Podcasts about old bolshevik

Episode 133:This week we're continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.You can find the book here:https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book[Part 1 - 4]Post-Scarcity AnarchismEcology and Revolutionary Thought[Part 5 - 8]Towards a Liberatory Technology[Part 9 - 10]The Forms of Freedom-The Mediation of Social Relations[Part 12]Listen, Marxist!-The Historical Limits of Marxism-The Myth of the Proletariat[Part 13 - This Week]Listen, Marxist!-The Myth of the Party - 0:28[Part 14 - 15?]Listen, Marxist!Footnotes:50) 1:50A fact which Trotsky never understood. He never followed through the consequences of his own concept of “combined development” to its logical conclusions. He saw (quite correctly) that czarist Russia, the latecomer in the European bourgeois development, necessarily acquired the most advanced industrial and class forms instead of recapitulating the entire bourgeois development from its beginnings. He neglected to consider that Russia, torn by tremendous internal upheaval, might even run ahead of the capitalist development elsewhere in Europe. Hypnotized by the formula “nationalized property equals socialism,” he failed to recognize that monopoly capitalism itself tends to amalgamate with the state by its own inner dialectic. The Bolsheviks, having cleared away the traditional forms of bourgeois social organization (which still act as a rein on the state capitalist development in Europe and America), inadvertently prepared the ground for a “pure” state capitalist development in which the state finally becomes the ruling class. Lacking support from a technologically advanced Europe, the Russian Revolution became an internal counterrevolution; Soviet Russia became a form of state capitalism that does not “benefit the whole people.” Lenin's analogy between “socialism” and state capitalism became a terrifying reality under Stalin. Despite its humanistic core, Marxism failed to comprehend how much its concept of “socialism” approximates a later stage of capitalism itself—the return to mercantile forms on a higher industrial level. The failure to understand this development led to devastating theoretical confusion in the contemporary revolutionary movement, as witness the splits among the Trotskyists over this question. 51) 5:12The March 22nd Movement functioned as a catalytic agent in the events, not as a leadership. It did not command; it instigated, leaving a free play to the events. This free play, which allowed the students to push ahead on their own momentum, was indispensable to the dialectic of the uprising, for without it there would have been no barricades on May 10, which in turn triggered off the general strike of the workers. 52) 6:45See “The Forms of Freedom”. 53) 7:23With a sublime arrogance that is attributable partly to ignorance, a number of Marxist groups were to dub virtually all of the above forms of self-management as “soviets.” The attempt to bring all of these different forms under a single rubric is not only misleading but willfully obscurantist. The actual soviets were the least democratic of the revolutionary forms and the Bolsheviks shrewdly used them to transfer the power to their own party. The soviets were not based on face-to-face democracy, like the Parisian sections or the student assemblies of 1968. Nor were they based on economic self-management, like the Spanish anarchist factory committees. The soviets actually formed a workers' parliament, hierarchically organized, which drew its representation from factories and later from military units and peasant villages. 54) 19:02V. I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” in Selected Works, vol. 7 (International Publishers; New York, 1943), p. 342. In this harsh article, published in April 1918, Lenin completely abandoned the liberatarian perspective he had advanced the year before in State and Revolution. The main themes of the article are the needs for “discipline,” for authoritarian control over the factories, and for the institution of the Taylor system (a system Lenin had denounced before the revolution as enslaving men to the machine). The article was written during a comparatively peaceful period of Bolshevik rule some two months after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and a month before the revolt of the Czech Legion in the Urals—the revolt that started the civil war on a wide scale and opened the period of direct Allied intervention in Russia. Finally, the article was written nearly a year before the defeat of the German revolution. It would be difficult to account for the “Immediate Tasks” merely in terms of the Russian civil war and the failure of the European revolution. 55) 34:04In interpreting this elemental movement of the Russian workers and peasants as a series of “White Guard conspiracies,” “acts of kulak resistance,” and “plots of international capital,” the Bolsheviks reached an incredible theoretical low and deceived no one but themselves. A spiritual erosion developed within the party that paved the way for the politics of the secret police, for character assassination, and finally for the Moscow trials and the annihilation of the Old Bolshevik cadre. One sees the return of this odious mentality in PL articles like “Marcuse: Cop-out or Cop?”—the theme of which is to establish Marcuse as an agent of the CIA. (See Progressive Labor, February 1969.) The article has a caption under a photograph of demonstrating Parisians which reads: “Marcuse got to Paris too late to stop the May action.” Opponents of the PLP are invariably described by this rag as “redbaiters” and as “anti-worker.” If the American left does not repudiate this police approach and character assassination it will pay bitterly in the years to come.Citations:30) 4:01Quoted in Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (Simon & Schuster; New York, 1932), vol. 1, p. 144. 31) 19:34V. V. Osinsky, “On the Building of Socialism,” Kommunist, no. 2, April 1918, quoted in R. V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, 1960), pp. 85–86, 32) 23:13Robert G. Wesson, Soviet Communes (Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, N.J., 1963), p. 110. 33) 26:30R. V. Daniels, op. cit., p. 145. 34) 30:27Mosche Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (Pantheon; New York, 1968), p. 122.

