• Sphere [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Look, I’m not trying to justify everything the Bolsheviks did during the Russian Civil War. I don’t know enough of the history to make a judgment call on most of that stuff. So I’m going to leave the question of morality entirely aside on this one.

    But I don’t think you can call your revolution successful if, within a few years, some external force is able to show up, wreck everything you were doing, and take over. It’s not enough to just temporarily wrest control away and set up your committees and your resource distribution system and declare victory. You have to establish long-term security and stability. If you don’t, you haven’t had a successful revolution.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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      2 days ago

      Valid point. I’d say that it’s inevitable for a large force with popular legitimacy and support to best a force with a similar percentage of but less-due-to-geographical-resources popular legitimacy and support, but I see arguing that would be moving the goalposts. So to engage that directly I would say that the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, commonly known as Rojava) is as anarchist as the USSR was communist. It’s been there for well over a decade now.

      • Sphere [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 days ago

        I could quibble over the circumstances (and, unfortunately, likely outcomes in the near future), or argue about your dig at the USSR, but honestly I’m more inclined to cede the point on this. I don’t really have anything against anarchists or anarchism; I was mostly just giving a flippant answer to that other commenter, who was being a smug jerk.