domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2m ago
Russian civil war deaths were about 10 million and I think at most you could probably only ascribe about third of those to direct or indirect killing of civilians by communists.
I think it's quite reasonable to ascribe all civil war deaths to the Bolsheviks because they did consciously started it.
epohon
2m ago
It is not a good goal, but it is an egoistic goal, and I'm quite fine with being egoistic at an exclusion of everything else. I'm just timing the peak intolerability of the world.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3m ago
My impression is that they don't have enough mana to pull off anything like that this year.
epohon
7m ago
Judging by four years ago, the hysteria will ramp up steeply right about now. He is an obvious rallying point.
They also promised to terminate Russian involvement in the ongoing world war and sue for a separate peace. Which, I guess, was more important of a factor than this.
That was certainly an important factor in the popularity of the Bolshevik regime after 1914, and perhaps as you suggest a more important factor -- but the question being addressed here (as indicated by the first sentence of the paragraph you quoted) is not why the 1917 Revolution was successful, but why the murderous despotism of the emerging Communist regime was not more widely foreseen from within Russia (or, for that matter, from within the United States and Western Europe), even before Russian involvement World War I.
Bartender_Venator
23m ago
I've seen a bunch of Uzbeks doing "We're from Uzbekistan, of course we [X]", and it's quite sweet, they're generally wholesome and outward-looking people who aren't really connected to meme culture so it comes off as earnest instead of cringe.
mildly_benis
30m ago
I found the voice so grating I closed one of the demos on an impulse. Turns out I categorically do not want someone else's mechanism to talk to me in such a bubbly, ingratiating, worryingly palatable manner unprompted.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
34m ago
I think what you’re observing is better explained by the libertarian wing receding from its high-water mark during Obama’s presidency.
I don't see how that's an explanation rather than a restatement of the original observation.
Botond173
35m ago
First, the Bolshevik revolutionaries didn't say they were merciless and malevolent; quite the opposite! Who could be against their stated agenda of fighting tyranny no matter what class of the people it affects? or self-determination for oppressed peoples?
They also promised to terminate Russian involvement in the ongoing world war and sue for a separate peace. Which, I guess, was more important of a factor than this.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
37m ago
Is that your video? If so I'll watch it. Otherwise could you give me a quick summary?
I think Russians will probably be more fine with that than ex-Soviet non-Russians would be.
When you say that mainstream scholarly estimates are about 25 million, how does that break down between the three categories above? 25 million doesn't make much sense to me just because: Russian civil war deaths were about 10 million and I think at most you could probably only ascribe about third of those to direct or indirect killing of civilians by communists. Estimates of the Holodomor death range from about 3-7 million. The Great Purge killed fewer than a million, and if you add all the other purges on top it probably adds another few hundred thousand as far as I know. Various ethnic resettlements killed maybe another million.
Here historian Stephens Kotkin attributes 18 to 20 million deliberate killings of civilians to Lenin and Stalin combined, not including war deaths or deaths by mismanagement. I do not know what events he totals to get that number.
My original numbers came from combining the low and high numbers for Stalin and Lenin from the table found here, but the numbers have changed since I last looked at them. The range from the current table would 10 million to 52 million (30 million plus or minus 20 million) depending on how you count. However, now that I read more closely, the high number can't be justified as a total murdered because it includes all excess deaths.
So, fair enough, I removed the word "Russian" and replaced the numbers with "untold millions".
NelsonRushton
58m ago
Thanks for the clarification.
I think that you should try to clearly define what you mean by Soviet communism having killed somebody.
If I were writing a paper on the subject of how many people were killed by the Soviet Regime (instead of a single sentence about it) I think you would clearly be right, but I don't think so in this case. In my reading, the morbidly humorous phrase "plus or minus 15 million" makes it clear that I'm not shooting for anything in that sentence that is justifiable by a rigorous standard, and at the same time leaves enough slack that you can take or leave #3 and still stay in range. The bottom of my range is 10 million and that is a safe bet IMO by any reasonable way of counting.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
I don’t know about that.