Annie and Lucas join Barbara C. Allen, editor of the recent collection of documents The Workers' Opposition in the Russian Communist Party: Documents, 1919-30 and author of Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik for a conversation on the Workers' Opposition in the Russian Communist Party. They discuss what the Workers' Opposition was, as well as the biographies of the more important members such as Alexander Shlyapnikov and Sergei Medvedev, what the Workers' Opposition stood for, focusing on its relationship to specialists and to purges and the peasantry and the Workers' Opposition. They finish with the story of the eclipse of the Workers' Opposition, the fate of the trade unions and of Alexandra Kollontai after the demise of the organization.

In this episode, Tony and Kevin try to persuade us, unsuccessfully, that they’re not criminals, per se. Since the characters they’ve created are at the very least ethically short-changed by, well, their identities, our co-hosts’ protests of innocence prove the contrary. Giving up, they take us to a few potential sponsors: “Snakes a-Poppin’!” which sells snake samples from a cart (I know! What?) to a couple quarreling about yard work, and “The Indoor Grill” from the All Male Meat Market, and Edwin Slezak, who sells old magnetic tapes that he’s stolen. It’s cutting edge of audiotronics, 1964. Finally, we hear once again from “Bogdan Krasplasian, Unfullfilled Bulgarian Minor Office Functionary.” He and his larcenous colleague Nicolai are still on the run from the Moscow authorities for a candy theft. Will meeting “The Old Bolshevik” pull them deeper into lives of crime? Or will it be even a really whole lot deeper?

Guest: Barbara Allen on  Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik. The post Alexander Shlyapnikov: An Old Working Class Bolshevik appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.

Guest: Barbara Allen on  Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik. The post Alexander Shlyapnikov: An Old Working Class Bolshevik appeared first on SRB Podcast.

It's the stretch drive! mid-march! Daylight Savings Time when every game is important! Ryan, Geeta & P Mac gather to talk the Canucks. Following a generally Canucks-less podcast last week, they drive head first into the green blue and white. Ronalds Kenins healthy scratching, Jacob Markstrom's stuggles and the big character wins that come after terrible losses against weaker teams are all discussed. They look at the influence of the goaltending coach, Nazem Kadri sleeping in, missing a team meeting and being healthy scratched because of it. They play a new game Old Bolshevik or 2014 NHL draft pick as well as look at the top teams in the NHL and whether their standings reflect the quality of team! And if you're entering to win the Kassian jersey shirt, email us at pucksonnet@shaw.ca Enjoy!

