Russia invades Ukraine

[zompist]

Some pages back Travis cited this guy, Paul Mason, and he's written a lot since. It's worth reading. It really is possible to be a socialist and anti-fascist!

[Raphael]

I find it interesting that Torco never seems to get the idea that the smaller countries near Russia might distrust and dislike Russia for the same reason the smaller countries near the USA distrust and dislike the USA.

Edit: Besides, if all political regimes are the same, what's the point of being politically for or against the one or other regime? What was the point of voting "No" in 1988? ("Yes, the Pinochet regime was bad, but so is every other possible regime...")

[Travis B.]

It should be noted that eastern European countries still remember the interventions by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, along with Russia's frozen conflicts after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Remember that Russia is, and the Soviet Union was, an imperialist state. Their eagerness to join NATO has not been about American imperialism but rather eastern European fear of Russian imperialism. Even with American imperialism in mind, eastern Europeans have far more to fear from Russian imperialism than from American imperialism. And to dismiss eastern Europeans' joining NATO as "American imperialism" is to treat eastern Europeans as lacking agency of their own.

[Moose-tache]

I feel like, if we can figure out how the Russian Federation has earned so much good will from leftists, we can reverse engineer it and get the Republican Party to support Communism for the Gipper.

[Torco]

huuuh... like, again, did I say "ZZZ SLAVA ROSSIYA ONWARD WITH GLORIOUS DENAZIFICATION ZZZ" without realizing it?

like, just to clarify: I don't *like* that russia is invading ukraine. the fact that I don't participate in the pro-western cheer-our-troops deluge doesn't mean I'm participating in the pro-russian cheer-our-troops deluge... okay, I'm kind of participating in both as a consumer, as well as other sources (the indians are covering the whole thing remarkably neutrally), but what I want out of this is for it to end, not for one side to achieve absolute victory (this is, incidentally, the anti-war position. it is not anti-war to be anti-the-enemy-and-for-our-glorious-troops): and the fact that there's a bunch of nazi battallions and regiments which seem likely to go "NO WE KEEP FIGHTING" after kyiv signs a treaty with moscow makes that especially unlikely. I don't want russia to make a hiroshima out of kiev, either.

And no, ukraine's nazi problem is not some invention of moscow's propaganda apparatus: there's plenty of imperial-sphere sources from before 2020 exploring it including VICE, NBC, Reuters, TWP... are those in the pocket of the kremlin's propa apparatus?

also like... "an insult to Europe" ? I don't feel any distinct duty to be patriotic towards europe. Yes, my country and yours *also* have a fascist problem, but not in the sense I'm talking about here: first, to quote hwatting from the other thread, there's a matter of distances: lepen and trump are fash, yes, but neither the US or France have, afaik, significant risk of having nazi armed groups rise up against the government: ukraine is under that risk, and that is a damned shame not least because it means whatever the outcome of the formal war between states is, other than absolute ukranian victory (which, let's face it, looks unlikely), fighting will likely continue in the manner in which it had been carried out across the donbass since 2014.

I feel like, if we can figure out how the Russian Federation has earned so much good will from leftists, we can reverse engineer it and get the Republican Party to support Communism for the Gipper.

Ha! we can only hope

I find it interesting that Torco never seems to get the idea that the smaller countries near Russia might distrust and dislike Russia for the same reason the smaller countries near the USA distrust and dislike the USA.

but I do! Russia's only second to the us in its waging of aggressive wars, and unlike the us, it invades territories bordering it and inhabited by people of its own ethnic composition, as opposed to distant countries with very different ethnic makeups: it's madness not to be scared of russian aggression if you're a latvian, swede, or moldovan. However, is it not also madness not to be scared of NATO agression if you're a russian? consider the amount of nukes and military bases surrounding its borders, and the nato advances. Like, this is geopolytical jockeying for position, like most wars are.

And to dismiss eastern Europeans' joining NATO as "American imperialism" is to treat eastern Europeans as lacking agency of their own.

truth. but also, to dismiss russian security concerns as "putin is crazy and invaded for no reason" is mindless team sports. the reality is there's good reasons for eastern europe to want to join nato, and there's good reasons for russians to want not to be surrounded by nato countries full of nukes pointing at moscow.

[Travis B.]

huuuh... like, again, did I say "ZZZ SLAVA ROSSIYA ONWARD WITH GLORIOUS DENAZIFICATION ZZZ" without realizing it?

like, just to clarify: I don't *like* that russia is invading ukraine. the fact that I don't participate in the pro-western cheer-our-troops deluge doesn't mean I'm participating in the pro-russian cheer-our-troops deluge.

