Talk:Bolshevization

Proposed Deletion

I've proposed this article for deletion. After 4 years, it sits at just 150 words. Sources linked in the article are more about the history of the communist movements in Italy and Czechoslovakia than about "Bolshevization" as an overall process. I could find no sources discussing "Bolshevization" more generally; in fact, the word seems to have been used more as a vague politicizing term by contemporaries both supporting and opposing the USSR around the time. The content in the article can be easily rolled into History of Communism and/or History of the USSR and nothing will be lost. Combefere ★ Talk 17:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

it's a topic in the political history of the left in lots of countries--Germany, USA, UK, Finland etc. in the 1920s and 1930s. --It was usually defeated but some leaders became dictators after 1945 like in East Germany & Czechoslovakia. I added some scholarly books and articles in English (there is a lot more in foreign languages). For an overview of the literature in English see https://ras.jes.su/nni/s013038640013465-9-1-en Rjensen (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 19 March 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus to move is unlikely to develop. (non-admin closure) Aydoh8 (talk) 03:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

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Bolshevization → Stalinization – This article should be renamed as Stalinization. The article explains how Stalin and his supporters ended democratic decision making in the national sections of the Communist International. Stalin destroyed the genuine bolshevics in the Soviet Union, for example through the infamous show trials. To name this article Bolshevisation is a gross dishonour to the memory of those genuine bolsheviks who opposed Stalin and were persecuted and murdered for that opposition. Hewer7 (talk) 15:08, 1 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Natg 19 (talk) 01:29, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

The above proposal to rename this page to Stalinization would also be consistent with the introductory paragraph in the article on Stalinism, which defines it as including the "... subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,...". Hewer7 (talk) 20:27, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Strong oppose: based on web searches, the proposed title does not meet the Wikipedia policy for WP:COMMONNAME. Article titles are based on policy, not what we think should be right. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 23:43, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Strong oppose: they are two entirely different subjects.  // Timothy :: talk  23:56, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose as stated in my discussion with you, these are two different subjects. Based on extra review, it failsWP:COMMONNAME as well.

Antny08 (talk) 11:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I understand. Please ignore the point I made about 'gross dishonor' as I see that can be considered an emotional rather than a factual matter. I still contend that Stalinism begins much earlier than 1928. The elements of Stalinism, are described in the article of that name as including: "...the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country (until 1939), collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,..."

My point is that the beginning of Stalinism, and of the Stalinization of the other communist parties is marked by three initial changes: the theory of socialism in one country, the bureaucratization of the Bolshevik/Communist party - that is the ending of internal party democracy, and the related bureaucratization of the Comintern and the communist parties of other countries. Other features of Stalinism generally developed later.

The theory of socialism in one country developed in 1924: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_one_country

The ending of the norms of bolshevic party democracy begin with the secret formation of an internal faction within the Politburo, the Troika of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Tony Cliff states that this secret faction was formed as early as 1922 or 23. See https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/trotsky2/16-troika.html That article includes a link to Stalin making the Troika public later on. The following article confirms that the Troika was formed earlier: https://www.sparknotes.com/biography/stalin/section6/

Lenin was evidently aware of the potential threat posed by Stalin and warned of it as early as 1923, shortly before the stroke that would totally incapacitate him in March of that year. ' " Lenin warned the Party that Stalin had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution" and formed a faction with Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.' See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism

Another key aspect of the bureaucratization of the party was the degeneration of Rabkrin (the worker's and peasant's inspectorate). This was set up to deliberately try and give workers and peasants oversight of the beaurocracy to try ensure that it did not take power. However under Stalin's control that was subverted and instead Stalin used it to develop his domination. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabkrin

This degradation of internal party democracy then started to spread to the rest of the Communist International - and should therefore be called Stalinization rather than Bolshevization. Hewer7 (talk) 13:31, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed reply. You make good points, but even if the points were correct, it still fails to pass WP:COMMONNAME, which forces me to oppose. Antny08 (talk) 14:30, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I think in this case it is necessary to consider that wikipedia policies "describe standards all users should normally follow." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). The word 'normally' is hyperlinked to a page that makes the following statement: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

My reason for saying this needs to be considered is that the existing term Bolshevization was used as a cover for Stalinization. In other words to accept the term Bolshevisation for how "the pluralistic Communist International (Comintern) and its constituent communist parties were increasingly subject to pressure by the Kremlin in Moscow to follow Marxism–Leninism. " would be to go along with the Stalinist distortion of the term.

