On 8 Maijs, 06:23, The Black Monk <ch....@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 6, 12:34 pm, P=C4=93teris Cedri=C5=86=C5=A1 (Peteris Cedrins)
>
> <cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > On 6 Maijs, 06:18, The Black Monk <ch....@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > On May 3, 12:28 pm, P=C3=A7teris Cedri=C3=B2=C3=B0 (Peteris Cedrins)
>
> > [deletions]
>
> > > Do you doubt that the Bolshevik Revolution would have failed if not
> > > for the Latvian Red Rifles?
>
> > That's a what-if game.
>
> Sure,, and is there a problem with that? Without the participation of
> the Latvian Red Rifles, would Russia have become Bolshevik? Yes or
> no?
My problem with what-if games, which I've explained many a time, is
that if you change one thing -- everything changes. In this case -- if
the Riflemen hadn't formed Lenin's Praetorian guard, others would have
been found. One could then find other things to play with -- I've even
read a novel in which the speculation is that Nechayev would have been
in Lenin's place, had he lived. You could ask questions like would
there have been Bolshevism without Lenin? You could read _War and
Peace_ on a similar question, as I'm sure you have...
> The evidence I posted strongly suggests that the answer is no.
>
> > > If so can you find any sup****t for the idea that the Latvian Red
> > > Rifles weren't critical for the Revolution's success?
>
> > I'm not denying that.
>
> Okay. Thank you for your honesty.
=2E..and then you could ask whether the failures of the provisional
government, and the failure of previous governments to introduce
reforms that addressed the causes of the extreme discontent that led
to such extremism, weren't critical to the Revolution's success. But
if I ask that, you're going to reach for some metaphor about girls
wandering around in bad neighborhoods.
There were over half a million landless persons (heads of families and
dependents) in what is now Latvia in 1897, out of a total population
of less than two million. Urbanization was taking place on a grand
scale. 1905 was the crucible -- that earlier revolution, and its
brutal suppression, radicalized many.
> > > Perhaps I am misinterpreting your intention, and if so I apologise,
> > > but it seems that you are trying to deflect the conversation away
from=
> > > the clear fact that Latvians were crucial to the Revolution (so much
> > > so that it would not have succeeded if not for them) to a different
> > > conversation, on whether Latvia as a whole is responsible for those
> > > actions. I've already repeated many times that I consider neither
> > > Russia nor Latvia collectively responsible for the actions of a band
> > > of criminals - I assume you are intelligent enough to remember that.
>
> > Here and elsewhere, the distinctions you make -- or fail to make --
> > between ethnicity and nationality are far too slippery.
>
> But at a time when there are no states, or they are not yet
> established, all we have is ethnicity.
OK, sure. But what does it -- did it -- mean? The national awakening
that took place from the 1850s wasn't political -- except in that the
idea of a "Young Latvia" (the term was given to the movement by the
Germans, because the book of poetry that marked the beginning of the
First Awakening included a translation of Heine) was detested by both
the Baltic Germans and the Russians, who saw Latvians as a peasant
class rather than as a nation -- wasn't overtly political. The "first
Latvian," Kri=C5=A1j=C4=81nis Valdem=C4=81rs, was a pragmatic and
constructi=
ve man,
interested in the betterment of his people and a self-described
Russophile. By the 1890s, the First Awakening had petered out -- with
the development of a bourgeoisie, "Latvianness" became bourgeois;
ethnic decoration, basically. Real work was done -- in education, for
instance. Then came the so-called "suitcase with the dangerous
contents" -- the Marxist literature Rainis brought in from Germany.
Even some of the major radicals (e.g., Jansons-Brauns) admit that
their understanding of the new wave of socialist thought was shallow.
But the lines of thought that run through this period are where you
find the profound differences -- and points of agreement.
Rainis, for example -- Latvia's greatest writer -- worked with Stu=C4=8Dka
at the leftist newspaper _Dienas Lapa_. His sister married Stu=C4=8Dka, in
fact. Rainis, however, rejected the dictator****p of the proletariat
(he could have become an academician in Moscow, but turned it down).
Rainis was _both_ a fervent socialist and a fervent nationalist. You
ask how I know how they thought -- well, you can read a lot of
polemics at different points.