The thing is that when there is oppression, to choose to be neutral, or to even simply to seek peace over justice, is to favor the oppressor. And in this case the oppressor is Russia, as it is Russia which is conducting a war of aggression against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Sure, Ukraine is supported by the West, but this does not make Ukraine's side in the war any less just.

[Travis B.]

And no, ukraine's nazi problem is not some invention of moscow's propaganda apparatus: there's plenty of imperial-sphere sources from before 2020

Ukraine's limited smattering of Nazis, who have managed to accrue very little actual political power, is nothing compared to the sheer numbers of fascists found in places like the United States and France, as has been pointed out.

[zompist]

did I say "ZZZ SLAVA ROSSIYA"

Of course not. It's SLAVA ROSSII (слава России).

but what I want out of this is for it to end, not for one side to achieve absolute victory (this is, incidentally, the anti-war position. it is not anti-war to be anti-the-enemy-and-for-our-glorious-troops):

If being "anti-war" means allowing Russia to invade, destroy, and remake Ukraine as it likes, then there is no difference between "anti-war" and "ZZZ SLAVA ROSSII". Pacifism here means Russia wins, Ukraine loses, Ukrainians all go into reeducation camps, and Putin's thugs run Ukraine like they run Donetsk and Luhansk.

I know, you think there is some principled difference. You look at destroyed Mariupol and think "Gosh, that's a bummer." But disapproving of Ukrainians fighting for their homeland is showing Putin that Mariupol is the way forward. This is how the guy has operated for 20 years: take a slice of territory here and there, try out bigger and bigger provocations. As none of this has gone wrong for him so far, he keeps going. "Anti-war" does not restrict Putin in any way, and actually encourages him, to the extent that it damps down resistance to fascism.

Putin will not "end the war" because a few tankies put out a manifesto gently suggesting that he should. Putin will end the war if and only if Ukrainians resist— that is, fight a war— to the point where he can't keep fighting. This point may be surprisingly close.

(On a theoretical level— you could reply that thinking everything is 1937-39 is a mistake, and has justified too many stupid wars. And you'd be right about those stupid wars. But not everything is, like, a colonial insurgency. This is a fascist invasion and fascists have to be opposed. If you're really trying to follow the Comintern's instructions from 1939, I'd remind you that they reversed in 1941, because of a fascist invasion. I guess it takes invading a country they actually care about to change leftists' minds? Are there any of those today, or does Putin get a free pass forever? Boy, he'd better not attack Cuba.)

and the fact that there's a bunch of nazi battallions and regiments which seem likely to go "NO WE KEEP FIGHTING" after kyiv signs a treaty with moscow makes that especially unlikely.

This assumes that the treaty somehow returns everyone to February 1. It's up to the Ukrainians whether they would accept such a deal. But I'd suggest to you that, amazing and unreal as it sounds, the war has not made Ukrainians look at Russia with eyes of love. Putin has made Ukrainians hate him. Not the 2% of Nazis that terrorize your dreams. Ordinary Ukrainians. Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Hell, the "citizens" of Donetsk and Luhansk, the people who would be particular screwed by a return to February 1, hate Putin by now: he destroyed all the jobs except for the militia, and used that as cannon fodder.

And no, ukraine's nazi problem is not some invention of moscow's propaganda apparatus:

I didn't say Ukraine has no Nazis. You are the one who focuses on a verifiably small number of Ukrainian fascists in order to excuse an entire fucking fascist invasion. There's fascists all over, in far greater numbers, and you choose to deplore only Ukrainian ones. Yes, this looks an awful lot like SLAVA ROSSII whose talking point is that Ukraine has to be destroyed in order to "deNazify" it.

However, is it not also madness not to be scared of NATO agression if you're a russian? consider the amount of nukes and military bases surrounding its borders, and the nato advances.

NATO was a smokescreen. Whoever occupies the Kremlin has faced "nukes and military bases surrounding its borders" for the last 70 years. Not once has NATO attacked a Warsaw Pact member or attacked Russia. Ukraine was not in NATO and its membership was held up indefinitely.

