Imperial Russian institutions compared to Soviet - any holdovers?

[fr-rein]

Institutionally no institution carried on, outside of some inherited archives. The best surviving institution was military simply by the fact that they did employ a number of purged officers from Imperial Army and in the end a lot of knowledge and talent was inherited.

In spirit?
CheKa (leter NKVD, KGB, etc) was like Okhranka and worse.
Kolhozes under Stalin and to 60s were serfdom 2.0, with people not having passports and thus unable to leave due to propiska, not getting real monetary rewards and used as a dirt cheap workforce to get finances for industrialization.
Of course, a bunch of ministries did in some way inherit older ideas and projects, but Soviets were free to try it.

But in general Tsarist regime was lagging behind and Soviets jumped era above, they had fundamental differences just because of that.

This said... People often forget that 2 Revolutions happened:
1) February one to dismantle regime and create Russian Republic
2) October one to give all power to Soviets.

Soviets, better or not than Tsarists, were not dismantling Tsarist Regime. They were fighting other alternatives for former Russian Empire - democrats, nationalists, fascists, other socialists, conservatives, etc. And we don't have much evidence that they ended up being better than them after that, especially in long-term.

If anything, an example of independent Baltic states proves that their economics grew organically without major human sacrifices. So did Polish economics in 1920s that had to unite 3 parts of country that were under different Empires, at times even with different railway gauge systems in it. They greatly outperformed USSR bar the 1930s.

Which were all part of the Russian Empire...

That had no justification.

Lenin himself recognised the treaty and, most importantly, declared that each nation could take sovereignty. And Soviets didn't inherit formally any obligations of Empire or pretended on that.

Of course, partially it was a lie. Soviets invaded other countries by setting up "alternative" Soviet governments of said countries and lands.

But it did result in fact that Lenin federalized Russia while making major republics formally separate states. There were many reasons for that - need to balance Russian communists and nationalists, need to establish rule in those states and thus inviting red nationalists, formally living up to the promises, etc.

This kind of argument

Poland? got subdivided back in the pre-Napoleonic Days. The Soviets sure were nice to let those Baltic places walk away. 'Ukraine' ain't ever been a country before the USSR, and Armenia hasn't had a government since... the crusader days? Azerbaijanistan is a real thing, but alas, the Russians invaded in the 1700s and didn't give up their half of it and the Persians decided that they wanted the other bit so...

Is like arguing for keeping Africa as a colony. Similar in reasoning, attitude and such minus the racism. Backwards and from XIX century, exactly thinking of Russian Empire. "Burden of White Soviet Man" - some line which Russian Neonazis and more nationalist communists there use today.

That's not even correcting generalizations.

 

[loup99]

By nature of geography the Soviets inherited certain imperial ambitions, but that is a different type of continuity. Had the revolutions spread we might have seen a number of Soviet vassal states (which is what was created when revolution succeeded outside Russia proper).

Not outside the existing Russian sphere of influence, no. The Soviet Union wouldn't have had the capacity of controlling the other countries seeing successful revolution in the 1920s. If Germany, France or Italy had a successful revolution, they would have quickly gotten the upper hand, due to their industry and qualification of the workforce. Seeing the revolutionnary wave in Europe during these years as Soviet imperialism completely misses out on internationalism which is central in Marxism.

Imperial Russia was a disaster of a society, but the ineptitude also meant that it was less brutal than the more efficient USSR. The heavy handed methods employed by the communists improved many metrics for the population (literacy etc) but the human cost was at times horrific. And the planned economy caused problems both short- (shortages, general failure to meet demands and famines) and long term (stagnation and lack of innovation).

There is a reason for why the New Economic Policy was implemented under Lenin's impulsion in 1921. A planned economy will inevitably have trouble in a non-digital age, especially if not based upon democratic aspirations but bureaucratic (today we have the tools to solve many of the information problems that arose in the past, but that is another story). Nonetheless, a part of what you describe as "heavy methods" clearly were a consequence of Entente agression, civil war and isolation. This doesn't excuse everything, but it should be kept in mind that the progress achieved in spite of that context is rather astonishing.

Western Europe is fortunate that reformists rather than revolutionaries won out on the left side of the political spectrum. The revolutionary vanguard parties created prison states whenever they got the chance.

The reformists pushed for wide-reaching reforms also because there was a revolutionnary threat and a power struggle. They were in a sense forced to deliver, when that revolutionnary threat disappeared many reformists also abandoned the prospect of reforms.

 

[bz249]

Which were all part of the Russian Empire...

