I mean, importantly though, most of the the 'tankies' of Western Europe admitted that they were wrong - that ultimately Khrushchev squashing the revolt was not going to solve any of the fundamental issues that were marring relations between the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Even Sartre, the 'tankiest' of them all, admitted that he was wrong.
And I think the idea that 56 was an anti-Semitic color revolution is honestly just not a correct characterization. Of course the Yanks and the Brits were getting involved, but the overwhelming amount of scholarship and primary source research on the uprising has dispelled the myth that reactionary forces powered discontent or manipulated the rebellion. (Happy to refer you to the literature) Sometimes we like to throw around the word color revolution for anything that has a hint of foreign involvement but such distinctions are difficult in a world where big countries are interfering in small ones all the time - you will never get a social movement that is divorced from geopolitical interests. But that doesn't mean the discontent or the politics behind it all are always completely fabricated. Tiananmen undoubtedly had some foreign reactionary forces melded in, I'm sure, but that doesn't change that it was also the product of mass discontent caused by shifts in political economy.
But it is also besides the point - 'tankies' now is just a weird slur for anyone who believes that violence probably will be necessary in a revolution or just general MLism, but has also twisted to become an insult against people who defend the DPRK or the PRC, because words just don't have any meaning I suppose. I mean the Dengists fought and beat the Maoists, but modern ones are suddenly the vanguard of the ML revolution or some such.
yeah despite all the lynchings of jews and communists
https://imgur.com/a/1wda0
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. "There is no longer any room for doubt," said the Yugoslav reporter, "it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information," continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."
"But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing." "Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
"The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-semitic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."
“A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported: During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: "Down with Jew Gero!" "Down with Jew Rakosi!" or just simply "down with the Jews!"
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that "Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary." Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that "anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt." This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because "fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface." Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957).
Yes, I'm not denying that there was obviously tremendous anti-Semitism or callous nationalism in the movement. Many Hungarian Jews left for Israel as a consequence of the violence (many left the Soviet Union too, but we'll ignore that for now - those dastardly 'rootless cosmopolitans', am I right? ). What I am saying though is it wasn't a major driving force, and enough archival research has been done to prove that point. Hobsbawm, who was in fact one of the original tankies, talks about it at length here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n22/eric-hobsbawm/could-it-have-been-different
Haaretz discusses the divisions amongst the Jewish community without undercutting he violence: www.haaretz.com/amp/1.4924257
Again the point here is that even people very sympathetic to the Soviet intervention do realize that ultimately how it was played was wrong - that it set up the divisions that would cause the Soviets themselves to collapse. Obviously Hungary was a deeply reactionary place in many respects, I mean the whole region was, but this was hardly just a matter of "the Brits created a color revolution that wanted to murder all the communists" particularly as a lot of the people who went and lynched Jewish officials were supposed Hungarian communists themselves.
I mean I half agree but let's be honest Kruschev lit the fuse that started the Hungarian protests with his ridiculous "Secret Speech" (which was somehow leaked immediately to the West) and split the Communist movement in half worldwide
From that point on (and particularly with the revisionist Kruschevite policies ending in the restoration of the profit motive in the USSR with the 1965 Kosygin reforms) the USSR was toast without a new Marxist-Leninist revolution
So while you point to the handling of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviets I would point more to the counter-revolution of Kruschev (which sparked the protests)
I agree with you there but for different reasons - the Secret Speech itself was not wrong, but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union. Interestingly Mao made the same critique - that largely what Khrushchev was saying was right in the sense that Mao also agreed that Stalin had made crucial errors and was also principally against what he saw as a personality cult, but that with Khrushchev having voiced these critiques, communist parties in the West that had tied their legitimacy to Stalin were suddenly done for. Mao was correct, the Secret Speech was a mistake in how it was done.
The 1965 reforms were obviously a terrible idea, but then they came from a decidedly anti Khrushchev faction that was wary of endemic economic issues. I think this represents a marked shift to technocracy in the Soviet Union which was ultimately terrible for everyone, but I am not sure that we can make a link between that and Khrushchev himself considering that he was ousted BECAUSE he was seen as not 'fit' to 'modernize' the economy.
But also I think in many ways even had the Secret Speech not been made, there were just certain fundamentals about the Soviet position in Europe that were just going to lead to dissent and splintering. It is a shame. Much of it could have been handled and I think defanged but ultimately being besieged by capitalist powers all the time and from every side just made all the 20th century socialist experiments wary, and I can't blame them.
but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union.