Rainis in a letter to Krauze, June 1916, my crude translation:
"We must get rid of the idea that we can only survive at the mercies
of the Germans or Russians. The proletariat and Social Democracy also
require a nation, and a free nation. The proletariat suffers the most
from the repression of the nation. The proletariat and Social
Democracy can only achieve its goals through the International, but
this is based on nationality -- on the existence of the nation. (To
kill a nation of a couple of a million is the same as killing a couple
of million members of the proletariat.) _Cosmopolitanism is a utopia
and old-fa****oned._ A nation-less situation is only a distant goal,
but not a means toward that goal. The cosmopolitan is a rabble, a
disorganized mass in which nations are held captive. The cosmopolitan
is sawdust and chaff, not grain or wood to be worked with."
The reason he wrote this way was because the idea he is dissing --
that of the nation-less situation as a means toward his goal, social
democracy (I used capitals in the text because that's what LSDSP
became during the relevant period -- LSD, the Social Democracy of
Latvia, which was taken over by the Bolsheviks) -- was indeed an idea
that was _au courant_. Stu=C4=8Dka only grudgingly even agreed to forming
a
"Latvian Socialist Republic"; nationality was a distraction from class
warfare.
It's not so hard to perceive the idea, Black Monk -- it's closely
related to the sovok ideas of such as Andrius.
> > And you are leaving a vital element out -- the state. I don't hold
Russi=
ans
> > collectively responsible for Soviet crimes,
>
> By demanding reparations from the Russian state you are in essence
> holding the Russian people collectively responsible - after all, who
> will ultimately pay the reparations if not Russian taxpayers?
>
> > but the Russian Federation is the successor state of the USSR, which
inv=
aded
> > the Republic of Latvia. States have responsibilities.
>
> Yes, the Russian Federation is the successor state of the USSR. This
> was a practical necessity - the USSR's security council seat, debts,
> and foreign property (embassies, etc.) had to go to someone after
> all. But do you recall Russia agreeing to take on the USSR's moral
> burdens? It seems that you are confusing the practical matter of
> division or inheritance of assets with a very different one -
> inheritance of legacy. The USSR's assets and foreign debts had to go
> somewhere, and did, to Russia - but the state itself died and is
> gone.
And you have the gall to accuse me of defining Latvians according to
convenience? What the above translates to is "we'll take the UN seat
and the nukes, but you can share the guilt." And that is indeed the
usual Russian approach -- "we'll take credit for defeating Fascism,
you Nazis pygmies, but you weren't occupied and share the blame for
Stalinism."
The inheritance of a continuous, complex history, which even
revolutions don't change very much, also has to "go somewhere."
Personally, I don't want reparations (and I've said so before) -- I
think asking for money is an impediment to asking for acknowledgment
of the occupation.
But this is exactly where I think you get slippery in a way that
matters -- states matter, and very much so. The peace treaty was
signed between states (and here you could, of course, pursue the
argument that the Soviet government wasn't legitimate in 1920, but
this debate is already too long...). States have _more_ responsibility
than ethnoi do, because they supersede ethnicity -- an ethnic Latvian
can become a Russian citizen and vice-versa, a state includes its
minorities, etc. In essence -- states are legal entities, and ethnoi
are not.
No, I don't recall Russia taking on the moral burdens of the USSR -- I
recall Russia blaming everybody else for everything. "We were all in
it together, and we built the Autobahn I mean those nice factories,
Siberia was a vacationers' paradise and anyway you are rehabilitating
Nazism, etc." Tomorrow Russia will happily take on the moral burden of
ecstatically celebrating the Soviet victory in 1945, no?
> > I would note, too, that
> > nostalgia for the Soviets is far more prevalent among Russians than it
> > is among Latvians, and I think that's rather illustrative of whether
> > Bolshevism was forced upon Russia or not.
>
> Why would nostalgia for the stable Brezhnev days of the 1970's by
> Russians who haven't trasnsitioned well or by the youth who doin't
> remember Soviet times tell us anything about whether Bolshevism was
> forced on the Russian people in 1918 or not? Are you going to tell me
> that similar East German commie nostalgia also means that the
> imposition of communist rule in that country was voluntary?
It's nostalgia for the Brezhnev days? Even you bring up the youth who
don't remember. Don't you think state policy has an effect on what
youth think? Don't you think the lack of a
_Vergangenheitsbew=C3=A4ltigung_
is a problem? Putin proclaimed himself a "proud Chekist" and revived
the Soviet music, did he not?
Here's a piece I like a lot, "A Few Words About History, Russia and
Latvia," by the historian Aivars Stranga --
http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/latvia/History-of-Occupation/Stranga/
[snip]
I have to edit a text, but I'll get try to get to the rest of your
text later.
Regards,
/P
http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
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