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this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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They did try to implement it, though. Or rather they started a transformation (i.e. collectivization, de-kulakization, etc) of society that they thought was necessary for communism. Say what you want about Lenin, Stalin and co. (and there's a lot to be said), they were true believers in the stuff they were selling. It's absolutely fair to call them communist.
... yet it's "generous" to describe the provisional government which was dominated by socialist parties as socialist leaning?
Stalin's position as a true believer is dubious at best.
Stalin's position as a true believer is bonkers!
Lenin there could be an argument for, although I think he was just a very clever manipulator that used the guise of being on the side of the people to gain power. But there's at least a debate to be had there.
But Stalin?! Aye, that's bollocks.
I talked about Stalin in my reply to Pug so I'll stick to Lenin here: Your framing is only possible in hindsight. Remember that Lenin was a Bolshevik back when it was the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, a full 20 years before the revolution. He was expelled from university for getting into radical student politics before Nicholas II even took the throne. Same as Stalin—but even more so due to being from a wealthy and prestigious family with lots of opportunity for social advancement—if he wasn't a true believer he could've done literally anything with his life. Painting evil mass murderers as fakes is appealing, but in this case it doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny; both had already been committed radicals for way too long by the time of the revolution.
No, plenty of people at the time condemned Lenin as a hypocrite without any real principles and a tyrant-in-waiting.
Are there any major mass murderers who came to power, rather than inheriting it (literally or effectively) who weren't true believers by your criteria?
Which is just the sort of intra-socialist mudslinging that would've been a dime a dozen in the decades leading up to the revolution. Nobody goes to prison for principles they don't have.
I mean any mass murderer has to be a true believer in something, at least so they can sleep at night; the question is whether they're true believers in the thing they're espousing in public, and in that case my example would be Hitler. He believed in the bigotry and genocide to be sure, but the "socialism" part of "national socialism" was obviously bogus. That said, most mass murderers do at least vaguely believe in the reasons they espouse for the mass murder; it's hard to be a mass murderer otherwise.
Okay, but it clearly demonstrates that the framing of Lenin as the fascist scumsucking mass-murderer-in-waiting that he was does not require hindsight, as numerous socialists at the time, by your own admission, recognized that fact.
That is an incredibly naive position to take. People willingly suffer for all sorts of fucking reasons, and principles are pretty far down the list.
... "their grip on power" comes to mind.
... I don't even know where to begin on this one.
He also didn't espouse socialism in public.
So your answer to the question is 'no'.
Chiang Kai-Shek? A true believer (in what, God only fucking knows). Pierre Laval? A true believer. Jean-Bédel Bokassa? A true believer. Blaise Compaoré? A true believer.
That's... not what I was saying though? Whether Lenin had the makings of a tyrant or not, he had to have believed in the revolution or he wouldn't have dedicated his life to it (which, love him or hate it, that's exactly what he did). Lenin had been a professional revolutionary for more than 20 years by 1917, and the idea that this was all an act so he could eventually seize ultimate power is frankly ridiculous without some hard evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I mean unless he got himself expelled from university and derailed his career for material gain, it'd have to be principle.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
No? The answer to my question is "Hitler," but also of these the one I know is Kai-shek, and that guy was absolutely a true believer... in radical conservatism, rule by the ultra-rich and somehow also Georgism??? Either way current or future tyrants craft their ideologies at least in part to justify their rule, making them essentially rationalizations, in which case yeah mass murdering dictators had ways to rationalize their atrocities. It's impossible not to kill thousands or millions of people and not feel something about it; that's just not how people are built.
"The idea that people would work towards power all their lives is ridiculous" is really the position you're taking.
... come the fuck on.
This may be a shock, so I invite you to sit if you aren't sitting already, but there are more things in life than just material gain and principles.
Which has about all the validity of redefining democracy as autocracy, and then claiming to be a believer in democracy.
But furthermore, and contrary to your claims, this would establish Hitler as a 'true believer' in the socialism he espoused in public.
... but you already explicitly said that you considered Hitler a true believer in his core causes.
Radical conservatism, except for the part where the KMT was anti-conservative in both rhetoric and, when it suited Kai-shek et co's power-seeking to be so, action. Rule by the ultra-rich, except for the part where the ultra-rich took a backseat to the military and any-fucking-one-else that Kai-shek felt he needed at the time.
So in what way is being a true believer different than being a venal opportunist?
It's incredibly easy. You probably kill people all the time, man. I kill people all the time. All you have to do is reduce it from seeing someone face-to-face (and some people can do even that, though they're generally exceptional and often sick fucks) to a distant, bureaucratic process.
We're both probably relatively normal human beings. Actually, fuck that - we're both probably above-average in conscientiousness. You heap moral opprobrium on the consciences major political actors all the time for their murders - not without cause. Do you want to take a guess at how easily they would sign away millions of lives and sleep easy for the least cause of staying in power?
No, my position was that someone working exclusively toward power wouldn't become a professional revolutionary years before the system was seriously shaken. There were simply better paths to power available to someone like Lenin.
I am shook.
