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The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union- historical narrative discussion thread (1 Viewer)

timschochet

timschochet

Footballguy
A few years back I started historical narrative discussion threads for World War II and the American Civil War, and a lot of people very much enjoyed those, learning and discussing the history. (I also started a history of Israel thread which I unfortunately was unable to finish due to a lack of narrative references to rely on.Hopefully someday I can return to it.) in my own thread, several months back, I started a narrative discussion of the Russian Revolution, but again I had to stop as I ran out of sources. I have now resolved that problem, and I intend to repost that discussion here, and then continue it, hopefully, all the way through the history of the Soviet Union. It will be a monumental task, because unlike the first two threads I mentioned I really need to summarize a lot of the events, so almost all of the writing will be my own. Not going to be very much copying and pasting here (except from my own posts in the other thread) if I can help it. 

But it should be a lot of fun, and also I believe this discussion is vital. This year, 2017, marks the 100 year anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The USSR was established that year and lasted until 1990, when Russia essentially became the state it is today. The coming of the revolution, and all of the years in between, are absolutely crucial to any understanding of the situation we face today with Russia and Vladimir Putin. 

Russia was a rich country in resources that was politically backwards with most of it's wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny percentage of people. A small group of revolutionaries took control and attempted to install Marxism. The attempt quickly failed and the horror of a totalitarian regime soon emerged, which thanks to a number of odd circumstances eventually threatened the freedom of the entire world. The regime should have died in 1953 when the man who formed it died, but his creation was so powerful that somehow it lasted another 37 years without him, and created an empire which was so prominent that, ever since it collapsed in 1990, the inheritors of the Russian state have desired to gain it back. 

So let's tell the story from the beginning...

 
A little background

Modern Russian history begins right around the time our Civil War ended, with the freedom of the serfs (slaves) by Tsar Alexander III. Prior to Alexander, Russian history is dominated by 3 major figures, all of them Tsars:

Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) The first of the Romanov Tsars, who transformed "the Russias" into one large state with Moscow as it's capital.

Peter the Great (1672-1725) Attempted to change Russia from an eastern country to a western one, heavily influenced by France and the Enlightenment. 

Catherine the Great (1729-1796) Continued Peter's westernized reforms is what is known as Russia's "Golden age." 

These three figures continue to have an important influence on Russian history even today. During their reigns, Russia expanded, shrunk, expanded again. It was under Catherine that Russia absorbed the Ukraine and Poland, and also millions of Jews (whom she restricted to Poland and Western Ukraine, known as the "Pale.")

 
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Of the 3 I listed in the above post, Peter the Great is probably the most important for our purposes, because the dilemma created by his actions still influences every aspect of Russia's relationship with the world today. 

Russia is caught between Asia and Europe, but it's people are much more Asian than they are European, in outlook and philosophy of life. Yet Peter, who was a murderous savage of a man, chose to attempt to turn his country into a western European state. Neither he nor the people he governed ever truly understood the ideas of the Enlightenment (though they accepted a rather medieval form of Christianity); they attempted to mimic the practices and lifestyle of the west (much as the Japanese did during the Meiji Revolution) while discarding as absurd nonsense notions like individual liberty and the sanctity of human life. The Russians have never understood our obsession with these ideas. 

 
A little background II

Beyond the 3 giants of Russian history which I mentioned (and which I will be returning to later), there is a pivotal event in Russian history in the 19th century that affected everything that happened since: Napoleon's invasion.

You can read about it in War and Peace. You can hear about it in the War of 1812 Overture. But essentially, Napoleon Bonaparte, having conquered most of Europe for France, decided to take on Russia. He led his Grande Armee on a straight line to Moscow, destroying everything in it's path. The Russian troops abandoned Moscow and then surrounded it. Between that and the cold weather, Napoleon was forced to flee. His line of supply was too thin and his troops were cut off. (Over 100 years later, the Germans would attempt to rectify this problem by dividing their troops and attack north, center, and south at the same time. But as a result they were stopped outside of Moscow. It really isn't that easy to invade Russia...)

