Thread by @kamilkazani

There is a misconception regarding Stalin and his punitive policies. Some argue that purges were aimed at Nazis/collaborators. Bullshit. The opposite is true - it was okayish to be a Nazi supporter. Meanwhile the heretics within the Party were exterminated with no mercy (thread)

A good example can be found in a short story by Shalamov. I personally much prefer Shalamov to Solzhenystsyn both as an author, as a thinker and as a witness of the era. Solzhenytsyn was imprisoned in privileged conditions, while Shalamov - in a literal hellhole of Gulag

The plot is. A prisoner finds out how does the Gulag keep information on him. One dossier is kept at the general archive - and you can't access it. On the bright side, they never actually check it. Another dossier is going with a prisoner from one camp to another and kept locally

There are abbreviatons there on how to treat a prisoner. For example КРД - Counter-Revolutionary Diversant. Not so bad. Unfortunately, this guy's abbreviation was far worse. КРТД - Counter-Revolutionary *Trotskyist* Diversant. That meant - kill him. Don't let him come out alive

Trotskyists, or people somehow involved with Trotsky in every capacity had to be exterminated completely. Why? Well, some monarchists or Nazis weren't so bad really. They were infidels, an outgroup. Meanwhile Troktskyists were an ingroup. They were heretics, which is way worse

Trotsky wasn't an outsider. In fact, he was a key player of the revolution and the civil war. He was personally organizing what would be called the October Revolution as the Deputy Head of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Petrograd (St Petersburg)

Who was *the* head of that committee that overthrew the Provisional Government and led communists to power, you may ask? It was Lazimir. How come you never heard of him? Well, he wasn't a Bolshevik. He wasn't Communist at all

The largest and the most popular party in Russia in 1917 wasn't Communists. It was a Socialist Revolutionary Party. They were non-Marxist agrarian socialists who built their agenda around land distribution. Ofc they were the most popular in a country of destitute peasants

Socialist Revolutionaries committed most terror attacks in prerevolutionary Russia. You see as Ivan Kalaev kills the General Governor of Moscow Grand Duc Sergey Alexandrovich. Bolsheviks disapproved terrorism and constantly quarrelled with Socialist Revolutionaries on this matter

After the February Revolution Socialist Revolutionaries come to power and form the government. Makes total sense. The most popular party with the huge popular support. Kerensky, leader of the Provisional Government was Socialist Revolutionary himself

But the WWI continued. And it was hugely unpopular among the masses. The debates on whether to continue the war led to the split of the party. Right-wing SRs supported the war, Left-wings - not. Therefore, Left-wing SRs joined with Bolsheviks to overthrew Provisional Government

But why was Provisional Government provisional in the first place? Because it was a temporary gov till the All Russian Constituent Assembly which would determine new way of governance will be called. Therefore, October Revolution wasn't seen as a major event

In fact, the coalition of Bolsheviks and Left SRs, who just overthrew the Right SRs together even allowed elections. However, despite having political power they lost it. Socialist Revolutionaries (which means Right SRs, Left SRs were too late with entering elections) won

According to Trotsky, a Left-wing SR Natanson gave the idea:

- We will probably have to disband the Constitutional Assembly by force
— Bravo! - said Lenin. - That's very right. But will your party agree?
— We have some controversy, but I believe everyone will agree in the end

And they did. The first day of their work was the last

Sailor Zheleznyakov who guarded the convention told:

- The guard is tired (караул устал)

And forced everyone out of the room. The Convention was disbanded, the regime transformed in a collective dictatorship of Bolsheviks and left SRs

Initially Bolsheviks and Left SRs allied to stop the war. However, after the Brest Peace Left SRs got angry. In July 1918 they raised a rebellion in Yaroslavl. Bolsheviks suppressed it, largely with forces of German and Hungarian POWs released for this task from POW camps

Consequently, Left SRs were purged from all offices and all magistrate positions. Now Russia becomes a one-party state. Here you see an image commemorating the suppression of Yaroslavl rebellion. See the swastikas on the background? SRs used them extensively

You can even see swastika on the banknotes of the Provisional Government. Until the rise of Hitler swastika was considered just another cool oriental symbol, associated with mysticism and masonry

Why did I cover this story of Bolsheviks and SRs in a detailed way? Cuz I find it very Haldunian. In fact I find Haldunian concept of assabiyah highly relevant for the analysis of revolution

According to Haldun assabiyah is a coalition of brave upstarts, usually nomads or highlanders. They invade the lands of rotten and degenerate sedentary societies and conquer them

But the completion of conquest means the demise of assabiyah. Once it becomes victorious, one of its leader wants to usurp all the power and all the glory of the victory for himself. Who now becomes problematic? Well, the old comrades. Those who actually did the conquest

The thing is - before assabiyah came to power it was rather a loose coalition of various heterogenous forces. It was relatively democratic. Relations within it were more or less horizontal and even the leader had to consult with the rest. Nobody could just command

But once the conquest is over it starts to change. The leader will usurp all the power, all the glory, all the authority. Horizontal structure becomes a vertical structure and collective rule - a personal rule

Furthermore, the entire narrative of how victory is achieved is now completely reshaped. It was never loose horizontal structure, it was a hierarchy with one leader from the beginning. We are not only a monarchy, but we have always been a monarchy with a God-like leader