Like a century or so... really an ethernity. The Brest-Litovsk boundary is not that far away from the 1992 boundary.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and nowadays also Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan are ridiculous? Alrighty then.

Remember, you said that.

 

[Gerle]

Remember, you said that.

What do you mean?

 

[Zaleukos]

The USSR did not intend to 'vassalize' anyone in the 1920s.

The Black Hundreds were clearly A-OK? Nah. Mark Twain put it eloquently, as I posted above. the Czarist regime was the worst in Europe, and up there for the worst on Earth barring Europe's colonial empires. It's horrors led to countless unremembered deaths and lives lived in constant fear of privation, random terror, and the lord knows what else. The USSR, for all its many, many, many crimes, was a far superior government than the terror-idiocracy which preceded it.

The 'revolutionary vanguard' was also a) invaded by foreign powers b) had to fight civil wars backed by foreign powers and c) was invaded by the host of Gog and Magog then d) was threatened with nuclear destruction, whilst all the while e) was mostly cut off from international markets & investment.

It might make a country's power structure a bit paranoid.

Imperial Russia was horrid and regularly let loose pogroms and other very nasty crap, but the violence was random compared to later Soviet violence and was not on any scale comparable to what the reds or the whites did during the civil war, nor to what happened under Stalin.

As for attempts at vassalisation I refer to the attempted reincorporation of pretty much all the newly independent states from 1918 onwards, Poland. Finland, the Baltics, and Poland only kept their independence through feats of arms. And as fr-rein pointed out Lenin officially stated that these countries had a right to sovereignty, as did Ukrainians and whatnot. Even when taken over by local communists they were subverted or reconquered.

Pre-Stalin the USSR was an imperialist power in practice. World revolution was all about that. Stalin was the moderate when it came to foreign policy (and really mostly just seized opportunities to create strategic depth).

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

What do you mean?

In the next East European nationalist squabble, I'll be sure to quote you.

 

[Gerle]

In the next East European nationalist squabble, I'll be sure to quote you.

Meaning?

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Meaning?

It's a very useful phrase to repeat that I can say I didn't say myself.

 

[Gerle]

It's a very useful phrase to repeat that I can say I didn't say myself.

Nor did I?

 

[loup99]

Pre-Stalin the USSR was an imperialist power in practice. World revolution was all about that. Stalin was the moderate when it came to foreign policy (and really mostly just seized opportunities to create strategic depth).

No it was not, world revolution is the opposite of imperialism, it implies international cooperation between workers. Even if the Soviets had wanted to they would have been incapable of dominating other European countries in the 1920s. Stalin pragmatically reoriented policy to more classical methods when it became clear the revolution wasn't going to spread, as the various attempts had failed and the USSR became isolated. You clearly confuse annexing a sphere of influence with spreading the revolution to industrialised European powers. Claiming the two are synonymous without nuance is to not comprehend the concept of global revolution in the first place. There was genuine hope of several revolutions succeeding on the continent, and that is not the same thing as taking control over new-born post-Tsarist states with no autonomy or industry. So global revolution does absolutely not end at the limits of the former Russian Empire. Furthermore, claiming that is to remove all agency from local revolutionaries, at a time when the local communist parties are not necessarily infeudated to Moscow. You even had anarchists who wanted to contribute to spreading revolution. When you have a red wave across the European continent, be it in Hungary, in Italy, in Germany etc, it is not a sign of Soviet imperialism. It is Stalin's reorientation which is much closer to imperialism, as you mention consisting of jumping on opportunities to satellise neighbouring countries after WW2.

 

[pithorr]

No it was not, world revolution is the opposite of imperialism, it implies international cooperation between workers. Even if the Soviets had wanted to they would have been incapable of dominating other European countries in the 1920s. Stalin pragmatically reoriented policy to more classical methods when it became clear the revolution wasn't going to spread, as the various attempts had failed and the USSR became isolated. You clearly confuse annexing a sphere of influence with spreading the revolution to industrialised European powers. Claiming the two are synonymous without nuance is to not comprehend the concept of global revolution in the first place. There was genuine hope of several revolutions succeeding on the continent, and that is not the same thing as taking control over new-born post-Tsarist states with no autonomy or industry. So global revolution does absolutely not end at the limits of the former Russian Empire. Furthermore, claiming that is to remove all agency from local revolutionaries, at a time when the local communist parties are not necessarily infeudated to Moscow. You even had anarchists who wanted to contribute to spreading revolution. When you have a red wave across the European continent, be it in Hungary, in Italy, in Germany etc, it is not a sign of Soviet imperialism. It is Stalin's reorientation which is much closer to imperialism, as you mention consisting of jumping on opportunities to satellise neighbouring countries after WW2.