 
In retrospect, Napoleon's essential problem in Moscow was the same problem Hitler faced at Stalingrad: line of supply. Russia is just one frigging large country with a whole lot of people. All of Russia's military tactics, in terms of defense, come down to one simple principle: retreat, retreat, retreat, let your enemy get in too deep, and then surround them and cut them off. This strategy might not work in smaller countries, but for Russia it's perfect. It's as if you were playing chess but you had endless squares in the back of your side of the board.  The drawback is that all of those retreats are going to create a LOT of human misery. In both 1812 and 1941-42, western Russia was completely savaged and torn apart. (And I have to add that if I were either Ukrainian or Polish, I would not be very fond of this strategy!) 

 
When we begin our story, (1861), it's important to note that the Russian empire included all of Poland, all of the Ukraine, Georgia, all of Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, Alaska, northern Mongolia, and northern Iran. All of this area and more was governed by a feudal, backward dynasty in Moscow.

Russia in 1861

All of the many lands and countries that I just described under Russian rule in 1861, far from being an asset, represented one of it's 3 main problems, both then and now. The problems Russia faced in 1861 (and now) are:

1. Too many different peoples

2. Economic conditions

3. East vs. West

Too many different peoples

Poles, Ukranians, Finns, White Russians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Magyars, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Jews, Afghans, Mongolians, Gypsys. Am I forgetting anyone? The majority of all of these races and cultures lived in 1861 in the country known as "Mother Russia". Almost none of them were happy about it. I can't think of another country in modern history that attempted to govern over this many disparate cultures while the government was made up of one race: Russians. You might have to go back to the Roman empire. Austria-Hungary had one-third of the peoples that Russia had, and they could barely govern. So how was Russia supposed to? The answer then, as it is now, that the only way to do so was through a draconian dictatorship. The Tsars and their ministers were absolutely brutal in their suppression of any independence movements, cultural or ethnic advances, liberal thought of any kind. Had they been challenged about this, they would have argued, with some justification, that any let up of absolute suppression would have led to anarchy and a threat to their survival. The drawback, of course, was that the suppression itself also led to anarchy and chaos as we shall see.

With only a few variations, neither the Soviet government of the 20th century nor the current Russian government under Putin has significantly strayed from this theme of suppressing minorities in order to avoid chaos.

 
Economic Conditions

With so many lands, rich in agriculture (particularly the Ukraine), minerals and (though they didn't know it in 1861) oil, Russia should have been one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, and in overall terms it always has been. However, it's agricultural wealth and feudal system prevented it from embracing the industrial revolution, because the aristocracy was so reluctant to give up what it had. So the result was, whereas in the rest of Europe by the 1860s there was a growing middle class thanks to all of the new technologies, there was almost none in Russia. 1 percent of the population was incredibly wealthy, highly educated, western in thought (many of them even spoke French rather than Russian), 99% of the population was poor and illiterate. There was almost no in between. There were almost no factories, no major railroad, no modern industry to speak of. The Tsar, Alexander II, recognize these weaknesses and was eager to change things. But to do so he knew that he would have to impose radical changes to Russian society, principally to the peasants.

The peasants, known as serfs, were slaves to the land. They were born into it, unable to leave where they lived (except when they conscripted into the Tsar's vast army.) They were, as I wrote, illiterate, superstitious, and practiced a Christianity somewhat similar to the way Muslims in Yemen and other poor middle eastern countries practice Islam- the local priest (Russian Orthodox church) was the sole interpreter of the Bible. The Tsar was seen as the Great Father, a semi-divine figure worshipped second only to Jesus Christ, who looked after all of the peasantry.

Alexander II by all accounts was a well meaning man who sought to bring Russia into the modern world. But as we shall see, it was done too quickly and resulted in disaster both for him and his country.

 
With regard to the Tsar's divinity, I'm not of aware of a historical analogy anywhere else in the history of Christianity. Many Catholic countries, and the Greek Orthodox Church, added saints that were either important figures in the history of their respective nations, or were actual gods worshipped by pagans in those nations prior to converting to Christianity (this still takes place in parts of Latin America.) But even though pre-Enlightenment Europe believed in the "divine right of Kings", those Kings were not given divinity themselves; they acted with the approval of God, an important distinction. Only in Russia was the emperor (Tsar) treated as himself divine among Christian states- and again this is an element of Asian culture, since in this the Tsar had much more in common with the Emperors of China and Japan than with the royalty of western and central Europe.

 
Roughly 156 years?

Xi Jinping gave DJT a 1,000 year history of China & North Korea in ten minutes.

You gonna finish up before TRMS comes on?

 
BobbyLayne said:
Roughly 156 years?