This is an incorrect reading of history. It was leaked to the West in the same way it was sent to 0.1% of the Communist party. To pour poison through the Communist party because if they'd released the speech in its entirety the grass roots masses would've lynched the Kruschevites
So they sent it to all the top cadres of the Communist Party who were told under no circumstances to let normal members know about it. This demoralised and paralysed the entire party and ensured the pro-Stalin communists (ie. of real socialism) could never rise to remove the revisionists
Domenico Losurdo goes over this specific point in Chapter 1 of his book on Stalin, How to cast a God into Hell
And Grover Furr wrote an entire book examining the Secret Speech and checking each statement of the 52 statements made by Kruschev and every single one of them was a lie, a fabrication or rumour and conjecture. In some of the cases Furr points out how they were actually the fault of Kruschev.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK
William Bland came to the same conclusion as the 2 above and in his book RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN THE USSR he points out how step by step the Kruschevites privatised the economy and disparaged Central Planning they did so in Soviet economic textbooks with attack phrases like "Central planning is a Stalinist holdover we must move past" and "organising Soviet enterprises to the profit motive must be done to move past the Stalin era" etc.
With this you see casting a God into hell to then nullify his policies was the true aim rather than some introspection into the party about events like the Yezchovchina
single major historian of Stalin and his leadership, including many who did a lot to overturn the lies of Conquest and his ilk, agree with Furr
And pray tell, where do these historians come from? Are they neutral historians devoid of ideology....or are they liberals and conservatives seeking to perpetuate their ideology?
The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best — paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie. Witness Macaulay, who, for that very reason, is the inept G. Smith’s unequalled paragon.
-Engels
Historians are bought and paid for and the intelligence services of the West use them to falsify history (such as Conquest who worked for a literal British Anti-Communist division whos' job was to sit around writing rumours about the Communist movement and Soviet Union in particular)
Anne Applebaum sits on the Atlantic council etc. Anthony Beevor was in the military, Robert Service was a British diplomat etc.
I could go through all of these supposed neutral historians who're tied to the British or American state by many thin tendrils
It is a product of American hegemony that most history in the West is written by bourgeois professors from the United States
I actually started as a Trotskyite. I wanted to read Grover Furr to see what the stupid Stalinists had to say. And after Furr made the point to never trust a single historian and read their footnotes I poured over the footnotes of all of his books (believing him to be a liar).
And after reading many a rebuke of Furr by supposed "mainsteam" historians I've come to the conclusion that the only reason they don't like him is because he uses Soviet archival evidence from private diaries and letters that weren't released until after the collapse of the Soviet Union but "nonetheless they were Communists so they must've been lying all the time".
I mean, importantly though, most of the the 'tankies' of Western Europe admitted that they were wrong - that ultimately Khrushchev squashing the revolt was not going to solve any of the fundamental issues that were marring relations between the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Even Sartre, the 'tankiest' of them all, admitted that he was wrong.
And I think the idea that 56 was an anti-Semitic color revolution is honestly just not a correct characterization. Of course the Yanks and the Brits were getting involved, but the overwhelming amount of scholarship and primary source research on the uprising has dispelled the myth that reactionary forces powered discontent or manipulated the rebellion. (Happy to refer you to the literature) Sometimes we like to throw around the word color revolution for anything that has a hint of foreign involvement but such distinctions are difficult in a world where big countries are interfering in small ones all the time - you will never get a social movement that is divorced from geopolitical interests. But that doesn't mean the discontent or the politics behind it all are always completely fabricated. Tiananmen undoubtedly had some foreign reactionary forces melded in, I'm sure, but that doesn't change that it was also the product of mass discontent caused by shifts in political economy.
But it is also besides the point - 'tankies' now is just a weird slur for anyone who believes that violence probably will be necessary in a revolution or just general MLism, but has also twisted to become an insult against people who defend the DPRK or the PRC, because words just don't have any meaning I suppose. I mean the Dengists fought and beat the Maoists, but modern ones are suddenly the vanguard of the ML revolution or some such.
yeah despite all the lynchings of jews and communists
https://imgur.com/a/1wda0
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. "There is no longer any room for doubt," said the Yugoslav reporter, "it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information," continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."
"But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing." "Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
"The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-semitic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."
“A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported: During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: "Down with Jew Gero!" "Down with Jew Rakosi!" or just simply "down with the Jews!"
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that "Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary." Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that "anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt." This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because "fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface." Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957).
Yes, I'm not denying that there was obviously tremendous anti-Semitism or callous nationalism in the movement. Many Hungarian Jews left for Israel as a consequence of the violence (many left the Soviet Union too, but we'll ignore that for now - those dastardly 'rootless cosmopolitans', am I right? ). What I am saying though is it wasn't a major driving force, and enough archival research has been done to prove that point. Hobsbawm, who was in fact one of the original tankies, talks about it at length here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n22/eric-hobsbawm/could-it-have-been-different Haaretz discusses the divisions amongst the Jewish community without undercutting he violence: www.haaretz.com/amp/1.4924257
Again the point here is that even people very sympathetic to the Soviet intervention do realize that ultimately how it was played was wrong - that it set up the divisions that would cause the Soviets themselves to collapse. Obviously Hungary was a deeply reactionary place in many respects, I mean the whole region was, but this was hardly just a matter of "the Brits created a color revolution that wanted to murder all the communists" particularly as a lot of the people who went and lynched Jewish officials were supposed Hungarian communists themselves.
