Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”
Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.
Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?
Ah, famous socialist cardinal József Mindszenty.
With Czechoslovakia it’s a bit more muddled, but looking at Gorbachev who was at first “we’ll do socialism a bit better” and then “we are ceding power to capitalists now”, I’m sceptical it wouldn’t do something similar.
Did you just use the failure if the USSR via self-rat-fucking to justify the imperialism of the USSR? I get the names mixed up sometimes, so genuine question.
Incorrect term. Call it hegemonism if you want, or geopolitical interventionism, but not imperialism. The USSR did not engage in economic imperialism in any stretch of the word, not within itself, not with neighbouring countries, not with third parties. It was a source of raw materials for the Eastern Bloc which it traded within COMECON on exchange for industrial goods at approximately international market prices* (i.e. applying unequal exchange to itself in favour of COMECON countries), it supplied aid in the form of industrial development to poor third countries on exchange for local goods, many times those produced by the newly formed industries (instead of supplying aid in the form of loans for raw material extraction and expecting a return in hard currency with interest rates)… It’s really impossible by any stretch of the word “imperialism” to apply it to the USSR.
*after the mid-50s