The American right has plenty of history with speech restrictions, especially around sexual content. DeSantis is not breaking new ground. He’s approaching from a more secular angle, but it’s the same old song and dance of a Moral Majority. Same for Texas jurisprudence.
Nor is the situation uniquely dire for the right! Keep in mind previous acts of defying the Feds have ended with the 101st Airborne deployed to high school. Or at least a good old FBI shootout. Compared to that the cultural and legal battles are tame.
I think what you’re observing is better explained by the libertarian wing receding from its high-water mark during Obama’s presidency. Trump’s branding has polarized the Republican base and it dominates any media coverage.
RobertLiguori
1hr ago
Huh. So you can make a husky act like a basset hound in terms of general laid-backness and temperament with a single gene tweak?
Respectfully, I doubt this. Can you link any sources to this effect?
gattsuru
1hr ago
I'm not convinced that they were tools that are broken rather than blunted, but even if they are splintered beyond repair, how and when and what happened is worth knowing. Regardless of what matters in the long run, these tools are almost certainly not the only tools vulnerable to the same things.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1hr ago
I largely agree, but he is currently facing a wrongful death lawsuit by Anthony Huber's father. I imagine he's going to be hounded by very well-funded civil suits for a long time as revenge for getting off. Still, this is a far shot from state prosecution or murder.
lest someone be tempted to pick nits as an excuse to ignore the thrust of the argument
Yep, so I want to be clear, my interest in this matter is not to try to defend Soviet communism. It was a very brutal system, at least in its first few decades. I am just interested in historical accuracy.
I think that you should try to clearly define what you mean by Soviet communism having killed somebody.
- Direct deliberate killing (guys from NKVD come to apartment, take guy away in car and kill him).
- Indirect killing (guys come to farm and take away all the grain, farmers die).
- Deaths through negligence or just because communism isn't a very good economic system.
For me, it makes sense to count #1 and #2, but not #3. Partly this is because it is extremely hard to accurately count #3.
And do you count military deaths in wars, or just civilian deaths as a result of political persecution?
When you say that mainstream scholarly estimates are about 25 million, how does that break down between the three categories above? 25 million doesn't make much sense to me just because: Russian civil war deaths were about 10 million and I think at most you could probably only ascribe about third of those to direct or indirect killing of civilians by communists. Estimates of the Holodomor death range from about 3-7 million. The Great Purge killed fewer than a million, and if you add all the other purges on top it probably adds another few hundred thousand as far as I know. Various ethnic resettlements killed maybe another million.
If you count every civilian killed as a result of Soviet military actions, that would add another 5 million or so, but that would not help a critique of communism much because the US and its allies also killed millions of civilians during WW2 and the Cold War, so killing large numbers of civilians in war time seems to be more a feature of large scale war, rather than of a country's political system.
Currently, I do think it's a nitpick to insist that "Russian" means "ethnically Russian", but I will check with my Russian friends and see what they think.
I think Russians will probably be more fine with that than ex-Soviet non-Russians would be. Only a minority of Lithuanians or Ukrainians would be ok with being called Russians, on the other hand there are probably plenty of Russians who, while not considering Lithuanians or Ukrainians to be ethnically Russian, would still be more or less ok with them being called Russian in a certain sense of the word Russian if they were re-incorporated into the Moscow-based empire.
But I didn't bring it up in order to nit-pick, it's actually important because I wasn't sure if you actually meant ethnic Russians, or you meant Soviets in general. I understand now that you meant Soviets in general, but I had no way of knowing that when I first read your post.
The Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic empire and even modern Russia is also still a multi-ethnic empire despite not having as much territory as the Soviet Union had.
A lot of the bad blood from the Soviet times comes down to people arguing about whether:
Theory A: The Soviet Union was pro-Russian and oppressed other ethnicities. Ethnic non-Russian nationalists tend to agree with this, and there is good reason to believe it given for example the Holodomor. On the other hand, many of the Holodomor's architects were not ethnic Russians.