Still, what motivation would Lenin have had to go through more than two decades of radical politics other than believing in radical politics? That's a massive hole that you have to address before your argument makes sense.
Okay admittedly I'm not the most familiar with Kai-shek's career, but also okay? The fact that he engaged in opportunism doesn't mean he didn't believe in anything; it just means he was willing to lie about his beliefs.
100% venal opportunists usually aren't a thing—like I said even someone who's in it for power needs to have a reason/justification why they deserve power, which is why I was arguing for a stronger claim: that Lenin and Stalin believed in values at the very least similar to the ones they espoused in public. Hitler fails this test because he didn't believe in socialism in any meaningful sense of the wrod. Kai-shek also doesn't. Trump doesn't need explanation (in hindsight that should've been my answer).
I'd hope not? In the first place there's not enough people for a significant fraction of people to be killing them all the time.
But that's the thing: Stay in power for what? There usually needs to be something there. This is counterterrorism, democracy, rule of law, "natural rights" (aka private property), the prosperity of the master race, national interest, etc depending on which utter piece of shit we're talking about. It's the existence of these justifications that allows them to do what they do.
... are there? What avenues to absolute power are there when the core ideology of the extant system is Tsarist "Unshakable autocracy"? What power is a non-revolutionary law student going to gain under that system?
A desire for power. I thought that was clear by my previous statement.
That being said, there's also adventurism, personal ties, a desire for fame or infamy, even sheer fucking boredom. Shit man, people do insane and long-term shit all the time for reasons other than material gain or principles.
But hey, according to your theory, every Old Bolshevik bank robber was a true believer.
See, your entire position isn't any sort of falsifiable theory or assertion as it is an article of faith. There is no form of proof that could possibly dissuade you from the notion you've taken up. No actions or statements matter; only the axiom that every mass murderer is a true believer deep down.
You remind me of the fundamentalist Christians I grew up around.
... this is incredibly naive.
They believed in socialism because they took power away from the workers?
That's your definition of socialism?
But one-man direction of the workplace - that is socialism in a meaningful sense of the word? Reducing the peasantry to serfdom under a totalitarian state - that's socialism in a meaningful sense of the word?
Okay? I didn't ask if Kai-shek was a fucking socialist, I asked if he was a true believer despite having no apparent genuine beliefs from his statements or his actions.
Why is Trump not a true believer, when every other fascist shithead is? You already admitted, again, that Hitler believed in the core causes, and your only point of disputation is that it wasn't "real" socialism he believed in; despite the fact that he didn't even claim to believe in the same socialism you're defining.
Or hell, maybe he did - God fucking knows you've already went to bat for oligarchy once. Is your only quibble with Hitler's socialism that the Junkers won out instead of the Strasserists?
Fucker, we live in comfortable enough circumstances to be arguing on an obscure web forum over history and politics. We are privileged here, and we are both killing people.
Jesus fucking Christ, you can't be serious.
Definitely not absolute power, but there was no reason for radical student to ever expect absolute power. His father was a high-ranking regional bureaucrat and his mother was a wealthy landowner; someone as talented, hardworking and ruthless as Lenin would've easily been able to get promoted to a high government post, which would've made any future ambitions much easier to achieve. It'd have definitely been easier than overthrowing the government—a pipe dream as late as April 1917.
I mean fucking yes (more or less, my personal line is February 1917)? Anyone not a true believer would've dropped out multiple times over. Speaking of which, is there any body of historiography you're drawing from here or is it just your (very justified) hate for the guy? What's your evidence here?
No? Only that most believe in some kind of coherent political or social program (again, Trump being a notable exception). I'm willing to change my mind, but I'd need evidence, and this sounds more the purview of psychology than history. Either way again, and I won't repeat this a third time, I'm applying a tighter standard to these mass murderers: Are the ideas they actually believe in reasonably close to those they espouse, no matter what those are? Kai-shek fails this standard because any standard fitting his actions would contradict his espoused beliefs.
I mean have you ever seen Trump explaining a coherent belief system? He's clearly in it for the grift, and he clearly believes he deserves to grift the shit out of everyone, but I doubt he has anything resembling a coherent political vision. However, he didn't spend decades risking getting arrested or killed by secret police for it—this is what a grifter lookd like.
I mean, the (still fascist) self-proclaimed socialists definitely thought he did up until he killed the shit out of them. Weaponized vagueness is a classic fascist tactic and absolutely does count as not believing in what he said; you're grasping at straws here.
Uh what the fuck? At calling them mass murdering tyrants to stress this point. If you're just going to read whatever you want into what I say then this is a waste of time.
Um this
Doesn't sound like socialism to me either so no.
Not to go on a tangent, but as much as you expect. There's plenty of people comfortable enough to argue about politics online, and the obscureness of the forum is irrelevant. If you calculated the number of deaths per person you'd get a small fraction, which well I make a point of trying but there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. If you have examples I'm all ears though.
Jesus fucking Christ. You think overthrowing the Tsar was a pipe dream after the February Revolution.
