ComradeRat

damn to think that image has haunted my dreams for over four years now

oh huh something I was reading a book about recently. In addition to everyone else's excellent comments I wanna point to James Harris' The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System because it completely upends the traditional scholarship of the purges.

Here is a libgen link to it: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E10CBD3C52CDF7D5D258AC666D67FAB6

I'm gonna copy the description from libgen to emphasize I'm not editorializing when i sing the book's praises:

Political histories of the Soviet Union have portrayed a powerful Kremlin leadership whose will was passively implemented by regional Party officials and institutions. Drawing on his research in recently opened archives in Moscow and the Urals—a vast territory that is a vital center of the Russian mining and metallurgy industries—James R. Harris overturns this view. He argues here that the regions have for centuries had strong identities and interests and that they cumulatively exerted a significant influence on Soviet policy-making and on the evolution of the Soviet system.After tracing the development of local interests prior to the Revolution, Harris demonstrates that a desperate need for capital investment caused the Urals and other Soviet regions to press Moscow to increase the investment and production targets of the first five year plan. He provides conclusive evidence that local leaders established the pace for carrying out such radical policies as breakneck industrialization and the construction of forced labor camps. When the production targets could not be met, regional officials falsified data and blamed "saboteurs" for their shortfalls. Harris argues that such deception contributed to the personal and suspicious nature of Stalin's rule and to the beginning of his onslaught on the Party apparatus.Most of the region's communist leaders were executed during the Great Terror of 1936–38. In his conclusion, Harris measures the impact of their interests on the collapse of the communist system, and the fate of reform under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

In very dry, academic writing, with constant, painstaking reference to the archival sources, Harris lays out facts building to his conclusion that there was a massive USSR wide conspiracy, and as the NKVD was sent in to uncover it the conspirators covered it up harder (including using the non-violent purges to purge non-corrupt officials, scientists, managers, workers). The conspirators systemically distorted production potential of their territory; repeatedly, in several different regions, leaders encouraged overestimation of the quantity of ore, and often the quality of ore deposits. Some of the copper and coal they claimed would be the basis of soviet industry literally couldn't even be used for industrial production. Hundreds of millions of rubles were wasted on facilities, and the conspirators covered it up harder (for example, scientists who disagreed with inflated guesses were--purged by the clique!). This conspiracy wasn't a Nazi plot, or a trotskyist plot, or an SR plot, or a tsarist plot--all of this was done to cover up regional authorities' incompetence and corruption (which dated back to literally 1917).

This excerpt from the conclusion is a good summary of his conclusions:

I would only add that by "not permitted to cite "objective reasons" for economic problems" Harris means "they had lied so, so much over the last 15 years that when Stalin ordered for much lower, more reasonable (based on the numbers central had) quotas but demanded absolute fullfilment of them, the regional authorities still couldn't meet quotas and explaining why would reveal their conspiracy.

Another highlight was the financial commisariat giving the gulags less than 10% of the money the centre ordered them to (it took years for the centre to find out, thousands died). Yet another highlight was the Ukrainian regional authorities (which ofc , death to him, was high up in) using central orders for dekulakization to eradicate any peasants they felt unruly (they made a profitable partnership with the ural factory managers who needed forced labour). Similarly, regional authorities used coercion in collectivization even in periods when the centre was repeatedly ordering them not to.

an apple slice a week keeps the fall-wasps happy too

It exists in all children, regardless of location or culture.

Tho I think your issue is conflating teasing with bullying (the latter is more systematic, long term and doesn't tend to arise outside of totalising institutions like school, work, bourgeois family, etc).

Ahistoricism is not good theory. When you study cultures outside of state formations and burgher societies you find a much wider variety of behaviour, and a greater degree of acceptance of 'weirdness', both on an economic level (e.g. various anishinaabe families and even individuals having idiosyncratic ways of harvesting maple sugar, saying "do it properyl" isnt socially acceptable), an aesthetic one (see the vast varieties of clothing that natives chose to wear in the earlier phases of colonialism 1600-1800, for example), or personal or spiritual choices (e.g. some of the prophets of the Nuer in Sudan ate excrement or ashes, some spent hours arranging seashells into neat patterns). You'll also see variation in cosmologies, and people accepting random teenagers just saying "all the elders stories are wrong, I know how the world was actually created" with little more than an eyeroll. One of the best examples of the acceptence of difference (and why even outside of just being a decent person its important) is the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa (younger brother and main theorist and agitator behind Tecumseh's war). He was basically useless most of his life. He maimed himself early in life failing to shoot a bow properly. He spent the better part of a decade doing the Shawnee equivilant of couch-surfing and bumming food off everyone else while aquiring a drinking problem. He was still socially accepted, if not trusted with any particularly important tasks. Then, one day, he drank a fuck ton and had a vision and turned into an anti-colonial prophet/propagandist. In our society, people would go "lol drunk failure go away". In his society, people listened and he helped mobilise one of the biggest anticolonial wars against the US.

