I highly recommend reading this thread. If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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it looks like you're getting a lot of mileage out of that post. lol
I did put a lot of effort into curating it, and am quite proud of the results. Several comrades helped me put it together as well, their efforts shouldn't go forgotten. That post has a couple hundred upvotes currently, if a tiny fraction of those people actually use it then it's all worth it.
This post makes me feel uneasy for a two reasons:
This was not a popular twitter post at the time of archival.
This makes the bolsheviks behaviour and capture of government look better, which contradicts my (albeit basic) knowledge of history.
I haven't had the opportunity to check the syllabi of those colleges yet, nor contact the people who wrote those syllabi to ask them directly as to why they made such decisions. Furthermore I would appreciate further comparison with the higher education institutions in other nations, including former soviet bloc.
In short this post makes a large claim (there is a conspiracy to hide information from the public) which I haven't verified personally nor seen anyone else but those invloved in this very conversation bring attention toward this supposed conspiracy.
I will what I can to keep this comment updated according to the information I possess.
It isn't some far-fetched conspiracy to understand that the Red Scare exists, it's rather historical fact. Anticommunism is US policy, and this extends to education.
Secondly, the Bolshevik revolution was positive, I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds. With Socialism came a dramatic and sustained improvement in worker's rights, equality of the sexes, a doubling of life expectancies, an end to famine, incredible scientific achievement in a country that began the century as an underdeveloped agrarian backwater, and a democratization of society in a way that far supercedes the former Tsarist system and the future Capitalist system in the Russian Federation.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer if I can or point you in a better direction to search on your own.
The events of the revolution were remembered as such by me: the bolsheviks incited the revolution, stormed the palaces, stormed the government buildings. After didn't hold fair elections for Parliament and instated their rule and their party as the only legitimate government of the region. Later they violently seized various assets of those that owned such things : "Раскулачивание" and various nationalisation of production and commerce. Soon Lenin dies and gets buried, stalin in power, and welcome to poland being bisected.
I assume I have mixed up the order of some events. I wonder if I am expected to check this myself or reply immediately. I will reply, and then go to Wikipedia to read the revolution page.
There's a lot wrong, and a lot out of order.
The Bolsheviks did not incite revolution, the brutal Tsars did, along with World War I. The Bolsheviks were a revolutionary party and were organizing the working class into worker councils called Soviets, and had created a second government alongside the liberal government.
During the events leading up to the October revolution, the liberal government had been essentially abandoned by the workers, and the Tsar was already were more of a figure head. The Bolsheviks won the Soviet elections, and lost the liberal elections, though the workers largely didn't care about that government, and the party that won happened to have had a major realignment shortly before the election yet the workers did not all know about that (pre-internet).
After the elections, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, along with the Soviets, stormed the Tsar and ousted him and the Liberal government that was more vestigial than anything else. Then came the Russian Civil War, the invasion from a dozen Capitalist countries to try to reinstate the Tsar, then the NEP (a market-focused economy temporarily for uplifting the productive forces), then Lenin's unfortunate death.
All in all, you're generally wrong with what you wrote, not only the order but also the character of events, and I don't think Wikipedia is going to be enough to know what actually happened. Again, I suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds.
I began by reading Britannica. I am aware of my black and white thinking and this manifests in me frequently being against everyone and everything.
Although Lenin and Trotsky had carried out the October coup in the name of soviets, they intended from the beginning to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling organs of the Bolshevik Party. The resulting novel arrangement—the prototype of all totalitarian regimes—vested actual sovereignty in the hands of a private organization, called “the Party,” which, however, exercised it indirectly, through state institutions. Bolsheviks held leading posts in the state: no decisions could be taken and no laws passed without their consent. The legislative organs, centred in the soviets, merely rubber-stamped Bolshevik orders. The state apparatus was headed by a cabinet called the Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin, all of whose members were drawn from the elite of the Party.
The Bolsheviks were solemnly committed to convening and respecting the will of the Constituent Assembly, which was to be elected in November 1917 on a universal franchise. Realizing that they had no chance of winning a majority, they procrastinated under various pretexts but eventually allowed the elections to proceed. The results gave a majority (40.4 percent) of the 41.7 million votes cast to the Socialists Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks received 24 percent of the ballots. They allowed the assembly to meet for one day (January 5 [January 18, New Style], 1918) and then shut it down. The dispersal of the first democratically elected national legislature in Russian history marked the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Naturally this is unfair. I will proceed reading Britannica now.