Therefore, the old comrades constitute danger. They are not only too proud and arrogant and dare to question the God-like leader. They are also a bearers of real knowledge of how victory was achieved and that things used to work in a very different way. They need to be eliminated

If you look at the October Revolution through lenses of assabiyah it makes sense. A very loose assabiyah of two parties came to power. Then one of them was purged ofc. But even the remaining party was still too loose, too horizontal. Too unstable. It still looked like this

It had to look like this. The progress of victory marks the demise and extermination of old assabiyah. Under the new order riches will belong not to the ones who conquered them and empire not the the ones who built it

While getting rid of his old comrades the God-like ruler will elevate strangers from nothing. They are nobody, and thus are completely dependent on his good graces. Consider, the Moscow processes of 1937-1938 when pretty much of the Bolshevik Old Guard was eliminated

Who was the prosecutor though? Who led the extermination of Old Bolsheviks? Vyshynsky. And who was Vyshynsky? He used to be a police commissar of a district in Moscow who order to arrest Lenin as a German spy in 1917

Is it a coincidence that Stalin delegated the purge to one of the most politically compromised men in the USSR? I think not. Actually it makes sense. First, Vyshynsky was totally dependent on the mercy of Stalin. Without his protection, he would be boycotted and destroyed

Furthermore, he might bear a grudge against Old Bolsheviks who despised him, looked down on him, and even tried to exclude him from the Party. Thus he could reasonable have a motive of personal revenge

This could explain why Trotskyism was by far the most dangerous political label under Stalin. Trotsky led the revolution. Trotsky was in charge of the Red Army. And while many communists saw him as the number 2 in the party, many of their enemies viewed him as the number 1

Anti-Communist propaganda of the Civil War constantly presented Trotsky as a tougher, more masculine, more dominant character

Leading sShere Trotsky is a dominant male character, while Lenin is a 'madame, a weaker, submissive, feminine partner'. He directly appealed to Lenin, asking him not to play under Trotsky's tune

Trotsky was the face of the Communist regime for most of the anti-Communists

No wonder that later under Stalin, Trotskyism became the worst political accusation. Shalamov's hero conspires to change an abbreviation in his dossier, dropping a T in КРТД as a typo. Once he becomes an ordinary Counter-Revolutionary divergent, non Trotskyist, he can live

Meanwhile sympathies for Nazism weren't that bad. Condider a poet Yaroslav Smelyakov. In 1934 arrested for keeping a copy of Mein Kampf. Indicted with glorifying Hitler and Mussolini 'I wish we were doing this, too!'. He got three years of prison camp

During the Winter War, Smelyakov was drafted to army to fight against the Finns. At the first opportunity he deserted and switched to the Finnish side. In 1945 when Soviets enter Finland he's arrested and sentenced to 2 years of hard labour

Once released, he seeks redemption. He writes a book of poems glorifying Stalin, then publishes poems instructing the working classes in true communist ways. He gets the State Prize of Soviet Union, the Prize of the Council of Communist Youth. Attends high-end government events

Let's summarise. Assabiyah is a loose horizontal coalition that seeks political power. Once victorious, it evolves into an absolutist regime. Which pretends assabiyah had always been absolutist and the victory is personal achievement of the ruler or of his divine predecessors

Under the new order, people who actually organised the victory and fought for it become a liability. They not only have high expectations and dare to question the power of the ruler, they also bear the real knowledge of where it all started and that it had not always been so

So they will be eliminated. The ruler gets rid of them and instead promotes outsiders. I would even speculate that outsiders better be compromised, they better be former enemies trying to buy their very life with the loyal service. The more compromised the easier to control

I would even speculate, though I can't prove it, that this Stalinist practice might continue till this very day in modern Russia. Being compromised = committing tons of things that are criminal from the perspective of the dominant narrative = prerequisite to promotion

Think about it. Every time some high profile official is arrested, they usually indict him with dozens or hundreds of cases, collected in piles of volumes with the list of his crimes and all his schemes he used. Every single time. What does it mean in practice?

The state security keeps dossier on every high profile person - politician, administrator, businessman. They keep huge volumes with the evidence of their crimes (or what they consider to be crime). The moment supreme power wants to destroy him, it will use all of this

Nemtsov who was then the Deputy Prime Minister recalls a dialogue with Putin, then his subordinate. Putin submitted him a report with the evidence on corruption schemes. Nemtsov:

- If you have the evidence, why don't you recommend to press charges

- You are the boss, you decide

Which probably reflects Putin's mentality. The role of investigators is not to destroy an official but rather to collect the evidence and present it to the boss. So he can use it against his subordinate whenever he wants. Criminal evidence is the main tool of control

Which implies that the supreme power who thinks and operates this way will be consciously selecting and promoting very compromised people. The more compromised, the more controllable

As a result, very soon the entire ruling elite will consist of people who are common criminals from the perspective of ideology which this very elite uses to legitimise it power. If you didn't do sth criminal from the perspective of the dominant narrative, you get no promotion

End of thread. I plan to publish mega threads weekly, but on a specific day of the week. Twitter doesn't give more than 4 options for a poll, so you can post a preferred day in your comments here. I will start threads between 12-14.00 East Coast time, 17-19 Western European time