I mean I half agree but let's be honest Kruschev lit the fuse that started the Hungarian protests with his ridiculous "Secret Speech" (which was somehow leaked immediately to the West) and split the Communist movement in half worldwide
From that point on (and particularly with the revisionist Kruschevite policies ending in the restoration of the profit motive in the USSR with the 1965 Kosygin reforms) the USSR was toast without a new Marxist-Leninist revolution
So while you point to the handling of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviets I would point more to the counter-revolution of Kruschev (which sparked the protests)
I agree with you there but for different reasons - the Secret Speech itself was not wrong, but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union. Interestingly Mao made the same critique - that largely what Khrushchev was saying was right in the sense that Mao also agreed that Stalin had made crucial errors and was also principally against what he saw as a personality cult, but that with Khrushchev having voiced these critiques, communist parties in the West that had tied their legitimacy to Stalin were suddenly done for. Mao was correct, the Secret Speech was a mistake in how it was done.
The 1965 reforms were obviously a terrible idea, but then they came from a decidedly anti Khrushchev faction that was wary of endemic economic issues. I think this represents a marked shift to technocracy in the Soviet Union which was ultimately terrible for everyone, but I am not sure that we can make a link between that and Khrushchev himself considering that he was ousted BECAUSE he was seen as not 'fit' to 'modernize' the economy.
But also I think in many ways even had the Secret Speech not been made, there were just certain fundamentals about the Soviet position in Europe that were just going to lead to dissent and splintering. It is a shame. Much of it could have been handled and I think defanged but ultimately being besieged by capitalist powers all the time and from every side just made all the 20th century socialist experiments wary, and I can't blame them.
This is an incorrect reading of history. It was leaked to the West in the same way it was sent to 0.1% of the Communist party. To pour poison through the Communist party because if they'd released the speech in its entirety the grass roots masses would've lynched the Kruschevites
So they sent it to all the top cadres of the Communist Party who were told under no circumstances to let normal members know about it. This demoralised and paralysed the entire party and ensured the pro-Stalin communists (ie. of real socialism) could never rise to remove the revisionists
Domenico Losurdo goes over this specific point in Chapter 1 of his book on Stalin, How to cast a God into Hell
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WS8cCjXDgdJaXFrkW9b1ldY3xlwiPPQ89AwZo53Amlk/edit
And Grover Furr wrote an entire book examining the Secret Speech and checking each statement of the 52 statements made by Kruschev and every single one of them was a lie, a fabrication or rumour and conjecture. In some of the cases Furr points out how they were actually the fault of Kruschev.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK
William Bland came to the same conclusion as the 2 above and in his book RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN THE USSR he points out how step by step the Kruschevites privatised the economy and disparaged Central Planning they did so in Soviet economic textbooks with attack phrases like "Central planning is a Stalinist holdover we must move past" and "organising Soviet enterprises to the profit motive must be done to move past the Stalin era" etc.
With this you see casting a God into hell to then nullify his policies was the true aim rather than some introspection into the party about events like the Yezchovchina
http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html
deleted by creator
And pray tell, where do these historians come from? Are they neutral historians devoid of ideology....or are they liberals and conservatives seeking to perpetuate their ideology?
-Engels
Historians are bought and paid for and the intelligence services of the West use them to falsify history (such as Conquest who worked for a literal British Anti-Communist division whos' job was to sit around writing rumours about the Communist movement and Soviet Union in particular)
Anne Applebaum sits on the Atlantic council etc. Anthony Beevor was in the military, Robert Service was a British diplomat etc.
I could go through all of these supposed neutral historians who're tied to the British or American state by many thin tendrils
It is a product of American hegemony that most history in the West is written by bourgeois professors from the United States
I actually started as a Trotskyite. I wanted to read Grover Furr to see what the stupid Stalinists had to say. And after Furr made the point to never trust a single historian and read their footnotes I poured over the footnotes of all of his books (believing him to be a liar).
And after reading many a rebuke of Furr by supposed "mainsteam" historians I've come to the conclusion that the only reason they don't like him is because he uses Soviet archival evidence from private diaries and letters that weren't released until after the collapse of the Soviet Union but "nonetheless they were Communists so they must've been lying all the time".
Yeah. I don't doubt there were foreign actors, but it seems like a case of where everyone was mad and took it out.