after history 👤

writing about Soviet history at

[after history 👤 @After__History]

The imperatives of national self-preservation would have pushed a Trotsky-led USSR toward decisions that Trotskyists would probably find too close for comfort to Stalinism, but the determinist conclusion that they would have governed in a near identical way is also clearly untrue

Despite much overlap, both men had clear and major differences in their political vision and priorities, and these differences would have manifested in different political outcomes. A system where power is centralized under one individual, which likely still would have happened under Trotsky—despite all his talk of democracy, will inevitably reflect that individual’s political instincts and ideological assumptions, even if broader constraints remain

I understand that their differences are often overstated, but this strikes me as a major overcorrection

[Lyra Sieradzka @lyrasie]

they would've governed practically identically tbh

[soul khan @soulkhan]

I don't think enough of us jews have confronted the reality that israel should be dismantled andd have its entire political, military, media leadership executed and its remaining populace placed in years-long rehabilitation until they're fit to transition into normal society

[after history 👤 @After__History]

https://t.co/KO9VQJJM6M

[after history 👤 @After__History]

NEW ARTICLE: Stalin came to admire Robespierre while studying the French Revolution in exile. Robespierre was first to terrorize the "enemies of the revolution," stoking repression that continually expanded inwards, much like Stalin's own terror would on an even greater scale.

In my latest article, I consider how the Robespierrean legacy can help us unravel the riddle of Stalinism. Link in reply.

[after history 👤 @After__History]

Sources: “A Soviet Jihad against Hitler: Ishan Babakhan Calls Central Asian Muslims to War" by Jeff Eden

"Islamically informed Soviet patriotism in postwar Kyrgyzstan" by Eren Murat Tasar

[after history 👤 @After__History]

Millions of Soviet Central Asian Muslims fought valiantly against the Nazis and were called to action through a kind of Islamically informed Soviet patriotism in which holy war, or jihad, was invoked against Hitlerism. Muslims played a crucial role in Soviet victory over Nazism

[Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta]

Today, as a Ukrainian-Jewish and a scholar of the Holocaust, I feel deeply ashamed.

I never could have imagined that in my country — the country where the Nazis murdered 1.5 million Jews, the country of Babyn Yar, the very symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, a country that claims to be fighting for “freedom and democracy” — a Nazi collaborator and OUN leader like Andriy Melnyk would be buried with full state honors.

Men under Melnyk’s leadership served in the Auxiliary police under Nazi. They hunted Jews hiding in attics, basements, forests, and barns, desperate to survive the Holocaust. They guarded ghettos and camps. They marched Jews to execution sites. And they took part in the shootings alongside the Germans.

By the spring of 1943, the Holocaust in Ukraine was nearly complete. The Jewish neighbors were gone — murdered before the eyes, and often with the assistance, of Melnyk’s followers. And it was precisely then that Melnyk supported the creation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, whose members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler.

And today, the president of my country — a man whose own relatives were murdered by the Nazis — kneels before the coffin of this Nazi collaborator.

One could hardly imagine a greater humiliation for Jews. It is a humiliation for everyone who once believed that “Never Again” meant something in contemporary Ukraine — a country where militant ethnic nationalism increasingly dictates the politics of memory, and national identity.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Dikötter is not a historian, he is a prosecutor. That's very much not the same thing.

Historians care about describing a period in all its complexity. Prosecutors care about building a case.

Which is why he's so widely reviled in China. All his books are designed to produce a single emotional reaction: horror and disgust about the country's government. He exclusively writes about the darkest chapters of China's history, strips away every structural factor, every geopolitical pressure, every counterfactual, and leaves you with nothing but a villain and his victims.

That's not history, that's an indictment.

Also, as a rule of thumb: when a "historian" of a country is most enthusiastically celebrated by the geopolitical adversaries of said country, you can take it as a pretty reliable indicator that they may not be serving truth so much as serving an agenda.

[Dilawar Karwan @RashmanTheHorse]

"In this yr of 1943, we should never tolerate anti Germanism" - this is how many of you sound.