Yes, that is certainly an anticommunist take on the Revolution, and it leaves out key details like the Socialist Revolutionaries having a major party split right before the election, as well as that the working class had largely abandoned the constituent assembly, as well as the nature of Soviet Democracy, which is what allowed the workers to elect the bolsheviks in the first place. You also see nonsense words like "totalitarianism" as well.
You would do better to read the book October by China Mieville than you would reading a UK-based encyclopedia with a vested interest in anticommunism. Rather, what you originally complained about, ie not believing there to be anticommunist institutions impacting education and popular media, is fully on display.
Finally, it also fails to mention that the Workers did not want to continue Capitalism, the Provisional Government had to be overthrown in the first place anyways. The Socialist Revolutionaries were also wanting to do that until the major party split, where the right-wing faction retained the name.
I am quite rigid in regards to dis/trusting Britannica and other free and accessible online sources ( e.g. Wikipedia).
In my opinion, if your data, theory, or story cannot survive public scrutiny on the open internet, then the quality of your material probably doesn't meet my standards.
Only trusting western, mainstream sources that are generally friendly to the Capitalist order is pretty low in terms of standards. Purely trusting biased sources isn't a good thing.
Moreover, the basic facts weren't wrong, I pointed out how Britannica intentionally leaves out key details, and emotionally charges the facts it does represent. You're only getting a small portion of the overall history and are deliberately refusing to look into actual sources, just summaries from biased individuals.
Why don't you want to read October, by China Mieville? As far as I know it's seen as very in-depth and well-sourced, the worst you would be doing is getting a better understanding of events.
All of that still doesn't address that Socialism was by far better for Russia than Tsarism or Capitalism, life expectancies doubled, democratic control was dramatically expanded, literacy rates went from low 30s to 99.9%, famine was ended, and disparity was lowered while GDP raised dramatically and consistently. Even if we ignored the events of the Revolution, the working class won out dramatically.
I regret to inform you that despite my own political preferences I am not going to approve of any government where the political opponents are oppressed.
A kind, benevolent, and merciful dictator will never (until proven otherwise) be good in my eyes.
You must disapprove of Capitalism to a greater degree than Socialism, then, because Capitalism oppresses the working class, who far outnumber the Capitalists. All systems oppress political opponents, what matters is which class is uplifted and which is oppressed, until class is eliminated as a concept. Moreover, the USSR wasn't a dictatorshio, but a democracy, you can read Soviet Democacy for more on how the Soviet model worked. It's even listed as a source on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy, so that should pass your bias checks.
Kronstadt rebellion (mentioned in the wikipedia article) seems to be highlighting that this model was in fact oppressing: socialists and anarchists.
Kronstadt was lead by Stepan Petrichenko, a Tsarist that tried to join the White Army, failed, then lead a mutiny and managed to successfully join the Tsarists afterwards. The fact that a Tsarist-led rebellion occured in the middle of a bloody civil war against the Socialists doesn't mean the Anarchists were oppressed, just people deliberately holding the civil war hostage so they could get preferential treatment.
You'll also know that the Soviets were the only supporters of the Spanish Anarchists, sending many arms to help fight the fascists. The Soviets disagreed with Anarchists, but often fought alongside them.
You really need to actually dig into subjects before bringing them up as though you are familiar from simple wikipedia blurbs, because otherwise you end up defending the fascist Tsarists.
At the very least, it's an incredibly shortened version of it that skips quite a bit of stuff.
I appreciate the sentiment, but not every country is as viewpoint-averse as the US. I read the Communist Manifesto as an assignment in high school. We shouldn't normalize the US's particular approach to propaganda.
To be fair, Marx is traditionally taught in a manner that distorts or coopts his messaging, blunting the practical and replacing with an anti-Marxist idealism. Marx is taught in the US in this manner as well. Simply assigning reading doesn't make one a Communist, especially if accompanied by bourgeois messaging. This applies doubly to the Manifesto, which is more of a pamphlet meant to energize the workers than an actual explanation of Marxist theory (which can admittedly be far more dry, even if I personally like reading and studying it).