Nations wanted to join NATO and not Russia after the USSR collapsed because, as you recognize, countries next to Russia are rightfully scared of Russia. If Putin had the slightest real fear of NATO, he stabbed himself in the foot, because he demonstrated again why neighboring countries should be afraid of it. Putin did an amazing job revitalizing NATO and making it effective and attractive to Europe in the 21st century. If he wanted the opposite— NATO to fade away— then he could have, you know, not started a major war.

I recommend Kamil Geleev's threads on Russia, how it got where it is, how Putin rules, what the Russian public is hearing, how Donetsk/Luhansk are "governed", etc.

[Moose-tache]

Since tensions are hot, let me throw some gasoline on. Here’s an article by Scott Dunn titled “How Can We Not Blame the West for the War in Ukraine?” (tl;dr: we can’t not). I apologize for the wall of text; I’m not angry, but rather delighted to find an article like this that can genuinely amuse me.

Scott makes a claim I’ve not seen before. The war in Ukraine is the West’s fault because we have failed to build more fuel-free passive houses like the Amory House in Colorado. Since the demonstration that this type of house was possible in 1984, every non-passive house has been a deliberate policy choice to keep burning natural gas. And since we keep buying natural gas, the war is our fault.

“Passive house” is a tricky term. Every article you’ll find about it asks with a smarmy grin “These houses are better. Why aren’t we building more of them?” without actually answering that question. Eventually I discovered that in terms of architecture, a passive house is just a house with lots of insulation, large, south-facing windows, and a heat exchanger. Passive houses require less energy, but not no energy (the ones that require no energy, like the Amory House, are just regular houses inhabited by people who don’t mind temperature fluctuations). As it happens, we’re already building lots of those. Scott mentions chilly northern European winters, but doesn’t mention that due to better buildings and better policy, Denmark’s per capita natural gas consumption has dropped by 58% in ten years. We’re steadily winning the war against traditional housing techniques, even though we don’t call our well-insulated homes “passive.”

The other half of the argument is a little harder to explain. I think Scott is working on the assumption that any war involving petro states and the US is, by definition, America's fault, but there's no receipts so I don't know. He seems to imply that the US wants war with Russia if it’s spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense instead of building more green energy infrastructure, and admittedly “Great Satan Want Spicy Rock Yum Yum” is one of those basic facts of the universe. I assume Scott is saying that because we maintain dependence on Russian natural gas, we are making tension between suppliers and consumers inevitable, but he doesn’t actually explain what the connection is between buying Russian natural gas and having to defend your apartment block from Russian tanks. Caveat emptor, I guess.

Here’s the thing. Does the West suck? Yes. Is most stuff it’s fault? Probably, I mean at least to some extent. There’s always a certain percentage of any crisis we can lay at the feet of the people who are in charge and also have a history of being ripe assholes. But sometimes the complex network of causality shows a stronger influence by other parties. We can lay a non-zero amount of blame on the Dutch for Apartheid, since they’re the ones who established a globe-spanning slave empire. But it would be a bad idea to blame them more than the Afrikaaners, who actually designed and implemented it. The reason it would be a bad idea is not because the Dutch are smol beens who shouldn’t ever be critisized, but because blaming them lets the real culprit go free. We can’t address a problem if the actor with the greatest share of the blame is treated as a leaf drifting in the wind.

Scott mentions the Iraq War, and I think this is actually a good example to use against him. In 2003, the left decidedly stood against the war, without supporting Saddam Hussein. We didn’t have to pretend that Hussein was a good guy to insist that killing Iraqis was bad. In fact, for many of us it was a bitter pill to swallow, to petition the government to take a course of action that was guaranteed to leave him in power longer. It is a similarly bitter pill to accept that the US has bumbled its way into the side of a war that somehow isn’t the wrong side, but we have to accept it. There is virtually no moral gray area in this war, at least so long as Great Satan doesn’t start leveraging it to expand NATO or something. The context of the war was in large part built by a century of UK/US hegemony, but the invasion itself was never inevitable, and belongs antirely to Putin. Nothing about the geopolitical situation he found himself in justified military action.

[zompist]

“Passive house” is a tricky term. Every article you’ll find about it asks with a smarmy grin “These houses are better. Why aren’t we building more of them?” without actually answering that question. Eventually I discovered that in terms of architecture, a passive house is just a house with lots of insulation, large, south-facing windows, and a heat exchanger. Passive houses require less energy, but not no energy (the ones that require no energy, like the Amory House, are just regular houses inhabited by people who don’t mind temperature fluctuations). As it happens, we’re already building lots of those.

