Leo Tolstoy, with his dreams of a free Russian peasantry, had realised before his death in 1910 that the communists aimed to launch an assault on traditional rural life. Having analysed Karl Marx’s Capital and studied the new “scientific” socialism, he spoke out about what Pierre Thiesset calls the communists’ “industrialised, urbanised and technocratised horizon, where Progress becomes a new religion”. [45]
What a grim picture you (and Quigley and Voline) paint. The truth, in this case, sure ain't pretty.
Your last sentence echoed precisely what I was thinking towards the end of your piece: how "...the Bolshevik New Normal of 100 years ago sounds so uncannily similar to the nightmare future towards which we are being herded today." The current endless attacks against small and/or independent farmers is especially similar, as is the all-out war on any narrative which is not The Narrative (aka state-sanctioned bullshit).
“This meant that the goods produced by the peasants must be taken from them, by political duress, without any economic return, and that the ultimate in authoritarian terror must be used to prevent the peasants from reducing their level of production to their own consumption needs”.
“The high speed of industrialisation in the period 1926-1940 was achieved by a merciless oppression of the rural community in which millions of peasants lost their lives”.
Thank you Paul. I so appreciate your work in general and your marvelous ability to hone in on the raw truth of the abyss we are facing. This last series of essays exposing the mechanics of the grim beast of communism are crucial. Existence without vitality or life is not just a form of government or control, it arises out of a sub-earthly primal opposition to life itself, and a motive to annihilate the creative essence of human spirit forever separating the living earth and humanity from our divine creative source. We behold the beast of the abyss. It has raised its ugly heads in various forms with increasing powers, now seems to be some kind of final ascent through a world wide surveillance system.
Governments is always assaulting humanity because the control freaks live entirely in fear and do not want anyone on the outside to be running free or loose or thinking for themselves. Those refusing to be slaves might lead other people to actually realize the truth in that they do not need government to certify their existence and they never will need it to live well and prosper.
You see, those in government cannot do anything in the real world for themselves and must live off the labor and fruits of others. That is the bottom line...theft from the citizen. Government can exist in no other fashion and never as an independent entity.
I would highly suggest anyone reading this to also check out the excellent video "Why the Russian Revolution failed" on the What is Politics? channel. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WXSsSgLpRE
It seems that the antipathy that both Marxists and anarchists had for the religiosity of the Russian peasantry was a major factor which kept them from allying with rural agricultural workers.
If anarchists had been willing to put aside their prejudiced views about Christianity and framed their anarchism in Tolstoyan terms, it seems likely they would have been more successful. What's clear is that the peasantry didn't want to give up their religion, which was part and parcel of their culture, nationality, and identity... making the whole endeavour of "consciousness-raising" somewhat dubious.
This is a subject which is near and dear to my heart because my paternal grandparents were Mennonite refugees from Russia. Their farms were seized by the Bolsheviks and many were sent to gulags, forcibly conscripted, or simply killed... And you can bet that part of the justification for this genocide was that the clergy was responsible for the oppression of poor, ignorant farmers.
In it, he identifies how the revolutionaries of this general time period (anarchist, nihilist, socialist & communist) failed to really connect with the Russian peasantry because of their contempt for Christianity.
This was likely a missed opportunity because as you rightly note, the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy was massively popular at this time. The peasants had a "Land and Freedom" ideology but they conceived of it in religious terms, which is typical of non-industrial peasant societies.
This remains true today in Mexico. Most Western commentators have failed to note how deeply religious the Zapatistas are, for instance.
Have you ever read "Government" by B. Traven, by any chance? It is a little-known masterpiece and I'm sure you would love it. In it, the author suggests that there is something about being an agriculturist that makes people more religious. I think there's something to it. Certainly I would expect to find more deeply religious people in the countryside than in the city.
Thank you very much for the great work you are offering us. I wonder, in the context of peasant life, if you could comment on the work of Alexandr Chayanov, who wrote extensively on the peasant economy in Russia and even wrote a utopía of a society based on the "mir". He was later arrested and died in a gulag, I believe. I found Chayanov through a Mexican centre in Cuernavaca, continuing the line of thought of Iván Illich.
