BHA: Reply to Sean's reply to me

[Timothy A Dayton <tadayton@xxxxxxx>]

Sean's point is a fair one, and it relates not only to the political
realities--that socialism in one country was a resort taken to after a
failure of an international revolution whose failure was itself partly
political in character--but also to the vexed problem of inquiries into
history that have any speculative ("What if...?") quality. You have to
impose some sort of closure, but since you are looking at an open system,
this is always to some degree arbitary, and it becomes a matter of where
you impose the "bracketing."  And this is the sort of question that is
supposed to be of interest in CR, isn't it?

If I catch the drift of Andrew's comments correctly, they are coming from
the recent studies in the old Soviet archives.  There are of course all
sorts of reasons to hold these in suspicion, though I have to confess that
I've not kept up w/ the scholarship specifically relevent here, that on
the "revelations" of Lenin's involvement in the deaths of members of the
Russian petty-bourgoisie who had committed no offenses.  I suspect Sean
is, in fact, up on this and I'd be more than happy to hear from him about
this, as my own persepective on the whole matter is close to his own, from
what I can tell, and I'd like to have this absence in my knowledge
negated.

Oh, also, I don't think it at all odd that the Czar could effectively
suppress the opposition at home but fail disasterously in the prosecution
of the war. Internal security was a speciality of the old regime and it
was much easier to conduct than a war against one of the two most
industrially advanced nations in the war.  The First World War was an
industrial conflict, and Imperial Russia lacked the ability to prosecute
such a war.  We can be thankful, at least that the Soviets learned this
lesson. By the time of the battle of Stalingrad they were outproducing the
Nazis in tanks by 3 or 4 to 1.  And as I understand it, their tanks were
also better.


Tim

Tim Dayton
English Department
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-0701



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