Curiously, I recently skimmed over an article that said that we could save some huge fraction of natural gas with more insulation. And I'm sure we totally could!

Once you start thinking along those lines, though... why stop there? Shouldn't we look at the car-centeredness of American city planning? The fact that we use most of our agricultural land for cows? The little matter that cryptocurrency has erased the entire energy gain from electric cars? For that matter, isolated houses, however passive, are way less energy-efficient than an apartment building.

There actually is a path to dealing with oil and climate change— much more than there was 15 years ago. But, well, it ain't exactly a winner in US politics— ask Al Gore or Jimmy Carter.

I agree with your analysis— I get very tired of the worldview where the only agent in the universe is the US.

[Moose-tache]

I get very tired of the worldview where the only agent in the universe is the US.

This whole thing has been a mind-fuck for the left, and I get it. We've developed the mentality that the US has to be the bad guy. For generations that's been a useful rule of thumb, so anyone who took it to an extreme was likely to still be right most of the time. Heck, it'll still be mostly true after the dust settles on the current war. But I can see, and feel, the agony some people have when they encounter facts about the war in Ukraine. It's like having to admit you were wrong to your vindictive ex in a crowded restaurant. It's a real oof.

Luckily, we can still look forward to the many, many ways in which the Biden Administration can still make things worse. And who knows? We might get some leaked documents showing that NATO was more complicit than we currently know, and then we can all go back to knowing exactly how to feel.

Also, since I never addressed the issue of Ukraine's far right-wing...
As an exercise, ask yourself how many far-right fundamentalist Muslims Gaza needs to have to justify a military response from the IDF. Let's only count the really pro-violencce ones, the ones who expressly believe that their interpretation of Islam allows them to pre-emptively kill Jews. What number of those people do we need to count in Gaza before it is OK for Israel to roll over Gaza with tanks, bombing its neighborhoods and causing wide-spread mortality among the population? If the number is "infinity," why does this same threshold not apply to Ukraine? Ukraine could have a shit ton of Nazis, hell even as many Nazis as (checks notes) every country in Europe other than Ukraine, and it still would not justify starting a war.

[Ares Land]

On the Nazi thing, I'd like to point out that not only did France come damn close to a fascist takeover, the far-right parties are funded by Russia and aided by Russian propaganda?

Judged on that evidence, I'd suggest that according to Putin, the 'Nazi problem' in Ukraine is that Ukraine has nowhere near enough Nazis.

This whole thing has been a mind-fuck for the left, and I get it. We've developed the mentality that the US has to be the bad guy. For generations that's been a useful rule of thumb, so anyone who took it to an extreme was likely to still be right most of the time. Heck, it'll still be mostly true after the dust settles on the current war. But I can see, and feel, the agony some people have when they encounter facts about the war in Ukraine. It's like having to admit you were wrong to your vindictive ex in a crowded restaurant. It's a real oof.

The problem is that the world has changed wildly in the past decades. Russia is a Western conservative's wet dream now, for starters. (Lots of manly manliness and practically no taxes on the rich, what's not to like?) Besides, Scott Dunn, and other besides may bring up the Iraq War, which is fine, except that there's not a single neocon left in Washington. The species is extinct, as far as I know. American conservatives are pro-Russia isolationists now.

[Raphael]

The problem is that the world has changed wildly in the past decades. Russia is a Western conservative's wet dream now, for starters. (Lots of manly manliness and practically no taxes on the rich, what's not to like?) Besides, Scott Dunn, and other besides may bring up the Iraq War, which is fine, except that there's not a single neocon left in Washington. The species is extinct, as far as I know. American conservatives are pro-Russia isolationists now.

What I find quite interesting from a historical perspective is this: In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia was the place that extremely reactionary conservative monarchists throughout Europe were looking to for inspiration, protection, and support. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union was place that supporters of the far left all over the world were looking to for inspiration, protection, and support. In the 21st century, Vladimir Putin's Russia has managed the seemingly impossible and pretty amazing trick of combining both of those roles. That hasn't been without minor problems - years ago, I read a report about Western extreme leftists working for Russian propaganda outlets who were pretty flustered when they were instructed to work together with Western extreme right-wingers working for Russian propaganda outlets - but generally, it seems to have worked well.

That said, I'd say right now the main question is how to keep all this from blowing up the world. All else pales compared to that.

[rotting bones]

Oh, nope. I'd rather say that the 1930s Soviet Union was a worse place to live, at least*1) if you were a farmer or herder (then still the vast majority of people) than any time in Tsarist Russia at least after the abolition of serfdom.