Jan Plamper begins in his book, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (Yale University Press, 2012), with two illuminating anecdotes that demonstrate the power and scope of Stalin’s personality cult. The first comes from Sergei Kavtaradze, an Old Bolshevik and longtime friend of Stalin. Upon his... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jan Plamper begins in his book, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (Yale University Press, 2012), with two illuminating anecdotes that demonstrate the power and scope of Stalin’s personality cult. The first comes from Sergei Kavtaradze, an Old Bolshevik and longtime friend of Stalin. Upon his release from the gulag in 1940, Stalin and Beria accompanied Kavtaradze to his old apartment, which was then occupied by an old woman. When he woman saw Stalin at her door she staggered back and fainted. When Beria asked why she was scared by the “father of all peoples,” the woman replied, “I thought that a portrait of Stalin was moving towards me.” The second tale comes from Artyom Sergeev, Stalin’s adopted son. Sergeev recalled one night when Stalin learned that his biological son, Vasily, used his famous name to escape punishment from one of drunken binges. In response to Stalin’s rage, Vasily said, “But I’m a Stalin too.” “No you’re not,” Stalin rebuffed. “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!” The production of the Stalin personality cult that disembodied the man and turned him into a symbol of Soviet power is at the heart of Plamper’s text. The cult made Stalin more than a leader–it transformed him into the Archimedean point of historical time and space. For Stalin represented the communist future as well as the vantage point in the socialist present. At the heart of this cult was Stalin’s image, which was reproduced in a variety of media, including portraiture and film. But the crafting, production, and canonization of Stalin’s image was no simple endeavor. It involved technologies that gave Stalin’s cult a particularly modern flavor. As Plamper shows, the production and dissemination of Stalin’s cult, which began in earnest with his 50th birthday in 1929, involved an entire institutional apparatus including mass media, artistic unions, art criticism, artistic competitions, individual filters, particularly Stalin’s secretaries Lev Mekhils and Aleksandr Poskryobyshev, and art patrons like Defense Minister Kliment Voroshilov, on top of which stood Stalin at the apex. Indeed, Stalin’s personal role in crafting his cult has undergone much debate. Plamper finds that it is best to view Stalin’s relationship to his cult as a form of “immodest modesty.” Stalin wanted his own cult and meticulously controlled it, at the same time he purposefully disavowed it. And through this alchemy of institutional and individual power did Stalin’s personality cult penetrate the psyche of the Soviet citizenry. This interview with Jan Plamper is part of joint project with Russian History Blog. Please visit Russian History Blog beginning March 28 to join a discussion among several scholars on the significance of The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jan Plamper begins in his book, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (Yale University Press, 2012), with two illuminating anecdotes that demonstrate the power and scope of Stalin’s personality cult. The first comes from Sergei Kavtaradze, an Old Bolshevik and longtime friend of Stalin. Upon his release from the gulag in 1940, Stalin and Beria accompanied Kavtaradze to his old apartment, which was then occupied by an old woman. When he woman saw Stalin at her door she staggered back and fainted. When Beria asked why she was scared by the “father of all peoples,” the woman replied, “I thought that a portrait of Stalin was moving towards me.” The second tale comes from Artyom Sergeev, Stalin’s adopted son. Sergeev recalled one night when Stalin learned that his biological son, Vasily, used his famous name to escape punishment from one of drunken binges. In response to Stalin’s rage, Vasily said, “But I’m a Stalin too.” “No you’re not,” Stalin rebuffed. “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!” The production of the Stalin personality cult that disembodied the man and turned him into a symbol of Soviet power is at the heart of Plamper’s text. The cult made Stalin more than a leader–it transformed him into the Archimedean point of historical time and space. For Stalin represented the communist future as well as the vantage point in the socialist present. At the heart of this cult was Stalin’s image, which was reproduced in a variety of media, including portraiture and film. But the crafting, production, and canonization of Stalin’s image was no simple endeavor. It involved technologies that gave Stalin’s cult a particularly modern flavor. As Plamper shows, the production and dissemination of Stalin’s cult, which began in earnest with his 50th birthday in 1929, involved an entire institutional apparatus including mass media, artistic unions, art criticism, artistic competitions, individual filters, particularly Stalin’s secretaries Lev Mekhils and Aleksandr Poskryobyshev, and art patrons like Defense Minister Kliment Voroshilov, on top of which stood Stalin at the apex. Indeed, Stalin’s personal role in crafting his cult has undergone much debate. Plamper finds that it is best to view Stalin’s relationship to his cult as a form of “immodest modesty.” Stalin wanted his own cult and meticulously controlled it, at the same time he purposefully disavowed it. And through this alchemy of institutional and individual power did Stalin’s personality cult penetrate the psyche of the Soviet citizenry. This interview with Jan Plamper is part of joint project with Russian History Blog. Please visit Russian History Blog beginning March 28 to join a discussion among several scholars on the significance of The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices