of irresponsibility and subservience, the anti-Marxist cult of personality, the destruction of the vibrant post revolutionary art culture (hosting some of the most progressive artistic movements), the regression in social attitudes re gender, bodily autonomy and sexuality, etc. are mind boggling.

[–] JoeySteel@hexbear.net 1 points 6 years ago* (last edited 6 years ago)

Traitors all the way down, right?

No one ever said a lot of the Communists that were shot over that period were brazen counter-revolutionaries that one day woke up and marched into the camp of counter-revolution.

By holding onto bad ideas, bad theory and terrible analysis they walked step by slow step into open counter-revolution.

Trotsky (and his followers) for instance did not believe at the time that the Soviet Union would last a day versus German Imperialism. This defeatism that coloured their outlook meant "given that the USSR will fall in a war we must make peace at any cost and Stalins path to confrontation will result in absolute disaster".

Can we, however, expect that the Soviet Union will come out of the coming great war without defeat? To this frankly posed question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic, and military sense, imperialism in incomparably more strong. If it is not paralyzed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the regime which issued from the October revolution.

Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed (1936)

This is what Trotskys followers believed. That the USSR would fall.

The Moscow Trials were largely about the fact Trotsky and Tukhachevsky wanting to carve off a huge rump of the Soviet Union (Ukraine) to the Hitlerites for assistance in coming to power. They believed the USSR was going to be defeated anyway. Better to present the land Hitler had demanded in MeinKampf for Lebensraum (the Ukraine for its Oil fields).

This is why even in 1939 Trotsky was writing about the "independence of Ukraine" despite the independence forces being bourgeois nationalists and fascists who would only in a few short years setup their own SS divisions and collaborate with Nazis under Nazi occupation. While the pro Communist part of the population was pro-Stalin

Leon Trotsky, Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm

In the 1980s both Arch J Getty and (trotskyite) historian Pierre Broue discovered that a bloc was created in the USSR which Trotsky had denied his entire life

“[The bloc] is organized. In it have entered the Zinovievites, the Sten-Lominadze group and the Trotskyites (former ‘[capitulators]’). The group of Safar. Tarkhkan has not formally entered yet – they stand on too extreme a position; they will enter in a very short time. – The declaration of Z. and K. concerning their enormous mistake in ’27 was made during negotiations with our people concerning the bloc, immediately before the exile of Z and K.” - Sedov to his father Trotsky

Pierre Broue, The “Bloc” of the Oppositions against Stalin in the USSR in 1932, https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html

“It is clear, then, that Trotsky did have a clandestine organization inside the USSR in this period and that he maintained communication with it. It is equally clear that a united oppositional bloc was formed in 1932”

(Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938)

“Stalin must be killed!” –Leon Sedov

“Stalin… is crushing the country … Inplacable hatred is accumulating around him, and a terrible vengeance hangs over his head… An assassination attempt? It is possible that this regime… will ultimately suffer individual terror. One can add that it would be contrary to the laws of history that the gangsters in power not be subject to acts of vengeance…” –Leon Trotsky

About the same time American historian Arch Getty was discovering that Trotsky had secretly sent letters to at least Radek, Sokol’nikov, Preobrazhenskii, Kollontai, and Litvinov. The first three had been Trotskyites before publicly recanting their views. Getty did not find the letters – only the certified mail receipts for them in the Trotsky Harvard Archive. Getty realized this meant that the Trotsky Archive has been ‘purged.’ These letters had been removed. Other materials had undoubtedly been purged as well.

Therefore it has been well established by scholars by the mid-1980s that a Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc did in fact exist and that it was formed in 1932 and that Zinoviev and Kamenev were personally involved. Sedov also foresaw the entry into the group of Safarov, who in any case had a group of his own.

The reason the Soviet state came down on them like a ton of bricks was because they had moved into open killings like they did when they Assassinated Kirov.