The Tsarist government was widely regarded as on borrowed time since Bloody Sunday in 1905, and was regarded as unstable even before that. Not only that, but this reflects a complete lack of understanding of ambition of powerful men throughout history.
For someone who tells me that I need to study history (apparently my years in college for just that major were insufficient compared to your collection of worldview-affirming factoids garnered through online games of telephone), you have repeatedly demonstrated an appalling lack of even basic knowledge of the facts of the situation, down to the fucking existence of elections before the overthrow of the provisional government and the prominent participation of socialists from the very start.
The issue here is, at its core, one of principle rather than Stalin specifically - you are asserting, as I have pointed out multiple times at this point in the conversation, a worldview of total incoherence insofar as revolutionaries are concerned, with any long-time revolutionary being a dedicated ideologue with no possibility of other motivations being their core impetus. In this conception, even the most venal opportunist and constant turncloak is necessarily considered a true believer regardless of their words or their actions by simple exposure to danger over a period of time, because you are apparently incapable of imagining any other reason why people stay a course of action.
It's axiomatic, and utterly fucking braindead, the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from a religious fanatic discussing their theology, not a fucking discussion of history and politics with someone who is supposedly left-sympathetic.
This fucking you, buddy?
I haven't seen Stalin explain a coherent belief system either. Yet he's a true believer, and Trump is not. For that matter, why does a belief system need to be coherent to be truly believed in? I can cite any number of religious maniacs with contradictory bronze-and-iron-age belief systems and texts who are nonetheless true believers.
... Trump absolutely has spent decades risking getting arrested. For that matter, the Tsarist autocracy rarely outright killed political opponents, preferring arrest and internal exile - especially for privileged middle class kids like Lenin, who enjoyed a very comfortable exile.
... his stated view of socialism doesn't even contradict his actions. You're ironically engaging in the traditional fascist tactic of treating words as having contradictory meanings in the same fucking argument.
But the fascist conception of one-man rule in the workplace DOES sound like socialism to you?
Simply by being literate, educated, English-speaking, and with enough time to argue for hours over history, you are necessarily, as am I, sacrificing time which could be spent laboring to save the lives of others.
Do you know how much it costs, even with all the graft and overhead of charity organizations, to provide life-saving supplies to individuals in areas like, say, Palestine?
Do you know how much your time is worth?
I mean he certainly didn't believe in democracy, but the way the economy of the USSR was run was the most communist thing the world had ever seen by that point (that lasted longer than three years). The communism s mixed with Stalin's authoritarianism, bigotry and paranoia, but there's no way collectivization and the five year plans were anything but (preparation for) communism. Besides, Stalin was a Bolshevik from when they were robbing banks to fund their activities, so it's not like he joined for the upward mobility. If he wasn't a true believer he could've been doing literally anything else with his life.
What the ever-loving fuck.
This... this is the same 'communist' economy which openly declared that one-man direction in the workplace was the founding principle of socialism?
Because they... reduced peasants and proletariat into the position of effective serfdom under a bureaucratic despotism not dissimilar to pre-modern regimes like Confucian China...?
That's... that's what preparation for communism looks like to you?
"It's not capitalist so it must be on the way to communism" is not a very good lens with which to view economics.
This can't be fucking serious.
Yep, exactly those guys. Again he was authoritarian as fuck, but it's not like the USSR Communists invented authoritarian socialism; that was already a thing by that point. One can be a socialist without believing in democracy.
Premodern China had private property, though, which is the crux of the thing here. Political systems and economic systems influence each other, but in terms of categorization they're more or less orthogonal.
I mean it's not my idea of preparation for communism, but it's an idea of preparation for communism. Industrialization and modernization as prerequisites wouldn't have been particularly controversial. From there the only logical leap needed is "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" and "if we don't hurry they'll fucking kill us" (which is basically what happened). Again I don't agree with the logic, but it does exist and doesn't outwardly contradict socialist ideas if you're willing to take a far-more-than-healthy dose of "the ends justify the means."
...why?
...
Please note that I cited one-man direction in the workplace.
In what world is managerial control by bureaucrats in an undemocratic system socialism?
Technically so did the Stalinist-era Soviet Union. In both cases, to varying degrees, it was marginalized in favor of state control.
what
... "Democracy is a prerequisite for socialism" gets you to call the architects indistinguishable from liberals, and therefore unworthy of being called even 'socialist-leaning', but "Genocide and suppression of the proletariat is a prerequisite for socialism" means that it's unfair to call them anything but true-believer communists?
fucking what
... because people use fringe organizations to climb the ladder all the time without being true believers?
"Every Old Bolshevik, bottom-to-top, was a true believer!" is a fucking insane position to take, and what your claim necessarily implies. Not only that, but it also necessarily suggests many of the socialists you've derided are, likewise, true believers and thus 'deserving' of being called socialists - yet in contradiction to this necessary implication, you parrot the Bolshevik line of them just being liberals painted red (ironic, considering Bolsheviks are fascists painted red, but there's no power like projection). Furthermore, your position suggests that few, if any, major mass murderers were anything but true believers, not opportunists, which is dubious at best.