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Talk:World History Lecture Eleven (view source)
Revision as of 19:51, April 24, 2009
, 19:51, April 24, 2009→Regarding Trotsky
::: I welcome a supported, well-written improvement on the lecture, but not something that would tend to confuse students with hairsplitting and debatable distinctions. Thanks and Godspeed.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 15:15, 24 April 2009 (EDT)
::: I welcome a supported, well-written improvement on the lecture, but not something that would tend to confuse students with hairsplitting and debatable distinctions. Thanks and Godspeed.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 15:15, 24 April 2009 (EDT)
:::: The lecture says Trotsky used the phrase as his personal motto. Nicholas says that he used it as a way to summarize and criticize his opponent, Stalin. That's not a subtle distinction - Nicholas and the lecture report precisely opposite versions! So it's probably worth "getting to the bottom of" if indeed the lecture contains a serious inaccuracy. [[User:Carillonneur|Carillonneur]] 15:44, 24 April 2009 (EDT)
:::: The lecture says Trotsky used the phrase as his personal motto. Nicholas says that he used it as a way to summarize and criticize his opponent, Stalin. That's not a subtle distinction - Nicholas and the lecture report precisely opposite versions! So it's probably worth "getting to the bottom of" if indeed the lecture contains a serious inaccuracy. [EDIT]: This seems to be the source: "[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch11.htm The Revolution Betrayed]" by Leon Trotsky, Chapter 11. The quote, a little more than halfway down, reads:
::::::...during the “purgations” in the last month of 1935 and the first half of 1936, hundreds of thousands of members of the party were again expelled, among them several tens of thousands of “Trotskyists.” The most active were immediately arrested and thrown into prisons and concentration camps. As to the rest, Stalin, through Pravda, openly advised the local organs not to give them work. In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. '''The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.''' Exactly how many Bolsheviks have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since 1923, when the era of Bonapartism opened, we shall find out when we go through the archives of Stalin’s political police.
::::I have to say that this supports Nicholas's reading of it, since Trotsky is using the phrase to describe Stalin's reign of terror, and definitely sees the altered adage as a Very Bad Thing. [[User:Carillonneur|Carillonneur]] 15:51, 24 April 2009 (EDT)