*1) Not talking about the bourgeoisie here, I assume for a Marxist they're supposed to do worse in a Communist system anyway.

IIRC peasants had no education and were whipped like animals if they misbehaved in Tsarist Russia. The Soviet Union eventually gave them machinery to improve production. The Soviet agricultural revolution was undeniably a disaster, but that's what you get if you suppress democratic decision-making.

As for Putin's Russia, I don't think it's fair to compare the 30's to a period when industrial development is complete. I'd compare today's Russia with the period before the dissolution of the Soviet Union when political rivalries hadn't yet caused food shortages (which continued into the Capitalist period).

I said it before, Capitalist countries achieved the transition to industrialisation with a lot less death and starvation than the USSR.

I don't think so. They did it by killing colonized peoples and stealing their resources.

Nations preach Capitalism after they have already finished developing by hook or by crook, and their poor people have become an electoral minority.

Don't get me wrong - I think that Tsarist Russia was a pretty oppressive and unequal country with a lot of problems, I just think that Leninism was a catastrophic (and vastly more oppressive) solution to those problems.

Tsarist Russia had the labor camps that the Soviets and North Korea are famous for.

It's a pity that we'll never know what Russia would have looked like if the Leninists hadn't taken over from socialists like the Mensheviks. who were ready to work in a democratic framework.

For the Mensheviks to have beaten the White army while under a Western economic embargo, and then Hitler, they might have had to centralize production too, causing many of the catastrophes associated with the Bolsheviks.

[Ares Land]

I don't think so. They did it by killing colonized peoples and stealing their resources.

I think I've mentioned this before, but this is wrong. Colonialism benefitted those people who were directly involved in it; it was a net loss for the colonizing countries.

Taking, for instance, France and Algeria. France paid more for Algerian resources than what could have been obtained on the open market -- prices was fixed -- and besides that Algerian settlers were subsidized by the French government.

The French people who benefitted were either the colonists who lived there, or those who did business with Algeria.

The rest of the country did not benefit from colonialism -- it actually took a loss.

---

More generally on the USSR: Tsarist Russia was a horrible tyranny. For that matter present day Russia is a fairly horrible autocracy. That doesn't make the Soviet Union any less of a tragedy!

[hwhatting]

Oh, nope. I'd rather say that the 1930s Soviet Union was a worse place to live, at least*1) if you were a farmer or herder (then still the vast majority of people) than any time in Tsarist Russia at least after the abolition of serfdom.

IIRC peasants had no education and were whipped like animals if they misbehaved in Tsarist Russia. The Soviet Union eventually gave them machinery to improve production. The Soviet agricultural revolution was undeniably a disaster, but that's what you get if you suppress democratic decision-making.

See, I was talking about specific time periods here - the time after the abolition of serfdom in Tsarist Russia vs. the 30s USSR. Read a bit about both periods and then tell me when was a worse time to be a farmer or herder in average.

I said it before, Capitalist countries achieved the transition to industrialisation with a lot less death and starvation than the USSR.

I don't think so. They did it by killing colonized peoples and stealing their resources.

I seem to have read similar analyses like Ares - colonialism sure was exploitative and good business to the elites who were involved in it, but mostly a drain overall on the colonising countries and didn't contribute much to industrialisation - at least the colonies acquired starting from ca 1800; it's rather that industrialisation made the giant Colonial Empires of the 19th century easier to conquer and maintain. Plus there were capitalist countries industrialising that had no or negligible colonial empires.

Nations preach Capitalism after they have already finished developing by hook or by crook, and their poor people have become an electoral minority.

That's such a general statement that it would neeed a very detailed discussion to test it - what exactly is the "Capitalism" that is being preached, who preaches it, what is meant by "finish developing"... unfortunately, I don't know when I'll have time for that discussion.

Tsarist Russia had the labor camps that the Soviets and North Korea are famous for.

Sure. But a much lower percentage of the population was in them than in Stalin's USSR, and Tsarist Russia didn't have the Totalitarian apparatus to make sure they were almost impossible to escape from. (Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Tsarist Russia was a paradise, I'm just saying it was horrible to a lesser degree.)

For the Mensheviks to have beaten the White army while under a Western economic embargo, and then Hitler, they might have had to centralize production too, causing many of the catastrophes associated with the Bolsheviks.

