Dear comrades,
As we all know there are two soviet eras pre and post death of Stalin. We all know Khrushchev basically did a coupe detat, by killing all Stalinists and also by starting the anti Stalin propaganda. We know he was the cause of the Soviet Sino split.
But what exactly caused the split? What policies did he push that were reformist or capitalist in nature ? How exactly did he fuck up? I know the results, but I lack in knowledge of the causes.
Imagine saying something akin to “let’s hear Gorbachev’s side of the story - we need the complete history” in 1993. There was an interview - it was bogus through and through. You won’t get the complete history that way.
Why not hear Gorby’s side of the story?
We did. It’s just that he lied a lot
I’m not talking about that dumb interview, I mean memoirs, personal correspondence, people that were close to him, etc.
My friend tells me that there are also a lot of speeches of his with ideas that weren’t even fully his own.
Sounds like an area of investigation!
I mean…
What you are suggesting is that we time travel and to get information that we don’t have right now.
For obvious reasons we cannot time travel and do that. Obviously it would be nice to know how they rationalised their disastrous viewpoints. But we can’t do that. Since they are dead and we cannot time travel.
So what are you getting at? Am I understanding you point correctly or what am I missing?
We do have the information though.
We have Khruschev’s memoirs and speeches and supplementary theoretical texts lol
Hell, his works are literally cited in Kuusinen’s work a lot.
No “time travel” required! Just old-fashioned historical research.
Memoirs alone will not give you the full picture - rather, they will give you someone’s viewpoint, however distorted it might be. One must inevitably compare that to other information.
Gorbachev, for instance, claimed in his memoirs that “Glasnost unleashed forces they could not control”. That was at the very least very dishonest - he himself went to great lengths and encouraged criticism of the CPSU through the same media he handed over to Yakovlev and other anti-communist forces. What good would it do reading this part of his memoir if you don’t have other sources of information to verify it against?
Okay, but Khruschev’s not Gorby.
And you already give an example of insight that historical research and reading can provide.
Thanks for proving my point.
The point stands - memoirs alone are not a reliable source, his or Gorby’s. Conceptually
I’m gonna need a picture of Khrushchev’s hog, for historical purposes.
Please post.
Fuck yeah
You raise a good point. If someone is interested, they can peer into Khruschev’s side of the disaster themselves. The books are freely available here: https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Memoirs+of+Nikita+Khrushchev
Precisely!
Thank you!