In Italy, the conquests born from the struggles of our old communists and socialists, the right to strike, public and secular schools, public healthcare, for everyone, free of charge, have slowly been taken away from us, one by one one, and this after the fall of the USSR, because now we are completely at the mercy of the United States, because this is the era of neoliberalism, of profit as the only engine in the world.
When our Founding Fathers met after the war to write the Constitution, there were communists and socialists, indeed, the Communist Party would have won the elections after the war, if it had not been for the intrigues of the CIA and Western plutocracies. Our Constitution, which is now an oxymoron in the era of neoliberalism, was one of the most beautiful in the world, with at the center the 'COMMON GOODS'. Yes. that's right, 'COMMON GOODS', to be protected, and among THESE COMMON GOODS there was the LANDSCAPE, nature, and school and education, which must been public and secular, no priests and capitalists who put their shitty hands on the environment, education and healthcare.
You will know that one of the causes of the coup in Ukraine was the robbery and hoarding of its immense agricultural territories which according to the old Soviet legislation was still public territory, COMMONS GOODS, by the ravenous Western corporations: https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/22/monsanto-and-ukraine/
So, for my elders, the word communism was not a blasphemy, it was an ideal, and for this they were tortured to death by the Nazis, hanged and sent into exile. You Americans and Anglo-Saxons think that communism is blasphemy, which is why you are witnesses (obviously not you, I'm talking about the American people) complicit in the criminal wars and coups d'état that the USA carries out against the countries of Latin America and the Middle East, and you are witnesses of the monstrous injustice of unbridled capitalism which is leading the earth to destruction, and to which even communist China had to submit in order to survive and not to be reduced to the state in which the Nazis wanted to reduce Soviet Russia: a country of subhuman slaves to be economically exploited. Capitalism is the Beast, and these infantile and criminal elites, who dream of packing up everything that is alive and placing it in their registers for profit, are the children of unbridled capitalism, which with Reagan and Thatcher infected and overwhelmed the whole world.
In them I recognize the same old capitalists that Marx talks about.
I don't believe that this new phase of capitalism, the fourth industrial revolution, has anything to do with Soviet communism, which was dismantled piece by piece by the CIA and Western plutocracies, (not I'm talking about the Chinese one, which is another story), like the glorious former Yugoslavia of Tito and the socialist Syria, and the Iran of Mossadeq, and the Chile of the communist Allende, and the heroic Nicaragua which endures coups d'état and sanctions; everyone are hit by continuous sanctions and dismembered. The Indonesian massacres of 1965-1966 took place in the name of this amoral capitalism and the list is not finished, it is too long. I have forgotten the secular and socialist Libya torn apart by the Western masters and handed over to the gangs of Islamic fundamentalists to take possession of its oil... The same thing for Yemen.
You consider Soviet Russia a totalitarian country, okay then, but think that at any moment, every day, everywhere, from the beginning of history to today, human beings as subhumans, without faces or rights, die of hardship, hunger and misery,
due to class violence, or capitalism, who speaks for them, who fights for them? communists and socialists do it and always have done it, and always will.
And let's think about Africa, a land of raids and robberies by our multinationals armed to the teeth, this is what China, the Western masters, would have gladly reduced to. Now, I don't love China as it is now, far from it, but I can understand why it chose to compete with predatory capitalism rather than suffer it.
Without class struggle we remain in prehistory, Marx teaches, we are fully in it, it is better not to snub Marxism and class struggle like old tools from the 19th century......
I hope you remember the concept of class struggle, which the bosses have removed from our little heads: The history of humanity is the history of class struggles. Now we know who won the war...
..
Perhaps isms are no longer in fashion, but only because a single ism has become synonymous with world reality, capitalism has not failed, ''It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'', it is a drive very powerful in the total hoarding of goods, people, rights and communities, and is supported by continuous wars. (see also Thomas Picketty,
What a grim picture you (and Quigley and Voline) paint. The truth, in this case, sure ain't pretty.
