One of my neighbours talks a lot about how Lenin did nothing wrong and that Stalin is the one who made the bad...

Lenin was moving towards "something" idk what but the NEP wasn't very communist, possible that if he had stayed alive they would have abandoned communism or seriously altered it.

Simple inequality
Dead>>>>Red>Serf

Lenin didn't do much wrong because he didn't get a chance to live long enough to see himself become the villain.

He still set everything up for someone like Stalin to do what he did.

Although arguably he was pretty bad, he just wasn't as bad as Stalin.

It's exactly the other way around. Stalin, while a cruel dictator, also industrialized the country, won WW2 and pretty much built USSR from grounds up. Lenin was just as evil but also completely incompetent.

Serfdom was abolished before Lenin was even born.

Lenin was not as evil, he never would have purged the party like Stalin did.

>tfw you will never call comrade Lenin a son of an Irkutsk cunt

>I don't really agree with him but I'd like to know what Veeky Forums thinks.

If you are a fan of Marx and Engles he didin do nuffin wrong if you arent then he is a monster albiet nowhere near stalin.

>Stalin's policies were a direct continuation of Lenin's

Socialism in one country wasnt really a continuation of any of Lenins principles unless you really stretch them. Likewise the pact with Germany was a literal betrayal. Likewise he was vastly less authoritarain than Stalin at the internationals and saw them as more than just a tool of foreign policy.

>Lenin was moving towards "something" idk what but the NEP wasn't very communist, possible that if he had stayed alive they would have abandoned communism or seriously altered it.

Lenins main plan was stalling out till revolution took place in the West.

Likewise beyond everything he was pragmatic (Left Communism an infantile disorder is a good work of his on this).

He tried a hardline approach when it came to socialism (War Communism) and it rapidly alienated the peasantry who they were reliant on as an agrarian society.

The NEP was either

The Bolsheviks appeasing the peasants until they were powerful enough to dispense with them (pessimistic view) or seeing that revolution in the west wasn't coming developing the means of production and social relations with limited capitalism to eliminate the last remnants of feudalism so that they could then transition to proper socialism (optimistic)

But he did purge, he purged the mensheviks and also backstabbed the Makhnovists in Ukraine. Dzerzhinsky who operated under Lenin was no less cruel than Lenin's butchers. He also created the earliest form of gulags (SLON) and war communism which was pretty much serfdom 2.0

Lenin perverted Marxism.

>Lenin was just as evil but also completely incompetent.

What makes you think Lenin was incompetent?

In what way?

THE party. Lenin would have kicked out Zinoviev from the party, he wouldn't have killed the old bolsheviks and members of the bolshevik party. Menshiviks were traitors or whatever according to the bolsheviks so it's fine to kill them. War communism has nothing to do with purging the party and was necessary, the party needed the support of the urban people who were starving.

Couldn't even beat fucking Poland and only ended up winning the civil war because the Whites were splintered into seven gajillion different factions and undersupplied to boot.

>it's okay to rob poor peasants of their food and belongings in order to feed spoiled middle class urban LARPing trash
I've came to conclusion that all cities literally need to burn. Nothing but subhumans there.

>But he did purge, he purged the mensheviks also backstabbed the Makhnovists in Ukraine.

Neither of them were groups were members of the party since 1912.

>Dzerzhinsky who operated under Lenin was no less cruel than Lenin's butchers

Unlike Stalins butcher Beria who had literal rape basement built into his office for kidnapped schoolgirls.

gotta do what you gotta do.

Offtopic but does anyone find it hilarious how Trotsky and his train of elite commandos was a huge reason why the Red's won the war.

>it's okay to kill your allies as long as they aren't members of your faggot party

Menshviks were not allies at all, they were bourgious libdems basically.

>Trotsky
>elite commandos
Trotsky was the least competent military commander of 21st century after Luigi Cadorna and perhaps on par with Budyonny who also happened to be a commie.

Bolsheviks were also bourgeois. The rural people supported either the whites or Makhno, bolsheviks were all urbanite trash.

he literally had elite commandos on the train who dressed in black leather and always arrived at the critical moment to turn the tide like gandalf.

The rural people were the green's they didn't give a fuck who won, they just didn't want to be conscripted.

They were about as elite as fucking antifa.

>Couldn't even beat fucking Poland

Stalin Couldnt even beat Finland and he had the industrialised soviet union and not the crummy civil war damaged semi feudal mess

>only ended up winning the civil war because the Whites were splintered into seven gajillion different factions and undersupplied to boot.

The fact that a party with only 25K members -almost all of them in a few cities managed to win is extraordinarily impressive even more so when you consider that party was almost destroyed less than a year earlier.

The whites might not have been perfect but they had access to far more human capital and foreign support.

if lenin had lived he'd do exactly what stalin did

>Stalin Couldnt even beat Finland
But he did beat Finland, his only loss was that he didn't get to annex them fully. And he managed to beat Germany, let me see Lenin accomplishing anything comparable.

No, Lenin had the balls and the brains to do it, Lenin was a syphilitic faggot who couldn't even take a piss without his ugly tranny wife holding his cock.

they were elite compared to the standard which was conscripted soldier with 0 training, at least they were commited to the cause. That made me laugh though pretty funny. Train had ammo and other shit as well which made it impactful.

>it's okay to kill your allies as long as they aren't members of your faggot party

Nice moving the goalposts mate. You went from Lenin would be like Stalin in purging his own part to "Lenin would be like Stalin because he was violent towards non bolsheivks"

I didn't say Lenin would be like Stalin, I said he was much worse

>But he did beat Finland
See yourself
>his only loss was that he didn't get to annex them fully

He access to one of the largest armies on earth and failed to achieve his political goals and had to settle for some minor territorial gains. Not only that but it cost him 160,000 men and 3.5K tanks.

He had close to 1 million men committed to that conflict compared to the 300K of Finns. not to mention aircraft and tanks. Compare that to the Polish soviet war where the soviets had roughly equal numbers of men to the Poles and no tanks or planes yet managed to not only gain territory like they did in Finland (which I guess that means its a victory by your standards) they did so with far less bloodshed.

>et me see Lenin accomplishing anything comparable.

What part of leading 25K of city lads to take over the largest empire on earth despite being all but vanquished months earlier is not impressive?

>lads
Oh right, an Anglo subhuman defending Lenin. Not unexpected. I'm usually against flag shitfests but Anglos should really get a flag on Veeky Forums so I could filter their low IQ posting.

Well you dont really have a good case then since the best evidence of him purging his own party -worse than Stalin- is him fighting and outlawing two opposing political groups. Meanwhile you had the Great Purge of Stalin and figures like Beria.

Him and Dzierzynski were the ones who established the whole system. Lenin was probably worse than Stalin. More fanatical but he died early.
Random villages were disappearing as a result of his engineering.

>Oh right, an Anglo subhuman defending Lenin. Not unexpected. I'm usually against flag shitfests but Anglos should really get a flag on Veeky Forums so I could filter their low IQ posting.

Well anything to avoid dealing with my point right?

Can you explain your High IQ logic of:

>Winter War - Soviets loose mass amounts of men gain a tiny bit of territory = victory for Soviets
>Polish War - Soviets loose some men gain a slightly larger bit of territory = massive defeat for Soviets

> Lenin was probably worse than Stalin. More fanatical

Does the NEP strike you as something a fanatic would do?

Lenin was a hypocrite that is certain. He had a relatively wealthy family (who paid for his wife's operation) used nationalistic arguments in a war against Poland, took money from the tsarist agents and finally he introduced NEP when the situation was really dire. I also thought that perhaps he didn't believe his own bullshit but the reality is that according to him those were all temporary measures, means to an end

After all Lenin created Cheka and introduced a system of labor camps (known as Gulags to Anglphones though this name only describes the administration).

Secret police has been a part of Russia for like 300 years.

In one year the Bolsheviks killed more people than the entire Tsarist regime over the course of century.

>In one year the Bolsheviks killed more people than the entire Tsarist regime over the course of century.

Do wars started by the Tzars count?

However in general revolutionary changes in governments when opposed and interefered with by foreign powers tend to be quite violent initially. Just look at revolutionary France, in the first 5 years of the first republic more people were killed in France than the Entire post Stalin period in the USSR despite it being a liberal and not communist revolution

French revoluton was an American revolution that failed.

>failed

>French revoluton was an American revolution that failed.

Still in those 5 years they killed more people than close to 40 years of Communist Dictatorship in Russia.

Also the Americans were extremely fortunate they did not have existential threats for neighbors and the Atlantic Sea as a barrier something neither Russia or France had.

Lenin was much more true to communism than Stalin.

>He says while typing in English

>failed
Not with all dem republics and their republicanism all over the world

American revolution was better it didn't end in bloodshed and multiple dictatorships and next revolutions.

It so strange to see someone pull the "ITS NOT REAL COMMUNISM" argument for liberalism

What was that supposed to mean? French revolution was just that. Bolsheviks had similar ideas as French revolutionaries. Its connection to the liberal philosphy isn't what caused the Vendee massacre or the retarded ideas about establishing a new "secular" religion, changing names of the months etc

>What was that supposed to mean?

That you are using the the most overplayed example of the no true scottsman arguments when it comes to history.

Did Trotsky even receive military training ever? How did he end up as a military commander?

He was an OUTSTANDING orator and a great organiser. While head of the army he it much stronger through disipline, conscription and un-communist ideas like having Officiers (they weren't even chosen by the rank and file). I also believe his logistics were fairly good.

The men were called out of their barracks. "Comrade-deserters – come to the meeting. Comrade Trotsky has come to speak to you." They ran out excited, boisterous, as curious as schoolboys. I had imagined them much worse, and they had imagined me as more terrible. In a few minutes, I was surrounded by a huge crowd of unbridled, utterly undisciplined, but not at all hostile men. The "comrade-deserters" were looking at me with such curiosity that it seemed as if their eyes would pop out of their heads. I climbed on a table there in the yard, and spoke to them for about an hour and a half. It was a most responsive audience. I tried to raise them in their own eyes; concluding, I asked them to lift their hands in token of their loyalty to the revolution. The new ideas infected them before my very eyes. They were genuinely enthusiastic; they followed me to the automobile, devoured me with their eyes, not fearfully, as before, but rapturously, and shouted at the tops of their voices. They would hardly let me go. I learned afterward, with some pride, that one of the best ways to educate them was to remind them: "What did you promise Comrade Trotsky?" Later on, regiments of Ryazan "deserters" fought well at the fronts.

Trotsky converted the Red Guards to the Red Army which eventually crushed the whites.

However reorganization meant, giving a modicrum of training, centralized planning and coordination. When what you had before were a bunch of local union militias, that means a great deal.

That the whites had assistance from every major world power only shows their sheer incompetence despite starting off with a relatively coherent military.

Well he did buy into Marxism in the first place and let Stalin amass too much power from under him so that's at least two mistakes.

Lenin wasn't any pure innocent child, but he really was not comparable to Stalin at all. In terms of brutality alone, Lenin wasn't much different from other contemporaneous leaders. However, he is directly culpable in devolution of the Soviet Union into an autocratic state capitalism.

Because the revolution succeeded only in feudalistic Russia, there wasn't the necessary industrial base to push toward communism, or to create a society where there was no market and no private industry.

After 1921, when it became clear that the developed world would not also he taken over by the workers, Lenin decided that the only hope for Russia was to develop a state capitalist economy (through some private enterprise and lots of national industry). However, by the end of his life in 1924, Lenin recognized that these systems were allowing for the creation of a new bureaucratic bourgeoisie operating within the framework of the communist party. In his final weeks, he led a campaign to devolve power back to the workers' soviets and preserve the USSR's proletarian character. He failed.

Lenin's temporary measures of state capitalism which included the suspension of much real democracy, were codified into law by Lenin's incompetent successors. Stalin and many other Bolsheviks drew upon Lenin for legitimacy and refused to consider Lenin's actions within the broader context of a transnational worker's movement. These politicians just pushed toward development, and everywhere embarked upon the impossible task of creating a communist society within a single, mostly agrarian country, while also defending from bourgeois elements internal and external. This great contradiction led to the horrors of forced collectivization and the gulag, top-down actions by a state capitalist entity hoping to enrich the state and develop the conditions of capitalism under a red flag.

A poor and agrarian nation will never be able to abolish start forces and topple the global hegemony of capital.

Not in any meaningful capacity. Much of the Russian population were tenant farmers, and Stalin's greatest failure was perpetuating these slavelike conditions in a woke socialist way.

Marx conceived socialism as identical to communism; a society in which production is socialized and geared toward need. Essentially, a society in which capital is abolished. Lenin accidentally or pragmatically redefined socialism simply as worker control of industry. This gave socialism an immediate political objective, despite its contradiction of Marx.

To Marx, the Soviet Union and revolutionary Catalonia were both capitalistic. He and Engels specified that state control of industry is just the replacement of a private capitalism with a national capitalism. Stalin and his modern-day online apologists insist that this society was still socialism because... it had red flags. Most libertarian socialist models are still capitalistic because they preserve market forces. 1930s Catalonia or modern day Rojava could be an important step in the direction of a socialist/communist society but as long as capital exists they're just a very woke, decentralized, and collectivized capitalism.

How did it fail? Nearly the entire world has embraced liberalism

While Bolsheviks were brutal and unscrupulous in general (one of main reasons they won the civil war), Lenin and Trotsky were nowhere near Stalin.
For example, Lenin allowed criticism, especially within party. And while Cheka commited shitload of atrocities, that wasn't encouraged by Lenin.
On the other hand some White commanders weren't flowers either. You had everything from honorable people like Wrangel and disgusting brutal thugs like Semenov.
Also keep in mind Bolsheviks seized power in a bloody civil war, that changed their outlook a lot.

I didn't read all this thread yet, but I would like to not something.

The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. This set off a brutal civil war that lasted until 1922. Lenin died early 1924. And he was in poor health (shot, multiple heart attacks, wheelchair bound) in his last months before the final end.

Keep this in mind when discussing his policies for the USSR. He really didn't live more than 2 years max into it the very start of it.

Lenin was okay. Leninists are retards though.

For sure. Leninism and Maoism are the aggressive counterpart to syndicalism and democratic confederalism. Together, such ideologies form the left wing of capital. While these red capitalist movements can be useful allies in overcoming the current liberal capitalist order, they provide no effective means to actually abolish capital.

are you leftcom or ancom?

I haven't read enough to call myself either but those two traditions offer the best prescriptive models for the future.

Once I get through the bread book I can offer a better analysis of anarcho-communism, but I think it offers a reductionist perspective on authority leaves some potential for capital to reemerge.

The reason they won the civil war was because they were fucking brutal. I mean really fucking brutal. Literally ISIS tier.

Imagine what ISIS would do if they conquered China or India. There, you have Soviet Russia.

Lenin (and trotsky, actually) had to be held back by the rest of the central committee from doing real dumbass shit during the civil war
the party did practice a real measure of internal democracy during the lenin days

> In terms of brutality alone, Lenin wasn't much different from other contemporaneous leaders.
Sneaky cunt.

Some people might actually fall for it too.

Far more people died thanks to Wilson and Kaiser Willy

You son of bitch, how about reading standard works on the subject and decide for yourself? Chamberlin's 'Russian revolution' in two volumes, Pipes's 'The Russian revolution 1899-1919' and 'Russia under the Bolshevik regime'. And if spefically Lenin, then Volkogonov's Lenin -biography.

Stalin's 'socialism in one country' did not factually exist. Just a pragramatic propaganda. One theory in the hundreds of different theories that Uljanov and Dzugasvili came up with and put on paper, but were not realised in any way.
So, there isn't a single difference between Stalin and Lenin, except for ethinicity, but both adopted 'Great Russian' identity.

And both ended up dying shitting their diapers. At least the top intelligenty Jew ended up with steel on his neck.

>Menshiviks were traitors or whatever according to the bolsheviks so it's fine to kill them.

>bring about "glorious communist revolution"
>keep all the power
>other leftists rightfully point out you're doing the same shit the previous governments were doing
>kill them
>THEY WUZ TRAITORS, WE HAD TO KILL THEM

Every single time

>richard pipes

Yikes lmao

Even Grover Furr is more reputable

You are a fucking idiot, the whites were just as if not more brutal.

>honey

Kek, sweetie

*sips sides*

America was basically the tutorial mode for the French revolution so of coz it had some bumps along the way

>Serfdom was abolished before Lenin was even born.

>Alexander II frees the serfs
>Alexander III crushed rebellions throughout Europe and reversed many of his father's liberal reforms

In other words
>socialist man ruins everything
Luckily the abolition of serfdom was not among the reversed policies.

If it weren't for Alexander III stupid crackdowns their might not have been any revolutions later on. He showed have followed what his father was doing

If anyone "ruined everything" it was Alexander Iii