“Attempts to give an“objective”assessment of historical events run up against: 1) the lack of factual data, which are recognized by everyone as established facts, 2) the class bias of the researcher. If we assume that after 1991, having destroyed the communist formation, Russia embarked on a progressive universal human path of development, then the entire period of history from 1917 to 1991. appears as a series of terrible crimes of a regime that has not been subject to change."
(iouris)
Thou shalt not bring the wages of a harlot and the price of a dog into the house of the Lord thy God according to any vow, for both are an abomination to the Lord thy God.
(Deuteronomy 23:18)
Put away deceitful lips from you, and wickedness of the tongue put far from you.
(Proverbs 4:24)
So, the last time we started writing our "true textbook" of the history of Russia and immediately faced a huge number of difficulties, although we did not even reach 1917. But now the second part has gone, and our children have become older and smarter. Here is the reform of 1861 … What did it give? The number of weekends and holidays gradually increased, but labor itself intensified, since non-economic or forceful methods of compulsion to work were replaced by economic, market ones. But feudal, not market, survivals remained: landlord and communal land tenure! And what about people? People, as J. Orwell wrote about it, from the Upper Paleolithic era were divided into smart, average and stupid. The task of the smart ones is to stay at the very top, the middle ones - to displace the “higher ones” and take their place. And only the lower ones are doomed to hard work, because they are poorly socialized, and they know little about everything, since they do not visit historical archives.
There are many ways to study history. I'm just happy with the opportunity to present VO readers with the opportunity to look at the works of the Penza artist Igor Zeynalov, who "opens" the era of the USSR through portraits of veterans, made on … documents of that era, issued to them. First of all, these are certificates of honor, in which, probably, all the "salt" of that era! If I had the opportunity, I would have decorated the entire textbook on the history of Russia with works in this manner. Young people, by the way, really like it. But … hardly any publishing house will go for it. But you can see the works themselves. Here is the first work: "Questionnaire" - I remember these, they contained questions "Do you have relatives abroad?", "Did your relatives serve in the White Guard formations?"
Did people understand this at the time? Yes, they did, although they expressed themselves a little differently. Here is what the Penza Gubernskiye Vesti newspaper wrote on November 5, 1905 in the article “Russian Press”: “The colossal degeneration of the people's way of life, which happened before our eyes, cannot take place without painful shocks, and therefore one should moderate one's aspirations … Consciously refer to the word "freedom", because after the "manifesto" the word "freedom of the press" is understood in the sense of the possibility of swearing regardless of the essence of the matter. We need more restraint, more sensibility, and the seriousness of the moment is obliged to this”. Everything is the same right now, isn't it? Years go by, and we still have the same rake!
What about remnants? And they remained. Stolypin was killed. And the psychology of paternalism persisted (which, by the way, was remarkably written by the writer Mamin-Sibiryak in his novel The Humpbacked Bear, I advise those who have not read it!), And it persisted when the market (and he already existed!) Demanded to abandon it. And what about V. I. Lenin, he saw it, did he understand? Yes, I saw and understood, as evidenced by his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", where he proved on the basis of open statistics that we no longer have a single peasantry. There are kulaks-usurers with cognitive dissonance from what they do, the middle peasants are terrified of how the indestructible is crumbling, but stubbornly pulling the strap, and the poor, whose "everything has collapsed": both the economy, and the brains, only vodka remained !
But here's the question: did Lenin know about the "Pareto law" discovered in 1897, when in 1917 he proclaimed the toast of the socialist revolution in Russia? Whatever one may say, 80% of property always belongs to 20% of fellow citizens, that is, even though you don’t break the social pyramid, you still cannot change its structure. Moreover, the top (elite) will sooner or later rot anyway, and then it (the higher ones) will be replaced by the “middle ones” (with the help of the lower ones), “new middle ones” will appear, the “lower ones” will be given something, but they will promise more and … everything will remain as it is! And if he didn’t know, then he was “a great optimist,” but if he did, then … everyone can continue on his own. But how can all this be stated in a textbook?
"Veteran of Penza Football"
What did V. I. Lenin, finding himself at the helm of state power? That's right - he adopted the famous Decree on Land, "realized the age-old dream of the peasantry." But what is written in this decree? Firstly, this is not a Bolshevik, but an SR program. That is, equalizing land use, the prohibition of hired labor and the sale and purchase of land. That is, what relations were canceled by the decree? Market! And what kind of relations do we have in the country now? Market! And no one is going to change them! Are there any remnants of feudal relations? There is! Registration!
Here is the text of the decree of those years! What if it's a fake too, huh? Like bronze helmets from ancient Attica. But there are few of them, and there are many such newspapers! Too Much To Fake …
But if so, then everything that the “market” is good, then everything that brings us back to the times of the Egyptian pharaohs (a similar form of land use was under them) and the peasant community is bad! By the way, the management of the factories was also elected for a short time. It is clear that during the war, directors became appointees, but … what kind of socialism is this, and how did the workers then influence the nature of production and participate in managing it? In fact - no way!
That is, what we habitually call the October Socialist Revolution was actually … a set of anti-market measures in agriculture to please middle peasants and poor peasants, so that they would support the new government. And in industrial production … the establishment of state monopoly in the country. That is, we practically never had any socialism, but there was state capitalism, covered by a loud left-wing phrase. That's all! It is enough to calculate the amount of property in the hands of the state and private owners in the USSR for different years to make sure that the main goal of everything that was done in the country was precisely state capitalism.