Your last sentence echoed precisely what I was thinking towards the end of your piece: how "...the Bolshevik New Normal of 100 years ago sounds so uncannily similar to the nightmare future towards which we are being herded today." The current endless attacks against small and/or independent farmers is especially similar, as is the all-out war on any narrative which is not The Narrative (aka state-sanctioned bullshit).
This one certainly applies to the deception and betrayal that was the USSR ... https://redpillpoems.substack.com/p/its-never-sold-as-something-ugly
Great article.
Carroll Quigley on Communism in Russia:
“This meant that the goods produced by the peasants must be taken from them, by political duress, without any economic return, and that the ultimate in authoritarian terror must be used to prevent the peasants from reducing their level of production to their own consumption needs”.
“The high speed of industrialisation in the period 1926-1940 was achieved by a merciless oppression of the rural community in which millions of peasants lost their lives”.
Thank you Paul. I so appreciate your work in general and your marvelous ability to hone in on the raw truth of the abyss we are facing. This last series of essays exposing the mechanics of the grim beast of communism are crucial. Existence without vitality or life is not just a form of government or control, it arises out of a sub-earthly primal opposition to life itself, and a motive to annihilate the creative essence of human spirit forever separating the living earth and humanity from our divine creative source. We behold the beast of the abyss. It has raised its ugly heads in various forms with increasing powers, now seems to be some kind of final ascent through a world wide surveillance system.
Governments is always assaulting humanity because the control freaks live entirely in fear and do not want anyone on the outside to be running free or loose or thinking for themselves. Those refusing to be slaves might lead other people to actually realize the truth in that they do not need government to certify their existence and they never will need it to live well and prosper.
You see, those in government cannot do anything in the real world for themselves and must live off the labor and fruits of others. That is the bottom line...theft from the citizen. Government can exist in no other fashion and never as an independent entity.
The slavery continues although this time as wage slaves.
I would highly suggest anyone reading this to also check out the excellent video "Why the Russian Revolution failed" on the What is Politics? channel. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WXSsSgLpRE
It seems that the antipathy that both Marxists and anarchists had for the religiosity of the Russian peasantry was a major factor which kept them from allying with rural agricultural workers.
If anarchists had been willing to put aside their prejudiced views about Christianity and framed their anarchism in Tolstoyan terms, it seems likely they would have been more successful. What's clear is that the peasantry didn't want to give up their religion, which was part and parcel of their culture, nationality, and identity... making the whole endeavour of "consciousness-raising" somewhat dubious.
This is a subject which is near and dear to my heart because my paternal grandparents were Mennonite refugees from Russia. Their farms were seized by the Bolsheviks and many were sent to gulags, forcibly conscripted, or simply killed... And you can bet that part of the justification for this genocide was that the clergy was responsible for the oppression of poor, ignorant farmers.
Great work, Paul. You (and your readers) may be interested to check out this video from the What is Politics? YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WXSsSgLpRE
In it, he identifies how the revolutionaries of this general time period (anarchist, nihilist, socialist & communist) failed to really connect with the Russian peasantry because of their contempt for Christianity.
This was likely a missed opportunity because as you rightly note, the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy was massively popular at this time. The peasants had a "Land and Freedom" ideology but they conceived of it in religious terms, which is typical of non-industrial peasant societies.
This remains true today in Mexico. Most Western commentators have failed to note how deeply religious the Zapatistas are, for instance.
Have you ever read "Government" by B. Traven, by any chance? It is a little-known masterpiece and I'm sure you would love it. In it, the author suggests that there is something about being an agriculturist that makes people more religious. I think there's something to it. Certainly I would expect to find more deeply religious people in the countryside than in the city.
All governments suck
An historical era shocking in its barbarity, yet unfortunately timely, as a snapshot of "hell on earth."
Fascinating and very informative. Thank you Paul Cudenac.
Dear Paul,
Thank you very much for the great work you are offering us. I wonder, in the context of peasant life, if you could comment on the work of Alexandr Chayanov, who wrote extensively on the peasant economy in Russia and even wrote a utopía of a society based on the "mir". He was later arrested and died in a gulag, I believe. I found Chayanov through a Mexican centre in Cuernavaca, continuing the line of thought of Iván Illich.
Yes, en fact, utterly similar to new reality today.
