The bombastic spectacle preceded the outbreak of WWI by just 4 years, followed by the overthrow of the Tsars in Russia in 1917 and the German Kaiser in 1918. Similarly, the glorification of monarchy, pomp & backwardness today heralds nothing so much as war & revolution. 2/
In her article, Jean Shaoul details only one of the horrific massacres in Africa that #QueenElizabeth presided over: the bloody crushing of the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in 1952-56, with an estimated 150,000 dead 3/: wsws.org/en/articles/20…
And @CarterWSWS draws attention to the contradictions and implications of the @nytimes glorification of the British monarchy, after launching an all-out assault on the democratic revolutionary traditions of the American revolutions with the #1619Project 4/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…
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1/ 100 years ago, on September 22 1922, Joseph Stalin wrote a letter to Vladimir Lenin that directly refutes the lie that Stalin represented the continuity of Lenin: In fact, the Soviet Union was founded in opposition to the national chauvinism of Stalin.
2/ In the letter, Stalin demanded the complete economic and political subordination of the Soviet republics of Ukraine, the Caucasus and other regions, to the central apparatus in Moscow. In the perhaps most revealing formulation, Stalin wrote:
3/ "The young generation of communists in the borderlands refuses to understand the toying around [by our party] with independence as a game.” The civil war had forced Moscow to show "liberalism" toward the oppressed nationalities, but now, Stalin insisted, this had to stop.
1/ 98 years today, on September 2, 1924, Mikhail Glazman, Trotsky's closest collaborators during the Civil War, shot himself bc he had been expelled from the party, based on false accusations. He was the first Trotskyist who was driven to death by the Stalinist bureaucracy.
2/ Glazman was a remarkable representative of a generation of revolutionaries who played a key role in the Left Opposition. Shaped by the experience of the civil war, fought under Trotsky's leadership, they were unwavering in their commitment to the revolution, honest, and firm.
1/ Mikhail Gorbachev will go down in history as the executor of the final act of the Stalinist betrayal of the October revolution: the pro-capitalist "perestroika" policy which led to the destruction of the Soviet Union. No one can understand his role w/o studying the documents
2/ written by the ICFI 35 years ago. In contrast to all the petty bourgeois cheerleaders of Gorbachev, the ICFI recognized in "perestroika" a move by the bureaucracy toward capitalist restoration. This analysis was summed up as early as March 1987: wsws.org/en/special/lib…
3/ Gorbachev, an outgrowth of the Soviet bureaucracy, was little more but a handmaiden of capitalist reaction & Washington. In 1988, David North wrote this scathing analysis, “Gorbachev grovels to Wall Street”. wsws.org/en/special/lib…
1/ It speaks volumes about the level of intellectual & political degradation and disorientation among America's so called "public intellectuals" that @jasonintrator, a supposed expert on fascism and Yale professor, can make such an extraordinarily disoriented statement.
2/ There is no question that anyone in West Germany in the 1980s would inevitably run into Nazis since they had been allowed to run much of the country by US imperialism after WWII. But, unlike Stanley, many would refuse to have "polite dinners" with them.
3/ In fact, German intellectual life at the time centered on the efforts of Ernst Nolte and other right-wing German historians to legitimize the crimes of Adolf Hitler as a response to the "violence" unleashed by the Russian Revolution. They were opposed vehemently.
1/This is a horrifying image of a pogrom in Lviv on July 1, 1941, that was encouraged by the Nazis but principally carried out by Ukrainian nationalists -- above all the OUN. The same organization the @nytimes and @TimothyDSnyder now want you to believe wasn't that big of a deal.
2/ Historian John-Paul Himka wrote on this pogrom: "The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) set up a short-lived government in Lviv on 30 June headed by a vehement anti-Semite. It simultaneously plastered the city with leaflets encouraging ethnic cleansing."
3/ "It formed a militia that assumed leadership in the pogrom, arresting Jews for pogrom activities. The militiamen were also present at the execution of Jews. The day after the pogrom they began to work directly for the Einsatzgruppen, again arresting Jews for execution."
1/ Ukrainian & Russian workers share a long & powerful revolutionary history. Trotksy's Left Opposition enjoyed enormous support in the Ukrainian working class. The following is a thread with excerpts from letters by workers in Soviet Ukraine from 1926-7. #UkraineRussiaWar
2/ On 1 May, 1926, a worker at a Ukrainian sugar refinery wrote to the City Council of Kiev: "I propose that we rename "KIEV" to the city of "TROTSKIEV". As Trotskiev, the city will no longer recall the mythical “Kiev”...
3/ "As Trotskiev, the city’s name will tell of the great revolutionary work done by Comrade Trotsky in Ukraine in the years of the cruelest class struggle on behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party..."