"Soviet Edison"
And all the contradictions between the same USA and the USSR in the past, roughly speaking, boiled down to a competition between two models of economic management. They have a private-state model (50 to 50), we have a state-owned model (90 to 10). It turned out that their model is more effective, and since 1991 Russia switched to it. Moreover, it must be emphasized that, as we all know and remember, there was nothing bad in state capitalism in the social sense. The working masses received free medicine (albeit not the best, but accessible to everyone), education (albeit scanty, “and only here,” but again, accessible to everyone). And, most importantly, confidence in the future. And who is it important to? For 80%, the remaining 20% get along just fine with "uncertainty."
People were underpaid for their work, they were not allowed to "get" what was not given by the state themselves, that is, to earn extra money (although they tried, otherwise where would the "bums" come from - "you are the owner, not a guest, take away at least a nail"!), But on the other hand with the funds from this "underpayment" the state gave its citizens a lot. But market-based forms of economic management … were practically not used!
And here's how to give it all in a textbook? Would you like to say it briefly? Is that how it is written here? It is unlikely that this will suit those who grew up on the myths of socialism. Explain for a long time and in detail with specific numbers and examples? Is it necessary in a school textbook?
In the USSR, diplomas were also given for being in the ranks of the CPSU. There was a decent time - here's a thick paper with a beautiful drawing and inscriptions.
But this is the economy. What about politics? Oh, it's even more interesting, and here's why. The fact is that the young Soviet state immediately put itself in a very difficult position, accepting the theory of Marx-Engels as its political basis. That is, we immediately became the vanguard of the world revolution. Therefore, they had to support it, help the revolutionaries of the whole world, that is, concretely implement the ideas of Marx-Lenin in life and at the same time build their own statehood, their economy and at the same time carry out a policy of national interests. And national interests very often come into sharp conflict with international ones!
The first such conflict happened already in 1918 and ended with the Brest Peace. “Shameful” from the point of view of “true” revolutionaries, but quite natural from the point of view of the primacy of state interests. A second similar conflict, only in an even more acute form, took place in 1939, when the government of the USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. From the point of view of geopolitics, where state interests are at the forefront, this is a completely normal agreement. From the point of view of the interests of the "world revolution" - this is their betrayal. That is why this treaty and everything that followed it is still so ambiguously assessed.
Now let's look at the consequences, again from a geopolitical point of view. First, de jure, there were the Munich agreements, then the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. And this was a normal policy for the then West. "The West is the West!" Then the "Liberation Campaign" on September 17 de facto made the USSR an ally of Germany and caused a flood of cartoons in the West depicting Hitler and Stalin tied foot to foot with their symbols in their hands, and the corresponding content of the scripture. But what is the main reason for such information presentation? Yes, in the fact that the USSR, having done so, placed its state interests above ideological ones, which otherwise would have required us to wage war with Germany to "save the Polish workers and peasants from the horrors of fascism and Hitlerism." And we … we did what the British and French did, that is, purely pragmatic! And I didn't like it, of course. Indeed, from the point of view of Marxism, predictably, we should have acted in a completely different way.
But when on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, this came as a shock to Western propaganda, and she had to immediately turn 180 degrees. After all, an attack on its own "ally", as it exposed the USSR to the whole world, has always been the gravest violation of all human norms, both de facto and de jure. And precisely because England and the United States had to help us, in this case ideology gave way to geopolitics and national and state interests. But we had to pay for it, of course. How? The dissolution of the Comintern, that is, the actual rejection of the slogan "We will inflame the world fire on the woe to all the bourgeois!"And now that's it - the revolutionary pathos is over, Russia has grown out of the Red Army Budennovka, put on the previously hated shoulder straps, and the authorities left the revolutionary rhetoric for the celebration of November 7 and honoring the veterans who personally saw V. I. Lenin.
I always feel sorry for people with such faces and piercing eyes looking into your soul. They are all heroes for their mere participation in that Great War! But … where are the white shorts, the house with the pool and relaxing in Mallorca in a motorized chair? For some reason, “their” veterans have enough money for this. Also, not all, but many. Among my acquaintances, veterans, none of them can afford it!
It seems to me that all of the above is obvious and, by the way, fits perfectly into the theory of Malthus (which was discussed in the first article), and is confirmed by historical evidence and data from economists. But how to put all this again in a school textbook, I do not know very well. Or, let's say, on the contrary - I represent very well, but I don't know how much it will be possible to describe it, and, most importantly, to prove the validity of these statements to those who are involved in publishing educational literature. But I don’t want to work “on the table”.
In addition, there are a number of historical events for which we, frankly, simply have very little information. No archived data, I repeat! Perhaps we will cover this in a future article. However, in any case, it seems that the difficulties of creating a new and "truthful" history textbook for the school have become obvious to everyone. And - most importantly, which of the VO visitors will undertake to overcome them ?!
P. S. Now look at all these faces again. Some of them probably "crushed" the girl in the hayloft, and then filmed the corner behind the sheet with her in the hostel, others played football and "half a liter" to the "October" in the doorways to warm up, rejoiced at the bought wardrobe and Gagarin's flight, They plowed the Hungry Steppe, invented new rotors and received certificates of honor, and when their strength diminished, they condemned the youth for licentiousness (although not all?). Be that as it may, each of them had their own life, which he wanted to make happy. And each of them had their own history of our country! Your experience. And can the history of each of them be brought to a common denominator? And again … you can! But let's remember the "Pareto law". It will again be history of 20%, not 80%, who will only have to resent the fact that this new history textbook came out “not the same” again!