The Polish-Soviet war was a regular war not any spread of world revolution. The Reds had close to zero support among workers, peasants or whoever else in Poland.

 

[loup99]

The Polish-Soviet war was a regular war not any spread of world revolution. The Reds had close to zero support among workers, peasants or whoever else in Poland.

We have already discussed this conflict here previously, so I'm not going to repeat the same argument. Again, stopping at Poland implies there were no ties between the Soviets and the Spartacist, the Biennio Rosso, the Hungarian Republic of Councils or that any relation was one of Soviet imperialism. That is the claim I refute, that world revolution was solely Soviet rhetoric to hide imperialist ambitions. No, there were local realities to world revolution beyond the Soviet, with November being a source of inspiration and hope for workers in several countries. In fact looking beyond Poland and former components of Tsarist Russia, a pretty universal symbol going across partisan lines (both anarchists and communists identifying).

 

[fr-rein]

Totalitarian state Stalin was building would be crushing autonomies, fostering it's regime on others and attack and claim other lands. It would be Imperialist regardless of Tsarist legacy and, probably, regardless of geographic conditions which only focused the expansion.

No institution would predetermine USSR being imperialist, in fact 1920s were a time when the traditional institutions were undone and new one built. Including mass education in minority languages, political representation, etc.

This said, the Soviet leadership did hold old views to some degree that played a role in re-emergence of more imperialist and nationalist state under USSR - and was a reason for it's ideological bankruptcy later.

So I do agree with loup in his main point - Soviet state wasn't initially imperialist and it didn't inherit imperialism as institution as Army, Diplomatic corps, Administration, Leadership were all new institutions.a

 

[Yakman]

The Polish-Soviet war was a regular war not any spread of world revolution. The Reds had close to zero support among workers, peasants or whoever else in Poland.

Poland had also been part of Russia just the year previous. It was essentially a rebellious province.

 

[grandsteed]

Poland had also been part of Russia just the year previous. It was essentially a rebellious province.

This argument seems weak. By this logic, Hungary had every right in 1918 onwards to reconquer Slovakia which had never existed as a sovereign state, only as so-called ’Upper Hungary’ for the last 1000 years. Yet much of that land was not ethnically Hungarian north of Kosice. Same for Austria and the Czech half of the union, it had been under the Habsburg boot for 400 years. The idea of ‘rebellious provinces’ is not compatible with the prominent beliefs of the last 150 years and is a wholly imperialist viewpoint that spits in the face of Westphalian peace systems.

 

[pithorr]

Poland had also been part of Russia just the year previous. It was essentially a rebellious province.

Only a part of Poland actually, do you remember - the partitions...
But even if so, do you mean it was legit?

 

[Yakman]

This argument seems weak. By this logic, Hungary had every right in 1918 onwards to reconquer Slovakia which had never existed as a sovereign state, only as so-called ’Upper Hungary’ for the last 1000 years. Yet much of that land was not ethnically Hungarian north of Kosice. Same for Austria and the Czech half of the union, it had been under the Habsburg boot for 400 years. The idea of ‘rebellious provinces’ is not compatible with the prominent beliefs of the last 150 years and is a wholly imperialist viewpoint that spits in the face of Westphalian peace systems.

what peace table had the Soviets been sitting at in 1919?

the point of Westphalia is that things are worked out by diplomats. in this case, one of the major parties had been excluded from the table. so...

 

[bz249]

This argument seems weak. By this logic, Hungary had every right in 1918 onwards to reconquer Slovakia which had never existed as a sovereign state, only as so-called ’Upper Hungary’ for the last 1000 years. Yet much of that land was not ethnically Hungarian north of Kosice. Same for Austria and the Czech half of the union, it had been under the Habsburg boot for 400 years. The idea of ‘rebellious provinces’ is not compatible with the prominent beliefs of the last 150 years and is a wholly imperialist viewpoint that spits in the face of Westphalian peace systems.

Not only as a sovereign state, but even as an administrative region. Poland was till 1867 was clearly distinct from other parts of the Russian Empire.

 

[grandsteed]

what peace table had the Soviets been sitting at in 1919?

the point of Westphalia is that things are worked out by diplomats. in this case, one of the major parties had been excluded from the table. so...

It certainly didn’t provide that any state could invade another just because it had been ‘left out’, sovereignty of states was an important component. Certainly, Poland was lost without much choice but Lenin agreed not to reoccupy these territories, and the West proposed solutions that actually would’ve been favorable to the Soviets compared to the final border.