Xi Jinping gave DJT a 1,000 year history of China & North Korea in ten minutes.

You gonna finish up before TRMS comes on?
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It's all prelude before 1917 (that being said, it's a LOT of prelude).

This thread is gonna take a while, though.

 
Nice.  I look forward to this.  I was lucky to have studied International Relations in Europe in 88-89, right as the Soviet Union began to fall.  I was also fortunate to spend some time in Moscow and Leningrad, even making a personal trip to the American Embassy (and being followed all the way back to the hotel, not so discretely either).

I have some great memories of my time in Russia.  It was so surreal.  I saw some of the most bizarre sights I've ever seen in my life - things that are still so vivid in my mind to this day.  The long lines - outdoors in -20 degree weather - and what were they waiting for?  Ice cream.  The saddest sight was the WWII memorial.  The names on the walls - millions upon millions of names.  It went on and on in underground caverns for what seemed like miles.  Just staggering.  And then there was the challenge we gave each other to find a man older than 60.  Old women everywhere - no old men.  It was unbelievable.  The supermarket we went into in the middle of Moscow - all the shelves empty save for a canned food item here and there.  I remember the meat section - totally disgusting stuff.  I remember a giant pig's head alone in a huge empty showcase.  ???

The people were great.  The young Russian kids would follow the tours and try to talk with us on the sly.  There were state monitors everywhere.  We met a group of college age kids who seemed cool - told us to meet them at the WWII memorial that night for some trading.  We met them there and then decided to go to their apartment.  It was so surreal - a concrete jungle of ugly apartment buildings that all looked exactly the same - and went on for miles and miles.  Their apartments had the bare essentials, a bed, coach, kitchen, and real cheap furniture.  In the bedroom the kid had painted a huge dollar bill on the wall.  They loved America.  They wanted to know everything about it.  They listened to us like little children hearing a fairy tale, smiling the whole time.  Thennnnnnn they brought out the vodka.  Oh boy.  I never saw anyone drink vodka straight up like that.  Bottle after bottle.  They were drinking it like water.  We all got absolutely plastered beyond belief.  I vaguely remember a lot of singing, dancing, throwing up.... At one point I went outside to get some air and when I came back in everyone had changed clothes - and we had one girl in our group and they had all guys.   :lol:   it was hysterical.  All I can remember is one of the guys was named Garig.  We all called him Louuuuuuuuuu.  He had no idea what it was about but he loved it.  I brought about 4 pairs of jeans with me and I came back with an incredible haul - a Soviet flag, an incredible collection of Soviet military pins going back to WWII, a very cool military coat and hat from Afghanistan.

So many other stories to tell.  Just an amazing time and place in history.  The people and the culture were both amazing.  Fell in love with the place actually.

 
Oh - another bizarre story.  My mom told me to pick her up a Byzantine cross.  I had no idea what it was and asked everyone I met where I could get one.  Someone told me to go to the Danilov Monestary.  So one night I ventured off on my own to find this place.  Navigating the subway was difficult because of the different alphabet, but I somehow managed to find the place.  It's in the middle of nowhere, it's dark as hell, cold as hell.... To this day I can't believe I would do such a thing at 20 years old all by myself.  So I find my way into the Monestary and I hear all this noise coming from one area.  I go over there and walk right into a funeral / wake type thing.  There were hundreds of people in there and 4 dead bodies lying in state.  It was sooooo creepy and bizarre - like a movie or something.  People wailing and chanting, walking around from station to station.  I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on but I couldn't.  And even though I stuck out like a sore thumb it was as if I was invisible.  Nobody seemed to give me the time of day.  I tried asking a few priests for a Byzantine cross and they had no clue what I was talking about.  Every few years I'll have a nightmare about that experience.  Probably have one tonight.   :(

 
timschochet said:
No. But I plan on it. I am very much a Russophile. 
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When you go make sure to see the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.  Unbelievable place.

Hey - any good books you can recommend?  Nothing too technical - looking for a good page turner perhaps on WWII or the Revolution.  Thanks. 

 
Higgs said:
When you go make sure to see the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.  Unbelievable place.

Hey - any good books you can recommend?  Nothing too technical - looking for a good page turner perhaps on WWII or the Revolution.  Thanks. 
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My favorite non-fiction narrative of the Revolution remains Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K Massie, which is available on Kindle. It focuses on the Tsar and his family and Rasputin, but there is plenty about Stolypin, Lenin, Trotsky and Kerensky as well. 

A good short summary of the entire Soviet period is Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991 by Orlando Figes. It touches on all the highlights, and at a certain point I'll probably rely on it pretty heavily for this narrative. 

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Technically I think he has it right there. I don't believe Ukraine was a nation before then, it is also a region, ie 'the Ukraine'. In modern usage people use the term for the region when they mean the nation.
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I honestly don't know what is correct, but since this is a historical discussion, and not one but EVERY source I have refers to it as "the Ukraine" for this time period, I will continue to use that term in this thread.

 
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East vs. West

I touched on this earlier. The Russian dilemma has always been: are they European or Asian? This question has been a central theme among Russian writers, artists, and intellectuals.

This is what I wrote on this subject several months ago:

For the last 20 minutes I've been trying to decide on a way to write down how important this question is to Russian history without sounding bigoted toward Asian (eastern) values, and without suggesting they are inferior to European (western) values. I can't really do it. I don't want to demean Asia, but let's just say that there's a cruelty to Russian history that becomes more understandable when you think of the Russians as an Asian people trapped in Europe. And that's all I'll say on this for now.

I've had more time to ponder this now. In my original thread, SaintsInDome2006 responded with a very good argument. Here it is:

Nobody has ever said that the Russians are "Asians", they are clearly Slav or Rus/Nordic, but do they look east in perspective and in political values? Putin and his boyars are struggling with that today. When Muscovy finally broke free from the Mongols it was by being as tough and cruel as they were, and then conquering like they were conquered, from the Ukraine, to Poland, to the Finns, to the Kazachs and the Tartars, and east to where there were native peoples and Asians, Manchurians and Mongols themselves. Today the Russian kleptocrats are unapologetically authoritarians and "occupiers" as they themselves use those terms. Meanwhile the people at one point very much wanted what we have seen in the Ukraine and in eastern Europe. There was a moment in time in the 1990's and the early 2000's when we could have helped them. Now we have a revanchist government.

I think this is extremely well written and largely true. And, in regard to my own earlier comments, I'll just add that, in retrospect, it is not bigoted to suggest that Asian thinking gives less emphasis to individuality than do modern western values, and this is connected to both the cruelty and authoritarianism of the various Russian regimes.

 
The General said:
Have we gotten to the Ivan Drago years?
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We're about 120 years away right now. Drago was born in the mid-60s, began fighting (amateur) around 1984. He was the perfect example of Soviet science, the evolution of the human species. Everything he hit, he destroyed. 

 
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Higgs said:
When you go make sure to see the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.  Unbelievable place.

Hey - any good books you can recommend?  Nothing too technical - looking for a good page turner perhaps on WWII or the Revolution.  Thanks. 
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If you like WWII stuff "the rise and fall of the third reich" is essential reading. 

 
Alexander II and the Narodniks

Although the Russians supposedly believed that the emperor (tsar, short for "Caesar") was the absolute ruler, the truth is that ever since Catherine the Great the Tsar's power had been eroding (as had all the kings in Europe.) Though Russia had no parliament (in Russian, "Duma") and would have shunned the very notion in 1861, the Tsar's councilors typically made all important decisions. Therefore from a historical perspective, it's hard to determine exactly how much Alexander II had to do with the earth shattering decisions that were made on his behalf during his time as Tsar. There is no question that he was influenced by the west, including the United States, and sought to bring Russia into the modern world. In order to accomplish this goal, he freed the serfs, liberalized commerce and movement for minorities (including the Jews), invited in foreign investment, spent millions of rubles on infrastructure, including railroads and new factories. With the sole exception of Japan right around the same time, no feudal society ever attempted to become modern as rapidly as the Russia of Alexander II.

The results were mixed. A new middle class sprung out of nowhere, educated in the new universities that were sprouting in all of the major cities. The peasants, given the right to move and profit from a portion of their own produce, created greater wealth than ever before. A new Russian culture was created which produced particular genius in two areas, music and literature, which has ever since enriched the entire world. Trade expanded and an era of relative external peace ensued- somewhat. (Finland and Bulgaria were given freedom, and Alaska was sold to the United States. Pesky Poland had to be crushed, as usual.) A new, fairer system of justice was created.