They explained it all pretty well imo

greeks set up colonies along the entirety of the mediterranean sea from the west shore to the east and from the north to the south. They were settler-colonising in this way from around the 400s or 500s BC until they got owned by the romans

i was excited (for more primary sources until i read

But he was expelled from the party the following year [1959] over his criticism of the Great Leap Forward, an industrialization program championed by Mao that led an estimated 30 million to 40 million people to die of starvation in three years. During his 20 years in exile, Li was imprisoned in a labor camp and spent eight years in solitary confinement.

He's not even there for the most interesting (and most in need of good contemporary primary sources!!!!!! Everyone and their mother has written about the civil war!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) period who cares about this guy

I do not think writing fiction for entertainment art is "falsifying history".

If the setting is "historical" or "realistic" it is imo, bc, as I said above, you have to present history reductively, as a compelling, coherent narrative and with the unknowns smoothed out or filled in by imagination. (And all that is assuming the writer has done research into the topic—most artists dont)

The history of knowledge of druids, witches, the middle ages, the middle east and more demonstrates how distorted views can become when the tendencies of capitalist media are allowed to run rampant. Anti-indigenous racism are more serious examples of how these distortions can be harmfulm.

More general fiction outside of "historical fiction" isnt what the post is about, so idk why youre bringing it up. If theres dragons, magic, etc and it doesnt take place in "real life" people are significantly less likely to confuse stuff in it for real facts about histories or cultures.

giving this entire entertainment sector to the capitalists to falsify history in the way they want it with literally no counter balance.

As I understand it, that's a large part of why the firewall exists isnt it? So that the western created ideological products dont become the cultural mainstream?

Im glad you liked it

"Falsification of history" (or science, etcetc) isnt a thing I get the impression the cpc wants to support (and frankly i dont support it either, but im just one poster)

"Cultural fight on this front" cultural fights to falsify history in the name of profit-driven consumer-entertainment dont sound like things historical materialists should be engaging in. Falsifying the history we're materially analysing is a recipe for disaster. Frankly the whole idea of a "cultural battle" that can be fought, lost or won reeks of the german ideology Marx was criticising:

It was a revolution beside which the French Revolution was child’s play, a world struggle beside which the struggles of the Diadochi [successors of Alexander the Great] appear insignificant. Principles ousted one another, heroes of the mind overthrew each other with unheard-of rapidity, and in the three years 1842-45 more of the past was swept away in Germany than at other times in three centuries.

All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought.

Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the putrescence of the absolute spirit. When the last spark of its life had failed, the various components of this caput mortuum began to decompose, entered into new combinations and formed new substances. The industrialists of philosophy, who till then had lived on the exploitation of the absolute spirit, now seized upon the new combinations. Each with all possible zeal set about retailing his apportioned share. This naturally gave rise to competition, which, to start with, was carried on in moderately staid bourgeois fashion. Later when the German market was glutted, and the commodity in spite of all efforts found no response in the world market, the business was spoiled in the usual German manner by fabricated and fictitious production, deterioration in quality, adulteration of the raw materials, falsification of labels, fictitious purchases, bill-jobbing and a credit system devoid of any real basis. The competition turned into a bitter struggle, which is now being extolled and interpreted to us as a revolution of world significance, the begetter of the most prodigious results and achievements.

Idk if this is true or not, but if it's not true it should be imo

way too much 'common knowledge' of science, history, politics in the west (i've never lived outside it so idk what its like outside) is based on what people see on tv/fiction/twitter/etcetc, which is made 1. by people without expertise in the subject 2. by people aiming to entertain (and profit) more than to inform.

This creates extremely distorted views of history. It communicates outright wrong or fabricated information mixed (without distinction) with truths for extra confusion. It communicates idealist ways of thinking about history, as great man theory abounds because of literary requirements for characters and a compelling narrative. And then such media usually portrays knowledge of history as more complete/settled than it actually is, because long descriptions of theories and countertheories make sales plummet