As you can see from the the following work a more thorough analysis shows that incipient stalinism in the comintern can be considered as beginning in 1924. The work "utilizes insights from Sovietologists to argue that Stalinism constituted a politics and practice connected with but distinct from Bolshevism. Reviewing Comintern and party history, it proposes a specific periodization. State Bolshevism, 1919–1923, saw subjugation of the American and British parties to Russian imperatives. Incipient Stalinism, 1924–1928, witnessed restructuring of the politics of subordination. From 1929, Stalinization accomplished a distinctive subordination." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0023656X.2019.1572872 Hewer7 (talk) 17:29, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

You have amazing structure of your response and good facts, but none of what you are saying proves that this should be the new name. As stated by another user, just because they existed at the same time and are SIMILAR does not mean they are the SAME. I do appreciate your enthusiasm and well-written responses. Once again, I do not have much knowledge on this, but based on what everyone else is saying, the name change will likely be denied. Antny08 (talk) 19:05, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

That they coexisted for a period of time and impacted each other doesn't change that the two subjects are different.  // Timothy :: talk  14:32, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Please see my reply to Antny08 above which deal with this issue. Hewer7 (talk) 17:48, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose — Such a move would assert that Bolshevization is Stalinization, and that the two terms are interchangeable. The nominator's own arguments and provided literature go against this notion. Yue🌙 09:04, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  I do see some merit in your point. If the title is not changed I will include some of the text above to indicate the difference between the two in the article. Hewer7 (talk) 10:38, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bolshevism/Bolshevisation: a poorly defined term

There is clearly an excessive tendency to reify the politics of the Bolshevik party and make a discrete system out of it. It looks that the term "Bolshevism" has found some acceptance in scholarly literature and so the problem cannot be resolved by deletion of an article built around a poorly defined concept, but I guess it is worth raising. It is similar to speaking of Francoism and Salazarism in place of Spanish and Portuguese fascism, or Reaganomics instead of 1980s US neoliberalism - arguably the tendency should be resisted because it does not help advance our knowledge of the described phenomena.

Here, specifically, the publication cited to support the assertions in the introductory paragraph, which purports to define the term "Bolshevisation", does not really bear these claims out - at least I am unable to find the relevant passage, and no page number or even chapter is indicated (improper citation). In fact, a reviewer has pointed out that the collective publication in question fails to define the underlying term "Bolshevism" (p. 214). Some of the chapters do not use the term at all except in quotations from anti-Communist sources.

The editor's introduction restricts itself to observing that "Bolshevism was a mirror through which European leaders and people observed their amplified fears" (p. 8) and that "the impact of the rise and establishment of Bolshevism through the perceptions and circulation of ideas and people ... is relevant in understanding, first, the consolidation of the Versailles system, and secondly, the spread of authoritarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s in “old Europe”" (p. 9). These two observations are much less controversial than the unsupported assertions, but all they suggest is the functioning of "Bolshevism" as a propaganda term through which Soviet Communism was caricatured (cf. the especially abundant usage of this term in Nazi propaganda). Now Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders have clearly used the term "Bolshevism" themselves in the heat of factional struggle, but Lenin seems quite happy to multiply "-isms" for rhetorical purposes (Kautskyism, Longuetism...). I have not seen any persuasive evidence in the article on Bolshevism that Lenin or other Bolsheviks succeeded in establishing a heterodox doctrine that would radically depart from the Communist method and political commitments of Marx. It is also not clear how Bolshevism would be different from Leninism or the Marxism–Leninism of Stalin as an allegedly separate system of thought or practice.

In this situation, what is needed is a proper investigation of the history and uses of the term "Bolshevism" from the sources of the era, and not an easy propagation of potential pseudo-concepts lacking in substance. It matters little whether an academic has chosen to use the term or not, unless they can show that there is a scientific point in using it - and it is not clear from the current Wikipedia articles that this has happened. So before we can talk about "Bolshevisation", it would be good to make absolutely sure that "Bolshevism" (rather than Russian Communism in its initial stages of development) is really a thing and what it actually refers to. VampaVampa (talk) 07:58, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I didn't create the original version of this article, nor the current introductory paragraph. I don't consider Bolshevism (ie up to 1924) to be anything other than Marxism. I agree that the introductory paragraph could be usefully revised to clarify the article. I would suggest something like:

The term Bolshevization has at least two separate meanings. Firstly to change the way of working of new communist parties, such as that in the UK in the early 1920s. [using the current reference 2 - see paragraphs two and three of the article] Secondly, starting in 1924, and reflecting the degeneration of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union into Stalinism, was "Bolshevization" a cynically named policy of getting the other parties of the Comintern to follow the line proposed by Stalin (and in the early period, by his allies). [perhaps using current reference 3 - see paragraph 4 of the article] Hewer7 (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)