Theory B: The Soviet Union was anti-Russian and actually helped non-Russian ethnicities to form their own nationalist movements. Ethnic Russian nationalists tend to agree with this. The idea that the Soviet Union was anti-Russian might seem strange, but the Russian ethnonationalists who argue for this point of view point out that the Soviet Union's leadership in its important years was not particularly ethnically Russian (Lenin was probably part Kalmyk, part Jewish... Trotsky was Jewish... Stalin was Georgian...) and that the Soviets had a policy of (Korenizatsiia)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia]. On the other hand, given that the Soviet Union was about 50% ethnic Russian (in practice, you could probably say even more because back then, many people who in modern terms are non-ethnic Russians were maybe more likely to view themselves and be viewed as ethnic Russian than they are now), it's also clear that Russians were the dominant ethnicity by population size at least - no other single ethnicity had nearly such a fraction of the population.
Corrected this to "What it did accomplish was to murder 25 million Russian people, plus or minus 15 million,". 25 million seems to be the midpoint of the mainstream scholarly estimates, with a low of around 10 and a high of around 40, according to Wikipedia.
Personally, I find R.J. Rummel credible, and he put the Soviet number at 60 million in his book Death by Government [source], which in my opinion justifies my original claim of 40 million plus or minus 20 -- but you reminded me that I should use more conservative numbers, lest someone be tempted to pick nits as an excuse to ignore the spirit of the argument. They will probably find another excuse anyway, but I want to do due diligence.
Currently, I do think it's a nitpick to insist that "Russian" means "ethnically Russian", but I will check with my Russian friends and see what they think.
Update: One of my Russian friends responds as follows:
I don’t see why it’s inaccurate to use the term “Russian” since colloquially it meant “anyone who lived under the Soviet regime”.
Thanks for the correction.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
That doesn't seem like a very good goal, and judging by your interactions here, it doesn't seem to be working for you all that well. If you are not currently suffering quite badly, you're faking it really well.
Perhaps he's one of these guys?
Folamh3
1hr ago
I've tried to play it several times but it never really clicked for me. The same was true of System Shock 2, which finally did click for me two years ago. I bought Thief shortly afterwards as part of the same "old school immersive sim" stable, and have been meaning to give it a try for a few months.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Yes, the biggest Soviet killings would have been the Holodomor, Kazakh famine, ethnic campaigns and the Great Purge, the three first of which mainly implicitly or explicitly targeted other ethnicities than Russians (unless one is Great-Russian enough in mentality to just consider Ukrainians to be funny-speaking Russians) and the last targetting communists of all ethnicities.
sliders1234
2hr ago
I think a lot of what you say about the right is pre-2021 right. They realized they get no mercy and now are willing to sacrifice their principles.
I would say Desantis war with Disney is a prime example. The right traditionally would have been against punishing Disney for Free Speech, but backed Desantis when he went after Disney within the rules of the law. Even though the Spirit of Free Speech was against doing anything. When you have institutional power to punish your enemies the right seems down with it now. The no pacifist in a foxhole standard has emerged. It’s better to win sacrificing principle than lose and end up dead. Abbott has also challenged a lot of legal principles and challenged Biden to try and stop him when he’s probably wrong on the law. The right also got aggressive with abortion using bad means to do it like Texas civil suit law. My guess is if Hillary was the 2024 candidate and destroyed her hard drive and lost lock her up would be attempted versus just being a campaign slogan.
When the right feels threatened they can do more. Pinochet was on the right and his plan worked. Until recently the right didn’t realize the system was risks. It was just annoying HR ladies and an occasional weirdos to laugh about on college campuses.
It’s not like the right has been opposed to force when it’s necessary. We killed a lot of commies. The right didn’t realize they were in a war until recently.
It will be worth knowing only to civilizations five millennia in the future, if there are those, of course.
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