[after history 👤 @After__History]

Sources:

“Reconsidering “Piłsudskiite nationalism”” by Paul Brykczynski, 

“The History of Poland Since 1863” R. F. Leslie

“Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman

“A Nation like Lava” by Neal Ascherson (book review)

[after history 👤 @After__History]

Pilsudski eventually abandoned socialism for nationalist politics. While the Soviets expropriated wealthy landowners, Pilsudski welcomed them into his government, much to the disapproval of his original socialist allies, who condemned these "monarchist and reactionary" elements.

It is unsurprising then that he also cracked down on the centre and left-wing opposition, arresting their leaders en masse in 1930. In the end, there was no Piłsudskite socialism in any meaningful sense.

[Kraut @The_Davos_Man]

Pilsudski was a socialist you moron.

He hated the Nazis. He proposed to the French a pre-emptive war in 1933 to end the Nazi regime. The French rejected the plan, he then signed a non-aggression pact with Germany to buy time to rearm Poland for war, but then died.

[maowadi 📕 🪂🔻 @maoisthnvx_25]

Antisemitism on the left is not a real thing. Antisemitism has ceased to be a structural and relevant type of discrimination for years now

[after history 👤 @After__History]

I talk about it more here

[after history 👤 @After__History]

The claim that Stalin impregnated a 13 year old girl is based on very tenuous and inconclusive evidence, as noted by historian Charters Wynn. And the supposed DNA test reported on in some tabloids has not been corroborated by reputable or scholarly sources.

[after history 👤 @After__History]

While its ironic that the writer who popularized the claim of Stalin having a relationship with a teenage girl is in the Epstein logs, that is really not a good historical argument itself, especially since other historians have made the same claim both before and after him.

It’s been mentioned by reputable Stalin biographers like Suny and Kotkin. Still, the evidence is quite thin and I’m inclined to agree with Charters Wynn who is sceptical of the claim.

[Bolshevik Enthusiast @LeBolshevikman]

The source for that Stalin story is some guy named Sebag Montefiore, his name is found multiple time in the Epstein flight logs and he was close friends with him lol

[Arsov oreol @notbourgeois]

About half-way done and I must say that it's rejection of the "dogmatic lunatic" trope is quite satisfying. It actually elaborates the logic, both of Enver Hoxha and the time he lived in, and shows how his pursuit of modernisation at all costs dominated his decision-making.

[after history 👤 @After__History]

https://t.co/SB24cxN2Nb

[after history 👤 @After__History]

NEW ARTICLE: Trotsky described Stalinism as a Thermidor, yet historians Fitzpatrick and van Ree are right to point out that Stalin’s Terror was not Bonapartist consolidation, but a repeat of Jacobin terror. In many ways, the Stalinists were more Jacobin than the Jacobins.

Link in reply

[🔄🔃🔄 @SomeSomething22]

It's -relatively- simple, he was perfectly ruthless and cunning in terms of intra-CPSU politics (why would he be Andropov's protégé if not?), yet utterly inexperienced and clueless in matters of practical and methodical governance

[after history 👤 @After__History]

“The Valaam Myth and Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans” by Robert Dale

[after history 👤 @After__History]

Historian Robert Dale researched the claim that the Soviets carried out mass deportations of disabled veterans in 1947 and concluded that there was no evidence to suggest a targeted campaign of this nature ever occurred. One of many popular Soviet history myths accepted as fact because people tend to have a very low threshold of evidence when it comes to believing things about the USSR that validate their pre-existing biases.

Of course, the myth reflected real anxieties and disappointment at the social stigma and low-quality of institutional support the USSR provided its disabled veterans. But it's really not demonstrative of a uniquely communist authoritarianism/incompetence given that the post-war reintegration of the disabled proved to be a massive failure across the board, generally.

The Soviets uneven universal pension structure was still superior to the paltry and fragmented support the US provided its disabled citizens. Nevermind the fact that by the 1930s over 30 U.S states had active compulsory sterilization laws targeting disabled people. It’s worth noting that the Soviets never embraced this kind of genocidal-eugenic attitude towards the disabled

[Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 @CathyYoung63]

After 1945, disabled Soviet veterans, especially amputees, were deported from large cities to distant regions because Stalin thought they made victory look bad.
You're welcome, dumbass.