A scenario with the Mensheviks winning out would mean some fundamental changes to the time line, so it's not even sure that the Civil war would happen the way it did, and even less whether Hitler would have come along. The Bolsheviks were successful because the Kerensky government wasn't ready to quit the war, while most of the people were tired of the war. A lot of the following history would depend on how that plays out in this time line. But the Kerensky government was the partner of the allies in the war, so I doubt there would have been an embargo or foreign interventions against that government, even if we assume a mutiny by reactionary army forces leading to a Civil War. One can also imagine a three-sided Civil war with the Bolsheviks as the 3rd Party. Plus the Axis troops would have been involved. So a lot of things would be up in the air, and a lot of detaila would depend on what the victorious coalition at the end of the crisis would be.
I assume that the Axis still would have lost WW I, and it's probable that the peace would have been as vindictive as Versailles, so there would have been a revanchist Germany, but with Russia not being a pariah state, it wouldn't have needed to start the cooperation with the Reichswehr that laid some of the groundworks for the Hitler-Stalin alliance. Even if we assume Hitler seizes power as in our timeline, it's not clear that he would find a willing partner for the invasion of Poland (I assume some kind of Poland would be restored in this TL as well). So lots of things could go differently.
BTW, while some degree of central steering of production for a war effort is usual, a lot depends on how it is done and whether it's reversed during peace time. But Lenin made concessions during the NEP period only grudgingly, and the centralised model was re-introduced long before WW II.

[keenir]

Oh, nope. I'd rather say that the 1930s Soviet Union was a worse place to live, at least*1) if you were a farmer or herder (then still the vast majority of people) than any time in Tsarist Russia at least after the abolition of serfdom.

*1) Not talking about the bourgeoisie here, I assume for a Marxist they're supposed to do worse in a Communist system anyway.

IIRC peasants had no education and were whipped like animals if they misbehaved in Tsarist Russia. The Soviet Union eventually gave them machinery to improve production. The Soviet agricultural revolution was undeniably a disaster, but that's what you get if you suppress democratic decision-making.

I'm curious how democracy could have improved the agricultural revolution there. Also, are you referring to Lysenko's revolution in most things plant-related, or to another incident in Soviet history?

[hwhatting]

I'm curious how democracy could have improved the agricultural revolution there. Also, are you referring to Lysenko's revolution in most things plant-related, or to another incident in Soviet history?

I assume RB refers to the same things I've also been referring to in my posts - the fact that the Bolsheviks first redistributed land from the big landholders to the farmers (which was popular), but then destroyed it all by forcing those farmers into collective farms, killing successful farmers (the so-called kulaks) and creating shortages in the short run. and an inefficient, underperforming system in the long run. If the Bolsheviks would have been more democratic, they would have accepted that most farmers did not want to join the cooperative farms and instead could have encouraged other forms of cooperation to create economies of scale, like machine parks etc.

[keenir]

I'm curious how democracy could have improved the agricultural revolution there. Also, are you referring to Lysenko's revolution in most things plant-related, or to another incident in Soviet history?

I assume RB refers to the same things I've also been referring to in my posts - the fact that the Bolsheviks first redistributed land from the big landholders to the farmers (which was popular), but then destroyed it all by forcing those farmers into collective farms, killing successful farmers (the so-called kulaks) and creating shortages in the short run. and an inefficient, underperforming system in the long run. If the Bolsheviks would have been more democratic, they would have accepted that most farmers did not want to join the cooperative farms and instead could have encouraged other forms of cooperation to create economies of scale, like machine parks etc.

ah, okay; i asked because I've read people who referred to Lysenko's actions as a revolution in their own right (also a disaster, a crisis, and a few other choice words)

[Travis B.]

I'm curious how democracy could have improved the agricultural revolution there. Also, are you referring to Lysenko's revolution in most things plant-related, or to another incident in Soviet history?

I assume RB refers to the same things I've also been referring to in my posts - the fact that the Bolsheviks first redistributed land from the big landholders to the farmers (which was popular), but then destroyed it all by forcing those farmers into collective farms, killing successful farmers (the so-called kulaks) and creating shortages in the short run. and an inefficient, underperforming system in the long run. If the Bolsheviks would have been more democratic, they would have accepted that most farmers did not want to join the cooperative farms and instead could have encouraged other forms of cooperation to create economies of scale, like machine parks etc.

Just another reason why, if socialism is to be successful, democracy is essential. Without democracy there will be those at the top who will inevitably ruin things, even if their intentions are good.