In Italy, the conquests born from the struggles of our old communists and socialists, the right to strike, public and secular schools, public healthcare, for everyone, free of charge, have slowly been taken away from us, one by one one, and this after the fall of the USSR, because now we are completely at the mercy of the United States, because this is the era of neoliberalism, of profit as the only engine in the world.
When our Founding Fathers met after the war to write the Constitution, there were communists and socialists, indeed, the Communist Party would have won the elections after the war, if it had not been for the intrigues of the CIA and Western plutocracies. Our Constitution, which is now an oxymoron in the era of neoliberalism, was one of the most beautiful in the world, with at the center the 'COMMON GOODS'. Yes. that's right, 'COMMON GOODS', to be protected, and among THESE COMMON GOODS there was the LANDSCAPE, nature, and school and education, which must been public and secular, no priests and capitalists who put their shitty hands on the environment, education and healthcare.
You will know that one of the causes of the coup in Ukraine was the robbery and hoarding of its immense agricultural territories which according to the old Soviet legislation was still public territory, COMMONS GOODS, by the ravenous Western corporations: https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/22/monsanto-and-ukraine/
So, for my elders, the word communism was not a blasphemy, it was an ideal, and for this they were tortured to death by the Nazis, hanged and sent into exile. You Americans and Anglo-Saxons think that communism is blasphemy, which is why you are witnesses (obviously not you, I'm talking about the American people) complicit in the criminal wars and coups d'état that the USA carries out against the countries of Latin America and the Middle East, and you are witnesses of the monstrous injustice of unbridled capitalism which is leading the earth to destruction, and to which even communist China had to submit in order to survive and not to be reduced to the state in which the Nazis wanted to reduce Soviet Russia: a country of subhuman slaves to be economically exploited. Capitalism is the Beast, and these infantile and criminal elites, who dream of packing up everything that is alive and placing it in their registers for profit, are the children of unbridled capitalism, which with Reagan and Thatcher infected and overwhelmed the whole world.
In them I recognize the same old capitalists that Marx talks about.
I don't believe that this new phase of capitalism, the fourth industrial revolution, has anything to do with Soviet communism, which was dismantled piece by piece by the CIA and Western plutocracies, (not I'm talking about the Chinese one, which is another story), like the glorious former Yugoslavia of Tito and the socialist Syria, and the Iran of Mossadeq, and the Chile of the communist Allende, and the heroic Nicaragua which endures coups d'état and sanctions; everyone are hit by continuous sanctions and dismembered. The Indonesian massacres of 1965-1966 took place in the name of this amoral capitalism and the list is not finished, it is too long. I have forgotten the secular and socialist Libya torn apart by the Western masters and handed over to the gangs of Islamic fundamentalists to take possession of its oil... The same thing for Yemen.
You consider Soviet Russia a totalitarian country, okay then, but think that at any moment, every day, everywhere, from the beginning of history to today, human beings as subhumans, without faces or rights, die of hardship, hunger and misery,
due to class violence, or capitalism, who speaks for them, who fights for them? communists and socialists do it and always have done it, and always will.
And let's think about Africa, a land of raids and robberies by our multinationals armed to the teeth, this is what China, the Western masters, would have gladly reduced to. Now, I don't love China as it is now, far from it, but I can understand why it chose to compete with predatory capitalism rather than suffer it.
Without class struggle we remain in prehistory, Marx teaches, we are fully in it, it is better not to snub Marxism and class struggle like old tools from the 19th century......
I hope you remember the concept of class struggle, which the bosses have removed from our little heads: The history of humanity is the history of class struggles. Now we know who won the war...
..
Perhaps isms are no longer in fashion, but only because a single ism has become synonymous with world reality, capitalism has not failed, ''It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'', it is a drive very powerful in the total hoarding of goods, people, rights and communities, and is supported by continuous wars. (see also Thomas Picketty,
Capital in the Twenty-First Century: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2014Chap1316.pdf
Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Wikipedia
Capitalism is based on wars. Without wars capitalism is finished.
Marx says that without class struggle we remain in prehistory. Marx is right, in my opinion...
All governments SUCK!