BUT- the very creation of the middle class created unrest and upheaval and a challenge to the autocracy. The Narodniks were the first of these protest movements- they noted that many of the serfs, upon being freed, were sold into a different sort of slavery either on the land or the factories owned by the bourgeoisie, who were replacing the landowners as the villains of Russian society. For the Narodniks, Alexander II's reforms opened up a window to a better world- they called for greater reforms: mainly a Duma, and freedom of speech. They were wary of capitalism and attracted to Karl Marx's writings, though it would not be correct to call them Communists or Social Revolutionaries- that came later. Mostly, the Narodniks were loud intellectual types who wrote long articles in newspapers and called for protest and revolt, which went completely unheeded by the masses (most of whom still could not read the newspapers anyhow.)

They were ignored by the general Russian public, but not by the Tsar or his ministers. As much as Alexander believed in reform, he was an autocratic leader who was convinced of his own divine rule. Anyone who dared challenge such rule needed to be crushed. The Tsar's Third Section (secret police, precursor to the Okhrana) arrested thousands and sent them packing to Siberia. (Always the destination of choice for anyone who challenges the Russian government.)

Rather than eliminate the protest, these actions caused even more, and terrorists emerged, bent on assassination. Their main target: Alexander II.

 
Regarding the sale of Alaska- modern Russians, including Vladimir Putin, regard this as one of the worst decisions in Russian history, but historians suggest otherwise: following the Crimean War, Alaska would have been difficult for Russia to defend, so Alexander II's ministers were trying to get something out of the bargain before they lost it anyway.

I have to add that this purchase took place under Andrew Johnson's watch, and since everybody is so quick to label Johnson as our worst President ever (well, before 2017 that is), here is a viable accomplishment that he can hang his hat on.

 
timschochet said:
Regarding the sale of Alaska- modern Russians, including Vladimir Putin, regard this as one of the worst decisions in Russian history, but historians suggest otherwise: following the Crimean War, Alaska would have been difficult for Russia to defend, so Alexander II's ministers were trying to get something out of the bargain before they lost it anyway.

I have to add that this purchase took place under Andrew Johnson's watch, and since everybody is so quick to label Johnson as our worst President ever (well, before 2017 that is), here is a viable accomplishment that he can hang his hat on.
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Uh that was all Seward. And there's no indication that Russians gave two ####s about it until the Putin-Dugin agitprop machine started drilling on it.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Uh that was all Seward. And there's no indication that Russians gave two ####s about it until the Putin-Dugin agitprop machine started drilling on it.
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You can't just say "that was all Seward." Because as you know very well that when events happen we credit the President at the time. 

As to your second point, Putin has certainly made a few comments about Alaska, but so did Stalin and Khrushchev- both of them said that the Soviet Union never would have made such a stupid deal. 

 
timschochet said:
You can't just say "that was all Seward." Because as you know very well that when events happen we credit the President at the time. 
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Some presidents are terrible. Johnson is one.

timschochet said:
As to your second point, Putin has certainly made a few comments about Alaska, but so did Stalin and Khrushchev- both of them said that the Soviet Union never would have made such a stupid deal. 
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Putin is the one who has pushed it out into the national Russian press - and internationally. Putin has turned it into a propaganda point. Stalin and Kruschev did not do that.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Some presidents are terrible. Johnson is one.

Putin is the one who has pushed it out into the national Russian press - and internationally. Putin has turned it into a propaganda point. Stalin and Kruschev did not do that.
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That's true, good point. 

I mentioned the Alaska deal in passing but it's not really a significant part of this narrative. It did not create any tensions between America and Russia, nor did Teddy Roosevelt's handling the Russo-Japanese war. 

The tension between us and Russia began in 1918, when Woodrow Wilson sent troops into Russia to help the Whites in their civil war (we'll get to it). The Russians have never quite forgiven us for that, despite our tremendous aid to Stalin during World War II. 

 
timschochet said:
The tension between us and Russia began in 1918, when Woodrow Wilson sent troops into Russia to help the Whites in their civil war (we'll get to it). The Russians have never quite forgiven us for that, despite our tremendous aid to Stalin during World War II. 
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I think that's fair - Spain and Mexico and Philippines and others have gripes about things that most Americans don't even know about.

However it's unconnected to the Alaska issue.

Might be worth noting that Teddy mediated the Russo-Japanese War. We saved the Tsar from overthrow that year.

Putin's complaint with us has to do with WW2, Cold War and post.

 
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